What's the current SOP in your state for finding an alcohol container in your cupholder? Unless you're driving a Smart Car, you'll be able to put it someplace that is out of reach, or in the trunk. So, an interesting thing about tests for substances is that they can often figure out how many parts per million of the tested material is composed of the materials you're testing for. I've heard THC is tenacious and doesn't like to get out of fat, but it does eventually go away. Using a formula that accurately plots this rate, you can probably figure out how many joints someone would have to smoke at certain time intervals to get that much THC in their system. They can do a similar thing with alcohol. Ain't science cool? This by itself would probably not be enough to get you locked up, but it combined with other factors that would suggest that you're driving high could make a compelling case. In several states, they pretty much do. I see no reason why pot should continue to remain illegal, as long as tobacco and alcohol are legal. I'd love to see my home state have yet another agricultural product to be officially proud of. bucketheader: If one has facts about something, then it is possible to extrapolate from those facts and reach a correct conclusion. The issue is which facts are used, what misinformation is passed off as facts, and poor logic.
Geez, if you want to live in a place where it is practically legal, just move to SF. In my neighborhood, there are probably 5 dispensaries (i.e., a place to legally purchase weed if you have a prescription card, which I understand only takes $50 to get) within a 10 block radius. You can also pretty much smoke it on the streets and parks with impunity. And if you know the right people, you can get it cheaper then the dispensaries (which I understand sell it for b/t 40-80/eighth -- but I have never been in one). Hell, the city passed a law officially making marijuana offenses the lowest priority enforcement policy. Lots can be said about SF, but I think considering the general wealth and output of the city, you can't say this policy has had some disastrous result or leads to a populace who does jack shit with their time and are wastes of space.
I agree 100% with this. I did not start smoking weed until I was 18 and before that I couldn't believe how idiotic people were by smoking. Then I actually tried it and really enjoyed it. I think a poll would help this thread: Have smoked and support legalization (or don't); Never smoked and support legalization (or don't). I have smoked pot almost everyday for the past 13 years and have met many successful people, some in their 50's, who still smoke pot. I think a lot of it depends on who you are as people have said. I do not have a problem with getting stoned and then working a hard 8-9 hour workday. I don't like to just sit on the couch so I would rather be productive when I am stoned as well as sober. The driving under the influence is a hard topic to figure out though. Personally, I am straight sober about an hour and a half after smoking kind bud so how could there be an accurate test if I am pulled over with weed in my possession?
The guise of ganja being a gateway drug is a complete farce in reality. The system we live in perpetuates this conception, however. Because it's deemed illegal (evil), to the populace once they've crossed the ganja bridge, the [insert drug here] bridge is not that far of a travel in one's mind. People are almost programmed that way. Well, I've already done (a), and it's OK, so (b) can't be THAT bad. Am I ready to legalize a plant that has been proven over and over again to be safer than alcohol and cigarettes? With huge agricultural insinuations notwithstanding? Am I? YES. Let's get real people.
Which is complete idiocy because THC can stay in your bloodstream for over a month. So unless I'm driving from DC to New Zealand, I don't see how this can really do any good.
There's a whole lot of naivety in this thread. This would be more poignant if I wasn't some anonymous idiot on the other side of the screen, but marijuana will not be legalized as a recreational drug in America in my lifetime. I'm only 25. Actually, let's take that one step further: there will never be a drug legalized with the intent that its use be recreational -- alcohol and tobacco are already legal and have a long history with the puritans who founded your country that complicates things. Don't bother using that as a counter-argument. Some thoughts: -The evidence on marijuana's health effects -- positive and negative -- is mixed. It's irresponsible to claim otherwise. But if you think about it logically, if you're smoking it, you're inhaling all the byproducts of its combustion. Even if it isn't carcinogenic, I suspect that you aren't doing your lungs any favours. I'm in respiratory therapy school, so I have a very small amount of knowledge of how lungs work, and I would be deeply surprised if the way we smoke pot -- inhaling and holding for several seconds -- didn't lead to an increased rate of deposition of combustion byproducts in alveolar spaces. This may lead to a lot of nasty things, or it may be totally benign. Just from personal experience, I know my lungs feel heavier for several hours after I smoke bongs. -The societal trend (in case you missed it) is to be healthier. Quit smoking. Drink less. Exercise. Eat right. I know Americans are pretty hypocritical, but do you really think people are going to add light up to the end of that mantra? Not a chance. The exception being if -- true or propagandized -- pot is continued to be (falsely*) considered to be perfectly safe. *-It impairs judgment. It does. I was rolling a doob before they even severed the umbilical cord. Don't tell me it doesn't. If you haven't done something incredibly stupid when you were high because of the way it impairs your judgment, you're probably smoking oregano. Something that impairs judgment will never, ever be legalized for recreational use in this social climate. -Referring again to tobacco, the trend is to force people to stop smoking without actually forcing them. You can't smoke in a restaurant. You can't smoke on a plane. You can't smoke within ___ distance from a doorway. You can't smoke in your car if you have a child with you. You can't smoke in your home if there's a child living there. Obviously the last couple were a bit of an exaggeration, but they aren't altogether unlikely. Where's the logic in slowly outlawing smoking tobacco only to legalize smoking another plant? This doesn't have so much to do with the debate, but I also wanted to point out the naivety of thinking the pharmaceutical industry is somehow behind the way pot hasn't been legalized yet. Big Pharma would jizz in their expensive, hand-tailored italian pants if there were precedence for legal recreational drugs. It would be an enormous growth industry. THC pills. THC puffers. They would actively lobby their ferrari-shaped sleds straight down that slippery slope into a huge pile of money and MDMA. Before y'all jump down my throat about any number of things I've said here, actually think about the reality. No one who doesn't already like getting high is going to buy the alcohol/tobacco analogue argument. These are different things; justify them on their own merits. About the health claims, it's all about perception. We don't really know what effects marijuana has because the research was stifled for a long time by its illegality. It seems likely that we'll find that -- like everything -- there are benefits and there are consequences. Also think about the social climate. Are laws being repealed, or are more being put in place? Is the country heading towards libertarianism or is it heading towards a nanny-state? If the former is true, y'all are right and, God bless us, maybe we will see pot legalized. I feel like its probably the opposite, and instead we'll see tobacco made illegal. Not soon, mind you. But within my lifetime.
If weed can be bought by the pack like cigarettes (say 20 joints in a pack like cigarettes), it could be sold at $20 per pack, more than double what cigarettes cost in NY which is one of, if not the, most expensive states for cigarettes. 20 cigarettes would have let's say 12 grams of marijuana. I've been all over America and found a $20 gram of quality bud to be the standard pretty much no matter where you go. $20 now buys you 12 times what it used, based on these assumptions. That's a huge price break. note: these are all hypothetical assumptions, in the event it was legalized who knows how it would be sold and for what price
Show me a reliable field sobriety test for marijuana that can accurately detect whether or not someone has used cannabis within 5 hours of being tested. Leave your "other factors" and "probably"s out of it. Show me the test, and I'll concede your point.
I've been a steady pot smoker for more than ten years now. I'm going to avoid the usual "Promote the Peace Plant, maaaaaaaaan!!!!" comments and say this: You wouldn't be harming anybody by making it legal. However, just like booze and cigarettes, it needs to be regulated. You still shouldn't drive stoned. Yes, it's better than driving drunk, but the shit still slows your mind and that's not good when driving a 4000 pound piece of mobile metal and vinyl. I've been to Amsterdam. It works there, it would work here. Yes, organized crime has their dirty and fat little fingers into it, but that's unavoidable. That's like buying a lapdance without putting money into a biker's pocket: utterly impossible. So here's a thought: let it go. The law has bigger and much more dangerous fish they should be going after: Crystal meth, heroine crack cocaine, and Grey's Anatomy. The economical factor is pretty much non-debatable anymore. There's serious money to be made (kind of like Scientology, only there's a useful outcome), and a legalization will also root out the idiots that give it a bad name. Legalizing will strip it of its outlaw glamour, so I'd wager not as many teens would smoke it once the initial "Holy SHIT it's legal!!!" period blows over. Legalization would also keep cops from wasting their time kicking down doors of harmless people and giving them extended prison sentences because they really smoke pot to quell their migraine headaches and refuse to take legal poison like Percocet. Finally, tax them so the entire economy gets the boost it needs (and that WILL happen, whether you agree or not), and then give a kickback from it everyone else can spend on alcohol and cigarettes. The law and government need to stop wasting their time and money systemaatically hunting down anyone involved in with this so-called "drug". You're NEVER going to get rid of it or deter people from smoking it. How could you, if there's still a netork that broadcasts nothing but cartoons for 24 hours a day?
I don't know why people say this. I would smoke it just as much. Did you stop drinking as soon as you turned 21 (or maybe 18 depending on your age)? As if all the sudden it's not fun to get drunk anymore? It's illegal to do a lot of other drugs, but you don't see a bunch of suburban white kids shooting meth, do you? And before you say "well that's how it is in Amsterdam for weed and other European countries alcohol" consider if the same thing applies to 21+ in America. It doesn't. Americans just like to get fucked up. That doesn't mean there still aren't plenty of good reasons to legalize. But to act like teenagers are going to magically stop smoking marijuana is far fetched, at best.
I constructed an opinion about marijuana and I've never touched it. If it's ever going to be legalized, it will come about at the hands of people like me who understand the civil liberties, economic and scientific issues rather than having any emotional ties to the substance. You're suggesting that we go back to the "'It's great - legalize it!' vs. 'It's the devil - arrest everybody!'" argument. You can't win without me.
You've hit the nail on the head. And I say this as a regular (twice to three times a week) user who started when he was 17. The health debate? Irrelevant. The economic debate? Irrelevant.* The bottom line is: it is your body, and you can choose what you do and don't put into it. Don't want to touch the stuff? I really don't care. I want to? You really shouldn't care. What I do doesn't affect anyone but me.** *For what it's worth, I think this argument doesn't hold any water. Legalize weed, and you would see the majority of regular users growing their own, rather than buying it from the pot store. Yes, there would be some tax revenue from connoisseurs who only want the high-end shit and lazy-asses like myself who don't really feel like taking the time to grow their own. But by and large, this argument is overused when there are so many stronger ones out there. **Unless I choose to get behind the wheel of a car. Then I deserve to be fucked by the long dick of the law. But to be honest, roadies have always been a last resort to me. We did them in high school because our parents would kill us if we did it at home and the police have a much better chance of catching us at a park than in a car. We did them in the early years of college because we lived in the dorms (where it is VERY easy to get busted) and we couldn't get ahold of anyone who lived in a house or apartment and would let us come over. By and large, if I'm high I do not want to be sitting in a moving vehicle silently freaking the fuck out at every passing car which looks like it's going to hit us. I want to be playing Xbox, banging my girlfriend, or shoveling pizza into my face. A small percentage of drinkers drive under the influence. If you could toke up legally, you'd see stoners follow the same pattern.
I think all drugs should be legal or at least decriminalized, yes that includes heroin, crack and crystal. The money not spent in hunting down non-violent drug users can be used to rehabilitate the addicts and education. The issue would be responsibly using the drugs and not endangering others while doing so. Yes, I think you can use any drug responsibly, that means you understand what you are putting into your body, you have some knowledge of what it will do to you and you understand the risks and have systems in place to mitigate that risk of negative consequences to others. For example: I decide I am going to a bar or party to get drunk off my ass, so I have a designated driver to drive me home safely. That in our society is considered responsible drinking, it does not take much to subsitute drugs for drinking in my opinion. Of course there would be flaws and abuses in the system , people would OD and die and their families would blame the government for not having laws in place to protect them from themselves, but with great freedom comes great responsibility. You have to be responsible for yourself and your actions. This opinion is coming from a drug addict/alchoholic who is currently sober.
Actually, I (literally) see a lot of suburban white kids doing meth, and that's an actual fact. Especially out in the suburbs and small towns where there's nothing else to fucking DO except drugs. I'm not saying teenagers will stop smoking it at all. I'm just saying a percentage, whether it's large or small (probably small) smoke pot because it pisses their parents off, which is what teenagers like to do because they're stupid, bored and ungrateful. That's why they do things like dying their hair green or getting drunk at and signing a Girls Gone Wild relase form in South Padre. Pot is harmless, fun and has undebatable evidence that it can assist the midcal community and various departments. Hell, it even makes How I Met Your Mother funny, and that's no easy task. The only time it isn't is when you corner me at a party to try to explain to me why they really killed Bruce Lee.
Bullshit. Just because it's legal to brew your own beer or make your own wine doesn't mean the majority of regular drinkers do it. Growing weed is a significant investment, both time and money. It's also quite difficult and time consuming to grow dank shit by yourself, not to mention the 4+ months it takes from seed to smokeable weed. The majority of regular users just want good weed at a decent price, without fear of arrest. It's simple economics to let someone who is better and more efficient at growing handle the operation, and you can go about your life without checking pH and nutrient levels, temperature, and humidity of 6 plants multiple times a day. And anyways, something like 50% of the weed in America is homegrown. I'm more concerned about how the government is going to compete with these "bootleggers" who will sell better weed without a tax hike, and lower prices because of the end of prohibition. I think Uncle Sam is going to have to grow some bomb ass weed and sell it for not much more than what I pay right now (50-60 1/8) to get the majority of the tax revenue that is coming to them. But one good thing is that the whole pot as a "gateway" drug argument is going to dry up. I firmly believe that the reason pot leads to other drug use is because a) society stigmatizes it and once kids try it and it doesn't fuck up their life they start think that other drugs won't either b) prohibition means that the only way to get weed for the vast majority of young people and first time users is through drug dealers, who more than likely will sell other drugs. I think it's a combination of these two factors that leads most people down the drug road. Think about it, how did you get alcohol when you were underage? You payed some homeless dude or got an older sibling/friend to buy you some. No contact with any other drugs. When you buy weed, you meet some shady motherfuckers who might also be selling blow or speed. Weed is part of the "drug culture" because of its legal status, when it really should be part of American culture, like having beers with friends.
I never bought this either, along with lowering the legal drinking age. I don't think there would be a huge cultural shift if either was done. Teens would still have keg parties when there parents left town and college kids would still binge drink. I agree with the general consensus that it should be legalized/decriminalized but have heavy restrictions like anything else. Though, I am on the fence with the "it's your body" argument. Wouldn't people's chances of affecting other people go up if they were allowed to do this? Particularly hard drugs, watch any of the Intervention shows or HBO's American Undercovers and tell me people wouldn't end up hurting other people by using drugs. A part of the argument that has been left out is mixing weed and alcohol, getting twisted. I could see major negative side effects from easing peoples perceptions with weed in this regard. You might be under the limit drinking 3-4 beers and be able to drive, but add smoking a blunt with it? Getting twisted will fuck you up exponentially more than smoking or drinking alone.
Let's say you have a methamphetamine addict in your family and it it destroying their lives. That person has no obligation to stop using drugs just because you don't like it or you don't want them to. It's still their body to destroy if they choose to. The emotional effect their drug use has on the people close to them is irrelevant. If they want to stop using drugs for their own personal reasons, then that's one thing. But just because you don't like what it's doing to them doesn't mean that they should be forced to.
But this also has an unintended economic effect on people around them. Whether it's healthcare, preventing more crimes, etc, it could have effects people aren't taking into account (I really don't know what they would all be, or the severity, because frankly I don't give much of a shit). Before I get PMd for bringing up healthcare, I feel the same way about alcohol and fast food. Again, I'm just trying to bring up another way to look at it.
If you are not sure as to the societal effects of marijuana, ask yourself this: did America experience more or less crime as a result of Prohibition?