... allow me to finally have a working multi-desktop interface in windows? I've never seen a solution for multiple desktops in microsoft windows that was anywhere near as nice as the one in KDE.
The one that was supposed to be "very clever" is just a painting with some windows on top of it. It looks like my browser thinks I need another plugin or something, but it doesn't tell me what this would be.
If this is supposed to be clever, I'm missing something, either personally or in my browser. Some of the other ones were pretty decent, I guess...
Is it possible to obtain OS/2 legally for free?
From what I can tell, its no longer possible to obtain a new copy of OS/2 legally at any price. If I were part of the OS/2 community (though I cannot claim to be), I would have pushed for IBM to release OS/2 at least to make it available.
It appears that IBM doesn't even distribute or sell it in any shape or form. If you look at IBM Software by category you can scroll down to operating systems, where OS/2 is suspiciously absent. Hence it seems that no matter how much money you want to throw at IBM, they won't even sell you a copy of OS/2.
But having seen that IBM doesn't appear to be trying to make money off OS/2 anymore (I seem to recall they ended all OS/2 support some time ago), the OS/2 groups may have suspected that perhaps they could get IBM to release the license. This would sound reasonable to most people - why not just give away something if you no longer want to make money on it anyways?
But as many other threads in here have pointed out, OS/2 is tangled up in IBM/Microsoft patent madness. So it doesn't seem too likely that it will ever be released in its entirety.
Is there maybe a repository of "abandonware" software
There is a more pleasing answer to this question, I can say. There are several abandonware repositories out there on the inter-web. However, I have never seen OS/2 or the like in any of them. Generally, the abandonware sites focus on things like DOS games.
you seem to be saying that the dangers are different and thus not comperable
I'll start by showing the one time that you actually quoted me correctly (even though you misspelled comparable in the process).
However, the more telling moment is this little nugget from you:
Yet you compared them.
Which is a total fabrication. I never did compare them. In my original post, which I'm guessing you still haven't bothered to read, I said that they really can't be compared because the risks are not the same.
Kindly show where I compared the two. We can wait all eternity I guess, since it will take you that long to find a place where I did. Which was really the point that I was making all along - you can't say that one is safer than the other, since the risks are not the same. After that, you started pushing pro-pot propaganda. It's too bad that you are too entrenched in that ideology to realize that I never said the things you accuse me of saying, nor did I ever propose the types of laws that you want to accuse me of proposing.
There's one other gem in your reply that likely deserves some attention as well:
"no less dangerous" when I think you meant "no less dangerous."
What the hell were you trying to say with this? Aren't those two statements identical? But yet you somehow found a way to make them mean completely different things, by trying to read my words to say something other than what they actually say. But I guess that mirrors pretty much everything you've tried to say thus far.
I find your sales strategy interesting, really - we certainly can't call it a "debate strategy" since you've pretty well ignored any rules of orderly discourse that would be followed in a debate. You start by trying to drive a point in my sheer repetition - ie, the way that you kept trying to declare the safety of marijuana. Then, when the fallacies of your statement are made crystal clear, you just drop them altogether - we've see you do this both with your statement about marijuana as well as with your accusations of me being for some reason an anti-semite.
But that's OK too, I guess. Eventually you'll just stop pushing your hatred because of course nobody is really reading this anyways. You're just doing this because you love to hate me. But that's OK, because really your hatred for me only hurts you in the end. And maybe, just maybe, if we really get lucky, you'll realize that all this time, your hatred has been mis-directed and based on nothing at all. At some point you jumped without looking, when you took my statements and twisted them into fuel for your propaganda. You then used that as a vehicle for your hatred, a reason to launch barrages of curse words at me. But really, what did you accomplish? Just because you keep accusing me of lying doesn't make it true. If you read back through posts in this thread, you'll find they have been consistent. All that's changed is your reading of them.
When you suggested that people high on marijuana be banned from being in public.
But they already are. And you can't be drunk in public, either. So I really didn't propose anything, did I? No I didn't. Therefore your statement is null.
"No less dangerous" means as dangerous.
You're stretching the statement to meet your own beliefs. Too bad they don't reflect the reality of what I said. But I won't let that get in your way, as it certainly hasn't up until now.
I'll just mention, yet again, that if you actually read what I wrote, you'll see that I said that the dangers can't really be compared on a "less dangerous" - "more dangerous" spectrum, because the risks are not the same. But if you want to continue down the same pathway of ill logic that you've been on for days now, who am I to stop you?
You are calling for more governmental regulations.
I challenge you to show where I called for anything new, anywhere in this thread. I never did. I simply stated that I support the current laws in the way that they are currently enforced.
your call to ban pot-heads in public
Please, show where I called for anything different than the current laws. We'll keep waiting for you to show that, and we'll all be dead and buried before you do, because I never did. But again, I won't let reality get in your way, since it clearly has no place in your world.
because they offend you.
I had to split this unique comment of yours in half because it was incorrect twice in one sentence. Not once did I say that people who chose to get high offend me. If I was offended by this, wouldn't I call for an outright ban? But I never did, as much as you seem to want to accuse me of doing so. Its OK, though. You've been spouting propaganda, rhetoric, and outright lies for some time now. Far be it from me to try to stop you from that.
I appreciate you taking a civil tone, a refreshing change from the people who have been incessantly cussing at me in this thread. However, I can't accept the results of that study, and I'll tell you why:
It has not been accepted by a peer-reviewed journal. The end of the article says it was presented at a conference. From my own experience in research, I can tell you that preliminary or even sketchy data is acceptable for conference presentation. Conference presentations are rarely if ever peer-reviewed. This article is coming on 2 years old, yet there does not seem to be a published article from the findings. This raises concern about the study.
We don't know the size of the study. They described the groups, but not how many people were in those groups. This makes it impossible to know if they even had a statistically relevant sample of people in the study.
We don't know anything about the marijuana involved in the study. When I earlier referred to "modified" marijuana, I was talking about more than just plant selection or breeding. There are of course some parts of the plant that contain more THC than other parts. And of course some people like to add other things to their marijuana. For this study, which parts were smoked by the people in the survey? How much were they smoking each time? For all we know the heavy smoker was smoking seeds and stems, because it isn't defined how or if the marijuana was compared between the participants.
We don't know anything about the people in the study. This is particularly important if the study size was small. It is known that some people and segments of the population seem to be resistant to cancer, in particular. Tobacco companies love to find the people who smoked 2 packs a day for 60 years and died of a heart attack, because hey, at least they didn't die from lung cancer.
And I suspect that if the people who put together this study didn't address these issues, the study may well have been rejected by a peer-reviewed journal. But I do appreciate you taking the time to at least google the subject for some meaningful data rather than just spouting propaganda. Unfortunately, the pathways of tumorigenesis simply don't support the conclusion of this study. And being as it didn't show up in a journal suggests to me that more work needs to be done.
I think it's fair to say that cannabis is safer than alcohol.
I still don't agree with that statement, because as I said, the risks are different. Some of the risks of marijuana are still not clearly understood. I think it is very much premature to call marijuana "safer" just because of the perceived differential of poisoning risk. I suspect that if you looked at ethanol poisoning during US prohibition, you could come to the same conclusion about the "safety" of alcohol.
One final, disconnected note - not many people here reply to anonymous cowards. Why not sign up for a free account? People will pay more attention to what you say, and you'll be able to more easily track conversations you take part in.
You want to ban something you don't like for no better reason than you don't like it.
Why don't you go ahead and show us where I suggested banning anything. We can wait. Indeed, we'll be waiting a very, very long time. Because I never suggested banning anything at all. But you enjoy trying to stretch my words into things I never said. So go ahead, and after the end of time, you can admit that indeed I didn't propose banning anything.
Since of course you are far too dead certain that your feelings are more important than the truth to such a degree that reality is not important.
You said it was not safer. That means it is either more dangerous or as dangerous. That is a lie.
Maybe you should actually read what I originally said, rather than continuing to subside on purely your own distortion of it. Here's a link to that comment. Good luck ever finding where I said that it was as dangerous or more dangerous. Indeed, what I said was that trying to say that marijuana is safer than alcohol is like saying sky diving is safer than bungee jumping. They each involve different risks.
But again, you are free to distort the reality of my responses into whatever fantasy you want them to mean.
You compared it to alcohol, and so did I. In my comparison, I found all your statements to be lies.
Interesting conclusion coming from someone who can't be bothered to actually read what I write. But OK, moving on...
That you are a Nazi.
I guess I should just be flattered that it took you that long into your reply to insult me for the first time this time around.
You want governmental control over all that offends you.
Again, if you actually read any of my comments, you would find that this statement of yours is nothing short of an outright lie. But I won't try to slow you down with reality, since it clearly has no place here when talking at you.
you are one dim-witted bitter little man
Fascinating assumptions there make up your second insult against me in this post. And being as I am 6'3" in height, I will take the 'little' to be the third insult. Of course I would expect nothing less than at least three insults per post out of you, since you can't actually present defensible, factual data in your arguments.
yet you have the chutzpah to insult my logic
Nice use of Yiddish there. Is that somehow supposed to buttress your absurd assertion of me being a Nazi? Is this supposed to insult me as well somehow? Though frankly, I would say that you're assertion that you are using logic at all is itself an insult to the term.
But it was nice talking at you anyways, even though it was a complete waste of my time. Now we just wait for this thread to eventually grow old enough to be shut down. I guess you should just count yourself lucky that nobody else is reading this to see you throw continuous expletive-laden hissy-fits based on your own faulty assumptions and failure to read the posts that you think you are replying to.
but it really comes down to you wanting to make everything you don't like illegal. Start with the Jews, why don't you?
What on earth do you think you're saying there? How public safety and anti-semitism could be even remotely related is beyond me. If you think that its such a horrible idea to ban being stoned in public, then you must think it is a horrible injustice that one can be arrested for being drunk in public.
Thats all that I'm arguing for. I just want to see the same enforcement for marijuana use as for alcohol use. Which really is the enforcement that we currently have, even if the books say otherwise.
You spout all sorts of lies about how dangerous it is compared to alcohol
Ummm... Not sure how you could consider what I said to be a lie. I said it is not safer than alcohol. I did not say it was more dangerous, or anything of that sort. I simply said it is not reasonable to consider it to be safer, when the risks are not the same between the two. It really isn't an apples-to-apples comparison from which one could logically call one "safer".
But if you want to try to put words in my mouth, well, you might as well just continue doing so. You've been accusing me of all sorts of garbage that I didn't say because you want to read what I write to say something other than that what it actually says. Its your right to read incorrectly, I suppose.
But really, what the hell are you trying to say with your comment about the Jews? Not once did I propose changing any laws. Not once did I express any hatred for any group of people. Meanwhile, I am getting a constant barrage of hatred from you and the other pro-pot propagandist all day long. And you're trying to suggest what from my writings? You're really stretching it now...
you fucking retard
Amazing insult number two, before even bothering to say anything at all. A good start, for sure.
no can overdose on pot
Oh, my bad. You must be the person who clings to the strange statement that no one in history has died from overdosing on pot? Yeah, I'd like to know how one could ever defend a statement like that. How could you ever be certain of the cause of death for all 10,000+ years of mankind? And as I referred to in a different post, research has shown death following marijuana usage in individuals with no previously known ailments or explanations for their deaths. But that's OK, you can continue to believe that smoking it is as safe as drinking milk.
even more stupid.
That makes for insult number three. With still frighteningly little material in the post beyond insults.
cunt.
Hey, I think this insult is new. But still number four. I could also point out that insult generally is considered sexist, and doesn't really make much sense directed at a guy. But logic hasn't applied since you hit reply to my original post, so why bother with it now?
you stupid fuck
Hey, there's insult number five. We're moving right along.
ignoramus
Ooooh, insulting with big words, too. Pretty good for insult number six. I'll take it easy on you and assume that the fly analogy is not directly an insult on its own and just you trying to express creativity.
stupid you are
Insult number sever is more your style, really. Back to only six letter words to express your hatred of me...
In summary, you posted a 210 word post, and insulted me 7 times. I guess that's pretty good, it averages out to 30 words per insult. Of course if the fly and slapped were supposed to be insults as well, then that makes 9 insults in the same number of words, for an average of just over 23 words per insult. So that means either you're getting lazy with your writing, or your hatred has caused you to lose your thesaurus.
But that notwithstanding, you still seem to have endless anger to throw at me to somehow convince me that marijuana is somehow "safer" than alcohol. If you actually read my initial post in this thread, you would see that all I was arguing is that marijuana is not inherently "safer" than alcohol, at least due to the fact that they encompass different risks that cannot be fairly compared between the two choices.
But you are free to continue hurling insults at me if that makes you feel better. You can also take comfort in the fact that there is an excellent likelihood that nobody else is reading this thread this far down to see you throw every curse word you know at me.
If marijuana is inherently unsafe, then what are the medical problems caused by eating marijuana brownies?
You need to examine the entire metabolic pathway of the compounds present in marijuana before you can declare it to be safe. If you think that marijuana use is so inherently safe, then take a look at this peer-reviewed paper:
Acute cardiovascular fatalities following cannabis use. Which comes from a country that is very lenient towards marijuana use, and yet cites over a dozen other papers that have also found deaths immediately attributable to marijuana.
What, you can't even get out of the chute without lying.
I have no idea what you are trying to claim with that statement other than just reiterating your hatred towards me, in case there was any doubt.
What does "safe" have to do with addiction?
Safety and addiction have plenty to do with each other. You're trying to claim that marijuana is completely safe and has no ill effects. Yet people do develop psychological dependencies (addiction) towards it.
yet you continue to fail to address the point you actually tried to make
I would say you continue to not read the point I initially made. I replied to a post that claimed marijuana is much safer than alcohol. I replied by saying that it really isn't any safer than alcohol, rather it has different risks associated with it. You can't say that one activity is "safer" than another when the risks are not the same. Furthermore, you cannot say that marijuana use is completely without risk.
And of course you responded with a statement that you could never back up, claiming that nobody in the history of the world has died from marijuana overdose. That is a statement that even a medical examiner, qualified to actually determine the cause of death for an individual, would be foolish to ever claim. You simply cannot claim to be knowledgeable on the deaths of every human being over the course of 10,000+ years. And beyond that, there is little to no documentation for the cause of death for many of those people.
What medical problem does casual eating of marijuana brownies cause?
This little gem is pretty amazing. Why would someone even do an investigation into marijuana brownies? Where on earth would you get funding to do that? Considering how difficult it would be to control that, it would be virtually impossible to get statistically meaningful data from such an experiment.
However, as more is understood about the metabolic pathways of THC, it can be said that intake of the chemical is not 100% safe in any form. You are always taking a risk when using marijuana. I could care less how many brownies someone wants to eat, as long as they keep their selves at home until they're no longer under the influence.
Let's count the insults that were used against me by the person who seems to feel that marijuana is inherently safe.
spouted ignorance and stupidity.
Thats one, and he hasn't actually said anything yet...
Read it and learn something.
Thats two, and he hasn't actually said anything in response to anything that I originally presented, but OK, we'll keep going...
claim something idiotic like
Hey, there's a fourth insult, the second in this one line!
you have extra chromosomes I guess
Wow, there's number five, and the third on one line. I am clearly dealing with a master-debater here...
You're an idiot
Insult six
I tell you you're an idiot Seven, and still moving right along
you a bigger idiot
That's number eight. Going for a record here?
too fucking moronic
Here's a ninth insult. But we're not done yet, are we?
your lack of wisdom.
I'll count that as lucky number ten.
douchebag
Wow, that's eleven.
Eleven insults in only 193 words. Thats approximately one insult per 17.5 words, really pretty impressive I suppose. Though I would be much more impressed if you actually responded with reason rather than just anger.
You still are clinging to your belief that for some reason marijuana is inherently safe. My original statement was that smoking marijuana can lead to lung cancer, which is still valid. Furthermore I said that it is not inherently safer than alcohol, and I stand by that.
You are also neglecting to consider the modified marijuana on the market. You can't say for sure what the THC content is of every plant, or what it is for the amount that is being consumed.
But ultimately, you are acting as if I want to take away your weed. Which of course tells me that you didn't even bother to read my first post in its entirety, so I'll summarize the end of it for you - I am fine with leaving drug enforcement as it is. The reality of marijuana enforcement right now is that if you are not doing something with it in public, your chances of being arrested for it are essentially zero. And I could really care less how much of it someone wants to use, as long as they just stay in their own private residence while doing so.
read your own words and tell me who you were directing that towards,
First of all, I never said anyone was an addict. Second, if we are to believe your statements about it being so fantastically safe, then we should expect that nobody in the history of the universe was ever a marijuana addict anyways, right? So you're just taking the words and expanding them into places where they weren't intended to go.
ask what the problems are when it is eaten, not smoked
Which is irrelevant when the question comes down to the safety of the product. And how many people eat it rather than smoke it? I know of a lot more people who smoke it than eat it.
No one in the history of the planet has ever died from an overdose of marijuana.
You continue to reiterate this statement that you must know you cannot possibly back up. Are you a medical examiner? I rather doubt it. But even if we suspend reality and pretend that you are, any one examiner performs only a very small portion of autopsies, such that no one person could know for certain the causes of death for even a rather small population, let alone the entire world.
Add to that the fact that most marijuana is grown in third-world countries, where the likelihood of cause of death being determined for anyone is rather slim. How then could you possibly support your feeling that nobody has ever died from marijuana? You can't. You're pushing pro-marijuana propaganda.
And all that I was trying to accomplish with my original post is to debunk the statement that marijuana is so inherently safe. Instead I get replies like yours where people continue to push propaganda, with no means or even efforts to support it.
their livers rotting out from under them.
Take your choice, lung cancer or liver failure. However, there is a significant difference, in the fact that you risk lung cancer every time you inhale foreign substances. On the other hand, the liver is quite capable of handling reasonable amounts of alcohol in the bloodstream - the reason why we have alcohol dehydrogenase in the human proteome.
Furthermore, if you want to say that someone with a marijuana problem is so easy to deal with, try dealing with someone who isn't willing to go a day without getting high. They may not be violent, but they are still a burden to those around them.
where alcohol is safe and marijuana kills tens of thousands every year.
I never said that alcohol was safe. But of course you couldn't bother to read my initial post all the way through. I said that it is factually questionable to say that marijuana is safer than alcohol because they involve different risks (in the same post I mentioned trying to compare sky diving vs bungee jumping).
But don't let actual reality conflict with your made up utopia
Right back at you on your "history" statement that you cannot possibly support. Being as there have been documented deaths directly from smoking tobacco, and plenty of people chose that route for marijuana, it is not possible for you to ever demonstrate that nobody has ever died from marijuana use.
Hell, at this point I'd be surprised if you even were willing to admit that marijuana is less safe than air.
But ultimately, it doesn't matter. You have your opinion that will never be swayed by any amount of reality. You seem to believe that there are no negative consequences from marijuana ever, regardless of the physical realities of the chemical and biological pathways that lead to cancer. Furthermore, nobody other than you and I are likely reading this thread this far - hence I won't even bother wasting my karma bonus to reply to you.
including 240,000 children under 15 years old.
HIV can also spread from the mother to the fetus. Those children under 15 could be a population of children who received the virus from their mother, but have not yet died of the virus.
Although it is possible that some portion of those under-15 children could be sexually active, as well. However, if you scroll further down the same page, you'll see that of the three age groups under 15 (2-4, 5-9, and 10-14), the youngest of the three actually has the highest percent prevalence. This could be indicative of a high rate of transfer of the virus from mother to fetus, with the infected newborn generally living to be around 4 years old.
try playing PacMan, though I was only messing with the controls during the game's demo
And how many of us were older kids at the same time that were constantly annoyed by having to wait for some younger kid to get tired of "playing" the demo so we could put in a hard-earned quarter to actually play the game?
I guess I deserve to use a "get off my lawn" line at this point...
(calling people drug addicts)
There you are putting words in my mouth. Who did I ever say was a drug addict in this context? You are trying to extrapolate things I didn't say from things that I did say, without actually reading what I said in its entirety. But we can continue to play this game, as you seem to enjoy it so...
a lying hypocrite
There's your first insult hurled at me in this response. And its a fairly short response, so maybe you won't be able to reach your minimum of three in this one...
You said that one couldn't take marijuana without risking cancer.
Again, putting words in my mouth. I started by saying that marijuana is not safer than alcohol, and I stand by that statement. I said that anytime you inhale particulate matter you risk cancer. That is not the same statement.
you a liar. Second insult. Not much space yet, but you're well on your way.
being called a liar, well, quit lying. Is it really that hard
Wow, you managed to squeeze in your third insult in this small reply. And yet you have yet to actually respond to what I said before. Its OK, I'll remind you again what I said so you can again not respond to it.
Anytime that you inhale particulate matter, you expose said matter to your living lung tissue. And this exposure puts you at risk for developing cancer. Furthermore, it doesn't matter if you are breathing in the smoke of tobacco, marijuana, or crack, or inhaling asbestos at a construction site, you are still subjecting your lungs to substances that they would not otherwise encounter.
And unless biology, chemistry, and physics are all suspended by the intake of marijuana by-products, you are putting yourself at risk when you smoke marijuana. It is not inherently safe as you claim. If someone wants to chose to expose themselves to it, I could care less. I just don't want to share in their exposure, or the aftereffects thereof.
I was going to actually dissect your continued lack of argument, but its no longer worth the time to remove the insults and try to find the nuggets of information that you want to present.
Clearly, you have convinced yourself that marijuana is the safest thing on the planet. Good for you. If you refuse to even consider the possibility that someone could develop lung cancer by inhaling smoke, the tobacco companies would probably like to offer you a job promoting their products in less-developed countries. If you feel that none of physics, chemistry, or biology apply to marijuana usage, then there's no reason to even continue this discussion.
And being as you seem incapable of responding without insulting me at least 3 times in a single post, it seems we have nothing left to talk about.
Wow, you are an idiot.
Wow, your argument is fascinating. I tell you how marijuana is not safe, and you respond by insulting me. You still seem to feel for some reason that marijuana is the safest thing on the planet, completely ignoring the chemistry and biology of lung cancer and the physics of asphyxiation. But if you believe for some reason that people are immune to both of those while high, then you are free to do so. But I'll have to tell you that those things do indeed happen. Just because you think that they don't happen doesn't make it so.
As I already stated, particulate matter in contact with living tissue (such as lung tissue) has the ability to cause cancerous growth. So unless you have some way to smoke without taking in particulate matter, then you are putting yourself at risk for cancer.
But really, why you need to make this such a personal assault on me I don't understand. I never said I wanted to take away your pot. I just wanted to point out that it isn't as safe as people like you insist on believing it to be. If you read back to my earlier comments, and read them in their entirety (which I would never hold you to do), you will see that the only laws I support against marijuana are the ones that make it a crime to be under the influence in public. I see these as being equivalent to the alcohol laws, where it is against the law to be intoxicated in public.
If you knew anything about the subject, you'd realize why saying this makes you an imbecile.
Wow, how can I even stand a chance at arguing against such well-constructed logic? We all know that of course any time you insult the person you are trying to argue with, you automatically win, right?
Feel free to reply with an actual argument explaining why you feel that marijuana is so inherently safe, if you actually have reason to support your feelings. I have already explained that there is indeed a risk of lung cancer associated with smoking, as well as the chance of asphyxiation. If you somehow believe that physics, chemistry, and biology are all irrelevant to marijuana, I'd love to know why.
So you would have it treated the same as alcohol then? That seems to be what you are saying.
Absolutely. Congratulations, you seem to be the first person to reply to my post after having read it in its entirety. I'd like to mod your post up, but obviously I cannot moderate and discuss in the same thread.
Has a case of a cannabis/THC overdose been recorded in human history?
We cannot be sure that it hasn't happened. You can die from overdosing on just about anything. And if someone did overdose on THC, it could well have been reported as something else to save the family the shame of it getting out to the press. Who would want to be the parents of the first person to die from inhaling too much THC? Hell, we know that kids die from huffing paint fumes and the like, but it rarely if ever is reported as such.
and I'm not talking about a malignant cancer, which is still a stretch
How exactly do you feel this is a stretch? Do you realize the processes that cause cells to metastisize? Have you never seen someone who ended up with skin cancer from too much tanning? Cells can only survive so much abuse and recover to follow the normal cell pathways. Too much abuse one way or another can and does lead to cancerous growth.
legislation of cannabis when an instance has never been recorded
You clearly didn't read my entire post or you wouldn't be asking this question. I never said I wanted to outlaw it outright. If you want to get stoned in your own house, and stay there, I have no problem with that. I have a problem if you chose to chance the well-being of others by venturing out into public while under the influence. Just as people can and will be arrested for drunk in public, I support arresting people who are stoned in public. Similarly, you cannot be arrested for being drunk in your living room (provided you don't break any other laws), and I could care less if you want to be stoned in your living room.
You are an idiot.
Always a strong way to start an argument. Go on...
drank until the long-term effects resulted in his death
So the long-term effects of drinking can kill but the long-term effects of smoking weed cannot? And how do you come to this conclusion? You have completely ignored the biological statements I made before, are you exempt from biology for some reason?
smoking so much that your THC levels become toxic, is impossible
And how do you come to that conclusion? Just because you and your dealer said so, it must be true? Everything has a lethal dose at some level; there was even an article here on slashdot a while back about a woman who died from drinking too much water in too little time. While the water itself wasn't toxic in the classic sense in that case, she did die from taking in too much water for her body to handle.
You most certainly could take in a toxic level of THC. Just because it hasn't made the news with someone reaching that by smoking doesn't make it impossible. Consider also how long it took before auto-erotic asphyxiation was ever reported - a similar level of shame could be associated with THC overdose such that if Johnny smoked too much and expired, his parents could well have withheld it from the press.
We should make everything illegal you don't want to look at.
Wow, thats a fantastic case of selective reading. Have you considered the public safety aspect of letting drug users wander around? All I asked was that if people want to use whatever recreational drug they like, that they stay inside. Which in reality is what the current drug laws come down to. How many people do you know that have ever been arrested for using pot in their own homes, without doing anything else illegal at the same time? Sure there are plenty of fantastic stories about cops breaking down doors while people were smoking pot, but how many of them can be substantiated to really be only about pot? Especially when you have to take the word of a stoned person against the word of the law enforcement personnel?
There may be some negative consequences to marijuana, but you don't have to lie to make it look worse.
You have yet to show any lies from what I said. Really, the burden should be on you. There may be some positive consequences to heavy marijuana use, though you have yet to show any. Instead you use propaganda to try to discount health concerns. Your arguments aren't much different from the tobacco lobby when they were trying to deny the link between cigarettes and cancer back in the 80s. You really should stop to ask who your lobbying is really helping - yourself or the people that are making money off of selling marijuana to you.
Based on the simple fact that you can't smoke yourself to death but that you can drink yourself to death
I'm sorry to tell you, but yes you can smoke yourself to death. You can certainly die of asphyxiation, unless for some reason marijuana makes one so fantastically uber-special that breathing is no longer required.
I will concede that it would likely be difficult to smoke oneself to death (and die by only the smoke and not its long-term effects), but anyone who discards entirely the possibility of smoking oneself to death is just plain wrong. But simple physics tells us that yes you can smoke yourself to death. The combustion of smoking anything will compete with you for oxygen. Likewise, the gases and solids of combustion that you are voluntarily inhaling are competing in your own lungs with oxygen. You are exposing living tissue to foreign substances, which is dangerous any way you look at it.
heat the plant to the point where the THC is released and you don't inhale any particles
So THC is not a particle? What is it then, if it is somehow non-particulate matter? Is THC the dark matter of the universe that we have been looking for? I very strongly doubt that any manner of combustion for recreational use of marijuana is so complete as to provide you with THC and only THC in a complete, pure, and unadulterated form.
no one has died from marijuana poisoning
That all comes down to how one defines "marijuana poisoning". There are plenty of ways to die that come about due to use (and misuse) of marijuana. And as I described earlier, you can certainly die from the overuse of it if you really want to.
Now before you go after me as some anti-pot uber-conservative, let me clarify where I stand on the use of marijuana. Frankly, I could care less what recreational drugs you want to use in your own home. However, when pro-pot lobbyists go about promoting marijuana as being as healthy as milk, I take exception to the lack of factual information behind the argument. The way I see it, if you want to get wasted on your own dollar, in your own home, and can do it without impeding on the public at large, then go for it. But if people want to wander around the streets (on foot or in a vehicle) while under the influence, then they deserve to be thrown in jail and treated like criminals. Keep the drugs and their effects out of the public sight, and I could care less.
Marijuana is also far safer than alcohol.
I take exception to that. Alcohol causes plenty of problems, but lung cancer isn't one of them. Any time you inhale something that is burning incompletely, you inhale all kinds of things that don't belong in your lungs, and risk developing lung cancer as your living tissue tries to deal with the solid (and gaseous) waste that doesn't belong there.
Calling it "far safer" than alcohol is like saying that bungee jumping is far safer than sky diving, or that a vegetarian diet is much more healthy than a mixed diet that includes meat. Each choice has its own risks.
Proposing that the president do a bunch of stuff that he has no power to do (stepping on Congress' toes)
The current administration sets good precedent for being able to do exactly this. Take a look at some of the signing statements and executive orders of the past 2-3 years if you need any proof.
Slashdot Mirror
... allow me to finally have a working multi-desktop interface in windows? I've never seen a solution for multiple desktops in microsoft windows that was anywhere near as nice as the one in KDE.
The one that was supposed to be "very clever" is just a painting with some windows on top of it. It looks like my browser thinks I need another plugin or something, but it doesn't tell me what this would be.
If this is supposed to be clever, I'm missing something, either personally or in my browser. Some of the other ones were pretty decent, I guess...
From what I can tell, its no longer possible to obtain a new copy of OS/2 legally at any price. If I were part of the OS/2 community (though I cannot claim to be), I would have pushed for IBM to release OS/2 at least to make it available.
It appears that IBM doesn't even distribute or sell it in any shape or form. If you look at IBM Software by category you can scroll down to operating systems, where OS/2 is suspiciously absent. Hence it seems that no matter how much money you want to throw at IBM, they won't even sell you a copy of OS/2.
But having seen that IBM doesn't appear to be trying to make money off OS/2 anymore (I seem to recall they ended all OS/2 support some time ago), the OS/2 groups may have suspected that perhaps they could get IBM to release the license. This would sound reasonable to most people - why not just give away something if you no longer want to make money on it anyways?
But as many other threads in here have pointed out, OS/2 is tangled up in IBM/Microsoft patent madness. So it doesn't seem too likely that it will ever be released in its entirety.
Is there maybe a repository of "abandonware" software
There is a more pleasing answer to this question, I can say. There are several abandonware repositories out there on the inter-web. However, I have never seen OS/2 or the like in any of them. Generally, the abandonware sites focus on things like DOS games.
The exploding / burning batteries, or the electric shock?
I think I'll stick to my ThinkPad, thank you much...
I'll start by showing the one time that you actually quoted me correctly (even though you misspelled comparable in the process).
However, the more telling moment is this little nugget from you:
Yet you compared them.
Which is a total fabrication. I never did compare them. In my original post, which I'm guessing you still haven't bothered to read, I said that they really can't be compared because the risks are not the same.
Kindly show where I compared the two. We can wait all eternity I guess, since it will take you that long to find a place where I did. Which was really the point that I was making all along - you can't say that one is safer than the other, since the risks are not the same. After that, you started pushing pro-pot propaganda. It's too bad that you are too entrenched in that ideology to realize that I never said the things you accuse me of saying, nor did I ever propose the types of laws that you want to accuse me of proposing.
There's one other gem in your reply that likely deserves some attention as well:
"no less dangerous" when I think you meant "no less dangerous."
What the hell were you trying to say with this? Aren't those two statements identical? But yet you somehow found a way to make them mean completely different things, by trying to read my words to say something other than what they actually say. But I guess that mirrors pretty much everything you've tried to say thus far.
I find your sales strategy interesting, really - we certainly can't call it a "debate strategy" since you've pretty well ignored any rules of orderly discourse that would be followed in a debate. You start by trying to drive a point in my sheer repetition - ie, the way that you kept trying to declare the safety of marijuana. Then, when the fallacies of your statement are made crystal clear, you just drop them altogether - we've see you do this both with your statement about marijuana as well as with your accusations of me being for some reason an anti-semite.
But that's OK too, I guess. Eventually you'll just stop pushing your hatred because of course nobody is really reading this anyways. You're just doing this because you love to hate me. But that's OK, because really your hatred for me only hurts you in the end. And maybe, just maybe, if we really get lucky, you'll realize that all this time, your hatred has been mis-directed and based on nothing at all. At some point you jumped without looking, when you took my statements and twisted them into fuel for your propaganda. You then used that as a vehicle for your hatred, a reason to launch barrages of curse words at me. But really, what did you accomplish? Just because you keep accusing me of lying doesn't make it true. If you read back through posts in this thread, you'll find they have been consistent. All that's changed is your reading of them.
But they already are. And you can't be drunk in public, either. So I really didn't propose anything, did I? No I didn't. Therefore your statement is null.
"No less dangerous" means as dangerous.
You're stretching the statement to meet your own beliefs. Too bad they don't reflect the reality of what I said. But I won't let that get in your way, as it certainly hasn't up until now.
I'll just mention, yet again, that if you actually read what I wrote, you'll see that I said that the dangers can't really be compared on a "less dangerous" - "more dangerous" spectrum, because the risks are not the same. But if you want to continue down the same pathway of ill logic that you've been on for days now, who am I to stop you?
You are calling for more governmental regulations.
I challenge you to show where I called for anything new, anywhere in this thread. I never did. I simply stated that I support the current laws in the way that they are currently enforced.
your call to ban pot-heads in public
Please, show where I called for anything different than the current laws. We'll keep waiting for you to show that, and we'll all be dead and buried before you do, because I never did. But again, I won't let reality get in your way, since it clearly has no place in your world.
because they offend you.
I had to split this unique comment of yours in half because it was incorrect twice in one sentence. Not once did I say that people who chose to get high offend me. If I was offended by this, wouldn't I call for an outright ban? But I never did, as much as you seem to want to accuse me of doing so. Its OK, though. You've been spouting propaganda, rhetoric, and outright lies for some time now. Far be it from me to try to stop you from that.
And I suspect that if the people who put together this study didn't address these issues, the study may well have been rejected by a peer-reviewed journal. But I do appreciate you taking the time to at least google the subject for some meaningful data rather than just spouting propaganda. Unfortunately, the pathways of tumorigenesis simply don't support the conclusion of this study. And being as it didn't show up in a journal suggests to me that more work needs to be done.
I think it's fair to say that cannabis is safer than alcohol.
I still don't agree with that statement, because as I said, the risks are different. Some of the risks of marijuana are still not clearly understood. I think it is very much premature to call marijuana "safer" just because of the perceived differential of poisoning risk. I suspect that if you looked at ethanol poisoning during US prohibition, you could come to the same conclusion about the "safety" of alcohol.
One final, disconnected note - not many people here reply to anonymous cowards. Why not sign up for a free account? People will pay more attention to what you say, and you'll be able to more easily track conversations you take part in.
Why don't you go ahead and show us where I suggested banning anything. We can wait. Indeed, we'll be waiting a very, very long time. Because I never suggested banning anything at all. But you enjoy trying to stretch my words into things I never said. So go ahead, and after the end of time, you can admit that indeed I didn't propose banning anything.
Since of course you are far too dead certain that your feelings are more important than the truth to such a degree that reality is not important.
You said it was not safer. That means it is either more dangerous or as dangerous. That is a lie.
Maybe you should actually read what I originally said, rather than continuing to subside on purely your own distortion of it. Here's a link to that comment. Good luck ever finding where I said that it was as dangerous or more dangerous. Indeed, what I said was that trying to say that marijuana is safer than alcohol is like saying sky diving is safer than bungee jumping. They each involve different risks.
But again, you are free to distort the reality of my responses into whatever fantasy you want them to mean.
You compared it to alcohol, and so did I. In my comparison, I found all your statements to be lies.
Interesting conclusion coming from someone who can't be bothered to actually read what I write. But OK, moving on...
That you are a Nazi.
I guess I should just be flattered that it took you that long into your reply to insult me for the first time this time around.
You want governmental control over all that offends you.
Again, if you actually read any of my comments, you would find that this statement of yours is nothing short of an outright lie. But I won't try to slow you down with reality, since it clearly has no place here when talking at you.
you are one dim-witted bitter little man
Fascinating assumptions there make up your second insult against me in this post. And being as I am 6'3" in height, I will take the 'little' to be the third insult. Of course I would expect nothing less than at least three insults per post out of you, since you can't actually present defensible, factual data in your arguments.
yet you have the chutzpah to insult my logic
Nice use of Yiddish there. Is that somehow supposed to buttress your absurd assertion of me being a Nazi? Is this supposed to insult me as well somehow? Though frankly, I would say that you're assertion that you are using logic at all is itself an insult to the term.
But it was nice talking at you anyways, even though it was a complete waste of my time. Now we just wait for this thread to eventually grow old enough to be shut down. I guess you should just count yourself lucky that nobody else is reading this to see you throw continuous expletive-laden hissy-fits based on your own faulty assumptions and failure to read the posts that you think you are replying to.
Have a nice day.
What on earth do you think you're saying there? How public safety and anti-semitism could be even remotely related is beyond me. If you think that its such a horrible idea to ban being stoned in public, then you must think it is a horrible injustice that one can be arrested for being drunk in public.
Thats all that I'm arguing for. I just want to see the same enforcement for marijuana use as for alcohol use. Which really is the enforcement that we currently have, even if the books say otherwise.
You spout all sorts of lies about how dangerous it is compared to alcohol
Ummm... Not sure how you could consider what I said to be a lie. I said it is not safer than alcohol. I did not say it was more dangerous, or anything of that sort. I simply said it is not reasonable to consider it to be safer, when the risks are not the same between the two. It really isn't an apples-to-apples comparison from which one could logically call one "safer".
But if you want to try to put words in my mouth, well, you might as well just continue doing so. You've been accusing me of all sorts of garbage that I didn't say because you want to read what I write to say something other than that what it actually says. Its your right to read incorrectly, I suppose.
But really, what the hell are you trying to say with your comment about the Jews? Not once did I propose changing any laws. Not once did I express any hatred for any group of people. Meanwhile, I am getting a constant barrage of hatred from you and the other pro-pot propagandist all day long. And you're trying to suggest what from my writings? You're really stretching it now...
you fucking retard
Amazing insult number two, before even bothering to say anything at all. A good start, for sure.
no can overdose on pot
Oh, my bad. You must be the person who clings to the strange statement that no one in history has died from overdosing on pot? Yeah, I'd like to know how one could ever defend a statement like that. How could you ever be certain of the cause of death for all 10,000+ years of mankind? And as I referred to in a different post, research has shown death following marijuana usage in individuals with no previously known ailments or explanations for their deaths. But that's OK, you can continue to believe that smoking it is as safe as drinking milk.
even more stupid.
That makes for insult number three. With still frighteningly little material in the post beyond insults.
cunt.
Hey, I think this insult is new. But still number four. I could also point out that insult generally is considered sexist, and doesn't really make much sense directed at a guy. But logic hasn't applied since you hit reply to my original post, so why bother with it now?
you stupid fuck
Hey, there's insult number five. We're moving right along.
ignoramus
Ooooh, insulting with big words, too. Pretty good for insult number six. I'll take it easy on you and assume that the fly analogy is not directly an insult on its own and just you trying to express creativity.
stupid you are
Insult number sever is more your style, really. Back to only six letter words to express your hatred of me...
In summary, you posted a 210 word post, and insulted me 7 times. I guess that's pretty good, it averages out to 30 words per insult. Of course if the fly and slapped were supposed to be insults as well, then that makes 9 insults in the same number of words, for an average of just over 23 words per insult. So that means either you're getting lazy with your writing, or your hatred has caused you to lose your thesaurus.
But that notwithstanding, you still seem to have endless anger to throw at me to somehow convince me that marijuana is somehow "safer" than alcohol. If you actually read my initial post in this thread, you would see that all I was arguing is that marijuana is not inherently "safer" than alcohol, at least due to the fact that they encompass different risks that cannot be fairly compared between the two choices.
But you are free to continue hurling insults at me if that makes you feel better. You can also take comfort in the fact that there is an excellent likelihood that nobody else is reading this thread this far down to see you throw every curse word you know at me.
You need to examine the entire metabolic pathway of the compounds present in marijuana before you can declare it to be safe. If you think that marijuana use is so inherently safe, then take a look at this peer-reviewed paper: Acute cardiovascular fatalities following cannabis use. Which comes from a country that is very lenient towards marijuana use, and yet cites over a dozen other papers that have also found deaths immediately attributable to marijuana.
What, you can't even get out of the chute without lying.
I have no idea what you are trying to claim with that statement other than just reiterating your hatred towards me, in case there was any doubt.
What does "safe" have to do with addiction?
Safety and addiction have plenty to do with each other. You're trying to claim that marijuana is completely safe and has no ill effects. Yet people do develop psychological dependencies (addiction) towards it.
yet you continue to fail to address the point you actually tried to make
I would say you continue to not read the point I initially made. I replied to a post that claimed marijuana is much safer than alcohol. I replied by saying that it really isn't any safer than alcohol, rather it has different risks associated with it. You can't say that one activity is "safer" than another when the risks are not the same. Furthermore, you cannot say that marijuana use is completely without risk.
And of course you responded with a statement that you could never back up, claiming that nobody in the history of the world has died from marijuana overdose. That is a statement that even a medical examiner, qualified to actually determine the cause of death for an individual, would be foolish to ever claim. You simply cannot claim to be knowledgeable on the deaths of every human being over the course of 10,000+ years. And beyond that, there is little to no documentation for the cause of death for many of those people.
What medical problem does casual eating of marijuana brownies cause?
This little gem is pretty amazing. Why would someone even do an investigation into marijuana brownies? Where on earth would you get funding to do that? Considering how difficult it would be to control that, it would be virtually impossible to get statistically meaningful data from such an experiment.
However, as more is understood about the metabolic pathways of THC, it can be said that intake of the chemical is not 100% safe in any form. You are always taking a risk when using marijuana. I could care less how many brownies someone wants to eat, as long as they keep their selves at home until they're no longer under the influence.
spouted ignorance and stupidity.
Thats one, and he hasn't actually said anything yet...
Read it and learn something.
Thats two, and he hasn't actually said anything in response to anything that I originally presented, but OK, we'll keep going...
stupid fucking argument
Hey, thats three, we're really moving here!
claim something idiotic like
Hey, there's a fourth insult, the second in this one line!
you have extra chromosomes I guess
Wow, there's number five, and the third on one line. I am clearly dealing with a master-debater here...
You're an idiot
Insult six
I tell you you're an idiot
Seven, and still moving right along
you a bigger idiot
That's number eight. Going for a record here?
too fucking moronic
Here's a ninth insult. But we're not done yet, are we?
your lack of wisdom.
I'll count that as lucky number ten.
douchebag
Wow, that's eleven.
Eleven insults in only 193 words. Thats approximately one insult per 17.5 words, really pretty impressive I suppose. Though I would be much more impressed if you actually responded with reason rather than just anger.
You still are clinging to your belief that for some reason marijuana is inherently safe. My original statement was that smoking marijuana can lead to lung cancer, which is still valid. Furthermore I said that it is not inherently safer than alcohol, and I stand by that.
You are also neglecting to consider the modified marijuana on the market. You can't say for sure what the THC content is of every plant, or what it is for the amount that is being consumed.
But ultimately, you are acting as if I want to take away your weed. Which of course tells me that you didn't even bother to read my first post in its entirety, so I'll summarize the end of it for you - I am fine with leaving drug enforcement as it is. The reality of marijuana enforcement right now is that if you are not doing something with it in public, your chances of being arrested for it are essentially zero. And I could really care less how much of it someone wants to use, as long as they just stay in their own private residence while doing so.
First of all, I never said anyone was an addict. Second, if we are to believe your statements about it being so fantastically safe, then we should expect that nobody in the history of the universe was ever a marijuana addict anyways, right? So you're just taking the words and expanding them into places where they weren't intended to go.
ask what the problems are when it is eaten, not smoked
Which is irrelevant when the question comes down to the safety of the product. And how many people eat it rather than smoke it? I know of a lot more people who smoke it than eat it.
No one in the history of the planet has ever died from an overdose of marijuana.
You continue to reiterate this statement that you must know you cannot possibly back up. Are you a medical examiner? I rather doubt it. But even if we suspend reality and pretend that you are, any one examiner performs only a very small portion of autopsies, such that no one person could know for certain the causes of death for even a rather small population, let alone the entire world.
Add to that the fact that most marijuana is grown in third-world countries, where the likelihood of cause of death being determined for anyone is rather slim. How then could you possibly support your feeling that nobody has ever died from marijuana? You can't. You're pushing pro-marijuana propaganda.
And all that I was trying to accomplish with my original post is to debunk the statement that marijuana is so inherently safe. Instead I get replies like yours where people continue to push propaganda, with no means or even efforts to support it.
their livers rotting out from under them.
Take your choice, lung cancer or liver failure. However, there is a significant difference, in the fact that you risk lung cancer every time you inhale foreign substances. On the other hand, the liver is quite capable of handling reasonable amounts of alcohol in the bloodstream - the reason why we have alcohol dehydrogenase in the human proteome.
Furthermore, if you want to say that someone with a marijuana problem is so easy to deal with, try dealing with someone who isn't willing to go a day without getting high. They may not be violent, but they are still a burden to those around them.
where alcohol is safe and marijuana kills tens of thousands every year.
I never said that alcohol was safe. But of course you couldn't bother to read my initial post all the way through. I said that it is factually questionable to say that marijuana is safer than alcohol because they involve different risks (in the same post I mentioned trying to compare sky diving vs bungee jumping).
But don't let actual reality conflict with your made up utopia
Right back at you on your "history" statement that you cannot possibly support. Being as there have been documented deaths directly from smoking tobacco, and plenty of people chose that route for marijuana, it is not possible for you to ever demonstrate that nobody has ever died from marijuana use.
Hell, at this point I'd be surprised if you even were willing to admit that marijuana is less safe than air.
But ultimately, it doesn't matter. You have your opinion that will never be swayed by any amount of reality. You seem to believe that there are no negative consequences from marijuana ever, regardless of the physical realities of the chemical and biological pathways that lead to cancer. Furthermore, nobody other than you and I are likely reading this thread this far - hence I won't even bother wasting my karma bonus to reply to you.
HIV can also spread from the mother to the fetus. Those children under 15 could be a population of children who received the virus from their mother, but have not yet died of the virus.
Although it is possible that some portion of those under-15 children could be sexually active, as well. However, if you scroll further down the same page, you'll see that of the three age groups under 15 (2-4, 5-9, and 10-14), the youngest of the three actually has the highest percent prevalence. This could be indicative of a high rate of transfer of the virus from mother to fetus, with the infected newborn generally living to be around 4 years old.
And how many of us were older kids at the same time that were constantly annoyed by having to wait for some younger kid to get tired of "playing" the demo so we could put in a hard-earned quarter to actually play the game?
I guess I deserve to use a "get off my lawn" line at this point...
There you are putting words in my mouth. Who did I ever say was a drug addict in this context? You are trying to extrapolate things I didn't say from things that I did say, without actually reading what I said in its entirety. But we can continue to play this game, as you seem to enjoy it so...
a lying hypocrite
There's your first insult hurled at me in this response. And its a fairly short response, so maybe you won't be able to reach your minimum of three in this one...
You said that one couldn't take marijuana without risking cancer.
Again, putting words in my mouth. I started by saying that marijuana is not safer than alcohol, and I stand by that statement. I said that anytime you inhale particulate matter you risk cancer. That is not the same statement.
you a liar.
Second insult. Not much space yet, but you're well on your way.
being called a liar, well, quit lying. Is it really that hard
Wow, you managed to squeeze in your third insult in this small reply. And yet you have yet to actually respond to what I said before. Its OK, I'll remind you again what I said so you can again not respond to it.
Anytime that you inhale particulate matter, you expose said matter to your living lung tissue. And this exposure puts you at risk for developing cancer. Furthermore, it doesn't matter if you are breathing in the smoke of tobacco, marijuana, or crack, or inhaling asbestos at a construction site, you are still subjecting your lungs to substances that they would not otherwise encounter.
And unless biology, chemistry, and physics are all suspended by the intake of marijuana by-products, you are putting yourself at risk when you smoke marijuana. It is not inherently safe as you claim. If someone wants to chose to expose themselves to it, I could care less. I just don't want to share in their exposure, or the aftereffects thereof.
I was going to actually dissect your continued lack of argument, but its no longer worth the time to remove the insults and try to find the nuggets of information that you want to present.
Clearly, you have convinced yourself that marijuana is the safest thing on the planet. Good for you. If you refuse to even consider the possibility that someone could develop lung cancer by inhaling smoke, the tobacco companies would probably like to offer you a job promoting their products in less-developed countries. If you feel that none of physics, chemistry, or biology apply to marijuana usage, then there's no reason to even continue this discussion.
And being as you seem incapable of responding without insulting me at least 3 times in a single post, it seems we have nothing left to talk about.
Wow, your argument is fascinating. I tell you how marijuana is not safe, and you respond by insulting me. You still seem to feel for some reason that marijuana is the safest thing on the planet, completely ignoring the chemistry and biology of lung cancer and the physics of asphyxiation. But if you believe for some reason that people are immune to both of those while high, then you are free to do so. But I'll have to tell you that those things do indeed happen. Just because you think that they don't happen doesn't make it so.
As I already stated, particulate matter in contact with living tissue (such as lung tissue) has the ability to cause cancerous growth. So unless you have some way to smoke without taking in particulate matter, then you are putting yourself at risk for cancer.
But really, why you need to make this such a personal assault on me I don't understand. I never said I wanted to take away your pot. I just wanted to point out that it isn't as safe as people like you insist on believing it to be. If you read back to my earlier comments, and read them in their entirety (which I would never hold you to do), you will see that the only laws I support against marijuana are the ones that make it a crime to be under the influence in public. I see these as being equivalent to the alcohol laws, where it is against the law to be intoxicated in public.
Wow, how can I even stand a chance at arguing against such well-constructed logic? We all know that of course any time you insult the person you are trying to argue with, you automatically win, right?
Feel free to reply with an actual argument explaining why you feel that marijuana is so inherently safe, if you actually have reason to support your feelings. I have already explained that there is indeed a risk of lung cancer associated with smoking, as well as the chance of asphyxiation. If you somehow believe that physics, chemistry, and biology are all irrelevant to marijuana, I'd love to know why.
Absolutely. Congratulations, you seem to be the first person to reply to my post after having read it in its entirety. I'd like to mod your post up, but obviously I cannot moderate and discuss in the same thread.
We cannot be sure that it hasn't happened. You can die from overdosing on just about anything. And if someone did overdose on THC, it could well have been reported as something else to save the family the shame of it getting out to the press. Who would want to be the parents of the first person to die from inhaling too much THC? Hell, we know that kids die from huffing paint fumes and the like, but it rarely if ever is reported as such.
and I'm not talking about a malignant cancer, which is still a stretch
How exactly do you feel this is a stretch? Do you realize the processes that cause cells to metastisize? Have you never seen someone who ended up with skin cancer from too much tanning? Cells can only survive so much abuse and recover to follow the normal cell pathways. Too much abuse one way or another can and does lead to cancerous growth.
legislation of cannabis when an instance has never been recorded
You clearly didn't read my entire post or you wouldn't be asking this question. I never said I wanted to outlaw it outright. If you want to get stoned in your own house, and stay there, I have no problem with that. I have a problem if you chose to chance the well-being of others by venturing out into public while under the influence. Just as people can and will be arrested for drunk in public, I support arresting people who are stoned in public. Similarly, you cannot be arrested for being drunk in your living room (provided you don't break any other laws), and I could care less if you want to be stoned in your living room.
Always a strong way to start an argument. Go on...
drank until the long-term effects resulted in his death
So the long-term effects of drinking can kill but the long-term effects of smoking weed cannot? And how do you come to this conclusion? You have completely ignored the biological statements I made before, are you exempt from biology for some reason?
smoking so much that your THC levels become toxic, is impossible
And how do you come to that conclusion? Just because you and your dealer said so, it must be true? Everything has a lethal dose at some level; there was even an article here on slashdot a while back about a woman who died from drinking too much water in too little time. While the water itself wasn't toxic in the classic sense in that case, she did die from taking in too much water for her body to handle.
You most certainly could take in a toxic level of THC. Just because it hasn't made the news with someone reaching that by smoking doesn't make it impossible. Consider also how long it took before auto-erotic asphyxiation was ever reported - a similar level of shame could be associated with THC overdose such that if Johnny smoked too much and expired, his parents could well have withheld it from the press.
We should make everything illegal you don't want to look at.
Wow, thats a fantastic case of selective reading. Have you considered the public safety aspect of letting drug users wander around? All I asked was that if people want to use whatever recreational drug they like, that they stay inside. Which in reality is what the current drug laws come down to. How many people do you know that have ever been arrested for using pot in their own homes, without doing anything else illegal at the same time? Sure there are plenty of fantastic stories about cops breaking down doors while people were smoking pot, but how many of them can be substantiated to really be only about pot? Especially when you have to take the word of a stoned person against the word of the law enforcement personnel?
There may be some negative consequences to marijuana, but you don't have to lie to make it look worse.
You have yet to show any lies from what I said. Really, the burden should be on you. There may be some positive consequences to heavy marijuana use, though you have yet to show any. Instead you use propaganda to try to discount health concerns. Your arguments aren't much different from the tobacco lobby when they were trying to deny the link between cigarettes and cancer back in the 80s. You really should stop to ask who your lobbying is really helping - yourself or the people that are making money off of selling marijuana to you.
I'm sorry to tell you, but yes you can smoke yourself to death. You can certainly die of asphyxiation, unless for some reason marijuana makes one so fantastically uber-special that breathing is no longer required.
I will concede that it would likely be difficult to smoke oneself to death (and die by only the smoke and not its long-term effects), but anyone who discards entirely the possibility of smoking oneself to death is just plain wrong. But simple physics tells us that yes you can smoke yourself to death. The combustion of smoking anything will compete with you for oxygen. Likewise, the gases and solids of combustion that you are voluntarily inhaling are competing in your own lungs with oxygen. You are exposing living tissue to foreign substances, which is dangerous any way you look at it.
heat the plant to the point where the THC is released and you don't inhale any particles
So THC is not a particle? What is it then, if it is somehow non-particulate matter? Is THC the dark matter of the universe that we have been looking for? I very strongly doubt that any manner of combustion for recreational use of marijuana is so complete as to provide you with THC and only THC in a complete, pure, and unadulterated form.
no one has died from marijuana poisoning
That all comes down to how one defines "marijuana poisoning". There are plenty of ways to die that come about due to use (and misuse) of marijuana. And as I described earlier, you can certainly die from the overuse of it if you really want to.
Now before you go after me as some anti-pot uber-conservative, let me clarify where I stand on the use of marijuana. Frankly, I could care less what recreational drugs you want to use in your own home. However, when pro-pot lobbyists go about promoting marijuana as being as healthy as milk, I take exception to the lack of factual information behind the argument. The way I see it, if you want to get wasted on your own dollar, in your own home, and can do it without impeding on the public at large, then go for it. But if people want to wander around the streets (on foot or in a vehicle) while under the influence, then they deserve to be thrown in jail and treated like criminals. Keep the drugs and their effects out of the public sight, and I could care less.
I take exception to that. Alcohol causes plenty of problems, but lung cancer isn't one of them. Any time you inhale something that is burning incompletely, you inhale all kinds of things that don't belong in your lungs, and risk developing lung cancer as your living tissue tries to deal with the solid (and gaseous) waste that doesn't belong there.
Calling it "far safer" than alcohol is like saying that bungee jumping is far safer than sky diving, or that a vegetarian diet is much more healthy than a mixed diet that includes meat. Each choice has its own risks.
The current administration sets good precedent for being able to do exactly this. Take a look at some of the signing statements and executive orders of the past 2-3 years if you need any proof.