Marijuana is less harmful than McDonalds or Alchohol. Everything should be legal as long as it doesn't hurt anyone besides the person doing it. Educate and let people make their own decisions. Problem is that nobody takes personal responsibility for their actions. Especially here in America. =(

"I don't like pot smokers"
hmm
are brownies ok ?

Dad, stepmom, aunt, brother, his friends, a couple other people I know, etc. I know lots of people who smoke weed and do other drugs, but most of these people don't do it too often. The people that I know who do it often are not pleasant to be around. I don't like weed itself, either. I think I'm allergic to the smell (never tried the actual drug)

By "easier to produce" I meant faster, not necessarily more difficult. It only takes a few hours to make meth, but months to make weed.

I have no first hand experience with drugs, but I hear a lot about drugs, and have heard that meth gives a better high, although most people (hardcore stoners included, for the most part) don't think that it's a particularly good drug. I have heard fairly definitively that LSD gives a nice high, though.

Edit: Not so sure about brownie eaters. I haven't been around people who eat "special" brownies a lot, so I have little or no knowledge of people who eat those.

sometimes risky to classify based on an activity, but heavy users (of anything) are different

my brother 'lost' 7yrs from LSD, no drug is 'good'

yea, overindulgance in anything is bad. Food, drink, drugs, even sex.

The key word is moderation. If you keep your use in moderation, your OK.

Deleted. Not quite sure of my opinion anymore, after thinking about it.

70% of Canadians think that smoking (cigarretes) at home is child abuse (relevent to my comment that was previously here.)

Hmm... I don't like marijuana but I think it gets chemical drugs developed. I think it's a bad influence on a child, but things like LSD, Extacy, and meth (especially meth) are much worse (IMO) than it.

I have a bad back.

I think dope would help.

Legalize it!

I have a bad brain,
I know dope would help
Provide it in our basic medical care program !
(now THAT, a basic medical care program, is a sorry joke indeed)

I have a bad attitude. I'm certain oral stimulation of my penis will help. Why aren't hookers considered "mental health professionals" and covered by Blue Cross/Blue Shield?

well you could sub a rectal exam ?
I think they are covered

You've been in California too long if you think those are the same thing :)

A few blocks from my house is a commercial street where pot dealers make their rounds and loiter in the park, offering just about every passer-by but the old Chinese ladies, "pot?", "skunk?", "dope?", etc. One learns to ignore the milder dealers. Sometimes when I had a little baby in the stroller or even napping on my shoulder I'd feel assaulted by some leering Bob Dylan repeating, "Sticky weed? Sticky weed!?" until he gets the clear negative. I enjoy the smell of pot cutting through the park on a summer night, but the dealers aren't welcome.

Then the dealers all disappeared. There was a sort of Turkish styled cafe opened up down the street. It looked comfy and luxurious in Bohemian fashion but I never checked it out.

A few months ago the owner of Da Kine Cafe made a media announcement that her business had been quietly selling pot now for two years without a single police incident. Days later the police raided Da Kine Cafe.

A week after that, my toddler son was pulling me along to buy ice cream when a shabby kid stopped us with the question, "Hash?"

govt. funded drugs...please
 

I am for govt. funded drugs...of all kinds. You want crack...coke...junk...anything? The govt. should give you all you want...for FREE!! Get it in the mail. Deliver it to your door. Supply the needles. All you could ever want. Then, all the drugies would o.d., and the govt. could pick up the bodies. See, no problem anymore. Show me even one person who does drugs who can say "enough already, no more!" Nope, they never know when to quit, so they'll kill themselves and there will be an end to it. Although, we would still have to dispose of all the hundreds of thousands of bodies. But that would only be for the first year or so.

How many people that learn to walk murder someone? Just a small percent.
How many people that murder learn to walk? 100%!

I was reading the American Dental Society's website about tongue piercings. They said that teens who got a tongue piercing were more likely to smoke. That is horribly unscientific because the factors are entirely unrelated. People who smoked marijuana then moved to crack didn't start because of marijuana. They were screwed up or unfortunate to begin with!

I tried a wide variety of drugs as a college kid and decided that my choice was clear: drugs/slacking or studying/applying myself. It's true that drug use can very easily progress well beyond experimentation and into addiction/problems. The same thing is true for alcohol, internet porn, plastic surgery, and a huge variety of other things. I feel everyone should make their own choices, but that it is important for good information and data to be out there and available. I don't feel that that was the case in the 90s regarding drugs. Instead it was more "just say no" and "DARE" and when you later dabbled in marijuana then you were left with the opinion of "Well govt and society lied to me about mj; what about the other drugs?" As a result, my friends and I tended to try everything just to see what would happen. Some drugs are, in fact, very bad for you (duh). I have never seen a less productive group of people than a group of college kids with a dormroom full of pills they bought in Mexico. And that was all perfectly legal (though not especially bright). I graduated with a 3.7 GPA from college, and managed only a 1.8 that term! That was when I made my decision to work on education instead of partying and living the "high life". That decision has worked out pretty well for me thus far.

I manage to slack off pretty well without any drugs or even serious drinking.

Good for you, thats a wonderful story of success. I'm glad you came to your conclusions with logic and knowledge. You make me proud to visit this site and bow (I really do kowtow) to you.

<----------

ditto
my decision as to the appropriate time, place

I've seen a lot of this stuff (4 guys shooting up with the same needle, bleh !) and believe that the real danger is just what pH described above,
drug usage DOES screw up one's education (it affects recall significantly)

no problems with adults making their choice, but those is school will do themselves damage (this is a parental problem, not a legal one)

billA, i don't know about that. All of the stoners that I know that smoke everyday, usually multiple times, do much better than me at school.

I wouldn't chase that too far, many possibilities

yea, thats what I'm saying. Large consumption of drugs doesn't neccisarely mean youre gunna do bad in school.

...this thread is STILL here !?!?!!

It becomes more complex when we consider drugs not as recreational but as mind altering.

Personally, I've always feared the recreational appeal of drugs. Good times blur into escape blur into full addiction living and dying for a fix. It's all about feeling good artificially.

I've used drugs as a tourist might use the Aurora Borealis or the Auschwitz Memorial. For experience. I think a lot of people could be improved by having their assumptions capsized, occasionally, gaining fresh perspective so they don't take themselves too seriously or keep plowing the same mental rut. Sometimes drugs can make you see yourself in a new light. But at what point in a person's life is this most useful? Before collage, marriage, children. Before committing to a path through adulthood. Is it a coincidence that's when people are statistically most likely to (naturally) flip out anyway?

On the other hand this is when mind-expanding drugs could do the most harm to those at risk.

I smoke daily, it has no effect on my schooling at all.

I could sit here and argue about the benefits and give lots of information on the plant and its by-products but I don't feel like it.
:D
Damn weed has goten me lazy and making speel bad!

here are some good sources of information.
www.erowid.org
www.overgrow.com

hey guys.

hehe where to start?

there have been a lot of intelligent posts about the benefits of marijuana, arguments why its not dangerous, why its not a threat and arguments against all those broken record arguments saying its bad for various reasons.

in a way i respect you guys for trying to open the minds of people who are trying to criminalize things they are not interested in, and get them to think about things in an objective way etc etc.
blah blah blah

personally i dont care.

if someone says to me "you cant smoke that plant" i say "f*** you" and i light up.
if i have to dodge the cops when im carrying a joint, it wouldn't be the first time.
things are the way they are, and i'm not gonna campaign to try and educate or change the minds of people who i believe are wrong. all i need to know, is they are encroaching on my freedom, and i'm able to defy them.

if theres a poll, ill cast my vote, but really, this thread is 9 pages long or whatever, its not worth my effort. im not trying to convince you guys that my way is the right way, but i wouldnt loose any sleep over trying to convince people to allow you to smoke weed. its not nice having crap laws sure, but it wouldnt be the first time there was an injustice.

assuming this thread is important to you, (which it seems to be)
as a suggestion, if u really wanted a constructive discussion, maybe you could have each argument for and against ganja in a list, and a mark next to it saying whether it has been proved true or false, whether it was decided so, by a couple of people, a judge or two, whatever. and the weight of that point. eg: marijuana can provide wood, weight of this point: rainforests no longer need to be cut down. and then you could click that item, and it would list counter arguments to that point, and whatever evidence there is on either side. etc etc.
its a complicated debate, marijuana certainly affects many things, just as alcohol, tobacco, fast food, television would affect someones life.
(moral issues aside, just looking at each one as an activity, and a thing which affects a person, their health, quality of life, motivation, achievements)
its not obviously harmful just as rape, murder, theft etc is,
"thou shalt not smoke weed" was not in the 10 commandments.
to decide whether it should be allowed or not is playing god in a way, its extremely hard if not impossible to know what the full implications of people making a law about a thing like this are... if you outlaw weed, why not outlaw other stuff which can have negative effects if abused, or used too much where do u draw the line?
making stuff like that illegal is simply playing god imo.
wheres my post going? not even i know :)

my advice if anyone wants it:
to the pro marijuana people:
do what you want and dont worry who approves or disapproves.

to the anti marijuana people
worry about your own life. and dont come with that driving under the influence crap, you know its a load of bullshit.

that came out sounding more aggresive than intended :/
life is too short to argue over crap. be merry.

peace

I agree. I could care less for others' aproval.

But when their disaproval can lead to an all expense paid trip for me to the ass rape motel, thats a different story.

ok i told myself i wouldnt get involved, but i cant resist.
the biggest argument against marijuana is that its unhealthy.
(thats what i hear the most at least)

now maybe the morons repeating this argument have not seen supersize me or just dont think about what they say...
the guy ate macdonalds 3x a day and started dieing.
his doctor told him he was going to die if he carried on eating macdonalds.

now, you can smoke weed (and this is the unhealthiest way to take it) 3x a day for months, and there will be no easily noticable effect on your health after you've sobered up, aside from your lungs, but its pretty obvious that ur lungs aren't gonna be happy.

and there isn't even a stigma about eating fast food! yet it kills you in a little over 30 days! the effects are drastic.

should we send people to get ass raped for eating a burger?

ok heres another one (haha i cant resist)
"when marijuana is legal, theres a good chance someone will DUI and kill me"

hows this, "if being tired and not going to sleep immediately is legal then theres a good chance someone will fall asleep at the wheel and kill me"

"if any type of medication which can impair driving skills is legal then blah blah blah"

"if leaving your house with a broken foot is legal theres a good chance someone might drive with a broken foot and mess up and kill me"

"if people with tourets syndrome are allowed to walk around freely theres a good chance one of them will drive a car and kill me"
:drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool:

It needn't be so black and white as legal/illegal. The debate in Canada is about how best to regulate marijuana. As we did alcohol, porn, tobacco, vehicle emissions, and, through exemption from sales tax, even items like milk, condoms, soap.

Over here we're now planning to attack junk foods with the same kind of social engineering that was so successful against tobacco in this country: mandatory health warning labels on the wrappers (in full colour graphic), special taxes (earmarked for health care), TV ads and school materials, and so forth.

Eventually we'll have to give highschool staff some realistic guidance on the issue of marijuana. We'll have to decide which beaches you can smoke marijuana at, or when, and post the signs. It's here to stay and we may as well face it.

I'd see this thread drop the false choice of legal or illegal. Regulation is the real issue now.

i agree 100% with you