Should U.S legalize Marijuana??

[billvon 2,421]

>I don't know what the answer is.

I don't either. I don't think "make everything that's bad for you illegal" is a good stance, but "let everything go to shit" isn't a good stance either. If we took the money we're spending on drug enforcement and spent it on education and enforcement of drug _behaviors_ (like operating under the influence) I think you'd see a reduction in drug crime, drug abuse and drug-related fatalities. But drug _use_ would likely go up. Bad or good? Depends on your goals I suppose. I guess I don't see much difference between a habitual drinker and a habitual pot smoker, so to me seeing more people use drugs isn't the end of the world.

[stayhigh 2]

I think
1. They should stop anti drug program, because me and bunch of my friend was introduce to drugs thanks to DARE program at school 7th grade.
2. Stop arresting smokers who occasionally smokes at home watching TV or listening to music
3. If they wanna win the War On Drugs, then enforce the law so severe such as death penalty so nobody wants to f??k around with drugs!!!!
4. If govn't can't follow rule number 3 then make it legal....

I can live with out drugs can you??
If you can, who cares about death penalty for does who smoke right???

Bernie Sanders for President 2016

[freethefly 6]

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They should stop anti drug program, because me and bunch of my friend was introduce to drugs thanks to DARE program at school 7th grade.

Just Say No to DARE
After years of ignoring the program's failure, DARE's anti-drug mavens design a new curriculum for a new generation of teenagers
By JESSICA REAVES
Posted Thursday, Feb. 15, 2001
Here’s a news flash: "Just Say No" is not an effective anti-drug message. And neither are Barney-style self-esteem mantras.

While most Americans won’t be stunned by these revelations, they’ve apparently taken a few DARE officials by surprise. According to the New York Times, after years of ignoring stubbornly low success rates, coordinators of the 18-year-old Drug Abuse Resistance Education program are finally coming around to the news that their plan to keep kids off drugs just isn’t working. That means a whole new DARE program — one which critics hope will sidestep existing pitfalls.

An ineffective past
DARE, which is taught by friendly policemen in 75 percent of the nation’s school districts, has been plagued by image problems from the beginning, when it first latched on to Nancy Reagan’s relentlessly sunny and perversely simplistic "Just say No" campaign. The program’s goals include teaching kids creative ways to say "no" to drugs, while simultaneously bolstering their self-esteem (which DARE founders insist is related to lower rates of drug use). It's apparently not a bad way of educating five-year-olds about the dangers of drinking cleaning fluid. But it's a bust at keeping teenagers from smoking pot.

According to an article published in the August 1999 issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, DARE not only did not affect teenagers’ rate of experimentation with drugs, but may also have actually lowered their self-esteem. The study, called "Project DARE: No Effects at 10-Year Follow-Up," bluntly deconstructs every claim the program makes. More than 1,000 10 year-olds enrolled in DARE classes were given a survey about drug use and self-esteem, and then, a decade later, the same group filled out the same questionnaire.

The findings were grim: 20-year-olds who’d had DARE classes were no less likely to have smoked marijuana or cigarettes, drunk alcohol, used "illicit" drugs like cocaine or heroin, or caved in to peer pressure than kids who’d never been exposed to DARE. But that wasn’t all. "Surprisingly," the article states, "DARE status in the sixth grade was negatively related to self-esteem at age 20, indicating that individuals who were exposed to DARE in the sixth grade had lower levels of self-esteem 10 years later." Another study, performed at the University of Illinois, suggests some high school seniors who’d been in DARE classes were more likely to use drugs than their non-DARE peers.

The weakness in the old DARE program, as several studies suggest, was the simplicity of its message — and its panic-level assertions that "drug abuse is everywhere." Kids, program directors learned, don’t respond well to hyperbole, and both the "Just Say No" message and the hysteria implied in the anti-drug rhetoric were pushing students away. It’s also possible, some researchers speculate, that by making drugs seem more prevalent, or "normal" than they actually are, the DARE program might actually push kids who are anxious to fit in towards drugs.


Trying something new
The new DARE curriculum, designed with these criticisms in mind, is less preachy, more experiential. It applies to a broader age-range than the old program, reaching kids not only in fifth grade but in seventh and ninth grades as well. It hinges on discussion groups rather than lectures. And it pointedly does not say "drug abuse is everywhere" — a new angle that researchers hope will make kids realize that maybe everyone doesn’t use drugs after all — so maybe they don’t need to either.

Programs like this inhale money, and by introducing a new curriculum, DARE officials guarantee a renewed federal grant, whether the program works or not. Obviously, the officials are hoping for the best. But even if the program fails, we can hope for a silver lining: Perhaps this first failure has taught DARE directors a degree of humility; maybe this time around it won’t take them 10 years to recognize failure and plot a new course.

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[jshatzkin 0]

Wow. That's a pretty extreme, inaccurate assumption of me. This is not a black or white argument. There are many grey areas, and you are taking much of what I say out of context and placing me outside of the grey area. If it were such a simple issue, one that had no grey areas and could easily be argued on SC, then it would not be such a big issue at all.

Edited to add: I suppose if I were to make such an extreme, overarching false assumption about you, similar to the one you have made about me based on some of my views, I could say you are just another pot smoking conspiracy theory hippie who wants to legalize drugs (isn't that the stereotype of people who want to legalize it?). But, I stay clear from generalizing to that extreme, and really doubt that it's true. Just making a point of how ridiculous your statement about me and the "Reefer Madness" post. You obviously have not read all my posts and are making hasty generalizations.

Jen

[micro 0]

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>I don't know what the answer is.

I don't either. I don't think "make everything that's bad for you illegal" is a good stance, but "let everything go to shit" isn't a good stance either. If we took the money we're spending on drug enforcement and spent it on education and enforcement of drug _behaviors_ (like operating under the influence) I think you'd see a reduction in drug crime, drug abuse and drug-related fatalities. But drug _use_ would likely go up. Bad or good? Depends on your goals I suppose. I guess I don't see much difference between a habitual drinker and a habitual pot smoker, so to me seeing more people use drugs isn't the end of the world.

Bill, there is real wisdom in your post. And your last sentence is definitely true. There IS no difference b/t those two groups.

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[micro 0]

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Wow. That's a pretty extreme, inaccurate assumption of me. This is not a black or white argument. There are many grey areas, and you are taking much of what I say out of context and placing me outside of the grey area. If it were such a simple issue, one that had no grey areas and could easily be argued on SC, then it would not be such a big issue at all.

You'll find she's the queen of such gadfly postings.

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[jshatzkin 0]

I agree that DARE was a big waste of money and simply a false security that we were doing "something" about drug issues. It was horribly ineffective and any study will show that.

Jen

[jenfly00 0]

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Wow. That's a pretty extreme, inaccurate assumption of me. This is not a black or white argument. There are many grey areas, and you are taking much of what I say out of context and placing me outside of the grey area. If it were such a simple issue, one that had no grey areas and could easily be argued on SC, then it would not be such a big issue at all.

Edited to add: I suppose if I were to make such an extreme, overarching false assumption about you, similar to the one you have made about me based on some of my views, I could say you are just another pot smoking conspiracy theory hippie who wants to legalize drugs (isn't that the stereotype of people who want to legalize it?). But, I stay clear from generalizing to that extreme, and really doubt that it's true. Just making a point of how ridiculous your statement about me and the "Reefer Madness" post. You obviously have not read all my posts and are making hasty generalizations.

Sorry you took it personally. My comments were directed solely toward you being a bit naive concerning govt sponsored drug research.

As for your comments about me being a "pot smoking conspiracy theory hippie who wants to legalize drugs ", well ...when you're right, you're right.
And furthermore ...um, what were we talking about again?

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"O brave new world that has such people in it".

[freethefly 6]

http://www.medicalmarijuanaprocon.org/

This organization looks at both sides of the issue and is unbias.

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[Lindsey 0]

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There is no physical addiction ot MJ. There is no physical withdrawal to MJ.

Again, you are posting opinion only. Please scroll to 3 separate posts where I have supplied peer reviewed empirically based evidence showing studies proving addiction and withdrawal existence of MJ. Read the studies, and if you can find one countering it, I will be interested to read it. I think it's fascinating how some can make such general overt statements, which are nothing more than personal opinion not backed by data or research! (at least you have posted nothing but your opinion). Please, you or Lindsey show me some evidence, not just your opinion, about addiction and withdrawal of marijuana supporting your claim.

There is obviously controversy in this area. Any "withdrawal" is medically insignificant....But I'm not interested in getting into that debate because it's not relevant.

But say I give you that....say there's a REAL significant withdrawal syndrome associated with marijuana use, even significant enough to cause psychosis during its course. It's still tangential to what we were talking about.... It still wouldn't support your claim that marijuana use can cause a "permanent fuck-your-brain-up psychosis."

If you want to dispel myths about marijuana use, I'd suggest using examples that aren't overly-dramatized. You know that tangential thinking is also a sign of psychosis....

Also....when you learn to critically analyze research, you also learn that peer-reviewed, empirically-based evidence is often invalid (that's why you can almost always find a study that produces different results), and NEVER proves anything.

linz

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[boudy 0]

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I could say you are just another pot smoking conspiracy theory hippie who wants to legalize drugs (isn't that the stereotype of people who want to legalize it?).

OK I admit I skipped the first 9 pages of the thread. So maybe somebody pointed out already how off the mark that stereotype is.

Milton Friedman - the guru of modern free market ideology (conservative, Reagonomics, limited government type thinking) - Analyzes the war on drugs in this 1992 speech & Q/A.

Friedman is anything but a wishy -washy criminal fodeling liberal hippy type. Clear thinking, clear speaking - but not politically correct nor always accepted by the powerd that be - particarly when the truth hurts: He calls the Drug War a Socialist Enterprise

>>In 1972, almost twenty years ago, President Nixon started a war on drugs-the first intensive effort to enforce the prohibition of drugs since the original Harrison Act. In preparation for this talk today, I re-read the column that I published in Newsweek criticizing his action. Very few words in that column would have to be changed for it to be publishable today. The problem then was primarily heroin and the chief source of the heroin was Marseilles. Today, the problem is cocaine from Latin America. Aside from that, nothing would have to be changed.

Here it is almost twenty years later. What were then predictions are now observable results. As I predicted in that column, on the basis primarily of our experience with Prohibition, drug prohibition has not reduced the number of addicts appreciably if at all and has promoted crime and corruption.

Why is it that the only observable effect on policy of the conversion of predictions into results has been that the government digs itself deeper and deeper into a bigger and bigger hole and spends more and more of your and my money doing harm? Why is it? That's both the most discouraging feature of our experience and also the most intriguing intellectual puzzle. In our private lives, if we try something and it goes awry, we don't just continue and do it on a bigger and bigger scale. We may for a while, but sooner or later we stop and change. Why does not the same thing happen in governments policy? <<

He goes on to explain - if you are really interested in a thoughtful analysis from a non-liberal world respected economist & a pillar of the free market solutions philosophy:
http://www.druglibrary.org/special/friedman/socialist.htm

Sad to say, we are another 14 years down the road since Friedman's speech and the predicted negative effects from the War on Drugs are progressively worse

[Lucky... 0]

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Yes.

The job of the government is to protect people from outside threats. It is not to regulate what we do with our own bodies. Plus, the only thing a pothead is a danger to is a bag of cheetoes. Regulating marijuana is a waste of law enforcement time and resources.

Under that line of reasoning then, should the govt. legalize ALL drugs? Heroin, crack, meth?

While I tend to agree that pot is one of the more benign of drugs, I worry about the "slippery slope" effect of legalizing this, then.... what comes next?

However, I don't like the apparent duplicity that alcohol is ok but pot is not. Still sorting that one out in my head.

Also, my wife's medical condition might improve w/ medicinal access to cannabis. So I guess I'm torn...

edited to add... can you believe it, I'm torn on an issue and not stark raving mad like a lunatic catholic boy?

As much as I despise drugs, they should be legalized for the reason of stopping a lot of crime committed to obtain money for drugs. Did we learn nothing from prohibition and the business of bootlegging? We have created an industry by making it contraband.

[freethefly 6]

This first link is an essay written by the late, great Carl Sagan
http://www.marijuana-uses.com/essays/002.html

Second is a testimony by one of the foremost authority on marijuana, Dr. Lester Grinspoon
http://www.medmjscience.org/Pages/history/grinspoon.bhtml

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[wildman2231 0]

Ask a vegan to remove all the plastic from their car,then take them hunting and teach them survival.
they WILL cut a tree,they WILL eat meat or fish.They WILL smoke a puff when they get a sprain.
It's sad that people don't teach that it's a med. as many other plants...If it's not their children, it helps or hurts as they are taught to see. It obviously hasn't created the axe murderers we were told in the 60's. They already existed. The illicit trade is more dangerous than the product. To those that deal,and those who persecute. I don't think that anyone(edjucated)can say it has killed more people than the nature of the trade its'self'
Remove the plastic from your life...Then tell me about the "NEW" hemp canopy....just can it , shut the hell up an go burn 1.

I'm fine...crazy people don't know they're crazy...No,Really!

[jshatzkin 0]

I know the stereotype is off the mark It's good to go back a few posts to understand context and meaning of certain posts

Jen

[jshatzkin 0]

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Any "withdrawal" is medically insignificant

Perhaps, "medically": but understanding it is an important, almost crucial part of drug education and psychological/social intervention.

I'll admit the "permanent fuck-your-brain-up psychosis." comment was a bit overdramatic (I blame the dramatization on PMS), to prove a point. It stems from another popular theory that I am not getting into, as it is not relevant and will probably be anbother 10 pages of debate wasting my time.

Dramatization is not equivalent to tangential thinking and should not be compared as such (that is similar to me likening you "delusional" for such a comparison). Of your definition, every thread in every forum on the site would be guilty of tangeantial thinking (vs natural progression of discussion) and called psychotic


Also, in reply to

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Also....when you learn to critically analyze research, you also learn that peer-reviewed, empirically-based evidence is often invalid (that's why you can almost always find a study that produces different results), and NEVER proves anything.

Yep. In fact good research often asks more questions than it answers and spawns more studies. Critically analyzing research is different than dismissing it completely when it concludes something you disagree with (ie "NO physical withdrawal or addiction to MJ"). Good critical analysis involves looking at several studies from both sides and how they were conducted to draw your own conclusions. All I have seen with you is a complete dismissal of any study I talk about, and nothing to add.

Jen

[Lindsey 0]

I'm not dismissing your studies. I've read plenty of literature on substance abuse and addiction. I understand very well the issues that we're talking about. But like you said.....it's important to consider research that doesn't support your own biases. That's not what I've seen of what you've posted, but you've made some pretty bold statements based on the research you wanted to include.

I've been working the marathon 36-hour ER shift this weekend. Because I'm not digging through journals in my free time...lol...only indicates that this discussion isn't as important to me as all the other things going on at the moment.

The tangential thinking comment wasn't in relation to being overly dramatic. It was in relation to taking the discussion off into that "withdrawal" topic, and I was just being silly....tongue-in-cheek :)

linz

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[jshatzkin 0]

I'm just shirking that responsibilty on you Of course I would not post studies contrary to my "dramatic" conclusions! That's what my opposing side is supposed to do

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I've been working the marathon 36-hour ER shift this weekend. Because I'm not digging through journals in my free time...lol...only indicates that this discussion isn't as important to me as all the other things going on at the moment.

That's healthy. Hopefully it has been a fun diversion during the shift from hell

Jen

[jenfly00 0]

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Any "withdrawal" is medically insignificant

Perhaps, "medically": but understanding it is an important, almost crucial part of drug education and psychological/social intervention.

I'll admit the "permanent fuck-your-brain-up psychosis." comment was a bit overdramatic (I blame the dramatization on PMS), to prove a point. It stems from another popular theory that I am not getting into, as it is not relevant and will probably be anbother 10 pages of debate wasting my time.

Also, in reply to

Quote

Also....when you learn to critically analyze research, you also learn that peer-reviewed, empirically-based evidence is often invalid (that's why you can almost always find a study that produces different results), and NEVER proves anything.

Yep. In fact good research often asks more questions than it answers and spawns more studies. Critically analyzing research is different than dismissing it completely when it concludes something you disagree with (ie "NO physical withdrawal or addiction to MJ"). Good critical analysis involves looking at several studies from both sides and how they were conducted to draw your own conclusions. All I have seen with you is a complete dismissal of any study I talk about, and nothing to add.

================================================

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Dramatization is not equivalent to tangeantial thinking and should not be compared as such (that is similar to me likening you "delusional" for such a comparison). Of your definition, every thread in every forum on the site would be guilty of tangeantial thinking (vs natural progression of discussion) and called psychotic

Like ...wow! I hope that rationalization has high tensile strength.

OK, you're right. Since you insist on holding on to the validity (minus the convenient omission of your PMS induced, and perfectly acceptable dramatization, of course ) of your claim, there is physical withdrawal from MJ ...pretty much like sea level does rise every time someone gets in the water. I dismissed your cites as BS cause they were ...well, BS for any meaningful application.

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it [research indicating physical addiction and withdrawal to MJ] is an important, almost crucial part of drug education and psychological/social intervention.

Crucial and medically insignificant ...go figure.

Then you must believe people living near sea level should start evacuating their homes every tourist season at the beach.

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"O brave new world that has such people in it".

[tbrown 26]

Used to smoke a lot of the stuff many years ago when it wasn't nearly so potent. Don't personally like it anymore. Don't want my kids smoking it. Hear it even causes lung cancer. But it should be absolutely legal. People who drive under the influence should go to jail whether they've been drinking, smoking pot, or taking anything else. But other than that and sensible legal age limits for the sale (which could reap a fortune in tax revenues), it ain't the government's bidness to tell people what they can smoke or cook in their brownies.

Do some people have mental health problems because of it. Yeah, some do. But that's a HEALTH problem and should be treated as such, just like people who drink too much or do anything else too much.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

[pirana 0]

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Hear it even causes lung cancer.

Now there's an angle you don't hear much about. A friend of mine in a pre-pharmacy program pulled a journal article for me that had the results of a study that focused on the toxicity of marijuana smoke. They found something like 200 to 300 gas phase chemical compounds, many of them nasty stuff. It is many times more toxic than cigarette smoke.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[freethefly 6]

Researchers surprised to find no link between marijuana, lung cancer
Study's findings apply even to heavy pot smokers
Marc Kaufman, Washington Post
Friday, May 26, 2006

The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.

The new findings "were against our expectations," said Dr. Donald Tashkin, a UCLA pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."

Federal health and drug enforcement officials have widely used Tashkin's previous work on marijuana to make the case that the drug is dangerous. Tashkin said that while he still believes marijuana is potentially harmful, its cancer-causing effects appear to be of less concern than previously thought.

Earlier work established that marijuana does contain cancer-causing chemicals as potentially harmful as those in tobacco, he said. However, marijuana also contains the chemical THC, which he said may kill aging cells and keep them from becoming cancerous.

Tashkin's study, funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse, involved 1,200 people in Los Angeles who had lung, neck or head cancer and an additional 1,040 people without cancer matched by age, sex and neighborhood.

They were all asked about their lifetime use of marijuana, tobacco and alcohol. The heaviest marijuana smokers had lit up more than 22,000 times, while moderately heavy usage was defined as smoking 11,000 to 22,000 marijuana cigarettes. Tashkin found that even the very heavy marijuana smokers showed no increased incidence of the three cancers studied.

"This is the largest case-control study ever done, and everyone had to fill out a very extensive questionnaire about marijuana use," he said. "Bias can creep into any research, but we controlled for as many confounding factors as we could, and so I believe these results have real meaning."

Tashkin's group at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA had hypothesized that marijuana would raise the risk of cancer on the basis of earlier small human studies, lab studies of animals and the fact that marijuana users inhale more deeply and generally hold smoke in their lungs longer than tobacco smokers -- exposing them to the dangerous chemicals for a longer time. In addition, Tashkin said, previous studies found that marijuana tar has 50 percent higher concentrations of chemicals linked to cancer than tobacco cigarette tar.

While no association between marijuana smoking and cancer was found, the study findings, presented to the American Thoracic Society International Conference this week, did find a 20-fold increase in lung cancer among people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

The study was limited to people younger than 60 because those older than that were generally not exposed to marijuana use in their youth, when it is most frequently tried.

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[SpeedRacer 1]

...or maybe it's all the Oreo cookies & Doritos that have potent anti-oxidants in them.

Speed Racer
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[namgrunt 0]

as an x cop that worked on the interstate it may supprise you to know I voted yes

the war on drugs is a joke

even though i do not use drugs even MJ what is the big deal with MJ??

make it legal..tax the hell out of it and lets move on

..

59 YEARS,OVERWEIGHT,BALDIND,X-GRUNT
LAST MIL. JUMP VIET-NAM(QUAN-TRI)
www.dzmemories.com

[freethefly 6]

Quote

as an x cop that worked on the interstate it may supprise you to know I voted yes

the war on drugs is a joke

even though i do not use drugs even MJ what is the big deal with MJ??

make it legal..tax the hell out of it and lets move on

..

Actually it is no surprise that you voted yes. As an ex-police officer, you have seen where the true problem lies. It is not in the drugs themselves but, a minority of the people who use them. When a person is arrested for, say, DUI, they are not arrested because they dranked but, arrested because they drove after drinking. They were arrested for driving while intoxicated. DUI is an law enforcement issue. The reason they drove intoxicated is refered to healthcare professionals and it is treated as an health issue while being prosecuted for the crime commited - driving while intoxicated. Drinking itself is treated as a public health issue not a law enforcement issue. As it applies to alcohol it should apply to all drugs. People sitting in their homes using drugs (namely marijuana) are no more (even less) dangerous than a person drinking alcohol. If a person then leaves and drives and it is proven (as it is with alcohol) that the person was intoxicated while driving then charge accordingly. If law enforcement were to treat alcohol itself as a law enforcement issue, more than 90% of the doors in America would have to be kicked in and the occupants arrested and jailed and or fined. Treating drug use as an law enforcement issue, namely marijuana, is expensive and has yeild zero results and has only wasted tax dollars and police resources. It has overloaded the court systems and filled the prisons with non violent offenders. It has caused riffs within communities between the people and the police (which hinders the police from investigating serious offences). It is time that a sensible policy be enacted that will pinpoint the problem users of all substances and see it for what it really is - a health issue, not an law enforcement issue.
http://www.leap.cc/

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young