Should marijuana remain illegal? Why should it be legal?

I'M NOT ENCOURAGING ANYBODY (STRICTLY CHILDREN) TO SMOKE MARIJUANA. MARIJUANA IS CURRENTLY ILLEGAL AND POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA IS STRICTLY ILLEGAL IN SOME COUNTRIES. I DO NOT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR MISUSE OF ANY INFORMATION HERE. THIS WHOLE DOCUMENT DEAL WITH MATURE CONTENT AND EXPRESS PERSONAL VIEWS ON AN ILLEGAL SUBSTANCE. READER DISCRETION IS STRONGLY ADVISED!​

Okay, So I decided to make a short resume about the movie The Union.

You can watch the full movie here.

I just took notes of the important keywords and put them in a word document to share it with all of you who won't have time to watch the movie/too lazy to and/or just can't watch the movie.

Brief marijuana history 101:
Cannabis can be hemp. It is the most durable natural soft fiber on the surface on this planet. Since thousands of years, hemp always had many uses on the industry. A lot of medicines and clothes were made from hemp. It is said that the famous movie "Reefer Madness" caused marijuana to be illegal. It was believed that marijuana caused the user to be violent but many politicians later opposed that myth. In fact, marijuana calms and mellows the user.

-Does prohibition really works?
Prohibition in fact has never worked. Prohibition has never stopped people from using marijuana. In 1937, it was estimated that there was 15,000 marijuana users. Now, it is estimated to be 15,000,000+ marijuana users.

-Dangerous of using marijuana?
People believe it kills brain cells, etc... The government did an experiment on monkeys to determine and see if marijuana kills or causes any damage to the brain or brain cells. The monkeys died. 6 years later it was finally released how the experiment was made. They pumped astronomical amount of smoke on monkeys. The smoke and the lack of oxygen made the monkeys suffocate and die. The dead brain cells were from the lack of oxygen and not from pot. Thus, the experiment results were invalid.
In fact, in 2005 a study showed that marijuana could stimulate the growth of brain cells on the brain.

-What about lung cancer?
All the studies used always that marijuana "may" or "should" cause lung cancer. But it has never been reported that someone had lung cancer solely from using marijuana. But smoke is harmful because of the proprieties of smoke. Any smoke could harm your lungs. But nothing in the cannabis plant ever caused lung cancer.
A study has been made and showed the tobacco smoke is more harmful than marijuana smoke.

-Which drug is causing more death per year?
Tobacco kills more people than all illegal drugs combined with accidents and aids per year.
It causes over 450,000 deaths per year. Even knowing that tobacco is being the number one killer in the country, the government still plants it and sells it.
Then we got alcohol. It is responsible for the death of over 85,000 people per year. Then we got caffeine which cause from one to 10,000 deaths per year. Even aspirin causes from one to 7500 deaths per year. What about marijuana? People believe it kills from 50,000 to hundreds of billions per year. In fact no single case of death has been attributed from using marijuana in the history of the human kind from thousands of years. You have to smoke 15,000 joints in 20 minutes to die from marijuana which is almost impossible.

-What about addiction?
Only 3% of the patients on the rehab system went voluntarily from being independent on marijuana. The others were either told by a judge or a guardian. Some people get the choices either going to jail or you go to a treatment. Everyone chooses to go to a treatment. They consider these people addicts. Marijuana is known to be less addictive than coffee. There are no severe withdrawal symptoms after stopping the use of marijuana. Its use can be discontinues easier than any other drugs.

-Marijuana is more potent now.
Marijuana being more potent now won't change its effects it had thousands of years ago. For it being more potent will just take fewer amounts from a user to get high thus, inhaling less smoke.

And marijuana could never be overdosed.

-Is marijuana a gateway drug?
Many studies had been done and never actually found something IN marijuana that could push user to go for "hard drugs"(such as cocaine, heroin, etc...)
In fact, any drug (such as food) could lead in using another drug. Example: milk could lead someone to drink alcohol.

Because of the current status of marijuana, users are forced to deal with the black market. Prohibition could be the reason of marijuana being a gateway drug. (Common scenario: -You got weed man? -No man but I got you these nice pills/powder/etc... I will let you try some for free.)
Many black market dealers now tend to go for harder drugs. Why? It is easier to carry pills and powder that could be easily hidden. Marijuana is harder to hard and to sell. It has a strong smell so it makes it harder for dealers to carry it.

-You will be useless to society if you use marijuana, right?
No. If that's true, then there are about 50 million people who smoke marijuana in the USA and over half of the population of Canada has tried marijuana at least once and yet both societies seems to flourish. Even some famous celebrities use marijuana. Many musicians and writers use marijuana daily. Even doctors and judges. Every presidential candidate has used marijuana at least once in their life.

People who are lazy and stay home and smoke weed were going to stay home and do nothing even without marijuana.

There is no evidence that marijuana had been the cause of a single crime. Legalizing it in Europe decreased the crime rate after being the highest crime rate in the world. Legalizing alcohol caused by far many more accidents and crimes then it is causing now from marijuana.

-What about drug availability?
Students in high school and schools claim that they could have access on illegal drugs easier than legal drugs.
Because of its current status on the country, its price and availability is unregulated and is on the hands of the growers. Marijuana could fully grow and flower in 2 months - 3 months. It is not hard to grow marijuana. It needs water, air and light just like any other plant.


The government spend over 7.7B$ to enforce marijuana prohibition. Legalizing marijuana and taxing it could give the government up to 14B$ in profit.

Some police officers know how marijuana is way safer than alcohol and would like to not prosecute criminals possessing marijuana but they don't want to lose their jobs. They just enforce the laws that already exist.
There are 786,566 marijuana arrests in 2005 for simple possession. 88% of marijuana arrests are for simple possession.
That's almost 1 million people in the USA arrested. either you go in jail or not, your future is destroyed. You don't find a job that will accept you with a criminal record. The government is telling us in other ways that's its okay to rape and murder but your career life will be deeply ruined if you do or smoke illegal drugs.

Drug tests:
They cost a lot of money. At first they said they are going to test pilots and police officers. Then they said they are going to DT professional athletes. Later on they planned on testing every child on every school.
In fact, THC (chemical produced from marijuana) stays on someone's system for up to 20 days (although people nowadays find ways to detoxification in several days) but harder drugs like heroine could leave someone's body in 3 days. That also tells the people to use the hard drugs and avoid soft drugs like marijuana.

What about its medical benefits?
Pharmaceutical companies are the most profitable industry on the US. What happened if marijuana is legalized? Well they will lose money because people found a lot of treatment coming from a natural plant.
Marijuana can slow Alzheimer. It treats glaucoma, back pain, depression, nausea, ADHD, anxiety, help patients with AIDS and cancer and could prevents cancer. There is no a product that provides as many as medical benefits as marijuana.
People in some states in US and in Canada could get a medical marijuana card if they have been checked and proven by a doctor that they qualify for a card. That card helps the patient against any arresting for possession of marijuana.

Marijuana is one of the most useful, if not the most useful plant known to mankind and it should not be illegal while keeping tobacco and alcohol legal.



Would like to see some comments and if that document changed your view about marijuana or not.


UPDATE: California and Massachusetts are getting marijuana fully legal soon (2010) for anyone who is 21+ years old!! The law didn't pass yet but officials said it's MOST likely it will pass and will BE LEGALIZED!!!

 

This is like the 10Th thread.

on topic. ; Yes i believe it should remain illegal it's a drug that can cause physiatric problems etc, and it would put dealers out of jobs.

 

Dealers out of the job? SO???? Who cares about the dealers. They put unfair price on a easy grow plant. And we pay more taxes just for the government to try and bust them. And they are making enormous amount of money by sitting home. Legalizing it would create more jobs and bring more profit to the government.
It causes "physiatric" problems? What kind of problem is that? Never heard of it. You might also want to cite your sources.

 

I have my sources from school, it causes paranoia ect. Yeah puts dealers out of jobs!

 

Legalize it bruh.

 

Well that's what's the government doing. Give an excuse to make something illegal or otherwise why the hell it is NOT illegal?
The information you get at school is BS my friend and all of what you learnt has been scientifically proven wrong.

 

It should definitely be legalized, I don't smoke very much but I think its stupid that it hasn't been legalized yet. I agree with most of what you put in the first post except for the addiction part.

I know a few of my friends who are addicted to pot, one who is definitely severely addicted (happens to be the girl I used to like, I'm still good friends with her though), she told me in the car before that she HAS to (HAS TO) wake up and smoke every morning or otherwise she can't do anything. She said that if she doesn't smoke then she can do absolutely nothing, she will just sit there and do nothing all day if she doesn't smoke. And after that, she has to be high all day in order to continue doing things.

Its actually really sad now that I think of it, because she is one of the most gorgeous women I have ever laid eyes on and she is just letting her self go. She doesn't care about her image anymore, she just throws on cloths and goes. She doesn't care about her body image, last week she came over and pounded all my food, she had like 2 pieces of cake and a bunch of cheese balls XD, and was like "I don't care, I'm a fucking fat ass and I know it." And on top of everything, she said that if she could do nothing for the rest of her life and just smoke pot and eat she would be cool with that.

It really does make me sad though that Pot can actually make you that lazy and not care about anything. Before she started smoking she was insanely hot and was into sports and shit and always dressed up everyday because she cared about what she looked like.

Basically in short, Weed is hard to get addicted too but once your addicted consider yourself fucked.

 

I'm really tired of kids coming to General Discussion and just copy/paste random shit about marijuana. Since when has this site because a druggie site?

 

I like it being illegal, theres more thrill to smoking. Where i live you only get a traffic ticket for anything under and O.

 

No point to keep any drug illegal. Idiots think that if you make something illegal that people will stop using it? Yeah, say that to the 20 or so million marijuana smokers in the US. Prohibition has only shown to increase crime and consumption.

 

It is notphysicilay addicting. But imagine doing anything while high is fun and bearable. Your mind is addicted to that nice feeling of doing everything with a nice mood. It all depends on your personality. If weed is tied up with the right personality, it creates success. If tied up with the wrong one, it could lead to very very bad ends and consequences.
It's bs that she wont do anything if she doesn't smoke on the morning. She will in fact do anything but with less "fun".

I didn't copy/paste that thread. I wrote it up myself. I'm expressing my point of view on something. Got a problem kid?

But trust me, getting a criminal record is NOT fun at ALL. You might like it illegal but 90% of pot smokers would like it legalized.

But making hard drugs easily available to kids, will be way more harmful to the society. I'm not against Drug War against HARD drugs. You could Google "PCP" and read some terrific horror stories happened to people while high off PCP.But making weed EXTREMELY illegal and leaving the hard drugs behind?(Since drug tests detects almost only marijuana) Now that's not logical.

 

But the whole thing is that she says that she doesn't even have fun smoking anymore. She said its like cigarettes, she needs to have it.

 

Yes because her tolerance is REALLLY HIGH and she needs massive amount of weed to get a nice buzz(not even high). She GOT TO take a tolerance break(2 weeks MINIMUM) at least to enjoy her ganja back. Her body doesn't need it, it's all in her mind. It's not healthy to eat like a fat ass unhealthy food.
Tell her that if she doesn't "cold turkey" for a while, that proves she is a disgrace for all pot smokers and that she is irresponsible. She NEEDS to stop smoking for a while and see if she could control herself. Don't ever let something control you. If weed controls her, then she will face MANY MANY ... for the third time MANY problems on her life and her future will be ruined. Any drug (even legal ones) that could control you will ALWAYS ruin your life. It's your duty to link her to this thread

 

This illustrates the many problems reached with abuse of the drug.

 

Drugs are already easily available to kids. Do you think drug dealers care about the age of their customers? It's easier for kids in some public schools to get cocaine and marijuana than for them to get alcohol.

 

Marijuana is reliving the same story alcohol once lived. It was seen as a terrible thing but it was made legal and in return the government makes hundreds of millions of dollars. In my opinion marijuana will be legal within 10 years.

 

It's good for u make it legal xD

 

and people claim that my idea for a drug board is unconstitutional.

 

i wish they'd legalize it cause when i buy the shit i hate dealing with shady dudes. never know when im gonna get fucked.

 

maruijana is a medicine, it is not a addictive drug, it is safe, lets ban alchol, how many people die from that, how many people die from weed