What's your position on marijuana?
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What's your position on marijuana?
Just curios and bored. marijuana, should be legal or illegal?
Personly, after reading the effects, i think it should only be illegal if alcohol and tobbaco is illegal, which will never happen in our life time. It's much safter in terms of health risks...
Personly, after reading the effects, i think it should only be illegal if alcohol and tobbaco is illegal, which will never happen in our life time. It's much safter in terms of health risks...
- 1v0ry_k1ng
- Posts: 4656
- Joined: 10 Mar 2006, 10:24
That just isn't true. I don't care either way on this subject, but the effects of tobacco and alcohol far outweigh those of marijuana. The difference is tobacco and alcohol have a strong cultural and social heritage that makes them acceptable and even encouraged. Marijuana lacks this, thus it's minimal effects (relative to aforementioned) are seen as destructive and deviant.1v0ry_k1ng wrote:a forth option "it has negative effects and is more harmful than alchohol and tabacco" is in order
Edit:
Here is a UK government report documenting this (holy shit that is long):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/p ... report.pdf
And wikipedia summarizing the report in one line
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana# ... f_cannabis
Last edited by Relative on 25 Feb 2007, 15:26, edited 3 times in total.
Marijuana should be legal to grow and smoke if you want too. A lot of people
will say it's a gateway drug too stronger drugs. You can say the same
thing about beer .. that's a gateway to harder stuff. It's always going to be
put down. The main reason, anyone will be able to grow it. It's a weed ...
If you can grow tomatoes ... you can grow Marijuana too.
Marijuana effects the mind, if the drug companies took the time to under
stand the effects on the brain. They could find new ways to cure people.
They could find lots of new ways the brain could receive new drug
treatments.
I don't use it ... but people that do should be able too .... I prefer
beer with a shot of JD ...
will say it's a gateway drug too stronger drugs. You can say the same
thing about beer .. that's a gateway to harder stuff. It's always going to be
put down. The main reason, anyone will be able to grow it. It's a weed ...
If you can grow tomatoes ... you can grow Marijuana too.
Marijuana effects the mind, if the drug companies took the time to under
stand the effects on the brain. They could find new ways to cure people.
They could find lots of new ways the brain could receive new drug
treatments.
I don't use it ... but people that do should be able too .... I prefer
beer with a shot of JD ...
The gateway argument is, imo, largely due to the fact that in procuring cannabis people will be exposed, not only to people with a vested interest in selling the person more drugs, but also to a social environment in which the ramifications of substance abuse are diminished by the reuglarity and familiarity of their use.
Personally i think the majority of drugs should be legal, if for no other reason than to move the trade and subsequent profit away from the organised criminals, and into a taxable and transparent market. In the UK the money could go directly into the NHS, and perhaps even include some kind of waiver/disclaimer which would exclude a person from certain free medical treatments if they decided to partake in narcotics.
Cannabis is a lot less healthy than tobacco afaik, it is more carcinogenic and encourages latent psychological disorders to become more prominent.
Another, fairly random point, is that (again afaik) there have been no deaths recorded in the UK caused by cannabis, compared to X amount per year due to alcohol
Personally i think the majority of drugs should be legal, if for no other reason than to move the trade and subsequent profit away from the organised criminals, and into a taxable and transparent market. In the UK the money could go directly into the NHS, and perhaps even include some kind of waiver/disclaimer which would exclude a person from certain free medical treatments if they decided to partake in narcotics.
Cannabis is a lot less healthy than tobacco afaik, it is more carcinogenic and encourages latent psychological disorders to become more prominent.
Another, fairly random point, is that (again afaik) there have been no deaths recorded in the UK caused by cannabis, compared to X amount per year due to alcohol
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- MC: Legacy & Spring 1944 Developer
- Posts: 1948
- Joined: 21 Sep 2004, 08:25
Personally, I don't like marijuana. I think people who smoke it are losers.
Because of this I think it should be legalized and placed into the same catagory, and subject to the same laws, as alcohol AND cigarettes. For instance, no smoking it inside public places. No smoking it on the street. Essentially it should be limited to personal consumption at homes and smoking rooms at bars and taverns. It should also be illegal to toke and drive. Growing it should require the same criteria as home breweries. Selling it should require a permit, just like alcohol.
I think legalizing it would solve a lot of the problems associated with it as an illegal narcotic. It's legalization would remove a lot of the "criminality" associated with it. It would no longer be the domain of potheads and stupid kids wanting to "fit in" and cause trouble (but on the same token, without weed to fall on as a 'social bad-ass' thing to do, kids might replace it with stuff like coke and heroin).
The one real danger with legalizing it is the fact that other, harder drugs will step up to take it's place. Rather than groups of kids going to the back of their school at lunch to smoke up, they'll be dropping ecstacy or injecting heroin.
As for health issues, cannabis may or may not be more dangerous than cigarettes -- but people don't smoke 25-50 joints a day. Well, some do. Usually they die quickly. Which is a good thing.
Because of this I think it should be legalized and placed into the same catagory, and subject to the same laws, as alcohol AND cigarettes. For instance, no smoking it inside public places. No smoking it on the street. Essentially it should be limited to personal consumption at homes and smoking rooms at bars and taverns. It should also be illegal to toke and drive. Growing it should require the same criteria as home breweries. Selling it should require a permit, just like alcohol.
I think legalizing it would solve a lot of the problems associated with it as an illegal narcotic. It's legalization would remove a lot of the "criminality" associated with it. It would no longer be the domain of potheads and stupid kids wanting to "fit in" and cause trouble (but on the same token, without weed to fall on as a 'social bad-ass' thing to do, kids might replace it with stuff like coke and heroin).
The one real danger with legalizing it is the fact that other, harder drugs will step up to take it's place. Rather than groups of kids going to the back of their school at lunch to smoke up, they'll be dropping ecstacy or injecting heroin.
As for health issues, cannabis may or may not be more dangerous than cigarettes -- but people don't smoke 25-50 joints a day. Well, some do. Usually they die quickly. Which is a good thing.
- 1v0ry_k1ng
- Posts: 4656
- Joined: 10 Mar 2006, 10:24
funny that in countries where kids are given wine with dinner at a young age that there is next to no binge drinking and kids getting drunk to be cool.
Cannabis mentally damages certain people, and does progressive damage over time (reducing reaction times). thats probably why its illegal. at the end of the day people smoking it are people who want to escape from reality, ie, their lives, and if they didnt do it with weed then they would just do it with somthing else.
teenagers on the other hand do it because its risky and kewl. soltution is just to make cannabis another household vice which is looked down on in excess just like the others are.
Cannabis mentally damages certain people, and does progressive damage over time (reducing reaction times). thats probably why its illegal. at the end of the day people smoking it are people who want to escape from reality, ie, their lives, and if they didnt do it with weed then they would just do it with somthing else.
teenagers on the other hand do it because its risky and kewl. soltution is just to make cannabis another household vice which is looked down on in excess just like the others are.
- FoeOfTheBee
- Posts: 557
- Joined: 12 May 2005, 18:26
Marijuana is like gambling - relatively harmless, stupid entertainment for the majority, serious addiction for a minority.
And like gambling it should be illegal. Trivial, stupid entertainment doesn't justify societal sanction for things that are so harmful to a significant minority of their users.
I a really libertarian country I wouldn't mind legalizing all kinds of drugs, but in modern social welfare states, you end up paying for the consequences of other people's addictions - this justifies making them illegal.
And like gambling it should be illegal. Trivial, stupid entertainment doesn't justify societal sanction for things that are so harmful to a significant minority of their users.
I a really libertarian country I wouldn't mind legalizing all kinds of drugs, but in modern social welfare states, you end up paying for the consequences of other people's addictions - this justifies making them illegal.
Last edited by FoeOfTheBee on 25 Feb 2007, 21:30, edited 1 time in total.
now i want to get high
edit:
edit:
this position makes no sense to me. for example, considering that some really overweight people are addicted to sugary foods, does that mean we should make sugary foods illegal because the nice stuff for the masses does not justify the addiction of the few?FoeOfTheBee wrote:Marijuana is like gambling - relatively harmless, stupid entertainment for the majority, serious addiction for a minority.
And like gambling it should be illegal. Trivial, stupid entertainment doesn't justify societal sanction for things that are so harmful to a significant minority of their users.
I a really libertarian country I wouldn't mind legalizing all kinds of drugs, but in modern social welfare states, you end up paying for the consequences of other people's addictions - this justifies making them illegal.
- FoeOfTheBee
- Posts: 557
- Joined: 12 May 2005, 18:26
It means that if I have to pay for your healthcare, there is some justification for regulating your health related behavior. This is the trend - some US cities have banned transfats.Boirunner wrote:now i want to get high
edit:this position makes no sense to me. for example, considering that some really overweight people are addicted to sugary foods, does that mean we should make sugary foods illegal because the nice stuff for the masses does not justify the addiction of the few?FoeOfTheBee wrote:Marijuana is like gambling - relatively harmless, stupid entertainment for the majority, serious addiction for a minority.
And like gambling it should be illegal. Trivial, stupid entertainment doesn't justify societal sanction for things that are so harmful to a significant minority of their users.
I a really libertarian country I wouldn't mind legalizing all kinds of drugs, but in modern social welfare states, you end up paying for the consequences of other people's addictions - this justifies making them illegal.
Better still would be to let people pay for the consequences of their own behavior, and not force taxpayers to do it.