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Carl Sagan Was a Secret Pot Smoker
alphuris writes "CNN.com has a little nugget of info about Carl Sagan being an avid Marijuana user. Apparently Marijuana's effects were a good part of Sagan's motivation to write his books and do his research. Who says Marijuana's a downer?" The article also says, "Ann Druyan, Sagan's former wife, is a director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. The nonprofit group promotes legalization of marijuana."
In fact, the only animal safety studies on Marijuana use ever completed killed vervet monkeys by asphyxiation from carbon dioxide poisoning, not from a drug overdose; showing that THC, while showing high efficacy, is one of the safest drugs known to man.
My mistake. I should have caught that before hitting submit. Those monkeys were killed from Carbon Monoxide poisoning, not Carbon Dioxide. D'uh.
The whole gateway issue is propaganda.
Correlations, the proof usually cited for this argument, aren't enough. Everyone who smokes weed first drank milk. This does not prove that milk is a gateway drug. (Doesn't prove it isn't either.)
A more reasonable argument is that using marijuana causes you to hang out with criminals and become like them. This unfortunately is circular: If marijuana is illegal, you have to get it from criminals, so it should be illegal to prevent this.
Historical Note: my parents argued very strenuously about pinball machines being a gateway to criminal behavior, a waste of time, brain rotting etc., but neither suggested outlawing them.
You are thinking of Arthur C. Clark, of 2001 fame.
Look, man, just because I might not think you should go to _jail_ for getting stoned does _not_ mean that you become an intellectual wizard for doing it. That's an absolute crock. Now, if you're that maladjusted that you _cannot_ think or deal with reality _unless_ heavily numbed by THC, I sympathize- I've been there. But don't think for a moment that it's giving you a damn thing- it's not, no bud ever had an idea or drew a picture or played a note on an instrument.
The best that you can say for it is that it might not get in the way too heavily when getting you out of yourself. That's not a good enough reason for relying on it constantly. Get _yourself_ out of yourself. As Frank Zappa said, you are bullshitting yourself if you expect pot to do this for you. Know why I stopped? It _stopped_ _working_ and I wasn't able to bullshit myself about it any more. Fear that...
For some reason Pot also makes taking a shit much more enjoyable. Dunno why though. And while we are on that subject... why do we call it "TAKING a shit" when in reality we are LEAVEING it. Personally i would never take a shit that sounds pretty gross :)
:)
Flame Away
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
--neil
I personally support this fellow's perspective, but there's an angle that he didn't mention, which is addiction. Marijuana is damned addictive stuff, all in the psychological sense like getting addicted to food or compulsively handwashing. Claiming that it's not addictive is a crock, that's a technicality- _people_ are addictive, _people_ develop habits, and pot is about the most insidious thing you'll ever run into because it doesn't fsck you up physically (insert Cheech and Chong cough here, assume deadly pallor), it's not a hazard to society (okay, everybody who's _hit_ something like a bush or tree when driving in a car stoned, raise your hand), and it becomes your best friend (I've seen heroin junkies have a harder time giving up pot than their heroin!)
You can't _get_ a more insidious drug. It doesn't _need_ to lead to anything to screw you up completely, especially if you lose the volition to do anything _but_ smoke pot and end up struggling to come up with the money to _get_ the pot. You'll lie, manipulate, and con anybody, your own mother, your best friend, to get it. I smoked it for years, years ago when I was growing up. Me and my best friend had a little routine we'd go through- we'd go in on a bag, and then one of us would divide and the other pick. This is my best friend and he couldn't trust me to be fair- he knew I couldn't- and of course I couldn't trust him either! How many of you have to do this? One divides and the other picks? Is that a really _mellow_ spiritual approach?
*rrrgh* damn, spare me from Pot Nation...
My best friend died from a combination of staying up all night, smoking too much pot and driving with that combination.
I got to see the big black spot on the side of the road where his car burst into flames after flipping over a few times. I have a melted piece of his radiator that I keep just for memories.
He was an idiot, and I really miss him. BUT MARIJUANA IS NOT EVIL!
And for those of you who want proof, here it is: He died on December 4th, 1990 at 3:15 p.m. It should be in the next day's (or 2 days maybe) issue of the Tulsa World: http://www.tulsaworld.com. His name was Robert Wayne Lovett, Jr.)
I'm sorry about your friend that nearly died, but I've spent *many* more nights watching friends that were passed out drunk to make sure they didn't inhale their own vomit. One guy went swimming in November and we found him passed out in the woods. We had to get him into the car and turn the heater on full blast because he was going into hypothermic shock.
Give me a break. Alcohol kills, marijuana doesn't. Anything can kill you - I know somebody that goes anaphilactic (sp?) around anybody wearing too much perfume.
So you think we should put people in prison because they sell, grow or smoke marijuana? Do you believe *everything* you are told? And you probably purchase every single upgrade of Windows 9x that you can, too, right? I'm sure Bill has to feed his kids...
Mr. Jon Katz, are you listening? Do you want a controversial issue to champion? Do you have the balls for this one?
What a stupid fscking comment. I have moderately low blood pressure (as well as many people in my family) and I smoke almost nightly. (so do a lot of people in my family). I think you just want to shove coffe grounds and salt in someones mouth to see what they would do. Anyway.. if you were at a party or a get together and sober and these other ppl were there i guess you just had a blood pressure cuff just in case. Dude she couldnt handle her shit and passed out. It happens from time to time.
Stop trying to scare people with lies... its a pathetic way to be.
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
Uhhhhhh.... *COUGHCOUGHCOUGH* yeah man, I uhhhhhhh *COUUUUUGGGHH* I uhhhhhhhh *COUIIIIUUIIIIIIIIIIIGH* no risk man, I uhhhhhhh *HACK!* uhhhhhhhh....
*klunk*
"My GOD, he's not dead! Gimme some of thaaaaaat!"
THIS ARTICLE, the US has more inmates per capita than Turkey.
And Turkey is supposed to be repressive.
What's wrong with this picture?
I am ashamed at the way my country has dealt with victimless crimes
such as pot smoking. The war on drugs is an embarrassment to us,
the taxpayers, because we keep throwing money at a non-existent "problem",
and it makes the US look like a bunch of fools who can't figure out
the obvious answer.
Home of the free? Only if you're willing to walk in goose-step
with the alphabet soup of federal agencies fighting the war on free thought.
I do. Prohibition just ain't working- the government needs to be able to tax it. The money can be used to help people who are really addicted and _want_ to get their heads straight, and for a million other purposes more useful than hiring drug enforcers and building jails for pot smokers. That's just stupid. Put them in jail and throw away the key when they drive stoned and run over little kids or little old ladies- but let them rot on the couch all they want- you _cannot_ pressure a person to stop using drugs, it's addictive behavior and you _have_ to want to stop, otherwise forget it. I don't smoke, drink or use drugs. I also don't drink coffee, though I still find myself getting compulsive over coca-cola or tea- sheesh, it never stops, but you have to draw a line somewhere or you end up an ascetic drinking distilled water in a locked room. I used to do all those things, and it really messed with me, I'll tell you. I don't _regret_ it, but damned if I'll go back to what drugs ended up becoming for me, and that includes if pot gets legalized. If that happened I'd laugh until I cried, man. I can never use again without really _locking_ _in_ to that gimme-more, hide-out-and-use, full-on, take-no-prisoners using style I gradually developed over the course of ten years of smoking pot. It doesn't go backwards. I can never have that first high again. Not even if it's legal. Instead I'd have only compulsion and escapism to look forward to. That's a nasty trap- it's like a sort of torture- my instincts will always be telling me to use, but I don't have to, and I don't use now. Except for guzzling coca-cola ;) if that bothered me as bad as pot ended up bothering me, I'd quit it too.
They smoke hash legally in Turkey, moron.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> Marijuana is NOT addictive. Period.
One point: pot is not PHYSICALY addictive. That is, it doesn't have withdrawl symptoms when you stop using it.
It is QUITE psycologicly addictive, though. The thing is, anything at all can be psycologicly addictive. Chocolate, linux, slashdot...
While if you are strong willed, that is easy to deal with (and it is easier with pot than some things. just try to get me to stop reading slashdot), it IS something one has to deal with at some time, and should not be ignored.
Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
Who'd have guessed it ;-)
- "When I say dance, you'd best DANCE motherf*cker!" -Violent Femmes
I was a closet budsmoking genius for ten years. I sat and watched, in the clouds of smoke, the shadowy forms of a million brilliant ideas. Once I even built one- once in ten years.
I stopped, and since then I've had two articles published in the top High End audio journal, have written a novel, have built most of the things I vaguely sensed were out there waiting to be invented, have released free software to the world under the GPL, and have a web site (see 'URL') full of pictures, writings, programs, essays, Window Maker titlebars and X pixmaps, music... _all_ of it after I stopped smoking, which I did because I was suffering and feeling really compelled and trapped in the stoner lifestyle, going nowhere reaaalll sloooowly.
Sorry, man. The stereotype is true. I've been there. That's not to say it should be a crime- it shouldn't, I support legalization. But I support it so it can be taxed and so we don't have to spend so much money on jails for stoners, I don't support it for me. I hated being a worthless leech on society. Being a stanford-binet 'genius' did not help a damn bit.
Sorry, dude. When I was a closet budsmoking genius- I smoked bud. Don't look for many people to be able to show you results. They can probably show you a lot of roaches, though, and if you're hurtin' you can scrape their bongs- nasty nasty stuff that is, but it'll give you a buzz and a headache. _That's_ the results.
Sorry.
Hmm... my experience with fraternities is that they mostly beat the hell out of people they don't like.
If you have to pay for your friends (if you don't pay your fees, you're out), why are you surprised that Mr. Sagan wanted money to speak to you?
Myself, I prefer to make my friends the old fashion way: Get to know people that I have something in common with.
GDI and proud.
"I find that today a single joint is enough to get me high . . . in one movie theater recently I found I could get high just by inhaling the cannabis smoke which permeated the theater," wrote Sagan...
I realize that this took place in 1971, but still, what kind of movie theater was this, and where??
People can do whatever they want, of course, but for me, I'll pass. The main thing I have going for me is my brain, and I'm not going to soak it in THC for a cheap kick -- not to mention that smoking pot is as dangerous as smoking tobacco.... Alcohol and snuff are drugs enough for me.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
It's just as bad as tobacco for you, maybe a lot better since you don't smoke nearly as much of it. I don't understand what the problem is. Everyone does it, from 15 year old kids to peoples grand parents. No one that smokes weed usually goes out and robs anyone, and no one has ever died from it. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but it seems like a pretty harmless drug.a
No, alcohol kills more than pot because it's actually poisonous. Ask the people behind the recent French medical report which classified drugs in three categories based on their danger:
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, it will be less dangerous than put what you use in your glass and drink it. :-)
> Look in countries like Ireland where they have legalized it - it's a non-issue.
:)
You're confusing European nations; pot is illegal in Ireland. Other than that, I agree with your posting entirely.
Sagan also wrote that pot enhanced his experience of food, particularly potatoes, music and sex.
I guess that explains the disappearing bags of potato chips amongst certain households. But really, I wish he had been advocate for NORML publicly instead of as Mr. X. You're at a club or a sporting event and somebody is obnoxious violent or rude. Have they been drinking alcohol or smoking pot?
I imagine big tobacco would say the latter, but the true answer is obvious.
Drugs that provoke specualation on the fact that we're getting screwed every day of our lives are illegal, and alcohol, used to numb it down, are legal. Now isn't that funny?
Does this surprise anyone? It's been years since I was involved in the use of such material, but Sagan sure looked like a stoner (or fellow ex-stoner) to me....
As for the movie theaters, I know in Miami as late as the '80's you could pick up an excellent second-hand buzz.
Hardly. Most influential artists I've met enjoy smoking pot. Many influential artists of the past are on record as enjoying it, or perhaps opium, absinthe, or various psychedelics.
I'm not talking about hang-in-corporate-lobbies art, or Top 40 Radio. I mean lasting and influential art forms.
And yes, a trained mind can help.
damnit, stop telling me about that, I needed those surveys to back up my smug assertion that the majority of americans want the war on drugs ended... well, it's still possible they do (tho probably not likely), but now I can't have those cool moments when I'm walking through a crowd and thinking "y'know, most of the people around me are dope smokers, or used to be anyway."
ahh well.. among my crowd in high school, I'd say drug use was something like maybe 60%, but nowadays most everyone I know is (or at least was) a drug user. still, sucks to have my head pulled outta my ass wrt drug usage figures...
I'm not saying pot's an IQ pill for everyone. I'm saying it's a creativity pill for some people. That's a fact supported by the direct experience of those people, and supported by some of their creations that have lasted. No, smoking pot won't make Einsteins out of idiots, but it has helped many Einsteins expand their potential.
It's a shame if the only use you found for THC was numbing yourself, but believe me, many people find much more. Don't deny the possibility of things you don't understand.
"Well, she didn't, she fainted and would have died if I haden't made her eat a whole bunch of cofee and salt."
I think you may have taken an alarmist's viewpoint in this instance. While it may be possible to suffer a drop in blood pressure, this is rarely fatal. Your story is akin to an account I read on Lycaeum.org. A lady tried DXM for the first time (a really meager amount by the way) and didn't like what she was experiencing so she called the hospital. They ended up pumping her stomach and telling her she would have died. Come on! I know people who've been able to drink upwards of 24 oz. of robo and not even become comatose. Lots of people overreact and do stupid things when participating in or viewing illegal acts.
The government is not interested in making cannibus legal, they would give the impression that they are trying to protect you from the dangers of drug use, in particualr, the stepping stone effect and, I'm convinced, the junk food effect. This is so wonderful. I am glad that the government watches out for me...
I think that it is obvious that the G-men don't really care much about protecting the common man from himself. If that were the case, almost everything that brings big money would be illegal. Nicotine, alchohol. Two legal drugs that are more dangerous in terms of long term use and abuse. Nicotine is used in bug spray, for cryin' out loud. Liver and pancrease problems, anyone? More American's die from stroke and cancer than end up in the hospital with complications from smoking weed. That is the way it is.
Give American's the right to choose any poison that they want, for all I care. It is your personal freedom to do any bodily harm that you want to yourself as long as it is only to yourself or a willing partner and you don't expect me to help pay for your treatment.
I am going to smoke some rock now...
"I'd also guess 50% of you smoke Marijuana on a "regular" basis. But yet, Your brains have not melted, you have a good job, and you don't sleep around." ;P ;) I've had sex. It was pretty cool, I enjoyed it, and in fact in a controlled way I've 'slept around'. Excuuuuse me if that doesn't meet with your hemp-laden morality ;)
Er. What have _you_ been smoking?
I smoked Marijuana for ten years on a regular basis. I tended not to be able to afford massive amounts of it, but I still ended up pretty spazzed out, unemployable, and feeling like worthless crap.
I am so sorry to have to bust your bubble, but you're talking crap- you're making implications that are not warranted.
Besides, what's with this 'sleep around' business? That's a weird tangent to take- where's that come from? When I was a stoner, I never _had_ sex. It was too difficult compared to getting high. Now that I'm clean and sober, well
Beside the point, this is all just Darwinism anyway. I don't necessarily think we should be trying to prevent all these deaths. Educate the people and let them decide for themselves.
Darwinism only applies if the people die before they are allowed to reproduce. Deaths due to cigarette-induced disease rarely occur until long after the deceased has produced all the offspring he/she desires. Thus, if propensity to smoke is genetic, the children inherit that propensity.
Yeah, alcohol is pretty bad. I don't drink; never have.
Of course, the "myth" that alcohol is worse than dope has very little "proof," unless you believe the b@st@rds at newscientist.com. I find their "new" science almost as silly as some religions. It seems that the same would apply to the pompous new book from the Lindesmith Center ("Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts"). It is notable that this "medical" book has only received crital acclaim from such magazines a "Rolling Stones." Even the supposed medical virtues of the drug are hotly contested, and there is currently much more scientific evidence to the contrary. Currently there are no medical institutions in the United States that recognize any medical benefits of smoked marijuana.
Also, claims that legalization of this and other drugs will result in lower crime are completely unsubstantiated. In fact, those countries (such as the Netherlands) that have experimented with such legalization policies are now re-thinking their policies. Crime rates and addiction cases have drastically risen as a result of legalization in these areas. Great Britain, Sweden and Egypt have also experimented with legalization policies. They were forced to abandon such politics in the face of remarkable rise in crime and substance abuse.
Earlier this century Opium was legalized in China, resulting in 90 million addicts which took 50 years to rectify. Similar things have gone on in Thailand and Iran, which are still struggling to fix the situation.
In April, 1994 21 major European cities formed a coalition against drugs, an acknowledgment that legalization has failed.
Other countries, particularly in the Middle East and Orient, exact a high price for drug trafficking; and such enjoy a relative freedom from the plague of drug abuse and crime. This, may I add, is NEVER mentioned by legalization proponents.
Since the 1970's over 10,500 studies have been conducted showing the harmful consequences of Marijuana use. "Newscience" and "NORML" don't want you to know that. They'd rather ignore the bulk of scientific evidence presented against their case. They'd rather enjoy their blunts legally, and pay less. They don't particularly care that history has shown their case completely irrational. No, to them Amdsterdam is a complete success story. Look at the handful of good things that have come of it. Of course, we won't mention the millions of nightmares it's caused... that's all irrelevant anyway. 'Long as we get our high.
Well, if you want me to post more references for my numbers here, I'd be pleased to do so.
"I'd also guess 50% of you smoke Marijuana on a "regular" basis. But yet, Your brains have not melted, you have a good job, and you don't sleep around." ;P ;) I've had sex. It was pretty cool, I enjoyed it, and in fact in a controlled way I've 'slept around'. Excuuuuse me if that doesn't meet with your hemp-laden morality ;)
Er. What have _you_ been smoking?
I smoked Marijuana for ten years on a regular basis. I tended not to be able to afford massive amounts of it, but I still ended up pretty spazzed out, unemployable, and feeling like worthless crap.
I am so sorry to have to bust your bubble, but you're talking crap- you're making implications that are not warranted.
Besides, what's with this 'sleep around' business? That's a weird tangent to take- where's that come from? When I was a stoner, I never _had_ sex. It was too difficult compared to getting high. Now that I'm clean and sober, well
this, however, needs to be taken with a healthy grain of salt. i know people who have messed their lives up -way- more with legal alcohol use than illegal marijuana use---i'd much, much rather be a dropout with a GED and a crappy restaurant job than a perpetually drunk homeless bum, something that weed just can't do to you. furthermore, i know even more people who've messed their lives up with a dangerous but legal and heavily encouraged thing: school. i know at least half a dozen people who've taken much more school than they could handle, going away to accelerated boarding schools, highly acclaimed colleges, taking more and more, spending all their time on homework, until they couldn't take it any more and killed themselves (or tried).
it's of course absurd to argue that education kills (insert a pointed lack of cheap jokes here). nor does alcohol turn you into a bum; or, as carl sagan has so gracefully demonstrated, does weed turn you into a worthless slacker. the thing is, all of these things -can- have all of these effects---so why is the risk presented by marijuana any greater than the other two?
food for thought.
Anyone notice that "marijuana" is spelled "mairjuana" in CNN's URL? I wonder if this was done on purpose, so people could send links to each other without worrying about filters picking them up.
Then again, may be just a typo.
-M
a slashdot thread on weed...i cant even look.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
You say you believe in an open market for drugs. Does that include heroin, cocaine, and other "hard" drugs?
Well... yeah. There already is a black market in all of these drugs, unregulated, so that my 14 year old niece could get some PCP through friends at school, and her parents wouldn't even know. If the market in drugs was regulated (what I meant by an open market, such as trade in alcohol or firearms), the laws could be formulated such that only responsible adults could purchase and use drugs.
This is may sound idealistic, but I believe it is a more reasonable goal than complete eradication of all drug use by the U.S./U.N. war on drugs.
People shouldn't need to be using heroin or cocaine any more than Prozac or Benzedrine. but we must realize that before these drugs (heroin and cocaine) were prohibited, they were existant in consumer products with much lower potency. There was abuse of those products, and the legislators turned to all out prohibition to stop the abuse. If they had merely regulated the sale and use (i.e. make it illegal to use drugs and operate heavy machinery, babysit, etc.) we would be in a much better situation today. Chewing of the coca leaf, for example, is a stimulant similiar to coffee. In the form of cocaine (of cut with other junk like baby laxatives) it can be a dangerous drug.
Hard alcohol wasn't nearly as prevelant before prohibition as it was after. People couldn't buy a case of beers (modern terminology) because they couldn't conceal it (for smuggling). A bottle of everclear was a different story. Same with a vial of coke vs. a bag of coca leaves.
Just another two cents on the issue. Dialog is important. And trust me, I know for a fact I am not right on this issue, I merely want to provoke discussion.
I would have expected acid, if anything. Maybe I'll take another look at marijuana - maybe work on some perl stuff and see how it looks.
.02
This article has made my #$&@ing day. Hehehe.
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
are the safest and most efficient delivery system.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
z
So what were they smoking when the Milky Way got it's name ? Somebody obviously had the munchies then :-)
Damn, you're right. Now I'm pulling all my books on the subject, searching the web, and doing deja.com searches to find my reference on this in order to clean that statement up. Haven't found it yet, but here's an interesting quote along the same lines:
Marihuana: a signal of misunderstanding: First report of the national commission of Marihuana and Drug Abuse, pg. 83-84, published and handed over to the President and congress in 1972:
This report, handed to President Nixon and the '72 congress, was the first in a long line of publicaly funded studies on marijuana use and public health policy which recommended decriminalizing the drug immediately. Needless to say, Nixon took one look at it's findings and tossed the report in the trash -- showing that politicians have no regard for any science that doesn't back up their pre-conceived notions.
Thanks for both of your replies, BTW.
> For example, heroin. It takes two shots to get addicted.
Not exactly true, really, as anyone who's been on a morphine drip in the hospital can tell you. No, I'm not advocating heroin use. It's a very addictive drug, and you can overdose on it if you're not careful. But let's stick to the facts.
> Being able to sit at the bus stop getting high with friends whilst an old granny is queing for her bus is just wrong.
Being able to sit at a bus stop drinking a beer with friends whilst an old granny is queing for her bus is just wrong, too. Which is why it's illegal to do so.
Now, I don't think marijuana is healthy. But our laws are a waste of money and only make the problem worse. People are getting really hurt, here, for minor lapses in judgement. It's just not working.
I work in San Francisco, the Valley, elsewhere, and ALL of the top software developers smoke dope.
Count them with the artists and scientists who benefit from dope.
You WANT your software company employees smoking!
If you do anything quasi-legal at least do it in the privacy of your home and not in a public place so that you don't have the least chance of getting caught. Furthermore I would say that such behaviour is less than wonderful for the good ol' brain in general plus the rather negative effects such as becoming dependant which anyone who has ever been to a drug treatment center will tell you. I think the cases of people able to use drugs without getting addicted is much like the people who can smoke til they are 95 or the people who drink every single day some can take it others cannot most likely some small adaptation on the level of the immune system or metabolic processes. I most likely would never use drugs because my family line has not proven to be well adjusted to it. My great-grandfather was an alcholic and I would rather not become something similar.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Lies only manifest more lies...It is silly to even argue with someone who says they no someone who died from Marijuana. It would be the FIRST death attributed to Marijuana in the History of the world, check your medical books. Ignorance is the product of propoganda. Intelligence is the product of Research. Sativa WebMaster Marijuana.Com
Tip off the DEA get the whole place closed down for good and get several people aquainted with the marvels of the prison social structure.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
They are all poisons. How much less dangerous is cannabis than alcohol? Every study says something different. Unfortunately the debate is so polarised nobody has a chance to get at the full unexpurgated truth. I do know this, though: cannabis monkeys with your central nervous system in a big way. And it can certainly do you harm - in many different ways. So can all psychoactive drugs.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Did you inhale? I hear some people (read clinton) tried pot and didn't like it. They (read clinton) didn't inhale.
I tried heroin once and didn't like it. I think it might be because I didn't inject. It really didn't do anything for me.
Some anonymous coward noted:
As a minor aside...in regions of the Southeast US that are dry counties (there are some in Tennessee and Georgia, and approximately 50 percent or more of the counties in Kentucky are dry; other Southern states in the "bible belt" prolly have "local option" laws) alcohol is quite illegal; in most places that are dry one can actually be charged with bootlegging for merely POSESSING alcohol, and the penalties are similar to those against marijuana posession. Penalties for SELLING alcohol can range all the way up to felony convictions policed by the ATF.
I can also state--from experiences of friends-- that in those areas of the Southeast where one MUST buy alcohol from a bootlegger, it is quite common that the bootlegger is either growing marijuana or deals in marijuana (and occasionally in harder drugs as well). In fact, most of your former "shiners" do marijuana farming as a side business or have gone completely to farming pot and bootlegging Jack Daniels and Budweiser (at twenty dollars a six-pack, yet).
As an aside--some fun statistics for folks. Kentucky--which has one of the higher percentages of dry counties of Southeast states (I don't know how many dry counties exist in Alabama or Mississippi or other states far deeper in the clutches of the Religious Reich than Kentucky is)--also had, until fairly recently, possibly the strictest law on cannabis posession in the US. (The law was eventually ruled unconstitutional because it was overbroad; the law as written defined marijuana so widely [it listed marijuana as being de jure "plants of the genus Cannabis or any parts or products derived thereof (my emphasis)] that posessing hemp rope [which is made from a Cannabis species posessing little if any THC] or taking dronabinol [the medical name for THC; more on this in a bit] would be technically illegal in Kentucky.)
Oddly enough, Kentucky is the #1 producer of marijuana in the US and it has been stated that if marijuana were taxable marijuana would likely be Kentucky's #1 cash crop (surpassing even tobacco, and Kentucky is in the top three tobacco producing states). If marijuana were legalised even for medicinal purposes in the US, most farmers could probably abandon farming tobacco; the climate and soil in Kentucky are next to perfect for growing cannabis, and in fact the US Government set up huge hemp farms in Kentucky during WW II for the war effort ("Hemp for Victory"). It is also thought it is likely impossible to eliminate all of the marijuana harvested in Kentucky, as a fair percentage of it is either growing feral in national forests or wildlife areas (where spraying paraquat is prohibited) or is outright planted in areas where spraying is prohibited.
Perversely, the main psychoactive principle in marijuana (delta-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC) is legal in the US, whilst marijuana isn't for the large part. THC is sold and marketed legally as a Schedule II drug called dronabinol (trade name is Marinol) and has been since the late 80's. The FDA, under considerable pressure from the DEA (and it may come as a surprise, or maybe not, that the DEA does have much influence over drug scheduling) has so far refused to even drop pure marijuana to Schedule II (which would legalise it for medical use in the US) even though pure THC is listed under Schedule II and even though a federal court has ruled that the FDA should drop scheduling of both pure THC and marijuana to "Schedule IV or V" (this being in a lawsuit by NORML).
(A note on how the US does drug scheduling. Drugs that have psychoactive abilities are listed from Schedule I (illegal for any use, and used for drugs considered "dangerous" and/or with no legitimate medical use that isn't served by "safer" drugs) down to Schedule V (possibly addictive in some form if you take it in the long term, but in some cases considered safe enough that prescriptions aren't required).
(Examples--heroin is listed as Schedule I here in the US (in Britain it'd be listed in the equivalent of our Schedule II). Morphine and most really strong opiates (fentanyl, oxycodone, etc.) are listed as Schedule II, along with pure amphetamine and dextroamphetamine (still legal for treatment of narcolepsy and for weight control). Schedule III is, mostly, medium-strength opiates such as codeine derivatives, a few strong benzodiazepines, and some amphetamine and barbituate derivatives [if memory serves, barbituate itself is also Schedule III]. Schedule IV includes most "downer" drugs--a lot of barbituate derivatives and drugs that metabolise to barbituates [like Ritalin], most legal benzodiazepines [Valium, Xanax, etc.], etc. as well as most codeine preparations and some barbituate relatives [Phenteramine, the "phen" part of "phen-fen", was Schedule IV before it was pulled from the market]. Schedule V listed drugs are fairly rare; the only ones I know of offhand are paregoric and "Cheracol" [which contains a weak opiate], both of which are listed as "exempt" narcotics and at least in Cheracol's case is available as an OTC drug in many states.
(No, the way the US does scheduling makes no sense at all. Hallucinogens and narcotics are seen as Really Bad and usually get listed as Schedule I or II; benzodiazepines, like Xanax or Valium, are well known to have a high potential for abuse [lots of people, LOTS, have been hooked on Valium and other tranquilisers; I happen to know a member of my family who has been hooked on Xanax for approximately the last twelve years yet refuses to get help, and the doctors fear the shock of withdrawal at this point would cause her serious harm] yet are listed as Schedule IV in most cases [along with codeine which takes some time to get addicted to--it's been said one can get hooked on Valium after a week or so of use]...I know of one case where a benzodiazepine has been listed as Schedule I (Rohypnol; "roofies", "date-rape drug") and only because it was being used in assaults and people had OD'd on it, and valerian root (which actually contains a very small amount of Valium in it, and has other active principles which your body metabolises to Valium--it's where the whole idea for benzodiazepines came from!) isn't even scheduled at all and can be bought over the counter at your local grocery in the "health-food" or "vitamins-n-herbs" section. The vast majority of drugs that can cause hallucinations at ANY dose [LSD, ketamine, psilocybin, ibogaine, etc.] are listed as Schedule I, even in cases where medical benefit has been proven in clinical trials [ibogaine has been proven to be useful in treating addictions to cocaine and heroin, and is one of the few useful agents known for treating the former]; usually at the moment it is discovered clinical trials are being started, permission is denied for continuing trials by the DEA. Marijuana is in much the same boat; in part the drug was banned in large part due to lobbying from liquor companies [who had JUST had liquor re-legalised and who were scared to death that marijuana would sink their chances at re-establishing legal business] and the DEA refuses to re-legalise because of the canard that marijuana is a "gateway drug" and also because marijuana is classified as a hallucinogen. [As a minor aside--Ectasy is also banned as a hallucinogen, NOT as an amphetamine derivative. As another aside, "anti-drug" programs with kids are also starting to label tobacco and alcohol as "gateway drugs"--especially tobacco. I expect after tobacco and alcohol have been banned they shall start next on cappuccino being a "gateway drug" and calling for the coffeehouses of the US to first stop serving to anyone looking younger than thirty, then closing up altogether.] Ketamine, which is a Schedule I drug in humans, isn't even scheduled AFAIK in veterinary use [where it is used as an anesthetic in larger animals, particularly equines--and yes, before one asks, veterinary drugs ARE scheduled just like human drugs are; many opiates used for tranquiliser darts and the like are licensed as Schedule II drugs [like carfentanyl] or are dual-scheduled [PCP was formerly Schedule I save for veterinary settings, in which it was Schedule II...] Nicotine for medicinal use [in "quit smoking" programs] isn't even scheduled AT ALL and most forms are available OTC, even though most scientists who have studied mechanisms of addiction will state nicotine is at least every bit as addictive as heroin or cocaine, if not more so; methadone is listed as Schedule II for treatment of addiction to opiates [and yes, it is directly comparable].
(If I were drawing up the scheduling, morphine and Valium would BOTH be at Schedule II, with all the strict licensing requirements and paper-trail required; marijuana I'd place in Schedule IV or V for medical use. The medical data just aren't there for it to be at tighter scheduling; there is evidence (from old copies of the US Pharmacopeia all the way to informal trials) that marijuana and cannabinoids DO have benefit in a number of illnesses, such as AIDS Wasting Syndrome, cancer wasting syndromes, severe vomiting from chemo, glaucoma, and epilepsy; in many cases pot is being used for treatment of illnesses that are refractory to standard treatment--nothing else works. The FDA apparently thinks there's enough benefit to allow *pure THC* as a legal drug, and a number of companies are working on cannabinoid derivatives that don't get you high but still have the same medical effects [they could work with pot, but pure pot is still Schedule I and even pure THC (which doesn't work as well for cancer patients and AIDS patients, which indicates that THC derivatives or "chemical cousins" in pot may also be helping there) is Schedule II which many doctors don't like to prescribe--one of the big problems with pain management in terminal cancer patients in hospitals/nursing homes/hospice is that doctors in the US are very hesitant to prescribe strong opioid painkillers because they are convinced their patients will become addicts and/or they do not want to deal with the red tape involved with Schedule II drugs (you have to have a DEA license to even prescribe them, prescriptions CANNOT be renewed, you CANNOT write prescriptions for over a month's supply, the pharmacist must likewise be DEA-licensed, and the DEA can block a prescription being filled if they feel it's for an "excessive" amount and bust the doc for drug trafficking), even if the only way a patient CAN get relief is through a Schedule II drug]. There is [at least according to the 1989 version of the Physician's Desk Reference, in the prescribing info for Marinol (dronabinol)] only one recorded death even remotely attributable to THC overdose, and even then it is doubtful whether THC was all that was involved [other drugs were in the person's system]...it isn't as dangerous as Valium, certainly, or other benzodiazepines [Valium is very, very bad to take with alcohol or other depressants; people have died from this; people have also died from accidential OD's of Valium and Xanax, as well as from deliberate OD's in suicide attempts], and I seriously doubt that even a six-month supply of pure THC [which is the maximum for Schedule IV or V drugs; some states have lower limits] is going to kill someone unless they already have something seriously wrong with them. Hell, people have been known to get addicted to Cheracol cough syrup, and it's listed as an "exempt narcotic" which can legally be sold OTC--to the point some states have legal restrictions on how many bottles one can buy, or keep the stuff behind-the-counter. The only iffy thing is synergy effects, but as far as that goes--both NSAID drugs like ibuprofen and aspirin and acetominophen and its derivatives are Very Bad to take if you are drinking alcohol, and Seldane (an antihistamine) was sold OTC in Canada till it was found out that it caused fatal heart rythym disturbances when taken with damn near everything from common antibiotics to medications for yeast infections and athlete's foot sold OTC. [It and Hismanal, a similar drug, got pulled from the US market around a year ago. Dunno if the Canadian equivalent of the FDA did so, too.] At the very least, if they legalised the stuff even for medical use it'd help a lot of farmers here in Kentucky, especially considering that if things keep going the way they are the largest legal cash crop in the state may eventually become illegal [tobacco] and Kentucky is not a particularly rich state to begin with; besides, the state already makes nearly *all* of its money on vices [gambling (the horse industry), alcohol (mess of distilleries, mostly bourbon but other stuff too--perversely in a lot of dry counties), tobacco, coal-mining (often, unfortunately, strip mining), exporting drivers of fast cars to NASCAR, and marijuana if you ignore the fact it's slightly illegal] to begin with. :)
(Another fun drug fact--many people note that marijuana is safer than aspirin and/or acetominophen. This is true. What many people may not realise is that aspirin and acetominophen *both* were grandfathered in when the FDA was formed. It's been stated that were they developed under today's drug safety testing schemes, aspirin would likely not get FDA approval and FDA approval would be iffy for Tylenol (the main way it'd get in is as an alternative for people who absolutely CANNOT take NSAIDs [the large class of painkillers known as Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Agents of which aspirin is one member], and whom doctors do not want to use steroids or opiates in--because aside from Tylenol one's choices ARE pretty much NSAIDs, opiates, or steroids). One of the main reasons ibuprofen, ketoprofen, etc. are marketed and have done so well is BECAUSE those NSAIDs are safer than aspirin and are proven well enough to be sold safely OTC. [Ibuprofen is actually *better* at treating some kinds of pain, too--in particular, it blocks prostaglandins which are a big cause of menstrual pain. Women all over the US *still* silently thank the FDA for the day they approved Motrin OTC. :)] Also, I should probably refer to asprin as acetylsalicylic acid rather than aspirin, considering Aspirin (R) is actually a registered trademark in most of the rest of the world [including Canada] for what we in the US just know as Bayer aspirin. :) [Thank the gods that the Canadians aren't Trademark Nazis or I'd have a mess of Mounties riding down to carry me away. :)])
Just my approximately 87 cents :)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Yes, I read a study in New Scientist's Journal, they fed (not forced, just instead of oats :) a horse 40 pounds of marijuana and it ended up just falling asleep.
:)
Pot lasts in your system for about a month, but the slightest signs of it normally dissipate in about 2 days at most (we're talking a lot of heavy smoking).
In fact, AFAIK the only brain cell loss that comes from pot smoking IIRC is when someone holds and chokes while smoking. This is hearsay, but if someone could verify it.. But of course, you could do this with air if you had a bad lung problem.
-Erik-
Sagan made various technical contributions here and there just like any other astrophysicist, but what made him special was his communication of science to the masses. Scientific education is sorely lacking in this country, and inspiring the general population to support science is just as important as particular research projects.
After all, we only learned a little bit more about geology through the moon landing, but how much more support did the scientific community get because of that?
I don't think we should belittle Sagan's mastery of communication and say that it's not a "real" contribution to science.
I'm sorry, people like this piss me off.
Just stop. Stop for 2 or 3 weeks, and make sure when your friends come over and offer you buds, you refuse.
You'll get used to it. A good friend of mine once said, "After so much drug use, the only drug left is reality itself."
So pop a couple of pills of reality and get a backbone.
-Erik-
You maybe mean Holland, but even there, dope is not exactly legal, but decriminalised. It would be very difficult indeed for any country to actively legalise consumption of canabis. Ther is a huge international treaty (I forget the name, perhaps someone can remind me) that binds all the signatory countries to hold quite specific laws regarding drug use.
However, a country can keep the laws on their books, but choose to turn a blind eye towards prosecution. Certainly in the UK, there are several places where if you are caught with personal quantities of marijuana, you may even escape being cautioned.
A little planning goes a long way...
Marijuana is NOT a cheap thrill. I had spent hours trying to find a bug in a program i was writing for work. The next day i came to work under the influence of marijuana and found the bug within minutes.
According to my "Deadly Doses, a writers guide to poisons" which is actually a very good treatise on poisons. Marijuana is a 0 of out 6 on the toxicity scale. Nicotine, morphine, heroin, alcohol, tylenol all score higher on this scale. There are no known OD's due to marijuana.
[I'd tell ya what they all are, but my books are packed for the move]
Of course this is coming from someone who doesn't do any drugs except ethanol... Oh well. I do notice that people who smoke up a lot tend to 'get stupid'. This I HAVE seen backed up in studies. Of course I don't know if this is a permanent effect like baking your brains with ethanol. On the other hand, I've never gotten into a fight with a ganja smoker. But I have been rather nastily threatened/whatever by numerous drunks.
Wrong. This is not my "perspective," as you so eloquently state, but referenced opinion based on studies reported in the medical literature. Marijuana is NOT addictive. Period!
Physical addiction is generally a manifestation of a neurological dependence on some arbitrary substance, such as nicotine, amphetamines, alcohol, narcotics, or barbiturates. When an individual "becomes addicted," it's because the drug mimiced a particular brain chemical such as a neuro-transmitter or neuro-inhibitor. By mimic, I mean that the drug winds up binding to a particular receptor normally used by neuro-transmitter or neuro-inhibitor. When this happens one runs the risk of allowing that part of the brain which manufactures said chemical to atrophy; meaning that afterward it will produce less of that particular chemical because the receptors have become satiated by an external source. If an individual in this condition suddenly stops taking the drug which is binding to those receptor sites, after the portion of his/her brain which manufactures that particular chemical has atrophied, then the person winds up experiencing drug withdrawals. This is physical dependence. Since different drugs mimic different neuro-chemicals the effects and symptoms of withdrawal are specific to each drug. However, marijuana does not produce this condition in people, or any other mammal. Period.
The Canadian "Le Dain Commission Interm Report," commissioned on the recommendation of Minister of National Health and Welfare and appointed as a "Commission of Inquiry" into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs, presented it's report to the Canadian government in 1970. Here is a summary of what it has to say on the potential for physical dependence of marijuana, as obtained from the "Consumers Union Report: Licit & Illicit Drugs", Pg 460: Now, you may want a quote on psychological dependence as well:I happen to like spinach more than just about any other green leafy vegetable. By your logic, does this mean that I'm "addicted" to spinach? How about coffee? If I don't get my morning coffee, I get one hell of a headache! Not so if I miss a day of spinach. According to this, if I were a heavy marijuana user and suddenly stopped smoking pot, I should expect as many withdrawl symptoms as if I had just stopped eating spinach. Maybe less -- as I just might experience extreme constipation from giving up spinach (it's good roughage).
You can't _get_ a more insidious drug. It doesn't _need_ to lead to anything to screw you up completely, especially if you lose the volition to do anything _but_ smoke pot and end up struggling to come up with the money to _get_ the pot. You'll lie, manipulate, and con anybody, your own mother, your best friend, to get it. I smoked it for years, years ago when I was growing up. Me and my best friend had a little routine we'd go through- we'd go in on a bag, and then one of us would divide and the other pick. This is my best friend and he couldn't trust me to be fair- he knew I couldn't- and of course I couldn't trust him either! How many of you have to do this? One divides and the other picks? Is that a really _mellow_ spiritual approach?
This is mostly just unsubstantiated person opinion. IOW: CRAP! As for how you used to split bags of dope, well that sounds like a perfectly sane Machiavellian approach to your relationships. People fuck each other over for sex, money, status, and just about anything else desirable, including pot. So, your point is?
Right now, I work at the greatest place to meet all kinds of people.
:) Don't really need the money, because you see, it's a great place to meet lots of people, and you'd be surprised at the age group that smokes pot.
:)
A convenience store.
Nicely dressed old men come in and buy zigzag's or a 50 cent swisher... One AFAIK of them works at a certain shoe company here.
And don't kid yourself, I've smoked out with the law too. They get it for free.
The only people nowadays that get anything from the "war on drugs" are the suburban housewives and country club members that are convinced something is being done about their "streets".
People are just more discreet. I have to get rid of something I purchased every now and then because it's laced. If I could buy it in a specialty shop, then I could guarantee that it passes chemical inspections, and pay a tax that will better my community (hopefully).
-Erik-
Because we can't find one. The ONLY known effect of an "overdose" of THC is extended sleepiness.
>I don't. I *do* know that if the woman fell
:)
>asleep after smoking pot (and only...) that you
>should have just left her sleep. I've *never*
>heard of or seen anybody just "pass out" from
>marijuana and I, like many here, have been
>around for many years. Combinations of, with
>alcohol, yes, but not marijuana alone. Where I
>find fault with your argument is starting off a
>post with "Pot KILLS people" and then going on
>to justify the post with a very unlikely story.
>I'm certainly not taking fault with you for
>trying to save someones life. It all just seemed
>a little, oh... off the deep end.
I had a straight bong that would do it, to be honest. It was called "The Terminator", and was 4' tall and about 6" in diameter. Made 2 people pass out on 1 hit, one guy who had been smoking regularily for 15 years.
It is possible, you just haven't seen it yet...
Besides, it was a novelty bong and we were getting way too high off of it.
-Erik-
> If he really believed she had potentially
> fatally low blood pressure, the intelligent
> thing to do would be to call 911 and/or take her
> to the emergency room ASAP.
Well, the problem with a forum rant is you don't get totellt he whole story.
How do you know I was in a country that _has_ a '911'? How do you know I wasn't omwewhere where I and everyone else there would've been imprisioned for a long, long time for this? How do you know I wasn't at a place where people would've rather pulled a knife and shot me for calling in the police? Or killed the girl and dumped her in a ditch rather than having the police come in?
How do you know I didn't take Basic First Aid and knew I was doing the right thing? For that matter, how do you know I am an unlicenced medic?
Yeah, a lot of the replies to my original post were vast misunderstandings. This one ticked me off a bit, though.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Could you give us a word or two on why you found it "disturbing" ?
I haven't read it, and I probably won't bother by default, though I do like to read intellectually disturbing matter now and then. So make a pitch.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
1) Although it is not proven that Marijuana causes cancer, it has been shown that it contains as much or more of same chemicals contained in cigarettes that have been shown to cause cancer.
The number of food additives and drugs the FDA approve every year which 'have been shown to cause cancer' is staggering. Your point here is not a convincing one when used against marijuana alone.
Overconsumption of alcohol is said to be a major cause of liver failure and heart disease. Let's ban that. Saccharin and aspartame (Nutrasweet) cause cancer in lab rats. Let's ban them.
The fact is, that if you smoke pot, and you smoke just pot, you smoke a lot less than if you smoke cigarettes. And the correlation between smoking pot and getting addicted to cigarettes is not proven. This is probably because joints don't have the lovely chemicals put into cigarettes by the tobacco companies to get you hooked. But let's not ban cigarettes, OK?
2) Marijuana users are far more prone to chest infections, such as pneumonia. Hey, what did Sagan die of? 2+2 = 5, right?
If I remember correctly, Sagan was ill with something more serious before succumbing to pneumonia. Besides, alcohol depresses the immune system, cigarettes cause lung cancer....
3) The THC in marijuana has been shown to affect the immune system. Unlike alcohol, THC can stay in your body for weeks depending on how often you smoke.
Sorry, but the aftereffects of alcohol also stay in your blood for weeks after you drink, depending on how much you drink.
4) It is VERY evident that marijuana affects the neuralogical systems of the body. There are many well documented side effects of the drug. Doctors are still researching the effect of marijuana on the brain.
Every drug, including alcohol and tobacco, affect the neurological and other systems of the body. That's not a convincing argument vs. marijuana alone. Furthermore, scientific testing of marijuana has not yet been extensive enough to indicate how widespread the side effects are.
5) Studies among teenagers have shown that those who smoke marijuana are up to 104 times more likely to try and become addicted to other, more dangerous drugs, than those who have not tried.
No they don't. Holland has found that since legalising marijuana, the average age of their heroin users (heroin is considered the follow-on drug from marijuana) has increased steadily. This is a universally accepted indicator that younger people are not taking up stronger drugs.
6) Less than 1 in 4 high school students have ever used, or ever will use marijuana. I doubt that number is higher with responsible, job holding adults.
Sounds like a serious issue, then.
7) Marijuana is addictive. While not everyone who uses becomes an addict, there are many who seek it out compulsively. In 1995 165,000 people entered drug treatment programs to seek help for marijuana abuse.
How many entered treatment programs for alcohol? How many tried to give up cigarettes? Let's see some context here.
8) Frequent heavy users of marijuana develop a tolerance to the drug. They require an increasingly higher dosage to get the high they seek.
This is true for every drug, including alcohol and cigarettes. It is not a convincing argument for banning marijuana alone.
It pisses me off to see posts like this. People who are likely to encourage kids and others to view marijuana and other drugs (tobacco and alcohol included) as a harmless thing. Then get all righteous, spurting BS about "freedom" and "lies." Yeah, everything you read on the 'net is true. Isn't it wonderful what you learn?
Yes, your post is an excellent example: you provide little or no context for your 'points', you quite often get your facts wrong, you extrapolate 'facts' from unproven assertions, and in some cases your facts are wrong.
Remember kids, just because someone posts footnotes doesn't mean they know what they're talking about.
One phrase:
Everything in moderation.
I'm strongly for legalization of weed, but I don't object to laws against use of dangerous equipment under the influence of drugs, ignorance, or stupidity.
I especially like the ignorance and stupidity part. Half of the SUV's out there would be undriven if this were law.
Lowmag.net
For instance the comparisons with other primates drove home how deep the connection is across primates between sex, violence, and domination. We are far more subtle about it than most (when was the last time a boss told you to bend over while he faked sex on you?), but I don't think our choice of choice of a four letter word is any accident...
Of course Sagan and Druyan don't come out and say that so bluntly. But after the wealth of behavioral information it is hard to draw a different conclusion. No matter how much you might (like me and from the intro I suspect the authors as well) prefer to draw a different one.
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
...to see if their homogenized, middle-America, Sunday-insert world has been rocked by the news that one of their most frequent and visible contributors liked to toke?
Should make for an interesting teen-feedback segment: Parade asks: Would you smoke pot if it meant you could write a screenplay starring Jodie Foster?
Once back when I was at Cornell, I had the pleasure of sharing an elevator with the elusive Mr. Sagan. Around about the third floor, he hit the emergency stop button, pulled out a one-hitter, and asked me if I wanted some.
True story. Except the part about where he stopped the elevator and smoked marijuana.
I wonder what Howard Huge is up to this week...
wcb
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
> Meditating can expand your concept of the
> universe, marijuana aids in meditation.
Hmmm... I've always found that smoking cannabis before meditating makes me fall asleep. Maybe I'm just unlucky.
Let's not forget that as a long term cancer patient cannabis mitigated the effects of his treatment and illness thereby extending his useful productive life.
Ok, you may not want to do any drugs, aspirin, coffee, and valium included. That's fine, its a choice and you're free to make it. For me this rings too close to those that don't want to put "chemicals" into their body, but its your choice, not mine.
The point is that some people will do drugs whether they are legal or not. You do remember prohibition from history class, no? It's therefore a valid question whether more harm comes to society by forcing drug use underground into criminal channels, or by use of the drug itself.
How do we gauge the effects of legalizing marijuana? One way is to compare its effects with other drugs that have been deemed legal, like alcohol or tobacco.
If you don't believe the war on drugs is doing great harm to our country and others, you probably don't see the point of all this. For those that are concerned with the effect of the government lying to youth, defranchisement of statistically significant portions of society, and general loss of civil liberties, all without significantly denting drug use or sales, its a real question.
Jim
Too much of anything is not a Good Thing(TM). In retrospect of the Internet Addiction piece, who is willing to have the internet illegalized or moderated for them? Anytime I hear people justifying reasons to save people from themselves it gives me the shivers. Think. What else can we ban? Breathing kills you so let's all hold our breath. Whoops, still dying. Damn. Shit oxygen is bad for you for fscks sake. See anti-oxidants. So it is not about bad or good or what's more worse than what. Live and let live. Anything you are capable of is a God given right. This is a metaphor, but it serves it's purpose. Think about it.
nothing excels in every environment
I bet you were an abuser.
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Or directly, because they had really low blood preassure, and the first joint they tried made their blood preassure drop really low.
There were a few people there, all of which, except for me, were stoned. I go "Hey, where's Tracy?" and they all start giggling. "She
fell asleep!". Well, she didn't, she fainted and would have died if I haden't made her eat a whole bunch of cofee and salt.
Oh, dear....
I hope you didn't hurt her too badly. How did you diagnose her "low blood pressure"? A sphygmomanometer? Or by looking...
How did you know she was dying? This is a big deal, you know. We don't generally go around dying (in the short term).
Was it low blood sugar? Did you have access to a blood sugar measuring device?
Did you know that coffee is a diuretic, with the effect of reducing the total fluid volume of the body? The result is reduced blood pressure.
Did ou know that if you create a hypertonic solution in someone's stomach, the tendency is for the body to shift fluids (H2O)to reduce the salinity of the slug of salt to less toxic levels? The short term result would be a dropping of intravascular volume as fluid shifted to the site of greater concentration. This process is called "osmosis".
The better solution for the situation would have been to encourage the consumption of isotonic or hypotonic solutions, to bolster intravascular volume. If there was actually a problem.
What you did was likely harmful to her, and possibly the very worst thing you could have done.
Please don't make medical diagnoses and then perform therapy modalities unless you know what you are doing. You obviously didn't.
I apologize for being so unkind and blunt with you, as you seem to be a caring individual. Since you do have an inclination to mess with people in what you perceive to be a medical situation, please get some training. There are many good first aid programs out there, and MANY hard core books. Get one, or five, and read it.
Or, call 911. But, I confess, I'm glad you didn't, and didn't have to.
So you don't wanna get old, fat and bald? Consider the alternative.
Yes, I have. You should try it sometime. From your posts, I can guarantee you would learn a lot from them, if you were willing to listen instead of pretending to know things you don't. You're speaking about stuff you apparently have no experience with; you may think it makes you sound smart, but it doesn't.
Are you selling them their bags?
Please refrain from personal attacks. All I was doing was correcting your own propoganda-inspired misinformation.
Damn,
Sorry for your problems and all, but I smoked a LOT of pot. A LOT, back when I was in college.
I have four beautiful wonderful children, and I've been gainfully employed as a systems analyst for the past 8 years, I live in the suburbs, have a house, a dog, and an SUV.
Yeah, pot is poison. It ruined my life.
I think you need to examine your life closely and see if there my not be some other factor that has caused your problems, because it wasn't pot.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Carl Sagan's work seemed pretty left-wing. And considering who his wife was, it would be pretty astounding if he was stuck up about it.
Incidentally he and Anne also co-wrote Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors which IMHO is one of the most interesting and disturbing books that I have read. Highly recommended.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I'll even go so far as to say that all of the people I smoked pot with in HS and College have gone on to lead healthy, normal, productive lives, are not dumbasses, and not impotent.
Man, I would even say that my first kid was due to pot, because we would have been a lot more careful had we not been stoned that night. . .
It's nothing I regret.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
sounds like pot makes you a little paranoid. . .
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"Sagan also wrote that pot enhanced his experience of food, particularly potatoes, music and sex."
yup.. anyone who has smoked pot can tell you that.
and i am all for legalization. i think it should be used responsibly, however, which it is often not.
and about the "safeness" of marijuana, it is non-physically addictive (unlike nicotine and alcohol), it does not provoke people to violence (like alcohol can do easier) and no one has ever died directly from marijuana except for the few people who are alergic to it.
safer than a lot of things which are legal.
but then, who ever said that US laws make sense.
just my pair of pennies...
-freakinPsycho
"All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."
- Alexandar Woolcot
Didn't Regan hand-pick a committee of scientists for an ultimate investigation intended to reveal the ills of pot to the world once and for all, and then have them come back with the conclusion that its worst effect was that it leads to tobacco use? Or is that just something I picked up while browsing alt.mendacious.folklore?
> The only causualties of the war on drugs has been our civil rights.
Yep: the US government is making war on its citizens. There was a map in Scientific American a couple of issues back, showing the incarceration rates for lots of industrialized nations. IIRC, the US was only worsted by Russia, being about 10x the rate of Canada and the Western European nations that supposedly have value systems most like that of the USA. The authors blamed the high rate directly on the drug war.
What people don't seem to get when they support vice laws is that once you've made a law against anything you've committed yourself to sending men with guns to interdict offenders and use deadly force if they don't want to go along with it; you end up shooting people for their vices. If they outlaw Pizza, Snickers, & Coke you'll start seeing hackers' bullet-riddled bodies on the 6 o'clock news.
What our legislators and law-enforcement officers need is a bit of perspective.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Pot doesn't affect short term...emmm....thingy. I know from personal experience that it ...emmm.... usually....errrr...emmmm..... sometimes when you....errrr...I'm hungry....
> These people became much more decadent and
> chasing of pleasures. (they become greedy
> sensualists) They are also much more jaded and
> find it harder to enjoy what pleasures they do
> encounter in everyday life.
Gosh. Maybe the people I know are exceptional somehow, but this is not the case in my experience. I have two friends who are currently heavy (more than four joints a day) smokers and both are dedicated family men with responsible jobs. They are both hard workers and very focussed on whatever they do.
I've had friends in the past who fit with the kind of waster image that heavy-duty potheads are supposed to have. The thing is, however, I'm not entirely sure they wouldn't have been the same even if they'd never touched cannabis. Someone doesn't have to be a dope fiend to be decadent, lazy or unmotivated.
I suppose the point I'm trying to get to here is that it's a bad idea to mix cause and effect. If you know people who have started smoking more dope and have had changes in personality, maybe there's something going on in their lives besides the cannabis that's responsible. The increased drug use could simply be a manifestation.
Amazing how we legalize alcohol, which causes thousands to be killed in automobile accidents, but make marijuana illegal. Marijuana makes you about as dangerous as a tree. But yet one is socially acceptable, and one is not.
What hypocrisy! The only causualties of the war on drugs has been our civil rights. I don't care if people use drugs - it's their body and their life. The government has no business telling you what you can or cannot do as long as it does not cause injury to another. And I would like to remind our legislators that if you want something done - make it illegal for kids to do it.
Look in countries like Ireland where they have legalized it - it's a non-issue. Nobody gets "smoked up" and plays baseball with other people's mailboxes. It lost all of it's "forbidden fruit" value once it was legalized, and now it's not even interesting.
In short, it's a big joke. So what if people want to smoke pot? Atleast they aren't getting tanked up and doing something really stupid like buying Office 2000....
--
He doesn't deserve to be insulted, when he misunderstood a harmless situation, forced a useless "remedy," and goes around telling people how he saved this girl's life?
If he really believed she had potentially fatally low blood pressure, the intelligent thing to do would be to call 911 and/or take her to the emergency room ASAP. Knowing the situation and his intentions, what he did was a crime (both legally and ethically): he was practicing emergency medicine without a licence (as opposed to providing first aid until a doctor or other medical professional could be reached). If she really had been in trouble, she would have died anyway, even with that quack remedy; he could have been liable for manslaughter charges.
Yeah, that's the kind of person we need more of.
In The Dragons of Eden, Sagan tells how his "informant" become aware of the presence of a "silent watcher" after using pot. I remember when I read that I thought the report of the experience was so vivid that it should have been himself. But he also said that marijuana couldn't improve one's capability of understanding philosofy, for instance, so it should "suppress the left emisphere and let the stars to come out".
It is all in the "Lovers and Madmen" chapter.
I would think that it is more probable that the person in your family drove him/herself nuts. Pot keeps me sane.
Maybe Jethro was suffering from some pot-induced paranoia.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If you can't tell the difference between sarcasm and a personal attack, just, ummm... well...
Name a few of these "great artists" for us.
Hint: if their work is published in Heavy Metal magazine, don't waste our time.
And don't list people like Aldous Huxley. He explored mescaline, as have quite a few people in the past. He didn't saturate his body with dope. And he moved on after checking it out a bit.
R. Crumb doesn't count either.
Well, never did really like Carl Sagan, but that's besides the point. I guess now we know why he kept repeating himself over andover and over. That too is besides the point.
People: marijuana kills you.
At best, you're slowly turning your brain into mush.
I've seen people die because of marijuana. Either indirectly, because they were dumb enough to operate heavy machinary (namely cars and motorcycles) under the influence.
Or directly, because they had really low blood preassure, and the first joint they tried made their blood preassure drop really low. There were a few people there, all of which, except for me, were stoned. I go "Hey, where's Tracy?" and they all start giggling. "She fell asleep!". Well, she didn't, she fainted and would have died if I haden't made her eat a whole bunch of cofee and salt.
Now I'm not trying to tell all of you not to smoke pot. I wish you didn't, and I want you all to know that even though I've never met you, it hurts me personally to know people do that.
what I'm saying is, don't try and justify your own actions by the actions of others. Jesus, who cares if Carl Sagan smoked something or not? You think because he, or the President of the United States did it, that makes it ok? Well, it doesn't. If you want to smoke pot for your own sakes and ruin your own brains with chemicals, that's your own business, not Carl Sagan's.
Yes, major rant, but this hit a raw nerve.
When you guys lose as many friends to alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, you'll be saying the same things.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
The article states that Sagan died of pneumonia. So be it. But he was dying of cancer (bone cancer I think). Could regular pot smoking have contributed to it? Could it have damaged his lungs enough that to make him more suseptible to pneumonia? If true then there is only one solution: Legalize pot and sell it in inhaler form. ;-)
Now it seems like you're just looking for an argument, getting defensive because you were wrong in a public forum. I don't really feel like that kind of argument, if all you're doing now is essentially calling me a liar, while you still have no basis for the statements you made.
Nor would I reveal the drug habits of other people, like you request. But I've been involved in the entertainment industry since 1983, including music, visual art, performance art, and little bit of movies. For all, both mainstream and alternative (and more innovation is in the alternative circles).
And don't list people like Aldous Huxley. He explored mescaline, as have quite a few people in the past. He didn't saturate his body with dope. And he moved on after checking it out a bit.
Actually, since you brought it up, your statement is quite wrong. He pursued and advocated psychedelics for the rest of his life, at great cost of his social standing. On his deathbed, per his request, his wife Laura injected him with a high dose of (I think) LSD. As of 1990, Laura was still involved in psychedelic research; I don't know if she still is, or if she's even still alive.
You seem to have quite an emotional stake in your conclusions; I don't know why. In any case, it's invalid to make up data to support your desired conclusions. You're harming society, and harming everyone you spread misinformation to.
Feynman's interest in hallucinations got him disqualified from the US Army in WW II! Absolutely hilarious story. You can read the details in Surely you must be Joking, Mr. Feynman...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
A substance can be poisonous without being lethal. I would certainly describe as "poisonous" any foreign substance which interferes with the body's biochemistry. And hallucinogenic drugs like THC and LSD certainly interfere with the brain's biochemistry - that's why they work.
If you haven't experienced nasty side effects from smoking cannabis yet - then you're obviously not smoking enough. Fortunately, it seems most people don't - in the US at least. But in the US you are used to much less potent forms. In the UK both grass and hashish is potent enough that one can easily smoke enough in one sitting to cause extremely unpleasant panic attacks. I've seen it happen to both first-timers and habitual users.
Moreover there is certainly a dulling of the intellect. You will tend to score about 10-20 pointe lower on IQ tests when your body is saturated. Remember that THC is highly soluble in fat, and the solid (non-aqueous) matter in the brain is mostly fat (cell membranes).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Did you ever see that movie Half Baked? The guy stops smoking pot and gets edgy, so he goes to an Alcoholics Anonymous style meeting and gets up and says he's addicted to pot and then that guy who used to host World's Funniest Home Videos gets up and he's like "Pot? I sucked dick for crack. Did you ever suck dick for pot?" and the crowd kicks the pot smoker out.
There are a lot of tobacco smokers who'd love to be able to just give up cigarettes for two months while traveling.
THat's funny, I don't know a single pothead that works as a house painter or carpet layer etc.
.
hm. one musician (okay, that's a gimme), three programmers, one director of technical theater in a large midwestern city, one architect. .
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The Feds are already doing this. Mostly, they destroy ditchweed, which is related to Cannabis, but doesn't get you high. Sometimes they find some ditchweed growing wild on the back 40 of some poor bastard's farm and he does 10 years. They are working on a virus that they promise will only kill Cannabis plants. After they release it into the wild and save America, they will celebrate with a six pack of Budweiser(tm) and a some Marlboros(tm). God bless America.
PS. Your family could have got much stupider much quicker and much cheaper by inhaling household cleansers and they wouldn't have had to worry about satellite surveilance.
Then there's the whole "Butthead Astronomer" story (Codename for the Apple PowerMac 7100).
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
So, let's see, Richard Feynman did it, Carl Sagan did it, Allen Ginsberg and his crowd did it and *so* much more, Edgar Allen Poe was alcoholic for a good deal of his life, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, the list goes on and on and on. Reminds me of an article The Onion did that the drug czar had to revise his "winners don't use drugs" propaganda; sometimes winners do use drugs.
What's a teetotaling person to do? Sure, most people who use drugs might be losers who are trying to escape from their loser lives, but some are actually experimenting with altered states of being. (Click here for an interesting article on what it is to *experiment*, not recreate, with drugs.) So I make the choice not to use too many chemicals to alter my consciousness. But even chocolate, caffeine, a good meal can do that. Exposure to the sun, rain, Dickens, a boring lecture, a rousing makeout session, all these externals affect my mood and state of mind whether I intend it or not.
Maybe a conscious user, one who's experimenting rather than recreating, asks the question in T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": "Do I dare disturb the universe?" Except, I say no, and he says yes.
I dearly hope I'm not wrong.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
Medical bills? Cannabis has been a very common way to grow your own (cheap) medicine and self-medicate your way out of chronic pain for thousands of years. Weird that it was made illegal just as the drug companies got really big and powerful. Now it costs an awful lot to (poorly) manage pain, and many people (especially in developing countries) go without adequate pain management for lack of funds. (Cannabis is now against the law in the whole UN thanks to US pressure ... that's why it's "tolerated" in Amsterdam and not legal.)
Cannabis is the Linux of pain management. Scares the shit out of Phizer.
Any surprise? I live in Ithaca, NY (about a 10 min. walk from where Carl Sagan lived). In any case, he was enough of a character that it does not surprise me at all (he built his house on the edge of a cliff, and incorporated an old Mausoleum into it)...
Now we have a wacky set of monuments in our town which together comprise a scale model of the solar system. In the middle the sun it this thing on a tower about the size of a softball, and then half a block away there is a pin-head sized speck in a glass thingee that's supposed to represent venus, and they go all across town, and pluto is way the hell out in the boonies, and then for the hell of it evidentalyl they built another one in Hawaii for the nearest star....
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
Another casualty has been our tax dollars wasted sending people who did nothing wrong to jail.
I don't care if W. Bush used drugs, as long as he doesn't care if we do.
Note: I actually do not use drugs and really have no desire to, just like I really feel no need to own a gun, but I'm adament that we need to have that right.
well.. for one the about 20% (not sure about the exact number, but somewhere along this order.. so give or take about 10%) of people who have a slight allergy to THC, it just gives them a slight headache. then ofcourse there's always the people who just don't like it for one reason or other, just like there are people who don't drink beer.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
many if not MOST artists of ANY medium, ever
This is a piece of folklore. Quite the popular notion, of course. A trained mind can do amazing things. Using chemical shortcuts only lets you peek into the room.
Basically, each writer stuck mainly to their respective specialities, and bounced ideas & plots off each other.
The differences between the two, eg which planet were they going to (Jupiter in the film, Saturn in the novel) were due to the differences between the way you write a book (usually front to back) and the way you make a film (all the scenes on the same set at the same time). When changes were made to the film, the novel wasn't always able to keep up (or vice versa).
I know many aging smokers with no attention problems or impotency. In fact, all the weed smokers I know who are over the age of 30 make good money and can concentrate better than most people, and some have children. This is coincidence, of course, but luckily it's enough to prove you wrong. Did you ever consider that maybe you were just slow and impotent to begin with?
Sure, weed is not great for you. The smoke can be harmful to your throat and lungs. And the psychotropic effects can be pretty dangerous, particularly to people who are on OTHER prescription drugs or have a genetic predisposition for mental instability. And many people report lessened motivation and loss of short term memory which seems to go away after stopping for a few months.
I've never heard of a case of permanant motivation loss or impotency with a proven connection to pot, but I don't deny that it might happen to a small percentage of users. We could have a study, but most American doctors are prohibited from doing real studies on the effects. And when people come up with positive-sounding reports, they might get suppressed by the government. There are a number of reasons why someone might choose NOT to smoke weed. It's just that you didn't mention any, since you were too busy spreading the ol' FUD.
A lot of kids are too smart to fall for BS, and so they try it themselves. Want less of them to be chronic users (pardon the pun)? Fine -- give them the equivalent education of having smoked dope for their whole life. Tell them all the good parts, too. And let them make their own decisions. Because if you say "Weed makes you impotent and dumb", then your kid goes and smokes and it makes him horny and inspired, he's going to think you're completely full of sh*t. And in a way, he'll be right -- cause you didn't give 'em the whole story.
1. Lots of people who have an interest in backing up the War on Some Drugs with facts have funded research looking for bad effects. Weak stuff like your point 1 is the best they've done.
2. Maybe so (although sample sizes of 1 are not a good idea) - smoking *anything* is bad for you. Unfortunately its illegal status stands in the way of safter forms of delivery: I don't see Wrigley launching a brand of marijuana chewing gum any time soon.
3. When you say "affect" the immune system, do you mean "to its detriment"? And why is staying in your body for weeks necessarily bad? Henna stays in your hair for weeks...
4. "Doctors are still researching..." sounds scary, means nothing.
5. Studies have shown that nearly everyone who has tried ill-advised drugs like heroin used marijuana first. This is supposed to be surprising? You imagine people saying "Mmm, shoot me up, but don't give me any of that marijuana stuff"? C'mon, think here!
6. Er, what was this supposed to prove exactly?
7. How many of those 165,000 entered those programs voluntarily, without compulsion of any kind from parents, teachers or other authorities?
8. Exactly wrong, the buildup of THC you alluded to earlier tends to mean that increasingly *lower* dosages are needed to get the effect.
I have to say, anyone who can cite your point 5 as evidence in particular is clearly grasping at straws. It bothers me.
--
Xenu loves you!
We have this idea of pot-smokers-as-Jeff-Spicoli because it's only the slackers who can ADMIT that they use pot. Why are we only hearing about Carl Sagan's pot use three years after his death? He and other high-profile successful people hide their pot use IN THE CLOSET because they don't want to lose their careers and their property.
Saying that only slackers use pot is like saying that all gay people are interior decorators. Your doctor or accountant is gay too, but just can't be open about it.
...but only the weak ones!
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
You dont need statistics, look around you.
Well, that's your problem then! You smoked weed. You should have stuck with Cannibis Satavia and cleaned out all those cancer and carbonous stems and seeds, and smoked from a water pipe instead of asbestos laced papers (papers are laced with asbestos to cause them to burn slower). Looks like you had no brain to begin with ;) Don't blame a harmless medically beneficial drug for your stupidity problem!
Poisons do not need to be lethal to be debilitating.
What was your intake? You ever hear of moderation? You know, I like potato chips, but I don't eat them every day.
I suspect our mental abilities are not dependent on the fact that YOU had no SELF control.
John
Not a coward
"Classic UFO's
Ok... at least you're not a hypocrite. This is good... I applaud you.
Of course, the "myth" that alcohol is worse than dope has very little "proof," unless you believe the b@st@rds at newscientist.com. I find their "new" science almost as silly as some religions. It seems that the same would apply to the pompous new book from the Lindesmith Center ("Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts"). It is notable that this "medical" book has only received crital acclaim from such magazines a "Rolling Stones." Even the supposed medical virtues of the drug are hotly contested, and there is currently much more scientific evidence to the contrary.
Talk
Currently there are no medical institutions in the United States that recognize any medical benefits of smoked marijuana.
Ah! Now we're getting somewhere! At least this is somewhat possibly backed-up. Unfortunately, it's patently false. According to the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences,
Also, claims that legalization of this and other drugs will result in lower crime are completely unsubstantiated. In fact, those countries (such as the Netherlands) that have experimented with such legalization policies are now re-thinking their policies.
Proof? Besides, let's assume this is true. The US government puts a lot of pressure on foreign governments. Are they necessarily "re-thinking their policies" because of honest health risks, or because of political pressure and other unrelated causes? Next!
Crime rates and addiction cases have drastically risen as a result of legalization in these areas. Great Britain, Sweden and Egypt have also experimented with legalization policies. They were forced to abandon such politics in the face of remarkable rise in crime and substance abuse.
Ummm... which means? Are you sure there was such a link between "crime and substance"? You can say wishy-washy things all you like. I want a leetle bit more. Oh, and those "experiments" were more of a thoughtful glance, followed by cold feet, than anything else.
Earlier this century Opium was legalized in China, resulting in 90 million addicts which took 50 years to rectify. Similar things have gone on in Thailand and Iran, which are still struggling to fix the situation.
Huh? Last time I checked, we were talking about Marijuana, not Opium. Big difference, kiddo! Maybe that's why you're so scared... you think we're talking about Opium! Wake up! We're not.
In April, 1994 21 major European cities formed a coalition against drugs, an acknowledgment that legalization has failed.
Ummmmmmmm.................. how do you get that? I've decided to form a coalition with my friend against cottage cheese. Therefore, cottage cheese must be bad for you! Sorry... no link between A and B here!
Other countries, particularly in the Middle East and Orient, exact a high price for drug trafficking; and such enjoy a relative freedom from the plague of drug abuse and crime. This, may I add, is NEVER mentioned by legalization proponents.
Oooh, oooh! This is gonna be fun! 'Cause I can tell one thing right away. You've never, ever lived over there, hmmm? Guess what? I lived in the Middle East for 3 years earlier this decade, and I honestly think that pro-marijuana spokespeople should spotlight these countries! Because guess what? They exonerate almost every single one of their arguments! Why? Simple. Your claim that they "enjoy a relative freedom from the plague of drug abuse" is flat-out, plain wrong! Some of those countries have the highest per-capita use of marijuana and related drugs in the world! Ok, so I can't back that up. I'm sure I could, except that official figures aren't available. Why? Because officially, the "problem" doesn't exist! Officially, there is no drug use whatsoever in those countries. But go live there for a while. See the real reality, not the official reality. See the drugs everywhere. Despite penalties of death, in some cases, for mere posession. Prohibition simply doesn't work!!!. And you're right about one thing. There's no drug-related crime. But this is not, as the government would have you think, because there is drug use... oh, trust me -- there is. But simply that it's done responsibly, in private (it has to be!)... it simply doesn't cause crime! There. Is. No. Relation. Seriously, it SHOULD be "mentioned by legalization proponents."
Since the 1970's over 10,500 studies have been conducted showing the harmful consequences of Marijuana use. "Newscience" and "NORML" don't want you to know that. They'd rather ignore the bulk of scientific evidence presented against their case.
Political, political, political. "Oh! We're the government! We think that marijuana is bad. If you want your funding, you think it's bad, too, don't you?"
They'd rather enjoy their blunts legally, and pay less. They don't particularly care that history has shown their case completely irrational. No, to them Amdsterdam is a complete success story. Look at the handful of good things that have come of it. Of course, we won't mention the millions of nightmares it's caused... that's all irrelevant anyway. 'Long as we get our high."
Umm... nightmares? What nightmares, praytell?
ell, if you want me to post more references for my numbers here, I'd be pleased to do so.
Not debating a single one of your numbers here. Good ol' Samuel Clemens... "Lies, damn lies, and statistics..."
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
If you want facts, there are some here :
h tml
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/1043/safe.
There are some references such as the Research Journal, which is a undiscardable source of scientific data.
Nope, not everyone smoked pot in the '70s. Some did manage to not inhale. -- /\/\
Perhaps because I have known a lot of people who smoke pot? Perhaps because I have known more people who died from alcohol and cigarettes than pot? Perhaps because I know people who have successfully used it as medicine? Perhaps because I know that doctors seriously discuss the medical problems and benefits and say nothing that agrees with your crap?
Try all of the above.
The stuff is not great for you. Smoking it all of the time does affect most people's motivation negatively. I personally think that it encourages escapism. However it is not a great evil and it is certainly less harmful than alcohol. Additionally the plant itself has lots of "non-recreational" uses (including a very valuable fruit and excellent fibre for making paper, rope, etc).
By contrast criminalizing it brings all of the negative effects that black markets always bring. And the much vaunted "gateway" effect IMNSHO is more an effect of kids finding out that adults are lying about one drug (like you just did), and then leaping to the erroneous conclusion that they lied about the others. By the time they find out that the effects of cocaine, heroin, etc were not exaggerated it is too late.
Regards,
Ben Tilly
PS I don't personally use it.
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I use cannabis regularly as do the majority of my friends.
:-)
I have a stable, well paid tech job which I perform as well as I am able (and with no complaints, so far).
My other stoner pals hold down jobs such as Magazine editor, journalist, programmer, etc. all of which require significant brainpower.
I dont think I am addicted to weed - I like it, a lot, and crave it in the same way you may crave chocolate but I have never had any 'withdrawal' symptoms such as those associated with drugs like Heroin, Alcohol or Tobacco.
That's not to say I dont get a mite pissed off when I am weedless for a week or so, but that is hardly the same thing.
-- Stu
An idea on "the origins and invaldities of racism" in relation to "Gaussian distribution curves" hardly seems all that impressive an observation to anyone who knows what a Gaussian distribution curve is. (Hint: take a pair of dice, throw them, and record the total. Repeat this n times, then create a plot with the totals on the horizontal axis and the number of times each total occurred on the vertical axis. As n becomes large, the graph becomes a Gaussian distribution curve.)
Relating anything in particular to a bell curve hardly seems profound to me without revelation of more details. Then again perhaps the point is simply to argue that pot doesn't switch off the "higher" brain functions. In my own experience, however, I've been too drunk to walk straight, but I could still do indefinite integrals (my friends apparently had so little confidence in my sobriety, they started me out with e^x :-P). Haven't tried pot so I can't say what that would do to my calculus (which is getting rusty enough these days anyway).
Ultimately, most of the yokels who read this story, especially America's glorious drug-fighting force, couldn't find the origin on a Cartesian plane with both hands and a flashlight, so maybe this is just designed to flummox them. Won't work. American drug policy is grounded on hysterics and "silent majority" politics, and not anything approaching rationality or objective scientific research. Then again, times may be a-changing. Just a few presidential elections ago, revelation of pot smoking would sink you. Now, every Republican and Democratic candidate up for next year, including the incumbent Vice President, has admitted to marijuana use -- except George W. Bush, who's been too busy deflecting questions about habitually doing lines of coke off the asses of strippers to address the pot question.
Sagan was the primary proponent for SETI. As for your comment about Sagan's ego, that is subjective. Your perception of the size of his ego is a misunderstanding of his passion to communicate science to the unscientific masses. I also admire Feynman and would like to know more about his experiments. But, I'll bet there are those that would argue that Feynman was an asshole as well.
"Classic UFO's
Since some certain people *ehhem* in the past decided that there was a minimum level of existance, and that the government and society should take it upon themselves to keep people above this level of poverty, the common man pays lots of tax money for medical situations arising from drugs and alcohol. Thus, when such things are legalized, it becomes *everyone's* problem.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
actually, it was ketamine (1/8th the normal dose) in the sense dep tank because he wanted to hallucinate but was worried that LSD would permanently modify his brain. See "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"... swell book, btw. ;)
You're right. The paper clip sucks.
That's why I have the little planet enabled instead. I love the way it blows a volcano when it gets upset at something I have done.
The question to ask is: How many people do you know who smoke lots of cannabis who have a lot of their creative energy drained out in the process. I know more than a few. Mellow is not necessarily a good thing.
--
"Listen, I did weed for over ten years. The result? I don't think as clearly now. I can concentrate only for short periods. I AM IMPOTENT."
OK, I admit it, I am only quoting this guy because he said that he was impotent. Tee hee.
Seriously, though, lost from this discussion is much mention of the crimes and punishments inflicted on dope dealers. Most people are fine with the fact that Marijuana does little to damage people's brains and bodies, but still are against it simply because it's legal. Moreover, the thought is often in the back of their minds that it causes crime.
Always remember that drugs do not cause crime--drug prohibition causes crime. If drugs were legal, whatever you think about the effects of drug use notwithstanding, then there would be less crime. Even if pot users had a slightly increased risk of cancer, teenage dealers would have a markedly decreased risk of shooting each other, or spending years in jail when they should be in school.
Oh yeah, not the white kids. They tend to get away with being users and dealers. Hmmm, maybe that's why a lot of people are in favour of drug prohibition. It is an excellent excuse to put 'those people' in jail.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
What a crock of shit!!! Yet another victim of government propaganda. I love the use of arbitrary figures used to support your claims, very big government like. ;-) I smoked pot regularly from the time I was twelve years old. I have a tested IQ of 186. I make a six figure a year salary as a consultant in the computer industry. Can you say, "Boy are you WRONG!" Peabrain!
Yeah well, one of my friends has been smoking it for more than 15 years, and experieneced no harmful effects. Just because weed affected YOU in a bad way does not mean it will affect everyone else the same. I mean, I can't drink coffee cos it makes me really ill - dosen't mean no one lese can drink it...
So? The guy is my heroe. He is the one who got me into science. Never heard about him and pot. Yet... So What? The thing is many people take this as a bad deal, and so I do not like his image being damaged in the mind of fools who see this as a big deal. 'Oh, he smoke pot, oh, my kids will never see Cosmos.'
In fact, he named his book "Billions and Billions" just that as a joke to the longstanding perception that he used that phrase. In the book he states:
"I never said it. Honest. (...) I said "billion" many times on the Cosmos television series, (...) but I never said "billions and billions". For one thing, it's too imprecise."
He goes on to say that the myth of that saying started with Johnny Carson, who used that phrase when doing an impression of Sagan.
But, Sagan knew he wasn't the most gifted cosmologist technically, but he was a gifted communicator. He explained and abstracted intricately complex concepts so that the general public could understand science. His television shows and books sparked interest in science in many lay-people. And who knows how many children he inspired to become scientists.
So, I suppose Sagan's gift was to make science more accessable to the masses. And I say he did a bang up job of it.
Try this one.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I agree that marijuana should not be illegal. All the mystique should be taken away from it, and it should be seen as nothing more awe inspiring or enlightening than spinning around too much on the merry-go-round at the playground.
It shouldn't be possible to make a lot of money smuggling or selling marijuana, and there shouldn't be a sub-cult surrounding it. It should be seen as just as legal, and just as stupid, as many other forms of substance abuse.
It should be explained to kids honestly in school, then the lecture should just move on to other things that it's easy to overdo (i.e. chocolate, cotton candy, alcohol, rubbing-your-eyes) and that are potentially damaging.
Since it is a mind enhancing drug (and it IS a mind enhancing drug), those people already had motivation problems and they used Cannibis to enhance that. You must live in an area with a high concentration of idiots much like yourself ;)
FLAME ON!! -
Sagan sounds like a fairly exceptional case. By and large, the avid pot smokers I've known, and I've known more than a few, have been a fairly unmotivated, apathetic, and unambitious lot. Certainly there were exceptions, but this was the general trend.
There is medical evidence to back this up. THC stays in the body a long time. Studies have shown that it impairs alertness and reaction times for 24 hours or longer after use. Its half-life in the body is approximately seven days, meaning that if you smoke once a week or more, you always have THC and its byproducts in your body, and are therefore never entirely sober.
I'm not advocating the continued criminalization of the stuff, and I'm certainly not advising that you drink alcohol instead. But I don't smoke dope, and if you were to ask for my advice, I'd say you shouldn't either. That Carl Sagan was able to use the stuff without apparent harm does not make it harmless.
eataTREE, ex-pothead
By any measure that I know, kids today are worse educated than kids 20-30 years ago. Sure, there has been grade inflation, and the SATs were adjusted a few years back to stop the average scores sinking to ridiculously low levels, but that does not reflect reality folks.
And your kids who know "calculus, elementary diff eq's and physics", don't. Trust me, I taught introductory Calculus to them at Dartmouth College not that long ago. They thought they knew it, but what had happened is that they had not even learned algebra and had a few muddled concepts about Calculus that got in the way. Most of them would have been better prepared with another year of algebra. And the kid who thought he had taken Calculus before but still did not know why -1 times -1 is 1 could have used some elementary arithmetic!
Sincerely,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
werd to Carl Sagan. i'm completely straight-edge, in that i don't smoke, drink or use any type of drug. i never have and i don't ever plan to. but recently, i've been considering joining NORML, just because i cannot see a valid reason for marijuana to be illegal. i feel that it should be a controlled substance, like anything else, but prohibition against marijuana has been a resounding failure.
i wonder how many non-pot smokers feel the way i do?
>Or directly, because they had really low blood
>preassure, and the first joint they tried made
>their blood preassure drop really low. There were
>a few people there, all of which, except for me,
>were stoned. I go "Hey, where's Tracy?" and they
>all start giggling. "She fell asleep!". Well, she
>didn't, she fainted and would have died if I
>haden't made her eat a whole bunch of cofee and
>salt.
The low blood-pressure was a pre-existing condition. Whatever caused her blood pressure to drop had nothing to do with the pot. Let's examine something here:
THC - a stimulant
Caffeine - a stimulant
So first you suggest she has low blood-pressure. Then you suggest that a STIMULANT LOWERED her blood pressure. Then you suggest that another STIMULANT RAISED it. Your lack of knowledge regarding the bare basics is frightening. Even I managed to learn something from old mother Reagan.
In any case, I'm no doctor, but that hardly sounded like a low blood pressure issue. If anything, it sounds suspiciously like a diabetic or hypoglycemic reaction. Now, the shock, in turn, might have been brought on by munchie food, who knows, that's all speculation. In any case, though, it wasn't the pot.
Also, again, I'm no MD, but the practise of giving does of salt to combat bouts of low blood-pressure seems highly suspect....
"people there except for me..."; "would have died if I hadn't made her eat..."
Boy, does the virtue shine through here, eh?
Frank Borman the astronaut tells an unhappy tale of one time he was invited by Sagan to some seminar or another and he ended up getting called a baby killer militarist by a bunch of snotty faced commie sympathizers. Sagan just watched benignly.
Later, Sagan was instrumental in propagating the nuclear winter hoax. After all the headlines on nuclear winter died down, other atmosphere modeling guys studied the TTOPS report and found it simplistic and wired to result in a doomsday scenario.
frankly, i'm less concerned about the muddy-thinking inducing vices of Dr. Sagan than i am of the muddy-thinking inducing propaganda he inflicted upon society.
Look, it doesn't turn your brain to mush. That is such a lie. How you know she didn't fall asleep. I do it all the time and know lots of people that do it. I never contribute it to low blood pressure. I fall asleep myself unless I make myself stay awake. It's not justification, it's awareness. Awareness that a lot of people use it who are not the stereotypical pot smoker. It is not for us, it is for people like you and others that don't really know. I've lost several friends to alcohol, it's sad but they were stupid to drive. That doesn't mean I'm going to give it up because I had some friends that made some stupid and fatal mistakes. Show me how it kills me. Not where someone was driving, show me where someone has been killed by it. I have never seen it. I've seen many pass out but no one die. Show me proof that it killed someone and proof that your brain turns to mush.
Hi brother! I lived in the SAE house above Rockledge, across the gorge from Carl Sagan's house, from 1982 to 1986. I had the pleasure and honor to sit in an "Ices of the Outer Solar System" seminar taught by doctor Sagan in 1985. Pot smoking and left wing politics aside, the man was brilliant, tough, and an intellectual inspiration. It will be a happy memory for me for the rest of my days.
One thing you didn't mention about his house was that it was also a converted mausoleum! It stood above the best darn swimming hole in Ithaca.
He made his reputation by predicting atmospheric conditions on venus, long before he became a TV personality.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You can listen to the poem at http://www.BooksOnMP3.com
Any sleight-of-hand, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from technology.
And I take it you've met just droves and droves of great artists.
Are you selling them their bags?
If it doesn't kill in moderate [...] doses, it isn't poison.
Then what would you call a substance that does permanent damage to the body but doesn't kill you? A toxin? Fair enough. My point remains valid I think.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
My only reaction to this story was, "Big deal." Every person has their idiosyncrasies and it doesn't change my opinion about Mr. Sagan one bit. There are more important things to argue about.
I've read Barry McCaffery (sp?) yelling about how our children are a bunch of greasy dope fiends... according to the DEA, 47% of highschoolers have tried drugs by the time they graduate. Now, I donno about you, but if some guy said "Hi, I'm from the DEA and I'm conducting a survey. Do you take drugs?" you can be DAMN sure I would say "no fucking way", even if I'd just swallowed nine hits of white blotter and had needle tracks so bad it looked like chicken pox. Even if the guy lied and said he worked for Good Humor Ice Cream or something, I *still* wouldn't say yes to any drug survey. Most ppl I know wouldn't either, drug users or no... so add, say, another 20% for those of us who perhaps partake but aren't gonna admit it to The Man, and voila, there's your majority. (There've also been studies in the past that concluded the numbers were more like 65-70%, but I can't think of any offhand. The McCaffery study I saw just the other day, but I'm too lazy to get an URL for it. Go look at the DEA homepage.)
I'd say the rate is more like... maybe 90% among the people I know, but my crowd is certainly not a statistically significant random sample of American citizens. If it seems like you don't know *anyone* who'd smoke that evil dope, then your crowd probably isn't either. There's quite a few billion dollars' worth of drugs out there, and *somebody* is taking them, no?
I'lll have to visit.
It looks like it could really give people an idea of the vast distances of space, and the tiny bits we're interested in...
That and I could tour the solar system in a day.
The sun in the palm of my hand, venus between my fingers.
Did he think this up, or was it done as a memorial after his death?
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Yep, most of the people in prison today are there for drug "offenses". I read a stat on Excite yesterday saying 1 out of every 34 americans is in jail.
As far as the bit about society voting on what constitutes a crime and comparing violent crimes to vices, such arguments don't follow. Histroy has show us that arbitrary redefinition of vices as crimes incites crime. Prohibition created a criminal cartel monopoly. The War on drugs has done the same and the forfeiture laws have corrupted public officials. Drug abuse is bad; drug laws make it worse.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
i personally dont think this changes anything, i mean everyone smoked pot in the seventies'.
Messiah
dr. the_messiah "... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way t
When was the last time you read about someone stoned on a joint who went on a murderous rampage, or lynched some minority representative? Or a bunch of guys getting into a big fight at a football match after getti8ng stoned? Sheesh.
--
Infuriate left and right
You know, if more people like Sagan would come out of the closet as being marijuana users, the government would have a harder time trying to stereotype marijua users as potheads who smoke a joint and become worthless leeches on society. It's time the feds stop bowing down to the tobacco companies and legalize marijuana.
If there are any closet budsmoking geniuses out there, please.... admit it....
I think you missed the point, which is: Many people don't smoke pot for a "cheap kick". Many people get intellectual gains from it, and enhance what their brain is already giving them. Certainly more so than alcohol. It's always been this way, but basically, US government propoganda has been trying to convince people otherwise for the last 60 or so years. This isn't paranoia, this is obvious to anyone who's smoked much pot. And yes, the US government has self-interested motives here, financial and otherwise. (For example, at least one major US presidential candidate is getting a lot of money from the prison industry. There are many very different examples too; ask me if you want to hear them.) The US government then applies pressure to other governments around the world.
Much development of human culture has come from brains enhanced by drug experiences, including some of our most influential computer scientists, and many if not MOST artists of ANY medium, ever. The problem is, they're not allowed to speak about it because of the current political climate. They'd risk their careers, not to mention jail time. Any pro-drug, anti-propoganda opinions are very effectively censored by this threat. So you very rarely hear those opinions in any public forum, but believe me, those opinions are out there. The only opinions you ever hear are either inexperienced, or lying.
I don't mean to give you a hard time, Jan. I admire you for having the attitude that "people can do whatever they want"; I wish more people in this country (USA) thought that way. Instead, because of the "War on Drugs", literally millions of people are rotting away in jail here for non-violent drug offenses. In many ways, they are in jail because of their political beliefs, a "crime" which is only defined as such by a government they strongly disagree with. So to the end of rectifying this extremely corrupt human rights abuse, I try to correct any misinformation I see. I'm trying to confront the propoganda head-on.
(And yes, I agree that many people are pretty lame and waste much of their potential by abusing (not just using) drugs, but that's no reason to throw them in jail. I have no right to tell a stranger how to run their life, if they're not imposing on me.)
There have been studies on this subject, e.g:
2 06.html
http://www.commonlink.com/~olsen/HEMP/IHA/iha01
They seem to bear out the fact that low levels of marijuana are not remarkably harmful to driving ability. I've seen other tests that suggest that these results may not hold in the presence of other drugs like alcohol or nicotine however.
I'm strongly for legalization of weed, but I don't object to laws against use of dangerous equipment under the influence of drugs, ignorance, or stupidity.
I think a functional test would be far better than legislated blood levels, simply because people vary widely in reaction to drugs, and it also means the government can get out of the business of policing what you put into your body. If someone can't pass a functional driving test stone cold sober, should they drive? L.A. implemented such a test for their bus drivers some years ago, so I think it possible.
Jim
I don't smoke anything, but I also think that pot is probably the least dangerous illegal drug out there -- alcohol has got to be 10x as bad for you.
I find it ironic that when I went on a month-long bender after my girlfriend dumped me and society just shrugged. Even though I almost ended up in detox a couple of time and barely remember most of January that year, it was OK.
Of course, if I'd started smoking pot, they would have had to lock me up for my own good and to protect society from me.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Hi Jethro,
You are certainly welcome to your opinion, as is everyone, and as an apparently caring person (you) I'd usually be the last to critisize your opinions. But I'm gonna, cuz I've had a raw nerve on this issue for quite some time as well.
>>People: marijuana kills you.
Life kills you, the moment you start it.
Children in cars can kill you with distraction.
High School sports can kill you (saw it twice, both athletes that I knew)
My point? It's not how long you lived, but *how* you lived, at least to many people.
Furthermore, studies have shown that the Jamaican Rastafarians, on average, live longer and it's tentatively attributed to reduced stress levels. Studies schmuddies. Who cares, people will always be able to spin numbers.
>>Or directly, because they had really low blood
>> preassure, and the first joint they tried made
>> their blood preassure dropWell, she
>> didn't, she fainted and would have died if I
>> haden't made her eat a whole bunch of cofee and
>> salt.
Oh Come On!!! Do you really pass through life believing that you saved hers? Do you really believe that giving coffee and salt to someone who 'has dangerously low blood pressure' is in any way a medically sane option?
>>what I'm saying is, don't try and justify your
>> own actions by the actions of others. Jesus, who
>> cares if Carl Sagan smoked something or not?
Because the world needs to know that people of 'credibility' sometimes do things that are counter to our governments list of approved behaviors that you won't get thrown in jail for. In my home state, (midwestern), the governer actually tried to pass a law that would have made a mandatory sentence of 30 days in jail (not county, not city, the STATE PEN) for anyone caught with any amount, period. 1 roach, 30 days, no questions. Geezuz, talk about hitting a raw nerve. Most people aren't in the position to stand up and say. "Yeah, I do it, so what?" *I* am not in that position as a founder and executive in a hardcore Sports organization, which is why, today, I'm an anonymous coward. I hope not to be, someday.
My life is *MINE*! our government needs to change it's views and every little bit of credibility helps, believe me, the corporate spin machines are ready maintain the status quo, even crank it up a notch. Disposable urine tests? *sigh*
Educate yourself. visit http://www.yahooka.com and seek out some scientifically sound information.
thanks for listening - shaggy
BTW - I do my best software debugging with a gentle buzz.
You do have evidence against what is today a very solidly accepted piece of research? Or do you only know how to throw stupid insults while hiding behind anonymity?
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Here's my view: Should pot be illegal? I don't really care. I don't smoke it, and I'm pretty sure that my life is better because of it. Alcohol is not worse than pot, especially long term. If you want to go through life with a foggy look in your eyes, with low testosterone and a general sense of laziness, go ahead. After all someone has to be middle management with no ambition, and I'd rather it be you than me. All the hardcore pot smokers I've met are far worse off than the hardcore alcoholics I've met.
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
But his main contribution IMHO was the popularization of science in general, and astronomy in particular. Communicating knowledge in an interesting way to the general public is a very valuable and rare skill-- and usually underappreciated by people already familiar with that knowledge! But we can thank him for much of today's interest in astronomy by the general public.
Ever been to Ithaca? If the impossibly hard classes don't get you down, the frozen tundra landscape and hideous women will... who would've thunk it?!?!
*insert pithy sig here*
People: marijuana kills you.
Please back this statement up with facts. Cigarette smoking kills about half a million people annually, while according to this PBS "FrontLine" report there were "...too few deaths to meaningfully study the other main hypothesis, that marijuana use would be associated with increased respiratory disease mortality." and "...relatively few adverse clinical health effects from the chronic use of marijuana have been documented in humans."[references available at PBS site] In fact, Marijuana has no known LD 50, that is lethal dose in 50% of cases, not because data on health affects is lacking, but because no report has ever been filed of a death from Marijuana overdose. In fact, the only animal safety studies on Marijuana use ever completed killed vervet monkeys by asphyxiation from carbon dioxide poisoning, not from a drug overdose; showing that THC, while showing high efficacy, is one of the safest drugs known to man. It's safer than aspirin, buddy.
At best, you're slowly turning your brain into mush.
The psychological and brain physiological effects of Marijuana use simply aren't well known in the United States because the FDA has repeatedly refused to allow human studies. They won't even allow studies which purport to give marijuana to test subjects, when they are really only giving a placebo. However, anecdotal evidence from the lack of emergency room visits due to marijuana intoxication, compared to alcohol, cocaine, and heroin overdoses are telling. As the second most popular recreational drug in America, it causes fewer emergency room visits than all other drugs combined. Stick that in your pipe and smoke.
Marijuana use is at least as old as alcohol consumption, going back many thousands of years. And it's noted that today a large segment of society smokes pot without anywhere near the same level of ill health affects as alcohol. This is not to say that smoking pot is good for you in general, just that in comparison to alcohol, it's far safer.
I've seen people die because of marijuana. Either indirectly, because they were dumb enough to operate heavy machinery (namely cars and motorcycles) under the influence.
No doubt, anyone operating heavy machinery under the influence of any drug (even many prescribed medications) run risks associated with cognitive impairment. No one should drive a car while taking oxycodone, alcohol, or marijuana. Period.
Or directly, because they had really low blood preassure, and the first joint they tried made their blood preassure drop really low. There were a few people there, all of which, except for me, were stoned. I go "Hey, where's Tracy?" and they all start giggling. "She fell asleep!". Well, she didn't, she fainted and would have died if I haden't made her eat a whole bunch of cofee and salt.
This anecdote doesn't back your statement up. Sorry.
I don't see many folks bringing up hemp as an industrial resource, nor do I see many folks pointing to it's use as a medicine for the terminally ill. I've seen Marijuana work wonders for people dying of AIDS and know one person who swears it's what got him through Chemo-therapy alive. Yet our government continues it's war on citizens as though we can't manage our own bodies and personal lives without government interference. I have no problem with obeying traffic laws which state I must drive sober, but when our government puts good people away for long prison sentences simply because they were trying to live through a terminal illness, we have a serious problem with a political institution way out of touch with it's citizenry.
I support legalizing drugs, and believe that it ought to be up to the individual how he/she decides to live his/her life. Laws and the police should protect citizens from violent crime and fraud, not self abuse and self destruction; that's a job for psychiatrists and clergy.
Originally Jethro's comment came in at a two, and has been moderated down. However, even though Jethro posted non-factual statements, it's turned into the most interesting comment thread among all the posts in this discussion forum (my opinion). So, moderators, please up this comment, and please go down and read some of the Anonymous Coward posts... at least one of them I noticed is very good.
The mistake most people who've posted are making are assuming that their experiences are universal; everybody reacts differently to pot. It makes Carl Sagan draw curves in the shower, it makes others giggle, it kills others.
As for arguments about the relative dangers of tobacco, they're irrelevant. I've no doubt whatsover that cigarettes are vastly more dangerous, but to insist that pot is harmless is just silly. It has dangers for some, and some people do become psychologically addicted. To the best of my knowledge, no-one can become physiologically addicted, but I'm willing to be corrected by an authoritative source.
Speaking personally, I'd like to attest to the effectiveness of hash (grass is damn difficult to get in Ireland) as an anti-nausea drug; when I was undergoing chemotherapy, it was the only thing that kept me from barfing the day away. Of course, I'm only talking about its effect on me. Your mileage may vary.
You're saying that if marijuana gets legalized, then society will have new costs to pay. Heck, if there are such costs, they're being paid already. How could it be otherwise? People have done studies, and concluded that costs for Alcohol are many orders of magnitude higher than any costs for Marijuana. Drunks drive and kill, and beat their families. Folk who get high are a lot more mellow ... :-)
Instead, let's think of savings. Let's lop off 2/3 of the budget for the "war on drugs", at least half the prison budgets. And court costs. And substantial police budgets. Hmm, maybe we could just take all of that money (W.O.D., prisons, etc) and apply it to something worthwhile instead. That'd make sense. I'd say let's cut the national debt (huge part of the govt budget!) first, but others may think differently.
In the distance, screams from law enforcement folk, "no, don't cut off our funds, we're addicted and can't go cold turkey..." you hear them already with respect to forfeiture reform. Another cost of the drug war is the Bill Of Rights. Police can take all your property just based on the strength of a suspicion, and you have no defense ... that's seizing everything you own, and they don't even have to charge you with a criminal act. Innocence is no defense; www.fear.org is illuminating, and scarey.
Seriously ... anyone who's looked at the economics of Marijuana Prohibition has concluded that it's always been about a money transfer program from smokers to people with more power. That includes at the very beginning -- when organizations with rights to large tracts of forests were major backers to that prohibition, since it abolished the market for hemp paper and supported a market for wood pulp that hadn't previously been viable.
End prohibition. Stop taxing the weak to fund the vices of the strong. And yes, stop the related hypocrisy in high places. (You can say "gwbush" can't you?)
- Jojo
I'm no great fan of Carl Sagan, he always came off as a bit self-absorbed to me. But I really do not understand your post. The fraternity hung a sign in lights facing his house with a vulgar message and Dr. Sagan is the one who owes an apology? In what way was their behavior even remotely excuseable and deserving further correspendance with the possible exception of a citation from the city or a letter of reprimand from the dean or the greek counsel?
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
But alcohol is OK.
Case in point: this spring Canadian Chiefs of Police recommended that pot be decriminalised because enforcing the marijuana laws is a waste of time, police resourses, court time, jail space, and besides, simple possessions is often just dismissed by most judges anyway because it's a waste of yadayadayada.
Ontario's very intellectual and open minded premier dismissed the CoP recommendations out of hand and said besides, he prefers booze anyway.
Politicians are too short sighted, too chicken, and too stuck in the mud to open their eyes and realise the hypocrisy of having alcohol and tobacco legal while keeping pot possession as a criminal offense.
-M
Having grown up watching Cosmos and reading his books, I can't but idolize the man.
This story reminds me though of when he sued Apple for naming a project after him. The people on the development team them renamed the project to BHA, and he sued again.
Perhaps Carl should have taken another toke and lightened up a little.
Ken
I don't care if W. Bush used drugs, as long as he doesn't care if we do.
The problem is that W. Bush used drugs, but doesn't want us to. He said he's "learned from [his] mistakes" and realizes that drugs are bad and need to be eradicated.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
you saved her life with salt and caffiene? it sounds to me you woke the poor girl up for coke and potato chips (at least her experience in eating them was enhanced...you being there must have been a major bummer though)
i worked as a truck driver for three years and the most dangerous legal thing by far is cars. in three years i saw twelve bodies on the road, all were quite gruesome. sure, statistically 50% of those deaths were caused by drinking and driving but the other 50% were caused by merely driving. If it were not for cars, drunks would walk or take public transportation, and the rest of us would be safer.
Just because Carl Sagan was one of the founders of extra-terrestrial awareness and happened to do drugs doesn't make drug use "correct". You can hold him up as a pillar of the community and say, "See, he did it!" or you can respect the laws of whatever country you are in and abide by them while trying to change them. All this proves is that Carl Sagan was human. He had his virtues and he had his vices, just like every other human. Somehow, I don't think that when Carl Sagan was in public, giving his speeches, promoting his ideals and preaching his message that he was stoned, or that those ideas were a result of marijuana's influence. Marijuana didn't expand his concept of the universe, and the geek community shouldn't hold Sagan up as proof that marijuana can benefit society.
Listen to yourself. Jethro tried to help his friend, and you insult him. I think that Jethro should get credit for being concerned about Tracy. It may not seem likely, but there is a chance that Jethro did save Tracy's life. And the possibility of saving someone's life outweighs just about any risk of doing it.
I'm sure you probably know something better to do for someone with dangerously low blood pressure, but do you think you'd remember what to do in a stressful situation like that? I applaud Jethro for doing anything at all. The world needs more people like this. He doesn't deserve to be insulted, especially since you haven't said what you would have done instead.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
He died of cancer, moron. Maybe he got pneumonia from the chemo or something.
I say make it legal and tax it, like alcohol & tobacco.
Being able to sit at a bus stop drinking a beer with friends whilst an old granny is queing for her bus is just wrong, too. Which is why it's illegal to do so.
Excuse me ? Is this another american law ?
I live in England, and whilst there is such a thing as causing a public nuisance, what's the problem drinking at a bus stop ? Or on the train home from work ? OK, if I was drinking at the stop and being abusive then fair enough, but otherwise that's plain stupid. A bit like those places where you cannot smoke outside in public at all.
It's fair enough if non-smokers are sitting around you if you light up, but if I'm on my own at the train station and someone walks up to me, sits down next to me and *then* complains, that's wrong.
Why is having a beer in hand at a bus stop "wrong?" Carbonated sugar water, colored and flavored with caramel and even cancer-causing sweeteners is just fine, but carbonated water, naturally flavored with fermented grain is "wrong?"
The only part about "guys at bus stops with beer in hand" that's wrong is the stereotype of the dirty drunken man on which you're most likely drawing your conclusions. Beer is a drink, and so is Diet Coke; loud, rude, irritating people drink both.
And a lot more people running around with holes in their throats, and missing their lower jaw.
Throat cancer / cancer of the mouth etc... aren't as lethal as lung cancer, AFAIK. So what you said is true, from a certain point of view.
Beside the point, this is all just Darwinism anyway. I don't necessarily think we should be trying to prevent all these deaths. Educate the people and let them decide for themselves.
--bricktoad
My friends, we are nothing but wings on the chicken of society.
I believe he invented the concept of a communications satellite in either a book or a short story, didn't he?
Nice post, however I have one criticism: "As the second most popular recreational drug in America, it causes fewer emergency room visits than all other drugs combined." This is not impressive. I am not positive, but I believe it safe to assume the same could be said for any other drug, as in: "PCP causes fewer emergency room visits than all other drugs combined".
It's relevant in that the recreational use of marijuana is second to only alcohol in popularity, while causing fewer hospitalizations than all other drug use combined -- including alcohol, amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, LSD, and PCP. This means that a very large population of users generate fewer hospitalizations than from the use of all other drugs combined. While PCP users presumably represent a very small number of the drug using population, they certainly generate more hospitalizations annually (by definition).
A couple of points that may be of interest :
1) Not many people realise that one of the most notable Jazz musicians of our time, Louis Armstrong, was a *very* heavy hash smoker. It is said that every morning he would start off with a joint... and yet this is one of the most influential people of our time, being recognised as something else when it came to music, and then to be made a diplomat on top of it. It was only in his penultamate year that Louis finally gave the habit up.
So, this with the Astronomer mentioned above must surely prove that marajuana *must* be legalised... or not ?
I am young. 17 in fact. I admit that I have smoked hash... not regulaly but it has happened - it would be rude not to. I will also freely admit that I liked the feeling that it gave me.
However, I am not entirely satisfied that hash/pot/marajuana/ganja should be legalised for the simple reason that, in my personaly opinion, it *will* lead on to stronger, more dangerous drugs being given less impact as to their effects.
For example, heroin. It takes two shots to get addicted. You enjoy your first trip so much that you have another. Hooked. Now, if marajuana was legal and I was made aware of this fact in school, the impact that there are classes of drugs, heroin being among the top at class 'A', would not lead me to have the same strong feelings I have against heroin as I currently do.
Another problem - smoking. That is, of the legal, tobaco kind. How many children under 16 (for that is the legal minimum here in England) started at eleven just because it seemed 'naughty' ? I think quite a few. I have seen fourteen-year-olds getting high just for the reason that it isn't legal... do you see where I am leading ?
Whilst it would be great if I could walk into a shop and ask for ten reefers, I *know* that I would not feel right doing it, and I would almost resent the fact that I could. Being able to sit at the bus stop getting high with friends whilst an old granny is queing for her bus is just wrong. Sorry, but it is.
I remember those same tests, in public schools of the state of Illinois. These surveys would show up every few years, and every student would do his or her best to "admit" to absurd practices of drug use and sexual conduct. It was a joke and every student knew it; I think we figured out that when the results are finally tabulated and presented to the powers that be (those who control the school curricula) that we'd be long out of the age group that was showing problems. In other words, we wouldn't be the ones subjected to supplemental moronic drug "education" classes and discussions.
One has to wonder about how these survey results were ever actually used.
"...fewer than [all others] combined..." is a pretty meaningless/misleading statement since if you combine them all, you get a big number, and almost anything else will be smaller.
I think your point was more along the lines of: Marijuana is the second-most used recreational drug, yet it causes fewer ER admissions than any other recreational drug. Which is an impressive fact; it means that on a per-use basis, there is virtually no risk.
By the way, an excellent post, and a good rebuttal to the one that started the thread.
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I remember when i was in middle school (about 13 years old) we were givina drug sex and alcohol survey. It was anonomous and done on a scantron (the little #2 pencil dots). I thought it was cool as shit and lied my ass off. I smoked crack weekly. Was a smackhead.. loved speed and got laid 4 times a week. All of it was bullshit (except for the weed)
Bottom Line? Surverys Don't Mean Shit
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