Posted on 01/21/2014 4:29:12 AM PST by Kaslin
How did we end up in a world where Big Gulps are being banned in New York while the welcome mat for potheads is being rolled out in Colorado? How is it that cigarette smokers are pariahs, while people smoking weed are being cheered? This is despite the fact that potheads are almost universally recognized as unmotivated, low class, degenerate – and, yes, smelly failures. Even the ones that get somewhere in life, like Barack Obama, usually turn out to be mediocrities.
Moreover, we all recognize that smoking is a dirty habit that makes you die younger and while drinking is a potentially dangerous habit that leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths per year, but we want to condone pot use on top of that? That's like saying you've got a bad back and a bad shoulder; so why not break your knee cap to top it all off. How many lives are we willing to flush down the drain because a significant number of Americans tried pot a handful of times in their lives, got away with it and now feel guilty about it? One hundred for every person in prison? 1000? 10,000? There's a reason pot was made illegal in the first place and quite frankly, the only reason alcohol and cigarettes are legal is because they're so deeply ingrained in our society that we can't get rid of them.
There is certainly a financial and human cost to keeping marijuana illegal and we can see it in our prisons. But, there would be an even larger cost to making it legal.
1) It's extremely addictive for some people: If you don't want to take my word for it, listen to Dr. Drew Pinsky who has been working with addicts for decades.
It would be malpractice to say that cannabis isn't addictive. Anybody who's experienced it, actually been addicted to it, knows how profound that addiction is.... The difficult thing about marijuana addiction is some people, even though they're addicted can do fine with it for many many years before they start to have difficultly, but eventually the high starts wearing off, people start smoking a lot more to try to get that high back and that's when they descend into difficulties. ...I've been treating cannabis addiction for 20 years. When people are addicted to cannabis, cocaine and alcohol the drug they have the most difficult time giving up is the cannabis. It is extremely addictive...for some people. I think that's where people get confused. It's not very addictive for many people. It's a small subset of people with a genetic potential for addiction. But for them it is really tough. You only need talk to them, they'll tell you how tough it is.
Additionally, that "small subset" Dr. Drew is talking about isn't so small in a big country like America. "Of the 7.3 million persons aged 12 or older classified with illicit drug dependence or abuse in 2012, 4.3 million persons had marijuana dependence or abuse." It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the more legal and available marijuana becomes, the higher those numbers are going to go.
2) This experiment hasn't worked out so well for Amsterdam: Humans being what they are, just about any stupid idea we can come up with has already been tried somewhere else. Amsterdam is the most famous place across the world that has effectively legalized pot. It has even turned into a tourist destination for potheads. Legalizing weed has been a huge success there, right? Actually, not so much...
Its citizens are now alarmed that their children are increasingly being exposed to it.
Amsterdam today became the first city in the Netherlands to ban students from smoking marijuana at school.
The city's mayor Eberhard van der Laan introduced the law after school chiefs complained about pupils turning up to classes high after rolling up outside the grounds.
Marijuana is widely available in Holland as, although it is technically illegal, police can't prosecute people for possession of small amounts.
But it has also had the unwanted side effect that Dutch children are frequently exposed to the drug in public areas.
Additionally, contrary to the claims that legalizing it will reduce crime, in Amsterdam it’s been found that crime is now centering around the coffeehouses where marijuana is sold.
…Certainly the outlook for coffee shops is bleak. Among the few policies that the three parties in the new coalition government agree on is the need to reduce their numbers. The governing agreement released last week laid out plans that will force them to become members-only clubs and shut down those shops located near schools.
The coalition is also advancing the idea of prohibiting the sale of cannabis to non-Dutch residents, which amounts to a death knell for many coffee shops.
...The circumstances that led to the tolerance policies have changed in the past decade, as large-scale crime around coffee shops and the legal sex trade became more visible. In particular, the absence of legal means for coffee shops to obtain cannabis has highlighted their association with organized crime.
But the open-minded instincts that helped foster the policies are also being questioned. And it is not just the far-right opposing coffee shops. The traditional parties of power on the center-right, the Christian Democrats and the Liberal VVD, have also moved against the policies they once promoted.
That doesn't exactly sound like a success story, does it?
3) Marijuana is terrible for your mental health: Marijuana may even be WORSE than cigarettes. At least cigarettes don't peel points off of your IQ.
A recent Northwestern University study found that marijuana users have abnormal brain structure and poor memory and that chronic marijuana abuse may lead to brain changes resembling schizophrenia. The study also reported that the younger the person starts using marijuana, the worse the effects become.
In its own report arguing against marijuana legalization, the American Medical Association said: "Heavy cannabis use in adolescence causes persistent impairments in neurocognitive performance and IQ, and use is associated with increased rates of anxiety, mood and psychotic thought disorders."
So, there's a good reason most habitual marijuana users come off as stupid. The drug is making them stupider, even when they're not high. You really want your kids on that?
4) Marijuana is terrible for your physical health: How bad is marijuana for you? It's even more toxic than cigarette smoke. Regular users are hit with devastating lung problems as much as 20 years earlier than smokers. Even small amounts of marijuana can cause temporary sterility and it has a terrible impact on the babies of women who smoke including "birth defects, mental abnormalities and increased risk of leukemia in children." If your standard is, "Well, it's better for you than Meth or Crack," that's true, but you're deluding yourself if you think pot is anything other than absolutely horrible for your health.
5) The drug decimates many people's lives: Movies portray potheads as harmless, fun-loving people who spend their time giggling and munching Cheetos, but they don't show these people when they're flunking out of school, losing their jobs, frustrated because they can't concentrate or losing the love of their lives because they just don't want be with a pot smoking loser anymore. Even in the limited number of studies that are out there, the numbers are stark.
A study of 129 college students found that, among those who smoked the drug at least twenty-seven of the thirty days before being surveyed, critical skills related to attention, memory and learning were seriously diminished. A study of postal workers found that employees who tested positive for marijuana had 55% more accidents, 85% more injuries and a 75% increase in being absent from work. In Australia, a study found that cannabis intoxication was responsible for 4.3% of driver fatalities.
...Students who use marijuana have lower grades and are less likely to get into college than nonsmokers. They simply do not have the same abilities to remember and organize information compared to those who do not use these substances.
It's bad enough that we already lose so many Americans early to cancer caused by cigarettes, alcoholism, and drunken driving. Do we really want to endorse the loss of millions more potentially productive Americans via Marijuana? Do we move on from there to Crack, Heroin or Meth? Some people would say, “If they want to do it, great, then it's no business of ours.” But, you can also bet that those same people will be complaining about all the junkies and welfare cases that will be created by the policy they endorsed.
So, ask yourself a few key questions. Is legalizing Marijuana going to make this a better country or a worse one? Would you want to live in a neighborhood filled with people who regularly smoke marijuana? Would you want your kids regularly smoking pot? Now is the time to think about it because although it's easy to thoughtlessly legalize a drug like marijuana, when things go predictably wrong down the road, it will be a lot harder to put the genie back in the bottle than people seem to think.
In twenty years urban areas in Colorado and Washington will be stoner wastelands with lethargic dopers lying about in the streets like the zombies in “I Am Legend”.
Cars with stoners at the wheel will sit immobile at stop signs while the drivers wait for the signs to turn green.
Schoolkids will be frisked for weapons, Bibles, & fudge brownies.
;^)
I don’t think it would matter if CA legalized it, I don’t think they could get much more stupid.
If it is to be legalized it has to be national and the borders must be secured to get the cartels out of the business. This certainly won’t happen under this regime.
The biggest hurdle I see though is driving; there is no good test for level of impairment. Yes there is a blood test but its results are questionable due to lots of variables in the plants.
On the up side it might make it a bit harder for kids to get it, but probably not much.
Marijuana is the first step to harder drugs. It makes it easy for someone who smokes it to justify using other drugs, rationalizing that it doesn’t bother them so maybe the other drugs aren’t so bad either. I watched an hour show on TV about marijuana and drug use. At the very end of the show, the moderator asked a DEA agent who sat quietly through the whole show if he thought marijuana was the stepping stone to harder drugs. His response was ‘I don’t know, but every drug user that I or any other agent arrested had started with marijuana’.
I have a friend who smokes the modern weed, it smells exactly like but WORSE than a dead skunk.
healthy dose of LSD.
Really? Didn’t know there was such a thing. Especially since what passes for acid is usually rat poison.
Actually there is a huge difference. Marijuana is nothing like LSD. The most likely effect of a marijuana “overdose” is the person goes to sleep and wakes up very hungry.
Cocaine, heroin etc. are illegal to make, possess, sell, transport and use in about 99.5% of the world. Yet virtually ANY middle school kid will tell you he can get ANY drug he chooses with little to no difficulty.
So....tell me again how making drugs, ANY drugs including MJ illegal has ANY effect on it’s use or availability.
Prohibition did not prevent drinking.
Vice squads and bunko squads have no effect on gambling.
Prostitution is illegal in all but 15 county’s in America yet it’s practice is rampant. So yes, making drugs in general and marijuana specifically illegal is pointless.
It does not prevent their use, it merely empowers evil people to destroy freedoms.
Conservatives think it is the job of the parents to properly raise their child, not a task for “society”.
The moral decay in America is neither caused by nor a product of drug use. Drug use is a symptom of that decay.
The disease of moral decay is a deliberate infection created
by “isms”....communism, progressivism etc. The enemies within are destroying us and the use of drugs is but a symptom of the decay and rot they are fostering.
The number one cause for America’s decline was the choice by many to turn away from the Christian values this country was founded on. THAT is the cause of the moral decay.
when I said I saw the elephant, you can take that too the bank. I don’t remember much of the 60’s so you know I was there.....
hash or strong grass brownies, that are consumed for the munchies effect without thinking about the amount consumed WILL put you on a trip that can be more intense than Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. Don’t doubt me.
Back several decades ago I was in the music business, and knew a lot of hard core druggies. Every one of them started on cigarettes, and still smoked long after they quit smoking pot.
There’s your real “gateway drug”.
Excellent!
Sounds like a back-drop for the movie “Idiocracy II”
I agree but do we have to try to raise our kids in a cultural toilet? Is it asking to much to keep weed illegal?
Most of them drank milk, too.
They won’t die but they have trouble functioning. And they are vastly entertaining to their classmates.
figure of speech...but of course you knew that
back in the 60s there would be a little evaporated dot on blotter paper, not enough for rat poison to do much damage.
what is out there today? I would not have a clue.
“I don’t remember much of the 60’s so you know I was there.....”
Hey, now that you mention it, I don’t remember you either.
My experiences differed.
I don’t know. Is it asking to much to make alcohol illegal? Or cigarettes?
Outlawing the moral “temptations” one faces in one’s life will NOT produce a decent, moral society.
It will produce a society with a lot of criminals. In such a society, one must worry not only about facing one’s conscience and one’s God when one succumbs to these temptations, one must be worried about being deemed a criminal, and having one’s life ruined by the state, for engaging in an activity which harms no one but oneself.
A society which cherishes individual freedom and individual self-determination should not fatten it’s legal code by making “crimes” out of activities which do not involve harming other persons.
Sorry.
...asking too much..
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