Should marijuana be legalized?
yes.. it should be legalized 1. read about prohibition of booze.. and what massive damage and misery it inflicted on this nation 2. pick up a newspaper.. and read what massive damage and misery it is inflicting on us now.. (same prohibition.. different less harmfull drug) a. it funds crime b. it turns police from public servents into public persecutors c. it is a war by our govt on our own people d. our prisons are so full of pot smokers we cant stuff in a few terrorists. e. instead of ignoring our 2nd biggest cash crop .. we could issue permits to grow.. making our govt the only ones able to profit from pot. anyone else could grow it themselves.. it's a weed. f. legal pot would have no additional detrimental effect on our country.. everyone is smoking it now anyway.. the only thing that would chyange is the prisons woudl empty.. the courts would be twiddling their thumbs.. and a few lawyers would starve.. .. cops could redirect their efforts at corporate crime.. and political corruption. the only reason drugs are illegal.. is because some neocons deprived americans of liberty and free choice.. it's time to free america.. and restore our constitutions bill of rights.. to pre bush . absolutely pot should be legalized.. and i dont even smoke it.
SHOULD THEY LEGALIZE MARIJUANA WITH ARNOLD PUSHING FOR IT IN CA.?
Yes. marijuana should be legalized. We wouldn't have to pay more for it if it were legal..it's full blown illegal now and look at how many people grow their own. Now if we want that government grade funky **** vs. Mexican compressed garbage we might have to pay a little more but would you not? And I'll buy into the argument that if it were legalized they'd increase the penalties for growing your own to deter this type of aversion but still- I don't think we would suddenly find ourselves reliant on the government to find weed. Marijuana is just too easy to obtain, it grows naturally and you don't need a chemistry degree to alter it like cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, or other street drugs. But aside from all of that. I don't fully understand why it is illegal in the first place. Marijuana is no more harmful than alcohol and it is less habit-forming than alcohol or even many perscription drugs that are legal. In other countries like the Netherlands and parts of Canada where marijuana has been decriminalized and even the shops in Cali for medical users, you can buy an assortment of danishes or candies or brownies or even lip balm (lip bomb) that will bring you the benefits of marijuana without the harmful effects of smoking. I can't stand the types of people who think marijuana makes you lazy and incompetent or what's worse the allegations that marijuana makes you aggressive. Hell yea marijuana decreases motivation, if you smoke enough. But what motivation do I need at home on a Saturday night after my children have gone to bed? What makes my smoking a joint worse than others drinking a glass of red wine? I'm not wasting myself, just taking the edge off. Am I not grown enough to determine if it is an appropriate time to smoke a little weed the same way drinkers determine it's an appropriate time to drink? And drinking alcohol takes you much further away from sobriety than marijuana does. And there certainly are no after effects that can carry into the next day like a hangover when you've drank too much. This argument has been made for decades though. Nobody has said anything that hasn't already been said. I don't think Arnold Schwarzenegger has too much influence over the rest of the country anyway.... Sorry my answer got so long, I guess I've done a lot of thinking on the subject lately...
Before liquor prohibition was repealed in the USA, did people drink more or less after it was banned?That was actually a really good question. Mostly, it just drove drinking underground. There were clubs that would serve drinks on a nudge-nudge wink-wink basis. If you wanted to drink at home instead, there were places where you could get it. The government was tremendously frustrated by this fact, and they passed law after law to fight the problem. First, imported liquor was banned and seized at the border. When that supply started to get reduced as a result, people turned to drinking rubbing alcohol and brewing their own beer and wine. So the government started intentionally poisoning the medicinal alcohols that were still legal. Tens of thousands of people died as a result.And people still kept drinking!After 10 years of this bullshit, they repealed the law. Alcohol was legal to drink again.Did people start drinking more?No, not really. They actually took two polls[1] in 1939 and 1960 to find out how many people “never drank”. In 1939 shortly before prohibition ended, it was 42%. In 1960, given 21 years for the culture to change, it only dropped to 38%.Interestingly enough, it was also a part of a trend in total amount of alcohol consumed on a per-capita basis:So sure, consumption went up after prohibition was repealed, then it went down, then it went up again, then down.You might even say that it “normalized”.Footnotes[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc...
Why do some people think marijuana should be legalized?
First off, your counters are deeply flawed: Most substance-abuse-related deaths have nothing to do with marijuana. In effect, you're saying "People overdose on heroin, so we should ban marijuana." There's a logical disconnect; people try to bridge the gap with a 'gateway drug' analysis, but there simply isn't the correspondence necessary to make that work. That everyone who does heroin did marijuana first is meaningless - by the same logic, oxygen is a gateway drug. If your concern about the no-smoking campaigns is financial...well, it's a little off, particularly when we look at tax revenues. If your concern is public health, then that's a little more reasonable, but legalization of marijuana would generally be venue-specific, and it would still be thoroughly illegal to smoke in cars (whether or not there are kids in the car). If your concern is one of 'mixed messages', saying that smoking is bad but simultaneously removing the prohibitions...I'm not a fan of that sort of logic. We can stand firmly by a position that it's wrong without necessarily declaring that it should be criminal. As for a good reason that it should be legal, the simple answer is this: Regulation. If it's legal in particular settings, then the government gets to control and regulate its production, distribution, and consumption. No more basement hydroponics draining power grids and promoting mould growth in residential complexes. No more cutting it with other more dangerous substances. A big reduction in violence and crime associated with the marijuana market and importation - criminal organizations make huge amounts of money off of marijuana; letting legitimate businesses take control of the market share would change the balance of power. And I don't believe it's improper to suggest that taxing marijuana would be a bad thing...
What are some honest concerns about legalizing marijuana?
As a secondary school teacher, I see young people having too many distractions already. They would much rather text their friends or listen to music than do schoolwork. I realize that making marijuana illegal when alcohol isn't seems absurd, and I am not taking a position about whether it should be legalized or not. However, it just seems that people want to feel good in the most lazy ways. If adults would go exercise, rather than smoke a joint, then, even though it isn't a "high" like marijuana, they would still feel better, and be healthier. Maybe marijuana should be legal. However,in a country in which pleasure seeking is making us fat and lazy, it is probably not contributing to our well being in the long term Should marijuana smokers be put in jail? Absurd. But is that the whole story? Does anyone else have any intelligent concerns about marijuana?
Would America be a safer place if Marijuana was Legalized?
Well if you swapped it round and had it legal while alcohol was banned, it would make anywhere safer. Things like alcohol and tobacco are known to be harmful and addictive, while Cannabis although mildly addictive, is banned on pure propaganda. There have been no unbiased results about negative effects published, and the ones that are published are done by pharmaceutical companies who view Cannabis as a cheap alternative which can be grown in any climate, tie that in with the fact that Hemp is a cheaper alternative to synthetic fabrics used to make clothes, and paper made from lumber, it becomes very obvious how many big companies benefit from it being illegal. Personally I don't indulge, it's still illegal and I'm required to take drug tests for work, however I've put in the time to do research and the only scientific study that wasn't stacked to get results was one that found canniboids to attack the blood vessels supplying nutrients to certain types of cancer. I know a lot of stoners, and I have to say, the ones who seems stupid, weren't particularly bright in the first place, although I believe (as there's no evidence yet) that in the case of high school students smoking it, it probably does impede brain development.
If marijuana was legalized federally, would you be allowed to smoke it in the military?Not necessarily yes, not necessarily no.Here's what I figure would happen. Initially, cannabis would be treated like many other perfectly legal things that the military doesn't allow. Off the top of my head:Flip flops in the chow hallFacial piercingsBeardsPurple hairFinger tattoosWearing whatever the hell kind of t shirt you wantHijabsKeeping a dog in the barracksSpending the weekend at the Knight's Inn on Washington RoadPartying at Club Octaneetc, etc.It would not be covered under the DoD's current "Zero Tolerance" policy for illicit drug use, because it would no longer be scheduled as an illicit drug. This means that smoking too many joints might still get you a job washing planes or chipping paint, but some of the nastier consequences would no longer be on the table.What I expect will happen is something similar to the Navy tattoos policy, which recently changed. Which is to say, eventually some focus group in the Navy will end up doing a giant longitudinal-study-cum-cost-benefit-analysis and make a determination of whether or not it makes sense to continue to try to keep weed out of the service: Has weed become so pervasive and accepted in the larger society that recruiters are no longer able to make their numbers when would-be servicemembers hear that the occasional toke is verboten?Has legalization of cannabis caused measurable problems in civilian society that could potentially be magnified within military ranks? Are people getting into more car accidents? Eating too many cupcakes? Sleeping too late?Might a permissive policy on cannabis (stateside) cause any potential problems for deployments to non-permissive regions? Consider HUMINT liabilities, the possibility of arrests at the airport for contraband in luggage, etc.Operational fitness: can worker sobriety (and lack thereof) be determined quickly, cheaply, and accurately in the workplace? Does it cost more to keep a weed user on the payroll, in terms of insurance, productivity, liability? If the powers that be look at the accrued data and determine that there is a strategic advantage to be had by allowing cannabis, it is likely to be integrated into military policy. I expect this data could take years to collect and decades to debate. So don't hold your breath.
(United States) If Marijuana legalization came up for a vote...?
The thinking is simply faulty on its base. Why legalize another drug, isn't alcohol bad enough. It would be more productive to try to outlaw alcohol but of course we know that it doesn't work.Once legalized its impossible to stop. How do we know what the safety record is or marijuana? The Journal of American Medicine reported on a 20 yrs study that marijuana kills about as many or perhaps more brain cells as does alcohol.You wish to replace the cost of enforcing marijuana laws with the cost of use in the workplace and when driving. There is no on the spot test for marijuana use with a driver while there is one (the PBT) that can test a police officer if the driver is using alcohol. Stoned driving does not make a good replacement for drunk driving, and while its possible to arrest a drunk driver, police officers trying to determine if a driver is stoned wold cost us a lot of enforcement money as well. Why do we care what the street value of marijuana is, are we supposed to be concerned that users are being overcharged. And if you can grow it in your garden why would anyone buy weed that is produced in government approved and taxed farm. There is no net gain in taxes for that, who would buy mass produced weed if you could simply grow your own. Many home gardeners grow the best weed now. Legalization is simply a proposal from people who wish to stay stoned, eating bons bons on the couch to keep from being arrested. Its a bogus argument based on flawed, convulted logic. And finally, I went to my 35th year high school reunion (which means that I was in high school during the hippie days) and I was fascinated by a guy we called "buzzy" who was one of our hardest stoners. He still living at home, still hasn't gotten that really steady job, never got around to finding a girl to marry (or marry him), still has a mullet haircut and now takes about a full minute to respond to a question or comment. Naw, we don't need that being something we want. Levae marijuana where it is and stoners where they are, living in Mom's basement.