[Landos Mustache]

"The UK Science and Technology Select Committee, which advises the government, commissioned an assessment of 20 legal and illegal stimulants to examine the actual social and physical harm they cause based on scientific evidence."

I am also convinced that pot is way way less harmful than booze or cigarets.

I have never heard of anyone getting ill from smoking pot other than the occasional nausea when consuming too much. Yes even with long term use from the 60's.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...-revealed.html

[fxbezak]

I tend to agree with this. Cigarettes are made with some vile stuff and it isnt the tobacco thats killing you Im sure. Its the chemicals used to enhance them.

I dont really agree with alcohol though, because there really isnt anything in alcohol to enhance its potency like cigarettes, its just the long term effects that can hurt you and over use.

Just my .02

[scaught]

smoke 20+ cigarette sized joints a day for a year and report back.

[Landos Mustache]

Just to be clear, obviously NONE of these things are good for you and too much of anything is bad including water.

[Eug Wanker]

Cheeseburgers are bad.... but they're ohhh sooo good. I'm trying to cut down though...

[jckalen]

smoke 20+ cigarette sized joints a day for a year and report back.

Well that's part of it... you don't generally smoke 20 joints a day, unless you're schmokin Marley-style.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by scaught

smoke 20+ cigarette sized joints a day for a year and report back.

I know people who smoke 20 cigarettes or more a day but nobody who smokes more than a couple joints a day.

[Eug Wanker]

I wonder how many people could function normally smoking 20 joints a day.

[Rumor]

Sit at a police department for a night and I guarantee you'll hear at least one call along the lines of "Bob is drunk and is beating his wife again." Sit there for a year and the worst you will hear about pot is "Bob is stoned and won't leave the all you can eat buffet again."

[ghporter]

The social and physical affects on the individual user are less for such things as pot, but the overall social impact has to be much greater. There's only a small black market in untaxed cigarettes, but the entire marijuana market is both ilicit and controlled by organized crime in one fashion or another. You cannot tell me that there's MORE social impact from cigarette bootleggers than from organized crime selling pot.

I'm not saying that cigarettes are a good thing at all-but there's a bigger picture than what the article is talking about.

[Rumor]

Depends on where you are. I never came across a dealer that got thier weed from organized crime.

[Ghoser777]

Glenn... I'm confused... which side are you taking?

[sek929]

Yes and all thatr organized crime would take a massive hit if pot were to be decriminalized.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Rumor

Depends on where you are. I never came across a dealer that got thier weed from organized crime.

Yeah, in Canada a lot of the pot is local. Small-time grow ops, etc.

Which reminds me. My GF's parents had some rental houses. One of their tenants moved out... and they found out the tenants had been using it as a grow op. Apparently there is a fair bit of damage in part of the home, and the ex-tenants seem to have disappeared off the face of this planet.

[Landos Mustache]

How many people here have ever seen an angry high from someone stoned?

Me, never.

Booze... all the damn time.

[Rumor]

Originally Posted by Landos Mustache

How many people here have ever seen an angry high from someone stoned?

Me, never.

Booze... all the damn time.

I'm going to refer you to my first post in this thread.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by Rumor

I'm going to refer you to my first post in this thread.

Well I saw that I was just hoping for other peoples input as well.

[sek929]

The US military must be jealous of cigs, 400,000+ kills a year for cigs.

But you still can't smoke joints

[porieux]

...

[real]

Originally Posted by Landos Mustache

Just to be clear, obviously NONE of these things are good for you and too much of anything is bad including water.

Lando you are right on.


To many people hear that something is good for them and then go eat/drink/smoke whatever til they feel sick then wonder why. Eat and drink what your body needs,no more no less. Balance is key to everything in life. Hanging out with your GF/BF to much can start to be a problem.

.02 Cents

real

[ink]

Originally Posted by Rumor

Sit at a police department for a night and I guarantee you'll hear at least one call along the lines of "Bob is drunk and is beating his wife again." Sit there for a year and the worst you will hear about pot is "Bob is stoned and won't leave the all you can eat buffet again."

[sek929]

Originally Posted by real

Lando you are right on.


To many people hear that something is good for them and then go eat/drink/smoke whatever til they feel sick then wonder why. Eat and drink what your body needs,no more no less. Balance is key to everything in life. Hanging out with your GF/BF to much can start to be a problem.

.02 Cents

real

Words of wisdom *


*I feel so dirty for using the thumbsup, it's so......pacheadish

[King Bob On The Cob]

The only thing I really have against pot being legalized is if they legalized it, my g/f would start using it more often, and I can't stand the taste/smell of ANYTHING that is like pot/cigarettes or anything else. Gives me bad headaches.

Yea, I'm a greedy bastard, I'll take my happiness over yours, so sue me.

[evfish84]

Cigarettes are pretty much just poison delivery systems. All they contain is nicotine and chemicals to enhance its effect. Nicotine is one of the deadliest known chemicals on the planet, and is still used as an insecticide. Why would anyone want to put a nerve toxin into their lungs? Why should these even be legal? It's just a slow means of expensive suicide.

Originally Posted by Rumor

Sit at a police department for a night and I guarantee you'll hear at least one call along the lines of "Bob is drunk and is beating his wife again." Sit there for a year and the worst you will hear about pot is "Bob is stoned and won't leave the all you can eat buffet again."

I agree. There are fewer immediate health problems in pot than in alcohol. Alcohol can kill a person in a single evening of binge drinking. I've never heard of anyone who died of a weed OD. Theoretically, it may be possible to ingest enough cannabinoids to freeze up parts of the brain that control heart rate or breathing, but I never ran across it in medical literature or the news. The only time I can imagine marijuana killing someone would be if an individual did something stupid when high (but there is the same problem with someone who is drunk).

[sek929]

I think I'd smoke less during the times in between growing cycles, and enjoy it more once it was harvested and cured

[mitchell_pgh]

I would agree the LSD, pot, etc. aren't as bad as alcohol/cigaretts [we're talking about the actual chemicals].

I think it's the activities that you partake in while on SLD, ecstacy and pot are the ones that get you into trouble.

[Gossamer]

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

I would agree the LSD, pot, etc. aren't as bad as alcohol/cigaretts [we're talking about the actual chemicals].

I think it's the activities that you partake in while on SLD, ecstacy and pot are the ones that get you into trouble.

You can get arrested for eating cheetos?

[sek929]

I don't think while smoking pot I have ever commited a crime apart from the act of smoking pot.

[Stradlater]

No ****, holmes.

[Rumor]

Back in my stoner days, I was kicked out of a Weinerschnitzel on all you can eat night. A combination of 24 hot dogs and chili dogs. My friend (also was asked to leave) beat me by three.

[Salty]

In the sense that there are people I don't know, I wouldn't care if pot were legalized. In the sense that I've seen people I know be complete stoners who never do anything but go to a low paying job, get high, and repeat for five years. I don't like it. That said in the sense that one of my youth group kids started smoking just recently for no reason, at the age of 17, I hate cigarettes too... and after seeing a friend get drunk for the first time...

Oh and someone said alcohol can't be artificially enhanced. There's a level of ethanol that the yeast creation the ethanol dies at, lots of liquor is distilled far beyond that level. Our bio teacher in high school taught us how

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

I think it's the activities that you partake in while on SLD, ecstacy and pot are the ones that get you into trouble.

I've never seen anyone commit crimes after having smoked pot (I don't have any personal experience with harder drugs). Alcohol: a lot, it makes some people very aggressive whereas pot usually makes people mellow.

[invisibleX]

Like salty said just because an addictive substance won't kill you doesn't mean it won't ruin your life. I'm sure they didn't take this into account.

EDIT: Well it looks like the ranking system does take this into account.

[Athens]

Originally Posted by ghporter

The social and physical affects on the individual user are less for such things as pot, but the overall social impact has to be much greater. There's only a small black market in untaxed cigarettes, but the entire marijuana market is both ilicit and controlled by organized crime in one fashion or another. You cannot tell me that there's MORE social impact from cigarette bootleggers than from organized crime selling pot.

I'm not saying that cigarettes are a good thing at all-but there's a bigger picture than what the article is talking about.

That is only because our laws make it that way. Take out its ilegal status, package and tax it you remove the criminal element of it.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Rumor

Depends on where you are. I never came across a dealer that got thier weed from organized crime.

...that they know of-or will admit to. And I'm not necessarily talking about "the Mob" here. But unless it's really, truly locally grown, some organization has managed to get it to you. That counts as Organized Crime, whether it's capitalized or not.

Originally Posted by Ghoser777

Glenn... I'm confused... which side are you taking?

Actually neither. I occasionally use alcohol, and it looks like there's science behind most people being able to occasionally use alcohol, not abuse it, and maybe even get some minor health benefit from it. There is NO positive effect whatsoever from tobacco in any form,a nd both tobacco and alcohol are legal and regulated.

As for pot, if it were like when I was a kid, when the majority of pot came from some local guy with a few plants in his acreage out in the country, and the guy was selling it so he could share-not to make a profit really-then I would not worry much about it at all. I've never heard of anyone getting even agitated on pot and being able to do anything about it. At most the social effects on the individual are increasing obesity-gotta have those brownies!

But there are very few real local growers of that type anymore. They are either high-tech hydroponic set ups (that cost a lot to set up and are usually financed by someone other than the grower), or fields out in the boonies that are guarded by bad people armed to the teeth (and often accompanied by a meth lab and other bad things-AND financed by some outside agent). Who's going to grow just a couple of plants and have enough to sell? No, I think that just about all pot, whether it comes from the hills nearby or through some mule bringing it across international borders, it's coming from someone who's making a huge profit. These are organized criminals who are not interested in the politics of pot-or are probably more interested in keeping it illegal so they can make more money from it.

I would like every smoker to quit right now. And I'd like to see a way to identify who can't use alcohol because they can't avoid abusing it. But they are at least in the open and subject to regulation.

Athens, while the legal system is what made pot the problem, I don't think it would be a given that legalizing it would immediately fix the problem. I think there would be bootleggers offering untaxed (and unregulated-and thus of unknown quality and safety) pot under the counter, and it would be just as difficult to prevent them from doing that as it is to keep 'em from selling pot now. It's part of the culture of pot use.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by Salty

In the sense that there are people I don't know, I wouldn't care if pot were legalized. In the sense that I've seen people I know be complete stoners who never do anything but go to a low paying job, get high, and repeat for five years.

There are quite a few who get degrees/high paying jobs, trust me on this one

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by sek929

There are quite a few who get degrees/high paying jobs, trust me on this one

I don't think that you're talking about the same thing as Salty. What I get from his description is people who LIVE for pot. You just can't get a degree or keep a high paying job and live for weed. You might be able to use it as your primary recreation, but to me "total stoner" means someone with nothing else in his or her life but getting buzzed. Spell that "loser" in most books.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by ghporter

I don't think that you're talking about the same thing as Salty. What I get from his description is people who LIVE for pot. You just can't get a degree or keep a high paying job and live for weed. You might be able to use it as your primary recreation, but to me "total stoner" means someone with nothing else in his or her life but getting buzzed. Spell that "loser" in most books.

Agreed.

Once my grandmother asked my long haired father (of his mid 20's) if he was a hippy.

He replied "Nope, hippies don't have jobs."

[Athens]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Athens, while the legal system is what made pot the problem, I don't think it would be a given that legalizing it would immediately fix the problem. I think there would be bootleggers offering untaxed (and unregulated-and thus of unknown quality and safety) pot under the counter, and it would be just as difficult to prevent them from doing that as it is to keep 'em from selling pot now. It's part of the culture of pot use.

you make it legal, and make the punishment for illegal sales to minors, illegal sales of home grown with very stiff fines, first offence 10 000, second offence shutdown of store or 50 000. With Jail a option. Take away the profit and add risk you remove the problem. Who is going to risk jail to make little profit on something and where would the demand be if it can be bought legally. There is massive profit in drugs right now worth the risk because there is enough demand and people willing to pay high prices to support it.

[Rumor]

If cheeba was legalized, the government would make less money off of it than they do now.

[Laurence]

Originally Posted by ghporter

The social and physical affects on the individual user are less for such things as pot, but the overall social impact has to be much greater. There's only a small black market in untaxed cigarettes, but the entire marijuana market is both ilicit and controlled by organized crime in one fashion or another. You cannot tell me that there's MORE social impact from cigarette bootleggers than from organized crime selling pot.

I'm not saying that cigarettes are a good thing at all-but there's a bigger picture than what the article is talking about.

What you are saying may be correct, but it has nothing to do with the point of the original poster. The fact that drugs are illegal may cause major harm to society as whole, however using the drugs does not. Logically the way to reduce the harm to society is to legalize the drugs and then the mafia will get out of the drug business as prices will fall to a fair-market value thus removing the extreme profit that exists today.

Excess profit caused by insulation from the normal pressures of capitalism is what harms society, not taking LSD, pot, etc.

[itistoday]

Man, I'm so glad I'm abstaining from these forums... whoops. (This topic has been discussed so much over the past couple of years, about as much as religion, and it always turns into a flame war somehow...) YOU'RE ALL ****ING MORONS!!

*runs away*

[subego]

Originally Posted by ghporter

while the legal system is what made pot the problem, I don't think it would be a given that legalizing it would immediately fix the problem. I think there would be bootleggers offering untaxed (and unregulated-and thus of unknown quality and safety) pot under the counter, and it would be just as difficult to prevent them from doing that as it is to keep 'em from selling pot now.

The only reason this would happen is if the taxes were so ridiculous that one would be willing to assume the risk.

Make the taxes reasonable and this isn't an issue.

Unless what you say is meant to express concern for the dealers that legalization would put out of a job.

Originally Posted by ghporter

It's part of the culture of pot use.

If I understand what you are saying here, I think you are mistaken. You are talking about a culture of crime. Legalize pot and these people will get interested in something that's actually illegal, rather than go through the effort of getting something they can obtain legally in an illegal manner.

[Rumor]

I live in Northern Cali. If pot was legalized, my community would lose out on tons of revenue. Crime is low. Only recently have we started to have problems. That topic would be more fitting for the P/W Lounge.

About 40% of growers now grow legaly (medicinal). However, the supposed "illegal" drug trade keeps this *county* afloat. Without it, our economy would hit a downward spiral.

Edit: I'm 100% legit. I don't even burn anymore.

[Athens]

Vancouver is working towards making drugs legal and treated as a medical problem. Currently Ottawa is fighting it because of pressure from the US. If legalized, members of the US government think its going to spill over into the US, which it prob would like the way US guns spill into Canada. But i would rather try this approach vs whats is being done now. 80% of Vancouvers crime is related to drug use. When you have a 150.00 day addiction, your going to do what you need to do to pay for it. We think we are helping people by keeping it illegal, but if you ask me we are cauing more harm to the users, more harm to the non users by keeping it illegal. The cost to fight the problem would be better used to treat those that need treatment. The cost of insurance, the cost to peoples lives having their car stolen or house broken into, the cost to the tax payer to lock them up... it just dosen't make sense, and for what protecting people from themselves.

[Lew]

Originally Posted by sek929

I don't think while smoking pot

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Landos Mustache

"The UK Science and Technology Select Committee, which advises the government, commissioned an assessment of 20 legal and illegal stimulants to examine the actual social and physical harm they cause based on scientific evidence."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...-revealed.html

That site should be renamed to www.oldscientist.com, since this study was done six (odd) months ago.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by Doofy

That site should be renamed to www.oldscientist.com, since this study was done six (odd) months ago.

So? The results would be different if they were done a week ago?

It takes time to compile information and come up with conclusions.

[Gossamer]

Originally Posted by Doofy

That site should be renamed to www.oldscientist.com, since this study was done six (odd) months ago.

So you're saying it's not relevant? It was posted August 7th, so it would have been hard to link to it before then.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by Gossamer

So you're saying it's not relevant? It was posted August 7th, so it would have been hard to link to it before then.
You need to stop trolling SWG.

Sorry are you saying I am the one trolling or he is trolling me?