badbobby Loc: texas

A new report concludes that marijuana can certainly ease chronic pain,and can help people sleep.
But it's also likely to raise the risk of schizophrenia.
This was released by a federal advisory panel in January.
The experts called for more studies about marijuana and it's chemical cousins.
They said the current lack of scientific information poses a public health risk because patients healthcare pros and policy makers
need more evidence to make sound decisions.
In reviewing studies published since 1999,it reached nearly 100 conclusions about patient benefits and risks.
We now have states making marijuana usage legal
should this be allowed or should it not be allowed?

Rivers

I got into this debate once before on OPP, and was pretty much chastised by everyone for my anti-marijuana stand. I'm not going there again. Legalize it, and watch the crime, highway deaths, graduation to heroin and opioids, zombie youths, etc. increase dramatically is all I gotta say....and, I'm not going to debate....been there, done that.

pafret Loc: Northeast

Marijuana is an intoxicant and like any other intoxicant it will be abused by those who are unable to practice restraint. The arguments based on alcohol toxicity have no bearing, alcohol is ubiquitous, it occurs as a natural byproduct of fermentation which can occur spontaneously and has existed since the dawn of mankind. Adding additional intoxicants to the legal status says we have learned nothing, from the immense social costs, associated with the legal intoxicants we have. Any beneficial medical applications can be derived from extracts of the plant. We do not need to create another industry devoted to physco-active mind benders.

If Marijuana is to be legalized, why not LSD, Speed, Meth, Cocaine, Heroin or any other opioids?

EL Loc: Massachusetts

I think you're right. After a number of highway deaths and some of the other things on your list, they'll rethink it. However, that will be too late for many.

wuzblynd Loc: thomson georgia

They know a lot about it. US. Dept of agriculture many years ago published all kinds of info on weed. It can be used to make over 1000 products​ from cellophane to Dynamite.its the fastest growing biomass on the planet. If it's legal then there is a paper trail and the profit can be traced. Oliver North, Iran contra war , guns for drugs they called it . The reason we could finance that war that we "weren't involved in" was with drugs money. Legalize it and we can't do stuff like that without getting exposed.

badbobby Loc: texas

think you got it right paf

pafret Loc: Northeast

Its chief use was in the manufacture of Hemp rope and cloth, but that variety of plant was not the version of the cannabis plant which contain psychoactive ingredients. It was outlawed along with all of the Cannabis family of plants. Probably because it is difficult to distinguish between them.

"In 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act strictly regulated the cultivation and sale of all cannabis varieties. The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 classified all forms of cannabis — including hemp — as a Schedule I drug, making it illegal to grow it in the United States (which is why we’re forced to import hemp from other countries as long as it contains scant levels of THC — 0.3% is the regulation for hemp cultivation in the European Union and Canada). As a result of this long-term prohibition, most people have forgotten the industrial uses of the plant and continue to misidentify hemp with its cannabis cousin, marijuana."

PaulPisces Loc: San Francisco

Pafret - Your post has some truths, some half-truths, and a good amount of opinion.

True: "Marijuana is an intoxicant and like any other intoxicant it will be abused by those who are unable to practice restraint."
One could apply the same "abuser" argument to guns, but I don't see any conservatives using that battle cry to restrict use for responsible owners.

Untrue comparison: "The arguments based on alcohol toxicity have no bearing"
You seem to be saying alcohol, being everywhere and being a natural process make it more OK. Cannabis is about as natural as can be had, with absolutely no processing required in order to use it. Left to its own it would certainly grow wild, and, considering we know it to have been around since about 2,700 BC, it's certainly no newcomer to the scene.

Opinion: "We do not need to create another industry devoted to physco-active mind benders."

Hanlf-Truth: "If Marijuana is to be legalized, why not LSD, Speed, Meth, Cocaine, Heroin or any other opioids?"
The implication here is that all intoxicants are equal in their benefit/risk proposition. This is of course untrue. LSD (the little I know of it) holds the potential for some pretty drastically awful experiences and permanent psychosis. The others you mention are physically addictive, which marijuana is not.


I full realize that I live in a culture (SF) that is OK with marijuana, so my outlook is perhaps biased. But I can tell you from my own experience that whatever drawbacks it has, I do not think it has earned its classification as a schedule 1 drug.

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

Depends on who you ask - and what day of the week. Laboratories that receive Federal grants always find severe problems with the plant, those that receive private funding rarely do - unless the private funds come from an anti pot coalition. I learned long ago to research the funding sources, before trying to interpret "scientific data", I put scientific data in quotes, as this isn't really science at all, it's - laboratory generated rhetoric, or LGR.

Applying for a permit to research marijuana is easy, getting said permit near impossible, the pressure against issuing permits is insurmountable. Why would the National Drug Abuse Prevention agency be involved in issuing permits for scientific research anyway? There are NO scientific experiments designed to cause drug abuse or addiction, but there are 100's being conducted to prevent or treat such conditions. In point of fact, the pharmaceutical industry, which is responsible for 95% of all cases of addiction, do not require such a permit process, their permits cover anything they wish to "study". If the Federal Government REALLY wished to effectively deal with drug abuse and addiction, they'd put their watchdogs on THAT industry, not the scientific community.

Another fact: the pharmaceutical industry is conducting it's own research into marijuana, specifically researching plant variants, with a view to copyrighting a particular variants/s. Should they be successful, we'll see a 100% turnaround in the official science, with Federal approval of marijuana quickly following - but only the copyrighted variety, with every other plant being illegal. Isn't it wonderful to see that here in America, the ability to profit off of scientific discovery, determines what is real science - and what is a waste of money?

L8erToots

When in doubt, follow the constitution. Hemp and marijuana were around during the time our founding fathers were drafting the constitution (as was alcohol) and so were the social problems of overuse of alcohol and other substances being used at the time. Yet there is nothing in the constitution regarding the use or regulation of it...therefore, it is up to the states and the people within the states to decide whether they want to "regulate morality". I don't smoke pot but I've been around people who have smoked pot most of their lives - they are highly successful and productive people in all walks of life (most of the people I knew were engineers and designers working in the aerospace industry - heck, I even worked with a weekend heroin user who was an ordinance engineer). Some of those people don't smoke pot anymore, just like most of them don't go out to happy hour on Friday nights after work and get drunk with their co-workers anymore (something else us hardworking engineers did in our 20's). There is only ONE difference between pot and every other drug, including alcohol and that is that all traces of the other drugs are gone from your body within a few days of consumption, where pot stays in your system for up to 30 days after you use it, even though the "high" only lasts for a few hours. Pot and pre-employment drug testing for pot use is the biggest job killer for young people in America today and anyone who thinks that people aren't smoking it and haven't been smoking it since the early '70's just because it isn't legal is, well, delusional. In CA in the mid '80's, Teledyne decided to grab about 25 employees coming in the front door and drug tested them before work...75% tested positive for marijuana and cocaine (and a few other drugs popular at the time). Management was shocked because these people were people that were highly functional and good performers at work. Make no mistake about it - pre-employment drug testing is required by Workman's Comp Insurance (as an employer you have to drug test to get insurance and they give you % points off your premiums if you agree to do random drug testing on your employees) and they require it so that if an employee tests positive for any drug (whether they were "high" or drunk the night before but are sober at the time of the injury) they don't have to cover that employee under Workman's Comp.
When it comes to regulating morality, follow the money, then follow the constitution to see if money is trumping our freedoms, whether they are good for us or not.

eden

Perhaps the glaring disparity of focus on the side effects of marijuana and alcohol needs to be put into context. It is difficult to ignore the impression that the specter of authoritarianism is fighting a vicious rearguard action against its loss of power by seizing on any fragment of possible downside to legalization. The arc of history assures progress so this will all be in the rearview mirror eventually, in spite of occasional backward steps. There should be no discussion on whether such a matter of personal freedom should be "allowed" or not.

eden

They should. Drug use is a health problem initially, not a criminal one. Perhaps the Portuguese approach should be re-examined.

pafret Loc: Northeast

Very few people defend themselves with a marijuana cigarette, it is particularly ineffective for that purpose. No one abuses guns, they are used to abuse others and those who do so are known as criminals. Similarly, the expression "abused" in my statement was hyperbole, excessive use of any intoxicant can easily lead to criminal behavior, it is the nature of the beast, one is intoxicated and not in possession of his faculties.

My point about alcohol was that even animals have abused alcohol derived from fermenting fruit, to the point that they risk their lives to consume it. Men, as higher order animals are subject to the same stupidity but consuming fermenting fruits and grains was called eating. Rolling a joint of the harvested heads of a specific set of plants with no food value is a somewhat, less natural, activity.

Yes, that is an opinion, this is the forum for expressing opinion.

There was no attempt to establish parity of damage caused by various drugs. It is true that they all have their drawbacks yet, if the rule is "Are there any beneficial aspects to use of this drug" then most addicts will assure you that their poison of choice definitely is beneficial to their well being. They wouldn't necessarily be correct and philosophically it may be a pernicious evil but, whatever floats your boat.

For the alcoholic, booze is physically addictive. It takes an enormous effort of will to resist just as drug addict can resist through the same exertion of will. Very few succeed in staying "clean and sober". The pothead is no different, an addictive personality will always result in overuse and abuse of society.

Genetic Scientists are publishing findings that there seems to be a genetic difference between addicts and those who do not exhibit addictive behaviors. Several interesting scenarios suggest themselves. Due to wide spread clamor for drug access the government mandates that all persons submit to a genome map to determine if they have addictive genes. If so they are placed on a no fly, no high, list and draconian penalties applied for possession and use.

The government will license the use of drugs, there never has been any human activity which the government has not attempted to license. I expect a breathing license soon. How would you control contact buzz, concert goers have complained that marijuana smoke is so thick they have gotten high without smoking. How about occupations which require drug testing to assure performance capability, do these people have to wear gas masks to prevent accidental contamination?

On a darker note, suppose the government realizes that the populace can easily be controlled by introduction of drugs into their water supply. That coupled with propaganda as in Huxley's Brave New World: Soma, half a gram is better than a damn would result in everyone with a mentality higher than a cabbage being mind controlled through drug conditioning. At what point does our "recreational" use become the means of our enslavement?

badbobby Loc: texas

Paul
you say that marijuana is not addictive.now that seems to me to be an opinion.
do you believe ,or do you disbelieve that the use of marijuana can lead to more dangerous drugs?
I personally have no opinion since I have never used it in any form
although if this arthritis keeps getting worse,I may.

I'd like to thank all the respondents on this subject
no one has cursed or belittled another
and that's the way discussions should be

eden

Agreed.