Posted on 03/12/2013 6:54:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Denver television station CBS4 reports that Colorado has seen a sharp spike in marijuana use among teenagers since voters passed Amendment 64 last November, legalizing recreational use of the drug. As described in The Economist, along with a Washington State measure also legalizing marijuana, Amendment 64 is “an electoral first not only for America but for the world.”
That means two American states are to the left of the Scandinavian countries, Holland, and every other liberal country regarding marijuana.
CBS4 quotes a number of local high-school students:
“I’ve seen a lot more people just walking down the street smoking (joints),” high-school student Irie Johnson said.
“In high school it has kind of gotten out of hand,” student Alaina Tanenbaum said.
According to the CBS4 report, based in part on data from a local drug-testing lab: “Experts say the test results show that children are getting higher than ever with alarming levels of THC, marijuana’s active ingredient, in their bodies.”
The massive increase in both the number of users and the amount of marijuana used by young people is precisely what I and many others predicted.
It was easy to foresee.
When something desirable is made easier to obtain, more people will obtain it. It is difficult to imagine an exception to this commonsense observation.
So legalizing marijuana is foolish because it leads to far more use of the drug and the availability of ever more potent forms. But the foolishness doesn’t end there. Equally foolish is that as a society we have made peace with marijuana while making war on tobacco. This has been a classic example of upside-down thinking; and we are reaping exactly what we have sown. We have produced a generation of young Americans who would never put a cigarette or cigar near their lips, but who increasingly get high on pot.
Yes, tobacco — specifically cigarettes — kills and marijuana doesn’t. But, if you’ll forgive the ultimate political incorrectness, young people would do much better in life if they smoked tobacco rather than weed.
First, tobacco doesn’t kill young people. When it kills, it generally kills much older adult people. Moreover, according to a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, if you stop smoking cigarettes by age 44, you will lose only one more year of life than a person who has never smoked.
Second, regular pot smokers increasingly tune out of life, becoming what are known as potheads, or, to put it bluntly, losers.
Third, as noted in the CBS4 report, “new studies that have been published say the risk of a car accident increases two-fold after someone consumes pot.” In other words, innocent human beings — sometimes whole families — are more likely to be maimed, paralyzed, and killed by pot smokers than by cigarette smokers.
For myriad reasons, then, I would far prefer my teenager indulge in cigarettes — not to mention cigars — than pot. Anyone who thinks that pot is less harmful to a teenager than tobacco is fooling himself — and his teenager.
If this is not obvious, ponder these questions: Would you rather your airplane pilot smoke pot or tobacco while flying? How would Britain have fared in World War II if Winston Churchill had smoked pot instead of cigars?
In terms of the effects of tobacco and pot on the smoker while smoking, there is simply no comparison between pot and tobacco.
What the Left has done to America’s youth in the last 40 or so years is so damaging as to be unforgiveable. They have ruined public-school education; left them with so much debt that they will likely be the first American generation to live in a fashion materially inferior to that of their parents; and robbed their innocence with sex-education classes, now beginning in kindergarten in Chicago and elsewhere. Now they are making marijuana available to more kids and in greater potency than ever before.
But they have left them with higher self-esteem.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.
That's what the German socialists in WWII came up with. America hasn't run out of other people's money yet and can afford the human pets for now, at least until they get old and need healthcare at tax payers expense. But when pets become too much trouble or expense they get put to sleep. There are pluses and minuses to the pet lifestyle.
Marijuana is not the harmless drug that the pot heads claim, particularly for young users and it contains many more of the same carcinogens that are found in tobacco.
Recent studies indicate that marijuana causes attention deficit and short term memory loss, which is reversible within about 8 weeks of abstention in adults, but is permanent in young users. Heavy marijuana use has been shown to reduce the IQ by up to nine points in heavy users and increase the risk of psychosis.
Put together, all of these things are a pretty good description of some of the pot heads that I know. I remember when my son was in high school, he described the effect of regular marijuana on some of his friends as killing ambition, that some of the best students turned into losers.
The faster way of turning people into heroin junkies is happening right now. First, get them addicted to prescription opiate drugs like Oxycodone. Then reformulate it to make it harder to abuse. Of the 2,000,000-3,000,000 US addicts, they quickly learn that heroin costs just a fifth the price, and gives them the same result.
“They start by smoking or snorting it, but in two weeks they are injecting it.” In Virginia and W. Virginia, heroin addiction skyrocketed even faster than they imagined it would. OD’s all over the place.
Most likely they did. We shouldn’t be so quick to accept the popular opinion on prohibition. It’s quite possible America was better off during prohibition.
The only reason I never started smoking pot in high school is because it was illegal.
And so am I. What makes you think I'm opining on things about which I know nothing?
You do understand that the underlying logic for your argument is exactly the same as the underlying logic for the argument in favor of the welfare state, no?
Absolutely. Can you make a cogent point?
Marijuana may not kill you but you will be a Joe Biden.
The spike has always happened. It even happened in Amsterdam when they legalized marijuana. But in short order, not only does number of users return to the typical, pre-legalization levels, but it was noted, those who use it use *less* of it.
The very best selling point of anti-marijuana use is, oddly enough, to tell children that truthfully it probably won’t hurt them, but what it will do is make them so dull and unmotivated that life will no longer be fun, but just monotonous. A loser’s life.
While it is laughing and cheery, and somewhat NSFW, a supposedly pro-drug song by a guy named “Afroman”, probably persuaded more marijuana users to stop smoking marijuana than every anti-drug ad ever created by the government. It really penetrated and made sense to them.
Again, somewhat NSFW.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeYsTmIzjkw
And in either instance, as long as society can protect themselves from the losers that are violent, and doesn’t have to shell out for their care when they end up in the gutter it’s a net win.
Really? You must have access to some seriously impressive weed.
That’s an idiotic analogy. The abortion issue brings the concept of a LIVING 3rd party to the equation while the meth issue is merely the ingestion of a substance by an individual.
saying classy
The problem is that irresponsible people want to be shielded from from the consequences of their irresponsibility. Which is why we’re in the state we are now.
“No wonder Colorado is enacting so many gun control laws.”
Interesting that you mention this.
I have been keeping a close eye here on FR for the past couple of days re the progress of gun control in Colorado, but haven’t seen anything posted.
I understand (from other news sources) that the majority of the proposed legislation passed there and will now become law?
I saw a study that found that the smoke from 1 joint equaled the cancer producing of 20 cigarettes. It’s the smoke that causes lung cancer, that’s why I don’t get people outlawing cigarettes and legalizing MJ for health reasons.
as per last post, I said classy , meaning yes you are now but at first I thought you were not.
we grew up in foster homes,onthe street etc I am the oldest, my brother is actually a drug dealer.
I left all of that and joined the miltary and got sorted out right after high school.
I love to fight so thought the military was the way to go and it was.
No I did not stay in school back then , no I never did a desk job, I canp;t sit in oneplace for too long.
My real mother I am told was on drugs, and now my sister whilst brother is an idiot who goes in and out of prison.
We all have addictive personalities, mine was fighting, and smoking back then, hers is drugs and so is he.
only 3 years are the difference between us all.
I now have kids and raise them to not take drugs, or smoke.
That was my experience and cannot understand as to why maybe anyone, [not you] thinks they know more about my life and what I have seen than I.
agree with all of that.
“Lots of people like to complain about the erosion of civil liberties, but what’s going to happen if the number of addicts grows exponentially?
Junkies don’t function in society, they don’t parent, produce economic output at the same level as people who aren’t addicts.”
We’re going to see two things happen.
The first thing:
We’ll see an increasing number of employers test for drug usage. This will result in a new “underclass” of drug-users, “legal” insofar as the state is concerned, but all-but unemployable from a business standpoint. No one will want to hire them.
The second thing:
In response to the above, we will see increasingly “progressive” state governments (or perhaps even the DC gov) seek to ban employee drug testing as being “discrimatory” against those engaged in “legal behavior”. The government will make it impossible or exceedingly difficult for employers to “discriminate” against drug users in the hiring process, and equally difficult to fire them for reasons that [employers’ claim] are “drug-use related”….
"Irie" is a Rastafarian term for high or powerful feeling.
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