I’m not sure which previous statements you may be referring to. In my first post in this thread, I wrote:
I’m also not sure which laws prohibit studies of medical marijuana. If there are any laws that must be changed to allow reputable organizations like the FDA, the NIH, the NAS, or similar organizations to do their tests, then yes, I support that. I wouldn’t support law changes that would allow Dr. Groovy Moonbeam, a practitioner of freaky holistic medicine on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California, to conduct “tests” (wink wink, nudge nudge) on medical marijuana.
You’re not honestly suggesting that there’s no physiological difference between drugs and ping pong, Monopoly, the Simpsons, Gigli, and blowjobs, are you?
Sure, there’s a physiological difference. Just like there’s a physiological difference between playing football and playing Monopoly, or perhaps even between watching a comedy and a drama.
What I’m suggesting is that the physiological difference is irrelevant in this case. Nothing that distinguishes marijuana from those other recreational activities leads me to believe that one should be legal and the other should be banned.
If you disagree, then which physiological differences do you think justify the ban, and would you support banning everything else that has those same physiological effects?
As I stated before, I’m in no hurry to legalize anything that may carry adverse health effects simply so that people can have fun using it. There’s already plenty of ways folks can have fun and ruin their health at the same time.
Let me throw this out there, too: if tobacco were illegal now, and the rate of illicit use of tobacco were comparable to mariujana’s current rates, I wouldn’t be rushing to legalize Lucky Strikes, either. Nor do I think it’s worth the effort to try to ban tobacco at this point, either. I just don’t buy the argument that “freedom” means that folks have a God-given right to use substances that harm their own health.
In response to your question, I approach these things on a case-by-case basis, weighing the factors in each case, and then making my decision. In response to the next question I’d anticipate you asking, I don’t see a point in banning alcohol, despite its health effects which can, indeed, be much more dangerous than pot. Alcohol is ingrained into our society to a degree that it would be foolhardy to try to ban it. I do support minimum drinking ages and other reasonable restrictions.
Then I doubt we will ever see eye to eye on this issue. I can’t think of any freedom more important than the freedom to control one’s own body, which necessarily includes the freedom to make choices that are harmful to one’s own health.
If that’s the only lens you pro-legalization activists can view the issue through, and you can’t even make room for the possibility that others have different perspectives on the issue (without being inherently wrong or stupid for doing so) then no, you’ll never see eye to eye with him or the public. And weed will remain illegal forever in the United States because the very people who should be campaigning for its legality instead are condemning everyone with the temerity to disagree with them. I’ve tried to explain this before, but I guess you’re all not just pot-smokers, but libertarian fundamentalists. That’s cool, but don’t expect the law to change.
Yep. In fact, they’ve turned me off to the notion pretty well during this thread.
And what about when there’s an accident, and it’s not clear from the physical evidence who was at fault - but one driver has an elevated blood alcohol content? Are you opposed to drunk-driving laws as well? I don’t think it’s ok to drive in an altered state. And the fact is that alcohol and pot both impair people’s driving abilities. You can simply look at past evidence in order to determine that driving while altered poses a danger to the driver and to everyone else on the road. When we can see that a certain course of action is inevitably a bad, dangerous one, it only makes sense to ban it. It’s inherently dangerous to drive while stoned, and if you really think drunk driving laws are unreasonable, you need to justify that one too.
If the only justification for pot being legal is “why shouldn’t it be?” then, well, as I’ve said, you’ll have to work harder than that to convince me or the general public. If you’d rather just self-righteously claim that everyone who doesn’t share your views is opposed to personal freedom, then feel free. But don’t expect any changes as a result.
[General rant, at no one in particular]
There have been many threads on weed et. al at the SDMB. In some of them, I’ve posted links to many studies about various effects of weed, including long-term cognitive deficits or rather lack of them, driving impairment…etc. The reason I don’t contribute much anymore is because it gets tiring to see the same govt. disinformation, trotted out time and again, by new debaters in these weed threads, and having to post the same stock replies.
On the first page of this thread, I posted, what I thought would be an informative link. Between 2000 and 2002, the Canadian Senate’s Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, conducted a comprehensive review of cannabis and policy. They researched all aspects. They recommended legalization. Again, here’s the link to their reports. There’s a summary, as well as the comprehensive 500+ page report. I recommend that people atleast browse through the summary. Otherwise this ends up being like a school teacher. Presenting the same material every year.
[/rant]
Well, you got one thing right, I will never see eye to eye with you. First of all, this crap about knowing whether or not a person is stoned while driving is stupid. Many police departments around the country are starting to use a retinal scan system that can test for a large variety of drugs including pot and alcohol. This would not be handled any different than a DUI, and I don’t think any of us pro-legalization people are advocating smoking or drinking and driving.
And if you don’t believe that you have a right to decide what goes into your body, then I can’t help you. So using you argument, if you get sick and go into the hospital, I guess you can forget deciding what the best course of treatment may be, because the gov’t has already decided for you. Hope you enjoy your stay. And I assume that you guys are also in favor of outlawing foods with trans fat or high sodium. Both of these are obviously bad for your health and you do NOT need them to survive. If you are not against banning these foods, then you are contradicting yourself and this debate does not need to move any further. And one last thing, you must also be in favor of prohibiton. I mean, c’mon people, it worked so well last time! And don’t give me this crap that well since it’s already legal then we should just let it go. That defies logic and is like arguing for slavery because, well, you know we have it, so let’s just keep it.
First, there is no right for people to put anything into their body that they feel like it. The Constitution makes no such guarantee, and neither do US laws. If you really want such a right to exist, fine, but I don’t think you’ll ever convince anything but a small percentage of the American people that that is a good idea. Hell, there’s still a fair number of dry counties in the US. How the heck are the drug use libertarians going to convince those folks that others should have the right to use pot, heroin, and paint fumes at their leisure? Will it just be more tantrums?
Nice to know how little effort is put in to listening to the other side. So far as I can tell, most of the folks opposing the legalization of pot (at least those participating in this thread) are basically saying that if folks want to change the law, they better have good reasons for doing so. There is obviously a strong case to be made for the abolition of slavery. There’s obviously a very weak case for banning donuts and Big Macs. If one doesn’t agree that someone should be able to put anything into their body, what is the strength of the case for legalizing pot?
I don’t think that every substance with some negative health effect should be banned, no matter how much you want me to think that. However, banning substances is a different matter than legalizing them. For some things, like sugary or fatty foods, there’s no way that such a ban could ever, ever work, regardless of how silly the idea is. But if you’re going to ask me to legalize something that’s now illicit, then you better show me that it is either not harmful, or that the potential harm is well understood and that the legalization is necessary for other compelling reasons.
With the exception of II Gyan II’s link, which I will read, it seems to me the stronger a proponent of legalization, the less calm reasoning they’re willing to put forward. In one sense, that’s very much like their analogues on the fundamentalist right.
Then again, I just don’t think that this is a very important issue, what with much more important issues out there like health care, education, environment, and so on. Until someone can explain to me why giving legal assent for recreational drug use is a big issue that deserves attention, I’ll keep my focus on other more pressing matters.
Correct. The Constitution also makes no such guarantee that you cannot. But lawmakers have figured out a way with ‘Acts’. Which in this case, is flawed.
I don’t know what the other posters have said about other drugs, but this thread is about pot, not heroin or paint fumes. :rolleyes: So if indeed it was made legal, the bible belt can still have dry towns if they wish, just like alcohol. Residents can just go to the next town over, and get it commercially there.
I still feel that your reasoning is wrong. You need to provide evidence that it is harmful. You’re the one keeping people down, TELL US WHY IT IS HARMFUL!
Well, when someone like you, who has stated that they have voted to keep medical referendas down, I find it odd that you claim that it’s NOT an important issue. Can you not see how easy it is for us pro-marijuana advocates to get upset sometimes about something we feel passionately about, unlike you? You don’t think it’s important, yet you vote anyway, WITH CARELESSNESS. It’s like getting beat up by your father when you’re 8, only to have mommy tell you to deal with it. Can you now see why it’s frustrating trying to argue valid points only to be told that it’s not important? Yet somehow, it’s harmful to the country at large, and that it should remain illegal with nothing really proven to back it up, except scare tactics and “reefer-madness”.
Ok, I’m going to argue this one again, only because it’s begging for it.
“…the less calm reasoning”… Are these reasons not enough?
Medicinal, helps those in severe pain cope.
It feels good :eek: (Can’t have that!).
You cannot overdose on pot alone.
The only time violence is really involved is when drug dealing is involved (derived from criminalization by the way…) It really is a peaceful drug.
For a lot of users, it helps you to focus.
It helps you to be creative.
There are plenty of reasons, but why are these reasons not enough? Can you dispute these?
Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many baseless generalizations in one paragraph. I haven’t condemned anyone, I haven’t called anyone stupid, and I am not a libertarian fundamentalist. Settle down, champ.
I see II Gyan II has already cited a study for this. The fact is that pot barely affects one’s driving ability, and there are ways to test for impairment in any case.
I would just add we need to give cops more credit here. Pretty much any cop with a modicum of experience under his or her belt can tell if you’re stoned/incapacitated. It’s like a male dog smelling a bitch in heat. For them it’s easy, even without special equipment. I’m not worried at all about an epidemic of stoned drivers after we legalize pot. It’ll still be illegal, and they’ll still catch you.
Khlaes, you say you’d “just rather have drugs be thoroughly tested in terms of the effects they can have on the human body before they’re made available to the public at large.”
Doesn’t that mean that each substance should be outlawed until such time as it’s been thoroughly tested and found to be… what? Harmless? Mostly harmless? If it’s found to be even slightly harmful, how likely is that that it will be legalized? But in any case, if you say that recreational substances can’t be legalized until they’ve been thouroughly investigated, isn’t that the same thing as saying that the default position should be illegality?
And once something’s been outlawed, doesn’t it tend to stay outlawed? I know that Prohibition was repealed, but that strikes me as a rare exception (one that might not have happened had alcohol not had such a long history of widespread use – the oddity wasn’t replealing Prohibition, it was passing it in the first place). And once something’s been outlawed, no one can study its effects on humans without govt permission. Govt officials, being dead set against legalization, are unlikely to ever allow testing.
Also, it seems to me that this wish that “drugs be thoroughly tested in terms of the effects they can have on the human body before they’re made available to the public at large” is an impossible wish; a pipe dream. Outlawing a drug does not prevent people from using it. The government cannot suceed in efforts to decide what subsances the citizens are and are not allowed to use. It can pass all the laws it wants. Those laws will have many effects, but preventing use will not be one of them.
Actually freedom does mean just that. (Although I would not call this right “God-given,” but rather, a right one automaticaly has due to being human.)
And pot isn’t ingrained?
Also, you acknowledge that illegal pot is less dangerous than legal alcohol – and you don’t see this as an indication that pot ought to be legalized?
How about a minimum marijana age? We’ll never have one unless we legalize. Several posters have said they found pot easier to get than alcohol when they were underage.
Excalibre, I agree with Floyd13. Yes, impaired driving should be illegal. Regardless of the substance causing the impairment. But I can’t see that there’s any need to try to pin down exactly how much of any substance makes one too impaired to drive. It will vary from individual to individual. Why isn’t it sufficient to say, you can’t drive while under the influence of anything that impairs your ability to drive? If Mr. X causes an accicent because he was impaired by a legally prescribed prescription drug, how is that any less bad than if he’d been drunk or stoned? I guess my position is, taking the medicine is fine, but if it makes you foggy, sleepy, or whatever, don’t drive while on it. By the same token, getting soused or high is also fine, just don’t drive while in that state.
We do have good reasons. (1) It’s not harmful enough to justify being prohibited. (2) The prohibition is causing far more harm than the substance itself ever could.
It’s only illicit because, years ago, Congress passed a prohibition on the basis of false information. Anslinger fed them a pack of lies.
It’s an important issue because of the harm done by prohibition, and because of the resources being wasted by the war on pot.
I agree. They can spot an impaired driver. And once they’ve spotted him or her, what other test is needed but the old standards: have the person try to walk in a staight line, have him try to hold his arm out then touch his nose, etc.
You might want to check the mote in your own eye there, partner.
Here is a key example. My key point is the harm that is caused by prohibition efforts. You overlook this point repeatedly and narrowly focus on harm that might be caused by pot. Do you honestly feel that we should carefuly consider every potential harm from pot but that there is no responibility to consider the harm resulting from attempts to prevent its use? As a supporter of the War On People, do you not feel any personal duty to consider the harm being inflicted on people every day? We have declared war on our own citizens and turned large swaths of our cities into battlegrounds and you think the key area of debate is whether pot will prevent a person from having shiny white teeth?
I am waiting for you to address some of the harms caused by the War On People, including:
Jailing people for actions that have harmed no one except (potentially) themselves. Let’s say that pot smoking doubles my risk of lung cancer. Clearly, this is a harm to my life and health. But is it worse than declaring me a felon and putting me in jail?
Ensuring profits for large criminal organizations. If you could buy pot at a store (with proof of age, of course), do you think that this would take away from the large piles of money in the hands of violent criminals, or add to it?
Waging war in our cities. This includes kids growing up and seeing drug-dealing as their best chance to make money and be successful. It includes kids roaming around in gangs armed with expensive weapons. It includes turf battles and drug raids. It also includes raids conducted against innocent families and the resulting property confiscations (you don’t get your property back if you’re innocent, by the way).
Destroying the legitimacy of law and law enforcement. You do recognize that in many communities, the police are now seen as the enemy of the citizens, right? You also recognize the amount of resources being thrown into the War On People at the same time as burglaries, robberies, rapes, and murders go unsolved? There is also the issue of freedom-loving Americans who lose respect for laws that are tyrannical and arbitrary and thus respect for the law itself.
Waste: We have spent billions on drug interdiction. The budget keeps going up while the positive results continue to not appear. 8th graders can still get pot while cancer patients cannot. People can still buy actual heroin on the street but cannot buy oxycodone. We are paying millions of dollars every day to jail and feed “criminals” who have harmed no one but themselves. Police officers, federal agents, and citizens die daily fighting a war against each other while you calmly debate whether smoking pot may have a long-term health consequence that is unpleasant. Have you heard of any that are worse than, say, being pumped full of bullets or smoking something that a dealer told you was pot but is, in fact, oregano and angel dust?
Collateral damage: While we fight to keep anyone from becoming an addict, people with severe health problems suffer every day because of the unavailablity of pot, or because they cannot find a doctor who is brave enough to prescribe pain medication for patients in pain. After all, it is better to suffer every waking minute than to be a dirty old junky, right? If you live anywhere near a city, I am willing to bet that you see regular news stories about children playing in their own yards being shot in random drive-bys. How do you suppose that a yard in a city in the world’s self-declared “free country” becomes an actual war zone? Oh yeah, that’s right. We declared war on our own citizens. It’s comforting to know, though, that we don’t condone people smoking pot, as it might turn out to be bad for them in the long run. Then again, if you don’t live to see 20, how many years count as “the long run”?
You present your aruments as if we were debating whether or not people should smoke pot. This is very much like the right-wing nutjob on my radio who asks callers whether they would “rather” that Saddam Hussein were still in power. The issue is not whether Saddam Hussein was a bad guy; the issue is whether or not the U.S. should have launched an all-out conventional war against another country. Similarly, the issue is not whether it is good for citizens to smoke pot; the issue is whether we want to fight a war against them to prevent them from doing it.
As has been pointed out, I am perfectly comfortable stipulating that, for most people, smoking pot is more of a detriment to their health than an improvement for it. Nonetheless, I am not in favor of shooting them or throwing them in jail “for their own good”. As a parent, I have often had to punish my children for misbehavior, but so far, when they do something like eating candy off the floor, I have not felt it made sense to lock them in their rooms for a year, shoot them, or insist that they are felons and should never be allowed to vote in another election.
Seems to me that the amount of harm being inflicted on citizens of this country by the War that has been declared on them is sufficient that the burden should be on you to show the harm from pot (or any other banned substance) that justifies it. Unless you’ve got some evidence of instances where one person lit up a joint and people all over the city started dropping dead, I’m not likely to find your argument convincing.
That’s an interesting comparison, because I feel very much that you are very much like the ideologues on the fundamentalist right. From what I can tell, you basically think that pot is bad and pot smokers are bad citizens. Based on this evaluation, you have no respect for their hopes, dreams, fears, or basic human dignity. You think it’s okay to fight an actual war in every city of the country against these citizens because they can’t convince you that pot is good for them. When I point out the unmitigated horror that drug criminalization has unleashed on all of us, your answer is that legalization proponents can’t prove that pot is not harmful or that it helps chemotherapy patients.
When are you going to do this good vs. harm evaluation of the War On Drugs itself? Are you just not capable of caring until you lose a personal family member?
If stopping a war against our own citizens is not an issue that deserves attention, I don’t know what is. However, if the points I have already mentioned just don’t resonate for you, let me try to put it in terms that might hit home to you. Have you considered how much good could be done in the areas of health care, education, environment, and so on using the billions of dollars that are currently being spent fighting the War On People–even if we just limit ourselves to the billions that are being spent on marijuana interdiction? Where do you think that money comes from?
I will say this - the use of pot is more common and accepted in countries like the US and the UK than it is in a country like the Netherlands. When it comes to illicit substances, the fact that they are illegal is probably attractive. It’s perhaps the only reason I can think of against legalisation of Marijuana - kids may have to turn to something worse in order to rebel.
I don’t believe in drugs. I don’t get drunk, I don’t smoke and I only ever tried some pot on a pancake, but wasn’t impressed. I like my mind as it is, and do not seek to alter its state by any other means than things I do in life. Artificially creating higher highs through drugs also creates lower lows and degrades your previous highs, and future highs. Very short sighted stuff. But so are many other things we do in our lives, and that in itself is no reason for making it illegal.
By the way, did you know that eating three ounces of chicken has the same effect on the brain a small sniff of coke has? Better ban KFC.
Also, since cigarettes suck at least as much as people suck cigarettes, I feel compelled to remind you that if you do happen to want to try pot, why not try it in the form of tea? Apart from giving the somewhat outdated English phrase ‘Anyone for tea?’ a fresh new meaning, this is the recommended way to take in pot for medicinal use. (I read this on the Dutch site on medicinal use of pot)
