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Carl Sagan, as "Mr. X," Extolled Benefits of Marijuana
New submitter Colin Castro writes with an exceprt from the San Francisco Chronicle that reveals a different side of Carl Sagan: MarijuanaMajority.com founder Tom Angell spent a few days this summer in the Library of Congress researching the iconic American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist and author and has come away with a bounty. Angell says he found some never-before-released writings on marijuana policy from the author of classics such as 'Contact' and the TV show 'Cosmos', which is the most widely watched series in the history of American public television. ... I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs,' Sagan wrote in 1971, under the name Mr. X.
They want their Carl Sagan news back.
Sure, if you smoke pot, you might end up like Carl Sagan, but you could also end up like Obama, Bush, or Clinton.
Do you want your teen to grow up and have 27% approval ratings? I thought not.
>> Carl Sagan Extolled Benefits of Marijuana
After hearing Sagan prattle on about "billions upon billions of stars" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#Phrase_.27billions_and_billions.27), is anyone really surprised?
Well, it's more valid than the status quo that imprisons millions of people for dumb-as-hell reasons derived from 1960s moral panics and 1920s racism.
I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs
So wait, Carl Sagan is saying our school systems and our culture are so fucked up that we need drugs to understand what the fuck we should actually be thinking?
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Nobody thinks of the economic impact of freeing millions and millions of American citizens from indentured servitude.
How will the prison industrial complex get cheap labor if we legalize MJ, which is used to imprison non-whites and seize all their assets without warrants?
If the South has to give that up, it could be the end of the plantations!
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Posted by timothy on Thursday October 09, 2014 @02:20PM
Sorry Timothy, you're a couple of hours too early to get posted. ..or perhaps we are not in the same time zone.
The pro-cannabis websites seem to estimate about 40,000 people in prison for marijuana.
I'm in a group that takes his philosophy of science...and marijauana...and spreads it via some pretty spaced out electronic music.
/shameless plug
We're called the Sagan Youth Boys. Check us out on Soundcloud for a taste. https://soundcloud.com/sagan-y...
Our 2nd album is coming out in a few months that'll be a hard sci-fi concept album based on a manned mission to Enceladus.
What twenty years of research on cannabis use has taught us
Read the full study in the journal Addiction
What twenty years of research on cannabis use has taught us
In the past 20 years recreational cannabis use has grown tremendously, becoming almost as common as tobacco use among adolescents and young adults, and so has the research evidence. A major new review in the scientific journal Addiction sets out the latest information on the effects of cannabis use on mental and physical health.
The key conclusions are:
Adverse effects of acute cannabis use
- Cannabis does not produce fatal overdoses.
- Driving while cannabis-intoxicated doubles the risk of a car crash; this risk increases substantially if users are also alcohol-intoxicated.
- Cannabis use during pregnancy slightly reduces birth weight of the baby.
Adverse effects of chronic cannabis use
- Regular cannabis users can develop a dependence syndrome, the risks of which are around 1 in 10 of all cannabis users and 1 in 6 among those who start in adolescence.
- Regular cannabis users double their risks of experiencing psychotic symptoms and disorders, especially if they have a personal or family history of psychotic disorders, and if they start using cannabis in their mid-teens.
- Regular adolescent cannabis users have lower educational attainment than non-using peers but we donâ(TM)t know whether the link is causal.
- Regular adolescent cannabis users are more likely to use other illicit drugs, but we donâ(TM)t know whether the link is causal.
- Regular cannabis use that begins in adolescence and continues throughout young adulthood appears to produce intellectual impairment, but the mechanism and reversibility of the impairment is unclear.
- Regular cannabis use in adolescence approximately doubles the risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia or reporting psychotic symptoms in adulthood.
- Regular cannabis smokers have a higher risk of developing chronic bronchitis.
- Cannabis smoking by middle aged adults probably increases the risk of myocardial infarction.
Professor Hallâ(TM)s report is published online today in the scientific journal Addition.
Can we take Carl off the pedestal yet? I know, it's hard to let go of childhood heroes, but almost all of his "contributions" to science were of a metaphysical nature, which is to say, not really scientific contributions at all. These writings included.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
He seems to have gone into it with an open mind, made observations, and drawn conclusions...if you study the process by which cannabis became contraband, "no more valid than anybody else's" starts to look a little silly.
A male dolphin.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
A frustrated romance of Sagan's played a small role in Lilly's most famous dolphin study. One night in St. Thomas, Sagan dined at a remote mountaintop restaurant. The hostess caught his eye. She was an attractive young woman with dark hair and a healthy, tomboyish quality. Her name was Margaret Howe. She told Sagan that she was bored. Her job as a hostess was evenings only. She wanted something else to occupy her on the island.
Sagan tried to get Howe into bed. Howe rebuffed him, but the meeting had one result: Sagan introduced Howe to anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who was then running the St. Thomas facility. This led to a job and plunged Howe into one of the most unusual experiments of the 1960s.
In the summer of 1965, Howe lived in the company of "Peter," a male dolphin, 24 hours a day, six days a week in a simplified flooded house. There are surreal photographs of Howe working efficiently at a desk or chatting on the telephone, eyed curiously by a dolphin as her whole environment is sopping in 24 inches of water.
"A dolphin is more like a shadow than a roommate," Howe said. The thing would stay by her all day and never leave. She could talk on the phone for hours. The dolphin wouldn't get bored. It wouldn't leave. As weeks passed, Howe was subject to depression and crying jags. "I have found that during the day I will find any excuse to get out of the flooded room," she wrote in her diary. (Lilly meanwhile was contemplating a flooded car for the future bi-species society.)
Peter began exhibiting courting behavior. He lightly nibbled Howe's legs, getting erections, and rubbing against her ardently. As a matter of expediency, Howe took to giving the dolphin hand jobs. Peter would "reach some sort of orgasm, mouth open, eyes closed, body shaking, then his penis would relax and withdraw." Dolphin libidos being what they are, this had to be repeated two or three times; then, finally, the dolphin could concentrate on its lessons.
That made for a pretty good conversation stopper. Otherwise the experiment's results were debatable. It seemed that Peter learned to say "hello" and "ball" and parrot consonant sounds. When Howe asked Peter to get the ball, he would often get the cloth.
* * *
After this experiment, Sagan visited St. Thomas and played a game of catch with Peter. Sagan threw the ball to Peter, and Peter dove under it and batted it back with his snout. His aim was as accurate as a human's. Then, after a few volleys, the dolphin began returning the ball far to the side of Sagan. Peter was toying with Carl, performing an "experiment" of his own. Figuring that two can play that game, Sagan retrieved the ball one last time and held it, treading water.
For about a minute, both mammals stood their ground. Peter gave in. He swam into Sagan's side of the tank, circling him, repeatedly brushing past him. This puzzled Sagan. It didn't seem like the dolphin's tail flukes had brushed him. Then he realized the dolphin had a hard-on.
The frustrated triangle of Sagan, Howe, and Peter was worthy of Sartre. There was a further twist. Peter was one of Lilly's ex-actor dolphins. Sagan had been propositioned by Flipper.
But my number was from the national institute of rectal studies.
The fact that you call this "prattle" illustrates Sagan's point - because of his altered perception, he was able to grasp the magnitude of what he was working with. Smaller minds more easily dismiss it as foolish and inconsequential because their brains just can't handle the idea of "billions upon billions".
I mean this in the nicest possible way - go smoke some weed and stare up into the stars. It helps put things into perspective.
It puts you in a different state of mind. You may or may not benefit from that state of mind, but there would generally not be a great risk of harm.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
That carl Sagan was a supporter of cannabis and used some himself is not news. SO "reveal a different side" is pure marketing BS, as this side was at least publicly known by 1999 for his bio. They only found a few "more" writing of sagan extolling MJl. No scoop here.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The issue about drug offense prisoners is muddled.
When drug war critics talk about the huge number of drug-offense prisoners, they're almost always referring to Federal prisoners. For example, in 2013 51% of Federal prisoners were serving time for drug offenses. That's insane.
However, only a fraction of American prisoners are serving time in Federal prisons. There are roughly 200,000 Federal prisoners compared to 1.3 million state prisoners.
At the state level things are different. In 2012 only 16% of state prisoners were serving time for drug offenses.
I always found the critics and skeptics confusing until I dug into the numbers. But I don't mean to diminish the War on Drug critics, however. Things like a history of marijuana possession convictions, even if you never served jail time, will be used against you later. Prison time isn't the only metric we should use to gauge the harsh effects of drug laws.
Disregarding the fact that i kan reed pulled his number from the "national institute of rectal studies," in principle, it's possible that both numbers could be true. Maybe there are 'about 40,000' people currently imprisoned for marijuana, but there are millions of people who were jailed marijuana at some point in their lives. (Or maybe there have been millions of instances of people being sentenced to jail for marijuana, which is a different statistic again.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
What you did was exactly what the subject line of the OP was saying.
Actually, your comment shows you narrow-mindedness.
Sure, people who are under the influence of perception-altering drugs seem annoying to listen to or be around. But being "unable to think straight" means they're thinking in very non-standard/non-traditional ways. I think attributes such as one's creativeness, imagination or even intelligence level, aren't subject to change just by taking drugs. But the creative mind, under those conditions, might well come up with some very interesting things that it wasn't likely to come up with while the brain was functioning normally.
Driving is a task that requires a particular set of skills and behaviors; none of which would be enhanced (or even remain unaffected) by getting drunk. That's pretty irrelevant to asking if, say, the artist under the influence of LSD might create more interesting music or artwork than he/she did without it.
Two things that you seem to be off on here:
A. I certainly didn't say "only racism". It's more than a little disingenuous of your to imply I did, especially when I specifically cited another major factor. And I won't even pretend it's just those if you ask.
B. Racism absolutely did play a role. Harry Anslinger, who you could consider the godfather of the war on drugs, put his racism about it in no uncertain terms.
And because he wasn't on drugs.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
That's 40,000 too many. We should never allow misguided governments to harm peaceful people.
I dunno. Lots of association-or-causation questions there.
I read Nora Volkow's review article in NEJM. Here's a good article in MedPage Today commenting on it. http://www.medpagetoday.com/Ps...
...on weed?!?!
His racism about is in very uncertain terms, as you link to an amateurish-looking website where not one of those eight quotations is cited. Wikiquote, which takes verifying quotations seriously, notes that at least one attribution of such unabashed racist speech is disputed.
Am I defending Anslinger? Not at all, I don't have enough information at hand to judge the situation. But let's be intellectually honest and source statements instead of lazily repeating the unverified assertions of myriad stoner websites.
8 edgy me
Disputed because wikiquote editors thought that "hispanic" wasn't in usage in the 1930s. Hm. Okay. Still sourced.
No it's not more valid. The imprisonment you talk of is real, but that is based on ... (surprise!) ... politics and the agenda's of those in power, not on anything any scientist like Carl Sagan would have to say on the subject. You should fight such abuse of power on the level of where it's leveraged, not by invoking some authority (in this case: is Sagan an authority in cannabis? who know?), because those opposing will always find authority-Y-same-level-as-Sagan.
People are imprisoned -- research why and how an by whom.
I think if you actually read the article, you'll find Sagan had *gasp* justifications.,
Anyone under the influence of illegal drugs think they're sooo intelligent and creative and imaginative and infinitely smarter. In reality, they can't even think straight.
And yet, the structure of DNA was figured out by a man who was on drugs (LSD) at the time.
The number from your rectal studies institute is probably more correct. The total number of people that have been imprisoned is likely much less than the number currently in prison.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
Also, I forgot Mullis, who was using LSD when he figured out PCR. So two of the greatest advances of the 20th century, right there, off the top of my head...
Sagan lived to be 62. For what it's worth he died from pneumonia, although I'm sure some one will try to blame the drugs for that. Grinspoon is 86 and still alive as far as my 30 seconds of googleing can tell (He was defiantly still alive in 2011) which is higher than average in the US.
>Hard work, imagination, creativity.....
Will? Or at least might?
Well there you go then, I think you've just made his argument for him. Our culture and education system embraces hard work, but largely goes out of its way to crush imagination and creativity. Meanwhile smoking weed has a reputation for enhancing both. (stoners notwithstanding - but then you wouldn't judge the value of alcohol by looking only at drunkards)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I asked for convincing citations for the eight specific quotations attributed to Anslinger by the OP, and you refer me to a television series that claims other people were racist too. That's not helpful. Please try to focus.
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
Silence is a state of mime.
You act as if that is a trifle that can be waved away. Use of historical lexicology to determine spurious quotations is a standard tool, and has been for centuries, at least as far back as the Donatio Constantini.
The sources are other people's claims, written decades later, that he said that. Are you really unaware that for determining the reliability of attributed quotations, finding an attestation closer to that point in time and closer to the man's own hand is vital?
... to make special brownies from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
So you're saying that prior to 1937 (or at the very least prior to 1906), the influence of cannabis didn't have this effect?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I knew there had to be some correlation here. One look at the tremendous amount of astrophysicists surrounding the MacArthur bart station in oakland is all you need.
Check out the influence Sagan had on Neil DeGrasse Tyson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
So they pulled it out of their ass?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Good point. Another thing that muddies the stats is that many of the people who actually do time for MJ are people who had previously served time for some other offense, and the MJ offense winds them up in jail as a probation/parole/3 strikes violation, which depending on the jurisdiction may or may not get counted as "being imprisoned for marijuana".
For some numbers not pulled rectally, according to an ACLU analysis: "Of the 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88% were for simply having marijuana." Remember that arrest means you were charged and it goes on your record. That alone should be enough misery to end this stupidity.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Yeah, but I'd contest that that claim is spurious
You forget it counts as part of three strikes penalties and sentence modifiers, and also affects criminal records, leading to job aspects - and not having a job increases the probability of further incidence.
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A little googling and I see nothing to indicate Grinspoon is dead. There are no mentions of death in his Wiki bio or anyplace else that I can find. If you have solid evidence (e.g., obit in a newspaper or something) then update Wikipedia.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Drunk people think they're great at driving too. Anyone under the influence of illegal drugs think they're sooo intelligent and creative and imaginative and infinitely smarter. In reality, they can't even think straight.
I think you meant to say using a cell phone or tablet while driving, which is the primary cause of accidents in BC this year, not alcohol or medications.
Same stats in WA, OR, CA.
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The daily telegraph? you need to cite something better than that.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Pointing out that Carl Sagan (or Nobel prize winners, etc) liked to smoke marijuana is a valid retort to the popular misconception that "marijuana users are lazy, stupid, stoners" (an ad hominem frequently used by supporters of prohibition).
Knowing that some of the greatest minds of our era are marijuana smokers disproves that misconception.
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I smoke pot often with multiple millionaire clients that I have. Each owns the company that I do work for. Each built that company from the ground up. As the article points out (that Carl said) smoking marijuana (and doing other drugs) can open our minds to things that ordinarily wouldn't be accessible.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
The main purpose of smoking pot is to chill out, to be mellow. If you smoke a bunch of pot and you feel wound up, driven, ambitious and motivated you might want a refund.
> the popular misconception that "marijuana users are lazy, stupid, stoners" (an ad hominem frequently used by supporters of prohibition).
The belief is that being a pothead tends to make people mellow/chill/lazy (true, at 15 I was getting scholarship offers, after smoking pot for a year I did nothing but sit around smoking pot), stupid (true - try talking to a stoned person while you're 100% sober), and stoners (true by definition).
It's not an ad hominem (attack on the person) to recognize that pot changes my state of mind in several ways. Nor is it an ad hominem to recognize that those effects include making me relaxed/chill/lazy. That's kind of the whole point of smoking pot, the purpose - to mellow the heck out, to get lazy rather than ambitious for a while.
"They" being me just in case you missed that.
Yes, I will guarantee the poster had no evidence to back up their hyperbolic claim of millions, not that the number itself was the point.
Unfortunatly the cannabis produced today (skunk) is way more potent than that available in the nineteen seventies. Then, average THC content under 2%, now average THC content 20%.
No study anywhere has ever reported an "average THC content 20%". That would be about right for the most potent samples on record not for an average of anything. 14% THC sensimilla was available (and measured by the DEA) in 1975. Currently the DEA reports an average potency of all cannabis samples of 4.89% (2010, most recent released figures), only about twice as high as the average in 1987 (2.38%). And of course hash/hash oil was available in the 1970s that was 40% THC.
This "today's pot is totally different from the past" is a lie based on deliberately false comparisons, similar to claiming that today's whiskey is WA-A-Y more potent than yesterday's beer.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Are you sure? Or you pull that from your backside? Different strokes for different folks. Of course, there's another drug that "intellectuals" partake in. Baseless indignation.
Sig not found.
That's kind of the whole point of smoking pot
That's just your reason.
Supporters of prohibition frequently believe that the "lazy, stupid, stoner" effects of marijuana persist after the intoxication has passed (and that eventually they become "burnouts" in the style of Cheech & Chong)
"Stoner" is the marijuana stereotype equivalent of "the town drunkard" (and thus counts as an ad hominem).
We all know that the "drunkard/alcoholic" stereotype does not apply to the vast majority of alcohol consumers. The next step is to get the public to understand that "the stoner" stereotype does not apply to the vast majority of marijuana consumers.
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From Wikipedia: "Since winning the Nobel Prize, Mullis has been criticized in The New York Times for promoting ideas in areas in which he has no expertise.[6] He has promoted AIDS denialism,[7][8][9][10][11][12] climate change denial[7] and his belief in astrology.[6][7]"
An interesting role model in deed.
Bye!
I do freelance IT work.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
The main purpose of smoking pot is to chill out, to be mellow. If you smoke a bunch of pot and you feel wound up, driven, ambitious and motivated you might want a refund.
Different strains of pot have different effects. Sativa blends are usually more of an intellectual high, indica blends tend to give the mellow "do nothing" couchlock high. In my experience smoking a sativa blend will make mundane tasks more tolerable (one can actually be more productive whilst stoned) and occasionally provides problem solving inspiration for more complicated tasks.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I remember one time being really fucked up and suddenly having this epiphany on the subject of gender discrimination/sexual harassment(like I had just been hit by the "Point of View Gun" from the Hitchhikers Guide Movie*).
It was essentially the idea that my prejudices against women/misogyny were largely driven by selection/confirmation biases and that it seemed really unfair that these attitudes towards women simultaneously objectified them and belittled their accomplishments. All of this for no crime more severe than being born with a uterus(and having to suffer all of the social pressures that go with that).
I felt a sudden and overwhelming sadness that other human beings had to endure injustice, and I was overcome with a profound sense of guilt for being one of the people contributing to human suffering/making the world such a horrible place.
These feelings detracted from my usual smug sense of moral superiority, and I suddenly realized how my arbitrary and whimsical attitudes towards cruelty to others played a contributing factor in my own struggles with major depressive disorder.
*Context: I was diagnosed with Aspergers at one point, so you might guess empathy for other's perspectives isn't really my strong suit. As an example: my solution to the Ebola epidemic going on in Africa right now was the same one used in the 1995 film "Outbreak". My belief that the ends justify the means also makes me totally unqualified to judge others for their behavior under such circumstances that I haven't personally experienced myself. I frequently surprise myself with how little is sacred to me when it becomes inconvenient to draw lines in the sand...
All of this in the name of expediency, convenience, and simple solutions to complex problems? Keeping in mind: Solutions where it frequently becomes evident they were entirely unnecessary/reactionary moral compromises once the dust has settled and more complex solutions have won the day.
If drugs can make someone like me(a miserable cunt) feel empathy for other people: they must be some good shit(Oxytocin?)! Don't worry though, this epiphany didn't change who I was. I'm still a douchebag with almost zero compassion. But these days I find it more difficult to speak in absolutes without doubt popping in to my head. Isn't that how ignorance is cured? One doubt-inducing experience at a time?
Another example for those still reading: There was a very nice cab driver who was in a long distance relationship. He was a good person who would have been widowed if one of my more hard-nosed "simple solutions" to complex problems had ever been implemented. My desire for simplicity and black and white thinking made this proposal seem so easy when I knew no one who would be impacted negatively by it, but it suddenly hit much closer to home when it would have severe negative impacts on someone I met personally and had liked.
If drugs can make me less of a bigoted/reactionary/prejudiced dick-head, maybe they can make the world a less ignorant & violent place?
This has been an episode of: "Confessions of an internet-troll".
Einstein used to claim that average people were much closer to being geniuses than they had been trained to believe.
"I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious." - Albert Einstein
Your "Hard work, imagination, creativity..." (and curiosity, as in the quote above), were all things Einstein thought could be cultivated by anyone who wanted to be wiser or smarter, and would let anyone create the sort of ideas he was famous for creating.
On imagination, he said "Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein
Yet, he also praised even the lsss disciplined forms of imagination:
"The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent or absorbing positive knowledge." - Albert Einstein
Given that he thought many people were capable of genius far beyond what they actually did, he may well have believed that taking some risks, such as drugs, could have positive outcomes in freeing up that genius. It's not like Einstein was still around when most of the psychoactives became famous/infamous, so I wouldn't care to bet money he would have been either ardently anit-drug or pro-drug in that respect, but I suspect he would have thought the people considering drugs as paths to understanding the universe at least deserved credit for wanting to understand the universe, instead of taking the drugs common in his day, which seemed to promise mostly mindless obliteration (alcohol and the opiates and barbiturates).
Who is John Cabal?
Allow me, please. :)
The industrialization of America after the turn of the century began to bring sizable numbers of US Southern blacks into the ghettos of our northern cities. They replaced the Italians, the last white group out of the ghetto, who themselves followed Irish and Jews, among many others. This is around 1920, and there's still plenty of racism, everywhere; even in New York City. But from the very beginning of New York City, there was a small contingent of black people. Not descendants of US slaves, but Caribbean immigrants, mostly.
These Caribbean immigrants were themselves descendants of slaves from sugar plantations and such, mostly run by the British, but also some French and Spanish. Slaves in the US were stripped of all their African culture; not a shred of original names or language or customs or anything survived. Not so much with the British, and especially the French and Spanish. They let them keep a lot of their culture; voodoo flourishes to this day in Haiti. Many were not even slaves per se; more like indentured servants or serfs. But even British slaves had it better than US slaves.
One of the things Caribbean blacks held onto, was the recreational use of marijuana. Marijuana has been known to the white man forever, and was not a big deal for about 1900 of the last 2000 years. It was commonly prescribed by doctors in the 1800s certainly, and before. But the white man, pretty much, never smoked marijuana as a common recreational thing. The white man's drug is beer. Well, and scotch. I don't know that they get complete credit for wine, but I think they get most of it. The white man loves his alcohol. He's been working on it for about 2000 years, at least.
Now, you need that liver enzyme to be able to enjoy your alcohol; some of us have it; really, most of us don't. Well, most of us didn't. And those of us white people that didn't, well, there's a good chance we died in the gutter as alcoholics and didn't have babies. Fast forward 2000 years, and most of us alive today can handle our liquor. Still not 100%, as we are all well aware. Asians and American Indians; severely lacking the alcohol friendly liver. If you haven't seen a full blooded Asian chick drink a whole glass of champagne, well; she's falling down drunk for an hour and a half. In the white man's world of super cheap beer and liquor, that lack of ability to casually drink alcohol plagues our Native American population to this day.
The black man in America is generally somewhere in between those two extremes. Beer was not completely unknown in ancient Africa, but was not a common thing in the deep jungles where slaves came from. But, he has been pressed into our white man's society for more or less, the last 400 years, so the law of liver selection has done it's work there, somewhat. Certainly, Caribbean blacks know what rum is for a long time now. And weed. Actually, there is a slightly Christian mysterious religion with roots in Africa, that uses pot as a meditation tool. Surely everyone knows who I am talking about.
So, back to our story of US Southern blacks migrating into our northern ghettos, at first filling out, and mixing with, the existing Caribbean immigrants, who have been filtering in for hundreds of years at that point. It's their turn; Black People; the Italians just did it, the Irish did it, hell, even the English WASPs did it when they carved it out of the woods, when bears and Indians and brigands could kill you at your front door. Pretty ghetto. The ghetto is the gateway to American society. Beginning in the 20s, the ghetto started becoming black, and the racists began to panic. One of the first things they did was to make pot illegal. White people didn't even know what it was, until Reefer Madness and all the hype; completely made up political BS. A tool, to keep the black man in the ghetto, and prevent him from integrating as he would otherwise.
And that racist BS persists to this day, although very few realize just how racist the anti-marijuana laws are
Can anyone tell me the physical measurements of these writings? I'm curious as to how many secret drug habits are in a Library of Congress.
"They call him Fapper, Fapper, faster than lightning,
no-one you see, is hornier than he,
and we know Fapper, lives in a world full of wonder there,
flying off underwear, under the sea!"
Table-ized A.I.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Alcohol is likely to induce the false self-confidence you speak of, whereas marijuana (and psychedelics) induce a sense of humility, which is one of the reasons for its use in religious groups like the Rastafari.
If your only experience with psychoactive chemicals has been alcohol, and your only 'research' into marijuana has been the spoon-fed government propaganda, I could see your generalization being an easy trap to fall into. Although you can't force life experiences on someone, my advice would be to at least look at what the scientific literature has to say regarding marijuana.
You act as if that is a trifle that can be waved away. Use of historical lexicology to determine spurious quotations is a standard tool, and has been for centuries, at least as far back as the Donatio Constantini.
Sure, anachronism is a good way to falsify an attribution. However, the term WAS in use in the 1930's.
Sorry, I'll trust The Lancet more than Telegraph.
So eat your weed then.
In your opinion for how do you need to smoke to notice the described effect. I used to smoke maybe 2 times a month max and did not notice any positive effect(((
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
The problem is, any attempt by "we" to actually do this quickly turns us into another government.
And of course, the entire War on Drugs exist precisely because a lot of people are not only okay with but actively support harming peaceful people. It makes them feel though or something.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I'll agree with you when the offense doesn't include things like DUI, or other such stupidity.
Just another day in Paradise
The point in contention, as you'll recall, was that racism was a major factor in drug prohibition. Please try to focus.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Of course he smoked weed. Why else would you say things like, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe"?
A drug is something that puts chemicals in our systems that effect how our bodies work.
Go to a pharmacy and you will see all sorts of drugs that do this to a positive effect. Some are man made, but most have their roots in something naturally occurring. So its not an impossible notion that there are beneficial aspects to pot.
Im not one to say that all drugs should be legalized. Many (especially the man made crap) are dangerous as hell and should be illegal. But just because a bunch of lawmakers got together and decided Marijuana is bad doesnt make it true.
People bitch about pot being the "gateway drug." Bullshit. You know what the gateway drugs are? Sugar and caffeine. These are the two that every kid at some point has too much of and goes "oooh. I feel funny."
My altered state of consciousness is a superposition of worlds where Sagan is both right and wrong.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
Amen to that. And I'm sure the drugs helped him expand his amazing knowledge of AIDS and made up astrophysics.
I have solid, proven, documented proof that the highest IQ test ratings, the best software programming I can achieve, and the greatest creative problem solving and creativity is after 8.5 hours of sleep and a sufficient diet with lots of B vitamins. That is supported by all of science and biology. Having random, idiotic ideas pop into my head while my synapses fire randomly because of THC does not constitute a superior means of thinking, it is in fact completely inferior. It is illogical and useless and the thought patterns would be easily achieved in a superior way by simple concentration and mental exercises while not under the influence of drugs.
Oh I forgot one! You know "the men who stare at goats?" Yeah, that was a gigantic drug-fueled waste of time by pretend scientists who thought halucinogens made them super smart and gave people super powers with quantum waves of life force and blah blah blah and other bullshit that doesn't exist in real science.