You lucky bastards in Colorado and Washington.......TOKE AWAY!!!!!

[CowboyFromHell]

The thing is there are different levels with all these things. I mean you get coca leaves, you get cocaine and you get crack, you get Coors Light and you get Russian aviation fuel, you get speed and you get crystal meth, you get valium and you get ketamine, you get Resin and you get genetically modified skunk. So this in mind, I don't get how they can make a blanket laws. It's like over here they went the opposite way and changed weed from a Class C drug into a Class B drug, same as the hard stuff like heroin etc. primarily because of the genetically altered high grade skunk that is more common these days with everyone growing with hydroponics and stuff, where as it used to be harmless bars of resin.

I mean they make a distinction with alcohol over there in most states don't they? I mean you don't walk into the supermarket and pick up your bottle of Tequila and Wild Turkey whilst getting a slab of bud like you do over here, you have to trundle off to the liquor store to get it afterwards.

I agree that alcohol is the real evil. It is the biggest drain on the health service over here, not just the obvious Friday night Accident and Emergency head stompings, stabbings, glassings, falling off buildings and RTA's but most of the expensive longer term resources and committments actually go to treating middle class professionals on 60k a year who have a bottle of 16%+ every night and need ongoing care for a new liver and complications. It ruins families, it ruins people. Anyone who has a friend or a family member who is an alcoholic knows that there is absolutely nothing you can do for them either, no matter how hard you try, it's fucking sad.

The problem with these laws is though, culturally, kids tout blow like it's perfectly natural and good for you, but the fact is that with a roach, it is fifty times more carcinogenic than smoking cigarettes. Last time I smoked that stuff I ended up watching the cricket for three days without moving from my chair. Life is too short for shitty downers. I could never get on with it, it smells sickly sweet and rank. I could only ever smoke it if I was on something else anyway and then I was immune, otherwise it just made me hungry and want to go to sleep, much the same as beer does these days, which is sad. It's also sad that to appreciate it you have to smoke it regularly. It's encouraging another habit of addiction. Speaking as a cigarette smoker this is the last thing we should be encouraging kids to do. It's all not that great either, especially for people who function on adrenaline or kind or have kind of split personalities to begin with or are looking for an ever better warm envelope to bundle themselves up in. With all the skunk rocket fuel about it is certainly not the natural and harmless San Francisco option it is popularised to be. I don't think it necessarily leads to harder drugs. There is a different to doing thirty bongs each night and having a few reefers to alleviate your MS or arthristis. Same as there is a difference in hitting the bottle every night or having a few beers at the weekend.

Still, suppose it's better out on the table than under it I guess. I guess the woodstock politicians do know the score though right?

I hate to be a party shitter but celebrating the legality of something that is highly carcinogenic and habitual is just stupid IMO.

I'm off for a fag.

Maybe about as stupid as someone who sat there for 3 days watching a cricket and now blames it on pot? Sorry bud but that story don't fly. No pot gives you a buzz for 3 days so try telling that story again, this time a lil more truth and believability to it. As far as grouping pot in with other drugs, to my knowledge pot is the only drug that requires no other "processing" than simply drying it out. Nowhere I've ever been has referred to pot as "blow", that's what cocaine is called. HUGE difference. Btw, not everyone that smokes pot turns into a veggie like you did. In fact many people find energy and motivation in a good buzz. Hell, my old '67 Mustang was turned into a 7 second car while stoned and ALWAYS passed both inspection for safety at the track and at the local inspection station to maintain it's legal street use. It also held together for over 150 passes at Farmington Dragway and the 50,000+ miles I put on it after it was built but before it was sold. It was still racing last I heard of it. Sounds to me like pot isn't a good choice for YOU but as I stated above, not everyone acts like you did when smoking it. Also, I don't think a person making the choice to smoke pot themselves is quite the same as "encouraging kids to do". According to that mentality anyone who drinks a beer is encouraging kids to drink. Talk about stupid....

[Rsmacker]

The thing is

I'm off for a fag.

Just to clarify:

Heroin is a Class A drug.

Yes, they can buy spirits at the supermarket. And in gas stations! Yay! It's better getting it at Publix when you are completely pissed and suffering from extreme flatulence though.

To Americans, "Blow" is Charlie, not what we call blow.

He is not a fag, his name is Simon.


Carry On!!

[Ward]

Btw, not everyone that smokes pot turns into a veggie like you did. In fact many people find energy and motivation in a good buzz.

So true.

[Nightbat]

I spoke based on personal experience and that of my close friends. Your experience may be different, but from what I've witnessed and been through myself, what I said was spot on. Besides, if it seems SO bad to you, don't do it.

Just look at some of the funny replies (or, hell, the topic title), now imagine being an impressionable teenager
ban alcohol, fine, but don't add a problem, even if it is a lesser evil

I was going to ask the same.

There are precious few studies about cannabis, but those that have been done are showing that it is not cancer causing. In fact, there is quite a bit of proof that THC inhibits tumor growth.

This may not be the best one, but there are many out there.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0417193338.htm

But who's willing to convince me that breathing in burnt particles (canabis or not) is good for you lungs?

People are going to do it regardless if it's legal or not. In fact people want to do it more if it's illegal. Look at the prohibition in the '20s with alcohol. Alcohol funded the Mafia, because people were willing to pay extra for something they can't get easily.

If you make something illegal it only means the reward for selling it is higher. The mexican cartel's and the CIA are gonna be pissed off if most of the U.S states legalize weed! They still have coke to import though...

So would you rather want the maffia to try and sell pot, or to try and sell heroine?
Remember it created a cocaine/heroine boom once the prohibition ended, because organized crime lost a source of income they started to focus on other things

Portugal legalized all drugs and their drug usage went down.

From wiki

Reported lifetime use of "all illicit drugs" increased from 7.8% to 12%, lifetime use of cannabis increased from 7.6% to 11.7%, cocaine use more than doubled, from 0.9% to 1.9%, ecstasy nearly doubled from 0.7% to 1.3%, and heroin increased from 0.7% to 1.1%
It has been proposed that this effect may have been related to the candor of interviewees, who may have been inclined to answer more truthfully due to a reduction in the stigma associated with drug use.
However, during the same period, the use of heroin and cannabis also increased in Spain and Italy, where drugs for personal use was decriminalised many years earlier than in Portugal while the use of Cannabis and heroin decreased in the rest of Western Europe

Italic: you said 'down'
It's confirmed that harddrug (coke/Heroin) users have halved
(but could also have dropped because: "There were 2000 new cases a year, in a country of 10 million people. 45% of reported AIDS cases recorded in 1997 originated among IV drug users"
in other words: 10 years later half of them died?)


Bold: sounds positive, but could it also be that more people have come in contact with drugs since it's no longer kept hidden from public view?



Here was ('was' since the liberalization threw a spanner in my idea) my stance on canabis:
Keep it illegal, but don't actively hunt it down, pretend to be 'stern' while keeping punishments low
the local drugdealer would rather trade pot than other things because there is less risk, public will keep seeing it as bad/adventurous
....Everybody wins (except the IRS)

[Hellbat]

Oh it's bad for you, just not "carcinogenic" bad. There's still ash and tar and particulates involved. That's why the serious users rock the vaporizers. It gets the good stuff out while avoiding (most of) the bad stuff.

[ginsambo]

No I was smoking for three days straight roach to roach just relaxing, I don't know I think I almost got through a couple of quarters. Another one and another and another, that is the only way I could enjoy it personally, otherwise it would be like smoking cigarettes, if I didn't have at least three heavy sessions a day to get used, and on with it, I would think and think and think and in the end just collapse, whitey and have convulsions. Mind you I never used to eat either, so that didn't help. Same as I would when I started smoking cigarettes. I used to puke my guts out when I started smoking infrequently in school, now I wouldn't give it up for the world and smoke twenty a day. I know people who I am told ended up on crack and I remember when they tried it for the first time and they puked their guts out and all and it just didn't suit them at all. It's not natural. Drugs make you stupid like that. When I go out, I still go out to drink, I drink three or four pints of Stella to everyone else's pint. I mean you go out to the pub to drink right? Not to have a conversation. People turn around after a few drinks and wonder why I act so funny. I don't know I try and stay away from everything the older I get, the less I feel a need for it. It's not about self control it's about getting as obliterated as possible and enjoying it, it's not even about keeping the high like an alcoholic, or maybe it is, but it's just doing it because you can. Or missing the trains stop seven times both ways back and forth over two days, because you just can't keep awake after staying up all week. Or discovering pills and thinking 'Wow' and dancing till 4 in the morning and then feeling pretty weird and like shite on monday through wednesday and turning up with a chewed up lip at work. Then doing twice as many the next weekend for the same buzz, Then just doing whatever pills you can get you hands on and as many as possible and not even dancing anymore. It's all pretty stupid.

People doing skunk in bongs to enhance their acid highs, it's all bullshit. That stuff stinks man, it's gotta be bad for you, so what are you saying?
Smoke inhalation is good for you? But even with Acid you build up like an immunity to it. You drop 9 tabs and everything just seems slightly off of normal. All the magic of sensing common bonds with people you don't even know, sensing people's primeval animal charactors and broadening your horizons, it all goes away pretty soon enough, then you just get bored and turn nasty, to try to permanently freak people out who aren't used to it and then you start enjoying it and you don't even realise what you are doing. It's just like beer or any other drug after time you build an immunity so you need more or you move on to the next thing or combine everything.

I donno, some people just have addictive personalities and look to substances, others are quite comfortable being social smokers, do not get sick, are happy with life in general and view drugs as civilised enhancements and maybe look to people instead. I don't think it particulary has anything necessarily to do with drugs. But offering it on a plate and making it socially acceptably, I don't know if I agree with entirely. Mainly because it will fuck up the ones amongst us who are always searching for something they haven't got and maybe think too much and do not have a particularly relaxed disposition with the world under a glass ceiling.

Maybe they should legalise the hard stuff, so people know what exactly what concentrations and purity they are getting and the needles are clean. Now that would be a sensible idea. Maybe it might just stop someone Oding or getting HIV in the squat whilst everyone else is injecting into their eyeballs because their veins are shot to pieces.

Other world cultures treat drugs with respect, they are only used for special occasions and thus they remain spiritually significant, potent and meaningful. However, those communities have a sense of purpose and people have a job to do each day that their lives depend on. Us, we treat drugs like penny chews. We are gluttoness and obese on drugs just like we are gluttoness and obese on cheap chinese sconsumer goods and food. We are like fucking Alice at the candy store. It's not good.

Cowboy, I see that, for a lot, probably the vast majority of people it does motivate them, they can get through factory work and manual chores in a heatbeat and it focuses the mind it as well as helping them on their way. Even on a regular basis, it' s relaxing if you smoke it regulary, but it doesn't do anything for me personally, it never gave me a buzz as you call it, although the stronger stuff can be a bit coming up on acid like. Maybe I didn't stick at it long enough. But who ever you are, daily cannabis use does alter your brain chemistry, regardless of how you are wired, same as any other drug, for the worse. And you can't seriously think everyone on this earth has the same brain chemistry?

But like I said Alcohol is probably the worst of the lot and I agree it's not the drugs but the people, just like its not the guns so it's nothing particularly against cannabis per say.

Personally I wish they would legalise cocaine if they are doing cannabis but in an ideal world everyone would go base jumping or introduce base jumping or lion wrestling, I think that would sort people's brain chemistry out for the better, being within an inch of your life and surviving, it's what it was all supposed to be about. I don't want to sound like some presbyterian preacher, probably more like a twat, but pot doesn't do anything for me personally and I don't feel a need for it. But whatever works for you, just be aware that it doesn't zap your emotions or make you irrational over the years is all I'm saying.

Is that 7 sec quarter mile? Seriously, even when I have been smoking regularly, I have never gone into that robotic kind of heavily focused accurate assembly mode you are on about from the buzz. It's like it does the complete opposite to me, I think of all these other things to be doing and ideas but a single thing. Maybe it's a personality flaw.

I'm lost in translation, I gonna go chow down on another fag, I've only got fifteen left to get through.

[LouSiffer]

Vaporizers are the shit!!! Also, weed brownies are my favorite!!-Lou

[ginsambo]

Alright, I concede, thinking about it some more, it probably isn't as harmful as smoking fags if you are a moderate user and you get on with it.

Man I have to clean up all these bodies, this pace is getting to stinking.

[ginsambo]

I thought bongs were healthy because they were filtered throw water. Alright, I'II leave you all alone, I'm even beginning to annoy myself now.

[Maiden89]

So would you rather want the maffia to try and sell pot, or to try and sell heroine?
Remember it created a cocaine/heroine boom once the prohibition ended, because organized crime lost a source of income they started to focus on other things

That's my point. People are going to buy illegal drugs and criminals are going to take advantage the high prices due to it being illegal. We've had a war on drugs for over 40 years, but drug usage is worst than it has ever been. If we make weed legal, than cartels and crime family's are just going to focus on something else. If we make everything legal than what are the cartels going to sell?

I hear that if it's illegal more people are going to do it, but I don't think thats true. In high school I could buy cocaine or heroine, but I'm not into that stuff so I didn't. Only the hardcore junkies do all the heavy stuff. Other people know it will probably fuck you up and their not interested.

In a way, we are creating more crime and violence due to making drugs illegal. Drug users are gonna still use them no matter what. We are paying all this tax money for the government to stop drug use; it's impossible.

If people are going to still use it, cartels are gonna kill to sell it and the government is going to use our tax money to try to stop it, we might as well make it legal and tax it, stop crime and help our economy.

[Ward]

But who's willing to convince me that breathing in burnt particles (cannabis or not) is good for you lungs?

Well that's completely different, I wasn't trying to do any such thing. I was commenting on the 'carcinogenic' claim.

As hellbat said, vaporizing is the way to go. I haven't smoked in quite some time.

[VitaminG]

Don't care about trivial things like the marriage deal......weed is WAY more important!! I am curious though, will those people that have been incarcerated, fined, etc for small amounts of weed be set free/have their records expunged?-Lou

excellent question. It would suck to remain locked up for something that is now NOT breaking the law, just because you were tried before the law changed

For all of you that have employers, I think it will be still be within their rights to forbid it and
drug test to verify.
You all know by now that I work in heavy industry (a steel mill), and it is zero tolerance for good reason.
You don't need someone to have a "bad day" for whatever reason, handling tons of molten steel.

Absolutely. As Xeno pointed out, companies will still have rules about workplace safety.

Oh, and just wait for the taxes.
It will make prohibition seem like the golden ages.
They will absolutely tax it to death.

I think you have prohibition ass backwards. Alcohol became super expensive BECAUSE of prohibition. Make something hard to get & people will pay more for it. Increase the consequences of being caught with it, or handling or producing it, prices go up again.

The best thing to do is legalize all of it, even the really hard stuff. The people that will use it will still use it, legal or not. Legalization will just get rid of the cartels.

Agreed. Legalise all of it.

Have the government regulate it. It will bring the costs down and ensure the quality. It will create another source of tax revenue. Ensure that if little Becky or little Johnny are going to use, they have to go to a legal dispensary to get it. No chance that it's cut down with drain cleaner or something else vile that will increase their chances of harm. Put the drug lords, traffickers, dealers, etc out of business. Why would you go to a dealer in a shady area if you can get it cheaper, cleaner & safer from official or licensed sources? It may not be as sexy and "outlaw", but who would pay a dealer you don't know (who's just as likely to rob you and slit your throat) $50 for a hit if you could get better quality for $20 down the local clinic? Cheaper drugs will also mean a reduced need to turn to crime to pay for those drugs. Eradicate the massive financial drain of the "war on drugs". Reduce the expenditure of maintaining a prison population of small time users. Use those tax dollars to better society instead of fighting an unwinnable war. Redeploy DEA agents to find murderers and kiddie fiddlers instead.

[xenophobe]

^ +1.

Criminalization has not worked. It's only helped to waste taxpayer money. Legalize marijuana, decriminalize other drugs. Decriminalizing marijuana in California has done nothing but to drive down black market prices. It has made it more available. It's also made quality higher and selection greater. For people like me who can critique pot like others judge wine, it's been nothing but a blessing.

Yeah, grab that Cabernet Sauvignon... can you smell and taste the earthy notes? Does it have a splash of fruitiness before the peppery oak overtone peeks through the canopy of aroma? See, I think that's all bullshit. It's a bunch of alcoholics that have been given reason to drink more alcohol. All I smell is stronger or weaker alcohol. Fruity my ass.

I don't get all that wine bullshit, but I understand it because I do the same thing with pot.

[VitaminG]

I'm a little hard now

[Whoopu2]

That's my point. People are going to buy illegal drugs and criminals are going to take advantage the high prices due to it being illegal. We've had a war on drugs for over 40 years, but drug usage is worst than it has ever been. If we make weed legal, than cartels and crime family's are just going to focus on something else. If we make everything legal than what are the cartels going to sell?

I hear that if it's illegal more people are going to do it, but I don't think thats true. In high school I could buy cocaine or heroine, but I'm not into that stuff so I didn't. Only the hardcore junkies do all the heavy stuff. Other people know it will probably fuck you up and their not interested.

In a way, we are creating more crime and violence due to making drugs illegal. Drug users are gonna still use them no matter what. We are paying all this tax money for the government to stop drug use; it's impossible.

If people are going to still use it, cartels are gonna kill to sell it and the government is going to use our tax money to try to stop it, we might as well make it legal and tax it, stop crime and help our economy.

+1