Marijuana

[ArenaBoy]

This is always a touchy subject but marijuana and legalization. As we all know marijuana is that one drug that can scare the most conservative person and then there's been the medical debate and everything.

I personally believe that it should be legalized as it is not as bad as one thinks. I've worked some pot heavy shows and honestly I'd rather deal with a stoner than a drunk because alcohol brings out the rage in some people. I would like to see it legalized but as long as there are some limits. One is to do it like they do in Amsterdam, cannot smoke outdoors but only in your house and designated areas. It would be frustrating for some yes but it would be worth saving the trouble and by legalizing it it can reduce some of the drug crimes that are committed.

I decided to post this because my friend is very open about her pot use. She thankfully smokes it once in a blue moon but she hates the attitude surrounding it. On a sidenote, I have never tried drugs of any kind as I nearly lost my best friend because of his use. He learned his lesson right then and there.

[AFPheonix]

I agree about the legalization, but I think the legal age should be 25: right about when your brain gets done developing. This stuff pretty much stops your mental and emotional development dead, not to mention it can pretty much ruin your memory centers.

In a lot of ways I wish my dad had a prescription for the stuff when he was still alive. His stomach was really sensitive, he had a lot of nausea, and he didn't eat well. My BIL slipped him a doobie on one family trip, and we noticed that he cleaned his plate that night

[ArenaBoy]

I agree but the main deomographic is usually teens but they'll find ways through it, people always do. That friend I mentioned said she is glad that she doesn't smoke it as much as she used to, she's actually thinking about quitting because of how expensive it is but she will admit that it screws you up in a lot of ways. The scary thing is she shows those signs that you mentioned and when I first met her I thought she was just emotionless but when I recognized the smell of pot on her one day I knew it immdiately. I do know that she sees a shrink and I'm guessing it may be because of that.

I've gotten used to the smell at the arena but there is this poor new girl who is very naive and doesn't even know what it smells like.

[ditchdj]

It's like I said in the other thread: anything this country has "declared war" on: drugs, terrorism, crime, guns, have ALL been a failure. And the most common excuse I hear is "You gotta have patience".

[Rapscallion]

Colleague of mine reports that his wife/girlfriend (not sure) works in a ward for mentally unstable people. She reports that many people there used to smoke cannabis - a huge proportion. I don't know if this means that cannabis caused it, or that their mental instabilty made them more like to need/want it. However, he's certain he metabolises it better than they do, which caused many of us to snort in our cups of tea.

Legalise it? More and more evidence is coming out that it's harmful, and it's not just scare tactics. However, there's also the argument that alcohol is more dangerous and addictive (I'll hold my hands up and say I've seen more violent drunks than 'hippies'). Sure the government could make major money out of sales of cannabis by taxing the fellow as much as they do other recreational chemicals (cigs and booze, for two), but I can't see that they'll ever go that way. Well, not in the next two decades, they won't.

Legalise it for a certain age? I've had children as young as ten beg me to buy cigs for them, so they'll be begging for a joint next? Can't see it happening.

Legalising it to reduce the number of crimes committed? You do know the obvious answer to that one? Y'know, the one about legalising theft? The real question would be more like working out if legalising it would be bad for the country as a whole. Would police be able to tell who was driving under the influence of weed as well as they are able to work out who was driving under the influence of alcohol? There's apparently a urine test, but that's going to be hard to administer at the side of a road...

What really puts me off cannabis and other drugs - including alcohol - is partly that I'm somewhat of an addictive personality (try me and food, for example), but also that the definition of clinical depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain. Many people who drink or smoke cannabis say that they feel better after a dose of their favourite chemical. I don't want to rely on chemicals to feel good.

Actually, I don't, so nyeh!

Rapscallion

[AFPheonix]

The difference between legalizing theft and legalizing pot is that a pot smoker is pretty much just screwing himself up. Theft affects other people. That's comparing apples to oranges. If I were to compare, I'd probably bring up prohibition, and how poorly that worked, and how it brought about the rise of organized crime in this country.

I would imagine that the cops could test impairment from pot much like they do for alcohol as far as a field sobriety test, not to mention that pot has that telltale herbally smell. Also, I would hazard to guess that breathalyzers could be recalibrated to test for chemicals found in pot as well as for ethanol.

I don't have an addictive personality, and I'll be the first to admit that I've never smoked even a cigarette, much less pot, and I probably never will. However, I am fine with other people doing it. I don't think it's any worse socially than alcohol or cigarettes. Yes, it has serious effects on some people who have the propensity to become addicted to it, but so does food or sex or anything else that people with that sort of personality get hooked on. Should we restrict all of that just for a select few?

[Rapscallion]

Heroin only screws the user up, but the user then goes to steal from others to finance his hobby. Again, the degree is different, since most stoners are part-timers and nowhere near as bad as heroin addicts, but there is the correlation between drug use and crime.

I agree that the police could use tests such as the walking in a straight line etc, but they already do this for drink drivers - I think the term is probable cause to allow them to stop someone and use an empirical measure of how intoxicated someone is? They need to be able to show a court that someone has a certain amount of chemicals in their system, which will affect their ability to drive. "He couldn't walk in a straight line," is not as good in court as "He blew the breathalyser and it turned a funny shade of pastel colours..." Without evidence such as that, a halfway smart lawyer would be saying, "Well, maybe he tripped!".

Socially? I generally have no more objection to it than I do cigarettes, but mostly because it ends up in cigarettes, and they are the main reason I don't go out on a weekend/night. I can't abide the stench of tobacco smoke. I don't make a song and dance about it, I just don't go out much.

Is it a select few? I don't know how many people smoke cannabis, and I would suggest that nobody does have a good idea, since it's still kept behind closed doors. How many people smoke it and end up with mental problems caused by/exacerbated by it? I honestly have no idea, so I'd be cautious about saying it's only a few. I really have no idea how many it would be.

Where would you draw the line? One person in a hundred develops a mild psychosis? Is that acceptable? One person in a thousand? Acceptable?

For that matter, where would you draw the line with alcohol? http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/a/alco...ts-country.htm suggests that there's an alcoholism factor in Western Europe, Canada, and the US of 5.5%, which seems extraordinarily high to me. That suggests that 5.5% of the entire population is suffering to one degree or other from alcoholism. Even if it was 5.5% of regular drinkers who became alcoholic, would that be acceptable?

Rapscallion

[rahmota]

Well anytime you have a situation where a person is doing somethign harmful to themselves it is going to be unpleasant to themselves and others, but it goes back to my commetns about a reasonable and responsible person being willing to accept the consequences of their actions. Be it drugs, alcohol or other vices.

As for where do you draw the line that again is the tricky part. Personally I see cigarettes and alcohol and marijuana as all at about the same level of "evil" or vice so all three should be legal and tazed and restricted appropriately. What is approriate, age 18 for all three as that is the voting age, age of adulthood in America and age to enter the military in america. Responsible people would self moderate their actions. Those with addictive personalities would either recognize it as you do raps or fall into the trap and need help of those who care about them or they would fal by the wayside of society and be dragged under the wheels of progress. Sad but true in modern society.

As for tests there are a few companies that market swab tests for cannabis for parents to check their kids rooms and such surreptitiously. i suppose police could use that for a person.

[AFPheonix]

"He couldn't walk in a straight line," is not as good in court as "He blew the breathalyser and it turned a funny shade of pastel colours..." Without evidence such as that, a halfway smart lawyer would be saying, "Well, maybe he tripped!".

All a breathalyzer is is a spectrophotometer. I would imagine that it wouldn't be too hard to calibrate one to read for THC as well as for ethanol. Heck, I'd probably bet that it already has been done.

[rahmota]

I'm not sure how long THC will stay in the breath after you are done smoking it though. Ethanol will continue to be exhaled as a by product of the break down of the alchohol. Thats why and how they can tell how long ago (roughly) you stopped drinking by how high your BAc is.

[Cyanocobalamin]

Actually, ethanol IS the alcohol found in beverages. The metabolites (breakdown products) are acetaldehyde, then acetic acid (vinegar!).

[digilight]

Marijuana is not physically adictive, it can be mentally adictive (anything can be mentally adictive though). The harmful effects really arise from smoking it, since breathing the smoke sure isn't going to be healthy for you. Now while there may be more harmful chemicals in Marijuana smoke the presence of them will actually not be as bad as normal tobacco smoke. If you compared a stoners use to an average cigarette smokers use (say 1-2 packs a day). Simply for the fact that a stoner is actually smoking less then a cigarette smoker.

Do I think it should be legalized, hell yeah. Do I smoke it, hell no, I havent touched it in over 7 years now. But the financial ramifications would be huge. THe amount of jail and prison space it would free up would be enormous. The taxable income it would provide the federal and local governments would be massive. Financially it makes sense.

Now for testing in a DUI type condition. THC and Canabanoids do not leave your system at the same rate that alcohole does. THC can stay present for days even weeks in a high volume smoker. Even if the user is not impared they could still test positive under current tests. The current method of testing would have to be greatly improved before any legalization could take place.

With government control the quality of marijuana would be better. There wouldn't be the risk of PCP laced weed any more (example would be the movie friday when smokey starts tripping and ends up in DBolts chicken coupe). Now I smoked a lot of weed in college and I never had anything that was laced myself so I cant really say if this happens or not.

They say that Marijuana is a gateway drug, and to a big extent I think it is. Nicotine and alcohol are even bigger gateway drugs though. But is this because we tend to try tobacco and booze at a younger age then our first puff from a joint, or our first line of cocaine. If the playing field were evened out by placing weed, cigs, and beer on the same table would smoking still be as big of a gateway drug?

Would legalizing it shift some of the glamour away from it that exists underground today. Or would our moral fabric decay even further at a much more rapid rate than it currently is.

Legalizing it would also make it more readily available as a treatment for cancer patients undergoing chemo, for aids patients, and for other patients whom it could potentially help. It may not be a cure, but it can and has been proven to help suffering in certain cases.

[rahmota]

Cyan: OopsYou know what I mean though.

Digi: I wasnt sure how long they stay detectable in breath type tests. I know hair, urine and nail clippings can all show it for long times after wards with hair being the longest duration. (One of the reasons when i left the dealership I got a burr cut hairdo)

I have to agree with you about the monetary effects of legalizing it. at the dealership a bag equivalent to about a pack of cigarettes was 100$. If legalized the price would probably drop a bit but still if they where willing to pay a Cnote for it when it was ilegal why not tax it so that its still that, that way the localities would get that much extra money while those who dont have the money might be discouraged. Of course the reverse could be said that crime would continue as a fundign soure for that but then if crimes where punished properly and the jails wherent filled with people whose only crime was smoking weed then there would be room for true criminals.

As for lacin yes it does happen but is generall rare. One of the guys I worked with had it happen to him and he about died. Apparently it was laced with cocaine and he had a cardiac arrest from smoking it. I never encountered it but then again I only casually smoked a few times while I worked at the dealership.

Aside from that I doubt it would speed the moral deacy of our society. Our society is already in flux from enough other issues that I doubt this one particular one would be the nail in the coffin as it where.

Otherwise I agree with you digi.

[MadMike]

I don't see how it's any worse than tobacco or alcohol, both of which are legal, provided that you're a certain age. That, and I have a huge problem with someone else telling me, a legal adult, what I can and can't put into my own body.

I really love (note the sarcasm) those god-awful commercials that "prove" that pot is bad, by giving examples of people getting someone else hurt or killed because they were driving, babysitting, etc., while high. Sorry, that doesn't prove that getting high is bad, it only proves that you shouldn't get high while doing any of those things, just like you shouldn't get drunk while doing any of those things.

Apparently the government didn't learn anything from the Prohibition fiasco.

[BusBus]

I support the legalization of marijuana. Yes, it is a drug. Yes, excessive use has permanent side effects. But, alcohol and cigarettes are even worse for you, and they're legal. Anything in moderation is usually okay. As long as the public is educated properly on marijuana (not via propaganda ads) and that some of the taxes earned on the sales go towards health care to cover the costs of those with marijuana-related illnesses (I live in Canada, hence the health care + tax thing), then I believe that most people who choose to use the substance will do so responsibly.

If anything, we should be checking out the Netherlands and seeing what effect the legalization of marijuana has....