question about pot

[The_Professor]

Well, let's see. We have spent decades and literally billions fighting the smoking epidemic, cigarette smoking that is. And now, you want to encourage smoking yet again, except with a different substance? I would guess, and it is only a guess, that if this were to be made legal, cigarette smoking would increase as well.

Plus, any substance that alters your judgment and not for the better, needs to be treated with kid gloves.

The smoking epidemic? Uh, anyway, I did not say I wanted to encourage anything. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that you're correct and making marijuana legal would result in more cigarette smoking. So what? It is not as if anyone goes into smoking without knowledge that it can be bad for one's health.

Just for the record, I've never used marijuana. However, outside of the government drug war propaganda, I have not heard much in the way of reports that marijuana is necessarily detrimental to one's judgment. So what makes you think marijuana alters one's judgment for the worse?

hehe..I have and so I have see nthe effects. UP, spoken like a true Libertarian. :-)

I understand your argument that, if you know that smoking too much can cause lung cancer and yet you still do it, thern you deserve what you get. I concur, to a point. However, if smoking a joint or driving a car under the influence of too much booze causes someone else harm, then that is where I would draw the line.

[The_Professor]

which is worst ?
alcohol or pot?

In terms of impaired judgement under the influense
I really have no idea

Does it matter? If you want to drink yourself silly or smoke several joints in the middle of the woods, so be it. If you do it and it negatively impacts anyoine else, WHOA!

[MissusDe]

Domer---
One of my sons told me about an episode of South Park (I think).   One of the  characters is urging the people who attended Woodstock to actually DO something.

Slowly I turned....and let him hear what I remembered about the years previous to that. 
Russians are going to bomb us
Nukes in Cuba
Space race, accellerated math
JFK assassination
Touring bomb shelters with my Brownie troop
Duck and cover drills
Civil rights marches, demonstrations, little kids getting sprayed by huge fire hoses and hurt
RFK assassination, MLK assassination
Churches bombed, Freedom Riders killed
RIots, riots
Peace marches/SNCC/ Weathermen/ etc
Friends getting drafted

I told him that a 3 day party in the mud listening to music was not a whole lot after all that.

......We didn't start the fire.....

[Lanya]

Sorry, I don't get it.

[MissusDe]

I was reminded of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire".  Here's a site where you can listen to the song along with a flash presentation that illustrates the entire song - you can click on the images and find out more about them. 

Under 'View This Title' choose either View in this window or View in new window.

http://www.ugoplayer.com/music/fire.html

[Lanya]

Now that I hear it, it's  kind of familiar, but I'd never heard the words before, I guess.  Thanks.

[Universe Prince]

UP, spoken like a true Libertarian.

Representin'!

I understand your argument that, if you know that smoking too much can cause lung cancer and yet you still do it, thern you deserve what you get. I concur, to a point. However, if smoking a joint or driving a car under the influence of too much booze causes someone else harm, then that is where I would draw the line.

Okay. We have laws against drunk driving, but we repealed Prohibition years ago. Why do we need a prohibition against marijuana?

[Xavier_Onassis]

I would guess, and it is only a guess, that if this were to be made legal, cigarette smoking would increase as well.

Plus, any substance that alters your judgment and not for the better, needs to be treated with kid gloves.
 
 
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I don't think that legalizing pot would in any way cause anyone to smoke more tobacco.

Nicotine gives a very mild high, and usually only with the first several puffs of the day. It also causes craving for more and more nicotine. The tar in the smoke builds up in the lungs and will often cause cancer and will always cause emphizema and bronchitis.

With marijuana, one reaches a stage of high that does not call for any more marijuana. Either you are high, or you are not. And breathing the smoke is intensely irritating and causes fits of coughing and wheezing, which is a good reason not to smoke anymore than the absolutely necessary.

Alcohol is a depressant, and causes malfunction of motor skills. The more one drinks, the more malfunctions it causes. You could say that the good thing about alcohol is that eventually, a prospective drunken driver will not be able to find the key, the keyholke, or possibly the car.

Marijuana causes changes in perception. Time and space are distorted. Sounds and light are distorted, particularly in the peripheral areas. One hears sounds that are not there, occasionally.

No one should drive while either drunk or high, (or under the influence of anything, including a cellphone) but the high driver can, with effort, concentrate and not run into things. The extremely drunken driver finds this a lot more difficult and could also pass out, or be overtaken by the desire to barf.

Marijuana use should be controlled and restricted. But the main reason people have problems with using it is being busted, failing drugs tests and the like. It is much easier to detect in tests, and by the smell than most other, nastier substances, such as opiates, cocaine, meth and Rx drugs.

Acute observer that I am, my views on marijuana were the result of watching people in the 1960's, and not in the US.

I think it should be decriminalized. People should be able to grow their own, and use it recreationally the way many people use beer.

The few lives that might be lost by abuse of pot could easily be made up for by banning casinos, which do far more damage to people than pot, if one wished to do this.

Perhaps the Indians could replace their casinos with marijuana clubs.

[Plane]

  I am trying to imagine Sir Walter Raleigh bringing something other than tobacco back to England.


   If he had discovered Marijuanna and made it a fad all over Europe early in the Colonial era would history hve been the same ?

   Or would Europe have gotten the munchies and conquered even more?