stevo

basically what it all comes down to. Some think we should force "responsibility" on everyone. Some don't.

__________________
"If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

krwlz

Good way to put it. Im obviously in the dont category. It's my life, no one else owns it, I will do what ever the fuck I want with it.

Jason762

HA HA. You just described my college roomate, Matt. That dude just smoked all day long! Hell, he even smoked all night long. One time I was up late doing a paper, and I notice about every hour or so he'd wake up, pick up his pipe, take a puff or two and go back to bed.

Seemed like a waste, but I personally have never tried it. What's it like to sleep high?


True, but they sure do peer pressure you into it. Sadly I had to give in. Actually, I did enjoy it. I was able to relax and the whole time I just laughed my loud, bolsterious laugh. Ha ha! I laughed so hard I made my best friend laugh hard, and all I've heard him do is chuckle.

It was a pretty cool experience. I would vote to legalize it.

Oh yeah... my dad says he used to smoke pot (kid of the 60's) but when he did he'd get really depressed and start crying. This happen to any of you?

krwlz

I would say I'm not terribly surprised. In my expirience, it can enhance certain moods. Though anger isn't one of them. I gotta say, it's actually helped me SOLVE problems in my life before. I would find something out, get all wigged out about it, so that I was thinking totally negetively about the problem, and not the solution...

Go some a bowl, calm down, reapproach the problem in an opimistic light, and stumble across a solution. I would have come to the solution anyway, smoking just helped me calm down enough faster, in order to think things through.

Haha, the laughter aspect... Eh, that goes away once you've smoked for a while.

slant eyes

i don't have a problem with people who smoke it and if they want to, that's their prerogative (sp?), but i can't stand how all those people are talking about how legalizing it would solve our economic issues...

what pot dealer do you know is going to pony up tax money and just be honest about how much they sold when filing taxes? ok, so youre 7-11 has it for sale and because it has to be taxed, is less likely to be quality weed or is more expensive, which then leads them back to their pot dealer, who isn't going to file any 1040's claiming weed sales...

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question authority, don't ask why, just do it!

Tully Mars

That's just one side of the equation economically. Have any idea how much tax payer money goes each year to find, prosecute, and incarcerate pot sellers and users? It's insane. The US spends a shit load of money trying to force people to live the way a select group of people have decided they should. Land of the free, home of the brave my ass.

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Adonis1782

I'm with ya krwlz! Hemp could help heal our economy and our way of life. It's too bad the people with the wealth and power are to greedy to do the right thing.

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snowy

I don't think it's pot dealers that will spur this change, but rather the end users of marijuana. For my part, I'd rather buy a regulated, taxed product that's easier to get. Everyone else I know who smokes says the same. If it were legalized, we would do it legally. Few people choose the black market if there is a reasonable legal alternative, especially since the black market comes with many associated costs (beyond just money). Could it cost more? Sure. But I doubt it.

Of course, the dealers I've met are generally smokers too, and in favor of legalization.

As Tully already mentioned, there are lots of other costs to keeping marijuana illegal.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

blktour

I would vote to legalize it.

I was reading the The Revolution: A manifesto, and in there Ron Paul came to the story about how it was banned. He even quoted people. But basically goes on to say that it is Unconstitutional to ban any substance.

They would have banned liquor, but instead they decided to tax it, and if you are caught making it, you will get charged with tax evasion.

when they taxed it, the bootleggers basically disappeared.

imagine if we do that to hemp. The black market of selling on the streets and locking up for hemp will be cleaned out.

it just makes utter sense to me.

dksuddeth

first things first, if it took a constitutional amendment to prohibit the manufacture or possession of a substance (alcohol) and another one to repeal that amendment, how can the government now ban a naturally occurring plant without one?

secondly, the black market would exist only so long as the taxation is not prohibitive or excessive.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Charlatan

Hemp is not the same thing as Marijuana.

__________________
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Tully Mars

Yet the US doesn't (or didn't? I really don't know anymore) make any distinction between the two. The US is so freaking uptight about this issue you can't even make such items as non-psychoactive herbal tea out of hemp. Comes from a plant in the cannabis family.

Pot bad, 50 cal. good... welcome to the "States."

---------- Post added at 05:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:46 PM ----------


Imagine if you took what we spend on LEO to find and harass drug users and put it into treatment programs or health care and education. People who have addictions- alcohol, meth and other powders, pot, whatever could be dealt with in a clinical setting rather then warehoused in a correctional one. People who don't have addiction issues could be left alone, just like social drinkers are now. I'd bet you could do that and still fund some health care and education programs, non-substance or substance related wouldn't matter.

Seriously prohibition didn't work for shit with booze and it isn't working with other substances either. All we're doing is keeping a paramilitary industry and several gangs employed fighting each other and among themselves.

__________________
I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

slant eyes

i guess it can go either way you look at it, i mean death row isn't really death row anymore, we just house serial killers and such, so in that sense, don't we spend lots of money on forensics and trials on those as well? should we discontinue prosecuting serial killers as well?

i know it's comparing apples to oranges, but it's all about a broken legal system. there are many other wasteful items our government blows cash on that can be saved without thinking marijuana is the holiest of holy cash cows

everyone here puts up valid points, but unfortunately, we are a small group, many out there merely want to legalize it so they can smoke more, they really could care less about the economy

that and stories like such: US man stuffs cat in marijuana pipe

don't help in stating that marijuana smoke doesn't alter the thought process

just my 2 cents

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question authority, don't ask why, just do it!

biznatch

Cool, thread from the dead, hadn't read this one.
I think, as a drug, cannabis is much safer than alcohol. Unless you're a thug who also smokes weed all day, you're not gonna start a fight on weed. I can't say the same thing on alcohol, and while I love getting shitfaced with my friends every once in a while, some of them have become mean drunks a few times, and I've seen plenty of fights start when people got drunk. Hell, I did a lot of stupid shit that could have gotten me arrested while drunk.
But smoking up with a few pals, and playing video games, watching a movie, listening to a good album, or going out for a nice walk outside is great, and safe. I don't think people should be allowed drive on any mind altering substance, though, since pot does slow down your reaction time, but having been in a car trip where the driver was stoned most of the time, and driving perfectly safely, I would say it's less dangerous than driving drunk.

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SSJTWIZTA

oh, im a HORRIBLE driver when im stoned, but thats just me.

pot is great, i actually prefer it over alcohol. i've never woken up after smoking all day long and went "boy, i sure made an ass out of myself last night."

you nailed that thug thing, biznatch. i have no idea how they manage to be so stoned and yet so violent.
the only thing i want to do while im high is eat a twinky and walk around the woods with my .22. perhaps play my guitar or watch some tv.

of coarse it alters the thought process, thats why (or part of the reason) people do it. same with alcohol, pcp, or whatever.

if you felt the same after smoking some weed, then why smoke weed.

__________________
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for me And there was no one left to speak out for me.
-Pastor Martin Niemoller

levite

If weed is illegal, then liquor, tobacco, and caffeine should certainly be illegal.

The original article has some fairly insane bits in it, but many of the initial facts are accurate.

Hemp, in both its intoxicating and its non-intoxicating forms were made illegal because of an industrial conspiracy, funded by the pharmaceutical industry, the liquor industry, the logging/paper industry, the oil companies, and the cotton industry. The fear-mongering propaganda used to incite support for the criminalization of cannabis was both entirely inaccurate and profoundly racist.

MJ should be legal in all its forms. I have no problem with giving it mild regulation and taxing it. But it should be legal. Hemp is a wonder crop, and weed is at worst no more dangerous a drug than alcohol, and at best probably much safer.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

william

Why not keep it simple - legalize it and tax it. It would cut down on the numbers in jail. Just as w/alcohol people who want to smoke a bit of weed will so. This is supposed to be the land of the free. I don't care about your drug of choice - booze, weed - it's your choice. You get stupid, you pay the price.

cdwonderful

A drunk , a acid head and a stoner come to a locked door. A sign on the door says" this door will open at 9am"
The drunk says " lets bash it open"
the acid head says " lets float through the key hole"
the stoner says " lets just wait till 9am......"


just saying.

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it wastes your time,
and annoys the pig.....

Turpis

i have smoked weed for 5 years now starting late high school. to say weed is a gateway drug is to say addiction is universal, which would be to say that alcohol or food is a gateway drug.

the addiction to drugs of a person who started out on weed is habitual. that is to say the habit of smoking led to a new lifestyle, new friends. the subject wont stop not because they are chemically addicted but because they know no other way of amusing/occupying them self. if this is true it is the behavior which needs to be checked rather than the substances.

behavior which i suspect was learned before the first joint was smoked. almost all of the people i know who have ever smoked weed smoked tobacco first. try and find someone calling nicotine a gateway drug.

biznatch

That's the unfortunate thing about weed being illegal. If you're in NY and decide you'd like some weed, you'll more or less end up needing to do business with these thug types; sometimes you won't, or there will be a middle man.
But yeah, going up to a seedy bronx neighborhood, sitting around on a stoop, waiting for a call back is not what I'd call pleasant. Cops know those block are flooded with narcotics, so they circle around, both in blue and whites and unmarked vehicles.
My friend (or rather, a dude I met while trying to make a purchase) got busted once by a plainclothes cop who looked like your average 30 year old guy from the Bronx, just stepped out of a grey minivan, and cuffed him against the wall.
They don't need to be paying all these cops to risk their lives so they can infiltrate the underground, get in touch with seedy people, and people who are downright violent thugs. Since I'm white, and don't dress with a definite urban style, I don't get much trust either, and have been asked if I was a cop. It feels uncomfortable, but since I have nothing to hide it's OK. But I wouldn't wanna do this as a job, betraying people you befriend.
If they legalized and taxed pot, it'd take a huge amount of business away from these gangs and operations, possibly eliminating a massive part of the problem.
Actually, my friend showed me an operation going on in Manhattan. They have a guy at "dispatch". He has dudes on bikes in all areas of Manhattan, who wear backpacks full of sealed cases of MJ.
They go to people apartments when they get dispatched, and show them the stuff, sell it, bike to the next client. Unbelievable. I would assume such a thing has at least 30 guys at any given hour of the day, possibly many more, out on their bikes, all under an organized system. Invisible to the naked eye, but something truly huge, with an economy independent of the stock market, the tax system, or any regulation.
USA: Cash in on this. You're stupid if you don't. The people clearly want weed, and if Phelps does it, who says you have to be an underachiever if you smoke it from time to time?

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optik_nerve

Agreed. Oh, and Phelps should be the poster child for marijuana legalization.

Slavakion

I'd agree with this. I've mostly experienced very happy and relaxed moods, but there was one time that I overreacted to something my friend said and got sad for a bit. I don't remember what it was, just that it was something silly to get upset over.

I've never had it interfere greatly with my life. The time I was most high, I was still able to make myself food and help my friend with her chemistry homework. Would I have done my own work? I can't say, which is why I don't smoke when I have a test or homework to do.

But this is anecdotal evidence, and therefore not representative of the norm, right?

n0nsensical

"Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere,"
--George Washington to his gardener, 1794.

__________________
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." --Abraham Lincoln

blahblah454

I eat hemp seed every morning in my shake. Full of essential fatty acids. I also own a few articles of clothing and such made from hemp. Very powerful plant. Grows a wee bit faster than trees and can do pretty much everything a tree can, and more!