The responses of those who are against legalization, even after I took the time to address the issue, is a good reflection of the emptiness of their argument.
America tried to ban alchohol but it proved impossible.
Alchohol can be a dangerous drug but we must accept that we cant ban it.
How is marijuana any different? Marijuana use has increased a huge amount since prohibition was enacted. I'm sure you know this, so I'm interested in hearing what you think the difference is.
We know about the long term effects of alchohol abuse and we know and can define what alchohol abuse is.
Cannabis can be a dangerous drug and it is already 'banned'.
We know that both drugs are dangerous so what good would it do us to have two dangerous legal drugs.
There is agreat deal of evidence to show that cannabis can exacerbate mental illness but there is not a great deal of evidence of the total effect of long term use and the health problems that it may bring.
It took quite a few years for the full evidence of how destructive tobacco was to health..those people today who say how dangerous tobacco is probably had fathers or grandfathers that thought smoking 30 a day was fine!
I never said that smoking a low thc spliff would get you just as wasted as smoking a high thc spliff..just the opposite.
I said that if we have to legalise cannabis then a compromise would be to make a lower thc bud legal but ban the high thc bud or hash because this is far more dangerous.
This has caused much consternation in one poster who seems to think a nice
bit of lower thc hash the same that was about say in the 60s or 70s(enough to get you mellow and a little high) is far more dangerous than white widow or chronic( enough to get you wasted if you either dont know what you are doing or are a heavyweight toker).
Well, I agree that weed is stronger these days. His point is that if someone's goal is to get high, then they will get high. If they need to smoke 5 joints to get the same effect, that's what they will do-this was the beer/whiskey comparison earlier. I think I understand your point; if marijuana is too strong, then will be dangerously high after smoking one joint. Well, if it were legal, couldn't we label the potency? There's no requirement to smoke an entire joint. On the other hand, who cares how high someone is if they're just going to stay at home and watch tv or whatever?
Marijuana is a cash crop in our county, and it is easy for anyone to obtain a permit to grow and smoke 'medical marijuana.' At the same time, we have huge pot farms grown on National Forest and BLM land, with armed guards which makes hiking and back packing in some areas dangerous.
Medical marijuana is only legal in certain states. I haven't heard of these National Forest pot farms, but this sounds a little farfetched...do you have a source? Well, actually I don't think it's relevant at all, so don't bother.
My concern is people driving while stoned and exposing babies and young children to secondary marijuana smoke. For these reasons I'm not in favor of legalizing marijuana.
I think those who are irresponsible enough to do this are doing it now anyways. I concede that these are worth considering, but even if we take these at face value, is this worse than the negative effects of prohibition? Putting non-violent marijuana smokers in jail exposes people to the worst people in our society, creating criminals. It also takes parents away from their children, leaving single parents and ophans behind. Drug cartels make enormous profits from the illegal status of marijuana. They have no problems resorting to the murder of innocent people to make their money. We need to take this power away from them. As our nation has staggering national debt, struggling schools, inadequate healthcare, etc. we have an opportunity to improve a lot of these problems in both the long and short run by saving money on marijuana prohibition.
Some say it would benefit the government to tax pot, but my feeling is the big pot farms would still avoid taxes.
If you think that legal farms would avoid taxes, how do you suppose they would do this? If you are talking about illegal operations, sure, some people will still grow their own, like with moonshine. But, like with moonshine, most people will choose the legal product because they do not have to worry about getting in trouble for using it.
I'm talking about exacerbating existing mental illness. I used to work for a program that served mentally ill offenders with substance abuse problems.
It's not a gateway drug, in that smoking marijuana doesn't lead to abuse of other drugs, however for meth addicts, relapse often begins with marijuana use, which alters judgment and makes returning to the drug of choice more likely.
Most likely, what happens is that they go back to their old meth dealer, who sells pot as well, and ask him for some weed. Eventually, the dealer says "you sure you don't want some meth?" and convince their old customer to bring back his business as an addict. If weed were available at the gas station, this contact wouldn't occur.
The alcohol comparison is mostly a side argument. It shows that those against legalization are hypocrites, but we can argue for marijuana legalization on its own. For the sake of argument, let's say weed is as dangerous as you say it is. Do you really think that the costs of usage outweigh the costs of prohibition which I discussed before? To windovervocals, sazerac, Chuz Life, anyone else against legalization, I wrote a long post on page 11. It would be interesting if you responded to each of my points. I know it's long, but I think the issue needs to be considered in its entirety, rather than the "It's dangerous! *plug ears* LALALALALA" approach. I don't mean that with disrespect, except to Chuz Life for the "get stupid" comment, I just mean that I think you guys need to make an argument other than "it's dangerous." What are your thoughts on the negative consequences of prohibition?
I won't be able to get back until later tonight, so it should be fun to check back up on the mayhem...