My point is that mar1juana is ripe for abuse because people think it is harmless. When its legalized, weed will come easier and cheaper to most people... and there will be more people like me. That 1% will grow to 10% or more. I always thought it was harmless too which is why I started smoking so much in the first place.
lol... Lots of misguided posts in this thread. No one here is saying legalize cocaine. Or even regulate it. I think the main issue we have with your argument, CHI, is that it is not representative of the average user. Pretty much anything in EXCESS is going to be bad for you/difficult to break the habit, but that's not a reason for prohibition. There really isn't a good reason ITT for why weed shouldn't be regulated. You basically admitted that yourself.
I used to be pro-legalization, but KingCheetah's data and Glenn Beck's cunning questions have really changed my mind in this thread. I mean, I had no idea that mar1juana kills about four times the number of people in California as all causes of death, including mar1juana, combined. That is really striking, as is the idea that Glenn Beck is "libertarian." I had thought he was a fibertarian?
Cocaine has to be produced chemically, never tried it, don't know much about it, but I know that cocaine isn't pure, it has other chemicals in it and it is highly addictive, this is why it shouldn't be legalized. mar1juana is not physically addictive, it's a plant, it grows in the ground and if you light it on fire it burns. We didn't create anything new, God gave it to us. Legalize coca leaves and lets chew on em like the Peruvian highlanders do!
Despite the relatively small sample size of himself and a few friends, it seems that CHI's rigorously designed study of the effects of mar1juana withdrawal are simply indisputable. What's even worse, is the lethargy inspired by the mar1juana is ironically dooming the initiative to failure come election day. "Dude, isn't there something important we need to do today?"
I think the simple answer is that the legal punishments for mar1juana use/possession are vastly disproportional to any harm mar1juana users cause society. There may be benefits to decriminalizing it (taxing/regulation) but those are all hypothetical - what isn't hypothetical is that the punishments for mar1juana use are a massive abuse of state power.
This is the biggest problem with the current system, IMO. People actually have the ability to be heavy smokers for years as teenagers. Any system that I would design would have as its primary (very nearly singular) goal reducing and eventually eliminating the access that our youth have to drugs.
Well, that is one of the things you want to look at, but you also need to have comparisons to other intoxicants so that you set drug policy based on what the properties of the drug in question is. Responsible drug policy would rate every drug based on metrics like... Potential for physical addiction Potential for physical damage Potential for psychological dependence Potential personal costs Potential societal costs Cocaine is a harder case, but when you look at facts rather than lore, you find that relatively few people became addicted to cocaine when it was legal. Coca-Cola built an empire from a recipe that once included cocaine instead of caffeine and even more people ingested a mixture of cocaine and wine dubbed Vin Mariani. The biggest event that turned public opinion against cocaine was newspaper accounts of "Cocainized Ni**ers" running around raping white women. None of these stories was ever substantiated, but that didn't stop the prohibitionists.
Yes, they can all be abused. Actually, in Switzerland they have had prescription heroin for over 15 years now. Addicts come in, get a known quantity of a known purity, shoot up in a safe environment, and then go about their lives. This program has resulted in the participants becoming productive, taxpaying members of society even though they use heroin every day. Their criminality drops drastically, recovery chances increase, and the addicts are brought back into society from the outskirts. I do not advocate for allowing recreational sales of heroin, just wanted to mention that there are radical solutions with impressive results.
Dude, you can only get so high in one day. To sit there and smoke a quarter ounce (or a little less in your case) in one day per individual is not logical. The needs of the many, or the real world most of us have to live in, outweigh the needs of the one...or the blunt. Sincerely, Spock from "Star Trek" I dunno what to tell you. Yea, I suppose we could have a whole trainwreck of individuals coming out of the woodwork doing it like you did (m-tards can we call them?). I guess they won't be straying far from their couches. Maybe they could just roll it all into one big blunt and smoke it all in fifteen minutes. Lol. I suppose you have a point and there will be a larger sample size who consume like it is going out of style. I guess they will just have to take a larger withdrawal when they come off of their days of basically binge smoking. :grin:
In the early 1900s, before drugs were prohibited, it was reported that 1.3% of the population was addicted to drugs. In the early '70s, when Nixon coined the term "War on Drugs," it was estimated that 1.3% of the population was addicted to drugs. In the late '80s, after Reagan amped up the WoD, it was estimated that 1.3% of the population was addicted to drugs. Guess what that percentage is today. I got that statistic from a speaker from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition . Great group of people.
Those people don't have any trouble doing exactly that now. There will be a bump in the reported usage, but at least we will be getting more accurate numbers when the paranoid stoners actually feel like they can answer the question for the pollster who randomly calls them.
I was pretty much a wake-and-bake pothead for over two years in college. I did everything stoned: work, school, balance my check book, you name it. And yes, on the rare days when we couldn't find any bud because we were too stoned to effectively plan ahead for such occurrences, sure we were a little bummed. And yes, the world looked a little different and we were a little anxious precisely BECAUSE we were so used to being so stoned all the time. But I also knew that's all it was because, simply put, you get used to yourself feeling a particular way, and when you don't feel that way all of a sudden, you have to get used to feeling another, different way. And then the cycle repeats. I can't say I understand what you went through. I already said I won't deride you for it or think you're lying. Your experience was your experience. All I'm saying (and what most everyone else is saying as well), is that your experience is so far from typical that I've never even heard of anyone describe what you're describing. And that's with years of personal experience and years of addiction counseling to boot. So, much like how booze shouldn't be outlawed based on, for example, my friend who nearly died from an allergic reaction to alcohol the first time she took a drink, to say that continued mar1juana prohibition based on a rare occurrence such as your own, is misinformed and illogical.
You smoked an eighth a day? Eighth= 60$ 60 * 365 = So you've been dropping 21,900$ on mar1juana per year for 3? So about 65,700$. Nice.
Kindly note my appreciation for your change in lifestyle. The journey of the substance abuser takes place on a freeway with a tragic destination. Although the exits are ample, they are finite in number. Congratulations on your success, my friend.
It was about $200-$350 an ounce depending on the strain. It's cheaper the more you buy. You can buy a pound for about $2500-$3000.
Funny thing is. . . if this passes. And MaryJane is treated like Tobacco I bet alot of these restrictive laws on when and where you can smoke will EASE UP ALOT. Rocket River "Smoke 50 feet from the building. . not indoors. . .etc. . . HELL NAWW!!!" - newly minted smoker's rights former norml member until maryjane became legal!!
