Should Marijuana be Legal?

Well no shit their IQ dropped.

Exactly, but keeping it illegal won't stop young teens at all from trying it.

Well, the study was done on only 1,000 people from one particular region out of millions who smoke it worldwide, so I don't see how it's reliable anyway.

Carl Sagan and Steve Jobs would beg to differ, and I'm sure countless others would too.

once again, no surprise there.

that only happens if you have a history of mental illness in your family, however, because everyone's genetic makeup is different, even then you may not be affected.

Your keywords are "significant minority"





ot: I'm about to crash, so g'night

 

Hey guys!!!!! I have a great idea1112!!!!!! Because marijuana may cause a slight drop in IQ LETS PUT PEOPLE IN FUCKING JAIL AND RUIN THEIR LIFES12221!!!!!

.....RETARDS

 

didn't read anything but the first 2 or 3 post, but I want to say I have not done drugs since freshman year of high school and I am in college now...that being said I think it should be legal.

The reason is simply because it is their life so what do we have to say about it? if you use any argument against weed you might as well ban cigarettes, alcohol, fatty foods, and anything even kind of bad for you. This is suppose to be the land of the free and as long as it's not hurting anyone why should it be illegal?

 

Should it be legal? Yeah. Should we want it to be legal? I dunno - the government monopolizing yet another area of the market does not appeal to me.

 

Let's take a look at Portugal here for a minute. Over a decade ago they decriminalized not just pot, but ALL drugs. Instead of arresting 750,000+ people every year like the US does (Every arrest takes 2-4 police officers about 4 hours) for pot possession, all they do for any drug is simply give them a ticket. Should you get a possession ticket, you go to a special court house and you pay the fine, and then you sit down in a room where a few people will explain to you that should you want to (100% voluntary) you can enter one of their FREE (paid for by taxes) rehab clinics to try and get clean off of any drug you want. Since the decriminalization they have seen a massive drop in the number of people who end up going to rehab a second time after relapsing. They also saw a 50% drop of drug use overall across the whole country over the course of the last decade. This is living proof that legalizing or decriminalizing weed, or hell, even heroin, meth, crack, etc would not cause an INCREASE in use over longterm.

Also, In America, you get caught with drugs, oh hey let's make the tax-payers pay 10,400$ for every single arrest they make + let's incarcerate them in private prisons funded BY THE TAXPAYERS. Honestly, I don't care if you do drugs or not, when you're the one paying taxes in your country, would you rather be paying for people to be serving 5, 10, 20+ years in jail simply for possessing a drug, or would you prefer paying so that those who want drug addiction help can easily get help without being worried about not being able to afford it. I'd rather pay taxes to help get people clean... not put them in an environment that is nothing but hardcore thugs and criminals that will only increase their likelihood of breaking laws in the future.

As far as addiction goes, this is how the statistics measure out for multiple drugs. The numbers given are the percent of users who become clinically addicted after using the drug at least once:

Nicotine - 33% (Means 1 out of every 3 people who smoke become addicted)
Heroin - 24% (Yes, Nicotine is statistically more addictive than Heroin)
Alcohol - 15%
Caffeine - 9%
Marijuana - 9% (Yes, Marijuana is statistically as addictive as Caffeine)

Now, over my years of researching marijuana, it's effects, and any kind of related information I can find, and through my own personal use, I have come to some conclusions.

I started to smoke on April 20th (4/20 International Smoke Weed Day) of 2010. I started to smoke and I started to learn and educate myself about everything I could about this new plant containing psychotropic drugs that I was putting into my body. I learned that it is not associated with lung cancer (Try and argue with me on that and I will provide you with close to an hour long interview with the director of Pulmonary Lung Function at UCLA), that it does not kill brain cells, that is actually helps protects brain cells from death caused by alcohol, and many other things. I believed for a few years that it was impossible to become physically addicted to this plant. I believed that the addiction was all mental. I can tell you honestly, from personal experience with this drug, that it can in fact lead to a physical addiction. I was mainly using marijuana as a natural pain reliever for horrible headaches I've suffered from every day since my head injury in Fall of 2009. Marijuana is a fucking phenomenal drug for stopping headache pain. My tolerance grew over the years as I was using it regularly, almost as if it was a medication with a specific dosage time and everything. By the spring of 2012 I was smoking 1-2 grams, by myself, every single day. Due to the fact that my tolerance was now so high that I was unable to get high simply from smoking a bowl (pipe) worth, I created a homemade gravity bong. The container I used was a 3 liter OceanSpray cranberry juice bottle. I cut off the bottom, made a carb near the top, and put a socket wrench cap through the lid of the bottle to act as a "bowl." I would use a plastic garbage can from my bathroom (obviously I used bags for trash and as soon as I started using it for gravs I just never used it for trash) to fill up with water, where I would place the bottle, submerging it up until a few inches from the top. I would pack the socket full (1/3rd of a gram) and screw the lid on. Covering the carb I would light the bud while slowly pulling the container up (it had a handle) the gravity of the water pulling every spec of smoke directly into the container. After cashing the entire socket full of bud I'd unscrew the cap and place my lips to the opening. I was easily able to 100% clear the entire 3 liter bottle every single time, and hold it to the point where when I exhaled no smoke would come out. I did this literally every single day. It's essentially like torching and cashing an entire bowl to yourself in a single hit. I started doing one every morning, afternoon, and at bedtime. My tolerance grew to the point where I was literally doing 6 gravity bongs a day; 2 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon, and 2 before bed. This eventually reached 2 grams a day, at which point I believe I was actually physically addicted to marijuana. If I ran out I would have panic attacks, tremors, no appetite, constipation (yes, google it, constipation is a very common side effect of weed withdrawal), racing heart, severe irritability, shortness of breath, rebound headaches, very bizarre sounding yawns (They happened when I was craving), insomnia, and probably other symptoms I'm not able to remember quite right now. I ended up going into an inpatient rehab program for teens for 6 weeks (Youngest I saw there was ~12-13, oldest was 17 or just turned 18). I managed to stay sober for 2 weeks before I gave in to temptation and started using again. I slowly started to run low on spending money because my gold sales weren't doing that well (I was easily able to support a quad (quarter ounce) a week selling gold, but not anymore), and so my use slowed to a crawl. I literally did everything I could to try and squeeze out one more smoke session. I smoked kief straight up, I spent nearly an hour cleaning off every spec of kief an bud off my grinder to smoke. Hell, it even reached the point where I went through my pieces (pipes/bong slides/etc) and used a knife or a paperclip to scrape off as much resin from the sides of the bowl (and inside of the bong slide) as I could. Eventually I was completely out, and the only way I was able to smoke was if I was with friends who had some. I actually managed to go exactly 14 days (just like last time) of being sober recently, and I just smoked a few hits with a buddy on a friday. I even turned down an invite the next 2 days to smoke, so it's not nearly as bad as it used to be. Tomorrow will be my 7 day more, and will mean in the past 21 days I've only smoked one time. That's crazy for me to even think about because back when I was smoking daily, I had the mindset that my body physically would not be able to handle going without it for a even a few days.

So overall, yes, it is possible to be physically addicted to weed, and the first few weeks of being sober can be very hard, but after you gain back control and know that you don't need it, it's a lot easier to stay sober, especially compared to other addicting drugs.

Am I a Marijuana Addict? My Psychologist thinks I show a lot of the early signs, but based on how I've been doing the past few weeks I'm very proud of my self control and such. When an Alcoholic relapses just by one drink, it can often be catastrophic, but when a Marijuana addict relapses by a bowl with some friends, it's honestly nowhere a comparison. It is exceedingly difficult (at least for me) to fall back into that bad habit and drug abuse with weed. I can see the difference, and there's no way I'm ever going back to using as much as I was.

Also, using weed regularly DOES affect your brain's ability to function, even if it's not always permanent. When I was smoking 6 gravity bongs a day my girlfriend would literally have to remind me what I was just talking about several times during all the conversations where had. I would just completely forget in the middle of a sentence. Now, after only being high once in the last 3 weeks, I can talk with her or anyone else for massive amounts of time without losing my train of thought. So yeah, a lot of it isn't all permanent, but it is there for people who use regularly.

Just my 2 cents

 

Just throwing some information out there.


Did you know there is no legal(in the US) way for testing to be done on marijuana to show it's positive effects? That's why there aren't very many studies. Also, the majority of the facts we do know were only discovered when a test that was originally testing for some negative effect actually found something positive instead.

 

It's very true. You basically have to do some reverse psychology to find some of the good shit. "Oh hey I think it may have a good effect on this part of the body, so let's ask for a study to say how pot is harmful to that area"

 

Legalize it, there is so many more positive sides then negative sides about smoking.

 

Smokers are going to say it should be legal. Non smokers are going to say it should be illegal. I think it should be legal because yes it would be taxable and useful for many other things such as paper clothing and other things that can be made from hemp witch in turn comes from Marijuana but its highly unlikely that we will see it legalized for another 10 or 20 years simply because the government doesn't want to see it legal. But the studies show that Marijuana is not an addictive nor harmful drug of any sort despite what the government says. The judge that represents the DEA even said it himself.

 

Personally, I think weed is stupid. In fact all drugs that are just used for recreation are stupid. However I believe it should be legal because we could tax it and in America there would be no more smuggling and issues on the Mexican border would be ceased.

 

yes it should be why only in amsterdam that's bs?

 

Possibly.

I have this discussion with friends often. They smoke that much they're total drones.

I think it might make everyone a lot lazier. It would also be heavily taxed and cost a lot more.

Over alll... I'd say YES but for medical purpose.

 

Marijuana becoming legal would benefit EVERYONE but criminals.

 

Actually, officials have stated that prohibition (being illegal) is what keeps the price of weed as high as it is now. Think about it, when alcohol was made illegal in the early 1900s the price of alcohol rose 600% because of the black market. The same concept applies to weed. Some experts have estimated that if it were legalized it could drop to as low as 5$ a gram for some strains. I couldn't tell if that 5$ was including taxes or not, but either way, it would be helluva lot cheaper than it is now.

 

No reason for it to be illegal in the first place

 

I would allow it getting legal, just for the purpose of the saying '' the forbidden apple is always better '' gets legal, and people will be okay with it.

 

Personally, I feel that it should be illegal because it's bad for your health. On top of that, people would be going to work feeling "high" and produce work that is way below standards and this would in turn worsen the economy.

 

Who said that people would take it before going to work, and also Marijuana shouldn't be the factor for below standard products, sometimes it helps.

 

Legalize it, theres so much money to save by doing so instead of keeping it illegal.

 

It's not at all my business what other people put into their bodies. I don't think anyone should tell someone else what they can and cannot put into their own body.