Dude. I’m too high to post.
Cocaine isn’t illegal, it’s a Class II drug, meaning it is right there with Ritalin. It is highly controlled, used in only certain situations (rhinoplasty comes to mind), and required to be locked up seperately in pharmacies.
Marijuana and LSD are examples of Class I drugs…not legal for use or distribution in the US in any case (though some people are able to use medicinal marijuana).
I’m not sure about heroin. I know Methadone is Class II, so IIRC, heroin is also Class II, but I could be (and frequently am) incorrect.
Also, your arguement that drugs are outlawed because they are addictive is flawed. Vicodin is one of the most abused drugs in America, yet it is perfectly legal with a prescription. Ditto for Xanax, Valium, Tylenol #3, Percodan, Percocet, among many others. They’re all addictive, that’s why they’re controlled.
My kids brighten up our home. They never turn the lights off. -A Wallyism
Industrial hemp contains a small enough amount of THC that you’d have to literally smoke a whole field of it to get high.
As for medical reasons, there are, of course, no other drugs that can do what pot can do. Why don’t you try to find me a drug that can help prevent nausea in chemotherapy patients?
Nope, those pills won’t work. People will just puke them back up.
Those studies are junk science. No independent studies have ever confirmed some of the ridiculous mumbo jumbo unleased upon the American public by their own government. Take the recent study that “proved” marijuana caused cancer because, out of a large group of people, those who used pot were more likely to get cancer than non-users. What the newspaper report of that study didn’t say, however, was that 85% of the pot smokers in the study also smoked cigarettes! Yep, you can always count on the government and the news media for that good old-fashioned down home honesty that our culture is so lacking in these days! Nothing shifty going on in those studies, nosireee!
Looking for an unbiased study? The World Health Organization, one of the most respected medical groups in the world, conducted this study which confirmed that pot is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco.
Most pharmacies don’t carry cocaine, but they can order it.
Heroin is Class I in this country, but in Europe Heroin is the equivalent of class II, being used in hospitals and such.
Two wrongs do not make a right…but three lefts do.
Sorry, I thought Class 3 were the worst, not Class 1…got confused, but the basic definition stands…
As for the comparable drugs with comparable costs…no way! Marijuana works great as is, and it is FAR cheaper than anything else comparable. To illustrate: Why do they call it weed? Because it is one!!! Today is 4/20, and the pundits will tell y’all to go plant your seeds this afternoon for a harvest in September/October: www.420.com
One reason that it won’t be legalized soon is because of how easy it is to grow it…They wouldn’t be able to control it. You can realistically take a seed, push it into just about any soil, water it, and in a few months you’ll have enough leaves to smoke, and by fall a full-grown plant. So cost could be nuttin’…And for those who want to look at costs of super-strain hydroponic pot, well, there are a lot of studies that say it is the lowly ditch-weed that is medicinally the best (THC breaks down into other cannabinoids (which work better for nausea, etc.) faster in the poorer quality pot).
I have so many thoughts going through my head that sometimes it’s hard to finish a
…whoa, I can’t belive in this erudite,well read group I am the first one to post this link, but here goes.
http://www.sumeria.net/politics/shadv3.html
this details Otto’s post…
…so you see, it was all a conspiricy between the oil,auto and chemical industries along with Hearst,IT&T,the Nazis, the US intelligence community and Wall St. …{whew}…however, it is a mistake to see these players as being discrete,unconected elements, they were (are),but separate heads of the same hydra :eek:
Cocaine IS legal, your ear doctor probably has a bottle of it in his office. Weed IS legal in the US in some areas. Like S.C., California, or Alaska, Arizona, etc.
Opium IS legal too, but they use another form of it.
The OP’s question was too obscure. I needed much more clarification as to, for example, just where.
In response to Sue Duhnym and all those others who say cocaine, heroin, etc. is legal it’s just controlled:
So if a cop finds me with a bag of Heroin or Cocaine in my pocket they’ll just say, “Oh, it’s just a class II drug. Have a nice day sir.”?
You know, reading this thread brought up an interesting question in my mind, and I was wondering if anyone could answer it.
As far as I know, both alcohol and marijuana were perfectly legal at around the same time, at least before prohibition occurred. Of course, instituting the prohibition of alcohol required the passing of the 19th(?) Amendment, which was later repealed. So why exactly did the banning of marijuana, or for that matter any other currently illegal drug not require a similar Constitutional Amendment?
Mr. Armageddon
“Just when you thought you had all the answers, I went and changed the questions!”–Roddy Piper
Oh. My. GOD! You’re so right! Because, after all, nobody smokes pot right now!
Ack. I think I just OD’ed on sarcasm.
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good dipped in chocolate.
The main reason pot is illegal while cigarettes and tobacco are legal is because pot never had a strong lobby to fight for it, and didn’t enjoy widespread use so the public didn’t fight for it.
Back a hundred years ago, damned near everything was legal. During that time, Alcohol and Tobacco built huge industries and were in massive use by the public. Pot was a fringe drug, and easy to grow, so an industry never developed around it.
Now we enter the nanny age, in which government knows best and decides to stop you from doing what you want. But by this time, Tobacco and Alcohol are entrenched, the people want it, and key political states rely on it for income. Therefore, those two drugs enjoy protected status.
None of this has anything to do with science. Marijuana is one of the least-dangerous mind-altering substances you can put in your body. There has never been a documented long-term risk of any sort of brain damage, and it appears that, while it’s a carcinogen, the average person smokes so little of it that there is very little risk of cancer. Orders of magnitude less risk than say, a pack a day cigarette habit(even a heavy dope user is only going to smoke a joint or two a day, vs 20-40 cigarettes for a smoker).
It’s hard to find real information about the physical effects of drugs because the government propaganda machine has been pumping out so much disinformation that it’s become mixed in with the real facts just about everywhere you look. A lot of the facts that ‘everyone knows’ about various illicit drugs are simply wrong.
OK, everyone, listen up. You there in the chartruese cummerbund, shut up before I gag you with it…
That’s better.
Now all you people who don’t smoke dope, how many would start smoking if they legalized it? Raise your hands please. Anyone? Not you cummerbund-breath, you already smoke it. Anyone else?
Strange, I don’t see any hands raised…
“Did you know…
…that in Canadian units, Canada is actually a larger land mass than the U.S.?”
– The Onion
Sorry, but I’m not seeing where Cecil “debunked” the Hearst/Du Pont/Anslinger theory. He wrote in his initial column
which doesn’t address the frequency, duration or hysteria of marijuana stories in Hearst publications nor the simple fact that Du Pont was not planning on limiting its nylon production to stockings. In column two he writes
So he’s saying it isn’t true because he hasn’t seen evidence he finds convincing, authorities say otherwise and the financial motive doesn’t make sense to him. Were it anyone other than Cecil saying it, this board would rip it to shreds in a heartbeat.
I’m not saying Cecil’s wrong in believing there was no conspiracy. All I’m saying is that what he’s saying in support of his non-conspiracy theory isn’t particularly compelling IMHO and doesn’t rise to the level of “debunking.”
:::raises hand:::
I’d like to try it at least once, just to see what it’s like. And I’d definitely be more inclined to do that if it were legalized.
Mr. Armageddon
“Just when you thought you had all the answers, I went and changed the questions!”–Roddy Piper
weed is legalized in SC?
::raises hand::
I smoked it a couple of times. Don’t now, but if it were legal, I would. I like it better than booze.
I was just visiting the (many) pot threads to say:
Happy 4/20!
But I would like to say to dtilque that my wife would smoke it if it were legalized. And sometimes, boy could she use it!
Salaam
Interesting thread! I just saw a videotape of the classic 1936 film “REEFER MADNESS”-I recommend it highly! Besides being hilarious, it shows how ridiculous the government’s position on pot is. The point is, powerful media forces were at work, even in the 1930’s, that had as their objective, the demonization of marijuana. Of course, we have a government that prefers to allow the tobacco industry to kill hundreds of thousands a year-but that is another story.
I don’t think Phillip Morris would have much luck marketing the stuff, except maybe to city folk. After all, marijuana is a weed. It would be easy and cheap to just grow your own.
For that reason, marijuana would evade all efforts to tax it. (I can picture a return to moonshine days, with redneck pot growers trying to outrun “revenuers” on country backroads…) If Uncle Sam tried to tax it, the net effect would be pretty much the situation we have now, except instead of trying to eliminate “illegal” marijuana, the T-men would be trying to wipe out “untaxed” marijuana.
So unless marijuana is legalized and made tax-free, we’ll still have the sort of black market for the stuff we have now.
On another topic, I do believe pot is addictive for some folks (not all). I have known people who seemingly could not do without it, and would get a serious “jones” for the stuff if deprived of it for any length of time.
I also believe, based on personal observation (no studies to back me up) that marijuana does have some harmful permanent effects of the brain. My observations are anecdotal, of course, but they fit the stereotypes.
Most of the folks I know who smoke it regularly seem to have lost all ambition and drive. (There are a couple of exceptions.) I have known several folks who have gone from being highly energetic go-getters to, essentially, layabouts. Maybe it’s just my friends who have experienced this effect, but I know what I see.
Lest you think I speak from ignorance, I have partaken in the demon weed myself. (Though only as part of “youthful experimentation”, in case this thread should be brought up during my run for the White House.)
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