Marijuana - Legalize It?

Great Debates
181

It is not just the act of smoking that creates the carcinogenic effects of marijuana. Hookahs, vaporizers, and brownies may all decrease the amount and potentcy of the carcinogens, but they are still there. Just as Ultra Light cigarettes contain less carcinogens than, say Pall Mall unfiltereds, the Ultra Lights still contain carcinogens.
However, you are correct that there is little to no evidence that THC alone is a carcinogen. Of course, there is little to no evidence that nicotene alone is a carcinogen (although, in all honesty, it appears it may be metabolized in the body as a carcinogen, but the medical jury is still out). It’s the way that these substances are grown, packaged, and, yes, used that increase the likelihood of carcinogens. I certainly think that the fact the substance, as used by a vast majority of users, is carcinogenic is an argument for it’s dangerousness and potential regulation.

Actually, I don’t find the argument illogical at all. Injesting marijuana is bad for you. The fact there are other things that are legal and are bad for you does not change that fact. Now, if you’re arguing that every single substance in the world, from pot to meth to X to cocaine to Oxycontin to PCP to any prescription medication, should be available for a person to decide to use (which is certainly an argument made here), you accept the fact that there should be some regulation as to what people should have at their disposal. The question then becomes, where are you going to draw that line. Very well-educated, rational people differ on where that line should be drawn. Personally, I’d include marijuana on the regulated side. Of course, looking now at the societal costs throughout the history of the U.S., of alcohol and tobacco, I may very well put those on the regulated side too. However, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Well, maybe for tobacco.

All in all, I guess I kinda come down with King’s Gambit and the benefits I see from marijuana use and it’s legalization are outweighed by the costs. Why add more problems to a world that is already rife with them from alcohol and tobacco. Now, if I were to create my own country (lets call it Hamletland), without all the history and social influences in the United States, I would very seriously consider making alcohol and cigarettes illegal and making thc legal. However, I’m dealt the world I live in, and make my judgments accordingly.

182

I swear I had some hyperlinks sprinkled in there…

The complete insanity that I refer to is C.A.M.P. (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting).

Here are a few government sites that refer to it:

http://www.chp.ca.gov/html/task_forces_and_campaigns.html
http://caag.state.ca.us/newsalerts/2003/03-133.htm
http://caag.state.ca.us/newsalerts/2001/01-120.htm

183

I have no problem with legalizing marijuana. It should either be legalized, or all other mood-altering substances banned, too. Except chocolate, of course. :smiley:

184

Hamlet, no offense, but I think you’re being intellectually dishonest. The only significant harm we should be concerned about is harm done to other people.

PCP makes a person more dangerous to others. Heroin makes a person more dangerous to others.

Marijuana makes a person more dangerous to himself.

Who the hell are we to tell people what they can and cannot do to themselves?

(Especially when we consider that weed makes people LESS dangerous to others?)

185

Sure- marijauna isn’t perfectly safe- but neither is booze. And let’s not get me started about tobacco.

So- I say- sure, legalize it, and tax it. The tax collected would be nice, and the savings on prison & police costs for not busting weed users & sellers would also be a benefit.

186

It does matter what drug, because marijuana isn’t addictive!

187

How in the hell does heroin make you more dangerous to others? It’s one of the most lethargic drugs known to man.

188

Which is a fact that anti-legalization types tend to overlook. Some people become psychologically dependent on it, but that’s an internal problem with the individual person, not a quality of the drug.

Caffeine has been found to by physically addictive- I’ve experience some nasty withdrawls from it myself, back in the days when I had to be to work at some unholy hour of the morning and couldn’t get off the ground without a twenty-ouncer of coffee from 7-11. I ran out at home one weekend, and in the middle of a busy street on the way to the store to buy more, the world tipped over sideways. I’ve gotten headaches withdrawing from caffeine, experienced lightheadedness…

I’ve never had these problems withdrawing from mj. During a drought, yeah, I’d miss it, but I could get along without it. When I decided I needed to quit because employers felt the need to have me pee in a cup to find out what I did away from work (this seeming to be much more important than, like, job performance, which has always been good), I felt mildly grumpy because, really, I don’t like alcohol, I’d rather wind down after a hard day’s work with a few tokes off a doobie, but I didn’t experience any particular craving for the drug.

189

I disagree. I am not only concerned with harm done to other people, I am concerned with harm that people can do for themselves. Same with seat belt laws, helmet laws, and prescription medication. There are some aspects of life, including substances that are dangerous to a person, that should be regulated, even if they do not have a direct causal factor to injury to others.

Adolescent Self-Reported Behaviors and Their Association with Marijuana Use, Department of Health and Human Services, SAMHSA, 1999. This report indicated that there was “a link between frequent marijuana use and increased behavior.” Brook, J.S. et al. The risks of late adolscence of early adolscent marijuana use. American Journal of Public Health, October 1999, also substantiated that finding. Also from those studies: young people who use marijuana weekly are nearly four times more likely than nonusers to engage in violence.

And, by the way. Disagreeing with SPOOFE does not equal being “intellectually dishonest.” Just so you know.

See the middle to last part of my post at 168.

190

Heh. Of course marijuana is linked to behavior. That should have read “increased violent behavior.”

191

Is it possible that adolescents who are willing to break one big rule (i.e. don’t use pot) are also willing to break other rules? It would seem to me that this might be the case.

192

Wow. I screwed up that quote real good, didn’t I? Hopefully you catch my drift.

193

Lekatt

My guess is that you sip coffee or tea, and–who knows?–maybe you even have a glass of wine at Thanksgiving. Why dodge all the questions? Here, I’ll number them for you so you can answer them one by one with ease:

  1. Do you drink coffee, tea, or alcohol?
  2. Should coffee, tea, or alcohol be banned?
  3. If you say alcohol should not be banned, then why should cannabis (a drug that many claim is less harmful/dangerous than alcohol) be banned?

Thanks for your cooperation!

King’s Gambit

I think what you say is true: if it were legalized, use would increase to some extent. Since use would increase, some of those users who never even considered the possibility of it affecting them negatively would get a bad surprise.

My response is… TOO BAD.

I am not heartless to those who would find that it hurts them, but my vision of government and life is different. I don’t want a totalitarian government telling me how to run my life. I want a government that protects me from crime, environmental degradation, crappy or dangerous products, and economic exploitation. And while it’s protecting me from those things, it can go ahead and prevent me from doing it to others.

The government should definitely put warning labels on the spliff boxes. It should make sure that ganja factories are paying a living wage. It should take away the licenses of stoner drivers. But I’ll be dammed if the government is going to prevent me from drinking whisky, which is my equivalent vice.

There are certain drugs that should probably still stay banned. Yes, I know that the all or nothing approach appeals to the human mind, which loves black and white, but something nasty like PCP should stay in the vet’s office. For the simple reason that I don’t think people can use it without, eventually, hurting other people. If I’m wrong, fine, don’t ban it.

But anyway, King’s Gambit, personally I don’t believe that the costs of enforcing all the drug laws are worth it. That is, yes, more stoners will exact a toll on society, but the cost of snooping for drugs and throwing people in jail is already a huge cost. Even if they’re equal, I would prefer to err on the side of freedom and personal judgment.

I can also respect a country doing things differently. E.g., Japan is an island nation with pretty low crime and drug use levels. It’s perfectly reasonable for a country like Japan to say, Hey, we’re channeling all our drug use into tobacco and alcohol, so let’s not start up with the other stuff.

But the cat is already out of the bag in the US. Hell, there were no drug laws until the 1910s, and anyone could go nuts on booze, ganja, coke, opium, mushrooms, (and later, even after other drugs were banned) speed, downers, and pills of every variety.

But the situation in the US is absolutely ridiculous.

194

Regarding the alleged correlation to violence, I think norinew is on the right track.

Who uses and who doesn’t is (relatively) easy enough to quantify in a study, but we have a long way to go untill we sufficiently understand the psychology behind the choice to use in order quantify why people choose to use.

If you’re a depressed/disturbed kid on the road to violence, and you self-medicate with pot along the way, the correlation between pot and violence does not apply. Based on my admittedly anecdotal experience and perceptions, I think that is much more common than the “Reefer Madness” propaganda that Hamlet seems to be regurgitating.

Substitute “therapy” or “prescribed anti-depressants” for pot in those studies and I’d bet my next paycheck that there would be a correlation to violence. So let’s keep those kids out of the shrink’s office…it obviously contributes to a life of violence and crime. :rolleyes:

Untill researchers roll up their sleeves and actually try and do some robust psycho-analysis on the subjects of their studies, their data exposes nothing but a circumstantial coincidence.

195

I think I catch your drift and I would agree in part with your point. Pointing to one factor and one factor only, to determine why people are violent is madness. Heroin doesn’t cause people to go out and beat the crap out of people any more than marijuana does. Determining precisely why someone takes a violent action is not that easy to pin down. But the studies indicate that there is a correlation (note: not causality) between marijuana and violence. I think it is impossible to determine the cause of violence and blame it only on one thing, but the correlation is there nonetheless.

You and your ilk are precisely the reason I’ve avoided, and in the future, will continue to avoid drug legalization threads. I suggest you take a few notes from lezlers, norinew, SPOOFE, and Asbestos Mango on how to conduct a reasonable debate that does not devolve into namecalling and accusations of propoganda.

196

Before we go of the deep end in assuming that everything the gov’t does to MJ is automatically the wrong thing, I would like to point out that Cannabis is a very intrusive crop and can cause damage the the environment where it is planted. Many hectares of land have been devasted for being used for growing cannbis. Even worse, the illegal nature of this crop means that the growers do things like divert streams and creeks. Very bad.

Of course, if it were legal this wouldn’t be as much of an issue (since the MJ growers would hopefully follow farming regulations), but it would still be a factor. This is why I get a bit nervous when people started saying “when its legal, everyone can grow some!”. Good idea if you use planters and small crops, bad idea when some uses their oversized backyard.

197

Marijuana linked to behavior?!? The horror, the horror! :eek:

In all seriousness (oh, I love having my little books here for handy reference), in the studies of criminal behavior and juvenile delinquency, the link between mj pretty much disappeared once alcohol and other drugs were controlled for. Also, people generally began committing crimes before they started smoking weed.

Also, as far as addiction to mj goes, studies in which subjects were kept more or less constantly stoned for up to thirty days showed no symptoms of physical withdrawl. The studies that showed signs of physical addiction/withdrawl used huge doses of oral THC and even it these cases, the symptoms were fairly mild.

It actually seems to be a consistent theme in these studies that show mj is seriously harmful- they tend to use artificailly high doses of pure THC rather than the smoked herb, sometimes just pouring the stuff on cells in a petri dish (although some studies have simply exposed the cells to smoke) then reporting the damage done. But, hell, I imagine if you put some live cells in a petri dish and poured a shot of Cuervo 1800 over them, it would kill 'em all, but most folks would not consider that a valid measure of the dangers of alcohol.

OK, smoke is bad for the lungs, I don’t think anybody is going to argue that. If you’re smoking eight joints a day, there’s a chance you might give yourself a case of bronchitis or irritating your lungs enough to make them more vulnerable to respiratory infections. But the average mj user who smokes a doobie to unwind at the end of the day probably isn’t doing themselves any more damage than someone who has a beer or two or a couple of glasses of wine.

198

You bring up this correlation in this debate for what reason then?

“[my]…anecdotal experience”, “[my]…perceptions”, “I think”, “seems” [to me] to be regurgitating"…these are obviously not going to be debate-swaying points, yet I was still inclined to share them, my perogative. Don’t let them scare you off from the more pristine exchange of ideas that I and my ilk don’t consistently participate in.

I was not trying to call you names or accuse you of consciously spreading propaganda. I was making a comparison and attempting to suggest that there are still remnants of past propaganda-influenced memes. My apologies if I’ve upset or offended you.

IMHO, C.A.M.P. is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The increase of mega-cropers with environmentally-unfriendly cultivation practices can be correlated :smiley: to C.A.M.P.'s existance. Your average grower was very different, and much more benign, back when the program started. The demand has remained. They’ve created a market that only the greedy, short-sighted and destructive are in a position to satisfy.

199

Hrmmm, from what I understand the “problems” that have led to the unfriendly cultivation have been an increase in security at our borders. This has led mnay to use our national forests as plantations for Cannabis growth. When was C.A.M.P. initiated?

200

C.A.M.P. was launched in 1983.

I will certainly concede that C.A.M.P. is not the only contributing factor to the increase in destructive cultivation practices. There are certainly regional differences. The migration from private to public land for cultivation, at least in NoCal, is more of a direct consequence of C.A.M.P., with an inderect relationship based on demand pressures due to border security.