I have had friends and relatives that thought that doing pot and other “mind altering” substances, including alcohol, was “fun”. A couple of them are now dead. One of them can’t tell the difference between a penny and a freight train. And all for a little “Wow, man, that’s some good shit”. Great fun. Now they are dead. As for alcohol, I used to drink myself under the table every day. I got smart and quit drinking before I became a statistic.
Sorry if my opinions towards drug abuse, whether with legal or illegal drugs, and alcohol abuse is rather strong, but that is just the way it is. It is my opinion and if nobody likes it but me, so be it. I ** will not ** change it.
Let’s see, what do we know? Alcohol is, of course, a toxin, and if you drink enough of it fast enough, it can kill you. But the fact is, people have been using this toxin for recreational purposes for millennia, and in the overwhelming majority of instances, have had no serious problems as a result. And besides, alcohol has nothing to do with mandatory minimums, because it’s legal to consume alcohol in this country.
Marijuana, OTOH, has no known lethal dose. In other words, to the best of our knowledge, you can’t smoke enough of it to directly kill you. Nor had it been demonstrated to have serious long-term effects on your cognitive abilities. For instance, I may not be able to put together a coherent sentence when stoned, but getting wasted a few dozen times during the 1970s didn’t keep me from later earning a Ph.D. in mathematics. Feel free to explain to me how society would have benefitted from my mandatory incarceration if caught.
I suspect that the problems you describe had to do mostly with either (a) excessive consumption of alcohol, the legal drug (again, outside the scope of this debate), or (b) ingestion of those other mind-altering substances that you describe. Without specifics, your post means nothing in this debate.
Good for you - but again, this is relevant only if you want to start a thread about the evils of drugs in general.
Nobody’s asking you to change your opinion, cheezit, but if you strongly state your opinions in this forum, as you’ve done, people who disagree with them are going to shoot them down if they can. It’s generally the custom to try to defend one’s opinions here.
I was asked by Badtz Maru – “This is a pretty strong statement, cheezit. I’d like a bit more insight into why you feel this way.”
I gave my insight. Nothing more.
I do not expect anybody to change their opinion of drugs, one way or the other, just because I don’t and won’t use them whether or not they are legal or not. I have to take care of me. I choose not to put those substances in my body. I am not telling you that you can’t put them in yours. Go ahead. However, the law is the law, and it is still illegal to “do drugs”.
One question, though. If Marijuana is so “harmless” why has it been made illegal?
Hysteria. Ever seen “Reefer Madness”? It was taken seriously, once upon a time.
Why has it not been made legal again? Well, hell: IIRC, about 20 states have laws that attach serious prison terms to the crimes of oral and anal ‘sodomy’. Why haven’t those been repealed? (And, to address your original question, why were they illegal to begin with?)