I'm against legalizing it.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Just curious, why?

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I wouldn't mind if it were legal to start with, but changing the laws to allow people to legally waste their time and money seems counter-productive.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Dammit, good thing video games were legal in the first place. Why the hell do you care what other people spend their money on if it doesn't harm you? Communist.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I think my biggest hesitation is the bother of it. Right now, smokers are in their homes leaving me alone. For the most part, I don't have to see them, smell them, or deal with them every time I go to the store. Also, I think legalizing it sends the wrong message about it, but I do understand and appreciate the need for liberty and freedom. And in my opinion, education is a more effective and powerful tool than regulation and law.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Also, living in a state where medical marijuana is legal, it is my experience that people that smoke weed have difficulty understanding that there is a limitation on their rights to smoke in public places and use of the substance. If it becomes legalized and someone bans the use of it on their property, as they have the right to, smokers just won't care. (This is a generalization, so to clarify I don't mean all smokers, but there undoubtedly will be those that do.) I don't want to live in that world, and I am hesitant to allow that world the potential to exist. But in the end, I do think that liberty wins in this case.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

@YeahIam: So you'd rather we just let people waste their money and time without profiting from it in a good way at all? You'd rather clog up the court systems with unnecessary cases and overcrowd prisons with non-violent, simple possession cases? You'd prefer to continue funding gangs and cartels and let them shoot our police and military and ruin their own countries? @Saturnlite: Public intoxication is already illegal. If cannabis were legal, it's not going to suddenly pop up everywhere. Most of the people who would do it are already doing it, and the people who are already doing it are going to do it wherever they please. What's the wrong message about it? That's it's harmless and won't hurt anyone ever?

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I'm not trying to blow this out of proportion by saying what will happen, just bringing some concerns to the table that I hope will be addressed. And I would not say that pot is harmless. It has effects, can harm brain development, decision making, cause risky sexual behavior, impaired driving, etc. It has also been linked to at least one case of eating the face off of a naked man. Plus it makes the entire neighborhood smell. The trouble with this argument is that there is so much biased and fabricated, outsourced data out their that it is hard to separate fact from lies. But I am not ready to believe that pot is harmless to yourself, your family, your society, and those near you. I don't believe that you should smoke pot, drink excessively, smoke cigarettes, gamble excessively etc. But I don't believe that legislation is the best way to deal with this. Also, I think I am done debating. I just wanted to point out a few concerns of mine. Yes they have solutions, but the fact is that legalizing pot has potential consequences.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I'm only going to address "It has also been linked to at least one case of eating the face off of a naked man." If by "linked to" you mean "happened to be in the system of a man who was also on a substance that causes a state similar to a mix of meth and PCP", then yes. But, really, can it any of the blame even remotely be attributed to it? I'd say it's more a case of it happened to be there rather than be the cause at all.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I just put that in there for humor.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

It has been found he actually wasn't on Bath Salts... I smoke weed, but at least i dont deny the fact to myself. He was a marijuana user, he probably was just a man with some very severe mental condition, but im not ruling out he had a bad trip, or the marijuana influenced part of it. I'm aware of what i put in my body and accept it, I try to be as open minded as possible.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

dfhsdfhsdfh I couldn't tell. Anon, you mind finding a link? I can only find stories that say he was on a "New, potent form of LSD" which is fucking stupid and makes no sense.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I don't mind if they legalize it, but there needs to be a more immediate way to test for it. Like with alcohol there's the breathalyzer, but it takes too long to get results for a drug test. And also, I freakin hate working with stoners. I have no problem hanging out with them, but work is miserable.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I see no plausible arguments against legalizing it any more. I used to argue quite staunchly against legalizing it, but when you really look at the situation, what arguments do people usually proffer? 1) It leads to harder drugs - I reckon a lot of people who use hard drugs now would have probably ended up doing that with or without the weed step, so why deny it to those who won't jump to heroin? Alcohol abuse could lead to a lot of worse things too but there's no question as to whether or not it should be legal 2) It has negative health effects - NO?! Really? You mean something used in excess might harm us? You mean it's exactly the same as cigarettes, alcohol, soda drinks, candy, red meat, dairy products, high fructose corn syrup, processed foods....need i go on? Whatever the argument, there's always a perfectly logical counter. So why should we legalize? Perhaps a leap in logic you say! I say let pot be legal and taxed, and use the income to fund schools, hospitals and other socialized elements of society. Save the police time and money, and place focus on REAL problems.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

It's okay if they legalize it but I think teachers should have to teach in school the negative parts and risks. I'm not sure if its all schools, but a lot of schools also teach about alcohol and cigarettes

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Totally judgemental and against legalising it. Smoking is bad. Drugs are bad. Smoking drugs is bad.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Yes you're right, smoking is bad - yet cigarettes, cigars, pipes etc are legal. Drugs are bad - yet alcohol, cigarettes etc are legal....should we also make these things illegal. There's no reason weed should be considered any worse than the above

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Drugs are fucking awesome. Everything is bad, there's no getting around it. People die from drinking too much water, people die from breathing too high of a concentration of oxygen. Even the body's own enzyme, Monoamine Oxidase, breaks down the body's own dopamine and results in a toxic substance that causes Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Living is bad for your health. What does it matter if someone chooses to partake in the ingestion of substances that can temporarily enhance enjoyment? ESPECIALLY if those substances aren't really harming anything. There's not a single shred of evidence to suggest that cannabis causes any damage of any kind if used in a reasonable manner. In fact, cannabis is good for you. It's been shown to have cancer preventing qualities, as well as helping protect against diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and increasing neuroplasticity. Just a quick fact: More people die per year from drinking too much water than from taking too much LSD, THC, psilocybin, and DMT combined, ever.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Right, exactly what I was getting at in fact. But that quick fact at the end, where does that come from? Sounds unlikely to me...but I do know there are people who die from over-consumption of water. Bubbles in the brain or something, doesn't it cause? Anyway, that's what I was talking about. It's hypocritical to single out drugs like cannabis, or even to group such a drug among all others.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

It's just fact. Those chemicals are almost impossible to get a lethal dose out of. The LD50 of LSD isn't even known in man, but the data is available in rats. The LD50 of LSD in rats is 16.5mg/kg injected intravenously. For a 100kg human, that would be 1,650.5mg of LSD to get a lethal dose. That's just over a gram and a half. That doesn't seem like much, but take in to consideration that a hit of LSD is only about 250 micrograms. A single hit is only 250 thousandths of a thousandth of a gram. Now, if I'm not completely inept at using a calculator (and please tell me if I am, I'm tired), that's over 6 and a half million doses of LSD needed to reach a lethal dose. Nevermind the fact that the rat dose is IV and LSD is taken orally. IV is always a lot more potent than taking a drug orally. Now, LSD is $5-$15 per dose, so you'd have to be stupidly rich to even begin to afford that. Either that, or you could synthesize it yourself. However, it's not like meth where anyone can just make it. Simply put, people just don't die from LSD. I could get in to pretty much the same thing for everything else I mentioned, but I'm sure you get the point.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

For sure, but at the same time, aren't the more immediate short term effects of something like LSD quite alarming? It might not kill you but what are the other health risks? As mind-altering drugs go, LSD is pretty....mind altering, isn't it? Can't it do considerable damage to your brain, even after a relatively short time of use?

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Not counting the possibility of hurting yourself under the influence, no. There's not been a single side-effect contributed to LSD use, ever. If one has a very strong family history of mental illness, it may make that illness manifest itself more prominently, but it doesn't cause anything by itself. No short-term side-effects, no long-term side-effects, no risk over overdose. It's extremely safe as far as just about anything goes. This is talking strictly about damage caused by the drug itself. There's always the risk of someone hurting themselves while using it, but that's why you have a sober person watch over you when you use it.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

You see that right there read very strangely because you kept saying it was harmless, but then you could hurt yourself, haha. And we should also have sober people watch over us when we drink but we don't and we end up hurting ourselves. Anyway, the adverse and immediate effects it has on the user's mind are cause enough to be extremely cautious with such a drug.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I'm sick of hearing the argument that people should be allowed to smoke weed because it doesn't affect anyone but the user. As someone who was raised by someone who is a drug addict who has smoked weed for as long as I have been alive I can pretty confidently tell you that that argument is completely ignorant. Just because something doesn't bother you personally that doesn't mean that there isn't a single victim of it in the world, and you'd really do well to consider everyone before throwing together an opinion of who is and is not affected by it.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I don't think anyone here made that argument...

by Anonymous 11 years ago

It is a common argument that goes along with your opinion, I wasn't directing what I said at anyone in particular, but I saw this post and wanted to share a more or less relevant view.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

The same applies to you though. To say that there is a victim of it and therefore we can't argue for its legalization is a massively hypocritical statement. There are victims of car crashes, of alcohol abuse, of smoking-induced disease, of eating too much junk food...and yet we are not debating the legality of such things. My brother also smoked a lot of weed in his teens, and it hasn't affected him in such an adverse way, or me for that matter. The argument you're referring to is saying that as long as people are doing it in a way that doesn't affect others, then where's the harm. If what people do adversele affects or harms other people, then that's where you bring in law enforcement. But until then, why shouldn't people have legal access to something like marijuana?

by Anonymous 11 years ago

There are probably 1000x more cases of domestic/child abuse due to alcoholism as opposed to cannabis addiction(side note: Cannabis is as addictive as caffeine, and caffeine has a lower lethal dose than THC). Just because a certain drug may lead to violence/neglect doesn't mean it needs to be illegalized, and equivalently, legalizing the drug doesn't mean abuse will be legalized. Drugs or not, abuse and neglect are still a choice made by the one committing them, and it shouldn't be used as an argument against the legalization of marijuana.

by Anonymous 11 years ago