Posted on 01/21/2014 4:29:12 AM PST by Kaslin
How did we end up in a world where Big Gulps are being banned in New York while the welcome mat for potheads is being rolled out in Colorado? How is it that cigarette smokers are pariahs, while people smoking weed are being cheered? This is despite the fact that potheads are almost universally recognized as unmotivated, low class, degenerate – and, yes, smelly failures. Even the ones that get somewhere in life, like Barack Obama, usually turn out to be mediocrities.
Moreover, we all recognize that smoking is a dirty habit that makes you die younger and while drinking is a potentially dangerous habit that leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths per year, but we want to condone pot use on top of that? That's like saying you've got a bad back and a bad shoulder; so why not break your knee cap to top it all off. How many lives are we willing to flush down the drain because a significant number of Americans tried pot a handful of times in their lives, got away with it and now feel guilty about it? One hundred for every person in prison? 1000? 10,000? There's a reason pot was made illegal in the first place and quite frankly, the only reason alcohol and cigarettes are legal is because they're so deeply ingrained in our society that we can't get rid of them.
There is certainly a financial and human cost to keeping marijuana illegal and we can see it in our prisons. But, there would be an even larger cost to making it legal.
1) It's extremely addictive for some people: If you don't want to take my word for it, listen to Dr. Drew Pinsky who has been working with addicts for decades.
It would be malpractice to say that cannabis isn't addictive. Anybody who's experienced it, actually been addicted to it, knows how profound that addiction is.... The difficult thing about marijuana addiction is some people, even though they're addicted can do fine with it for many many years before they start to have difficultly, but eventually the high starts wearing off, people start smoking a lot more to try to get that high back and that's when they descend into difficulties. ...I've been treating cannabis addiction for 20 years. When people are addicted to cannabis, cocaine and alcohol the drug they have the most difficult time giving up is the cannabis. It is extremely addictive...for some people. I think that's where people get confused. It's not very addictive for many people. It's a small subset of people with a genetic potential for addiction. But for them it is really tough. You only need talk to them, they'll tell you how tough it is.
Additionally, that "small subset" Dr. Drew is talking about isn't so small in a big country like America. "Of the 7.3 million persons aged 12 or older classified with illicit drug dependence or abuse in 2012, 4.3 million persons had marijuana dependence or abuse." It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the more legal and available marijuana becomes, the higher those numbers are going to go.
2) This experiment hasn't worked out so well for Amsterdam: Humans being what they are, just about any stupid idea we can come up with has already been tried somewhere else. Amsterdam is the most famous place across the world that has effectively legalized pot. It has even turned into a tourist destination for potheads. Legalizing weed has been a huge success there, right? Actually, not so much...
Its citizens are now alarmed that their children are increasingly being exposed to it.
Amsterdam today became the first city in the Netherlands to ban students from smoking marijuana at school.
The city's mayor Eberhard van der Laan introduced the law after school chiefs complained about pupils turning up to classes high after rolling up outside the grounds.
Marijuana is widely available in Holland as, although it is technically illegal, police can't prosecute people for possession of small amounts.
But it has also had the unwanted side effect that Dutch children are frequently exposed to the drug in public areas.
Additionally, contrary to the claims that legalizing it will reduce crime, in Amsterdam it’s been found that crime is now centering around the coffeehouses where marijuana is sold.
…Certainly the outlook for coffee shops is bleak. Among the few policies that the three parties in the new coalition government agree on is the need to reduce their numbers. The governing agreement released last week laid out plans that will force them to become members-only clubs and shut down those shops located near schools.
The coalition is also advancing the idea of prohibiting the sale of cannabis to non-Dutch residents, which amounts to a death knell for many coffee shops.
...The circumstances that led to the tolerance policies have changed in the past decade, as large-scale crime around coffee shops and the legal sex trade became more visible. In particular, the absence of legal means for coffee shops to obtain cannabis has highlighted their association with organized crime.
But the open-minded instincts that helped foster the policies are also being questioned. And it is not just the far-right opposing coffee shops. The traditional parties of power on the center-right, the Christian Democrats and the Liberal VVD, have also moved against the policies they once promoted.
That doesn't exactly sound like a success story, does it?
3) Marijuana is terrible for your mental health: Marijuana may even be WORSE than cigarettes. At least cigarettes don't peel points off of your IQ.
A recent Northwestern University study found that marijuana users have abnormal brain structure and poor memory and that chronic marijuana abuse may lead to brain changes resembling schizophrenia. The study also reported that the younger the person starts using marijuana, the worse the effects become.
In its own report arguing against marijuana legalization, the American Medical Association said: "Heavy cannabis use in adolescence causes persistent impairments in neurocognitive performance and IQ, and use is associated with increased rates of anxiety, mood and psychotic thought disorders."
So, there's a good reason most habitual marijuana users come off as stupid. The drug is making them stupider, even when they're not high. You really want your kids on that?
4) Marijuana is terrible for your physical health: How bad is marijuana for you? It's even more toxic than cigarette smoke. Regular users are hit with devastating lung problems as much as 20 years earlier than smokers. Even small amounts of marijuana can cause temporary sterility and it has a terrible impact on the babies of women who smoke including "birth defects, mental abnormalities and increased risk of leukemia in children." If your standard is, "Well, it's better for you than Meth or Crack," that's true, but you're deluding yourself if you think pot is anything other than absolutely horrible for your health.
5) The drug decimates many people's lives: Movies portray potheads as harmless, fun-loving people who spend their time giggling and munching Cheetos, but they don't show these people when they're flunking out of school, losing their jobs, frustrated because they can't concentrate or losing the love of their lives because they just don't want be with a pot smoking loser anymore. Even in the limited number of studies that are out there, the numbers are stark.
A study of 129 college students found that, among those who smoked the drug at least twenty-seven of the thirty days before being surveyed, critical skills related to attention, memory and learning were seriously diminished. A study of postal workers found that employees who tested positive for marijuana had 55% more accidents, 85% more injuries and a 75% increase in being absent from work. In Australia, a study found that cannabis intoxication was responsible for 4.3% of driver fatalities.
...Students who use marijuana have lower grades and are less likely to get into college than nonsmokers. They simply do not have the same abilities to remember and organize information compared to those who do not use these substances.
It's bad enough that we already lose so many Americans early to cancer caused by cigarettes, alcoholism, and drunken driving. Do we really want to endorse the loss of millions more potentially productive Americans via Marijuana? Do we move on from there to Crack, Heroin or Meth? Some people would say, “If they want to do it, great, then it's no business of ours.” But, you can also bet that those same people will be complaining about all the junkies and welfare cases that will be created by the policy they endorsed.
So, ask yourself a few key questions. Is legalizing Marijuana going to make this a better country or a worse one? Would you want to live in a neighborhood filled with people who regularly smoke marijuana? Would you want your kids regularly smoking pot? Now is the time to think about it because although it's easy to thoughtlessly legalize a drug like marijuana, when things go predictably wrong down the road, it will be a lot harder to put the genie back in the bottle than people seem to think.
I used to be very into online gaming, was head of a clan and admin over our dedicated server which hosted what was at the time the top ranked Call of Duty UO servers.
The vast majority of participants were geeks and never touched drugs or alcohol.
And I agree that video games are as -if not more- addictive than hard drugs to those that have a propensity towards compulsive behavior. There have been many studies that claim they are comparable to cocaine in the way the brain is effected. Maybe. I’ve seen guys -and some girls- completely obsessed. You name it, divorces and failed careers, just as if they were on meth or crack.
If by drugs you mean the substances you mentioned, yes. Do you find that so hard to believe? Drop by XBOX Live, PSNetwork, or any of a variety of internet-based game chat services and see for yourself. The average age for gamers is around 35 years of age. Do I think a majority of these gamers smoke? Drink? Do drugs? ABSOLUTELY.
Call it empirical evidence...
It sounds, though, like it should be a controlled substance instead of an illegal one, either being bought only with a prescription or being bought only in a state store specifically licensed to do so and with ID proving an age over 21.
Supplying it to minors should be a crime.
I was just a young kid living at home.
I didn’t understand at the time what was happening.
You put the puzzle pieces together as you grow older - and no - the “criminal possession” part wasn’t happening at home (at least not in the open)
We got to see the glorious after affects upon her return home
Reasonable.....making that work in real life could be problematic
but at least it’s reasinable. Treat it like ETOH.
True, nicotine is addictive, habit forming and smells. No argument but unlike other drugs it doesnt alter your personality and you dont get stoned. No one ever went to jail saying rhey didnt mean to beat their kids but they smoked too many cigarettes and couldnt help it.
Should have also mentioned penalties for driving under the influence, disorderly, public intoxication, etc.
With alcohol all these are based on blood levels and the nature of the bad behavior. It should be the same.
To date there is no test comparable to BAC results etc. that can definitively
show someone is “under the influence” for marijuana and many drugs.
Lab tests can show the presence of drugs or metabolic byproducts of drugs
but there is no real correlation between levels measured and impairement
of abilities. Alcohol provides a fairly straight line correlation between amount measured and impairement and even then there is variations based on physiology. Science is still behind the curve on measuring impairment
and the legal system needs hard data to set legal definitions for non ETOH drugs.
Similar to alcohol, there is an established impairment level in Colorado of five nanograms of active tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—the active psychoactive component of marijuana—per milliliter of whole blood.
http://www.coloradodot.info/news/2014-news-releases/01-2014/recreational-marijuana-legal-impaired-driving-not
There hasn't really been an obvious reason until now given that the stuff itself was illegal. The military has a fairly precise test to measure drug amounts, including THC, and they've used it to remove those who abused drugs.
It's a starting point for research, and I assume if they can put a man on the moon, then they can get a quick analysis for a police traffic stop, and a BAC-type test for legal issues.
The illegality of pot is a statist tool, as are those who support it.
Maybe smoking doesn’t alter your personality, I won’t argue that one way or the other but, as a former smoker who is the son of a smoker and grew up in an environment where teenagers were allowed to bring cigarettes to high school if their parents signed a permission slip for them I can certainly tell you that DEPRIVING an addicted smoker of nicotine can CERTAINLY change his or her personality for the worse very quickly and it can be amazing to see to what lengths a person will go to get a cigarette.
I could tell you about my first cousin, who in his youth had been a very athletic, classicly handsome young man with an absolutely brilliant mind and three times the energy of anyone around him who developed emphysema but kept on smoking until he died in a nursing home in his early sixties. At one point he burned his face trying to smoke a cigarette while wearing an oxygen canula in a hospital room. He was five or six years older than I and I had really admired him when I was a young boy. Remembering all that he went through is one of the few things that can cause my eyes to water now at age 69.
If I made a long list and it WOULD be a long one, of all the stupid things I have done in 69 years, smoking cigarettes would be near the top of the list.
Probably....the impetus with legal MJ now exists to
finalize standards.
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