Let's all talk about our experiences smoking weed. That'll be farging great.

[Rome]

Well, duh.....

I meant female prostitution.  Sorry to leave your persuasion out, Demon. 

[Munson]

All this talk of drugs and the prison system reminds me Prison Song.

Minor drug offenders fill your prisons
You dont even flinch
All our taxes paying for your wars
Against the new non-rich
Minor drug offenders fill your prisons
You dont even flinch
All our taxes paying for your wars
Against the new non-rich
I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch
Right here in hollywood

(The percentage of americans in the prison system
Prison system, has doubled since 1985)

Theyre trying to build a prison
Theyre trying to build a prison
Theyre trying to build a prison
(for you and me to live in)

All research and successful drug policy show
That treatment should be increased
And law enforcement decreased
While abolishing mandatory minimum sentences
All research and successful drug policy show
That treatment should be increased
And law enforcement decreased
While abolishing mandatory minimum sentences
Utilizing drugs to pay for secret wars around the world
Drugs are now your global policy now you police the globe
I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch
Right here in Hollywood
Drug money is used to rig elections
And train brutal corporate sponsored dictators
Around the world



I don't care for drugs, I don't smoke....the only way I'd do pot is if it was in a special brownie, and I haven't done that yet. Don't really plan to. So I don't really care about legalizing drugs.
But the whole war on drugs is retarded beyond belief. The government has a lot more important things it should be worrying about than catching a dude with some weed. Like catching that guy with that whole terrorist organization backing him, and how he attacked us like 7 years ago. Yeah, that guy's still out there. But hey, lets arrest Jamal because he got a little high. Mission Accomplished.

[reese125]

I tell you what Bobby Bouchet, its post like these that you might want to consider getting high more often

[Munson]

Boucher*

[troyhstewart]

After my heart attack, I openly talked about *marijuana use to help me quit tobacco, as I had done years before. While the doctor could not openly endorse the use of pot, he agreed the benefits of quitting tobacco thru *pot use far exceeded the risks.  I quit tobacco that day.

* - temporary 


nicotine and cigarettes are by far more addicting and dangerous than pot.

The FDA is a farging joke.

[Seabiscuit36]

After my heart attack, I openly talked about *marijuana use to help me quit tobacco, as I had done years before. While the doctor could not openly endorse the use of pot, he agreed the benefits of quitting tobacco thru *pot use far exceeded the risks.  I quit tobacco that day.

* - temporary 


nicotine and cigarettes are by far more addicting and dangerous than pot.

The FDA is a farging joke.

did your baby find your stash? 

[MadMarchHare]

Pharmacologist says HI!

Actually, smoking pot is really no worse than smoking tobacco, and in a lot of ways better.  It's the least addictive of "those" drugs, where nicotine is the most addictive substance on the planet.

I have to disagree with you RJS on legalizing all that shtein.  First, comparing morphine to pot is horribly wrong.  Recreational use of any opiate is very bad for the user, and these drugs should be regulated.  Heroin is a nightmare, as is meth.  Legalizing these would be extremely dangerous.

The hallucinogens, however, well, whatever.  Shrooms and acid have pretty low addiction liability, you might be able to make a case for those.

Personally, I've never used anything outside of alcohol, and am a little prideful about it.  You want to legalize (and tax the shtein out of) pot, fine.  But not opiates, not cocaine in any form, and sure as hell not meth.  While I agree, the "war on drugs" is ludicrous and completely ineffective, legalizing the latter doesn't solve problems, just exchanges old ones for new ones.

[rjs246]

I, of course, disagree. The argument that addictiveness should determine legality could be made except for the fact that the two major legal drugs in this country are as addictive as it gets. The only reason alcoholics are tolerated while heroin addicts are not is because we have arbitrarily decided that alcohol is legal and have made it available at respectable businesses throughout the country. The reason we think that heroin is so awful is because it is only available through professional criminals, is cut with anything and everything and is almost universally socially stigmatized.

As I said in my first post, the idea of some drugs being ok while others are not is so deeply ingrained in our psyche that I don't ever expect to change anyone's mind, but from a strictly logical point of view, no one has ever been able to explain to me how alcohol can be legal while other addictive inebriating substances are not.

[MadMarchHare]

Well cig companies increasing Nicotine in their product is a whole different discussion and it's exactly why I'd worry about legit companies marketing a now legal substance. Capitalism has no conscious and will sell anything for a profit as long as it's legal.

Capitalism is also producing a wide range of much less harmful nicotine delivery systems, such as dip, snus, electronic cigarettes, and other innovations. After all, the nicotine itself isn't what's killing people, so there's definitely a market for nicotine addicts who want to get their fix without dooming their health. By the way, more nicotine in your cigarette means you smoke less cigarettes and inhale less of the tar and other shtein that kills you. That's why lights aren't any safer -- people smoke more of them.

The market won't get a chance to revolutionize the nicotine industry though. Most anti-smoking activists hate safer nicotine alternatives, as a lot of them are, at their core, drug warriors who are horrified at the prospect of people being addicted to a drug, even if the drug is low-risk and keeps people away from having to use more dangerous products. [They have some selfish motives also. Their ability to generate scary statistics -- and hence funding -- would be greatly compromised if cigarettes weren't as bad for you as they currently are.]

Not only do these acitivists have much support in the FDA and throughout government, but so does Big Tobacco, which (if you haven't noticed) LOVES embracing new tobacco regulation these days. Why? Because it gives them the opportunity smother any potential competition in its crib!

Example: This year's Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which seems to enjoy broad support in Congress, gives the FDA broad discretion to ban any new nicotine products (including safer-than-cigarette products).

Hence the bill instructs the FDA to approve a "modified risk tobacco product" only if it would "benefit the health of the population as a whole taking into account both users of tobacco products and persons who do not currently use tobacco products."

To make that judgment, the FDA is supposed to consider "the increased or decreased likelihood that persons who do not use tobacco products will start using the tobacco product that is the subject of the application" as well as "the increased or decreased likelihood that existing users of tobacco products who would otherwise stop using such products will switch to the tobacco product that is the subject of the application." In other words, the FDA could decide to keep a demonstrably safer cigarette off the market because it might attract new smokers or dissuade current smokers from quitting.

Worse, an existing product can be deemed a "modified risk tobacco product" subject to FDA approval if its manufacturer indicates on the package, in advertising, or in any other forum that it's less hazardous than cigarettes. If an executive at a smokeless tobacco company mentioned in a TV interview or an op-ed piece that his products were much safer than cigarettes, which is indisputably true, those products could suddenly be considered illegal.

Source: http://www.creators.com/opinion/jacob-sullum/fda-approved-cancer-sticks.html

The legislation is supported by anti-smoking activists and by Philip Morris USA.

Dude you are so off-base, I don't even know where to begin.  Nicotine is a surrogate for a neurotransmitter, located all over your brain.  In fact, the receptor is called "nicotinic" because it was identified as binding nicotine.  The actual transmitter is acetylcholine, and you'll find that receptor everywhere, including controlling blood pressure, lung function, etc.  

There was a paper published by Ken Kellar a few years ago showing brain slices of smokers v. non-smokers.  Smokers had a massive upregulation in receptor expression in the brain, but the caveat:  none of them work.  Sure, tar is the big carcinogen in cigs, but nicotine is hardly safe.  

As for snus:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18412245?ordinalpos=7&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

[MadMarchHare]

I, of course, disagree. The argument that addictiveness should determine legality could be made except for the fact that the two major legal drugs in this country are as addictive as it gets. The only reason alcoholics are tolerated while heroin addicts are not is because we have arbitrarily decided that alcohol is legal and have made it available at respectable businesses throughout the country. The reason we think that heroin is so awful is because it is only available through professional criminals, is cut with anything and everything and is almost universally socially stigmatized.

As I said in my first post, the idea of some drugs being ok while others are not is so deeply ingrained in our psyche that I don't ever expect to change anyone's mind, but from a strictly logical point of view, no one has ever been able to explain to me how alcohol can be legal while other addictive inebriating substances are not.

There is no logical explanation except social acceptance.  However, from a scientific standpoint, heroin is way worse than alcohol.  Look at the list posted earlier, trying to argue no one becomes single user to addict.  1 in 7 people who tried heroin became an addict.  The ratio for alcohol is 1:30.  Heroin escalates much faster, has way more health related issues (immune suppression, changes in brain chemistry and cognition, cardiovascular and pulmonary issues).  And it's not just because the compound isn't regulated enough.  It's farging dangerous, 30x more potent than morphine.  Every effect I listed above is due to heroin, it doesn't even begin to consider whatever else is in the shtein sold on the street.

Again, where does it stop?  You want fentanyl on the street?  Fentanyl patches come with instructions which include:  when removing from patient, fold patch in half and flush down the toilet.  Know why?  Because if a kid (or a non-tolerant adult) touches the drug side of that patch, they could die of pulmonary failure.

The other problem I have is that aren't there enough impaired drivers now.  You think if coke and heroin and meth were legalized, that would get better, or worse?

[rjs246]

See, I learn something new every year on this board!

That's all great information about the h train, and persuasive. My main remaining problem is with how heroin addicts/users are treated because of the way the laws are set up around it.

I have some issue as well with lumping coke, heroin and meth into a group and saying that legalizing them would somehow open the floodgates of farged up drivers and make our roads unsafe. Sadly, I don't have any fancy science talk to back up my protestations so I'll just say I don't believe that would happen because a)plenty of people do those drugs now and b)the penalties would (theoretically) be the same for driving with a straw in your nose as they would for driving drunk so it would be illegal to do that and would carry penalties, blah blah blah.

SCIENCE!

[MadMarchHare]

Honestly, I have no science to back up the driving issues either, just a gut feeling.

I also have to agree that the policing is horribly unfair, there is just no arguing with those statistics.  I just don't know what the hell to do about it.

[MadMarchHare]

Just so noone accuses me of being full of shtein:



the paper

[rjs246]

What if I want to accuse you of being full of shtein anyway?

[MadMarchHare]

Join the club.