Marijuana

[bugfartboy]

Ducks: Slightly. But not much. I've just seen people at school whom I'm sure use it regularly. And I really don't want to end up like them.

DeagonX: *sigh and disappointed head shake*

[Deagonx]

Well its true :P


I bet the Garden of Eve is made of marijuana.

[Ertxiem]

Duckling, you ended up not double posting! But if you did it wouldn't be a problem since you were giving 2 lengthy replies to 2 different people.

Going point by point.

1. I meant the figure physical arm vs dependence. According to that figure, cannabis causes both less physical harm and less dependency than tobacco and alcohol.
And remember that smoking marijuana isn't the only way of consuming it. So, the cancer comes from smoking something (be it tobacco or marijuana).

2. A treaty is an agreement between countries. In this case, based on medical facts and politics (as any treaty). So, the substances included on that treaty can be changed by the WHO (again based on medical facts and politics). Any country can lobby for one substance to be included or removed.

And regarding my points. It's true that the overall consumption is reduced when prohibition is in place. However, high consumptions exist with or without prohibition.
See the wikipedia on the US Prohinition. And the thing is: the dependency is what causes the most health problems, and prohibiting will not avoid it. Furthermore, prohibition brings a new problem: increased crime. And you can't avoid this one: if it's forbidden, the price is high; and if the price is high, it's more worthy to take the risk.

2. If your point was about recreational drugs, then both alcohol and tobacco should have the same treatment. Anyway, the taxes can be justified by the costs associated to guaranteeing the quality of the substance and to the treatment of the health problems associated with consumption. I mentioned the revenue as a less significant benefit.

Furthermore, by taxing marijuana, the ones who pay are the ones who can be a burden in the future to the state. Unlike now, that all of us pay taxes and a part of it is spent in the fight against drug dealers.

3. I didn't explain myself very well (I wasn't talking about obesity at all). I meant that drug sold on the streets has a large fluctuations in the quality. And the dealers add other products to the drug just to increase the weight of the package sold. The fluctuations in the quality and the products added increase the risk of health problems.

4. I disagree. If the sentences aren't proportional to the offence (or the risk to the society) then the laws will transmit the wrong impression. Uninformed people may think that substances with similar sentences are more or less the same thing and try any of those.
And forget getting rid of marijuana or any other drug, by the way. "Evidence of the inhalation of cannabis smoke can be found in the 3rd millennium B.C" It's around for 5000 years, so I do think it's ingrained in the human culture.

So, I still think that consumers will be able to have a better health if marijuana is legalized. It doesn't mean that it could be sold in any store. One way of doing it was selling (or even offering in some specific cases) marijuana in specific places. The quality would be controlled and the side effects too. And the crime related to the illegal commerce of marijuana would drop.

[ArtDrake]

Number three is malarkey. The marijuana drug is, while not physically addictive, heavily psychologically addictive and habit-forming. Workers are completely unproductive while on the drug, while with moderated use of alcohol, workers can still continues to function, albeit not with heavy machinery. Marijuana smoking is brain-damaging, behavior-altering, judgement-impairing, and carcinogenic.

Oh. I don't quite see the chart as contradicting what I said.

In my comparison of marijuana to alcohol, I was speaking of the immediate behavioral effects. The chart, as I see it, doesn't compare bahavioral effects. Also, the chart's only a rough guide, seeing as there're different types of effects, and the effects might be judged to be harmful differently. For an absurd example, suppose there's a drug that causes people to go on a murdering rampage. It isn't directly harmful to the durg user as such, but causes people to hurt the drug user in self-defense, causes emotional harm later, and may cause the drug user to commit suicide after they realize what they've done. Depending on how you gauge harm to the user, this drug might rank at zero or at through-the-roof.

Acknowledged, the US can lobby, but it might be hard to change the WHO's mind on this decision.

About recreational drugs, I think they should all be stamped out, possibly including alcohol (moderate use, I'm not sure about), and especially tobacco. Even if they can't.

And now, I give up. If we can't get rid of drug use, what's the point? The only thing I can think of that might solve the problem of drug use is to try to tell people what it does to them, and that didn't work with tobacco. Everything I can think of has already been tried, and discredited by the drug industry as mere propaganda, or just ignored. "Your Brain On Drugs", lung cancer pictures, first hand accounts from people that have to have the vibrating devices to make sound in their throats and vocalize... none of it works.

Last thing, as a hypothetical: What if we could create a vaccine that destroyed certain drug chemicals before they reached the brain? That way, people could prevent their children from getting addicted to drugs at an early age, and as adults, they could choose to continue taking the drug-destroyer. Hm...

[Ertxiem]

I agree that the degree of damage (and addiction) is subjective. Nevertheless, the picture I posted is from a paper in the Lancet, one of the best scientific journals. I didn't read the original paper, so I can't really tell how they estimated the values.

I also think that it's not likely that marijuana is removed by the WHO from the list of substances.

I agree that there is no need for the use of recreational drugs by anyone.

Education certainly plays a role in reducing the number of people that tries drugs. But that alone isn't a solution to the problem. In fact, I don't see any good solution to the drug problem. In my opinion, some attitudes (on the individual level and on the government level) can reduce the problem but not eliminate it. And the actions that reduce crime (for instance, drug legalization) would increase the number of small consumers. So, this would be a really hard balance to attain.

The problem with a vaccine is the following: drugs contain either molecules that our brain produce or molecules similar to the ones produced by our brain. So, a vaccine would be very hard to make in either case.

[ArtDrake]

About Lancet and your point thereabout: acknowledged, understood, and agreed.

Your fourth point: Quite so. I think we agree that it is a problem, but just not on how to deal with the problem. On second thought, excessive jail terms isn't actually a rational solution to the problem, but the idea stands that if there were a very serious deterrent (but if the deterrent didn't apply to a greater extent to drugs that were more damaging and addictive, the public might get the wrong impression) to doing drugs, perhaps less people would abuse / use drugs.

True. Which is why it remains so sadly a hypothetical.

[Deagonx]

Oh, I already stated a simple resolution: Legalize it, its not harmful, not intoxication, it doesnt cause cancer, it doesnt make you lazy, it doesnt kill brain cells THC actually increases production of which.


So why not?

Oh wait... people are ignorant and think its this horrible horrible thing because the media portrays it that way.

[SmartyPants]

1. It is a plant, it is nature. Not something concocted by human beings.

My aunt was hospitalized due to her using "natural" remedies.  Just because something is natural, doesn't mean it is healthy.  I perfer the thinks "concocted by human beings", because they are approved by the FDA.

2. The reason it was illegalized was because [cannot remember name] spread a hate campaign about it to protect his interests in the wood industry. Hemp is a very cheap source for paper.

Every pot head is quick to point out that early 20th century businessmen in the paper industry were against pot.  unfortunately, every pothead that knew that part of history didn't know anything else about history.  If they had any understanding of history, then they would realize there hardly every just one cause for anything.  Can you honestly tell me that the only reason that society continues to pass new anti-drug laws is to protect the timber industry?

3. It is not as addicting, nor intoxicating as both smoking and alcohol. Yet both of those are legal.

People always point out that pot isn't physically addictive.  Well alcohol isn't physically addictive either, so why are there so many alcoholics?  That is because drugs can also be mentally addictive.

4. If the government sold and taxed weed it would be a big source of money for the government.

We should also make cigarettes legal for minors, so we bring in more government taxes.

5. More than half of America does it, infact.. more than half of the human race has done it, or does it frequently.

I bet almost everyone has stolen something once and has hit someone once.  Should theft and violence be legal too?

4: MARIJUANA IS NOT A DRUG! It is basically the some concept as tobacco, a plant that you burn.

Marijuana and alcohol are both drugs because they effect your nervous system.

Those 'studies' that proved it kills brain cells... Hmm let me describe the test.

They put masks on monkeys and fed nothing but weed through it. They got no oxygen and brain cells died.
Carcinogenic? Many many things are claimed carcinogenic. If I drank soda for 4 years and got cancer they would claim soda was carcinogenic. It is not judgement impairing, it heavily relaxes you and puts you in better spirits.

Where you high when you were making up this crap?  You can't make baseless accusations, because you don't like the results.  Yes, diet soda will cause you cancer if you drink about two liters of it every day.  If you actually look at the studies that Duckling is refering to, then you will notice they weren't giving extreme amounts of THC to the monkeys like they were to the mice in the diet soda experiment.

5: You cannot say for fact that no one you know does it. I know TEACHERS that do it. My BROTHERS do it. My PARENTS do it. My NEIGHBORS do it.

We now know who is funding the Mexican Drug War.  I hope your teachers, brothers, parents, and neighbors need to get high is worth the death of thousands of people.  People think that buying marijuana is a victimless crime, but the money they spend on drugs does into the hands of murders who will use that money to buy weapons.

God made the cannabis plant. Therefore, isn't it alright?

God also made poison oak, but I wouldn't smoke that either.

[ArtDrake]

im2smart4u, hate to contradict you, especially on one of the few issues on which we agree, but alcohol is physically addictive; that is, it causes physical dependence, where one builds up a tolerance and there are withdrawal symptoms. Other than that, I agree with all that you've said thus far.

EDIT: This just in!

Just wanna get this straight with you, and I sincerely hope that I dont come off as hostile or rude.

Marijuana is not carcinogenic. Infact, they give patients with pancreatic cancer weed to smoke to help the cancer. Marijuana is also proven to improve asthma. Its more of a medical drug than anything.
So please, refrain from that in your arguments.

Just wanna get this straight with you, and I sincerely hope that I don't come off as (too) hostile or rude.

Marijuana is very possibly carcinogenic, as is most smoke inhalation. The only combustion reaction in which you can safely imbibe the by-products is the burning of hydrogen. In fact (two words), I'd like to know who gives patients weed, because possession of, and distribution of, and possibly perscription as a medicine of (I'm not sure about that one) Schedule I restricted substances is illegal. If you can give me a name, I'll be sure to report this incident of malpractice to the State Board of Medicine.

You could be confusing the marijuana drug with tetrahydrocannabinol, which is the only cannabinide approved of by the FDA for medical use. It's sold as Marinol, and can be useful as a painkiller. Doctors give this to patients who are dying of pancreatic cancer so they aren't in as much pain. All other cannabinides are Schedule I restricted substances, while Marinol is Schedule III.

Marijuana is also proven to get people that have asthma, but attempt to smoke the marijuana plant anyway, rushed to the hospital, severly injured, oxygen-deprived, dying, or dead, because the smoke is an irritant and only serves to inflame the throat and chest, as well as closing off the airways and bronchial tubes.

It's more of a recreational, long-term killer drug than anything.

So please, refrain from preaching the value of medicinal marijuana in the Marijuana thread, and I won't refute your claims.

[MikeW781]

You can't abuse marijuana LOL!

I know kids who have died from the smoke... not the weed, but the smoke itself can kill. Although its worth pointing out that they were not smoking safetly, but still. Its dangerous.

Honestly, I know tons of people who smoke, and from my experience- not one of them is anybody. They all have no ambition in anything, and some of the ones I knew before they did pot were different. Its not a direct, instant change... you don't smoke and loose 30 points of your IQ. However, its long term effects are notable, and with every case I have seen, they are bad. People smoke due to the age-old human problem of putting short-term happiness as a top priority.

Also, there's almost no use in comparing drugs severity though, the thing is, they are all still bad.

[ArtDrake]

But I think we can all agree that heroin is worse for you than marijuana drug... right?

[Deagonx]

Right along with alcohol and tobacco, yet they are both legal.

[ArtDrake]

Yes, but they shouldn't be. On the other hand, no, because heroin is much more addicting and harmful than either of the two.

[Deagonx]

I was speaking about Marijuana O_o

[Ertxiem]

im2smart4u: would you like to address my points?