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Karon wrote:

Alcohol leads to wife-beating, shootings, etc.

Actually, no it doesnt.



...as far as Weed being legalised.

I see no reason for the prohibition on Weed to NOT be lifted the same as it was with Alchohol.

Anyone who knows anything about the history of Mary-Jane can plainly see that "Weed=Bad" is a crazy notion. Furthermore, if you can say "Weed=Bad" with a beer in your hand, you're basically ignorant of the facts.

WarOne wrote:

Frazzled wrote:
Define yourself. Which illegal drugs? All of the them, some of them? which?

Only the ones Frazzled likes. Lots and lot of them. All of it Overnight Expressed straight to Frazzled's door!

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Guitardian wrote:I would say all of them. If someone O.D.s they knew what they were getting into before they shoved the needle in. But then again I believe in natural selection culling the gene pool for the sake of progress too.

Sniffing glue?
LSD?
Crystalmeth (made by Americans for Americans HURR!)?
Weed?
Crack?
black tar heroin?
licking frogs?

But yea I actually agree with Guitardian on most. Make sure current laws incorporate the effects of drugs (driving under influence, public intoxication) then increase the penalties 250%. Put a 200% on foreign iports until we develop our domestic market. Then make it legal. Then tax it. Win Win!

Guitardian wrote:I would say all of them. If someone O.D.s they knew what they were getting into before they shoved the needle in. But then again I believe in natural selection culling the gene pool for the sake of progress too.

Total lack of historical perspective. Cocaine was legal once, and it wasn't pretty. Meth and heroin are far worse. The illegality of drugs don't make them more desirable, just more difficult to attain. These substances are often times incredibly destructive to the societies they are prevalent in and to legalize them is inviting more problems than you seem to want to think. Issues of self reliance and self control go right out the window when you're discussing substances that drastically change the chemical nature of the human brain.

Also for reference:

THATS NOT HOW NATURAL SELECTION WORKS GOD fething DAMNIT.

Make sure current laws incorporate the effects of drugs (driving under influence, public intoxication) then increase the penalties 250%. Put a 200% on foreign iports until we develop our domestic market. Then make it legal. Then tax it. Win Win!

Yes, because creating an environment of addictive substances that are entirely government controlled and heavily taxed is such a good idea. You're an awful macro economist fraz, the legalization of hard drugs would destroy the low income sections of american society and would drag the middle down quickly.

Do what with drugs.... errr, dunno. [pufffff] errr, may be... what was the question?

ShumaGorath wrote:

Yes, because creating an environment of addictive substances that are entirely government controlled and heavily taxed is such a good idea. You're an awful macro economist fraz, the legalization of hard drugs would destroy the low income sections of american society and would drag the middle down quickly.

I do believe you reflexively attack posters at this point.

here, respond to this one.
Frazzled alternate universe B

Heck no. Drugs are evil. Put 'em all in prison and throw away the key. Don't forget to shoot their dogs when you raid their houses.

or Frazzled alternate universe C:

Heck no, things should stay the same. I don't see what the problem is, they are bad for you.

Not getting the macro economic theory argument, but lets go there. The drug war creates an artificial shortage on a price inelastic good, without the desire to actually extinguish the behavior. As such the price of the good rises, generating supranormal profits for the manufacturers. A classical economist would also note the market does not have full knowledge by all parties, and transportation difficulties.

I vote D.

Round up all drug smugglers/dealers (yes even pot dealers/growers), line them all up side by side, make them dig a trench 6 feet deep by 3 feet wide, and then mow them down with M16's and AK-47's.

Problem solved, mostly.

ShumaGorath wrote:
Yes, because creating an environment of addictive substances that are entirely government controlled and heavily taxed is such a good idea. You're an awful macro economist fraz, the legalization of hard drugs would destroy the low income sections of american society and would drag the middle down quickly.

Regardless, while there is a lot of support for the legalization of mary jane, there isn't much for the legalization of the white rider.

Fateweaver wrote:I vote D.

Round up all drug smugglers/dealers (yes even pot dealers/growers), line them all up side by side, make them dig a trench 6 feet deep by 3 feet wide, and then mow them down with M16's and AK-47's.

Problem solved, mostly.

So speaks the voice of reason One way of sorting it all out

Frazzled wrote:
Not getting the macro economic theory argument, but lets go there. The drug war creates an artificial shortage on a price inelastic good, without the desire to actually extinguish the behavior. As such the price of the good rises, generating supranormal profits for the manufacturers. A classical economist would also note the market does not have full knowledge by all parties, and transportation difficulties.

See, if this thinking were applied to illegal immigration, the problem would be solved today.

Anyway, its not a price inelastic good in most cases. The primary volume of illegal substances are not universally addictive. I know many a young royal who would refuse the rider if the price exceeded his expectation.

Interstingly, Fazz has also made the case for reducing immigration controls.

dogma wrote:Anyway, its not a price inelastic good in most cases. The primary volume of illegal substances are not universally addictive. I know many a young royal who would refuse the rider if the price exceeded his expectation..

Wouldn't this be an argument against the claims of its inherent destructiveness as well?

Yes.

Anyone see the interview w/ Gary Johnson and Stephen Colbert last night?

He really brought up everything I said, how alcohol was worse, how weed really isn't bad, how it reduces use of it in countries where it is legal(or places) and how it relates directly to the prohibition era of the US.

Really good interview, though colbert pretty much just feths with him the whole time (its his job, afterall)

One thing tht gets overlooked in nearly every debate about this: marijuana is NOT harmless. It makes you:
1) Stupid. If you doubt this, hang out with some stoners for a while and try talking about something more advanced than Sesame Street.
2) Emotionally unstable. You experience severe mood swings when not under its influence. You become more agressive when not smoking, etc.
I'm speaking from experience. I smoked a lot of weed when I was in high school and towards the end of university. Suffice to say I avoid it like the plague these days. It is NOT a harmless substance by any means. The only 'perk' it has is not being addictive.

Almost any substance will have harmful effects if overused. I know many people who smoke weed and not one of them could be considered stupid or emotionally unstable.

There is of course the exception of my cousin, who used to smoke weed heavily, and is now crazy. No causal link proven.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/evidence99/marijuana/Health_1.html

"It has been suggested that marijuana is at the root of many mental disorders, including acute toxic psychosis, panic attacks (one of the very conditions it is being used experimentally to treat), flashbacks, delusions, depersonalization, hallucinations, paranoia, depression, and uncontrollable aggressiveness. Marijuana has long been known to trigger attacks of mental illness, such as bipolar (manic-depressive) psychosis and schizophrenia. This connection with mental illness should make health care providers for terminally ill patients and the patients themselves, who may already be suffering from some form of clinical depression, weigh very carefully the pros and cons of adopting a therapeutic course of marijuana.

In the short term, marijuana use impairs perception, judgment, thinking, memory, and learning; memory defects may persist six weeks after last use. Mental disorders connected with marijuana use merit their own category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV, published by the American Psychiatric Association. These include Cannabis Intoxication (consisting of impaired motor coordination, anxiety, impaired judgment, sensation of slowed time, social withdrawal, and often includes perceptual disturbances; Cannabis Intoxication Delirium (memory deficit, disorientation); Cannabis Induced Psychotic Disorder, Delusions; Cannabis Induced Psychotic Disorder, Hallucinations; and Cannabis Induced Anxiety Disorder."

What is the root of a mental disorder, refer to textbooks 1-5, for a varied set of opinions on the matter.

http://behavioural-psychology.suite101.com/article.cfm/marijuana_triggers_mental_illness

The researchers were clear that it's not that marijuana causes psychosis. Rather, marijuana triggers mental illness if the individual already has a predisposition to that illness. So if your family has a history of schizophrenia or other psychotic illnesses, smoking pot now could predispose you to struggle with mental illness later in life.

In other words, just like many concepts derived in the field of psychology, there is little more than complete bs to stand on.

Driving cars causes mental disorders, but only does so if mental disorders were already likely to occur... but the car caused it, obviously. Of that there can be no question.

Orky-Kowboy wrote:One thing tht gets overlooked in nearly every debate about this: marijuana is NOT harmless. It makes you:
1) Stupid. If you doubt this, hang out with some stoners for a while and try talking about something more advanced than Sesame Street.
2) Emotionally unstable. You experience severe mood swings when not under its influence. You become more agressive when not smoking, etc.
I'm speaking from experience. I smoked a lot of weed when I was in high school and towards the end of university. Suffice to say I avoid it like the plague these days. It is NOT a harmless substance by any means. The only 'perk' it has is not being addictive.

I haven't seen the aggression, but there is growing evidence that it links to several mental disorders,. However, it should also be noted that alcohol has a very strong impact on the development of the brain, and that your brain will continue developing into your mid-20s. Should it also be banned?

While there are drugs that are sufficiently harmful to society that they should be banned, there is also a point where the harm of a drug is insufficient to justify banning it. Wherever that line is, I have a hard time placing marijuana on one side and alcohol on the other.

sebster wrote:I haven't seen the aggression, but there is growing evidence that it links to several mental disorders.

Link it please, no offense or anything, but 99% of what I have seen is next to meaningless.

http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/factsmyths/

The more links about it, the less can be misunderstood, so add them up.

Orky-Kowboy wrote:One thing tht gets overlooked in nearly every debate about this: marijuana is NOT harmless. It makes you:
1) Stupid. If you doubt this, hang out with some stoners for a while and try talking about something more advanced than Sesame Street.
2) Emotionally unstable. You experience severe mood swings when not under its influence. You become more agressive when not smoking, etc.
I'm speaking from experience. I smoked a lot of weed when I was in high school and towards the end of university. Suffice to say I avoid it like the plague these days. It is NOT a harmless substance by any means. The only 'perk' it has is not being addictive.

You know what you just said can be applied to alcohol too.

Apart from the non addictive part.

Hell, if anything we should BAN Alcohol and legalize Pot!

Orky-Kowboy wrote:One thing tht gets overlooked in nearly every debate about this: marijuana is NOT harmless. It makes you:
1) Stupid. If you doubt this, hang out with some stoners for a while and try talking about something more advanced than Sesame Street.
2) Emotionally unstable. You experience severe mood swings when not under its influence. You become more agressive when not smoking, etc.
I'm speaking from experience. I smoked a lot of weed when I was in high school and towards the end of university. Suffice to say I avoid it like the plague these days. It is NOT a harmless substance by any means. The only 'perk' it has is not being addictive.

Agreed.

Marjuana is also dangerous if you have any sort of heart condition or are on any sort of heart medication, can be grown with poisonous pesticides and not properly treated, and can cause drug induced psychosis and paranoid schizophrenia in people with a predisposition.
Hash can be cut with all sorts of things, too.

Da Boss wrote:Marjuana is also dangerous if you have any sort of heart condition or are on any sort of heart medication, can be grown with poisonous pesticides and not properly treated, and can cause drug induced psychosis and paranoid schizophrenia in people with a predisposition.
Hash can be cut with all sorts of things, too.

On the plus side, it makes listening to Can bearable.

I think if someone's properly informed and aware of the potential risks for themselves, that's fine, puff away in the privacy of your own home. It's the misinformation that gets spread (that it's harmless) that really bugs me.

Da Boss wrote:I think if someone's properly informed and aware of the potential risks for themselves, that's fine, puff away in the privacy of your own home. It's the misinformation that gets spread (that it's harmless) that really bugs me.

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Da Boss wrote:I think if someone's properly informed and aware of the potential risks for themselves, that's fine, puff away in the privacy of your own home. It's the misinformation that gets spread (that it's harmless) that really bugs me.

Exactly.

Albatross wrote:

Da Boss wrote:Marjuana is also dangerous if you have any sort of heart condition or are on any sort of heart medication, can be grown with poisonous pesticides and not properly treated, and can cause drug induced psychosis and paranoid schizophrenia in people with a predisposition.
Hash can be cut with all sorts of things, too.

On the plus side, it makes listening to Can bearable.

yes yes it can can. I have noticed back in my stoner days I liked an awful lot of music that nobody around me really 'got'... noise, buzz, sloppy crazy crackly recordings and walls of sound. Weed is good for that. Also, when actually playing the guitar and recording a track, I would find myself losing myself in the headphones and completely rocking as I go along, thinking it was genius. I would sober up and listen back and just think 'what the heck is that garbled nonsense?' but at the time it was the sublime. My latter years (the 'beer years') are a lot more organized, oddly enough, because I'm not communing with buddha or whatever while I'm playing I'm just rokkin some attitude... but I don't regret the experimental years with weed. It did let me explore a lot and learn, and never did me any harm. Nowadays I just think of drugs as learning experiences, and once you have learned each lesson, you move on, and leave it in the past, and always come back to beer and cigarettes. I don't regret any drug I have ever taken. I learned from all of them, and left them behind. It is possible for a legalized culture to encourage that kind of mode of thinking and we may well end up with less addicts.

Fateweaver wrote:Alcohol may have worst long term effects (and that's debatable since even doctors say that a glass of wine (ONE glass, not an entire bottle) is good for you but I still challenge anyone to tell me it's immediate effects are worst than weed.

I can go a drink a single pint of Guiness, get into my car and drive like a always do. If I was to smoke an entire joint I'd be fethed up, driving fethed up, talking fethed up and acting fethed up and would get into an accident.

Like I said, legalized marijuana should cost an arm and a leg. Take the average street value of it, double it and then tax it on top of that.

Then people will just supply it illegally untaxed.

umm... NO

The only reason pot is expensive is because of risk. It grows just like tobacco. Think a pack of joints versus a pack of cigs x2 cost because of tax, and that's still an awful lot cheaper for potheads than 3 joints for $20. Win-Win.

Orky-Kowboy wrote:...marijuana is NOT harmless. It makes you:
1) Stupid.
2) Emotionally unstable.
I'm speaking from experience...The only 'perk' it has is not being addictive.

Okay then. lets substitute MJ for "Porn"...Oh, wait...

Orky-Kowboy wrote:http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/evidence99/marijuana/Health_1.html..."It has been suggested that marijuana ...

This same piece you cite goes on regarding "suggested" detriments. But please hop on past
studies on the impact on alzheimer's and the impact of Acetylcholinesterase, which is also known to accelerate the loss of function in alzheimer's patients. And there are pretty recent studies suggesting the cancer risk are much less:

Despite the heavy use, "in no category was there any increased risk, nor was there any suggestion that smoking more led to a higher odds ratio," he continued. "There was no dose-response—not even a suggestion of a dose response—and in all types of cancer except one, oral cancer, the odds ratios were less than one."

The confidence intervals around the odds ratios were wide however, and the odds ratios did not show a dose response.

In contrast, tobacco smoking was associated with increased risk for all cancers, and there was a "powerful" dose-response relationship. People who smoked more than two packs of cigarettes per day had a 21-fold risk for cancer, as opposed to a less than onefold risk for marijuana, Dr. Tashkin said.

But who am I to argue with Harvard *Law* about *medicine*? What could a Doctor's research possibly know?
Or possibly the question of a return on investment:
Research suggesting CA alone could return $1.2 BILLION on legalization and taxation - with a potential of 18 billion in related income. Let's assume that the $200 million in enforcement costs get rolled back into public rehab programs - the return on investment can still be measured in hundreds of millions.

Legalize it, tax it 50% more than tobacco (data here) from $1.56/pack to say $2.50 and it presents a return to the community.

But of course alcohol is so much safer! We've become accustomed to alcohol fueled rages. A pot fueled rage results in an empty fridge and yet another trip to the store for Funyuns and Sunny D.

If pot has to be heavily taxed to be supplied legally, it will create an illegal market for untaxed pot, just like there are for moonshine and cigarettes.

Kilkrazy wrote:
If pot has to be heavily taxed to be supplied legally, it will create an illegal market for untaxed pot, just like there are for moonshine and cigarettes.

Yes, however will we bust up the great moonshine cartels?