Marijuana.com

Yana Usdi

I'll try to do this carefully and without going too much into off topic issues, but that's a misconception in my experience. It's based on a few misunderstandings which can be solved by simple education where the conversation is allowed. I've done it myself for years and on both sides of the political spectrum, if anything dems are a little harder sometimes because they are afraid it will make them look bad. It's getting easier over time, not harder, awareness is rising and the results are there for anyone to check for themselves once they know.

First it depends on the assumptions that we've somehow saved lives and driven prices up, that it works. We haven't and it doesn't. Prices adjusted for inflation fell and by quite a bit in the big two we started this all for. Purity on the more deadly one climbed by several times and death rates on both climbed by several times.

Second it depends on the assumption that someone is talking about free use. Explosives are legal, just regulated. Fully automatic weapons are legal as well, just restricted to people such as collectors and studios. Lots of things are legal but highly regulated and that's pretty much what we're talking about here as well.

They assume things such as damage climbing as a result of legalizing, fact is that those death rates climbed so much mostly because of two things. The unknown purity from dose to dose leads to the waves of deaths we hear about in the news now and then when a hot shipment hits town and being unable to call for help until it's too late kills more. Len Bias would have survived if his friends had just called for help, but rather than see that we scared them with tougher laws and the death rates continued to climb.

The day it's regulated that associated damage should drop simply through known doses and the ability to ask for help. The fact that we've been financing our own enemies and all of the other associated damage and managed to make ourselves the most imprisoned nation in the world both per capita and in raw terms to accomplish all of this isn't good either.

What we've been doing is supporting a policy which doesn't work but sounds pretty good, only thing standing between now and reform is education. That's why cops are interested. It doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with wanting to see anyone high. Has quite a bit to do with ending the extra damage caused by this and being in a position to limit what's left when we reform.

Hopefully that doesn't step on anyones toes, if you want to know details of what at least one approach to it might be check the first link I posted to you, second post I made in the thread I think. There's plenty of other ideas out there as well, as long as it's trial study first and results based I'm ok with starting with any of them.

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LEAP Current and former members of law enforcement who support drug regulation rather than prohibition.
Drug Policy Alliance Alternatives to Marijuana Prohibition and the Drug War

 

Kushable

No one will ever go for cocaine legalization. Nor do I think cocaine should be legalized. And your completly right about impurity and tough laws Yana Usdi. But the only good solution to this problem is to make ALL drugs a public health issue not a criminal one. The notation that some one is a criminal for wanting to have fun is absolutely ridiculous and it spits in the face of the constitution!

Yana Usdi

I'll make this my last post in the thread, probably tested the good will of the owners enough here But on the face of it you're probably right, in the terms we think about most of the time I wouldn't go for it either. Prohibition is newer than we think though, didn't exist as Federal law or any law in most places in the US until the early 1900's. History of how we got from there to here at the following if you're interested, written as a speech by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School and delivered to the California Judges Association 1995 annual conference. It's based on work he and Professor Richard J. Bonnie did when they lead a team to research the private and public archives of what was then the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, later to become the DEA, so it's first hand knowledge. We just forgot that we ever got by without these laws so imagine that we can't.

History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States

Thing is we've got a real current history developing now of the hardest one itself being regulated with good results and done today, over ten years and still running with the Swiss and other smaller test programs with decent results both in the past and currently. It doesn't tend to look much like we imagine it when trial study, science and results lead the way rather than idealism. The Swiss program was explored and linked later in the thread I pointed to in my last post, was detailed in the Lancet Medical Journal and elsewhere over recent years but the press pretty much ignored it in the US. Much of the rest of the world is watching though.

When I first heard about it a few years ago I didn't like it either, but over time something keeps nagging. What we're doing doesn't work and this seems to, use is actually falling among the young in particular and so has the damage, to users and to society. I've never won over a forum in a day but given time to let people get used to the idea many come to the same conclusion. More than you'd think, just takes time to think it over for themselves. It's already happening with the hardest of them in other places and with good results, if we can handle that and we can handle pot the ones in the middle shouldn't be beyond reach either given trial study to see what works.

This is why I don't post here often, hadn't planned to today but I knew that stat was wrong and wanted to point that out. Always ends up heading in this direction so I'll let this go here and give the owners a break for another year or two.

Jake

Oh my God how can you get ahead of yourself and talk about legalizing marijuana!? Don't you hear the prohibitionists squealing and scaring people against medical marijuana because it's "a cover for a slow legalization of marijuana." You need to stop that and focus ONLY on MMJ, or you'll just prove them right and people will be afraid of legalizing MMJ....

Same thing. Trust me, when the time comes, I can support only medical marijuana, or only legalization. Sometimes I'm able to be completely honest and say that all drugs should be legal, now. Depends on who you're talking to, and how the opposition will try to spin it.

But on a marijuana site, I feel pretty safe that I can write what I believe about the whole, larger issue of prohibition, rather than just cannabis prohibition....

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Buzzby

Hardly. The possibility of repealing a prohibition is largely dependent on how acceptable the drug in question is to the general public. Repealing the 18th Amendment was fairly easy because everyone was familiar with alcohol and it was used by most adults. Marijuana will be more difficult because its use has never been as widespread. The US is close to being ready to legalize it.

Cocaine is an entirely different matter. It's used by a much smaller segment of the population than marijuana. It's toxic. It's use often results in socially unacceptable behavior. Over-use results in physical damage and the possibility of psychosis. I personally lost a couple of friends who got too friendly with the stuff.

Any association between a campaign to legalize marijuana and one to legalize cocaine will only lead the majority to reject marijuana.

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Viper420

You couldn't be more right. The DEA wants people to believe that those of us who want MJ (medical and otherwise) to be legalized want ALL drugs legalized and that scares the HELL out of most people. Fear is the DEA's best weapon and they use it with expertise.

troublemaker_42

I have to agree with Buzzby. While in principal, I believe that we should punish behavior and not substances, the reality of the situation is that we want to isloate marijuana away from all other drugs when it comes to legalization efforts....at least if we want to have a chance of being remotely successful with the idea.

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Ted Nugent: "To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic." Also by Ted "If guns cause crime, all of mine are defective"
unknown- Gun control theory: Those who are willing to ignore the law and rights of others i.e. murder, robery, rape etc will obey a law which prohibits the possesion of a firearm.

Buzzby

Actually, I do want to see ALL drugs legalized. There are many drugs I don't want to take and that I'd prefer that other people don't take. That's irrelevant. If we are free people we should be free to put whatever we like into our own bodies. If we abuse drugs and act unlawfully under their influence, we should be tried for those crimes.

Prohibition doesn't work. It has never worked. It never will work. Laws should deal with reality, not some idealized world that can't exist.

I believe that the legalization of marijuana is imminent and shouldn't be in any way involved in the legalization of other drugs. Why? Practicality. We have a good shot getting weed legalized in the near future unless we add the "poison pill" of tying it to legalizing drugs which few people are willing to tolerate.

Jake

Exactly, buzzby just summed up what I was trying to say. We can support only MMJ when we need to ("MMJ is just a cover for legalization!") or only support legalization. I'll support total-drug legalization when I can.

Viper420

The legalization of meth, cocaine, crack and heroin is a pipe dream and is NEVER EVER going to happen. Any attempt to tie Mj to those other drugs is a recipe for failure.