marijuana- should it legal????

[Craptacular]

Do you think maybe the reason that alcohol is involved in more problems (car accidents, etc) is that it's a little easier to obtain??

[korme]

Weed is so easy to get, they misewel make it legal.

[Qwikshot]

Originally posted by Bee
I say legalize it and treat it like alcohol. I don't use it and I wouldn't if it were legal.

I concur.

[Fritz]

Originally posted by sabotai
Fritz, yeah. There have been times where I've taken a few drags off a joint, and never really felt anything.

Is this a common reaction? I know it was not for me.


One problem with regulating pot is measuring how much "high" power would come in a smoke, and how "high" you could be to operate machinery and such. How "high" would be "high in public?"

---------

Question:

Why do so many people who want to legalize pot bring up the hemp issue?

If commercial grade hemp is not capable of producing buzz grade pot then it seems that one issue may be damaging the other.

[McSweeny]

well Fritz, my dad is a regular user of pot and has been for as long as I can remember. I never ever saw or felt the effects of what he was doing. Hell, I didn't even know until i was like 14. So i think it would all come down on the parents responisbility. It's the same way with booze too. A person who drinks regularly can still be a good father while another person may be just the opposite and have mood swings and beat his family or whatever.

[Fritz]

Originally posted by McSweeny
well Fritz, my dad is a regular user of pot and has been for as long as I can remember. I never ever saw or felt the effects of what he was doing. Hell, I didn't even know until i was like 14. So i think it would all come down on the parents responisbility. It's the same way with booze too. A person who drinks regularly can still be a good father while another person may be just the opposite and have mood swings and beat his family or whatever.

Oh, for sure. I was not meaning to imply that pot users could not be good parents. But second-hand smoke is an issue.

[sabotai]

Weed is so easy to get....extrememly easy.

Skydog, I wonder why people drink when they don't want to get drunk...anyway, you do have a point. But I would say the only time is when you're at a party and you have to drive. Some people still have a glass of wine, or just one or two beers. Someone else might just take a few drags.

[Easy Mac]

Originally posted by Craptacular
Do you think maybe the reason that alcohol is involved in more problems (car accidents, etc) is that it's a little easier to obtain??

Depends on how you look at the question.

If you're talking people under age, tehn no, weed is far easier to obtain, and under age people get in far more car crashes drunk than high. It took me and my friends 5 minutes to get weed, and half the time we couldn't get alcohol.

If we're talking older people I can't say.

[sabotai]

Fritz, it's kind of the same as alcohol. With some people, 3 beers get them buzzed, with others, a full six-pack. A few drags might make someone feel high, with others, they feel nothing.

And being high seems to be like a binary thing. Either you're high or you're not. I've never been "a little high".

I think the Hemp issue is more of them pointing out how "frightened" the government is of pot. They're just saying "This won't even get you high and it's outlawed. It'd insane." Kind of like that, I guess.

[korme]

The reason you might not feel anything sabotai is because a lot of people actually don't smoke it to the best effect. When you hit it, when all the smoke is in your mouth, swallow/inhale it. You'll probably cough mass, but after 3-to-4 hits of decent weed, you'll be high off your ass.

[sabotai]

Shorty, beleive me, I know how to smoke it.

And you're right, some people don't smoke to the "best effect". But you touch on something else. The quality of the weed matters too.

[Craptacular]

Well, underage people shouldn't be getting either of them.

As for "adults", I think it's just a tad easier to get alcohol than weed.

[Craptacular]

By the way, does anyone else think dawgfan is really Woody Harrelson?

[Qwikshot]

Originally posted by Craptacular
By the way, does anyone else think dawgfan is really Woody Harrelson?

Cool we have a celebrity on the website!!!

[cthomer5000]

I honestly think everything should be legalized, and 18 should be the age for all adult rights.

If people want to, they should have the right to ruin their life any way they wish. Freedom of choice.

[Fritz]

Originally posted by cthomer5000
I honestly think everything should be legalized, and 18 should be the age for all adult rights.

A single age of majority (18) would be my number 1 domestic goal if I were a national figure.

Originally posted by cthomer5000
If people want to, they should have the right to ruin their life any way they wish. Freedom of choice.

The flaw with this thinking is that currently we expect the govt to pick people up when their lives fall apart.

[Joe Canadian]

It should be legal. It is not a gateway drug. It should be sold and taxed as tobacco and alcohol are. Why waste millions of dollars trying to arrest people when the government could be taxing it like tobacco and alcohol and making millions instead. Throwing people in jail for smoking weed is pretty much useless.

For those who have taken any introductory economics class, studies have shown that taxing is a far better way to decrease usage then making it an illegal substance.

It's a pointless argument really. The American government is dead set against legalizing or decriminalizing the substance. Canada however seems to have the more educated stance on the subject . Although they are talking about decriminalzing it here, I really hope that leads to legalzing the substance.

[ACStrider]

Originally posted by Joe Canadian
...Canada however seems to have the more educated stance on the subject .

Did I just see "Canada" and "more educated" in the same sentence?

[GrantDawg]

Originally posted by ACStrider
Did I just see "Canada" and "more educated" in the same sentence?

Yeah, they don't know the difference between bacon and ham.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally posted by sabotai
Skydog, I wonder why people drink when they don't want to get drunk...anyway, you do have a point. But I would say the only time is when you're at a party and you have to drive.

I know LOTS of people who drink alcohol fairly regularly, but who never get even a little tipsy. My in-laws have a glass of wine at dinner nearly every single night, for example. My father used to nurse a single drink of bourbon through an entire 3-hour Braves' game, and I never could tell any effect on him.

She Who Must Be Obeyed will go to the grocery store after work today and buy food and beverages for the weekend. She will probably buy a bottle of Kendall Jackson or Clos du Bois chardonnay (if either is on sale for less than $12.00, a bottle we usually make the purchase). That single bottle will last us through dinner Friday AND Saturday night, and we'll have a little left over on Sunday. (No alcohol sales in Georgia on Sundays. That one always nails the newcomers on Super Bowl Sunday. I enjoy going to the grocery store after church on Super Bowl Sunday and spotting the newcomers in the beer section. Boy are they disappointed when they get up to the checkout line!)

[vtbub]

I think there is a missing option on the list. Pot is a medicinal drug, much like claritin or a morphine. I have no trouble at all with pot being a legal perscription drug. I do not think that it should be legalized for recreational use. Unlike drinking, there are some nasty side affects such as second hand smoke. Like other drugs, it does impare your abilities.

I don't use it, I've never used it, and if it was legal, I wouldn't use it. I do believe that the laws should be changed so that someone who is found growing weed for themselves in their own backyard should not receive the same punishment as a dealer found with a ten pound brick of it. Growing your own should be looked the other way and not prosecuted.

The real problem with pot is trusting where you got it from and what it's cut with.

Just my .02

[Ben E Lou]

Originally posted by vtbub
I do believe that the laws should be changed so that someone who is found growing weed for themselves in their own backyard should not receive the same punishment as a dealer found with a ten pound brick of it. Growing your own should be looked the other way and not prosecuted.

The real problem with pot is trusting where you got it from and what it's cut with.

You're unwittingly making just about all of the arguments for legalizing it. If it were legal, there would be no drug dealers any more. You'd go to the local convenience or grocery store and buy it from behind the counter, and legalization would cause it to be a heck of a lot cheaper, since many people would just grow it themselves. Drug-related crimes would just about disappear if you legalized them all. People would never worry about trusting where you got it and what its cut with, because everything would be regulated.

[McSweeny]

you think liqour laws are bad in atlanta? up here in connecticut they stop selling booze at 8PM and don't sell it on sundays. And none of this going to a gas station to pick up a case of beer

[sabotai]

SkyDog, I know lot so fpeople who do to...I just don't see the point. I personally don't liek the taste of alcoohol. It was just a lame attempt at a joke. Please forgive me.

[vtbub]

Sky,

All good points but then you run into the gray area of when and where it could be used. It's not something you can do in a bar. Certainly not something that could be tolerated by driving or working. Even if it was legalized, it's use would be heavily regulated.

[McSweeny]

you can smoke cigarettes in a bar, so why not pot if it was legal? i assume that a standard would have to be set on how much you could smoke before driving. And lots of people have a drink or 2 at lunch while working, so why not a smoke?

[Maple Leafs]

Originally posted by Airhog
Do we allow people under the influence of alcohol do drive?

Without taking a stance on either side of the debate, it's worth pointing out that there is a signficant difference between driving drunk and driving high. Alcohol can be detected with a simple breathalyzer test. As far as I'm aware, there's no (empirical) way to determine whether someone has smoked up, short of a urine or blood test.

So unless you want to give the police the right to demand your blood, or make you pee in a cup for them, you're looking at a problem that will need to be solved before a lot of people will get onside with legalization.

[vtbub]

Because of the second hand smoke effect. My wife is allergic to pot smoke, if we are in a restraunt which doubles as a bar, it would make her quite sick to breathe that in. If I have a drink and she doen't then she's not really affected by my drinking.

Since smoking will be eventually banned from bars anyway within the next 10 to 15 years, it's a moot point.

[McSweeny]

lots of people are allergic to cigarrete or cigar smoke and it has been proven to be hazardous to your health, yet it is still allowed in bars and other public places. so if you wanted to ban smoking pot from a bar or a club you'd also have to ban tobacco smoke

[korme]

Driving high is much safer than driving drunk, says I. I don't drive, but my friends always talk about how they could never drive drunk, yet driving high isn't that different.

[Fritz]

Originally posted by McSweeny
lots of people are allergic to cigarrete or cigar smoke and it has been proven to be hazardous to your health, yet it is still allowed in bars and other public places. so if you wanted to ban smoking pot from a bar or a club you'd also have to ban tobacco smoke

that is poor logic

[QuikSand]

My libertarian sensibilities say that ideally we shouldn't have our government telling us what products we, as consenting adults, might choose to consume. If we do things that are injurious to society (e.g. driving under the influence) - then by all means, make those things illegal. But the purchase or consumption of a product simply ought not be the government's business. For that reason, I voted "yes" on the poll.

On the other hand, it's folly to think that such a new policy would have no effect. Legal but regulated (and even taxed) drugs of any kind would almost certainly mean that more people would consume - including more children, and more people who do not have the good sense to consume properly. There would almost certainly be more children who find it as a "gateway" to other more serious drugs, and there would almost certainly be more unfortunate usage-related incidents in society generally as a direct result. I realize that the true believers among the legalization crowd don't want to recognize these are valid arguments, but they are essentially undeniable.

I think Fritz, who is also guided by libertarian sensibilities, has nonetheless raised a number of the reasonable and practical objections to this issue.

There's more to the story, of course. There's a lot of bad that comes from the fact that there exists a demand for this product, legal or not. And therefore, you have substantial commitments of law enforcement resources to the problem, along with the downsides of such a lucrative illegal business (unregulated black market companies don't play by the same rules as "ordinary" ones)- so much of our street violence is the direct and obvious result of the lucrative drug trade. Convert that market to one where law-abiding, regulated businesses can lawfully conduct their transactions in the open, and you cut out much of the ruthlessness and territorialism that pervade the black market. You'll probably have more drug addicts, but fewer drug murders.




For me, a surprising parallel is that with mandatory seat belt laws. There is no evidence whatsoever that a person not wearing a seat belt poses any additional danger to society. (Though there is a subsidiary argument that such a person is more vulnerable to serious injury, and therefore a potential cost to the government or even other insured citizens for medical care) In such a case - you have a classic quandary of "proper role of government" versus "the greater good." If we pass laws to require seat belt use, more people will wear them, and fewer people will die or get seriously hurt. We know this is true. The test is: is that societal gain worth the imposition on our civil liberties, and is it worth having government intrude into your personal decision-making?

It's a fascinating public policy dilemma for those who take these issues seriously, I think.

[McSweeny]

hmmm maybe... maybe there'd have to be smoke houses or something like that, where people can go get stoned and watch the game

[Fritz]

Originally posted by McSweeny
hmmm maybe... maybe there'd have to be smoke houses or something like that, where people can go get stoned and watch the game

There is something like this already. I think they call it Holland.

[vtbub]

It should be consumed at home or at a buddy's where nobody is driving. NO PUBLIC USE.

[Qwikshot]

Originally posted by McSweeny
hmmm maybe... maybe there'd have to be smoke houses or something like that, where people can go get stoned and watch the game

They do that in Holland and Vancouver.

[albionmoonlight]

I agree with the opinions of many people on this board who try to look at the issue as one of costs. The true costs of keeping it illegal (cops, arrests, drug crime, etc.) are hard to quantify, and each side can use their own numbers to support their argument. The true costs of making it legal (worse health problems, more driving fatalities, second hand smoke damages, publicly funded rehab (either through the government directly or through a rise in health insurance rates for everyone)) are even harder to quantify, and each side can use their own numbers to support their argument.

In my more creative moods, what I would like to see is for the Federal government to step out of the way and let each state decide if the substance is legal or not and make laws regulating it. Each state would then come up with its own crazy system (like GA and Sunday booze laws. When I was in college in GA, I was one of those people about whom SkyDog spoke who was really confused in the Kroger trying to buy beer on a Sunday). After a decade or two, we would have a better sense of what the true costs on each side really are.

Ultimately, though, I think that such a system would create more chaos than it is worth (with all of the money and time that would be spent campaigning on various initiatives and the issues of transportation through states, etc. that would arise) and could lead to a Prohibition like situation if the Fed ever decides to weigh in on the issue again.

Personally, I am against legalizing because I saw too many HS friends get baked out of existance by the stuff. But there are a lot of larger, civil liberties reasons for legalizing it with which I sympathize. So I would not be too upset if the front page of tomorrow's Post had a picture of GW smoking a bit of the "nefarious demon weed" (as a tounge-in-cheek professor of mine used to call it) while singing a legalization bill into law.

[Qwikshot]

Are we winning the war on drugs?

Now we have estacy, let's face it, in future years, there may even be more addictive, dangerous designer drugs out there...

How dangerous is pot compared to other drugs...yes people have been baked out of their minds and lost the desire to work, go to school etc...but people have gotten drunk out of their minds too, and done the same...or people have smoked packs and packs of cigarettes a day and killed themselves...what makes pot so different from tobacco, or alcohol?

[Fritz]

Quikshot:

What tests would apply to drugs that could lead to leagalizing them? Would you suggest a danger scale and determine some means to measure various substances against this scale?

[Qwikshot]

Originally posted by Fritz
Quikshot:

What tests would apply to drugs that could lead to leagalizing them? Would you suggest a danger scale and determine some means to measure various substances against this scale?

What I want to know is what tests prove that alcohol and cigarettes are safe/more dangerous than pot? Anyone...

I can see that estacy is bad because it ages the brain, bores holes in it.

I can see that LSD is bad because bad acid leads to bad trips which one could die, or be stuck in a trip, or flashback, and go insane.

I can see that cocaine is bad because it speeds up the heart (ask John Entwhistle), it's highly addictive, and if you buy it from disreputable (and who is reputable in this anyway) you could be snorting drain cleaner.

I can see why heroin is bad, highly addictive and as you progress you need to take more and more, leading to deadly overdoses.

I can see why angeldust is bad, leads to massive hallucinations, and a feeling of invinsibility...fries the brain up pretty bad.

I'm just asking how did our government say okay, beer/wine/hard alcohol okay.

cigarettes/cigars okay

pot, nope?

That's what I'm curious about? I'm not really for or against, I don't think pot is anymore harmful than cigarettes or beer...but I can see where other drugs are more dangerous...

[Craptacular]

Originally posted by Shorty3281
Driving high is much safer than driving drunk, says I. I don't drive, but my friends always talk about how they could never drive drunk, yet driving high isn't that different.

I wouldn't get into their car in either case.

[Qwikshot]

Originally posted by Craptacular
I wouldn't get into their car in either case.

I agree, my friends have done it for long trips, these are the same guys who fall asleep after one toke, I shake my head...but if that's what they want to do with their lives, I'm not going to stop them, I just not going to get into that car either...

[John Galt]

On the other hand, it's folly to think that such a new policy would have no effect. Legal but regulated (and even taxed) drugs of any kind would almost certainly mean that more people would consume - including more children, and more people who do not have the good sense to consume properly. There would almost certainly be more children who find it as a "gateway" to other more serious drugs, and there would almost certainly be more unfortunate usage-related incidents in society generally as a direct result. I realize that the true believers among the legalization crowd don't want to recognize these are valid arguments, but they are essentially undeniable.

QS, "undeniable" seems a bit strong. I think, in recent years, the gateway argument favors legalization. The argument for a reverse-gateway goes like this:

As long as we have some legal and some illegal drugs, the gateway is already created. Kids or adults try alcohol, cigarettes, aspirin, ibuprofen, sudafed, etc. They then move from those drugs to other "hard drugs." The key, then, is to create a sensible line dividing more harmful and less harmful drugs. Otherwise, people try an illegal, less harmful drug (like pot), discover it isn't that bad, and then question what the government has been telling them. Pot is less harmful than alcohol in every way. By making it illegal, people who try it become more distrustful of the government propoganda and thus, rationalize the move to other drugs.

To me then, the "gateway" is a reason to legalize pot.

For the rest of you arguing about driving - a study under the Nixon administration designed to prove pot's danger actually showed that an average "dose" of pot/THC was equivalent to a single beer in terms of driver impairment. If you want to stop drug-caused reckless driving, then you should prohibit alcohol and not pot.

[Qwikshot]

I wouldn't get in a car with a drunk drive or a pot head...

[dawgfan]

Originally posted by QuikSand
On the other hand, it's folly to think that such a new policy would have no effect. Legal but regulated (and even taxed) drugs of any kind would almost certainly mean that more people would consume - including more children, and more people who do not have the good sense to consume properly. There would almost certainly be more children who find it as a "gateway" to other more serious drugs, and there would almost certainly be more unfortunate usage-related incidents in society generally as a direct result. I realize that the true believers among the legalization crowd don't want to recognize these are valid arguments, but they are essentially undeniable.

Here's an area where we disagree Quik. I don't doubt that pot use would increase noticably right after legalization, but I have a strong suspicion that long-term, usage would not be signficantly more common. The ease with which pot can be obtained currently suggests to me that most people who are inclined to want to use it do, with a much smaller percentage of people that are curious but unwilling to break the law. There is also likely a small percentage that currently use pot precisely because to do so is breaking the law.

The other area where we disagree is the gateway theory. As I've already pointed out, the evidence does not support this notion. Again I ask why is it that so very few people that have tried pot are users of harder drugs (cocaine, heroin, etc) if there is something inherent in smoking pot that causes a person to use harder drugs?

Perhaps there is something in pot that changes the brain chemistry to make people more likely to seek more intense highs, but there's not much in the way of conclusive evidence for this theory. If you can find evidence to the contrary, I'd like to see it.

Much more likely is the notion that those people inclined to actively seek altering their mental state and are willing to break the law to do so will start smoking pot. A few among them will feel the need to experience more intense highs or be willing to subject themselves to the higher risks of harder drugs. Given the ease with which pot can be obtained, they are very likely to start there before moving on to harder substances. Hence, the connection is a correllation, but not causation.

Another possibility is the proximity effect - some pot dealers will also deal harder drugs, and through repeated exposure to these dealers pot users might be convinced to try a harder drug (which of course benefits the dealer by getting them hooked on a more addictive substance with a much higher profit rate). If this is the case, legalizing pot removes this as an effect.

Originally posted by QuikSand
There's more to the story, of course. There's a lot of bad that comes from the fact that there exists a demand for this product, legal or not. And therefore, you have substantial commitments of law enforcement resources to the problem, along with the downsides of such a lucrative illegal business (unregulated black market companies don't play by the same rules as "ordinary" ones)- so much of our street violence is the direct and obvious result of the lucrative drug trade. Convert that market to one where law-abiding, regulated businesses can lawfully conduct their transactions in the open, and you cut out much of the ruthlessness and territorialism that pervade the black market. You'll probably have more drug addicts, but fewer drug murders.

We agree here. This country has spent the last 20 years or so battling the "War on Drugs", and what has changed? It makes no sense to me from a public policy perspective to continue keeping marijuana illegal.

I would also agree that Fritz has pointed out a number of practical issues that would have to be addressed by making it legal. Obviously you'd want at least the same regulations on pot as you do alcohol - strict limits on driving while stoned, no operating heavy machinery or public transport, set an appropriate age limit, make provisions that account for the effects of second-hand smoke, etc. I don't have the answers to these, but I think it's time we started figuring them out as a country rather than sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that the demand for pot isn't going to go away.

[Qwikshot]

Y'know I had a dream that once they legalized pot, I'd be a pot farmer, how great a dream is that? Long as you didn't smoke all your profits away...

[Maple Leafs]

Originally posted by Qwikshot
I agree, my friends have done it for long trips, these are the same guys who fall asleep after one toke, I shake my head...but if that's what they want to do with their lives, I'm not going to stop them, I just not going to get into that car either...

I'm sure that's very comforting to the people (and their families) who have to share the roads with your idiotic friends.

[dawgfan]

Originally posted by Craptacular
By the way, does anyone else think dawgfan is really Woody Harrelson?

And your point is...?

To address your previous post, I agree that underage kids shouldn't be using either. The best way to do this though is through education. And the only way for education to be effective is if the information being provided is accurate. For years this government has attempted to paint grossly exaggerated portraits of the effect of many drugs. When people try them and find out much of what the government has claimed is BS, they lose any faith in the messages the government is trying to send.

So, acknowledge the reasons why people like to use pot (and alcohol, and tobacco, and cocaine, etc). Then discuss the drawbacks to all these drugs without resorting to exaggeration or distortions of the truth.

Drug education can work - I for one have never had any interest in using cocaine or heroin because I knew what the drawbacks were and decided I didn't think either was worth it. Same thing with cigarettes - I can't understand why anyone would start smoking.

[dawgfan]

Originally posted by Fritz
you will be able to find a post almost exactly like this anytime this subject comes up anywhere.

And your point is...?

[Qwikshot]

Originally posted by Maple Leafs
I'm sure that's very comforting to the people (and their families) who have to share the roads with your idiotic friends.

No different than the drunks on the road...you try talking a 6 foot 7 inch 350 pound man out of his car...

and for the matter, if you've been on the roads, there are sober people who are scarier drivers...cell phone junkies, 16 year old teens, old people...you share the road with lots of idiots...and I'd like you not to judge my friends either, they may not be perfect, but neither are you...(after all you /are/ a Leafs fan, bleach).