Should marijuana be legalized?

Tobacco doesn't make you hallucinate. They bred that out of tobacco hundreds of years ago. Pot still does. Maybe if they can breed the hallucinogenic properties out if it, they will legalize it and it can be just another poison to put in our bodies for minimal amounts of quasi-pleasure.

 

Absolutely not; after all, it sounds like it would be too troublesome if it were legalized not to mention of course all the obvious harmful health side-effects. ^^;

 

I say yes. We have Free Will and we should be allowed to excercise that Free Will.

 

Well, you don't need to worry about paying for me. I live in Australia.
But don't ***** about health care. You're going to pay taxes no matter what. At least the government is putting it to work.
I don't care if someone gets hit by a bus and needs recontructive surgery. I don't care if some fat son of a ***** needs a heart bypass and a stomach band. But my money will go to them anyway.
So if I decide to get ****ed up and need my stomach pumped, then I'm ****ing going to.
Because I pay taxes just like the rest of you.
(And I don't even know what you're *****ing about. You don't pay taxes anyway.)


Look, kid, don't tell me to "do my homework on drugs". I know what ecstasy looks like. I've got a pill in my room right now. It's blue with a plane on it. I've taken green ones with a clover printed on it. I've taken red ones with a McDonalds logo. I know what they look like and I know what they do.
One pill will not kill anyone. I've taken three in one night before, and didn't drink anything but alcohol which as you should know is a diuretic and I did not get dehydrated. It's not that bad.
And I've never had a bad high. Ecstasy releases a naturally occuring chemical in the brain, putting you into a state of happiness. What's so wrong about that?

You're idea of fun may be to sit at home on a Saturday night and play video games and watch Naruto. But it certainly ain't mine. I should be allowed to live my life however it is I want, as long as I'm not causing harm to anyone. And I'm not.

 

I can;t argue with someone like you. You are completely irrational. You can see all the facts laid out in front of you, you know all the deadly risks that WILL eventually catch up with you, but you refuse to admit them. You are in complete DENIAL. One day, you WILL slip up, you WILL get sick, and you WILL die from drugs. Don't expect me to pay for your (or anyone like you) medical bills, insurance, funeral bills, or tax increases from your giving cops more work. In fact, I just might laugh when you die, and scream "I TOLD YOU SO". My idea of a good time is to hang out with whatever friends you have, in a perfectly legal way, and do things that make you happy. Legally. I feel no need to break the law in order to have a good time.

 

Irrational, denial, refusal? No. Where did I say drugs were harmless?

I know very well what I'm doing, and I don't care. I accept any and all consequences of my decisions. I don't intend to live forever, what's the point of growing old if I can't do anything? So in the long term, yeah, these drugs may kill me. But it was all worth it.

 

well either way bro i still think drugs and alchool are easy to avoid and should be outlawed in the USA

 

You mean on a Kingdom Hearts forum filled with underage uneducated people? Yeah, it shows a whole lot

THC has never been shown in scientific testing to have any capability to cause chemical addiction.

This is completely baseless. There is not a substance or compound on the planet earth that is not cycled through the human body with time, traces of anything can hardly be sustained in the human body for longer than 30 days.

MDMA's ability to dehydrate you is nowhere near lethality, and no worse than that of Alcohol, which at the very worst results in a headache (see: "hangover")

It's been shown that use of cell phones whilst driving results in more perception and reaction loss in people than being high does, and even cell phones are still below being alcohol intoxicated.

http://www.soop.ca/potfacts/safetodrive.html

What?

Also, if you want to get into the history of why Marijuana became illegal in the first place:

http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/12/22/whyIsMarijuanaIllegal.html??

The criminalization of Marijuana was brought about through lying about almost everything about the substance to deem it dangerous despite medical contradiction, and was a political scapegoat to appear tough on crime in the wake of the end of prohibition. Not to mention the general consensus that it was seen as a competitor to the tobacco and hemp industry that at the time couldn't properly be capitalized on, so they wanted it gone altogether.

The fact that something like Marijuana results in the underground drug market is the problem. There is a demand for the substances whether you like it or not, the fact that they're illegal results in drug dealing, robberies, gang wars, smuggling, and gets money into the hands of the bad people.

There is no quality control to street drugs, there is no guaranteed safe buying, and people are put in dangerous situations because of the fact that it is senselessly illegal. No underground market would be able to compete with a government regulated and government sanctioned market for the substances. There would be pharmaceutical level quality control, safe availability, and it would create an entire entrepreneurial market where the money from legally selling them and taxing goes back into the economy, not in the hands of drug dealers.

The "war on drugs" is prohibition, and we learned in the 20s that it could never work. The introduction of alcohol prohibition saw the largest crime growth in US history (up until the War on Drugs was started, funnily enough). The fact that alcohol was desired whether it was legal or not led to gang wars, bootlegging, underground speakeasies, homebrewed low-quality product that poisoned and sickened many because of lack of quality control.



The government saw the senselessness in prohibition, they've just yet to see the fact that the "War on Drugs" is the same thing. Tens of billions of dollars are spent raiding marijuana growth houses for growing a natural plant that has limited harm compared to already legal substances, spent on housing and feeding the teenagers that they put behind bars for possession, potentially ruining their lives for simply experimenting while they were young, and taking Law Enforcement Officers away from protecting the people and instead putting them to work busting pot dealers.

While on that note, lets get over to this:

I'm not sure if I've posted this spiel in this thread already or not, but lets give it another go.

Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects, however it is interesting to note that there is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a single proven or documented cannabis-induced fatality.

The record of marijuana use encompasses 5,000 years of human experience. It is estimated that from 10 to 20 million Americans routinely, albeit illegally, smoke marijuana without direct medical supervision. Yet, despite this long history of use and the extraordinarily high numbers of social smokers, there are simply no credible medical reports to suggest that consuming marijuana has caused a single death.

By contrast aspirin, a commonly used, over-the-counter medicine, causes tens of thousands of deaths each year.

Drugs used in medicine are routinely given what is called an LD-50. The LD-50 rating indicates at what dosage fifty percent of test animals receiving a drug will die as a result of drug induced toxicity. A number of researchers have attempted to determine marijuana's LD-50 rating in test animals, without success.

Enormous doses of Delta 9 THC, All THC and concentrated marijuana extract ingested by mouth were unable to produce death or organ pathology in large mammals.

The non-fatal consumption of 3000 mg of THC by the dog and monkey would be comparable to a 154-pound human eating approximately 46 pounds of marijuana at one time. In addition, 92 mg THC produced no fatalities in monkeys. These doses would be comparable to a 154-pound human smoking at one time almost three pounds of marijuana, or 250,000 times the usual smoked dose, and over a million times the minimal effective dose, assuming 50% destruction of the THC by smoking.

Simply put, researchers have been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death to this date.

At present it is estimated that marijuana's LD-50 is around 1:20,000 or 1:40,000. In layman terms this means that in order to induce death a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much marijuana as is contained in one marijuana cigarette. NIDA-supplied marijuana cigarettes weigh approximately .9 grams. A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response.

In practical terms, marijuana cannot induce a lethal response as a result of drug-related toxicity.

Another common medical way to determine drug safety is called the therapeutic ratio. This ratio defines the difference between a therapeutically effective dose and a dose which is capable of inducing adverse effects.

A commonly used over-the-counter product like aspirin has a therapeutic ratio of around 1:20. Two aspirins are the recommended dose for adult patients. Twenty times this dose, forty aspirins, may cause a lethal reaction in some patients, and will almost certainly cause gross injury to the digestive system, including extensive internal bleeding.

The therapeutic ratio for prescribed drugs is commonly around 1:10 or lower. Valium, a commonly used prescriptive drug, may cause very serious biological damage if patients use ten times the recommended (therapeutic) dose.

By contrast, marijuana's therapeutic ratio, like its LD-50, is impossible to quantify because it is so high. In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating ten raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death.

Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine without significant consequence, more so than any medically prescribed substances on the market to date.

By comparison, smoking pot is much safer than smoking cigarettes, one reason being that marijuana is not inherently as addictive as tobacco because it does not contain nicotine. Many more people get addicted to tobacco smoking than marijuana smoking, because the chemical reliance to keep the habit going simply isn't there for marijuana, many stop using marijuana as they get older, whereas cigarette smoking usually leads to lifetime use.

Not to mention that the act of smoking marijuana involves taking significantly less smoke into your lungs than tobacco users, as well as the fact that marijuana requires much less use in order to get the desired affect. You will hardly ever see a person who feels the need to smoke seven marijuana joints a day, by comparison cigarette use can be an entire 20-cig pack in a day. Marijuana smokers typically don't have more than one on average, and they tend to quit the habit much easier.

Marijuana is used to alleviate Cancer and HIV symptoms, as well as relieve sufferers of Influenza and the affects of Chemotherapy treatment. It's also been suggested to help those with Anorexia and Alzheimer's, and that it may even inhibit cancer cell growth. It helps those with Multiple Sclerosis with muscle use, and some have claimed success with OCD and Tourettes patients in controlling of their ticks.

Significant medical uses for Cannabis are still being researched and discovered.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080908103045.htm
http://www.webmd.com/news/20000228/marijuanas-active-ingredient-targets-deadly-brain-cancer
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february132009/mj_vs_drugs_2-13-09.php

And some alternative views that have been brought about in recent times as people have sought to fight against the War on Drugs:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/05/health/cbsdoc/main4844665.shtml
http://www.alternet.org/story/71504/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti3QAlKx10c&fmt18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFmtirw5io8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LayaGk0TMDc

 

it would be a good idea to legalize it because i think it could possibly help reduce the amount of MJ problems that occur... its not that harmful of a drug and even though it could lead to harder drug uses, its less harmful that cigarettes which are legal right now

 

i think i agree here... its true that maybe tobacco should be the ILLEGAL substance since it does more harm and causes more deaths in society than MJ ever will

 

Maybe they should BOTH be illegal, since they both CLEARLY have bad effects on the human body and provide absolutely NO benifit that can't be attained with a synthetic alternative.

 

I think it would be pure stupidity to legalize marijuana.

 

One, It IS about my ideas and my way of thinking because this is a thread about if the people on this forum THINK that cannabis should be legalized. I'm also not talking about a AHH for a few second scare, I'm talking about seeing a real dead body in you house scary. There was a guy that took a hallucinagenic drug (can't remember which) his greates fear was spiders. The drug kicked in and he saw massive spiders like the kind you find on a dinner plate creawling up his body. He clawed and scratched at his arms, legs, and his body. He had scars for LIFE. Also, contrary to popular beleif, it IS possible to get addicted to cannabis. The have been studies into this and it has been found to be addictive. I cannot find the figures. Also, drugs are sold to find things like terrorism and gang culture. I don't want MY or anyone elses money going towards funding to effectively kill people. This is my opinion and if anyone, user/addict or not doesn't agree, tough ****.

 

HECK NO.

Marijuana should never, ever legalized. What's America's philosophy? If you do something the people like, it is very, very, very hard to undo it. It is a stupid drug that kills many people day to day, it is offered to the youth of America day to day, and kills many brain cells that could be used for something more productive than wasting it all away. It is no use to the people of America, and making it legal would make us the stupidest country in the world, if not already. Even if another country does it, we're not that country. We have different people. People do the stupidest of stuff here. Text messaging while driving. Telling the children of America that we can die for our country and not be allowed to drink a beer at the age of eighteen. Proposing anti-spanking laws. Telling the children of America the "birds and the bees" at the age of five. But those are all irrelevant subjects that are for another time, and another place - just a list of things that prove we're a stupid country. =]
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This depends on what you consider "addiction". Scientific chemical addiction is caused when the reward pathways of dopamine in the brain as a result of a substance cause the need to continue to do the substance, and result in a reliance. Cannabis and THC have not been shown to have any affect on dopamine in the brain, the substance itself simply does not contain anything that affects the reward system in the brain attributed with addiction, therefore it is not chemically addictive.

So then you ask, why do you hear about these severe cases of what clearly appears to be addiction? That is what we call the human factor. Marijuana is not chemically addictive, it does not have anything in it that alters brain function in a way to cause addiction in regular cases, however, there is the factor of habitualization and people who simply have addictive personalities.

Addiction and habit are not the same thing, Marijuana has the capability to be used regularly out of habit, but that is entirely a human factor for it to become so, not a chemical one. Same with people who simply have addictive personalities, it is a mental issue with the person to begin with that leads to the few and far between cases where Marijuana is a factor in a addictive relationship. The same people could have gotten addicted to jogging, playing darts, or arts and crafts, it's simply something wrong with their brain that attributes a dopamine release to whatever they end up addicted to.

You seemed to have missed the part earlier where I pointed out that Marijuana does not kill "many people day to day".

As for the whole "killing brain cells" thing:

http://www.soop.ca/potfacts/braincells.html

 

In a drug sense, there are two kinds of addiction - physical or chemical addiction, where it will be damaging or fatal to go off the drug, or mental addiction (may be another name, don't remember), where your brain is taught through constant or often use to need the drug to "have a good time" or to feel good. Going off it in the second case will produce mild to strong withdrawal symptoms, depending on how long you have been on the drug. THIS is what marijuana does to you. It addicts you, but not fatally.

 

Marijuana does not do that to you, because in order for it to do that to you there would have to be a chemical process taking place in order to cause that reaction. What you are referring to, as I pointed out, is a habit. You can make a habit out of anything, I could make a habit out of eating chocolate (which, actually, could lead to chemical addiction as chocolate and other sweets release dopamine).

Marijuana is not be all end all completely non-addictive, I am not stating that it is impossible or that no one has ever had some sort of dependence on it, what I'm saying is that this is not out of the ordinary and what actually is there is shown to be significantly less harmful then even that of a ridiculous amount of legal substances.

It is not fatal, and it is shown that there is typically limited to no withdrawal symptoms from recreational use of Marijuana, and that withdrawal symptoms have been shown in cases where there was years of almost daily use of the substance, and even then it was out of the system in close to 10 days.

 

agreed, it would ruin more lives.

 

yeah thats another possibility as well.... even though i smoke cigarettes everysoften, i dont do any MJ because its too scary to think of what could happen to me if it overtook my sense of reason and judgement. alcohol is just as damaging as well. :D

 

As long as alcohol and cigerrettes are legal
marijuana should be too.
Yes, i think it should be legalized for reasons i have stated before
but if the ignorant masses think its dangerous then outlaw Alcohol and cigs as well.