MARIJUANA

[Latch33570]

Many states in the US have passed medical use and the restrictions are pretty lax.  California has been doing it since 1996 and low and behold it hasn't fallen apart yet. 2 of our states have passed recreational use. I bet they won't fall apart either. I wonder how much money and lives it will save.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

It is true that some behaviours shouldn't be done by people under age, but that is no cause to just outright ban it. By that account, driving should be forbidden to everyone, since a kid driving a car "gives the possibility of harming other people as a result of psychological damage"...or a physical one by the way.

 

That analogy fails. A car, if used safely, is perfectly safe. Cannabis cannot be used safely. You cannot control whether or not it will cause damage.

Also, you are terribly biased when discussing it in terms of other psychoactive substances, since you reject their effects as an afterthought (Despite alcohol or cigarettes alone killing millions a year)

Alcohol does not need to kill, and cigarettes do not have the potential to infringe on others freedom.

As a person I think that you are free to take whatever options you want with your OWN body as long as you have the mind in a state you can do so.

That's just it though. Cannabis's damage potentially threatens other people. Unlike alcohol or cigarettes the damage is long lasting and directly to the brain. The potential for the kinds of damage which could threaten someone elses life are too great.

 

whilst clinging to every possible consequence of pot

I am not clinging to anything. I am simply pointing out the facts that cannabis use has the potential to harm others, and is exceptionally harmful to the under-age. Legalising it would increase its use among the underage, and would put other people at risk.

[Brice]

I live in Colorado! Yes... we have recreational pot now, so I know tons on this topic. 1: There have been no marijuana related deaths in this state in about ten years. 2: the Colorado school system is uber poor compared to national average and the Amendment 64 states that like the first four million dollars annually goes to the school system. 3: Colorado loves it pot so the amount of marijuana taxed throughout the state is going to make in the upward of twenty million dollars. So personally I think marijuana should be legalized because it isn't bad. (I don't even smoke weed)

[Latch33570]

VERTIGO you said something about it doing damage and putting others at risk. Name one example please. The term psychosis is to broad. Most people who suffer from psychosis live just fine. The threat is greatly exaggerated. Just out of curiosity would you also outlaw alcohol? Lord knows prohibition hasn't worked for alcohol or pot. When I said that California didn't fall apart I meant that nothing noticeable negative happened at least that I know of.  The only deaths associated with marijuana stem from it being illegal and empowering criminals rather than honest businessmen.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

VERTIGO you said something about it doing damage and putting others at risk. Name one example please

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1445718/Cannabis-use-causes-...

 

Britain's most senior coroner is warning that hundreds of young people are dying in accidents caused by their prolonged use of cannabis.

Hamish Turner, the president of the Coroners' Society, said that the drug, which is often portrayed as harmless, has increasingly been behind deaths that have been recorded as accidents or suicides.

In the past year, he estimated that cannabis was a significant contributory factor in about 10 per cent of the 100 cases that he had dealt with in south Devon, where he works.

Conversations with his colleagues led him to believe that the scale of the problem elsewhere in the country was equally bad. "Cannabis is as dangerous as any other drug and people must understand that it kills," said Mr Turner.

Called. Sorry, but when Britain's most senior coroner says it's dangerous, I'm inclined to agree. This is a scientist and a non-political appointment. This is a serious opinion that people should listen to.

Just out of curiosity would you also outlaw alcohol?

No, because intoxication from alcohol is temporary and manageable.

 

[Abreo]

Around 20% of Australians experience a mental disorder at some time in their life but studies suggest that only a small proportion of violence in society is attributable to mental illness (up to 10%). In fact, violence is more closely correlated with the sex of the offender (i.e. male) and drug or alcohol use than with mental disorders.

http://www.responseability.org/site/index.cfm?display=134897

 

Based on published studies, Roizen (3) summarized the percentages of violent offenders who were drinking at the time of the offense as follows: up to 86 percent of homicide offenders, 37 percent of assault offenders, 60 percent of sexual offenders, up to 57 percent of men and 27 percent of women involved in marital violence, and 13 percent of child abusers. These figures are the upper limits of a wide range of estimates. In a community-based study, Pernanen (4) found that 42 percent of violent crimes reported to the police involved alcohol, although 51 percent of the victims interviewed believed that their assailants had been drinking.

http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/alerts/l/blnaa38.htm

 

I'm not trying to make the point that weed is safe, just that alcohol isn't and if you're for making weed illegal it only makes sense to make alcohol illegal as well, you're more likely to commit acts of violence when under the influence of alcohol than psychosis. Yes, you can cure somebody of alcoholism but if alcohol plays such a huge role in homicide, then you only need to get drunk once to convince yourself something is worth doing or to make a mistake you can't take back. 

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

I'm not trying to make the point that weed is safe, just that alcohol isn't and if you're for making weed illegal it only makes sense to make alcohol illegal as well

Here's the issue though. Alcohol's mental incapacity is temporary. Cannabis isn't. Psycosis can last a long time, sometimes your whole life. It can be exceptionally unpredictable. I'm not just talking about pscosis cauising viloent incidents, I'm talking about its ability to cause you to loose concentration, to develop multiple personalities etc. The issue being that these stay with you for life. Alcohol, by contrast, will only leave you incapacitated for a matter of hours.

Yes, you can cure somebody of alcoholism but if alcohol plays such a huge role in homicide, then you only need to get drunk once to convince yourself something is worth doing or to make a mistake you can't take back.

Yes but here's the thing. With drinking, you don't have to get drunk, and there are crimes in place for dealing with drunk and disorderly etc. By contrast, with cannabis, the affects are far more intimidate and problematic with a much lower threashold.

Also, let's just break this argument down a little. Have we really handled alcohol and cigerettes that well? The following is an interesting point made by a conservative media outlet.

It seems to me that a smart society, like a smart person, learns from its mistakes. And although I haven’t mentioned tobacco, a cursory exploration should conclude virtually the same problems exist there, albeit replacing drunk driving and domestic violence with more mundane issues like lung disease and cancer. We as a society simply don’t handle recreational drugs very well, particularly when it comes to their overuse and use by young people.

Taking that observation in hand, it seems beyond strange to me that some people want to add another similar substance to those already available. And just to reiterate, the single, simple argument we’re dealing with is that of fairness, as in, “It’s unfair to prohibit marijuana since you permit alcohol.”

Unfair? Perhaps.

Unwise? Not so much.

Some analogies may help clarify at this point.

Imagine that I have hired two employees at different times from the same college. Although each looked quite good on paper and in interviews, both turned out to be much less excellent than hoped for. Even though I can’t figure out a practical way to fire either of them, does that mean I’m obligated in fairness to hire the next applicant from that college who applies to me for a job? “But you hired both of them!” “Yes, and look how that’s turned out. I don’t intend to be so naïve a third time.” It’s a sadistic philosophy which holds that individuals or societies are beholden to the standard set by their worst decisions for any future choices.

Again, imagine some woman who picks up a man at a bar, dates him for awhile, and then finds herself being abused by him. She breaks up with him and returns to the bar to pick up a new man. She dates him for awhile and finds the same thing happening again. So she ends the relationship. Amazingly, she returns to the bar, but this time, she explains to the man who chats her up how she’s a bit wary of being abused by yet another guy from a bar. “Well, honey, don’t you think you owe me the same opportunity you gave those other two?” Please tell me our public policy advice is better than this.

Yet again, imagine that we as a nation involved ourselves in a failed war such as Vietnam but from which we actually couldn’t extricate ourselves. Then imagine we found ourselves on the verge of another war with similar-seeming difficulties. Would we really believe that consistency required us to engage in it because advocates assure us “it isn’t any worse than Vietnam?” Fool me once, shame on you….

Yet a fourth time, imagine that you have before you a heavy drinker who smokes two packs a day. I don’t imagine you would ever dream of saying to him, “I think you’re being inconsistent. Don’t you realize that marijuana isn’t as bad as either of the drugs you already abuse? And since you already smoke and drink a lot (even though you wish you could quit both), don’t you think for the sake of consistency you should add weed to your unhealthy regimen?” But how is this different from the argument at hand?

“So are you saying you favor prohibition of alcohol and tobacco?”

Nothing of the sort. I’m simply saying that the obvious problems we already have from both of those drugs being legal is the best reason to avoid embracing any more recreational drugs.

Now if you offered me a hypothetical society in which neither alcohol, nor tobacco, nor marijuana was in use and asked me to choose which of the three to permit, I can’t really say what I would pick. But it should be pretty clear we don’t have such a fantasy society in front of us. We live in a real one with a real past and a truly entrenched familiarity with alcohol and tobacco. If we add marijuana to the list, there will be more use of it than there is currently, which means more young users, more occasional users, more regular users, and more impaired driving. Needless to say, none of this will make our country stronger.

It seems to me that a wise society is the kind which learns from its mistakes rather than feeling obliged to repeat them out of a misguided sense of consistency. Our standards should improve because of our prior errors, not be permanently held back because of them. “It’s-no-worse-than” thinking is simply not the guiding light toward great personal or public policy.

[Abreo]

Here's the issue though. Alcohol's mental incapacity is temporary. Cannabis isn't. Psycosis can last a long time, sometimes your whole life. It can be exceptionally unpredictable. I'm not just talking about pscosis cauising viloent incidents, I'm talking about its ability to cause you to loose concentration, to develop multiple personalities etc. The issue being that these stay with you for life. Alcohol, by contrast, will only leave you incapacitated for a matter of hours.

If I get drunk and beat/kill my wife do you think she cares that the effects of alcohol are temporary? That stuff happens, and in a lot of cases it wouldn't happen without alcohol.

 

Yes but here's the thing. With drinking, you don't have to get drunk, and there are crimes in place for dealing with drunk and disorderly etc. By contrast, with cannabis, the affects are far more intimidate and problematic with a much lower threashold.

 

Like being lazy as opposed to being violent? You're more likely to get violent on alcohol than you are to develop psychosis or hurt someone under the influence of marijuana. Sure you don't have to get drunk and if you do the police can put you in a holding cell but unless you're parading down the street with your pants off they can't arrest you until you commit a crime.

So if I get wasted in some place that isn't a bar it's pretty much a guarantee that nobody is going to arrest me before I decide to start driving my car, nobody is going to arrest me before I turn aggro and start a fight, and nobody is going to arrest me before I can anything that isn't already explicitly illegal itself. Even if I'm at a club or a bar my level of intoxication can go unnoticed within the crowd. They might stop serving me if they look at my bar tab and see I'm on my tenth round but I can just go bar hopping to prevent that from happening. Your conception of alcohol being better than marijuana because it doesn't cause psychosis forever is arbitrary. It doesn't have anything to do with the actual amount of negative impact someone can inflict on the world. You don't have to be pro-legalizing marijuana but you do have to be consistent. 

 

It seems to me that a smart society, like a smart person, learns from its mistakes. And although I haven’t mentioned tobacco, a cursory exploration should conclude virtually the same problems exist there, albeit replacing drunk driving and domestic violence with more mundane issues like lung disease and cancer. We as a society simply don’t handle recreational drugs very well, particularly when it comes to their overuse and use by young people.

 

Assuming the person smoking only gives themselves lung disease and cancer then I'd say it's way better than beating up your family and running people over. 

Imagine that I have hired two employees at different times from the same college. Although each looked quite good on paper and in interviews, both turned out to be much less excellent than hoped for. Even though I can’t figure out a practical way to fire either of them, does that mean I’m obligated in fairness to hire the next applicant from that college who applies to me for a job? “But you hired both of them!” “Yes, and look how that’s turned out. I don’t intend to be so naïve a third time.” It’s a sadistic philosophy which holds that individuals or societies are beholden to the standard set by their worst decisions for any future choices.

 

This has nothing to do with the argument I'm making, since I'm not asking you to be pro-legalizing weed but against alcohol. The first two applicants were bad and as of yet there is no practical way of firing them, but that doesn't mean the boss want to fire them. In this case the boss would be actively looking for a way to get rid of them, or at least they would pro-firing them in theory if it wasn't at all practical to do so—which is all I ask you to be about alcohol. You may not know a practical way to get rid of it but you can still be pro-banning it in theory.  

Again, imagine some woman who picks up a man at a bar, dates him for awhile, and then finds herself being abused by him. She breaks up with him and returns to the bar to pick up a new man. She dates him for awhile and finds the same thing happening again. So she ends the relationship. Amazingly, she returns to the bar, but this time, she explains to the man who chats her up how she’s a bit wary of being abused by yet another guy from a bar. “Well, honey, don’t you think you owe me the same opportunity you gave those other two?” Please tell me our public policy advice is better than this.

So she broke up with the first two—or made them illegal—and refused to legalize the third because they also visit the magical abuser-bar she loves to go to? Well she made alcohol and tobacco illegal, sounds consistent to me, although it isn't entirely consistent with the overall argument being made here. I'm not sure I like the magical-abuser bar in theory because not all drugs are negative or have similar effects but I can work with it.

Yet again, imagine that we as a nation involved ourselves in a failed war such as Vietnam but from which we actually couldn’t extricate ourselves. Then imagine we found ourselves on the verge of another war with similar-seeming difficulties. Would we really believe that consistency required us to engage in it because advocates assure us “it isn’t any worse than Vietnam?” Fool me once, shame on you….

 

But the Vietnam war ended right? We didn't support fighting the war forever just because we had been fighting it for so long? At some point—even before the war ended—we decided to be against continuing the war because it was bad for us?

Yet a fourth time, imagine that you have before you a heavy drinker who smokes two packs a day. I don’t imagine you would ever dream of saying to him, “I think you’re being inconsistent. Don’t you realize that marijuana isn’t as bad as either of the drugs you already abuse? And since you already smoke and drink a lot (even though you wish you could quit both), don’t you think for the sake of consistency you should add weed to your unhealthy regimen?” But how is this different from the argument at hand?

I'd be for him moving over to weed if it would help him quit the other two drugs. Although since he seems to have an addictive personality—once again—perhaps we should get him to quit using the two drugs that are bad for him as well as telling him to not start using marijuana. The person writing this, under this metaphor, seems to be for letting us continue to abuse the drugs that we're abusing even though, by this analogy, our livers and lungs are going to fail anytime now if we don't quit cold turkey?

“So are you saying you favor prohibition of alcohol and tobacco?”

Nothing of the sort. I’m simply saying that the obvious problems we already have from both of those drugs being legal is the best reason to avoid embracing any more recreational drugs.

 

Doesn't make sense for reasons previously stated. 

Now if you offered me a hypothetical society in which neither alcohol, nor tobacco, nor marijuana was in use and asked me to choose which of the three to permit, I can’t really say what I would pick. But it should be pretty clear we don’t have such a fantasy society in front of us. We live in a real one with a real past and a truly entrenched familiarity with alcohol and tobacco. If we add marijuana to the list, there will be more use of it than there is currently, which means more young users, more occasional users, more regular users, and more impaired driving. Needless to say, none of this will make our country stronger.

 

Or we can personally swear off all of them if we think drugs are so bad and start attempting—through education—to warn others of the dangers of these drugs. It wouldn't be the same as us personally criminalizing alcohol and tobacco but at least our personal philosophical views would be consistent and that's all I ask of someone. And hey, who knows, maybe a while down the road we can convince the majority of the population that drugs are bad and we should just make everything illegal? We won't get there if we don't try.

It seems to me that a wise society is the kind which learns from its mistakes rather than feeling obliged to repeat them out of a misguided sense of consistency. Our standards should improve because of our prior errors, not be permanently held back because of them. “It’s-no-worse-than” thinking is simply not the guiding light toward great personal or public policy.

 

I'm not taking lessons on being wise form a guy who argues against consistency because they probably drink and smoke, or their demographic probably drinks and smokes, and therefore they're extremely reluctant to knock booze and smokes more than they need to. It's fine to knock weed though because social-conservatives don't like weed and therefore the risk of alienating anybody is extremely low.

Also, another side-note, tobacco isn't really that bad—cigarettes are. Cigars are fine, you can smoke one a day without upping the chance that you'll get cancer. Honestly cigarettes are just pointless. 

 

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

If I get drunk and beat/kill my wife do you think she cares that the effects of alcohol are temporary? That stuff happens, and in a lot of cases it wouldn't happen without alcohol.

No, of course not. I'm not saying that alcohol makes nothing bad happen, I'm saying that cannabis is ultimately worse, because with cannabis, there is the possibility you could do that at any time, even not directly after having taken a smoke etc. The Psycosis affects are long term.

So if I get wasted in some place that isn't a bar it's pretty much a guarantee that nobody is going to arrest me before I decide to start driving my car

No, but we could require all cars to have an inbuilt breathalyser, and a computer system that ensures the engine wouldn't start without someone competent at the wheel.

Your conception of alcohol being better than marijuana because it doesn't cause psychosis forever is arbitrary. It doesn't have anything to do with the actual amount of negative impact someone can inflict on the world.

I disagree. Alcohol's impact is more manageable. You are only under the influence for a limited time. Psychosis is long term, and the damage is permanent, because the brain is not self regenerating.

In this case the boss would be actively looking for a way to get rid of them, or at least they would pro-firing them in theory if it wasn't at all practical to do so—which is all I ask you to be about alcohol.

If it was practical to ban alcohol, then yes, I'd be in favour of it. Since it isn't, but it is practical to ban cannabis, we have to be pragmatic. What we don't have to do is send everyone to jail etc. We just have to fine people etc.

[Abreo]

No, of course not. I'm not saying that alcohol makes nothing bad happen, I'm saying that cannabis is ultimately worse, because with cannabis, there is the possibility you could do that at any time, even not directly after having taken a smoke etc. The Psycosis affects are long term.

But alcohol has more of a link to violence than psychosis. 

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Debatable in the extreme. The reason that we think that is that the link for alcohol is so very clear. Someone was drunk, they hurt someone. The problem with psychosis though, is that it's far less predictable, and as has already been demonstrated, there is a large body of unreported cases that senior medical experts put down to cannabis linked issues.

"Schizophrenia and other psychoses are associated with violence and violent offending, particularly homicide. However, most of the excess risk appears to be mediated by substance abuse comorbidity." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2718581/

Also, the violence in the case of alcohol is something that only occurs under direct influence. Psycosis by contrast, is unpredictable, and therefore inherently more dangerous.

[Latch33570]

VERTIGO in regards to the article you supplied One was a under the influence death. That doesn't count. The 2 suicides maybe. The parents blamed the pot but that isn't unbiased. What are they going to say "we did a lousy job raising them" or perhaps they were just depressed and would have killed themselves anyway. Who knows perhaps the pot gave them a higher better quality of life and would have killed themselves sooner.  Point is we don't know. As for the British coroners opinion. It is just that an opinion not a fact. By the way if you think politics doesn't play a part in what he says you are nieve. 

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

The parents blamed the pot but that isn't unbiased. What are they going to say "we did a lousy job raising them" or perhaps they were just depressed and would have killed themselves anyway.

I think they know when their children start changing because they start taking a drug. Also, paranoia is a massively common drug side affect. It's not as if this is a off the wall blaming.

As for the British coroners opinion. It is just that an opinion not a fact.

It is the opinion of the most senior British medical professional in the country. That's a pretty well informed opinion.

By the way if you think politics doesn't play a part in what he says you are nieve.

He's making a professional medical judgement. That's not politics.