Marijuana legalization

[PurpleRain]

-snip-

PurpleRain: I'd like to introduce you to a concept called Prohibition that we tried here in the United States back in the 20's.

It was a miserable failure, created more crime than our country had seen it's inception and made criminals out of ordinary folk who just wanted a beer.

This is what the criminalization of Marijuana is doing.

And really, marijuana is a bloody plant, you don't "cut" it with things like you can with heroin unless you're getting yours from somebody who thinks it's funny to throw Oregano in with your stash.

Besides, for all that marijuana can do to you (very little), we have these wonderful things called alcohol and tobacco here that are far worse for you and as legal as waving the American flag.

Plus, can anyone name a mind-altering stimulant that's not only legal but so socially acceptable in the USA that you can buy it in almost every business you walk into? If you guess Caffeine, you're right! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine

I don't understand why the US keeps popping up. It is illegal in most countries you realize. Also, I'm not discussing the chemicals of it, just the buying and selling of seeds.

I think many people missed my point.

I brought up the US because I live here and it's a brilliant example of how prohibition creates crime and doesn't actually stop something from being used.

I was addressing, mostly, the beginning of your post when you claimed that marijuana "screws up your brain". I have a hard time dealing with the rest of your post because allowing the sale of seeds and seeds only sounds far too similar to the Marijuana Tax Act: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marihuana_Tax_Act_of_1937

I gathered, but you were just telling me things I already knew and compared it with marijuana. Caffeine is bad for you. I don't drink it because of that. So is most Soy products and much much more. But all this doesn't make marijuana any less dangerous. I've experienced off hand two cases of friends close to me becoming very infected with it and doing horrible things because of it. Just saying.

 

[PurpleRain]

Industrial operations? What the hell are you talking about? Read my OP. Operations are illegal. You can only trade the seeds. They are not hallucinogenic if they burned.

Dude, I wasn't even talking to you. As in my post, had you paid attention, you would've seen I was speaking to Pegghead.

Ah huh! My mistake. I thought peghead was some strange term I had never heard of.

 

[jpoon]

I gathered, but you were just telling me things I already knew and compared it with marijuana. Caffeine is bad for you. I don't drink it because of that. So is most Soy products and much much more. But all this doesn't make marijuana any less dangerous. I've experienced off hand two cases of friends close to me becoming very infected with it and doing horrible things because of it. Just saying.

Man, that is silly. They became infected with it? Holy shit, you need a bit more experience in the subject than to say it like smoking weed is spreading an STD. People do horrible things totally sober, and I doubt your friends did much that they would not have done stone cold sober. People don't rob others for a bag of weed and it's as simple as that really.

 

[twistedmic]

I think marijuana should be legalized. Not only that it should be standardized, give it different grades based on THC content (and priced according to potency), make 'smoking laws' and 'smoking age (18 or 21), sell it alongside cigarettes and even tax it.
Legalizing it would dry up some crime and drug cartels, I'm sure people would much rather go up to a Shell station or Wal-Mart to buy a few joints rather than go hunt down some drug dealer and buy what might be marijuana. The smoking laws and smoking age would work just like alcohol laws- no smoking and driving, no buying marijuana for under-aged people etc. And taxing marijuana could bring in a lot of money.

Also, marijuana can be cut or laced with other things.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Make it all legal so that people can know what they are buying. Provide strong incentives for full disclosure of information regarding the product. Tax it some, but not so much that people would rather buy it on the street than in a store. The proper response is not an ineffectual attempt to ban all consumption but to help citizens make informed choices about what they want. If drug dealers are law-abiding citizens operating with no incentives to evade discovery by the authorities they are much less likely to do shady things like make their product more dangerous for whatever reason: if you operate out in the open you get more customers at a cost of being known to authority. That's the situation you want drug dealers to be in: sunlight is the best disinfectant for these sorts of otherwise intractable problems. Freedom of choice far more easily results in freedom of information and consumer protection than does prohibition.

 

[Ammadessi]

-big effing snip-

I gathered, but you were just telling me things I already knew and compared it with marijuana. Caffeine is bad for you. I don't drink it because of that. So is most Soy products and much much more. But all this doesn't make marijuana any less dangerous. I've experienced off hand two cases of friends close to me becoming very infected with it and doing horrible things because of it. Just saying.

Yes, and how many people die of alcohol poisoning a year, or get into drunk driving accidents and kill themselves or others? The argument that "we should ban it because it's not very good for you" is simply poor when you have far worse substances being sold at your local grocery store.

I simply compared it to caffeine because people who take the "it's bad for you so it's wrong" route don't seem to understand that the only difference between caffeine, tobacco, alcohol and marijuana is levels of social acceptance. If marijuana had not be demonized, the current attitudes on it would be completely different.

Edit: Do something that's bad for you once in a while. Have a beer, drink a cup of coffee. Spending your whole life avoiding everything that might possibly be bad for you is going a sad way to live. You're going to die anyway, life is a terminal condition.

 

[jpoon]

No one laces weed with anything, unless you are dealing with some REALLY shady individuals. It would be a waste of whatever they cut weed with to do so and it would be easy to spot no doubt.

I can guarantee if someone is using a cooking herb to cut weed with I will spot that shit in about a second, though I guess I can't speak for everyone.

 

[Ammadessi]

Also, marijuana can be cut or laced with other things.

Just out of curiosity, what would be cut or laced with Marijuana? I've heard of soaking the buds in formaldehyde which is just stupid, but it's a bloody plant, it's not an innocuous white powder like heroin that you can mix with baking soda without anybody noticing.

 

[Poomanchu745]

The only problem I can see to legalizing weed would be the uses of motor vehicles and anything else you are not allowed to operate when drunk. The problem is the lack of testing to see if a person is currently high. With alcohol you have a BAC that can be checked by a breathalizer but there is no such thing with weed. It would be very hard to enforce this and pretty dangerous for high people to be driving all the time.

 

[thiosk]

How is it only half a step though? You want your weed, you got it, but you have to grow it.

But if I want weed now (which I don't) I've got it already. And I don't have to grow it, I can live in the 20th century and convert cash to weed.

What I would like to do is stop at a boutique and be able to try interesting blends developed by dedicated breeders. And there is no reason but for the perpetuation of racist laws (originally, prohibition of marijuana was done to have something to throw mexican immigrants in jail for, to keep them away from Pure White Women) to have it continue to be illegal.

It is as interesting to a conissuer(sp) as coffee, tea, beer, wine, or tobacco.

 

[Mako SOLDIER]

Also, there is little credible evidence to support brain damage caused by marijuana.

Well, it can activate underlying mental illness in people who are prone to it. Trust me, I'm one of those who it massively screwed with, and anyone who claims it isn't damaging is just naive. Sure, those people may have ended up ill eventually anyway, but they also might not have.

 

[Mozared]

To be honest, the only decent way to do it is to either legalize it completely or forbid anything to do with it. Half-legalizing it will cause it to become important sales merchandise in clandestine circles. Also, legalizing it fully won't have the shocking effect some people think it will have - it's not like suddenly half the country will be driving around stoned. People who want to smoke weed generally do so whether it's legal or not.

I'm from Holland, I know what I'm talking about =P
Edit: And actually, ironically enough, the 'Purple Rain' is a coffeeshop near my place.

 

[thiosk]

Also, there is little credible evidence to support brain damage caused by marijuana.

Well, it can activate underlying mental illness in people who are prone to it. Trust me, I'm one of those who it massively screwed with, and anyone who claims it isn't damaging is just naive. Sure, those people may have ended up ill eventually anyway, but they also might not have.

And here we run into causation\correlation.

If someone's illness comes to bear, and they are marijuana users, did it CAUSE the illness, or are we observing the two occurring at the same time, and applying emotion to the situation?

If a crappy carpenter builds a house, and the roof collapses, was that due to the weight of the snow on the roof, or was that due to the shitty termite-eaten lumber he installed?

We don't make alcohol illegal because alcoholism runs in families, we certainly shouldn't make marijuana illegal because it makes paranoid schizophrenics paranoid.

And look at swine flu girl. She has this weird problem. Was it CAUSED by the swine flu shot?

Doubt it. Could have been caused by anything from bikini wax exposure to a bee sting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR5p_bD3uLc

 

[Blatherscythe]

Hey can't be worse than smoking, hell, you can vaporize it to make it smoke free.

 

[Heathrow]

Actually there's a much simpler solution to making sure your weed is safe Just legalize the trade entirely and have the FDA regulate sales. This would move marijuana sales into more reputable vendors-i.e Holland's 'Coffee Shops'. Safe and easily accessible weed for whomever wants it. As for smoking weed in public that's a bit of a mixed bag: on the one hand we still let tobacco smokers smoke in public on the other hand we don't let people drink in public. Personally I think we should allow marijuana smoking in public but regulate where in accordance with normal smoking laws: not with in 20 feet of an entrance to a building, not in parks et cetera.

@Pegghead
I say any substance that can make the world go funny and slow, and if overdone CAN cause health problems should not be allowed, to cultivate, use, abuse, trade anything associated with it.

So I assume you're advocating the prohibition of alcohol and tobacco then as well.

 

[teisjm]

First of all, props to the OP for this

I am very much against the drug and the use of it, but I would be okay with this. I enjoy people having freedoms to put whatever they want in their bodies, be is McDonalds, to this, to as far as acid, and I hold that freedom above my own beliefs.

While i'm for weed legalization i think we have something in common, i would never push anyone to get them to try weed, and I always respect the non-smokers.

Since we're talking about reasons heres a few other than the ones the OP stated.

Weed is called a "gateway drug" some (selfproclaimed) experts say that weed leads to hard drugs, lets just for a moment accept this as the truth.
If weed leads to... say coke, is it because the "user" is looking for a new stimulant?
If so, isn't alcohol the first step for most people?
Most people "progress" this way: drink alcohol, then smoke weed, then do coke, then shoot heroin.
I'm fully aware that most people don't go further than alcohol and that far from everyone follows this path, but this is the logiv of gateway drugs. Hence, weed isn't the first step, alchohol is.
So either it starts with alcohol OR
The other idea is, that once you've figured out how to buy weed, you've opened a door to the criminal market of drug dealers, maybe you think "hey, i wonder what else this shady dude is selling" or maybe the pusher pushes you into other drugs. If this is the case, weed isn't the problem itself, it is weeds connection to the criminal world. If you could go to your local liquor store and buy weed, you wouldn't come into contact with criminal pushers, and thereby avoid dealing with people who is intetrested in you doing harder drugs.

Heres another thing which is connected to the above paragraph.
Criminal gangs make money by selling weed (amongst other stuff) if the store sold legal weed, no-one would go to the gangs (you don't see any gangsters pushing beer and rum), and they would make less money, thereby be weakened. Removing the criminals monopoly on the weed market would be an ecomonical punch to their face.

just my 2 cents for the discussion.

 

[ucciolord1]

It should be legal simply because it's more dangerous illegal. Because of its illegality, it has to be bought from dealers who sometimes mix it with other more potent drugs designed to hook you. Purchasing it illicitly provides a large cash flow directly to organized crime. If it were legal, but regulated, then we would have eliminated a major source of funds for criminals. Also, the fact that it's a restricted substance makes it more desirable. If it were legakized, people wouldn't care (as much) about it.

 

[Murlin]

Netherlands has a different policy on weed and rugs, and although the rest of europe calls us a "state of dealers and doped" the visible part of drug trade and use is considerably lower (in percentage) then that of other countries where it is already difficult to see how much trades and uses are made.
So for me, legalizing weed and some soft-drugs might just be a good solution, same with downloading; Don't prohibit, live with it!

 

[r0qu3]

I hear a lot of people bickering about marijuana legalization. While I'm very anti-drug and anti-drug trade, I tend to view the way people argue as a 'Yes, because it ain't that harmful' or 'No, it screws your brain' type argument. I'm siding with the latter. Marijuana can be and is widely cut with all sorts of shit, so unless you know a guy growing it, you may be not getting the full whack. But there's the thing: growing the plant. This is the point of view I want to discuss.

I would imagine a better stance to take is making Marijuana seeds legal, but not the selling or buying of the plant. Of course, enforce the usual rules about not being able to smoke in public areas and don't smoke before driving but they're a whole other case. If people were able to grow their own plants, it would mean that they had control of what they were putting in their own body. It's personal and they can form their own judgments with the thing. With this, the trading of the drug would be cut drastically and so you'd get less people having to need a quick amount as it would be more of a growing and timely experiment.

I am very much against the drug and the use of it, but I would be okay with this. I enjoy people having freedoms to put whatever they want in their bodies, be is McDonalds, to this, to as far as acid, and I hold that freedom above my own beliefs.

i like you attitude towards this...

...i myself smoke for about 12 yrs now...and yes i'm fine, have a well paid job and as i live at the dutch frontier the shitty-cut is non-existant on legal shops.I strongly believe that people should decide themselves what they put into their body, what really annoys me is: i never steal, i harm nobody and i don't drive stoned...but still i have to cope with fucking idiots, gangsta-types and the law (which really costed me a lot over the time). That's just bullshit i don't want to cope with these guys. I wish all the cops would actually look after real and harmful crimes instead of watching the frontier for stoners...

On the other hand i'm not for just totally legalize it, cause everybody who says "Yeah its so harmless" actually are full of shit...und liars.... It should be sold legally under heavy surveillance (customer cards, state license for smokers, 18+ and funding of drug-help-centers)

Also the initial idea of legalizing the seeds is actually very good... as i start growing anyway to free my live of unnecessary hassle...


So, rock on and actually take care...

 

[thiosk]

Personally I think we should allow marijuana smoking in public but regulate where in accordance with normal smoking laws: not with in 20 feet of an entrance to a building, not in parks et cetera.

Smoking should fall under the same considerations regardless of what is being smoked.

No one wants to smell your tobacco, no one wants to smell your crazy weed.

Tickets should be issued for driving under the influence of marijuana, and only if its directly observed (no one dies from smoking and driving except for a couple obscure cases; but drinking and cellphones...)