Posted on 07/28/2018 10:14:10 AM PDT by Mariner
We’re seeing an experiment in action. Over the past few years, more and more countries and states have been legalizing marijuana, and we’re finally getting to see what effect it really has.
There have been all kinds of predictions. The naysayers have been sure that legalizing pot will all but bring the world to its doom, with drug abuse and crime running rampant. And on the other side, pot advocates have all but suggested that it’ll usher in a new era of peace and prosperity, where mankind finally settles its differences over a toke.
Enough time has passed now, though, that we can pretty definitively say what really happened—and it’s not all what you might expect.
10 Car Crashes Go Up, But Fatalities Go Down
When you legalize weed, it seems, you replace a lot of your drunk drivers with high drivers. And that has some interesting side effects.
First off, legalizing marijuana definitely leads to more people smoking marijuana. In Colorado, adult marijuana use has gone up by 29 percent since it was legalized. But a lot of those people picking up joints are putting down beer bottles, especially before driving.
Drunk driving, in Washington state, has gone down nearly 33 percent since 2007. High driving has gone up about 50 percent—but its hard to get much meaning out of that, because marijuana stays in the bloodstream for weeks after the effects wear off.
(Excerpt) Read more at listverse.com ...
So would you agree, the tens of hundreds of billions in tax dollars totally blown on government’s failed war on drugs, all while expanding government in NEARLY every direction, was a total failure?
What is this, the 4th time you've been asked this? Give it a shot Tex.
” all while expanding government in every direction, was a total failure?””
But the same tests will show impairment, and presence of the drug just becomes a confirming factor. Follow the pen with your eyes, without moving your head, stand on one leg looking up for 30 seconds, walk a straight line in a certain number of steps and return, follow a set of simple instructions... Or put 'em in a room with a bunch of snack foods...
“There won’t be one state fifteen yrs from now which has not legalized marijuana”
You can take that to the bank. It’s as certain as the day is long.
There will be holdouts, but eventually they’ll wake up and realize their cause is forever lost. Just like the prohibitionists of 100 years ago.
No. I don’t believe government has been a total failure.
This unabashed proponent of legalization does not use marijuana.
And is a productive citizen.
Ferrget it...You won’t answer the question you’ve repeatedly dodged and danced around. Pathetic.
I rest my case.
That's a good thing for the states they leave behind! In fact, offer free one-way bus tickets to the legal pot destination du jour, with the stipulation that returning is punishable.
75 years of observation.... If you can't see it, then you haven't been paying attention... :)
I said I don’t agree with you.
I can’t believe this, is not FR a conservative site? You wouldn’t think so to read this thread. As I write this, 40 “progressive” pro-pot posts and counting, with but two “conservative” posts dissenting.
As I understand it, “conservative” means to conserve, “progressive” - damn the conservative torpedoes full speed ahead to a new world of dope head progressives. Damn the Christians who still contend for Biblical-derived morals and values, full speed ahead...to their eternal destruction.
We Christians are too narrow-minded the progressives tell us. Too stuck in the past. Yes, we are narrow minded, and for a good reason. Our founder and Master warned us beware the wide progressive way that the majority will choose, with its end eternal destruction. Choose the narrow way that leads to life, he said, Matt. 7:14.
Because that is narrow minded. It's possible to argue the reverse and be just as accurate.
1. Most of the people on the streets outside your office are high or brain-damaged.
2. Homeless population explodes.
3. Crazies and homeless crap and pee out in the open. One of the streets outside my office is now a popular “dumping” spot and smells unbelievably foul.
4. Traffic and pedestrian accidents skyrocket. Stoned and brain-damaged druggies wander across the streets randomly.
5. Cops stop enforcing the laws, especially the drug laws. They know there is no upside for them, only the possibility of being injured or sued for “civil rights” violations.
6. A small percentage of the population (politically connected Democrats) gets rich off of controlling the marijuana dispensaries.
7. People stop working.
I’ll stop here.
If you think street people are entirely due to marijuana you’re rather short sighted, they existed a hundred years ago and were drunks. Called bums and hobos. I said I don’t think it’s a good thing, but your knee jerking apparently got in the way, lol.
Care to actually post some proof?
I know apocalypstic scenarios are very popular on FR but yours are about the worst.
Is there any problem NOT created by smoking reefer?
That was the strategy used by the White Citizens Councils in the pre-Civil rights days. Under it it was hoped that that would remove Blacks from Mississippi.
Of course, it was short-sighted and stupid.
I think it’s funny that you conflate religion with conservatism and pot with progressivism.
>I was not referring to “religion” per se. I quoted Christ’s words, Matthew seven...to which Christians look for answers.
From the way you talk, you must not be a Christian conservative, who has experienced progressives calling them narrow minded and out of step with the way society is going.
Candidate Trump speaks favorably about medical marijuana and leaving legalization to the states =>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWIQhDbs1g8
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President Trump supports the STATES Act, which leaves mj legalizaion to the States =>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M53XLBd54Y
______
So what do you have to say about President Trump, who has done more to facilitate legal pot in the US than all of FR combined and more than any other President, including the last one?
I understand that the so-called drug warriors at the DEA and the FBI believe that they have a fundamental legal right to torture innocent pain sufferers such as cancer patients by forcing through extremely restrictive laws and regulations withholding pain alleviation agents like opioids from these victims of unwanted diseases and other medical misfortunes. As far as I’m concerned, these drug warriors deserve to have their faces melted off with blowtorches even as their fingers are snipped off millimeter by millimeter with tin snips.
Nor do I shrink in the slightest degree from the concept of cosmic, vicious justice against the scuttling, subhuman vermin that gloat in human suffering in favor of strutting, inhuman authoritarianism. I wish upon them the most hellish pain and suffering as imposed by the infinite justice of God.
Fat male teens with soy-boy man-tits from all the soybased snack foods eaten with munchies. Pretty common clinical observation.
Have not dived in to this discussion because the stoners will not be refused by clinical facts. Minors/teens that is, people whose brains are still growing up until about age 24— are proven 20 point IQ loss with chronic pot use.
Don’t care about the old stoners— they are already clinically addicted from past life, and their brains are whatever they are. But our youth? this is not a benign agent, which is why it is still a Schedule I narcotic with no clinically accepted medical use, and a high potential for abuse.
Finally, there are significant UK studies (peer reviewed) that have identified gene-linked schizophrenic response to chronic marijuana use. That is— there are certain people with specific identified genome sections which respond to the environmental chemical THC (and other cogeners) with documented schizoid behaviour. In females possessing these gene codings, as they approach age 40-45 (and hormonal changes are noted if they have not borne children) there is marked increase in bipolar disorders. The cross reference is to the specific numbered gene markers in the individuals. Such is the result of the human genome project and identifying disease states caused by genetic susceptibility to external chemical effects. Again— the people who have the specific gene dosing (dosing can be the complete range of numbered gene areas from all of them inherited down to 20% of the gene regions- with consequent quantifiable clinical events.
But then.... this is all some Puritan cabal trying to spoil people’s fun. The Libertarian part says to me— let em screw up their lives... .there’s more for me who pays attention and doesn’t miss 15 years. The “ruling class” (at least the dem/rino crowd) loves a chemically distracted population of proles.... just like the ancient Incan kings had a docile starving, cocaine dependent slave class they didn’t have to feed to control them.... just dole out the coca leaf and the lime to chew it with to release the alkaloid.
Aside from all these chemical effects, have no problem with people vaping THC if they could— it is far far better than inhaling pot smoke with it’s more than 100 poorly studied carcinogens in the tars created from burning/puffing a joint. Same as nicotine— vape it... don’t smoke it. And not surprised that RJ Reynolds et cie. are the largest lobbyist against vaping nicotine (cause these people don’t buy cigarettes!!) Personally think that it’s big Tobacco that is behind this “legalization” and the small time growers think they are going to run things-— they aren’t— it’s RJ Reynolds that will own the monopoly on filter tip pot, mass produced.
Rambling observations from a clinician/pharmacologist/forensics career.
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