The Cannabis Catastrophe (Pot softens brains: Stoners don't care)

The Daily Mail [UK] ^ | January 26 2003 | Melanie Phillips

[quidnunc]

As David Blunkett contemplates the chaos and fury triggered by his decision to downgrade the law on cannabis, he could do worse than consider the case of Dominique Lansdowne.

Eleven years ago, when she was 18, the former care assistant from Swindon started smoking cannabis once a week. ‘After a couple of weeks, I found it was addictive’, she said. ‘As soon as you start you get the feeling you’re completely relaxed and calm, but then you crave it. I used it more and more until I was smoking it every day. Then I couldn’t work because I was too stoned all the time. I was so paranoid I couldn’t leave the house.

‘I haven’t worked for the past six years. I lost all my friends and nearly lost my family. I couldn’t afford to pay my mortgage, my house was repossessed, I had to live in a hostel. I was in hospital three times, and couldn’t cope at all in the community. I had no social skills left. My life was in tatters. I didn’t stop completely until two years ago.

‘I still take anti-psychotics, antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, and will probably have to take medication for the rest of my life. I’m positive cannabis was the cause; I became paranoid as soon as I started smoking it. I’ve known hundreds of people who smoke it; all of them have some kind of paranoia or a problem, whether they recognise it or not.’

All of which makes it truly extraordinary that this Thursday, cannabis will be downgraded from a class B to a class C drug.

The Home Secretary’s move has delighted the drug legalisers — but astonished and horrified those like Dominique, who know the truth about its effects.

Tory leader Michael Howard has boldly declared that a future Conservative government will reverse the policy. Yet Mr Blunkett’s so called ‘reform’ has already caused many people mistakenly to believe cannabis is now legal or safe to use.

Despite ministers’ desperate insistence that it remains illegal and dangerous, putting cannabis in the same category as slimming pills, painkillers, tranquillisers and anabolic steroids sends the inescapable signal that it is not very dangerous after all.

Dominique Lansdowne knows what nonsense this is. Before she used cannabis, she had not even smoked tobacco; afterwards she also tried speed, LSD and ecstasy. ‘I would never have touched hard drugs if I hadn’t taken cannabis. Reclassification is really dreadful and sad because the government is saying cannabis isn’t that bad and so people are going to take it thinking it’s not going to do them any harm.’

-snip-

[Monty22]

I remember fondly when that McLeroy finally got kicked out. The pro-pot stuff on here is embarrassing to the site.

[eboyer]

Why don't you post something to back up your idiotic opinion?

I will...

The Islamic Perspective:
The objectives of Islamic divine laws are the protection of faith (belief in one God), life ( abortion. suicide, homicide), property (ownership) and the mind (intoxicants). Normally in the brain there is an inhibitory control which tells us not to engage in shameful or wrongful acts. Any suppressant drug including alcohol will suppress this nerve pathways and take away such restraint. Ability to make a judgement, to protect the body or honor, a quality for humans is taken away under the influence of drugs.

There are two main features of Islamic prohibitions:
a) lslam stops the wrong at the inception and not at the end. There is nothing like safe drinking age, or safe drugs to get high. Most of the teenage alcoholics don't buy the alcohol from the store but get it at home. Islam makes equal laws for both children and parents by prohibiting completely (total abstinence), but the West does not. It is for this reason, the West has been crippled to handle the problem of drugs and alcohol, because it has made duel standards.

b) Islam blocks all the avenues to the wrong. Therefore not only illicit sex is prohibited, but casual mixing of sexes freely is prohibited, but obscenity and pornography is prohibited, and in the same context, not only drinking wine is prohibited, but making it , selling it, keeping it, or even growing grapes for the sole purpose of selling it to winery for making wine is prohibited by the Prophet (PBUH). Some 1400 years ago, Allah(swt), our creator and sustainer, who cares for us, sent down following revelation in the following order, mentioned in Quran.

[Senator Pardek]

LOL - did she start listening to jazz and dancing with black men, too?

[Monty22]

Please post the source, ok?

Some islamic nutbag site does not impress me.

[Indie]

I’m positive cannabis was the cause; I became paranoid as soon as I started smoking it.

Sounds like a heavy-duty guilt trip for breaking the law to me, not the herb. Since she is "positive" about the cause of her mental problems, she must be an M.D. or D.O. with a specialty in Psychiatry I presume??

As a past college user (prior to my LEO days), I have first hand knowledge it is not physically addicting (it's also a medical fact), but like abuse of any LEGAL mind affecting substance, it can have adverse effects on studies and behavior.

I stopped in my sophomore year in college "cold turkey" and never had the desire to light up again. Definitely more "reefer madness" propaganda.

The most dangerous two drugs in society are legal.

Sorry to all you folks that think everything should be outlawed, but as an ex LEO veteran, IMO, the WOD is wrong. Pot prohibition has destroyed more lives than pot ever could, even if you believe it is harmful. Funny how we never learn from History. [Prohibition]

[Huck]

I remember fondly when that McLeroy finally got kicked out. The pro-pot stuff on here is embarrassing to the site.

This thread is anti-pot, isn't it? That's the premise of the article.

[gdani]

Bill Gates has done ok with a soft brain!

And Carl Sagan.

And Newt Gingrich.

And Clarence Thomas.

And....

[Monty22]

Not the thread, the (pot) users.

[eboyer]

it was from your islam + marijuana suggestion.

go do your own dirty work.

[Huck]

Usually, the entire debate is what's embarassing. Stupid, really. But thankfully, my wife is done and so I can go home now. Enjoy the rest of your evening.

[Monty22]

Well duh, an islamic propaganda site will say it's a religion of peace too.

However, that don't make it so. In fact, if you had a brain left you'd realize it probably makes it the opposite.

Wow how pot users get offended when you trash their crutch. Incredible.

[Cultural Jihad]

Just a suggestion, but if she can't "handle" smoking marijuana perhaps she should stop.

"If people get hurt, so what?
If people get burned, too bad!"

[Chris Tucker]

[eboyer]

You are about as stupid as any bonged ouy hippy I have ever encountered.

You are the one making stupid generalizations about a connection with islam and marijuana.

I posted something that refutes it. you have yet to post anything to back it up.

I am not defending pot BTW. Apparently you are too stupid to see the difference.

[tacticalogic]

Wow how pot users get offended when you trash their crutch. Incredible.

You walked in here on 3 legs, and two of 'em have "Dogma" written all over them.

[SkyRat]

"Now no man was allowed to enter the Garden save those whom he intended to be his ASHISHIN. There was a fortress at the entrance to the Garden, strong enough to resist all the world, and there was no other way to get in. He kept at his Court a number of the youths of the country, from twelve to twenty years of age, such as had a taste for soldiering... Then he would introduce them into his Garden, some four, or six, or ten at a time, having first made them drink a certain potion which cast them into a deep sleep, and then causing them to be lifted and carried in. So when they awoke they found themselves in the Garden.

"When therefore they awoke, and found themselves in a place so charming, they deemed that it was Paradise in very truth. And the ladies and damsels dallied with them to their hearts' content...

"So when the Old Man would have any prince slain, he would say to such a youth: 'Go thou and slay So and So; and when thou returnest my Angels shall bear thee into Paradise. And shouldst thou die, natheless even so will I send my Angels to carry thee back into Paradise.'"

(from The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, translated by Henry Yule, London, 1875.)

Since you were the one suggesting google, I hope you follow your own advice and search for http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&safe=off&q=hashish+assassins&spell=1

You should see several sites who debunk this myth. Also excellent book resources: 1 Omar Khayyam - as quoted in the Calcutta Review, No. 59, from Mirkhond's History of the Assassins.

2 Edward Burman, The Assassins - Holy Killers of Islam

3 FARHAD DAFTARY, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma'ilis (I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd: London, 1994), 213 pp

4 Marco Polo - on his visit to Alamut in 1273

The few parts I've read suggest to me that what they used were something far stronger than MJ.

Regards

[Cultural Jihad]

You really ought to apologize for that uncalled for remark.

[Monty22]

I'll call your post and raise it:

http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=assassin

[eboyer]

"The most dangerous two drugs in society are legal."

That is absurd. You claim alcohol and tobacco is more dangerous than heroine?

Why?

alcohol and tobacco are the most used substances around. If heroine was as common as these two we would have a major epidemic on our hands.

[Monty22]

No, you're too stupid to research the topic and look up definitions on webster.