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Get off my lawn!

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RedLion:
As someone who has drank and smoked pot in limited quantities in the past, I have to say that in my experience I've found at least part of what you claim to be wrong, Switchblade. Alcohol is much more dangerous in terms of how it affects you, in the short term at least. When you're high, you can still maintain a modicum of rational thought. Generally, you feel relaxed, a bit hungry and all around contented, with a tendency to laugh at stupid things. With alcohol, though, drink enough and you don't "feel" anything; you're just blacked out until you wake up the next morning on the bathroom floor. That's never happened to me, but it's happened to plenty of people I know. Alcohol has a much higher potential for long-term addiction, because while people who smoke in response to emotional stress do so just to get rid of tension, most people who drink for that same reason do so to get completely plastered and get to the point where they're not consciously in control of their body at all.

It's great that you've read so much on this, but when it comes to the issue of drugs like pot and LSD, there are plenty of scientists and doctors who have vested interests in perpetuating the exaggerated dangers of the drugs. I don't think anyone will argue that something like crack, heroine and meth are harmless or nonaddictive. There's a general consensus that they generally are. But pot? Not really. What about people entering their 50's or 60's now, who were part of the 60's movements and were perpetually smoking a joint? Why haven't we seen massive health repercussions with these people? I know the THC in today's marijuana is astronomically higher than it was back then, but most people smoke in moderation nowadays, while back then for a lot of people it was a daily, habitual thing, like drinking a can of pop.

Scandanavian War Machine:
-my dad has smoked pot almost every day since he was 16 and he's totally fine. hell, he's a fucking athlete.

-my friend johnny is only 20, gets blackout drunk everyday he can afford to and he's a fucking babbling retard now.

i think pot is probably ok.

a pack of wolves:

--- Quote from: RedLion on 13 Mar 2008, 14:38 ---I know the THC in today's marijuana is astronomically higher than it was back then, but most people smoke in moderation nowadays, while back then for a lot of people it was a daily, habitual thing, like drinking a can of pop.

--- End quote ---

Maybe the people you know only smoke in moderation but I've known a lot who smoke every single day, and plenty who're basically permanently stoned. The good old wake and bake technique. Simply smoking every day isn't necessarily a bad thing any more than drinking every day is, but I've known a fair few people who've screwed their lives up a fair bit on account of getting high all the time. But I've known people who've fucked up because of all kinds of things. Getting addicted to videogames for example, and that isn't a good reason to control the supply of them.

tania:
i'll pretty much always defend the idea that people should have the right to put any drug they'd like into their body as long as it doesn't hurt others but i'm not so sure alcohol fits that criteria. a substantial amount of fatal car accidents in the states are the result of drunk driving. alcoholism is one of the biggest factors in spousal abuse. there is a huge correlation between homicide or assault offenders and whether or not they were drinking at the time they committed the offense. and so on.

i don't actually smoke pot at all and yeah, i understand there's just as many people who abuse alcohol as there are people who are intelligent and responsible but really, i find it hard to believe pot is a worse drug than alcohol.

Switchblade:
To date, everybody I've known who smoked weed wound up doing one of two things:

1: quitting before it became a problem.

2: getting hooked and dropping out.

There have been far more of the latter than of the former. I'm yet to encounter anybody who smoked it on a regular basis and wasn't affected by it in some fairly significant way.

while it may be to some extent true that quote: "medical organizations and care providers get BIG MONEY for pushing certain drugs" I think I should point out that I'm not aware of any medication designed for weaning people off cannabis. Heroin, yes, there are plenty of mild opiates designed to wean people off Heroin and suchlike, but there aren't such medicines around for Marijuana (to my knowledge). As such, it's difficult for pharmaceutical companies to make a profit off helping people quit cannabis addiction, because there's no product they can sell for that purpose.

So, if there's no drug being sold to help people quit, and therefore no money being thrown at medical organizations to promote certain products, then ulterior motive goes out the window. With no incentive, those medical groups fall back on the old standby of actually recommending what's best for the patient's mental and physical health.

I'm all for letting people fuck up their own brains and lives if they so want. It means that they aren't competing with people like me, which makes my life easier. I do, however, think that it's vitally important that people be presented with ALL the facts so that they can make their decision with all of the evidence in front of them. That way, we can reasonably blame their own stupidity rather than misinformation or lack of clear facts.

And let's just say that when it comes to trusting information that is given to me, I tend to feel more secure placing my faith in the say-so of a law-abiding, intellectual professional than in the say so of an addict or dealer, either one of which is willfully breaking the law. It's Occam's razor again. I can either make the far-fetched and paranoid assumption that every doctor and medical paper in the world is out to stop me from having fun for no good reason, or make the not-very-far-fetched-at-all and quite reasonable assumption that marijuana is actually bad for me, and that the people who are promoting it are doing so because they want to sell it and get rich.

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