Cannabis, Marijuana and the Great Debate of Legalization

[sharp/7/shooter 23]

Highly doubt it. In fact, I highly doubt the amount of people that would smoke weed would change drastically. People who want to smoke, will smoke. Obviously, if made legal, it would be much more accessible, but I find it hard to believe that a person who never smoked only because it wasn't allowed *by law* would then break the DUI law.

 

Exactly, we still have a law that prohibits the usage of any substance that effects the way an individual operates a vehicle. Even if marijuana is legalized, that law would still be in effect.

 

Downside- it would hurt the overall productivity of the workforce.

 

I know plenty of hard working cannabis smokers who are very successful at their jobs. Many well-known people have smoked cannabis, including Steve Jobs who developed Apple while smoking the herb. Seriously, people who are lazy and choose to be are always going to have that mentality whether they smoke weed or not...they are not going to change.

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

shooter' timestamp='1282332219' post='569076']

Exactly, we still have a law that prohibits the usage of any substance that effects the way an individual operates a vehicle. Even if marijuana is legalized, that law would still be in effect.

 

Downside- it would hurt the overall productivity of the workforce.

 

I know plenty of hard working cannabis smokers who are very successful at their jobs. Many well-known people have smoked cannabis, including Steve Jobs who developed Apple while smoking the herb. Seriously, people who are lazy and choose to be are always going to have that mentality whether they smoke weed or not...they are not going to change.

 

 

i know plenty of hard working heavy alcohol drinkers who are very successful at their jobs.

 

Pot will have an effect just like Alcohol has an effect on a portion of people. Is it enough to stop pot from being legalized? No. But it's still a negative aspect.

[sharp/7/shooter 23]

Where is this "hidden" information?

 

Well, the information is not hidden now, but in 1974, Ronald Regan, with his war on drugs had manipulated the public image of cannabis. He proclaimed that "The most reliable scientific sources say permanent brain damage is one of the inevitable results of the use of marijuana". This was after Heath/Tulane University had conducted a study in which they concluded that Rhesus monkeys, smoking the equivalent of only 30 joints a day, began to atrophy and die after 90 days. What the public didn't know was that this was fabricated information. In 1980, Playboy and NORML finally received for the first time—after six years of requests and suing the government—an accurate accounting of the research procedures used in the infamous report. As reported in Playboy, the Heath “Voodoo” Research methodology involved strapping Rhesus monkeys into a chair and pumping them with equivalent of 63 Colombian strength joints in “five minutes, through gas masks,” losing no smoke. Playboy discovered that Heath had administered 63 joints in five minutes over just three months instead of administering 30 joints per day over a one-year period as he had first reported. Heath did this, it turned out, in order to avoid having to pay an assistant’s wages every day for a full year.

 

They suffocated the monkeys with no additional oxygen aside from marijuana smoke. When you are suffocating, your brain cells will eventually die and they attributed this to smoking marijuana. Look up the Heath/Tulane study and read up on the information.

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjd74gzMAKU

[sharp/7/shooter 23]

i know plenty of hard working heavy alcohol drinkers who are very successful at their jobs.

 

Pot will have an effect just like Alcohol has an effect on a portion of people. Is it enough to stop pot from being legalized? No. But it's still a negative aspect.

 

That wasn't what I was getting at. You said that the downside of legalization would be the overall decline of production in the workforce. I was trying to tell you that it would not effect the workforce at all. Also, each business is entitled to its own policy of substance use, whether it is alcohol, marijuana, etc.

[Jareth Cutestory 678]

I wish we'd legalize it so politicians could work on bigger issues and stop wasting time on whether or not people could smoke an herb legally or not.

[KillingInTheNameOf 63]

I support the right of individual states to legalize it. I don't think it should be done at the federal level.

 

I don't think states should be permitted to effectively legalize it by legalizing medicinal marijuana as California has done. Either legalize it, strictly enforce the medicinal legalization, or don't make it legal.

 

I don't think individuals should be permitted to sell or grow & I don't think dispensaries should be permitted to buy from unregistered growers. The situation in Cali where half the homes in a community are operating as grow houses is dangerous and allowing dispensaries to operate as out in the open drug dealers is hypocritical. Allow independent farmers, who struggle being profitable to do the growing, kill two birds with one stone, and maybe even help manage the inflation of consumer goods.

 

Bottom line, California's model is terrible unless circumventing the law is the only goal.

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

I support the right of individual states to legalize it. I don't think it should be done at the federal level.

 

I don't think states should be permitted to effectively legalize it by legalizing medicinal marijuana as California has done. Either legalize it, strictly enforce the medicinal legalization, or don't make it legal.

 

I don't think individuals should be permitted to sell or grow & I don't think dispensaries should be permitted to buy from unregistered growers. The situation in Cali where half the homes in a community are operating as grow houses is dangerous and allowing dispensaries to operate as out in the open drug dealers is hypocritical. Allow independent farmers, who struggle being profitable to do the growing, kill two birds with one stone, and maybe even help manage the inflation of consumer goods.

 

Bottom line, California's model is terrible unless circumventing the law is the only goal.

 

I agree with pretty much everything.

[sharp/7/shooter 23]

I support the right of individual states to legalize it. I don't think it should be done at the federal level.

 

I don't think states should be permitted to effectively legalize it by legalizing medicinal marijuana as California has done. Either legalize it, strictly enforce the medicinal legalization, or don't make it legal.

 

I don't think individuals should be permitted to sell or grow & I don't think dispensaries should be permitted to buy from unregistered growers. The situation in Cali where half the homes in a community are operating as grow houses is dangerous and allowing dispensaries to operate as out in the open drug dealers is hypocritical. Allow independent farmers, who struggle being profitable to do the growing, kill two birds with one stone, and maybe even help manage the inflation of consumer goods.

 

Bottom line, California's model is terrible unless circumventing the law is the only goal.

 

I agree that a well structured law must be in place if states were to legalize marijuana either medically or for personal use. Once the law is in place, the state must enforce that. IMO, patients who are prescribed marijuana should be able to grow, primarily for cost and efficiency. What is so bad about a patient growing cannabis?

 

Federally I do think we should legalize cannabis. This is a multi-billion dollar industry that this nation as a whole could benefit from, financially and medically. Provide a long-term plan to implement the plant slowly into society, structure laws based on the use of cannabis and enforce them. Regulate it and profit. Of course pharmaceutical companies and government officials worried about public perception will battle this to the end.

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

its illegal to sell your own beer, it should be illegal to sell homegrown pot

[BMP 424]

If anything, eventually we'll see more states decriminalizing it, and after that (and I mean a long time after that), we'll see people care less and less about it, by then maybe it'll really be made legal and the government will start to actually give people licenses for others to sell it.

 

 

 

I think you should be allowed to grow your own, but not sell your own, much like beer is. Although put a limit on it, or else you'd see farmers filling up acres of land with weed and going around the system to sell it. That isn't to say people still won't try to grow a bunch to sell, but you can only try to grow so much without anyone knowing.

[sharp/7/shooter 23]

its illegal to sell your own beer, it should be illegal to sell homegrown pot

 

I think you should be allowed to grow your own, but not sell your own, much like beer is. Although put a limit on it, or else you'd see farmers filling up acres of land with weed and going around the system to sell it. That isn't to say people still won't try to grow a bunch to sell, but you can only try to grow so much without anyone knowing.

 

I agree 100%