Batten down the hatches.......

[ladyt28]

So you think pot is good for America?
A move in the right direction?
Something we can be proud of?

I have seen people suffer from cancer and it's treatments who have managed to survive because of what marijuana did for them in regards to pain and appetite. If used as a medicine, then yes, I believe it is good and a move in the right direction. Could it be abused? You betcha - the same as every other medication that is out there. Does that mean we ban them all because of how a few abuse them? I don't think so.

 

[ladyt28]

Rhamiel, maybe you have never used pot, but I have. In my younger years. Pot works on the mind in a different way than alcohol does. Pot makes you so "mellow" that you get lazy. You don't want to work, you don't even think about working. You are so chilled that work doesn't even enter your mind. You become completely content to just sit and watch Sesame Street all day, completely enthralled with the depth of it, wondering how anyone could ever not miss the deep messages Sesame Street has to offer.

Alcohol, as bad as it can be, doesn't do that to you.
It's a different drug, completely different.

Auntie, I have used it and was what would be called a "heavy user" at one point in my life and you know what? I never missed a class, never failed a class, never missed a day of work and got all of my housework done as well. I know of several people who still smoke it and they too manage to get to work, pay their taxes, and get everything else done that they need to do. I am not questioning your experience but you really can't just generalize it to everyone else.

And as far as alcohol, are you serious? You don't think people have sacrificed all due to alcohol abuse? Have you ever seen Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?

ANYTHING can be abused, even asprin. ANYTHING can become a substitute for living, even video games. Again, do we ban all of it because some manage to abuse it? No.

 

[MrJim]

I worked for a dealer and we had all sorts of customers. There were the bums that would scrounge money to buy and there were the "got it together" recreational users. One friend of ours was a loan officer at a bank and he was recreational user. Indeed because we were dealers (not "pushers") we offered different products and some would move onto stronger stuff, but many simply wanted the weed and weren't interested in anything else.

And to this day I would rather be in room filled with weed smokers than drinkers...but I'm not persuaded that it should be legalized. The libertarian faction presents a good argument to legalize everything but I'm not convinced it is for the best, though we used to talk about it back in the day, we figured if it was suddenly legalized we'd be in good positions to go to work in the new industry

 

[-~Truth_N_Trust~-]

lol, MrJim - I never would've guessed!

I've seen both sides, ie. people who use it 'well' and people who don't. Part of the argument with illegal drugs is the illegality itself is one of the most dangerous parts (the lifestyle - ie. dealing with criminal elements, the uncontrolled/unregulated content), even looking at the difference between morphine (prescribed) and heroin (illegal)?

Still, personally, I'm not convinced that they should be legalized at all, or decriminalized.

 

[Auntie]

Heard this on the news today:

Hundreds Arrested in Cross-Country Campaign Against Drug Cartel

"Federal authorities arrested more than 750 people across the country in what they describe as "the largest and hardest hitting" operation to ever target the "the very violent and dangerously powerful" drug cartel known as Sinaloa.

The cartel is being blamed for much of the violence erupting along the U.S.-Mexican border, according to officials familiar with the operation.

U.S. officials said Wednesday that the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and divisions of the Department of Homeland Security have spent two years investigating and arresting people associated with the Sinaloa cartel — which they say has been smuggling drugs, laundering millions of dollars obtained illegally and fueling a wave of violence along the Southern border.

----

Through "Operation Xcellerator," as it was dubbed, authorities say they seized more than $59 million in cash, 149 vehicles, three aircraft and three ships used by the cartel.

In terms of drugs, authorities confiscated more than 16,000 pounds of marijuana, 12,000 kilos of cocaine, about 1.3 million Ecstasy pills and significant quantities of other narcotics.

----

But the cartel's influence stretches even farther. Other organizations with ties to those cases have been busted by authorities in parts of Minnesota, New York, Arizona, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas.

According to the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center, 230 cities across the country are faced with some form of drug cartel or Mexican gang presence.

Through "Operation Xcellerator," U.S. law enforcement officials worked with counterparts in Mexico and Canada, where the Sinaloa Cartel is believed to have "distribution cells," which sell or transport the cartel's drugs.

The DEA says efforts continue to "stop the ruthless violence the traffickers inflict on innocent citizens in the U.S., Mexico and Canada."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,500305,00.html

 

[Matthewj1985]

The fact of the matter here is that the only way to stop this is to legalize marijuana. There are no fact based reasons not to and only about 1000 reasons that it is a good idea.

To start off with lets look at the dangers of pot. Right now the data seem to indicate that the only risk to adult users of any quantity is a doubling of the risk of testicular cancer. That might sound scary till you realize that it doubled from like 4% to 8%. Call me brave but I will take those odds for all the benefits I get in return. We have also observed that like pretty much every other drug out there, marijuana is not good for children's developing bodies. The best way to keep it out of the hands of kids would be to lock it up the same way we do alcohol. Dealers don't check IDs because they don't have to, a clerk selling alcohol to a minor can be in some deep dodo with the state's alcohol control board. Of course the whole "it must be illegal because it is dangerous" argument is a non-starter since we know alcohol and ciggerettes are both vastly more dangerous for us than marijuana.

Predictions of hell on earth are also baseless and unfounded. The state of California has had such a liberal medical system for so long that they have defacto legalization. Just like in every other state that passes med, teen use has gone down. 2 other great examples are Amsterdam and Vancouver (BC as a whole is a good one too). In both cities they saw a drop in marijuana use and hard drug use. The numbers are simply not on your side.

Next we have the "everyone will be driving stoned" arguement. This is actually very interesting. Every single study not done by the US government (one of the only groups getting any benifit from pot being illegal) I have seen on pot and driving concludes that the people who were stoned scored on par with or better than the sober drivers. I know this is a crazy idea but how about instead of arresting people for arbitrary amounts of chemicals in their blood, we only arrest people who are actually driving while impaired. I have no problems arresting people who are stoned and can't control their vehicel but again the numbers indicate that these people are in the extreme minority.

Money is going to be the reason you will see nationalized legal marijuana within the next 5 years. California has already introduced a bill to legalize it and it has a ton of support, mostly because it is hard to play the "chicken little" card when the results of defacto legalization are right outside the door. After California does it, it will only be a matter of time before they start producing enough to illegally export to the rest of the country where demand far, far, far, outstrips supply. Prettly shortly after that mass produced California weed will be cheaper than even locally grown indoor stuff because the market will be so flooded. After that any state with any kind of brains left will legalize it and tax it because it will be so abundent that trying to stop it will be a joke. We spend hundreds of billions every year across this nation and liberal estimates are that we get 3% of all people involved in the trade (growers, trimmers, sellers, users...).

Like I said the anti-legalization side has very little science behind it and a lot of doomsday scenerios that have no basis in actual events.

 

[Auntie]

We have also observed that like pretty much every other drug out there, marijuana is not good for children's developing bodies. The best way to keep it out of the hands of kids would be to lock it up the same way we do alcohol.

And we all know that pot-heads would never ever do pot around the kiddies.
And we all know that pot-heads would never ever give the kiddies a little toke of the joint.

 

[Matthewj1985]

And we all know that pot-heads would never ever do pot around the kiddies.
And we all know that pot-heads would never ever give the kiddies a little toke of the joint.

Because that never, ever, ever happens now with alcohol or tobacco. If you gave kids a death sentence for trying alcohol or drugs there would still be kids that did it every single day. There is no such thing as a 100% full proof system and so I will trust the clerk who could lose his job and go to jail to ID kids more that I do the dealer who has zero incentive to ID people.