Opinion on Marijuana

My high school is predominantly an arts school...enough said...

I think 90%+ of all Preforming and Visual Arts kids (besides Grade 9s, which I think 25-30% are stoners) are stoners. 75%+ of the general population are stoners (including the Gifted Program...being gifted doesn't stop people from being stoners...).

There are so many kids that come to class baked...

drumbeat said:

Even in the 90s this may have been the case. Nowadays though, the GM 'skunk' is very strong and it saturates the market.

(for the record I haven't touched any of it for 6/7 years.)

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My experience with it was in the 70's. It was a term used to describe low quality weed. I did check out a few of the seed vendors online and did see Skunk as being offered in their inventory. I suppose things have changed drastically since my days as a pot smoker. It's probably been more than 20 years since I last had a hit.

When I was 11, I began regularly smoking cigarettes like many of my classmates. When I was a bit older I began drinking beer when I could get it, then later pretty much any alcohol I could get my hands on. Then, one day in SoCal, a friend says "hey - I got some pot, want to smoke some?" I asked WTF it was. He said it was "like a cigarette that when you smoke it you get drunk".

THAT, Cosmic, is what we mean by being a "gateway drug". Tobacco cigarettes and alcohol were my "gateway drugs" to introduce me to smoking pot. Pot may be one......just like alcohol and tobacco and aspirin and Tylenol and antibiotics etc etc etc, but that statement in its own means jack-diddly-squat. IOW it is meaningless, just a thing to say that reflects your fear of the unknown.

I understand (as usual) that this is a special issue for you and I appreciate your emotional involvement, but you are lacking in science on this topic.

Look, I do not recommend that anyone become dependent on any substance for their happiness. I am Buddhist, but I am practical as well. It would be great if everyone could just live forever healthy and happy without any support from anything or anybody...but that is not how this world works.

Some of us have intractable pain, some of us have severe medical conditions that require intervention in order to enable them to live something resembling a normal life. Some of us just prefer to be drunk or stoned or catatonic. It is NOT our right to dictate to these individuals how to cope with their burden. It must be their choice, and it is especially NOT the governments right to dictate this with "law".

When I first moved to Detroit, Michigan had on the books a law that stated that ONLY a married man and women were allowed to have sex and ONLY in the traditional "missionary position". Trying to tell someone what they are allowed to ingest is logically equivalent to that, and it is none of the governments' dam business.

If you want to shoot heroin in an alley until you die, that is your right. It is not my right to tell you not to do that either, though I may advise you not to for obvious reasons. Some things we have control over and some we do not. THIS is one of those issues that we simply do not have control over.

Oh yeah - and further on this topic, the genie is so far out of the bottle now that it is not possible to put him back in it again.

What happened in Britain created the English "mini garden" now typically found under the stairs in an English flat. These are what we call "micro grows" that are extremely hard to detect and are now quite as common in GB as any other garden.

Further details available on request.

Stryder said:

In fact I'm suprised governments haven't done like Monsanto and generated a genetic derivative of Cannabis so that it cross pollinates other species and allows them to pull patent infringements on anyone growing the particular GM. Yes no longer would it all be about Narc's at your door, but a pinstripe suited lawyer readying legal action in the name of large corporations or governments.

It doesn't matter how illegal or legal the substance is made if it's all boils down to patent infringements.

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Patent infringement damages are based on how much the infringing party would have reasonably had to pay to buy or license the invention. If the invention can't be licensed or sold (because it's illegal), I think you might have a hard time proving damages...

drumbeat said:

I know of about 25 people who started smoking weed aged under 16.
10 years later, and 4 of these still smoke every day, while another 5-6 have a little dabble now and again. None of them have ever used cocaine or heroin, and only 3/4 used ecstasy for a small period around the age of 17/18.

This proves you wrong.

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That's like arguing that because your 99 year old aunt smokes a packet of ciggaretes a day that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. It's a fallacy of the general rule, or something very close to it. I suppose, strictly speaking it's a strawman hypothesis constructed using a fallacy of the general rule.

Being able to point at a group of people that didn't progress to harder drugs doesn't absolve marijuana from having a role as a gateway drug, anymore than being able to point to a group of people who did neccessarily proves it. If I were to apply that logic, I could argue that any use of marijuana should be banned because all users of marijuana will eventually use heavily enough that they must steal to fund their addiction. All of which fails to consider the alternative - that personality type as much as any other factor leads to progression. Do I think that it has a role to play? Sure, I'd suggest that it's pretty obvious that it does. Does that imply that everybody who has used will neccessarily progress to harder drugs? No, because that in itself implies a false dichotomy, and ignores the existence of addictive personality types.

Personally, I think we should address the societal issues that exist around, and lead to Tobacco abuse, Alcohol abuse, Gambling Abuse, Over eating (yes, eating, and eating specific food groups can be an addictive behaviour), and so on and so forth before we go and introduce another vehicle of addiction.

Personally, I would like to be able to walk down public streets without inhaling second hand smoke.

Trippy said:

Personally, I would like to be able to walk down public streets without inhaling second hand smoke.

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Understandable, but since there's no scientific basis for the claim that outdoor second-hand smoke has any significant health impact on you, that's simply an expression of personal preference, with no more weight than that of smokers who like to be able to walk down public streets while smoking. The exhaust from the cars driving on the street next to you are a much bigger impact on the air quality (not to mention noise pollution, global warming, etc.).

I'd like to be able to walk down public streets without listening to loud cell-phone conversations, or noisy children, or having to navigate around slow, inconsiderate pedestrians. But, alas, these are simply preferences, and not justifiable impositions on anyone.

cosmictraveler said:

Marijuana serves as a gateway to the world of illegal drugs in which youths have greater opportunity and are under greater social pressure to try other illegal drugs.

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To the extent that such is true - which is to say, very little - that's exactly because marijuana is illegal. It's an argument for legalizing marijuana and normalizing its consumption.

Stryder said:

Now that's actually funny, the first people to complain about GM foods were stereotyped as being "pot smoking tree hugging hippies", but nowadays most of these people are hypocritically smoking GM Cannabis.

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Selective breeding for desireable traits is not what people mean by "genetically modified." Because if they did, then every food crop in the world would be "genetically modified."

Stryder said:

In fact I'm suprised governments haven't done like Monsanto and generated a genetic derivative of Cannabis so that it cross pollinates other species and allows them to pull patent infringements on anyone growing the particular GM.

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You can't patent a marijuana strain where such is illegal, and at least in the US it's illegal to grow any kind of hemp (regardless of whether it produces marijuana), so there's no larger legal hemp ecosystem to cross-pollinate from.

Stryder said:

It doesn't matter how illegal or legal the substance is made if it's all boils down to patent infringements.

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Yes it does. The legal status prevents "it" from ever so boiling down in the first place.

quadraphonics said:

Understandable, but since there's no scientific basis for the claim that outdoor second-hand smoke has any significant health impact on you, that's simply an expression of personal preference, with no more weight than that of smokers who like to be able to walk down public streets while smoking.

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No, for me it is actually a health issue.

I'm allergic to members of Solanaceae, which includes Tobacco, Tomato, and Peppers. Among other things, second hand ciggarete smoke triggers my asthma. Encountering it out doors is sufficient to induce coughing fits of varying degrees of severity.

Knowledge91 said:

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:

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I think if you are of the age to have a television in your room and you have one, it should be legal to smoke M. Television watching leads to all dangerous addictions and really poor political and social conception.

Pineal said:

I think if you are of the age to have a television in your room and you have one, it should be legal to smoke M. Television watching leads to all dangerous addictions and really poor political and social conception.

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OMG..don't give anyone any ideas to make TV illegal!..

(the first time you have seen "Heavy Metal", were you stoned?)

NMSquirrel said:

OMG..don't give anyone any ideas to make TV illegal!..

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It will never happen, not with anything remotely like the world's current power structures. Why would the people with serious power want television to go away. No way.

(the first time you have seen "Heavy Metal", were you stoned?)

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I have not seen it, though the answer would have been no anyway.

Trippy said:

No, for me it is actually a health issue.

I'm allergic to members of Solanaceae, which includes Tobacco, Tomato, and Peppers. Among other things, second hand ciggarete smoke triggers my asthma. Encountering it out doors is sufficient to induce coughing fits of varying degrees of severity.

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Bummer, those are like the two most important ingredients known to man, tomato, and pepper.

Knowledge91 said:

Bummer, those are like the two most important ingredients known to man, tomato, and pepper.

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I know, although through trial and error, I have managed to establish one or two things.

If it's the same thing in both, then in Tomato it seems to be restricted to the leaves, and whatever it is it seems to denature, or otherwise degrade with cooking as it seems to be raw peppers that give me problems. Although, I'm not 100% certain why it would denature during cooking, but survive combustion. :shrugs:

quadraphonics said:

You can't patent a marijuana strain where such is illegal...

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Sure you can. There's nothing in the law that says an invention can't be illegal. There are plenty of patents on illegal things. Of course, how useful/valuable those patents are is another question...

Trippy said:

That's like arguing that because your 99 year old aunt smokes a packet of ciggaretes a day that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. It's a fallacy of the general rule, or something very close to it. I suppose, strictly speaking it's a strawman hypothesis constructed using a fallacy of the general rule.

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Well normally I wouldn't use an argument like that, but it was in response to a claim that all dope smokers are thrill seekers and work their way up the drug ladder.

It's a daft claim, and me knowing 25 who didn't proves it to be daft.

No need. The US federal governments National Academy of Science School of Medicine agrees with you, the 'gateway drug' theory fails. This despite religious and far - right conservative's dogmatic repetition of same as an argument to support continued prohibition.