Booze has medical value. It’s used in cough syrup. At one time it was used as an anesthetic. It’s still used as an antiseptic.
I understand that some use it recreationally as well.
The Fort Smith Police Department are embroiled in a whistleblower case involving 3 officers. During the discovery process they mail an external hard drive to their lawyer. Suspicious, the lawyer has the drive evaluated by a computer security consultant: 3 trojans are discovered, capable of capturing passwords and installing other malware.
Contempt of court charges are filed. The Arkansas state police are asked to prosecute, but they refuse. Lawyer representing whistle blowers finds malware on drive supplied by cops | Ars Technica
“Marijuana”, the plant, does not have any more legitimate medical use than a poppy flower or a strip of willow bark.
It contains compounds which may have medical uses. If so, then the proper route for people who want those compounds to be legitimized is to advocate for further studies like the ones you mention so those compounds can be given FDA approval, not to just hand out buds containing unknown chemicals in an unknown quantity so that people can take a dose of unknown size and call it “medicine”.
For people with cancer and other conditions that result in them feeling like shit all day, I have no problem with them smoking pot if that makes them feel decent for a while (and allows them to eat without puking). The law shouldn’t either – people in severe pain smoking pot grown at home or by neighbors don’t do any harm whatsoever to society.
it’s amazing how many people that would otherwise be against unregulated medicine on whatever grounds are in favour of medicinal pot.
Of course recreational pot should be legal, which would solve a lot of the problems, but calling an uncontrolled dose of an untested substance “medicine” is absurd, and should be illegal. The harm isn’t done by people smoking it and feeling better, it’s done by those who call it medicine, who are no better than homeopaths or other woo-based “therapists”.
Research what causes the benefits and provide that as a medicine, and allow those who wish to continue smoking a substance that’s known to cause cancer and mental illness in private if they choose, but don’t call it medicine.
I’m sure there are plenty of woo-peddlers around, but it’s my understanding that there are plenty of actual doctors who recommend pot to some of their patients to manage certain conditions, and it can be effective in this. I’m in favor of legalizing recreational pot, and I also think doctors (but not dealers!) should be able to legally recommend or prescribe pot to manage pain and nausea caused by certain conditions whether or not it’s legal recreationally.
And I’m in favor of research. I don’t think we need to wait for all research to allow doctors to recommend and prescribe pot to their patients for managing various conditions. I also think doctors should be allowed to prescribe cocaine, heroin, and pretty much any drug for management of pain and discomfort for certain seriously suffering patients.
I don’t smoke it, by the way. I did it a handful of times about 15-20 years ago, but none since.
Marijuana was enormously helpful to my father the last few years of his life. It helped with his chronic pain and completely cleared away the nausea his medications caused him; it was as important to maintaining his quality of life as any of the prescription drugs he used. He was no weed head; he was a successful businessman, a self-made man, and a wonderful family man. Anyone who thinks he was some kind of reprobate for using marijuana is an asshole, and anyone who doubt the medicinal value of it is an ignoramus. I don’t smoke myself, no interest in doing so, but the medicinal benefits were extremely obvious and anyone who says they don’t exist is simply wrong.
Doctors should be able to prescribe a controlled dose of a tested substance. I can accept recommending it in the short term until the research has been done - I’m well aware that it’s been prevented for political reasons - but it’s not an ideal situation.
Heroin and cocaine are used medically, at least here in the UK. One of my friends is a pharmacist at a hospital, and I’ve talked to him about that, and also the place I used to work had a department where custom prescriptions were made, and heroin and cocaine along with other controlled substances were kept there. Under very tight security.
I’ve no idea what the medical uses of cocaine are, but I do know that heroin is very rarely the best opiate to use for pain control. And if it is prescribed, I’d expect it to be made in a lab and carefully tested, not obtained from anywhere unlicensed, whether from an illegal dealer or a shop selling ostensibly “medical” heroin through a legal loophole.
I don’t smoke it either. Have done in the past, and mildly enjoyed it, but not enough to make the effort to get it.
I’m not saying anyone’s a reprobate for using it. I’m saying that using uncontrolled doses of an untested substance is far from medically ideal, and should not be considered a good situation. If it’s a medicine, it should be tested, regulated, and prescribed by doctors in a controlled fashion.
I’m fine with all that, but until all that testing happens, guys like RickJay’s dad should have access (especially if prescribed/recommended by a doctor) to weed if nothing else is working.
I’m in favour of it being legal anyway. But not being sold as a medicine. Give people all the available information - that weed appears to be helpful in these situations, but hasn’t been fully tested - and let them make their own minds up.
What I think would be a bad situation is if it’s used instead of proven effective medicines, and if it were to interact badly with them, as is the case sometimes with St John’s Wort, for example.
This is only the situation in a few countries, that enjoy a level of freedom and especially freedom from absolutely corrupt government, and especially police forces.
A conversation like this would be ludicrous in many countries. In fact, I can see how some populations in the US actually might view the courts and police in the US much like everybody views the courts and police in Mexico, Russia or China. Police are a dangerous corrupt arm of a dangerous and corrupt system, and you don’t trust them, call them, and you really really try to never get arrested by them, for any reason.
And there isn’t even an expectation of actual justice.
Why not start a thread about how all plants are not medicine. That should be a great thread.
No, I’m not going to do it.
This is the Pit so I predict I will not be popular by saying this but I would like to point out something that, I am going to suggest, has been lost.
Before I make my point I will say:
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I do believe there are some police officers who are utterly and totally corrupt. Who commit pre-meditated crimes.
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I do believe there are many examples of police officers committing acts which, on reflection and after the event, are clearly wrong and sometimes illegal. Even if that was not the intention of the officers at the time.
However I think it is important not to ignore the obvious.
This thread is an impressive 1800 posts long showing clear and valid concern about the issue but how long would it be if it were called “Controversial encounters between CRIMINALS and civilians”? If people were outraged enough to report them here how many accounts would there be of entirely innocent civilians from babies to the very elderly being robbed, beaten up, raped, tortured and murdered?
I think it is right to look for higher standards in the police force. I think it is helpful to highlight the more egregious failures and failings. But when the police are described, in this thread, as “dangerous and corrupt” it leads to the question would life be better with no police force?
My belief is we need a better police force. I personally don’t believe that there is a realistic option for **no **police force at all.
TCMF-2F
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
It seems that the crux of your argument is that criminals commit more crimes than police do. Thanks for the blinding insight.
Call me crazy, but i would argue that this thread was created precisely because we recognize that crime is an issue, but that we also have a right to expect a rather higher standard of honesty and integrity and non-criminal behavior from our peace officers.
This is a pretty long thread. Perhaps you can point out for me where anyone has made the argument for no police force at all, because i seem to have missed it.
Edit: Ninjaed by AtomicDog, who went for the more concise response. 
I think everybody agrees with the first part. Absolutely no one has advocated the second part.
We would really, really like a police force that didn’t have criminals wearing badges, being protected because they have badges, and not using deadly force as the first club out of the bag.
How exactly do we get one? From the very beginning the Peelian Principles were an outline of how an honest, just, and accountable police force ought to behave. But the epidemic of police misconduct indicates that it isn’t just a matter of some rotten apples- that the problem is systematic. What rewards police departments for tolerating or even perpetuating this kind of behavior? In the US at least, one glaring problem is race: white-majority police forces are virtually at war with the African-American population. To the extent that white police consider themselves “us” and urban African-American populations “them” (and vice-versa), many (the majority?) of police forces have utterly failed a key Peelian Principle:
Yeah… I knew I would not be making a popular comment.
In post 1813 FXMastermind said as part of a longer post "***Police are a dangerous corrupt arm of a dangerous and corrupt system, and you don’t trust them, call them, and you really really try to never get arrested by them, for any reason.
And there isn’t even an expectation of actual justice***."
To me - and I am willing to accept I am misunderstanding FXMastermind - that is moving towards a call for eliminating the police as an entity (especially where he suggests “you don’t call them”) which I believe to be an unrealistic goal. I think Atomic Dog will agree with me there.
mhendo, Typo Negative: That was the post which particularly encouraged me to make my comment. That was the specific post I interpreted as a call to remove all policing although I did feel it was hyperbole. But I felt - even as hyperbole - the sentiment should be called out. I am sorry I offended you by doing so.
TCMF-2F