Legalization of Marijuana

You're still missing my point here. Are there quantifiable damages? Of course there are. Do you know how many bones are broken, people killed, fights taking place in the world of sports? What's the benefit of going to a football game? Cars that are designed to be able to go 100 km/h faster than cars are allowed to go anywhere in the world? They're not a liability?

You have a severely skewed perception on how the world works, I'm afraid. People who invest and deal with things that aren't universally beneficial, while carrying certain risks with themselves are apparently fools, which is an oversimplification to say the least.

Why do I think that if one bad thing is legal, we should make all bad things legal? I don't. Why do you think that I'm focused on making "bad" things legal? I'm focused on providing choices and freedoms, as that is the direction our civilisation is headed to at the moment. With these choices and freedoms come new risks and it is our duty to reduce them and limit them as little as possible. What you seem to suggest is the world we should strive for would be almost completely opposite, limiting as much as possible and getting rid of all the choices with potential risks and damages.

THC is a lot less harmful to the body than caffeine yet we let little kids drink soda and coffee and don't let anyone ingest THC (unless prescribed in certain states). It's also less harmful than cigarettes, alcohol, car exhaust, fatty synthetic foods and many many prescription drugs such as Adderall or Prozac.

Also arresting people for marijuana possession wastes police officers' time, wastes jail space, tax dollars and the way in which the US legal system handles these cases can ruin a lot of peoples' lives for something incredibly minute. My friend just got arrested for possessing less than a gram, and although her live isn't screwed over, she has to go through a lot of unnecessary bs which is affecting how much time she has for her school work, which is should be (and is for her) the most important thing for college students.

And the whole "gateway drug" thing is just plain dumb. Maybe we should offer factual drug education in schools that isn't filled with "War on Drugs" propaganda. Maybe we should show students films such as Requiem for a Dream, have them read books by authors who have experienced real addiction and perhaps it would give people a more realistic outlook on truly harmful drugs. Or maybe we should actually give help to people with serious addiction issues instead of blaming it on a plant. An addict will always be an addict, weed or no weed.

Marijuana is just a plant with psychoactive (and medical) properties. When my mother was a hospice nurse, she administered it to cancer patients who could not eat or drink to save their lives and watched them actually do it because of the affects of THC.

Also, my friends and I smoke weed very regularly. We're all very good students who make As and Bs (I made straight As this quarter), routinely do our work, talk to our families, have motivation and are successful in a stressful/hard working environment. They also don't experience heightened anxiety or stress because of it. I do but that's because I have a pre-existing condition that has nothing to do with what I put into my body . We're all perfectly healthy too. It's not just me and my friends either, most people at my school smoke weed and they're not failing out, and my school is hard! It's a lot of work.

Xsoteria:

You're still missing my point here. Are there quantifiable damages? Of course there are. Do you know how many bones are broken, people killed, fights taking place in the world of sports? What's the benefit of going to a football game? Cars that are designed to be able to go 100 km/h faster than cars are allowed to go anywhere in the world? They're not a liability?

They are. Do you think I have an issue with restricting or prohibiting any of those things? I am not missing your point, I have addressed it several times. The problem is that you are caught up in the assumption that these totally separate issues are somehow relevant to the status of marijuana. In the debate over the legality of marijuana, nothing matters but marijuana. I can give you terms to help you grasp the sort of things we should look for when considering restrictions and prohibitions, which I did.

Do the things you listed have quantifiable and identifiable damages? Are any of the things you listed mind altering (i.e., do they impair judgement)? Can you stop doing any of those things and be free of any lasting effects immediately? Are any of those associated with long-term mental problems? Are those things well-researched to the degree that their influences and implications are understood? Do they contribute to society in their recreational use? Is peer pressure or indoctrination a factor in their prevalence?

I expect a number of the items you listed would afford the answer "yes" to a number of these questions (for marijuana, the answer is "yes" to all of them). But that is entirely irrelevant. The question comes down to marijuana, which, without any real dispute, I have demonstrated is harmful in recreational use. It is also being inappropriately administered in the medical world. Shall we go over the statistics again? Would you like me to provide new sources? Do you wish to delve into the impact that people like the poster above me have when they purchase their drugs and fund the massive drug cartel machine in Latin America? Do you realize that the "coffee shops" of the Netherlands buy their product from the black market and that the international tourists cause immense problems for their local municipalities?

Recreational marijuana use is harmful and serves no benefit to society. That is the truth and that is the only consideration that matters in this argument.

You have a severely skewed perception on how the world works, I'm afraid. People who invest and deal with things that aren't universally beneficial, while carrying certain risks with themselves are apparently fools, which is an oversimplification to say the least.

Xsoteria:

Why do I think that if one bad thing is legal, we should make all bad things legal? I don't.

Then perhaps you should change your argument: "Alcohol (or xyz) is legal, and marijuana isn't as bad, so we should legalize it." It's flawed in so many fundamental ways. The things you are listing (x,y,z) are often huge killers/health issues. It just so happens that I think alcohol should be illegal. But it is completely irrelevant. As I said, drugs get no precedence. Furthermore, how "bad" marijuana is in comparison to these things is subjective and not measurable. There's too much to consider with the drug culture. I would say that alcohol probably has a worse impact on society than marijuana, but marijuana is more damaging than television and sports. I could be wrong. It's subjective.

Xsoteria:

Why do you think that I'm focused on making "bad" things legal?

I don't; I am only refuting your reasoning as it is.

Xsoteria:

I'm focused on providing choices and freedoms, as that is the direction our civilisation is headed to at the moment. With these choices and freedoms come new risks and it is our duty to reduce them and limit them as little as possible.

Then I advise that you change your argument to something that reflects that. You should be saying, "Even though there are risks, marijuana should be legal because people should have the right to be idiots," or something to that effect (without my bias imbued into it). If freedom is your focus, you are wasting your time assuming that I believe our current state is perfect except for our marijuana laws. I think many things should be illegal; your attempts to draw comparisons just fall short a fair percentage of the time and they really have no logical place in the argument anyway.

Xsoteria:

What you seem to suggest is the world we should strive for would be almost completely opposite, limiting as much as possible and getting rid of all the choices with potential risks and damages.

That misrepresents my perspective a lot; you're trying to surmise some broad principle behind my argument because you seem reluctant to accept that I essentially am saying:
Recreational marijuana = dangerous & not beneficial, therefore marijuana should be illegal.

Zef2Def:

THC is a lot less harmful to the body than caffeine yet we let little kids drink soda and coffee and don't let anyone ingest THC (unless prescribed in certain states). It's also less harmful than cigarettes, alcohol, car exhaust, fatty synthetic foods and many many prescription drugs such as Adderall or Prozac.

You cannot prove these opinions, and they don't entirely apply or matter anyway.

Zef2Def:

Also arresting people for marijuana possession wastes police officers' time, wastes jail space, tax dollars and the way in which the US legal system handles these cases can ruin a lot of peoples' lives for something incredibly minute. My friend just got arrested for possessing less than a gram, and although her live isn't screwed over, she has to go through a lot of unnecessary bs which is affecting how much time she has for her school work, which is should be (and is for her) the most important thing for college students.

Perhaps you and your friends should consider not breaking the law, then you will not have to undergo all these things that you deem to be "unnecessary." Did you purchase your weed from a dealer? Can you bear it on your conscience that you are providing income for a murderous mafia that is known to slaughter and behead innocent people? Nevermind; the drug cartels are usually put to shame by any capable police force. Those officers have my praise.

Zef2Def:

And the whole "gateway drug" thing is just plain dumb. Maybe we should offer factual drug education in schools that isn't filled with "War on Drugs" propaganda. Maybe we should show students films such as Requiem for a Dream, have them read books by authors who have experienced real addiction and perhaps it would give people a more realistic outlook on truly harmful drugs.

Right. Use scripted films over statistics. Let's really give them the Hollywood treatment while they're young. I'm all for educating the youth. We don't do enough of it. We could do a better job of it. But why legalize marijuana? That sort of measure only tells the public, "Hey, the government says we can do it, so it must be safe!" Legalization is a step backwards. In an ideal society, people would not smoke marijuana, so let's not concede that unless we have to (and we don't, so long as people like you make the responsible decision to stop integrating drugs into society).

All drugs are "gateway drugs," just as all video games are "gateway video games." Experience and connections will often bring people back.

Zef2Def:

Or maybe we should actually give help to people with serious addiction issues instead of blaming it on a plant. An addict will always be an addict, weed or no weed.

Don't you start doing that! Don't you go down that illogical road where you imply that somehow all plants are harmless!

Zef2Def:

Marijuana is just a plant with psychoactive (and medical) properties.

No! You did it! Oh, mercy. I had suspected it, but now I am sure: you are under the influence of drug-culture propaganda. Who "planted" that thought in your head? Get rid of it! Or do I have to show you the long list of dangerous and harmful plants in this world?

Anyway, what you say in that above quote should really translate to: "Marijuana is a psychoactive drug."

Zef2Def:

When my mother was a hospice nurse, she administered it to cancer patients who could not eat or drink to save their lives and watched them actually do it because of the affects of THC.

Studies have demonstrated that marijuana is no more effective than a placebo in increasing the appetite of cancer patients.

http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/results/summary/2006/cannabis0806
A midstudy review even had that research curtailed because the marijuana was having such negative effects on participants: “Certain adverse events, however, were statistically higher in both cannabis groups, including diarrhea, severe constipation, pain, and fatigue. Overall, those taking CE were nearly twice as likely to have adverse events than those taking placebo.”

Zef2Def:

Also, my friends and I smoke weed very regularly. We're all very good students who make As and Bs (I made straight As this quarter), routinely do our work, talk to our families, have motivation and are successful in a stressful/hard working environment. They also don't experience heightened anxiety or stress because of it.

That's all fine and dandy, but really you shouldn't be trying to determine the fate of national politics based on your personal experience. It would be far more effective if you were to produce some statistics here.

Zef2Def:

I do but that's because I have a pre-existing condition that has nothing to do with what I put into my body .

Are you sure? That sounds like your opinion. And that's fine, but isn't it possible that you sometimes smoke to self-medicate? I have no crtiticism to levy against you, but if you could be completely honest in answering that question, I would greatly appreciate it for my personal account. Do you think you have ever smoke to help you with your emotions--perhaps anxiety or depression?

Zef2Def:

We're all perfectly healthy too. It's not just me and my friends either, most people at my school smoke weed and they're not failing out, and my school is hard! It's a lot of work.

Could you tell us how often you smoke, exactly? Could you define "regularly?"

My apologies for being such a sarcastic jerk at times, but when you have my viewpoint on this issue, you wind up debating alone against hordes of people with the opposite opinion, and you can get a bit cranky as a result.

kizzman:

That misrepresents my perspective a lot; you're trying to surmise some broad principle behind my argument because you seem reluctant to accept that I essentially am saying:
Recreational marijuana = dangerous & not beneficial, therefore marijuana should be illegal.

You're right, I'm sorry. I thought you had a consistent principle in mind, something like "things that bring no quantifiable benefits and carry risks with themselves, should be illegal". Apparently you don't - you simply think marijuana should be illegal.

It's fine if you wish to decide the legality issues on a one by one case, but I think that it is a pretty immature way to go about these things. I would suggest it's even somewhat hypocritical to not have a principle when these things are decided, but seeing as how you insist we limit the discussion to marijuana exclusively (which is understandable I suppose), I'll just leave it at this.

Found this earlier; pretty interesting. Source: Jack E. Henningfield, PhD for the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

It makes me feel better about being okay with cannabis, seeing as I'm a regular caffeine-drinker.

Alex; schmetterling!:

http://www.saferchoice.org/images/SAFER/comparingdangers.png

Found this earlier; pretty interesting. Source: Jack E. Henningfield, PhD for the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

It makes me feel better about being okay with cannabis, seeing as I'm a regular caffeine-drinker.

That chart is extremely misleading because it doesn't actually show how drug usage impacts your health and thus how dangerous it is, it just shows how chemically addictive they are (and it's perfectly possible for substances which are not chemically addictive to be addictive behaviours). Consuming coffee regularly, even being addicted to it, poses virtually no serious health dangers unless you're pregnant and has been associated with all kinds of health benefits because of its high level of antioxidants - not the same can be said about regular consumption of marijuana.

If you still think marijuana should be illegal, and you're in the year 2012, you need to do some serious re-thinking and research.

Alcohol is 100x more dangerous than marijuana. /thread.

Ahhhhron:

If you still think marijuana should be illegal, and you're in the year 2012, you need to do some serious re-thinking and research.

Alcohol is 100x more dangerous than marijuana. /thread.

Let's assume the number you pulled out of nowhere is accurate. This is going to be more of a point against your silly statistic than the drug itself.

Alcohol related deaths are approximately 2.5 million annually, causing nearly 4% of deaths worldwide. In Russia, 1 in 5 deaths is attributable to alcohol. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/11/alcohol-related-deaths-_n_821900.html

In the USA, alcohol costs an estimated $185 billion dollars in health and productivity expenditures/losses annually. http://www.forbes.com/2006/08/22/health-drinking-problems_cx_mh_nightlife06_0822costs.html

Even if alcohol is "100x worse than marijuana," that means weed related deaths are approximately 25,000 annually, accounting for 0.2% of deaths in Russia and .04% of deaths worldwide. The drug would also cost the U.S. $1.85 billion dollars per year in productivity and health losses/expenditures.

^
But there are no recorded marijuana deaths. Aspirin kills more people than marijuana. You're just assuming it kills people because alcohol does, but that makes no sense. There is no evidence that there has ever been a death from marijuana. (Most likely owed to the massive amount you would have to ingest to OD, I'm assuming. I believe it's something like 800 joints in an hour. Good luck with that.)

Actually, I made no such assumption myself, I simply used the nonsense statistic provided by Ahhhhron. From there, it was a basic Google search followed by some simple math to demonstrate why his point is moot.

Okay, so we all agree that while there isn't a number affixed to it, currently every "drug" has caused more deaths than marijuana?

I would not agree with that, no. Marijuana may have caused many deaths due to impairment and accidents over the years. Considering its widespread use, I imagine it is more deadly than a number of other drugs out there (I don't know why you used the quotation marks). I think that THC poses less risk to an individual than alcohol and cocaine, for example, but it is dangerous and potentially deadly.

^
But until you can produce literature or statistics the other way, it's just an assumption on your part with nothing to back it up. However, I can produce statistics and literature which support that there has never been a death due to marijuana.

But I have already produced these statistics when we debated a year ago (or however long it was). I imagine I could find them in this forum.

http://www.mibba.com/Forums/Topic/44507/Legalization-of-Marijuana/?page=13

Check my very long post here and scroll down to section c). It has a brief discussion of some statistics found on a pro-marijuana site that admits impairment due to marijuana use can cause fatal accidents.

I don't think it doesn't impair one's ability to drive (in large amounts or when you first start using it). But there are still no direct statistics or records that prove an accident was caused because the person was smoking marijuana or under the influence of it.

On rare occasions, I get so high I can't drive. I always have someone else drive when that happens. But generally, it doesn't impair my ability. It makes me more cautious.

There is no way to prove that an accident is caused by marijuana (or alcohol, for that matter), then. Your judgement of your own behavior while you are high doesn't count for much because you are impaired when you make said judgement. The statistics show that being high on THC poses increased risks for accidents of all kinds, and accidents can be fatal.

http://www.canorml.org/healthfacts/kaiseraccidentstudy.html

And yes, I acknowledge that I am using a NORML source, but I do so to lend referential credibility to my point.

'...Among men, current marijuana users had a 28% higher rate of hospitalization due to injuries than non-users; among women, the increase was 37%. Results were adjusted for alcohol and tobacco use, as well as age, race, education, marital status and medical conditions.'

...

'California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer said that he was not surprised by the results. "This accords with what we have long been advising users in Cal NORML's "Marijuana Health Myths and Facts", namely that accidents are the number one health hazard from marijuana use."'

http://www.annalsofepidemiology.org/article/S1047-2797(02)00411-8/abstract
"Though the results must be viewed cautiously, they suggest that marijuana use may be independently associated with increased risk of hospitalized injury."

kizzman:

There is no way to prove that an accident is caused by marijuana (or alcohol, for that matter), then.

Because you can't get stats for it there's no way to prove it? I have stats for alcohol deaths and driving, alcohol deaths in general, cigarette deaths, deaths from aspirin. You have no data for marijuana stats.

I do, I just posted them. There's no definitive way to prove anything, dru, but studies suggest that being under the influence of marijuana poses increased risk for hospitalization and fatal accidents.