Marijuana / Hemp / Hashish?

4 Options:

A - Don't legalize
B - Legalize with restrictions/regulations (like taxes)
C - Legalize without any specific rules, treating it like any other plant.
4 - Legalize, but only for medical use

In case anyone's keeping count...pro-legalization measures were defeated in Colorado, Nevada and South Dakota (which only sought to legalize medicinal use).

Allow Homegrown to be tax free.

Blood tests in lieu of breath tests with the same penalties for refusal.

I'd also make it legal for private employers to test for it and hire fire based upon consumption of the substance.

Completely off limits to Military and Law Enforcment First Responders and Firemen.

The only problem really I forsee with legalizing pot and trying to keep it out of drivers hands, its very difficult to test to see if someone is actually "high or impaired" really all you could do is test and see if they could actually "drive" IE walk a straight line hop on one foot.
This is simply on the grounds that THC is a naturally occuring chemical its in your food just in loow doses so unlike booze your body doesn't react negatively to it and doesn't attempt to flush it from your system, so a blood test would only prove that you've smoked pot in the last month =/ not smoked and then hopped in your car.

But otherwise yah, I think it would help the goverment funding scene out ALOT if we stopped trying to prevent it and just taxed it!

Don't legalize it as there is soo much strain on health services due to legalised and strongly taxed drugs such as alcohol and tobacco that to bring in another would cripple the already hobbling NHS.

-----Abernyte

You know, I think if instead of keeping it illegal they legalized it, but targetted it with an anti-smoking campaign, like that against cigarettes, the percentage of pot smokers could actually decrease after a couple of decades. It would just stop being "cool", just like cigarettes aren't cool anymore.

Don't smoke it, never have, don't particulary like the smell, have known quite a few people who have smoked it. I think that, were it legalized, it would probably be a lot less harmful to society than alcohol currently is (just my opinion; I have no scientific studies to back that opinion up, either!).

As for regulation, sure, you can grow it in your backyard to 'avoid' taxes on it were it legal, but there's enough people who wouldn't want to go that route that I think taxation/regulation would be effective. For example, my brother makes beer and my dad makes wine; I just buy both (probably a bad example...whatever... ).

I think being arrested and going to jail for pot is pretty stupid.

So here's a question: I'm so not a smoker, but I've hit up the sheesh on a hooka pipe while overseas. Definitely not harsh on the lungs, but I have to assume that you're still getting some (all?) of the bad side effects of smoke. Is that the case, or does a water pipe actually filter out any of the bad stuff?

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

but it does cool the smoke down, so it feels better to inhale.

But, I'm of the opinion that sin taxes are anti-American. And while taxing marijuana isn't as bad as taxing cigarettes, morally speaking (since pot isn't addictive), I still don't like the idea of taxing subsets of this country.

You'll get tax money off the people making money on producing and selling it. That's already a step in the right direction. 'Double taxing' select portions of the population is flat out wrong.

Heh, thanks for the laugh, DC.

I'll state again. Pot won't be legal until one of two things happens.

1) My generation becomes the oldest members in the House/Senate.

2) The government can regulate and receive revenue from 99% of people who can produce marijuana (And this will never happen).

This is why pot is not legal and 200000+ other drugs with far more harmful effects are. That being because the government can regulate and receive revenue from these legal drugs, and anyone with half a brain and a few seeds can grow pot in their yard.

Pot is not physically addictive.

Its addictive in the way that some people say CF is addictive. But, that's hardly the same thing. If you were going to say that anything enjoyable constitutes as addictive then all games, the internet in general, television and etc should all be added to the list.

That being said, if you have a shred of willpower, you won't get addicted to pot.

I don't disagree with what you're saying, I don't think it'll be legal for reason 1. Basically, there's too much social stigma riding on it. And its not because of people growing their own, its because your grandfather and probably father have very large dislikes for pot smokers. Along with a healthy chunk of those generations.

The clinical definition of addiction has been changed by the WHO. What you are describing (which once was clinical addition) is now termed physical dependance.

As far as I know, pot neither develops physical dependance or tolerance. That isn't to say it can't be addictive. Here's a pretty interesting web page that talks about the issues (mostly in regards to pain management -http://www.whocancerpain.wisc.edu/eng/11_3/tpda.html#1

Marijuana use does not result in a physical dependency. Its addictive like gambling is addictive to some people, in that people may have a non-physical compulsion to do it. Compulsion oriented people should probably avoid marijuana. But what I find interesting, is I'm what you might call an incredibly compulsive person. I easily get addicted to things. Gaming, cigarettes, caffeine, etc. I have a tendency to be overindulgent. However, that has somewhat reduced as I've aged.

Still, even with that, I've never become addicted to marijuana. Or gambling for that matter, but thats just because I'm a miser.

Well, that and nicotine and caffeine are the two most available drugs that do in fact cause physical dependance.

It's a dangerous rat hole to say well, I never got addicted to alcohol, drugs, smoking, therefore anyone that does must be weak willed and deserves whatever their addiction brings them. It's a form of social darwinism that lets us discount or completely ignore the plight of others not so fortunate. Similar logic applies when someone says I had no problem getting a job therefore anyone on the streets deserves to be there. The brain is not exactly a well understood organ and one person's indulgence is another person's demon.

You won't.

If it was legal, I would quit drinking entirely.

B. It's a mind-altering substance that makes it unsafe to perform some tasks, ergo it should be regulated. As a parent, I don't want it to be possible for my kid to walk into 7-11 and buy pot, just like I don't want it to be possible for him to walk in and buy alcohol or cigarettes.

I don't want people driving while high at the level it would occur if there were absolutely no deterrent.

Given that marijuana use is a net negative for society at large (w/ regard to productivity) I'd support severe restrictions on advertising. More severe than current restrictions on cigarettes and alcohol. I'd also apply those "more severe" restrictions to tobacco and alcohol.

Isl wrote: Given that marijuana use is a net negative for society at large (w/ regard to productivity) I'd support severe restrictions on advertising.

A negative for society at large with regards to productivity? Elaborate please? Do you mean productivity such as... someone getting up and doing something, or do you mean productivity as... producing the substance in the first place?

B.

I'd like to point out the reason Marijuana is illegal has nothing to do with the drug affects. It has to do with the hemp vs paper trade in the early 20th century and a certain tycoon of said industry being related to J. Edgar Hoover.

>Marijuana / Hemp / Hashish?
>
>4 Options:
>
>A - Don't legalize
>B - Legalize with restrictions/regulations (like taxes)
>C - Legalize without any specific rules, treating it like any
>other plant.
>4 - Legalize, but only for medical use


If it were legalized, it'd have to be B. You can't really treat it like just another plant.

I quit smoking pot a long time ago because I don't enjoy the buzz anymore, but I know people that do and they are good people! I think it falls in the same catagory as alcohol. (which in my opinion is a -lot- worse) There will always be idiots out there that abuse things and ruin it for the rest of us.

In the end my decision comes down to this:

If you get drunk you could go home and beat your wife. If you get high what's the worse you could do... Eat her dinner?

"Then hunger proved more powerful than grief." - Count Ugolino and the Tower of Hunger

Alcohol use is not a cause of wife-beating. It just so happens that more drunkards abuse wives. There is a correlation, not a cause. Most people who get drunk _don't_ hit their spouses.

I would say that legalizing it is a bad decision - its like telling underage people its alright to drug up once you reach a certain age, and it'll make getting drugs a lot easier than it is now, which is still pretty damned easy. Keep it illegal, make it harder for people to get it.

While I'm not saying that all evil in the world is caused by people on drugs, I will say that I've never seen marijuana/hemp/whatever else do anything really positive for a person outside of draining a couple of thousand dollars per year that could be going to something more useful. Whether or not you get high is your own personal choice, but society as a whole should disapprove of it, because it is harmful, unattractive, and ####s up your brain chemistry.

Legalizing it for medical use is still pretty useless, I think, because at this day and age there are better painkillers, and we have enough problems with people addicted to prescription drugs that adding another whole category of addictive substances via prescription would be retarded.

>I will say that I've never seen
>marijuana/hemp/whatever else do anything really positive for a
>person outside of draining a couple of thousand dollars per
>year that could be going to something more useful. Whether or
>not you get high is your own personal choice, but society as a
>whole should disapprove of it, because it is harmful,
>unattractive, and ####s up your brain chemistry.

You could say the exact same things about alcohol and tobacco, yet they are both legal.

Are you against them also? If not, why not? If wasting money and being harmful and unattractive is bad for marijuana, shouldn't it be bad for everything else that does the same sort of thing?

By legalizing it, all you're saying is that marijuana is NOT a drug in the way that coke, meth, heroin, etc is. You're basically putting it in the same category as cigarettes and alcohol (which realistically, it SHOULD be considered as).

Legalizing marijuana isn't going to tell the kiddies that cocaine is ok, too. At least, not anymore than the cigarettes and alcohol already do. All it's going to do is tell kiddies that their parents aren't criminals because they get high every once in a while. I don't see that as a bad thing.

>Alcohol use is not a cause of wife-beating. It just so
>happens that more drunkards abuse wives. There is a
>correlation, not a cause. Most people who get drunk _don't_
>hit their spouses.

Yes I realize that. But I was using that example as a way to compare the effects of the two. Alcohol itself isn't going to beat someone up, yes, but the people who are most likely TO hit their wife are probably going to be less likely to do it if they were high rather than drunk.

>
>I would say that legalizing it is a bad decision - its like
>telling underage people its alright to drug up once you reach
>a certain age, and it'll make getting drugs a lot easier than
>it is now, which is still pretty damned easy. Keep it illegal,
>make it harder for people to get it.

But it is! It's perfectly ok to "drug up" on all the alcohol and tobacoo you want... AFTER you reach 18 and 21.


>
>While I'm not saying that all evil in the world is caused by
>people on drugs, I will say that I've never seen
>marijuana/hemp/whatever else do anything really positive for a
>person outside of draining a couple of thousand dollars per
>year that could be going to something more useful.

I, personally, can not work high. But there are other people who say they can't work unless their high. When I stoned I just stand there stuck on stupid like a zombie. Again, other people say that's them sober.

To each his own I guess.

"Then hunger proved more powerful than grief." - Count Ugolino and the Tower of Hunger

Not necessarily because I can't do my job, but because I like to be relaxing when I toke up.

To me, the only negative effects marijuana has ever had on me is to make me lazy. Positive effects? I don't kill stupid people daily.

Alcohol use is not a cause of wife-beating. It just so happens that more drunkards abuse wives. There is a correlation, not a cause. Most people who get drunk _don't_ hit their spouses.

Alcohol absolutely causes violence, in many forms. Specifically, the drug lowers your inhibitions, and someone who is intoxicated is more likely to act on an unpleasant urge that a sober person could suppress. It is legal (within boundaries) because we've decided as a society that most people can control their usage of alcohol, and the risks do not merit a ban.

I will say that I've never seen marijuana/hemp/whatever else do anything really positive for a person outside of draining a couple of thousand dollars per year that could be going to something more useful. Whether or not you get high is your own personal choice, but society as a whole should disapprove of it, because it is harmful, unattractive, and ####s up your brain chemistry.

You're correct that it's not a healthy habit-- I don't touch it for those reasons, just like I don't touch cigarettes, I don't eat a lot of fatty foods, and I drink only in moderation. That said, it doesn't particularly bother me if other people have unhealthy habits, so long as they don't impact me.

The question is: Should marijuana be in the class with cocaine/heroin/etc. (where it is now), or in the class with alcohol/tobacco (regulated but legal)? Obviously, if you allowed people to purchase marijuana, it would have to fall under many of the same restrictions-- no driving while influenced, no smoking in public places where others are exposed, minimum age, etc. Several countries treat marijuana in this class, and are able to keep things under control.

Legalizing it for medical use is still pretty useless, I think, because at this day and age there are better painkillers, and we have enough problems with people addicted to prescription drugs that adding another whole category of addictive substances via prescription would be retarded.

I guess you're not aware that synthetic THC (the major active ingredient in marijuana) is already available by prescription in the United States.

You're aware of what they use now for severe chronic pain, right? Marijuana's addictive powers are weaker. The medical marijuana movement is separate from making marijuana available for casual use. It could be legalized just for people with conditions like MS, terminal cancer, etc. (As an example, your doctor can give you morphine for certain conditions, but they can't just hand it out to anyone who walks in the door.)

And chronic pain isn't nearly the only use, or even the most promising one. The main use would be for nausea control, or to restore the appetite of people undergoing procedures like chemotherapy, HIV treatments, etc. In both cases, Marinol (synthetic THC) is already in your doctor's toolkit, though questions remain about whether or not it works as quickly or as well as the whole plant.

That said, there aren't a lot of controlled studies completed, largely because it's difficult to do them legally. Studies do agree that smoking anything is just not an ideal delivery system, because of what it does to your lungs and mouth. (I can't think of any drug which is prescribed to be smoked.) But it's very likely more drugs like Marinol could be prepared with sufficient research.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Alcohol is not a CAUSE of violence. You cannot prove that people who are violent with alcohol will not be violent without alcohol - A controlled experiment on that scale would require controlling for every other factor which causes violence, which is basically impossible. And highly illegal.

I will admit there is a distinct correlation between the two, but it proves nothing. Perhaps an inclination to violence causes alcoholism. Perhaps just people who aren't drunk get away with more violent crimes, whereas people who are drunk get caught more, leading to a disparity in the statistics Linolaques mentions. You cannot prove that alcohol causes violence.

I also believe that Marijuana/hemp/whatever should be kept illegal. From an economic point of view, making it illegal increases the cost of getting the drugs and the risk associated with it, making it far more difficult to obtain. Should the drug be legalized, the price would go down as the drug cartels start sending in larger amounts of the drugs legally, and demand would go up, resulting in many, many more people using drugs. This might be okay to you, but I do not think it would be beneficial to the society as a whole. Therefore, I say no.

It is not a matter of whether or not Marijuana or whatever is worse or better than any legal/illegal drugs, it is a matter of whether or not the effect of legalizing it would have enough benefit to outweigh the harm.

You cannot prove that people who get lung cancer and smoke will not get lung cancer if the didn't smoke. A controlled experiment on that scale would require controlling for every other factor which causes lung cancer, which is basically impossible. And highly illegal.

I will admit there is a distinct correlation between the two, but it proves nothing. Perhaps a susceptibility to lung cancer causes becoming addicted to smoking. Perhaps people who aren't smokers aren't checked for lung cancer as thoroughly, whereas people who smoke are checked closer, leading to a disparity in the statistics Linolaques mentions. You cannot prove that smoking causes lung cancer.

The rest of your argument is also ####, but isn't as easily mocked, so I'll stick with this.

You just have to collect the data and run logistic regressions to isolate risk factors. Unless you are familiar with epidemiologic methods, try avoiding mocking people.

>Alcohol is not a CAUSE of violence.

If I get drunk and, for example, sucker punch someone I might dislike but would ordinarily never hit, alcohol isn't (to some degree) a cause of that violence? ####.

I'm sorry, but you can't take an obviously stupid position and then hide behind "but it would be illegal to prove it!"

Want me to send you a copy of BOTH my statistics AND my psychology book? The part where it says that an episodic example is not the general case?

I know a 92 year old smoker. Therefore all studies which declare tjat smoking cuts down on your life span becomes bullsh*t. Right?

Nothing personal, I enjoy the intellectual exercise of arguing, but episodic examples prove absolutely nothing.

Just because it has happened before doesn't mean he's right and I'm wrong.

Furthermore, we could re-interpret your example to mean that someone with the inclination to do violence might take up drinking in order to sucker punch the guy he doesn't like. Drinking didn't make you dislike him, drinking didn't make you punch him. You dislike him. You got drunk. You punched him. There could be a million other things in between these events that drove you to it, not necessarily the alcohol.

Dude. I've read a lot more about psychology than anyone in my line of work would ever need to. I graduated with a minor in psych. Your statistics are not going to intimidate me.

Obviously one case study in a vacuum proves nothing. Please don't construct a straw man and try to beat it down with your textbook.

I apologize if I have offended you. I was merely pointing out that in my opinion, your line of argument was flawed, and used my old psychology and statistics textbooks to punctuate it. I did not mean to insult your intelligence.

Want me to send you a copy of BOTH my statistics AND my psychology book?

Only because you've clearly never read them carefully, and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Alcohol absolutely causes a higher incidence of violence in the intoxicated party. It is proper to say "Smoking causes lung cancer." without needing to prove that all lung cancers are caused by smoking, or that that all people who smoke will get lung cancer.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Lung cancer and violence are two different things.

Lung cancer is a carefully defined disease that has a few medically proven causes. One of them is carcinogens, which are present in cigarettes.

Comparing this to an action with hundreds of different possible psychological responses varying from person to person does not prove anything. There is no medically proven cause of violence. There are people who have medical conditions which can cause violence, such as adrenaline imbalance, but you will agree that is not usually the case.

Are you seriously calling violent behavior while intoxicated anecdotal? The effects on mood, aggression and all sort of other factors have been carefully studied for alcohol. These studies have controlled for potential confounders, such as environment and sex (also a potential effect modifier).

If you'd like specific article references, I can paste links you'll never follow. Otherwise, you could use scholar.google.com to search for, say, "alcohol violence".


---------

paper quotes


"It was argued that the data from human and animal studies indicated that the causal basis of alcohol-related violence was most complex and it was unlikely that this drug should influence such behaviour through a single mechanism eg by increasing ‘aggression’. It seemed that within the same category of violence a number of plausible explanations for the action of alcohol existed and that this drug might simultaneously contribute to the completion of violent acts in a number of ways."

----
(a study on felons)

"The findings were interpreted as being consistent with the hypothesis that alcohol effects violence directly, acting through the acute effects of use, rather than indirectly through the effects of underlying or mediating factors."


And so on.

There are a lot of bad statisticians with PhDs running around. It's too bad there are undergrad psych majors stinking up science too.

1) Insulting people when they attempt to take a less popular viewpoint in an argument is a very mature way to get your opinions across.

2) By your own admission, there are some very bad statisticians with PhDs running around. Clearly, you know much more than these people, and so therefore not only are they undeserving of their PhDs, which came from years of study and hard work, but because you are so obviously immune to mistakes that your view is always right, you must therefore pass judgement upon everyone, including those statisticians and random people on the internet who like debating psychology?

3) "It was argued that the data from human and animal studies indicated that the causal basis of alcohol-related violence was most complex and it was unlikely that this drug should influence such behaviour through a single mechanism eg by increasing �aggression�. It seemed that within the same category of violence a number of plausible explanations for the action of alcohol existed and that this drug might simultaneously contribute to the completion of violent acts in a number of ways."

Clearly you haven't read the argument carefully. This is part of what I was saying - the issue is too complex to effect a causal relationship, and that it is possible alcohol as a whole might have some mitigating effects that we have yet to test for. I know it is possible for someone to get less aggressive/violent while drunk.

1) Are you new to the Internet? My insult was almost a compliment by the standards set by the IEEE.

2) I don't necessarily know more than the bad PhDs running around, I just know better. Nice sentence there, though... something about how I judge dumbasses. But you're a nice guy so I'm going to (attempt to) educate you.

3) Yep!

4) I was under the impression that you stated:

"Alcohol is not a CAUSE of violence. You cannot prove that people who are violent with alcohol will not be violent without alcohol - A controlled experiment on that scale would require controlling for every other factor which causes violence, which is basically impossible. And highly illegal."

>> No... studying alcohol is perfectly legal. And randomization is legal too, which generally precludes worrying about confounders because by definition a confounder is:

1. Causally associated with the response variable in the population but not in the causal pathway of interest

and

2. Associated with the predictor of interest in the sample

As you can see, 2 generally won't hold if your predictor of interest was divied up among the participants randomly. This is the entire point of randomized clinical trials (okay, maybe not). The psych department around here does lots of stuff where they give kids booze and measure their risk taking behavior, interactions with peers and whatever.

"I will admit there is a distinct correlation between the two, but it proves nothing. Perhaps an inclination to violence causes alcoholism. Perhaps just people who aren't drunk get away with more violent crimes, whereas people who are drunk get caught more, leading to a disparity in the statistics Linolaques mentions. You cannot prove that alcohol causes violence."

And at what point does a "distinct correlation" become "causation"? It's a difficult thing. With smoking and lung cancer, for instance, it's agreed upon because you know... there's evidence of many kinds, biological and national and from studies. Alcohol's "distinct correlation" is quite different though. Violent behavior doesn't lag 25 years behind drinking. You have to pull really, really hard at the "oh no there was no intervention" rope to continue stating alcohol doesn't cause violence.

Have you ever played a drinking game? Let's say we're playing a drinking game, which has some randomizing effect on how much people drink, right? Now who's the violent drunk? The guy that had to chug whisky. This is an imperfect experiment.

How about self-reported violent activity, self control, etc.? I have plenty of friends that used to get absolutely tanked and get into fights, wrestle and other dumbass stuff. Now, they don't drink -- and why? Because they "don't like getting all violent". So let's say that's 20% of the population -- 20% of the population self-reports that alcohol causes THEM to be more violent. You'll dislike this one, but it's more like someone that recognizes they have allergies (believable) than someone attempting to ascertain the cause of their depression (not necessarily believable that they would know). This is an imperfect experiment.

Okay, one more. I'm throwing a party and I order 3 kegs. I invite all of my super cool frat brothers and tell them to wear their biggest collars. Everyone shows up at 7pm -- alcohol doesn't cause violence, so they're goign to be violent at about 11pm anyway (yes, every frat party includes violence (sexual or otherwise)). But the truck never shows, and everyone just sits around. There's no fighting. This is an imperfect experiment.

Unfortunately, you'll only accept a perfect experiment because you're not arguing anything you believe you're just arguing to argue. And unfortunately, that is only worthwhile when SOMEONE believes the point you're trying to argue. When you argue points that NOBODY believes, you're just being A RETARD.

1) I don't get how you can read that sentence and come away with anything other than what any bartender or college student could tell you: Alcohol causes an increase in violent behavior. The precise mechanism is complicated and the drug likely acts in several ways, but you put alcohol in, and violence comes out.

2) By your argument, cigarettes don't cause cancer. Maybe all cells have the capacity to become cancerous, and maybe people with more of those cells just have biological urges to smoke. (Is RJR hiring?) There is a point beyond which ridiculous stretches of the imagination to encompass a hypothetical are counterproductive. This is like the people who say "You can't prove the moon landing was real."

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I have several psychometrics and psychopharmacology classes lodged in the nether regions of my brain, if that means anything to you.

Alcohol makes people (even those that aren't "violent") less inhibited. It interferes with their judgement, motor skills, and often makes people aggressive. All of these lead to situations where one is much more likely to commit or be the victim of a violent crime. You aren't going to find a psychologist say that anything Causes anything else generally, but you will hear them say that alcohol is the Best Explanation for punching a guy due to the increased aggression, poorer judgement, and lack of inhibition that occurs as a result of intoxication. It's also important to note that my statistics weren't citing alcoholics (people that have a "medical" history of alcohol abuse) but it was obtained by checking for alcohol in the system (physically or in oral histories) of the victim or criminal at the time of the assault.

As far as violent individuals go, it's a pretty ambiguous idea. The closest, of course, would be psychopaths, though their violence is more likely to be transactional and emotional than physical. Still, from what I remember and see with a quick review of the literature, they are not significantly more likely to abuse alcohol than the general population.

Finally, in regards to admitting the harmful consequences of alcohol but still arguing for the prohibition of marijuana, I have this to say: If we want our laws to be obeyed, they should be just. Something that is significantly more harmful to society should not be legal (alcohol) while something that is comparatively much less of a plague carry heavy penalties for use and waste tons of taxpayer money. Our laws should discourage in an appropriate manner that which is most harmful to society.

"I also believe that Marijuana/hemp/whatever should be kept illegal. From an economic point of view, making it illegal increases the cost of getting the drugs and the risk associated with it, making it far more difficult to obtain. Should the drug be legalized, the price would go down as the drug cartels start sending in larger amounts of the drugs legally, and demand would go up, resulting in many, many more people using drugs. This might be okay to you, but I do not think it would be beneficial to the society as a whole. Therefore, I say no."

The reason this argument is terrible, is I could replace Marijuana with Coffee, Candy, or any number of other legal items in our society which have dubious benefitial effects and not break the argument. Its just not a valid criteria to make something illegal. There really is no valid reason for why marijuana is illegal. It basically is just simply because some people want it to be, but that doesn't make it just. Doing jailtime for marijuana possession isn't justice. I think thats why you'll find a not insignificant portion of America simply ignores those laws and a not insignificant number of people in America would like them removed altogether.

>I also believe that Marijuana/hemp/whatever should be kept
>illegal. From an economic point of view, making it illegal
>increases the cost of getting the drugs and the risk
>associated with it, making it far more difficult to obtain.

From the economic point of view, keeping it illegal creates a humongus criminal market, which provides the money base to criminals much worse than pot dealers. Legalizing marijuana would destroy this shadow market, weakening the criminal gangs, providing more taxes to the government, and freeing up police to fight the real bad guys.

>Should the drug be legalized, the price would go down as the
>drug cartels start sending in larger amounts of the drugs
>legally, and demand would go up, resulting in many, many more
>people using drugs.

Once it is legal, you can actually regulate the price. It is now that it is out of control. People generally don't like to break law, so most will be buying pot legally, even if they could get it cheaper if they got it illegally. Keeping the price high shouldn't be much of a problem, just like it is not a problem with alcahol & cigarettes. A bottle of vodka costs $30 because of the alcahol taxes, not because ethanol is expensive (it is dirt-cheap).

I can't believe that this is the post that finally inspired me to register a forum handle, but here you have it.

As Valgie said below, alcohol most certainly causes violence. There are many, many studies that support this, but here's one statistic for you from the Annals of Emergency Medicine in 1999,

"In a Memphis, Tennessee study, 85% of murderers and 75% of murder victims were intoxicated during the murder.... A review of 331 American medical examiner (coroner) studies published between 1975 and 1995 found that victims tested positive for alcohol in 29% of suicides, 38.5% of unintentional injury deaths, 39.7% of motor vehicle deaths and 47.1% of homicides."

Also bear in mind that in 2003 only 61% of adults in the US used alcohol in that year.

Alcohol also has the worst withdrawal symptoms that I can think of. Actually it's the only one that I can think of right now where you can die from withdrawal.

Pot, in addition to its beneficial medical uses, can be thanked like many other drugs for a good portion of our art.

Too much money is wasted chasing after people with pot. It's absolute ####, especially considering the size of the national debt, the price of education, the price of health care.

Alcohol also has the worst withdrawal symptoms that I can think of. Actually it's the only one that I can think of right now where you can die from withdrawal.

Opiate (heroin, etc.) withdrawal can be fatal, though both barbituates and alcohol are more likely to kill you. (All of the above are compounded by ther fact that the addiction has probably harmed your overall health significantly before you tried withdrawing.) But yes, all of the above are more powerfully addictive than marijuana in terms of both physical and psychological symptoms, yet one is legal and the other two are prescribed more often than THC is. Society is also considerably more supportive of people with addictions to painkillers-- it's treated more like an illness than a character flaw.

Marijuana is more on a level with cigarettes in terms of addictive power-- the health effects tend to be limited to anxiety, insomnia, irritability, cravings, and other things that are very unpleasant but not life-threatening.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I'm willing to cede barbituates to you, but I still haven't found anything indicating opiate withdrawal can be fatal (aside from choking on vomit). Sure, you may likely Wish you were dead, but I don't see anything in my texts suggesting anything too serious. I could be wrong, I'm sending an email to a professor about it.

I thought cigarettes were significantly more addictive than marijuana...is that not true?

>Alcohol use is not a cause of wife-beating. It just so
>happens that more drunkards abuse wives. There is a
>correlation, not a cause. Most people who get drunk _don't_
>hit their spouses.

Do you claim that a sober person is just as likely to beat his wife as a drunk one? Alcohol removes inhibitions, so people who normally could restrain their violent urges are more likely to execute that violent urge. So, alcohol is a catalyst for some people. And yes, it too can damage your brain when used excessively, though some positive effects of the use of small doses does exist.

"While I'm not saying that all evil in the world is caused by people on drugs, I will say that I've never seen marijuana/hemp/whatever else do anything really positive for a person outside of draining a couple of thousand dollars per year that could be going to something more useful. Whether or not you get high is your own personal choice, but society as a whole should disapprove of it, because it is harmful, unattractive, and ####s up your brain chemistry."

This sort of mindset just begs for someone to make the "slippery slope" argument, which I now shall.

That's a slippery slope. The legality of something or illegality should not and can not in a free nation, be based contingent upon its constructive and positive effect on the community or the person. Rather it should be based on the negative effect to others and the line should be drawn that it correlates to measurable damages significantly more than other legal activities.

Thus vandalism is a crime while not having a paying job is not and should not be a crime. In that same vein, smoking pot should not be a crime. The fact that it does not positively affect your life or your contribution to society in and of itself should not be criteria for its legality. Its still a broad and highly subjective topic, but those are my two cents. Its kinda hard to nail down a definitive definition of what should and should not be legal.

For me toking on a Doobie might seem like the thing to do after a long day on the job.

I think you wouldn't have to disallow people from smoking pot while driving if you reinstituted the concept of debtors prison.

Frankly, the only reason why drinking alcohol while driving needs to be illegal is because there's way too much of a safety net for recklessly driving and getting into accidents. Today I can decide to be a retard and kill a pedestrian and its unlikely I'll do jail time or pay out a lot of money unless its blatently obvious or I'm drunk at the time.

That, to me, is just plain bad Driving a vehicle is a responsibility, this country's policies shouldn't remove the weight of that responsibility from people.

I'm personally in favor of individual financial and behavioral responsibility. I don't feel bad for people who drive poorly getting sued. Our system doesn't 'provide a safety net' so much as it encourages people to treat every situation (debt, getting into accidents, taking care of their health/healthcare, etc) like a privilege which they don't need to actually do the right thing with. And the people who are least likely to have any issues with debt and stupid behavior typically make the most money and shoulder the heaviest burden of other's idiocy.

So, more or less, those of us who aren't irresponsible idiots, are paying for others to have the luxory of acting like children.