Decriminalization

[Nitro]

Well today we may see the begining of legalizing marajuana as the Canadian federal govt is gonna try and pass a bill that will only fine someone who has 15 grams or less on them, instead of charging them...

 

*cheers* GO CANADA!

[Zoom Rabbit]

Already decriminalized for less than an ounce in my home state of Oregon, and fully legal for those with a doctor's prescription (although the federal laws are still in effect, which is where the lines are drawn right now.)

 

Go team! Vive la resistance!

 

[Nitro]

I must say, though, that 15 grams is a bit excessive for personal use... Then again, I know some guys for whom smoking 50 in a weekend (on their own) isn't uncommon.

 

And the government's been growin' the stuff for medicinal users for a while now. Some companies have permits to grow it too.

[Ikhnaton]

pot is extremely overrated, and people who push for its legalization make themselves look bad.

[Zoom Rabbit]

That's because your average stoner can't express their viewpoint eloquently enough.

 

Reluctant as I am to get up on the soap box on this issue and address it directly, I feel compelled to do so. In America this past year, I have seen our traditions regarding free speech erode when the anti-war movement was shouted into silence. The gods of war won that bout, and if we are to regain what ground our freedom has lost...then free speech must be stood up for in small ways. I'm sorry, Ike. You know I love you as a squadron mate, but on this occasion I must resist the frown into silence and make myself look bad in public once again.

 

*(Gets up on soap box.)*

 

Kids, don't smoke pot. No, I'm not being facetious here...I mean it. Don't smoke cigarettes, don't drink alcohol, don't frequent the company of hookers and don't play with guns. All of these things are dangerous, and you should do none of these things unless you are old enough to exercize the proper judgement as an adult. When you are eighteen, you can go to Nevada and get laid for cash, smoke a cigarette afterwards, probably get a beer easily enough, and play with your rifle all you want.

 

And if you want to smoke a joint after the evening's fun...you shouldn't go to prison for it. That is what Nitro and I are saying.

 

The truth about marijuana: it causes short-term memory loss, is three times as carcinogenic as tobacco, and can sap one's desire to get ahead in the world. In addition to this, it interferes with the development of the brain as it is still growing and forming new pathways in youth...which is why I say emphatically that you should leave it alone until you are a young adult and that brain has finished growing. I was given good advice on this matter, and partied not a whit until I was eighteen, and my brain seems to work just fine at the seasoned age of thirty-five, thankyouverymuch.

 

True story to illustrate my point: I knew a guy once who had taken two years of French class, the same as me. He started getting high when he was thirteen, and all he could remember of those two years of French was 'Je m'appele Eric.' My French is quite handy well into adulthood (although it seems to make Jem laugh...)

 

I won't even go into the ethics and moral arguments of medical marijuana. Suffering from two on-the-job back injuries and years of sword practice, I voted for this issue in my home state of Oregon and consider it put to rest. The people have spoken.

 

To sum up, it seems that I have a lot to say against marijuana. I do...but I also have a thing or two to say against tobacco, alcohol and firearms. Nevertheless, as a responsible adult I do have firearms, and do drink on occasion. Pass on the tobacco (nowadays, anyway.) Drugs are dangerous...but our society has decided that some drugs (i.e. tobacco and alcohol) can be used recreationally by most of the population and should be legal. People like myself and Nitro simply believe that marijuana is as safe (if not more so) and should be included in that 'gray area.' Frown on it all you want--people frown on drinking, too, but it is still legal.

 

So. I say: legalize pot, tax the dog**** out of it (it would still be cheaper than buying on the black market) and use that money to get the truly dangerous drugs off the streets, the ones that kill kids in syringes or up noses, destroy lives and encourage street crime. Leave the potheads alone.

 

*(Lights up a phat doobie and relishes it. Passes it to Nitro.)*

 

Vive la resistance.

[edlib]

I have not touched the wacky weed or a drop of alchohol since '99. In fact, I can't recall taking any drug in all that time that would alter my blood chemestry including asprin or Tylnol, with the sole exception of caffiene. I joke about it here quite often, but I honestly don't believe that I will ever partake in either of these substances ever again in my lifetime. I was never a heavy user of either, mainly because I am a total control freak and I really dislike the feeling of being out of control, coupled with the fact that my family (both sides) seems to have a history of problems with chemical dependance and addictive personalities.

However, on the subject of legalization, I tend to come down on the "pro" side... for the same reason I am for keeping full abortion rights and against gun-control: I don't like the government trying to control and dictate an individual American's morality. On many of these socal issues I am far closer to a libertarian than a liberal.

Besides, I like to think of myself as a realist... legal or not, the same amount of people are going to use it. The majority of people I have met in my life will admit to using it (including both my parents, who are now both in thier mid-70's,) or are currently using it (I do work at a music college after all. ) So, if everybody who wants it can already currently get it, why not free up some precious law-enforcement resources? And as long as it is illegal, there is a romance around it for many kids who probably wouldn't be interested in it at all if they could get thier hands on it without breaking the law.

[Cmdr. Cracken]

Personally, the whole legalizing of weed is a big crap argument. the stupid politicians up on capital hill don't realize there sitting on a goddamned gold mine. Imagine the taxes you could put on weed. note the fact that weed, currently illegal is a multi-million, possible a multi-billion dollar buissness. Bing! Deficit gone.

 

stupid politicians.

[edlib]

Yeah,.. but unlike tobacco, you can grow marijuana in your back yard or in a pot on your windowsill, bypassing all the taxes at the point of sale.

Granted, most people wouldn't bother going through the hassle of growing and harvesting it if they could go to the corner store and pick up a pack of pre-rolled smokes... just like most people don't bother to make thier own beer.

[Nitro]

Very well put, Zoomie. I'm no pothead either, but I have been known to smoke up with friends from time to time...

[Zoom Rabbit]

Cracken: Things are the way they are because organized crime makes so much money off of it (IMHO.) I suspect the mafia throws a lot of money into keeping it illegal...

 

Edlib: Old-timers tell me that it used to grow wild by the side of the road before it was made illegal. It is a 'weed' after all.

 

If I had something else to say, I've forgotten it.

[Nute Gunray]

Originally posted by Cmdr. Cracken

Personally, the whole legalizing of weed is a big crap argument. the stupid politicians up on capital hill don't realize there sitting on a goddamned gold mine. Imagine the taxes you could put on weed. note the fact that weed, currently illegal is a multi-million, possible a multi-billion dollar buissness. Bing! Deficit gone.

 

stupid politicians.

 

Except. that it wouldn't work. Tobacco and alcohol are heavily taxed, and in the case of alcohol in some states, only sold by the state. Yet smuggling BOTH of them is a huge section of the black market in the US. Yes, people smuggle cigarettes out of Canada across the Great Lakes to sell them tax free.

 

oh, and it's Capitol Hill and always capitalized.

 

oh and it's not the Federal Government that really makes drug laws. The Fed does make them overall illegal (with the various schedules and whatnot), but it's the state that really calls the shots (hence, Oregon saying it's legal to have some, but in PA it's completely illegal).

[edlib]

Originally posted by Zoom Rabbit

Edlib: Old-timers tell me that it used to grow wild by the side of the road before it was made illegal. It is a 'weed' after all.

Yeah, my dad has some great stories about growing up in Revere where it was always growing in empty lots before anyone but the musicians and the beatniks got hip to what it was. My dad is a musician.

My uncle Bill (on my mother's side, also a musician) and my dad would go out on tour together and there was always someone on lookout, scanning the roadside for any sign. Once they came across a good find,.. and missed the gig by only a couple of days. Seems there was also a river there where the fishing was good, and a farm town nearby with a lot of young, impressionable small town girls, and, well...

 

But then my uncle always was a bad influence on my dad.

[Nitro]

Uncles can be like that...

 

Well, not always. My dad's brother got hella-drunk one night when he was 16 and totaled my granddad's car. He was fine after the crash, but Grampy George beat him six ways from Sunday.

 

My dad was 12 at the time, he's 58 now, and I've had more alcohol in the 10 months I've been 19 than the 46 years since that night. He drinks socially, and even then barely. I've never seen someone better at nursing a beer than him.

[edlib]

It appears that some places aren't even waiting for legalization to take effect before taxing it:

 

http://www.ksrevenue.org/perstaxtypesdrug.htm

 

http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/stamps.htm

 

Hmmm...

[Flying Beastie]

Drugs create dependency. Dependency is weakness.

--Tyr Anasazi

 

That said; for medical purposes, fine.

 

If sold over-the-counter, obvious age/ID-checks, and heavy taxes. People who want to do . . . that to themselves have every right to do so. Personally, I find the habit distasteful, but I don't want to speak for everyone.

[Jabba The Hunt]

Drugs, including nicotine and alcohol, are only taken for culutural reasons, either to look good, or because its the thing done, or often, in the case of alcohol, as a "coming of age" thing.

 

Personally I drink alcohol because of the cultural "pressure", some people see you as a bit of a kill joy for not drinking, I don't like it for dis-like it. Although as im dyspraxic (bad co-ordination) it has a rather exessive effect on me.

 

Anyway I think nicotine should be made illegal, wouldn't care if alcohol was made illegal, would probably vote for it to be made illegal anyway if it was put to a national vote.

 

Basically my point is that all of these are basically poisons and therefore arent that good for you.

[Nute Gunray]

er, nicotine? why? It's the only drug that isn't mood altering or does anything to change your mental faculties. Aside from being highly toxic, it's the least dangerous drug there is.

[Zoom Rabbit]

Nutiferous, in typical conservative right-wing fashion you have taken a snippet of the truth and made it all your own. I'm afraid that you are horribly wrong about tobacco.

 

Yes, it is toxic. Carcinogenic, even. It is also strongly physically addictive...which means quite honestly that buying a pack of cigarettes is something few people do only once. Those who have experienced both tobacco and heroin (I'm not one, but I did smoke cigarettes for twelve years) say that the addiction of both is similiar, and both can have profound physical withdrawal effects. Any smoker who has no food and no cigarettes but just enough money for either will walk out of a grocery store with a pack of cigarettes--believe it or not, it's that addictive.

 

It also is a mood altering drug. When you smoke one, you get an immediate sensation of physical gratification, and light-headedness if you aren't used to it. You can't get drunk or truly high off of a cigarette, but you do get a definite *buzz* off the thing.

 

Side note: marijuana isn't the slightest bit addictive in the physical sense. Some long term users experience psychological addiction, but there is no withdrawal involved.

 

[Cmdr. Cracken]

Zoomish is correct. Nicotine is a very powerful addiction. I've ben fighting it for the past 6 months or so, to no avail. Though i'm starting to win. ^_^

[Nute Gunray]

I figured I didn't need to say that it's addictive, as I assumed that everyone knows that.

 

Toxic and addictive doesn't make it dangerous in the omg peril sense, like, say, crack. If I smoked a cigar and got into my car, I'm going to be able to drive just fine, unlike if I've had 4 glasses of rum.

Just because Nicotine is highly addictive doesn't really put out a 'ban Nicotine because it's evil' vibe. I'd say caffeine is a million times worse than Nicotine, except for that whole being toxic thing.

[Zoom Rabbit]

*(Sips at the giant mug of coffee that he has on hand from the minute he gets up till he goes to bed at night and smiles innocently.)*

 

Addictive, yes. So is sex. I would be very interested to hear if caffeine is harmful to the health, though. They've been trying to prove it's bad for you for years, to no avail...

 

There are other health *benefits* from smoking tobacco--gray phlegm and reduced lung capacity, morning cough (otherwise known as emphesema), damaged sense of smell...not to mention the sexy way it makes you smell to others. It's the addictive qualities of tobacco that make it so insidious; think of tobacco as a rabid baboon and coffee as a sweet little kitty-cat...which one would you want attatched to your leg?

 

Also, remember what I said about about marijuana being three times as bad for you as tobacco? It is, joint for cigarette. However, no one in the world (except maybe Tommy Chong) smokes twenty joints in a single day, whereas the average tobacco smoker's habit starts around twenty cigarettes (a pack) a day. Most of the daily chronic reefer smokers I've met smoke no more than one or two joints' worth in a day...if the tobacco smoker smoked only three to six cigarettes per day, he probably wouldn't suffer much of a health impact.

 

[Zoom Rabbit]

Aw, screw it. I was gonna do this tomorrow, but I'm wide awake from coffee and Chong hasn't showed up yet with the 'Antidote.'

 

Cracken: I feel your pain, and have advice. First of all, you have two addictions to fight: the obvious physical one, and the more insidious phsychological one. Both have different treatments, and this is what helped me.

 

Physical addiction: Buy a box of patches. This is medical stuff--don't screw around with it. Taking the medicine is NOT weakness, so just buy nicotine patches and step down off of them. It works.

 

Step one: Start taking St. John's wort about a week before quitting. This will help you not to be an @$$hole while you are jonesing.

 

Step two: Put on your first patch, but ignore the instructions on how long to wear them or buying smaller dosages--it's an IQ test, and they just want to suck the last few dollars out of your wallet that you will throw at this addiction. As soon as you feel ready (a few days or so,) take your next patch and cut it in half with scissors. Now you have *two* half-dosage patches--you control the dosage, and can make one box last a month if necessary, get it? You control the speed of stepping yourself down.

 

Step three: Buy some ginseng (the extract, in the little bottles) at your local health food store. Whenever you feel a craving to smoke, drink about half a bottle of ginseng--you'll get a head-change, and it's healthy for you.

 

Note: Both St. John's wort and ginseng should be used temporarily, while you are fighting the addiction, not as a daily supplement.

 

Psychological addiction: The cure I prescribe here is meditation. Surprise! A simple exercise will suffice.

 

Step one: When you first get up in the morning, take a few minutes before getting out of bed to do this. Simply breathe in the air, and as you are doing so, imagine that it is colored orange.

 

Step two: Repeat this, changing the color each time you breathe, which you should be doing slowly and deeply. The sequence is: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.

 

Step three: When you get to violet, see yourself bathed in the purple mist. At this point, you may easily conjure an image within the mind's eye that represents the intended goal.

 

This image should come from you. Being in the Navy, I used the image of the 'smoking lamp' (an old tradition from the old days of wooden ships when sailors would light their pipes on deck from a single lantern for safety reasons) in my meditation. When the smoking lamp was out...it was out, man. You would obviously want to use another image, specific to you. Perhaps picturing 'smoking' as an AT-ST in Rogue Squadron and blasting it apart with an X-wing would work, or maybe as a monster that you could cut with a 'sword of the mind.' Be creative--it's your head, after all.

 

There. That's how I quit smoking. Vive la resistance.

[Nitro]

I quit solely on physical activity. Went cold turkey from a pack a day 'cause I got ordered to CFB Greenwood for a survival instructors training course. 6 weeks of living in the woods. I was too hungry, too cold, too tired, or too busy swatting mosquitos to notice the cravings.

 

But now, 2 years later, I still get the urge every time I smell tobbaco...

 

More advice: Once you quit, and the cravings are mostly gone, buy one pack, and keep it in your locker. I've found it's easier to resist the cravings when I know that if I really wanted one, they're only three turns of a combination lock away. I've had my pack since last august, and only smoked two, and those were during periods of extremely high stress. (Finals + Work = Stress City)

 

But including those two, I've been smoke free since March.

[edlib]

I'm so happy I never started. I'm probably lucky that I first tried a cigarette after I had been smoking weed for a while. After smoking the cigarette I had to wonder "What's the big deal? Where's the rush?"

My dad quit using the patches. Until then he was smoking 2 packs a day of unfiltered Camels!

My mom stopped one day in the middle of a cigarette with almost a full carton left. She just put it out halfway through, and never smoked again! Total cold turkey! She went though some intense withdrawal symptoms, but she stuck with it anyway.

[Nute Gunray]

I'm surprised they haven't proven caffeine bad. They could just ask me and I could tell them about my broken digestive system and messed up heart rate*. I'm certainly addicted to caffeine and have actually suffered withdrawals from it twice.

I love cigars. Too expensive to smoke often, so it's virtually impossible to get addicted unless you roll around in money or something and can afford a bunch of cigars a day. I haven't had one in almost two months.