Posted on 03/25/2010 3:21:41 PM PDT by Zakeet
Supporters of the initiative collected well more than the 433,971 signatures needed for it to go before voters in the fall, again putting the state at the forefront of the nation's drug debate.
An initiative to legalize marijuana and allow it to be sold and taxed will appear on the November ballot, state election officials announced Wednesday, triggering what will probably be a much-watched campaign that once again puts California on the forefront of the nation's debate over whether to soften drug laws.
[Snip]
With polls showing that a slim majority of voters support legalization, the legalization campaign will be trying to appeal to a slice of undecided voters who are mostly mothers. "It's always easier for people to say no than to say yes for an initiative," said Mark Baldassare, the pollster for the Public Policy Institute of California.
[Oakland marijuana entrepreneur] Lee hopes to raise as much as $20 million. He will probably be able to tap a handful of wealthy advocates who have supported efforts to relax drug laws, including multibillionaire investor George Soros and George Zimmer, founder of the Men's Wearhouse. Zimmer has donated at least $20,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Alcohol is a drug. That's like saying what's the difference between a Cadillaic and cars.
As for your points:
1. It is definitely possible to have a little amount of pot and not get altered. Much like it's possible to have a little amount of alcohol and get altered. All that is dependent on the strength and quantity of both drugs. You can drink a twelve pack of near bear that has a 0.5% alcohol volume and not feel much, much like you can smoke a pound of 0.5% THC ditchweed and not feel anything. Conversely, you could take a shot of everclear and get blasted like you can take a hit of 18% THC weed and get blasted.
2. If you have any proof that pot is a gateway drug, I'd like to see it. The stats would indicate otherwise. There are 13 million or so past month pot smokers and around 2 million and around 700k past month heroin users. Not a huge gateway. The reason more pot users go on to use other illicit drugs as opposed to alcohol users is partially from sheer volume, and because pot users are exposed to a black market that sells other drugs where alcohol users are not, in general
3. I have no idea what your definition of "frequent" is but it certainly isn't what most people use. Psychosis in general is rare, and even a 40% increase of something (if you buy that pot use is 40% more likely to increase the risk of psychosis) rare isn't frequent in my book.
1. I smoked pot occasionally in my teens and no, the first hit gets you feeling differently. The stuff they grow and sell these days, I have heard, has far higher THC content than I ever knew. So you are wrong. One good hit will alter your consciousness. Not so with a small glass of wine or what have you.
2. I quickly googled marijuana gateway drug statistics and found what looked like an even number of reasonably decent looking studies that both proved it and disproved it. So I asked myself, did I start with pot and then go on to harder stuff? And what about my friends? And so I come down on the side of the studies that show that marijuana is often the first of increasingly strong drugs.
I ask you in all honesty, was marijuana your first illegal drug? Did you do harder drugs after? Think of ten of your marijuana using friends. Did any of them start with marijuana, then move on to harder stuff? My guess is, most did.
3. The psychosis studies are recent and made big news; I am surprised you didn’t hear of them:
“Smoking marijuana can increase your risk of developing a psychotic illness by more than 40 per cent, authors conclude in a controversial study in this week’s edition of The Lancet.
The study suggests that even occasional pot use could raise the risk of psychosis, a category of mental disorders that includes schizophrenia. The authors say the findings underline the need to remind marijuana users of the long-term risks.
Dr. Theresa Moore, University of Bristol, and Dr. Stanley Zammit, Cardiff University, and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 35 studies, dated up to 2006, to see whether there was evidence to connect cannabis use to mental health disorders.
They found that those who smoked pot were 41 per cent more likely to develop a psychotic illness than those who had never used the drug. “
Even without that study I knew this. An ex boyfriend of mine quit pot because it was “making him paranoid.” The stereotype of the paranoid pot user has, like most stereotypes, a basis in fact. It is commonly known, and doesn’t much need a study to prove it.
Consider my tagline: What doe the Left want me to do? It wants you to go get high. Because you are far less useful that way.
Since personal possession is already legal in Alaska you would like to them out of the union to?
Correlation is not causation. The cause of many of the Netherlands ills comes from the ROP.
I have absolutely no problem with people using the medium of their choice to get high in the privacy of their home, peacefully and causing no problems to others.
I am disgusted at only those who want to force their thinking on others.
The government will need pot to quiet down a restive population and pot taxes to fill their empty coffers.
“A gram is better than a damn.”
Everyone has a right to their opinions, & stating them isn't forcing anything....it's simply called free speech. I believe that adults can -- & DO -- discuss this rationally, just like we are now.
I appreciate what you said re: people & the privacy of their homes, 'cuz I agree 110% (thank you!)....& when I say "people" I am referring ONLY to ADULTS over the age of 21, provided that the state in which the resident lives has been given its right under the 9th & 10th Amendments to decide where to go on this issue. That's all I am asking for, & NOTHING more.
So do you believe that I was a repeat offender when I was addicted to nicotine for 20 yrs? Wouldn't you call that "negligent behavior"?
What about parents who smoke cigarettes in their car while their children are in the back seat. Isn't that being "a danger to other people"? What about smoking around an asthmatic (especially children w/ asthma), for example?
No one who opposes marijuana use is pretending that excessive use of alcohol is a good thing.
We are saying there is a marked difference between alcohol and marijuana, and marijuana is worse.
“The anti-pot laws are a dismal failure! I want freedom & liberty for people to abuse their body with the poison of their choice so long it does not hurt others.”
I don’t. I don’t want it to be legal to destroy yourself, most especially your mind. This is a basic difference between a libertarian and a conservative position. Conservatives recognize that societies can not function without a good majority of sane, rational people. I know that we would LIKE that to be the case. It would be easier to just let everybody do everything they want to do. But our desire does not change reality.
As for the pot laws being a dismal failure, no they aren’t. FAR more people would use it if it were legal. The border of “legality” makes a lot of difference to a lot of people.
No, retarded people are morons that smoke pot and use drugs and don't think their behavior diminishes the quality of life for everyone.
And, according to the last Gallup poll on the subject, only 27% of conservatives support marijuana legalization while 72% of liberals do. So, the plants here the LOSERS supporting legalizing pot, an idea that has failed in every left-wing nation or state it has been tried.
I truly hope the next pothead on the highway is driving on the other side of a highway you're on.
? So, the recreational use of cocaine, PCP, LSD and harder drugs is something that isn't negligent and a danger to other people? It's unbelievable that anyone could believe that. Such drugs cause those taking to control of themselves and harm others.
All drug usage, murder and crime in the Netherlands increased after marijuana was decriminalized in the mid-1980s over a 20-year period. And, marijuana use is proven gateway to harder drug usage and it isn't arguable that intoxication is a factor in about half the murder and results in addicts committing crimes to get drugs.
Nicotine doesn't cause one lose control of one's sense and doesn't endanger other people.
They won't continue to rise as soon as it is legalized and the ensuing increase in drug usage, auto fatalities and crime occurs.
But, you'd rather believe Barney Frank's arguments than Ronald Reagan's on the issue. Is that because you like to smoke pot?
2. Of course pot is the first illicit drug used before someone who is a heroin user or a coke user goes on to try that. For one, it's a much more mild drug than those two. When I was a kid and first visited an amusement park I didn't go right on a 300 foot roller coaster that went 70+ MPH. I rode the Ferris Wheel and the Tilt O Wheel first before I would even consider riding that. Plus, it's the more common, widely available drug in the illicit marketplace. I would wager most people come across pot in their lives before they come across heroin or coke.
That being said, the numbers disprove the gateway theory. There are 15.2 million past month pot users. 2.4 million are past month cocaine users. 119k have used heroin in the past month. And about 600k past month meth users. If you combine them all (about 3.1 million) the percentage is 20% of all of the popular hard drug past month users equals the total of past month pot users. If pot were a gateway drug, I'd think that number would be over 20%.
3. I've read the study. Your claim was that it was frequent. That is what I'm disputing. Psychosis in general is infrequent in this country. This would be like saying that if you go swimming in the ocean and wear a red bathing suit you are 40% more likely to get bit by a shark. Yet if that increased the odds of getting bit by a shark from 1 in a million to 1 and 600k, that wouldn't mean that wearing red trunks makes one get bit by a shark "frequently."
How is one "less useful" if they are getting high, compared to pretty much all the crap out there where one can tune reality out? Is the person getting high "less useful" than my ex-girlfriend who would spend hours at home watching crap like the Bachelor and Bad Girls Club? Or is that person "less useful" than my cousin who plays World of Warcraft for what seems to be 12 hours a day?
Interesting.
One drug you can overdose on. One drug causes reckless and violent behavior when too much of it is indulged in. One drug is so addictive that you can literally die from it if you quit it cold turkey (known as the DTs). One drug causes massive liver problems when it is abused.
You are correct about one thing, there is a marked difference.
Alcohol is more responsible for more death, destruction, and violence than every other drug combined. I think your concerns are misplaced.
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