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| Should weed be legal?
Posted: 5/22/2005 11:26:43 PM | I smoked for about four years. I loved it very much but had to give it up when I discovered that it was close to impossible to find a decent paying job when doing it. (Plus not to mention it was so expensive!)
I think weed should be legalized.
#1) Legalizing weed (or at least decriminalizing it) will help free up jail and prison space in many states.
#2) Legalizing weed will take money out of the pockets of real criminals and put it into the pocket of businesses.
#3) Contrary to popular belief, people who smoke weed are very normal people. They just happen to partake in something that not everyone agrees with.
#4) For those with serious problems, like those who are gatewayed into other drugs through weed and must consequently must refrain from doing it again because they will fall back into the harder drugs, I think it would be wise to rehabilitate them. Not through them in a cage like rabid animals, throw away the key and hope they get better. These are people like you and me, not a pet to be locked in a room for a time out.
#5) I often hear that money spent on weed eventually ends up in the hands of terrorists. Wouldn't it make more sense to legalize it so we can use the money for our army while taking money out of the pockets of religious radicals?
#6) I severely doubt that the illegalization of Marijuana can be as simple as one reason. (Like no way to check potentially intoxicated drivers for it.) While I believe that may be "part" of the reason, the main contributing factor is that most Americans are close minded to the idea of legalizing it. Most people who believe this are either people who have never tried it and are only going off what they hear (some people fear what they don't understand) and people who blame Marijuana as the reason that they turned into harder drugs in the first place.
#7) Speaking of that second group of people, let's move onto the subject of Marijuana being a "Gateway" drug. People who claim weed has led them into other drugs usually fall into three categories.
A) This person did in fact start using weed. However when John or Jane Doe was unable to get the Mary Jane they needed, they begin consider doing another (and usually harder) drug to replace the lack of buzz. I call this "The Replacement Gateway."
(What you need to understand is that this category of person could be completely removed if it were legalized. With the ability to easily and without much effort they could easily indulge thier weed smoking habit with little to no irritation.)
B) This person may or may not have started out with Marijuana. Once again John or Jane Doe turned to heavier drugs (because they wanted to amplify the high, or were pressured into it, any number of reasons really.) and when they were caught, either by law, friends or others they used weed as a scapegoat. "The Marijuana made me want to get higher and higher until I decided to try (crack, heroine, meth or what have you)." I call this "Scapegoat Gateway."
(What people need to realize is that it isn't the fault of the Marijuana. Whenever anyone comes under attack it is the natural of any normal human to deflect blame to another medium. (AKA, Marijuana) This is considered a type of propaganda and has been going on way prior to weed ever became an issue. (If you need an example, just look at how the Germans blamed the Jews for thier crashing economics in World War II.) Typically it is a technique used to divert someones attention from the issue at hand. In the case of Marijuana, that the real problem is that the person has an addictive personality.)
C) This person started with weed. John or Jane Doe once again turned into heavier drugs due to the effect of Marijuana. There is no explaination for it, the person used weed, got bored with it and moved on.
(This is probably the most difficult of the three to analyze because most of the time the drug user gives little to no information on thier real motives. People tend to say one thing and really mean another. There are some who's "Gateway experiences" can be explained. Peer pressure being a major one. However not all of them can be explained. The only answer I can give is that the person was genuninely interested in the drug and decided soon after discovering that weed wasn't as "bad" as some people so maybe Ecstacy or Heroine isn't as bad as everyone says it is either. Maybe I should give it a chance. They give it a chance, they get hooked and they become another victim of a propaganda filled society.)
#8) Alcohol could very easily be considered a "Gateway" drug. It leads into more and more drinking. The more you drink, the more alcohol you need to sustain the buzz (much like weed). Which usually results into drinking heavier drinks. Alcohol has also been attributed to the use of tobacco. There are alot of people who don't smoke at all, but after they have a couple, they're lighting them up left and right!
#9) Legalization means regulation. In that aspect legalizing it and regulating it will do MUCH greater good than keeping it illegal. You can regulate ages (as said before), but you can also regulate more important things than that. Like what goes in Marijuana, how Marijuana is purchased, where it is purchased. Doing so would mean safer weed and now everyday people like you and me won't be forced to go out and hunt for it. They would no longer worry about getting "burned" for thier cash by either trickery or brute force.
#10) Contary to popular belief Marijuana has never been attributed to giving the smoker cancer. (Why would it? They give it to cancer patients to increase thier appetite, that would be the equivalent of giving a cancer patient a pack of marlboros.) However there have been studies done that DO show that weed has been known to cause Empheseyma and loss of brain cells. However the Empheseyma may be caused by an outside factor (pesticides used on the Weed, things to prevent drug sniffing dogs to find, chemicals found in Marijuana Parafonila.) and quite possibly isn't the effect of weed itself. On the subject on the loss of brain cells, a person that smoke one joint of weed that is standard quality will lose roughly the same about of brains cells as someone who sneezes. So if you are that worried about losing your brain cells maybe you should hold in your sneezes. Wait, that causes more brain damage. Face it people, people lose brain cells everyday and people gain brain cells everyday. Yes brain cells DO regenerate.
Here's proof they do:
http://biology.about.com/library/weekly/aa102199.htm
http://healthlink.mcw.edu/article/926345803.html
And there are literally hundred more similiar articles like that on the web.
Finally, if you are wondering why Marijuana always has has a dark stigma about it, buy the movie Reefer Madness and watch it. It is a movie that was released in 1937 that claimed that the smoking of Marijuana could give the smoker violent urges. The movie didn't stop there. It also claimed that it caused users to lose morals, become rapists and murderers, suicide and my personal favorite, permenant insanity! Guess what everyone, if you ever smoked weed you're a whacko! Let's see, so the person loses concept of morals, becomes really horny, depressed and violent.... maybe they should have called the move Drinking Madness! 
Here is a review for Reefer Madness for those interested in reading:
http://www.thespinningimage.co.uk/cultfilms/displaycultfilm.asp?reviewid=1107
Thanks for reading! | |
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| Should weed be legal?
Posted: 5/22/2005 11:41:43 PM | Oh and on what punkimunkee (and a few others I'm sure) that say they wouldn't legalize weed because people can easily grow it, that isn't true. People being able to grow weed easily didn't stop them from illegalizing it, so why should it stop them from legalizing it. If anything, the legalizing of it would free up police resources (officers on the street, helicopters surveying areas), so we could get the real problems (Murderers, rapists and thiefs) off the street. Also if weed were legalized I'm sure growing it would remain illegal for the very reasons stated above. Though it's not like everyone is going to be rushing out to grow weed even if the growing of it were legal. What would most people do? Grow a plant and wait months to get some free, low quality weed or just go to the "shop" and purchase it? I mean, I might like apples, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to be Johnny Appleseed when there's a grocery store not even a minute from my house!
Peace everyone. | |
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naterb
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Joined: 4/21/2005
Msg: 253 | |
| Should weed be legal?
Posted: 5/23/2005 8:18:14 AM | Every one smokes it one time in there life. I'm surpriced its not legal yet, and it would cut down on crime of people smuggleing it in the country. | |
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| Should weed be legal?
Posted: 5/23/2005 5:44:54 PM |
Every one smokes it one time in there life. I'm surpriced its not legal yet, and it would cut down on crime of people smuggleing it in the country.
It would cut down on crime, period! Everyone would be home eating whatever is left in the fridge and watching HGTV going, "Wow! That is the coolest wallpaper I've ever seen in my LIFE!"  | |
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| Should weed be legal?
Posted: 5/23/2005 5:49:20 PM | | id say maybe not make it legal, but definitely lessen the sentencing for possession, and i dont even do any drugs...! but the prisons are full of non-violent stoners...who are able to hold jobs and pay taxes...so im just sayin | |
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| Should weed be legal?
Posted: 5/23/2005 6:01:54 PM | | It's not legal? So thats why they arrested me last week. | |
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| Should weed be legal?
Posted: 5/24/2005 9:39:54 AM | @mmmmm_good
I totally agree with you about alcohol. Alcohol does not descriminate it kills innocent people, and destroys families.
IMO one of the reasons it is not legal is because the government can't figure out a way to control it. It can be grown indoors or out everywhere in North America.
There are alot more dangerous drugs out there than pot. They need to stop worrying about pot and worry about cocaine, crack, and any other drug that can be bought on the street and has resulted in the death of someone. | |
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| Should weed be legal?
Posted: 5/24/2005 9:40:02 AM | | IMO Reefer Madness depicted symptons/actions of alcohol, alot more than pot. | |
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| Should weed be legal?
Posted: 7/30/2005 6:23:14 PM | And while the drumis beeing beaten lauding to stem the flow of drugs into Amerika we have this bit of hypocrital nonsence ~~
September 21, 1996
AS I SEE IT
By Cynthia Tucker
DRUGS? They want to talk about drugs in America?
Before this sordid tale is finished with the telling, both Bob Dole, who injected rising drug use among adolescents into the presidential campaign, and Bill Clinton, who couldn't resist saying something back, may regret getting mired in the subject of illegal narcotics.
Before this political season is over, each man may be forced to talk about an ugly chapter in the history of urban drug use that they would rather not confront: a scheme in which Latin American smugglers sold drugs in the American ghetto and used the profits to fund anti-Communist guerrillas in Nicaragua, all with the tacit approval of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). You haven't heard Dole or Clinton bring that up, have you?
The story-reported by the San Jose Mercury News in a series called "Dark Alliance" and supported with exhaustive detail and volumes of documents-has set off a clamor for an investigation. The call has even been joined by retired Army General Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's drug czar. The furor could force the Dole and Clinton campaigns to say something sensible about illegal narcotics in America, after all.
There will be no admissions from Spy Central, of course. They will never admit that their obsession with enemies abroad allowed them to acquiesce to a scheme which ensnared thousands of their own citizens in the violence soaked web of crack cocaine. The renegades at the CIA have always operated in the shadows, beyond the reach of the laws which govern the rest of us. That does not seem to change-no matter how many times a president or a Senate committee promises to rein them in.
But there need not be any admission of culpability from the CIA for the nation's leaders to acknowledge what those at ground zero of the crack epidemic have known all along: The socalled war on drugs has always been a war on the vulnerable black and brown poor. It did not take a major newspaper's account of the cynical exploitation of America's ghettos by Nicaraguan anti-Communists and their CIA handlers to tip us off to the simple truth that American lawmakers are much more interested in locking up black men than in reducing drug use. That is self-evident.
This much we knew long before the Mercury News gave us the rest of the ugly story: The laws governing powdered cocaine, which is used and sold largely by whites, and crack cocaine, used and sold largely by blacks, are very different. It takes 100 times as much powdered co caine to land you in jail as it does crack.
As a consequence of those disparate laws, thousands of young black men and women have been locked away for long stretches while their white peers get probation. It is because of the absurd "war on drugs" that on~third- begin one-third -of all black men in their 20s are under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system-in jail, on parole or on probation.
It is too late to save some of the young black men who were sucked into the violence spawned by the crack trade. They took too easily to dealing drugs and killing; they belong in prison. But there are countless black men and women who have committed no violent crimes who can still be salvaged with low-cost drug treatment programs. They do not belong in prison for succumbing to a drug pushed on them by the CIA protected operatives who flooded Los Angeles with cocaine so cheap any fool could buy it. And many fools did.
This "war on drugs" was always a phony way to make politicians look like they were protecting us from criminals. Instead the racist drug war manufactured criminals where none had been before. 
Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor of the Atlanta Constitution. | |
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| Should weed be legal?
Posted: 6/13/2006 3:45:31 PM | | I think weed should be legal i mean there is NOTHING wrong with a person smokeing weed i mean everybody does it once in their lives and some people do stupid shit when they are stone but some of us know, when we have had TO MUCH and when its to OUT of control. | |
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