Marijuana: It’s Time for a Conversation

[Father Time]

I just popped in to tell you pot heads that I walked by this room a while back and when I got to my desk there was a roach stuck to the bottom of my foot.

Just saying...you might want to be careful what you leave laying around....

When you can't debate your opponent's arguments, collectively dismiss and insult them.

Coward Tactics 101

 

[Father Time]

Oh and as an aside someone earlier suggested the government should be distributing and selling weed which I think is stupid.

We dont need the government to sell alcohol cigs, or soda we certainly don't need them selling weed.

The current weed selling networks will legitimize, the government could make safety standards (don't mix weed with crack), wa la problem solved.

If you want evidence the free market handles things better than the government compare fed ex and ups to the postal service.

 

[Article 15]

I still go with the effect argument as well.. as in effect directly on others...

Alcohol you can have a drink and the person besides you is not going to get any effect off of it whatsoever... you smoke marijuana next to someone, and they can and will get some effect from the smoke they inhale thanks to your lighting up

The medical argument is a bullshit one, as the benefits for creating appetite in cancer patients etc have been translated into a prescription drug called Marinol... and inhalation is not an effective delivery system for most any drug that is not directly to impact lung function issues such as asthma...

Getting killed by a drunk driver, raped, or beaten by a drunk relative seems a bit more consequential to me than inhaling some second hand weed.

 

[Diuretic]

Oh and as an aside someone earlier suggested the government should be distributing and selling weed which I think is stupid.

We dont need the government to sell alcohol cigs, or soda we certainly don't need them selling weed.

The current weed selling networks will legitimize, the government could make safety standards (don't mix weed with crack), wa la problem solved.

If you want evidence the free market handles things better than the government compare fed ex and ups to the postal service.

I know this is another issue but there is no "free" market and anyway private corporations can cock things up in a spectacular manner, the evidence is everywhere. But enough of that sideshow. Government should be in competition with the current networks as you put it because the current networks are controlled by organised crime. Organised crime networks should be hammered by governments using their economic power to drive them out of business and then and only then should there be further reform. I'd prefer people to go to Safeway or another retailer to get their dope rather than give money to organised crime. Actually I would prefer them to go to neighbourhood stores come to think of it.

 

[Article 15]

In some states you can only get booze from state run liquor stores.

 

[DiamondDave]

Getting killed by a drunk driver, raped, or beaten by a drunk relative seems a bit more consequential to me than inhaling some second hand weed.

Getting killed by a stoned driver, a driver under the influence of prescription medicines, etc is no better also... but you are talking about an indirect effect from a choice.... not inherent to the use of the product in front of others in public

nice try

 

[DiamondDave]

The only use for alcohol, cigarettes, and caffeine is also the high. The mind-altering effect it has.

There is nothing inherently illegal about having a good time and a drug doesn't have to have positive health benefits to be legal. Cigarettes have no health benefits and the effects of smoking them are even worse on your body. They're still legal because there's no good reason for them not to be. They're still regulated because there is good reason for them to be. Marijuana's no different.

The government simply has no right to send people to jail for doing something to their own bodies in their own homes that harms no one else.

Marijuana has been stigmatized due to a successful campaign by William Randolph Hearst and Henry Anslinger, who we now know prohibited it to get rid of competition for his newspaper business and painted it as a moral issue to get support from the puritanicals who would also ban lots of personal, private choices one should be free to make with their own body.

Marijuana is in no way substantially different than alcohol and cigarettes, the government's own commission intended to probe deeply into the legal status of marijuana concluded the same thing.

By the way, one of the major difference between Marinol and smoked Marijuana is that one negatively effects your liver and the other negatively effects your lungs. For people like my aunt (an evangelical who has never even been drunk) who battled cancer for years and took every prescribed drug in the book to treat and deal with the pain, their livers have been completely destroyed by pills. Once your liver goes, you face some massive problems and getting a transplant is a risky crapshoot (also, sadly but understandably, not one a terminal patient is likely to receive). Marijuana does damage your lungs, but if you've got pink lungs and a couple years at best, it's a safer alternative to any oral medication. Marinol may be better for some, smoked marijuana better for others. But both have positive effects and negative side effects.

No quentin... there are actually benefits to certain things including alcohol and alcohol products... so don't lie to try and prove a point....

There is no extremely high risk for immediate liver damage with marinol... yet another lie... and no other side effects that are any different than the side effects from marijuana itself... yet another lie

Yes... the US government does have the right to restrict things for personal use, when deemed a harm for society or when deemed to be able to infringe on the personal rights of others... hence why we have laws now that can prevent smoking in some public places... and when you do infringe on others, you can be punished for this action...

There are differences between alcohol, cigarettes, and pot... but nice try again....

So... beyond your lies..

There is no benefit to a person that comes from pot being smoked... the only positive benefit to pot is a medicinal use for a VERY SMALL percentage of patients in actual need.... there is no drug delivery system involving smoking that has ever been approved by the FDA and the FDA has shown this to be an ineffective and dangerous way of administering drug dosage...

You do not go legalizing something for the sole fact of getting high off it...

 

[Article 15]

Getting killed by a stoned driver, a driver under the influence of prescription medicines, etc is no better also

True but it isn't exactly a burning issue right now, is it? Drunk driving is. Alcoholism destroys families.

... but you are talking about an indirect effect from a choice.... not inherent to the use of the product in front of others in public

Yeah, I guess you do have a point. But smoking weed while walking down the street will be just as illegal as it is to drink and do the same. The most likely scenario would be to do it in some sort of hash bar or privately at home.

 

[editec]

I call BULLSHIT. In my teenage years, I recall being so blasted on weed that I kept thinking the car was trying to flip over backwards while I was driving down a hill. I will give you that you tend to drive slower on pot than on alcohol. By the time I decided to give up trying to drive, I think I was going about 20 in a 45.....thankfully no one was injured during this story.

On another note, listening to Whole Lotta Love (Zepplin) tends to intensify the intoxicating effects especially while driving.

You seriously going to try to argue that the physical and mental effects of hemp and booze are the same?

The only people you'll have to convince is anyone whose ever been drunk and also stoned (that's proabably about 100 milllion of your fellow citizens) and of course the entire medical and scientific estabishments.

You're a lawyer, maybe you can pull it off.

Some of us await your case with high expectations.

 

[editec]

They PREFER it because of the HIGH... DUH

Absolutely

Which is the ONLY reason people want it legalized... the fucking HIGH... there is no medical benefit to smoked marijuana over the marinol prescription.. ZERO.. none.. nada... zilch

Contrary to what the phramacuetical companies would like you to believe, marinaol isn't much like hemp. Hemp has more active ingredients (thsoudans of them) than marinaol does.

I'm not arguing for its medical effects as an appetite stimulant, anyway, but for its psychogropic effets.

And when a mind altering substance can have effects reach others directly, including children in a home, people in a bar, people at a bus stop, etc, yes it is something that should not be legal

That's got to be the sorriest argument I have ever heard. Second hand highs? Please, don't make me laugh.

The precedent of making it legal in some ways and not others is also a very slippery slope than can lead to some very bad things with marijuana as a drug, and other currently illegal drugs as well....

Many word above...little content though

If you want to sit in your house and smoke it... knock your socks off... I don't care if you do that or shoot heroin into your tiny dick or snort your dead grandfather's ashes with cocaine... but it is your choice to do it, knowing it is an illegal substance along with many other things in society.. and if caught purchasing those substances, or caught with them in your system while committing a crime, or caught with them in your system at all while driving a vehicle, etc, then live with the consequences that it is an illegal act

True enough.

 

[editec]

I disagree. You treat it like a gun or other potentially dangerous instrumentality, you can legally purchase it, possess it and use it. But, if you do something bad with it, then you have to pay. Criminalize the potentially bad resultant behavior, not the act of possession or use.

Very sensible approach, not only to hemp but to most things.

Presuming that hemp is apt to make people criminal is no more sensible than assuming than eating a chocolate bar will make one act criminally.

 

[editec]

Oh and as an aside someone earlier suggested the government should be distributing and selling weed which I think is stupid.

M, too.

We dont need the government to sell alcohol cigs, or soda we certainly don't need them selling weed.

No more than we need the government to sell oregano.

The current weed selling networks will legitimize, the government could make safety standards (don't mix weed with crack), wa la problem solved.

The government should just stay the hell out of it entirely.

If you want evidence the free market handles things better than the government compare fed ex and ups to the postal service.

Legalize marijuana and the entire profit motivation would evaporate.

Anybody with the brains of a turnip, and about 6 quare feet of land can grow enough hemp to last a total stoner a year or so.

The street value of an ounce of hemp in a baggie, were it legal, might actually be less than the value of the baggie it came in.

It's harder to grow zuchinnis than hemp.

And we ALL know how difficult it is to give zuchinni away when they're in season.

Hemp would have practically no market value which would be a damned good thing.

 

[DiamondDave]

True but it isn't exactly a burning issue right now, is it? Drunk driving is. Alcoholism destroys families.



Yeah, I guess you do have a point. But smoking weed while walking down the street will be just as illegal as it is to drink and do the same. The most likely scenario would be to do it in some sort of hash bar or privately at home.

But if you drink next to your newborn baby... that baby is not going to get an effect from your having a Budweiser or a rum and Coke... puff next to the infant, and they will

And again... the whole 'rationality' behind the legalization is to legalize it to get a high... because the other 'medical benefits' have already been made available in the form of marinol... and you don't just decriminalize for a high... there is no benefit at all to legalizing this illegal drug

 

[Article 15]

But if you drink next to your newborn baby... that baby is not going to get an effect from your having a Budweiser or a rum and Coke... puff next to the infant, and they will

And what of somebody smoking a pack a day in a house with children? Are you going to lead gov't charge into that home? I don't think you want to continue on this path ...

And again... the whole 'rationality' behind the legalization is to legalize it to get a high... because the other 'medical benefits' have already been made available in the form of marinol... and you don't just decriminalize for a high... there is no benefit at all to legalizing this illegal drug

I never suggested that the "whole 'rationality' behind the legalization is to legalize it to get a high" ... that's silly and it is pretty nonsensical to say that there is "no benefit at all to legalizing" marijuana.

 

[DiamondDave]

And what of somebody smoking a pack a day in a house with children? Are you going to lead gov't charge into that home? I don't think you want to continue on this path ...



I never suggested that the "whole 'rationality' behind the legalization is to legalize it to get a high" ... that's silly and it is pretty nonsensical to say that there is "no benefit at all to legalizing" marijuana.

Do I smoke cigarettes? Yep... Would I throw up a living stink that cigarettes need to be decriminalized (if they were made illegal) because I need my buzz??? HELL FUCKING NO

There is no benefit whatsoever about the legalization of pot... the ONLY legit benefit has been shown in VERY RARE cases to be medical... and the 'smoking' delivery system is something the FDA has for NO drug... hence we have the legal benefits of pot in the form of marinol, which is in controllable doses with no major side effects that are not inherent to THC itself... beyond a 'high' there is ZERO benefit to decriminalizing pot.. unless you are like the assclown bobo, who sees another rationalization behind more taxation for the government

 

[Article 15]

Do I smoke cigarettes? Yep... Would I throw up a living stink that cigarettes need to be decriminalized (if they were made illegal) because I need my buzz??? HELL FUCKING NO

As a recently quit smoker I can tell you that if the gov't were to try and make butts illegal there would be a shit storm.

And again, you are arguing with an invisible opponent as I haven't posited that it should be decriminalized because people need to get high.

There is no benefit whatsoever about the legalization of pot... the ONLY legit benefit has been shown in VERY RARE cases to be medical... and the 'smoking' delivery system is something the FDA has for NO drug... hence we have the legal benefits of pot in the form of marinol, which is in controllable doses with no major side effects that are not inherent to THC itself... beyond a 'high' there is ZERO benefit to decriminalizing pot.. unless you are like the assclown bobo, who sees another rationalization behind more taxation for the government

Your point seems to be that because pot is bad for you (to which I agree) then legalizing it could not possibly provide any benefits. Your thinking is too narrow if this is the case.

Sealybobo is correct when he says that legalizing it will bring in tax revenue. Do you dispute that?

The biggest benefit I believe we would get from legalizing marijuana is it will free up our justice system and keep black marks off our kids records that don't need to be there.

 

[DiamondDave]

As a recently quit smoker I can tell you that if the gov't were to try and make butts illegal there would be a shit storm.

And again, you are arguing with an invisible opponent as I haven't posited that it should be decriminalized because people need to get high.



Your point seems to be that because pot is bad for you (to which I agree) then legalizing it could not possibly provide any benefits. Your thinking is too narrow if this is the case.

Sealybobo is correct when he says that legalizing it will bring in tax revenue. Do you dispute that?

The biggest benefit I believe we would get from legalizing marijuana is it will free up our justice system and keep black marks off our kids records that don't need to be there.

1) I am not for legalizing something just for potential tax revenue
2) Kids and people need limits in society... there is right and wrong... just as a 'kid' should be punished for DUI, or drunk in public, or for huffing glue, or making crystal meth from sudafed, or taking heroin, or whatever... so they should be punished for the use of pot and anything related to it's use and distribution, as it is illegal
3) If they do try and criminalize tobacco, shitstorm or not, I would not fight it or scream bloody murder.. do I think it will happen in my lifetime? No... but because it is legal, does not mean that we change the legality of something that has zero positive benefits
4) No benefit, other than some very rare uses for medicinal purposes (which are handled by the drug marinol, which is legally prescribed) have been shown whatsoever... not one.. zilch.. nada.. again, I do not support decriminalizing for the sake of a high

 

[Andrew2382]

I actually wrote a 20 page paper on the legalizaton of marijuana back in College, so I know tons of stuff about it.

I myself and for legalizing it...I don't smoke it anymore, maybe once ina blue moon with some good friends, but pretty much gave it up.

Legalizing does a few major things

First it frees up millions, if not billions of dollars spent on the judicial system and prison sentences the governemnt spends for people arrested and detained due to marijuana cases


The black market woul dget wiped out overnight for the product, it would be the pharmecutical companies that would actually maufactrure the marijuana ciggerate.
The companies would pay an corporate tax to the government and the individual pack would have a tax on them to the consumer.

It would give federal agencies more time to concentrate on more important things like cocaine, heroine, X, things that can actually harm people.

If you legalize it, the desire to use it actually goes down. Just like prohibition with alcohol, when it was illegal, everybody wanted it. Now it is legal, and there are countless people who don't drink excessively and don't drink at all...You would see the same thing happen with marijuana.

There are many more positives then negatives.

That and also, th eeffects of marijuana or (getting high) is really negligible. It's no where as near as getting drunk doin 15 shots of Tequila. You never find yourself the next morning on the bathroom floor with your head next to the toilet.

There has never been one reported case of someone overdosing from Marijuana, yet you can drink yourself to death.

 

[editec]

The argument that since there's no positive reason to legalize it, ergo it should be illegal flies in the face of logic.

Laws shouldn't exist because there's no good reason for them NOT to exist, but because there's a very good (extrmely good, overhwelmingly good!) reason for them TO exist.

Nobody I have ever read has made a coherent or logical argument for the existence of the laws against hemp.

They can make personal arguments for them (because they don't like it that people get high, for example), but they cannot justify the laws based on something so silly as that.

Hence they make shit up, like hemp is a gateway drug, or the even sillier argument about second hand highs (I wish) or some other goofy misinformed blather.

All pure nonsense, of course.

The government is the prohibition business because it is a BIG BUSINESS...one that generates money for the criminal justice system at every level (including the criminal and corruption of our criminal justice level) and two: because it gives the government additional power and control over part of the population that Nixxon decided was a threat to people like him politically.

 

[Article 15]

1) I am not for legalizing something just for potential tax revenue

I'm not saying that. All I asked you to do was acknowledge that it would bring in tax revenue.

2) Kids and people need limits in society... there is right and wrong... just as a 'kid' should be punished for DUI, or drunk in public, or for huffing glue, or making crystal meth from sudafed, or taking heroin, or whatever... so they should be punished for the use of pot and anything related to it's use and distribution, as it is illegal

When legal it would be regulated like alcohol with age restrictions, etc. The details of how to handle a kid getting caught with it vary but I'm for the their guardians being given a fine. This would save tons of valuable time and resources in police department, court systems, and the war on drugs.

3) If they do try and criminalize tobacco, shitstorm or not, I would not fight it or scream bloody murder.. do I think it will happen in my lifetime? No... but because it is legal, does not mean that we change the legality of something that has zero positive benefits

You just said you didn't want to make weed legal because it has no benefits but NOW you want to say if something is already legal but has no benefits then that isn't justification to make it illegal.

That's some inconsistent logic there.