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WHY MARIJUANA SHOULD BE LEGAL EVERYWHERE

JacksinPA

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WHY MARIJUANA SHOULD BE LEGAL EVERYWHERE

Cannabis, or marijuana as it is popularly known, is derived from the cannabis plant. Marijuana is used for medicinal and recreational purposes around the world. It gets its psychoactive properties from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), one of the over 480 compounds found in the plant. There are multiple ways to take marijuana. It can be smoked directly or vaporized and marijuana-infused foods and drinks have been consumed since as early as 1000 BC.

Marijuana has gotten a bad reputation over the years and many people consider it nothing more than a drug that gets people high. Though marijuana has been around for centuries, very few people understand it in its entirety. One of the major reasons why many people vocally support calls to ban marijuana are the number of myths and misunderstandings surrounding it. The good news is that this is changing. Over the years, various studies conducted around the world have found multiple medical benefits from marijuana use and public opinion regarding marijuana has changed for the better over the last few years. The percentage of American adults who oppose marijuana legalization has sharply declined in recent years. If you are still on the fence about marijuana, here are some reasons to help you make up your mind.

No Deaths Have Been Reported Due to Marijuana Overdose
One of the most popular marijuana myths that are still doing the rounds is that a marijuana overdose can kill a person. Nothing could be further from the truth. Recent studies shows that a person would have to consume 20,000-40,000 times the amount of THC in a joint to die due to an overdose. To date, not even a single account of death due to a marijuana overdose has been recorded.
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Marijuana is also not addictive. You can develop a habit for using it on a regular basis, but when i quit after years of heavy use there was no withdrawal problem.
 
206649_IMG_20190403_085709_772.jpg
 
hemp growing has been supressed because it looks like cannabis
that's unfortunate because hemp has an array of wonderful properties, which causes it to be something which deserves to be grown:
...
Hemp as paper: Hemp won’t just save trees, but paper made from Hemp is stronger and more durable. According to Ecomall
The hemp plant, like cotton, produces cellulose fibers that are much more pure than fibers derived from wood...Many of the early documents printed on hemp paper hundreds, or even one thousand years ago, are still in existence.

Hemp as a fuel: Hemp is more sustainable and burns cleaner than any other fuel. More importantly, though, EcoMall says:
The same high cellulose level that makes hemp ideal for paper also makes it perfect for ethanol fuel production. Ethanol is the cleanest-burning liquid bio-alternative to gasoline. In one test, an unleaded gasoline automobile engine produced a thick, black carbon residue in its exhaust, while the tailpipe of a modified ethanol engine tested for the same 3,500 miles remained pristine and residue-free.
Also, when hemp as a biodiesel combusts it releases water vapor and CO2 which is absorbed by plants.

Hemp to renew soil:
For one, hemp grows in abundance. But more importantly, when plants grow they deplete the soil of some natural vital nutrients, hemp however revitalizes the soil.


Hemp actually revitalizes the soil it grows in, both by aerating the soil and through the deposit of carbon dioxide in to it. This makes hemp ideal for crop rotation, and the crop that follows in the soil hemp grew in will develop better than if hemp had not been used.
Hemp as a fiber: Hemp is one of the strongest plant fibers. The venerable fiber is extremely resistant and rugged and has been used by sailors to hold ships and sails. In fact, Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag from hemp.
Hemp can produce 250% more fiber than cotton and 600% more fiber than flax using the same amount of land.
Hemp as food and care: Hemp seeds can be eaten or used as edible oil and provide an incredible source for protein. It can also be grown where other plants won’t because it is so durable. The oil can also be used for hair and skin care and detergent."
 
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WHY MARIJUANA SHOULD BE LEGAL EVERYWHERE

Cannabis, or marijuana as it is popularly known, is derived from the cannabis plant. Marijuana is used for medicinal and recreational purposes around the world. It gets its psychoactive properties from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), one of the over 480 compounds found in the plant. There are multiple ways to take marijuana. It can be smoked directly or vaporized and marijuana-infused foods and drinks have been consumed since as early as 1000 BC.

Marijuana has gotten a bad reputation over the years and many people consider it nothing more than a drug that gets people high. Though marijuana has been around for centuries, very few people understand it in its entirety. One of the major reasons why many people vocally support calls to ban marijuana are the number of myths and misunderstandings surrounding it. The good news is that this is changing. Over the years, various studies conducted around the world have found multiple medical benefits from marijuana use and public opinion regarding marijuana has changed for the better over the last few years. The percentage of American adults who oppose marijuana legalization has sharply declined in recent years. If you are still on the fence about marijuana, here are some reasons to help you make up your mind.

No Deaths Have Been Reported Due to Marijuana Overdose
One of the most popular marijuana myths that are still doing the rounds is that a marijuana overdose can kill a person. Nothing could be further from the truth. Recent studies shows that a person would have to consume 20,000-40,000 times the amount of THC in a joint to die due to an overdose. To date, not even a single account of death due to a marijuana overdose has been recorded.
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Marijuana is also not addictive. You can develop a habit for using it on a regular basis, but when i quit after years of heavy use there was no withdrawal problem.
According to the Shafer Commission, formally known as the "National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse," they recommended national decriminalization of marijuana. That was in 1972. Nixon chose to ignore their findings.

You are right, marijuana is not physically addicting. However, there is the possibility of a psychological addiction. The individual thinks they need to be high in order to function. There is also a risk that heavy use could lead to increased tolerances to THC, and only after detoxifying for at least several days (or even a few weeks) can those tolerances be lowered again. THC is stored in the fat cells, and even if someone completely stops after a long period of heavy use, they could still test positive for THC up to six weeks later.
 
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WHY MARIJUANA SHOULD BE LEGAL EVERYWHERE

Cannabis, or marijuana as it is popularly known, is derived from the cannabis plant. Marijuana is used for medicinal and recreational purposes around the world. It gets its psychoactive properties from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), one of the over 480 compounds found in the plant. There are multiple ways to take marijuana. It can be smoked directly or vaporized and marijuana-infused foods and drinks have been consumed since as early as 1000 BC.

Marijuana has gotten a bad reputation over the years and many people consider it nothing more than a drug that gets people high. Though marijuana has been around for centuries, very few people understand it in its entirety. One of the major reasons why many people vocally support calls to ban marijuana are the number of myths and misunderstandings surrounding it. The good news is that this is changing. Over the years, various studies conducted around the world have found multiple medical benefits from marijuana use and public opinion regarding marijuana has changed for the better over the last few years. The percentage of American adults who oppose marijuana legalization has sharply declined in recent years. If you are still on the fence about marijuana, here are some reasons to help you make up your mind.

No Deaths Have Been Reported Due to Marijuana Overdose
One of the most popular marijuana myths that are still doing the rounds is that a marijuana overdose can kill a person. Nothing could be further from the truth. Recent studies shows that a person would have to consume 20,000-40,000 times the amount of THC in a joint to die due to an overdose. To date, not even a single account of death due to a marijuana overdose has been recorded.
===================================================================
Marijuana is also not addictive. You can develop a habit for using it on a regular basis, but when i quit after years of heavy use there was no withdrawal problem.
Likewise I managed a very responsible career in medicine along with my daily smoke. If anything deserved a ban it would be tobacco and alcohol; the two biggest killers-but they provide a massive income to governments via taxation so won't be banned any time soon. In 2019 alone tax revenue from sales of alcohol (in the US), amounted to $9.9 billion.
 
There is a terrible thing about Pot. If you say, had a guy jump in front of your car, and you hit them, you will be tested for intoxication. The tests for pot are based on fat cells. Which could show up as positive, a LONGGGGGGGGG time after use, not currently high. This could ruin your life.
 
Libertarianism definition: “a political philosophy that advocates only minimal state intervention in the free market and the private lives of citizens.”

I think libertarianism is a very important benchmark. I agree with it insofar as the onus is on the government to justify the silver linings of their policies. This is in spite of the inherent use of coercion in any collectively implemented plans. The platform of legalising all drugs is a useful and self-consistent reference point in the debate.

I think the difficulty arises when someone wants to ban a particular drug but they only focus on the supply side, namely drug dealers. We must address all of the root problems including the aspect of demand. If the market is strong enough, up-and-coming drug dealers will indeed simply take the place of those who are caught and sent to jail.

An extreme comparison would be how removing terrible Saddam Hussein inadvertently ended up creating a whirlwind of other internal violent disputes and controversies. Except the drugs war is on a dispersed and international scale.

I think we first need to disentangle drugs from other crimes. To solve the problem of drugs we must remember not to conflate it with other misdeeds. For instance a very small number of thieves might commit separate crimes like assault as well. This may be down to them having a general criminal mindset. A person might perhaps get consecutive sentences for each crime category. But obviously not everyone who engages in petty thief is a big criminal.

Likewise selling drugs should be treated as a standalone issue. There’s no point giving big jail sentences to a few defendants as if all drug dealers were part of a major drug cartel. Aiding and abetting violence is a different crime!

From a public relations perspective, I think it would be beneficial if the drugs war tried harder to lose the residual nanny state undertones. The sole purpose of the drugs war is to help drug addicts. It’s not exactly to protect innocent teenagers who decide to experiment with a drug. Even if you just took a dangerous drug once, technically you are still a drug taker!

Drugs may cause antisocial behaviour but that is really a distraction. Someone can still drive dangerously without having consumed any alcohol. A person could commit a violent crime devoid of any drug. Effective drug policies should therefore only consider the effects of the drugs on the addicts themselves. Other societal problems are secondary to the task at hand. They instead fall under the purview of social welfare or other police initiatives.

Parts of the drugs war do scientifically seem a bit ad hoc. Unlimited alcohol and cigarettes are available. The buyers of drugs are spared criminal responsibility yet it’s reversed for prostitution where the it’s the buyers who are criminalised. I’m not necessarily saying that it should be different.

I just think more effort is needed to help people who suffer from these addictions. There’s little point in apportioning excessive blame towards drug dealers. As I said before if you want to legalise all drugs, I understand your argument. Don’t criminalise anyone in that case. But if someone else views the problem like a “war” and drugs as some sort of explosive weaponry, then to some degree both buyers and sellers would bear responsibility for this “arms trafficking”.

I’m not in any way at all trying to stigmatise people who are addicted to drugs. I just think policies need to be consistent in order to be sustainable. Otherwise it will eventually fail.

I find the topic of legalising specific drugs like cannabis to be quite interesting. I’m not an expert! There could be holistic advantages with a particular drug depending of course on the risk of adverse side-effects. With the concept of rehabilitation though I found the following quote informative:

“All psychoactive drugs modulate the existing neurochemistry of the brain: either by mimicking specific neurotransmitters or by causing the neurotransmitters themselves to be more or less active... Hence, whatever one has seen or felt after ingesting LSD is likely to have been felt by someone somewhere without it.”

So rehabilitation could also be about finding safer natural alternatives to drugs like the meditation example in the link.

Coerced abstinence for drug consumers in some situations might be a proportionate idea given that society is opting to give drug dealers these very long jail sentences.

“Coerced abstinence is a drug rehabilitation strategy which uses frequent monitoring and immediate punishment to reduce drug use among participants... Because the program ascribes neither to the disease model of addiction (which requires drug treatment) nor to a moral-model (which mandates long and hard sentencing), it may simply be too ideologically neutral to be a successful part of a political platform.”
- Wikipedia
 
People under the influence are much easier to control. Keep-em drunk and high! :eek:
Wow, I never realized how hung up the right is about being controlled. It must be hell to be a republican you fear being controlled so much you don't feel safe unless you carry a concealed weapon. Chill out, smoke a joint, you'll feel much better and happier.
 
“Most users of most drugs (cigarettes and heroin are the prominent exceptions) are occasional users, suffering little damage, doing little damage to others, and contributing little-even in the aggregate-to the revenues of the illicit markets. Moreover, no one would argue that an occasional marijuana smoker (by far the most common variety of illicit drug user) faces personal risks or creates problems for others that are comparable to the personal risks and social problems created by frequent high-dose crack use....
When offenders are subject to coercion, why coerce them into treatment rather than focus directly on the desired outcome-that they simply stop using drugs? That’s the idea behind coerced abstinence...”
 
“Most users of most drugs (cigarettes and heroin are the prominent exceptions) are occasional users, suffering little damage, doing little damage to others, and contributing little-even in the aggregate-to the revenues of the illicit markets. Moreover, no one would argue that an occasional marijuana smoker (by far the most common variety of illicit drug user) faces personal risks or creates problems for others that are comparable to the personal risks and social problems created by frequent high-dose crack use....
When offenders are subject to coercion, why coerce them into treatment rather than focus directly on the desired outcome-that they simply stop using drugs? That’s the idea behind coerced abstinence...”
Last I checked (and it has been a while), heroin is actually quite safe if only you can get clean stuff and control dosage. That means MANY doctors are "safe" heroin addicts, while criminalization ensures that ordinary users are at tremendous risk.
 
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WHY MARIJUANA SHOULD BE LEGAL EVERYWHERE

Cannabis, or marijuana as it is popularly known, is derived from the cannabis plant. Marijuana is used for medicinal and recreational purposes around the world. It gets its psychoactive properties from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), one of the over 480 compounds found in the plant. There are multiple ways to take marijuana. It can be smoked directly or vaporized and marijuana-infused foods and drinks have been consumed since as early as 1000 BC.

Marijuana has gotten a bad reputation over the years and many people consider it nothing more than a drug that gets people high. Though marijuana has been around for centuries, very few people understand it in its entirety. One of the major reasons why many people vocally support calls to ban marijuana are the number of myths and misunderstandings surrounding it. The good news is that this is changing. Over the years, various studies conducted around the world have found multiple medical benefits from marijuana use and public opinion regarding marijuana has changed for the better over the last few years. The percentage of American adults who oppose marijuana legalization has sharply declined in recent years. If you are still on the fence about marijuana, here are some reasons to help you make up your mind.

No Deaths Have Been Reported Due to Marijuana Overdose
One of the most popular marijuana myths that are still doing the rounds is that a marijuana overdose can kill a person. Nothing could be further from the truth. Recent studies shows that a person would have to consume 20,000-40,000 times the amount of THC in a joint to die due to an overdose. To date, not even a single account of death due to a marijuana overdose has been recorded.
===================================================================
Marijuana is also not addictive. You can develop a habit for using it on a regular basis, but when i quit after years of heavy use there was no withdrawal problem.
All drugs Should be legal.
 

He made some good points. I understand his arguments about making it safer to use. I found the idea of using the mental health service instead of banning it good and interesting but maybe a bit idealistic because addiction seems very complex. Psychologists can help with past emotional difficulties but not necessarily spiritual issues and anomie. I’m not sure if a psychiatrist can prescribe drugs to stop you taking other drugs!
 
I am against legalization.......

I am for decriminalization .............
 
All drugs Should be legal.
There are too many dangerous pharmaceuticals out there that should never be legal per se.

Decriminalize reefer don't legalize.........
 
The more legal marijuana becomes, the more young people will be smokin'. As a retired teacher the worst aspect of regular marijuana use is that it very often robs students of ambition and ruins study habits. You just don' feel like hittin' the books when you're high. Much more fun to play video games. So if it's a nation of Beavis and Buttheads you want, legalize marijuana everywhere. They'll need to be high to survive the day on those monotonous minimum wage jobs they're stuck at.
 
The more legal marijuana becomes, the more young people will be smokin'. As a retired teacher the worst aspect of regular marijuana use is that it very often robs students of ambition and ruins study habits. You just don' feel like hittin' the books when you're high. Much more fun to play video games. So if it's a nation of Beavis and Buttheads you want, legalize marijuana everywhere. They'll need to be high to survive the day on those monotonous minimum wage jobs they're stuck at.
not unlike excessive imbibing of alcohol
eating too much food
there are down sides to excess anything that is tangible

that there are those who cannot be moderate in their (ab)use should not cause those who can be responsible to be denied access
 
People under the influence are much easier to control. Keep-em drunk and high! :eek:
Not quite the same - lots of drunks get stupid and violent, drive 150mph because they believe they're bulletproof and as good as a NASCAR driver, etc. I'm not a pot user, but I understand that's at least rare with that drug.
 
not unlike excessive imbibing of alcohol
eating too much food
there are down sides to excess anything that is tangible

that there are those who cannot be moderate in their (ab)use should not cause those who can be responsible to be denied access
Hey, smoke all the pot you want. Makes for less competition in the job market. :)
 
According to the Shafer Commission, formally known as the "National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse," they recommended national decriminalization of marijuana. That was in 1972. Nixon chose to ignore their findings.

You are right, marijuana is not physically addicting. However, there is the possibility of a psychological addiction. The individual thinks they need to be high in order to function. There is also a risk that heavy use could lead to increased tolerances to THC, and only after detoxifying for at least several days (or even a few weeks) can those tolerances be lowered again. THC is stored in the fat cells, and even if someone completely stops after a long period of heavy use, they could still test positive for THC up to six weeks later.

You are not going to do any reversing of THC tolerance by not smoking for even many years. THC acts at a receptor. When the body sees something like THC that activates those receptors, the body makes more of those receptors in order to handle the high levels of THC gotten from MJ. Those new receptors require more THC to get the same response as you got the first time. Works the same as alcohol & opioids, just different receptors.
Hey, smoke all the pot you want. Makes for less competition in the job market. :)

Not really a good option if you want to get a good job. Saw a recruiting film for a CSX railroad conductor job. They drug test applicants via both urine & hair follicles. And THC metabolites can be detected for months after you last smoke. And they spot test you on the job.
 
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