How do you see pot heads, and the overall usage of marijuana? I started smoking after my junior year in high school, I don't think it held me back in school I was never a very good student. I don't like its extreme usage in the media. I see it becoming a bigger problem in the future. It should have strict age enforcement such as jail time for anyone who supplies it to minors, it already is a growing problem for 7th graders to high school freshman but I do think it should be legal for anyone 18 and over to smoke and produce it. If for no other reason marijuana should be legal for all the hemp. :m:
There are those who claim it is a gateway drug to other substances. But I suppose you could make the same argument regarding alcohol. I do think it should be out of the reach of youngsters, yet that is probably impossible.
It's less harmful than alcohol, TBH. If we legalize it we can tax it. Too, I expect most of us think paying to lock up someone whose only crime is being a stoner (and not behind the wheel of a car or doing any other illegal thing) is a waste of money... I miss being able to have some on occasion-not a big deal, but I have to be able to pass a pee test...so no twice-yearly special happy brownie for yours truly...
did you see that the feds are shutting down the weed dispensaries in Calif. They got 45 days to shutter or the feds are going to come for em . Next it will be Montana . I don't get it after Obama said it was time to back off last year . Something just don't jive
i have 3 sons, i've told each of them i would very much rather they smoked pot than drink alcohol. all 3 of them don't drink alcohol. all 3 of them smoke pot. i do not see marijuana becoming outright legal in the US. i do however see it becoming so decriminalized to where it might as well be legal. there is at least one problem with pot though, and that is the inability of the user to "control" the high.
I think it should stay illegal. It supplies lots of poor people with a way to make money. If it were legalized, first there would be the taxes, then the fact that it would probably sell a lot cheaper, then the company putting their label on it gets a cut, then the store that it's sold out of. At the end of the day you have a poor person making minimum wage for selling the amount of weed that 5 people could make that much from in a day. Yes, I'm very aware of the "taxes" that the growers, transporters, and distributors already put on weed, that's why I have friends so I can buy mine cheap. Oh yeah, this is just absent typing, so point out any flaws you find.
Anybody watch the PBS series on Prohibition? Recall what actually ended the Great Depression? Yeah - the repeal of the 18th amendment ended the Great Depression. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! How? Everybody (except the Republican religious extremists who had passed the 18th) wanted to drink a few beers, so they scraped up the money to do that as soon as beer was available. That got the breweries fired up and they had to hire more workers who spent their wages on goods and services from other businesses that then had to hire more workers and ta - da! The American economy roared back to life. Cannabis (among other things) is currently "prohibited" by the US federal government. Yep, if cannabis was legal it would be cheap and taxed, no doubt. That would likely kick those Mexican cartels in the groin hard, maybe throw the Mexican economy into the crapper too, while saving US national forests from illegal industrial level cannabis cropping by heavily armed Mexican gangsters. It may crimp the domestic US black market as well, which would be a bummer as I wholeheartedly support the Black Market. It would also create a HUGE new domestic market and all of the appurtenant support businesses. It would slash the cost of border interdiction, raise government revenues and free up resources current expended on the US law enforcement/judicial/incarceration cartel while freeing LEO from that 67% involvement with the illicit drug industry they currently have. (Here, they just busted half a local police dept including the former chief for spending a ton of 'drug forfeiture' money on....cannabis and prostitutes. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ) No, it is much better to stay the course throwing an ever - increasing amount of money and manpower at an ever - increasing problem until 2020 when it is projected that 1/2 of all Americans will be incarcerated for "drug crimes" and the other 1/2 of American citizens will have jobs in prisons guarding them. That will leave nobody to pay the taxes to support Prohibition. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Legal - in US, needs to be 21 and up like alcohol. There also needs to be strains reserved for medical purposes. The way I see it, they should definitely keep the medical programs going if they decide to legalize due to insurance coverage. It would suck if it were just legalized like alcohol with NO medical considerations - although I guess (worse case scenario) if it were legalized that way, then I would much rather get marijuana without insurance then suffer from the effects of the chemo/MS/whatever.
I don't agree with this. The cartels have a bunch of different ways to make money. They can switch gears and start peddling other stuff (like coke/meth/smack). They could also very easily just pay the taxes and turn their cartel into a legit business since they already have a ton of cash and production infrastructure in place..... if it turns legal, they can just get the paperwork and turn legal right along with it. I think the only two possible ways it would actually hurt a Mexican cartel is: 1. if the United States ramped up domestic production, made the local product cheaper, and made import fees ridiculously expensive. The cartels would be marginalized since nobody would buy from them. 2. if the easy availability of marijuana fulfilled everyone's desires to get high to the point where other drugs lost favor (sort of a reverse gateway hypothesis LOL) BTW - I think I've said all this somewhere before. .
To rely on any kind of intoxicant so that one would feel good is to set oneself up for failure. Finding pleasure should come cheaply, without dangerous side-effects, and available 24/7.
I disagree. As a advocate for pot I would say once you have used the drug enough you can seek out the next best thrill (i.e. shrooms, crack, ecstasy), especially if you started using pot at a young age like 13-15.
My friend, can you educate me, and the friendly people of SF on different strains, I have been dying to get a solid answer on this. Such as, what are the different strains, and how do the vary in effect? But, the way it is set up now it makes it much easier for minors to get it off drug dealers, if you legalize it to be grown privately you get rid of the need for dealers. If you apply for a green card:m: to grow your own supply and you are caught trafficking the drug in any way you should receive maximum possible punishment which should be up 15 months in jail, and permanent loss of green card:m:. Basically, if you want it, grow it, and save the hemp for personal use or weekly collection.
Of course organized crime would look to gain profit elsewhere if cannabis trafficking were to lose its financial allure. The whole point of being a criminal is to make more profit with less investment. I would suggest legalizing ALL "drugs" and placing them under the supervision of the FDA as a medical issue rather than a criminal law issue. If coca and opium tea were readily available as they are elsewhere fewer folks would search out the refined products - much as what happened after alcohol Prohibition was repealed. These are all just plants, they are easy to grow and harvest. Yeah, your back yard reefer prolly ain't gonna be as sweet as NYC Deisel or Strawberry Cough from an Amsterdam Coffee Shoppe, but it would work well enough for many. I am not recommending that anyone consume anything in excess, but I am acknowledging that there are many folks who consume these substances regardless of the laws against that, just like alcohol. This is not going to go away or lesson. It is not going to stop regardless of how many people we lock up. The stuff we are locking them up for using is readily available to them in the frikkin prison we lock them up in - now where is the logic in that? We can't even stop them from smoking pot in state pen, how do we expect to stop them from smoking pot in the privacy of their own homes? Prohibition did not work. Prohibition is not working. Prohibition will not work in the future either. Prohibition is the US federal governments attempt to repeal the law of supply and demand and it is destined to fail as it consistently has throughout the entire history of its use. The next time you hear about a huge bust of pot on the tv news, just remember this: for every ton of pot successfully interdicted, 10 tons make it through. For every drug dealer busted there are 10 waiting to take his/her place. For every tunnel under the border LEO finds there are 10 more that LEO misses. If LEO busts the airplanes they switch to boats. If LEO busts the boats they switch to submarines. If LEO stops a bunch at the border they slip in and grow it in our national forests - and they shoot anybody that gets close. This is not a "war, it is a rout, and the Prohibitionists are the losers.
almost. once this tecno craze grows to the next generation and ecstasy is the new weed we will have failed, as our children's brains will be fried.
I think that craze will be self limiting. Cultures always react to new drugs that way, there is an initial enthusiasm, and then later we learn to use it in the proper context.
