Pollen won't get you high, unless your 'pollen' is a pseudonym for buds... unless you actually meant pollen?
Legalizing marijuana
- Thread starter Awake
- Start date
Growing pot is big business, a business run by organized crime. If you buy pot from a source who is involved in organized crime, which is very likely, then YOU are personally responsible for the ongoing problems related to organized crime. These problems have resulted in higher property taxes in order to increase police services, lower property values due to grow-ups in our neighborhoods, gang related violence, etc.
I'm sure there are some of you who have no jobs, do not own property, are reclusive because you can't stand society and sit around smoking pot all day typing on forums. The only thing you produce is more crime. YOU are the crux of the problem.
Roll that up and smoke it.
I'm sure there are some of you who have no jobs, do not own property, are reclusive because you can't stand society and sit around smoking pot all day typing on forums. The only thing you produce is more crime. YOU are the crux of the problem.
Roll that up and smoke it.
It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Remember that at all times.
-Bill Hicks
-Bill Hicks
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Re-normalizing America's drug preferences away from the more dangerous drugs now in vogue and back towards marijuana, which by comparison is rather benign, would obviously have no net negative first-order effects.
After all, most of you know from personal experience that as psychoactive substances go, it's about as addictive and crazy-making as caffeine. Certainly far less so than alcohol. Potheads do indeed go to work and school, raise their families, and maintain their homes and gardens. They don't usually get high in the morning, and they drive no more dangerously than the average finger-thrusting, horn-blowing, tailgating, white-knuckled Starbucks junkie on his way to work.
It's the second-order effects that have corporate America scared. People who smoke grass like to eat and listen to music. They enjoy watching sunsets, walking through the forest, playing with their pets, sitting around talking. They are not into conspicuous consumption. Aside from life's necessities, they spend their money on snack food, CDs, an occasional concert ticket... and that's about it. They can't imagine why anybody thinks they need six different pairs of designer sneakers.
Get America back into grass, and away from meth, crack, and whatever else is going around because it's cheaper than grass, easier to conceal than grass, and doesn't show up in a drug test two weeks later like grass, and the malls will be out of business.
That, boys and girls, is why Corporate America and its servant, the Government, will never legalize marijuana.
After all, most of you know from personal experience that as psychoactive substances go, it's about as addictive and crazy-making as caffeine. Certainly far less so than alcohol. Potheads do indeed go to work and school, raise their families, and maintain their homes and gardens. They don't usually get high in the morning, and they drive no more dangerously than the average finger-thrusting, horn-blowing, tailgating, white-knuckled Starbucks junkie on his way to work.
It's the second-order effects that have corporate America scared. People who smoke grass like to eat and listen to music. They enjoy watching sunsets, walking through the forest, playing with their pets, sitting around talking. They are not into conspicuous consumption. Aside from life's necessities, they spend their money on snack food, CDs, an occasional concert ticket... and that's about it. They can't imagine why anybody thinks they need six different pairs of designer sneakers.
Get America back into grass, and away from meth, crack, and whatever else is going around because it's cheaper than grass, easier to conceal than grass, and doesn't show up in a drug test two weeks later like grass, and the malls will be out of business.
That, boys and girls, is why Corporate America and its servant, the Government, will never legalize marijuana.
What's the point of legalising it when there's so much of it already? May as well leave it as it is. Of course this depends on whether you were referring to the proposition of making it a legal drug carefully prescibed to patients, or legal for everyone. Because either way there's alternatives to the first, and its not necessary for the second. Anyway, GO CRACK ANY DAY!
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
In this country (USA) the drugs laws are used to persecute minorities. White people can usually get away with smoking marijuana. (My friend Zeke told me this, I wouldn't know.) But African-Americans and Mexican-Americans are routinely arrested for it. Often it is just harrassment, the cops let them go after making them late to wherever they're going, talking trash to them, and confiscating the marijuana. But many times they are prosecuted. There are lots of African- and Mexican-Americans in prison for marijuana offenses but very few white people. In fact something like one in three black American men have prison records, overwhelmingly because of drug convictions, which makes it impossible for them to get good jobs, support their families, and become role models for their communities. Convicted felons lose their right to vote, so they don't even have a voice in trying to change the system.rainbow__princess_4 said:
Don't try it in this country. The laws against crack cocaine are much stricter than the laws against powder cocaine. Interesting coincidence, here it is mostly white folks who inhale powder, and mostly black folks who smoke crack. Once again, our prisons are full of African-Americans who were busted for using crack, but when cops break up a party in a white neighborhood and find powder cocaine, they just flush it down the toilet and give the people a big lecture.
Even if the laws were not enforced discriminatorially, they eat away at our society. Any commodity with a high demand that is forced into the black market becomes a high-profit business with a high risk, just exactly the sort that invariably winds up under the control of organized crime.
So it's Prohibition all over again complete with the machine guns. Children are recruited as runners because they know the cops will be more lenient on them. Drug dealers driving around in expensive cars wearing gold chains become more attractive role models to children than honest working folk. Police, prosecutors, and government officials at all levels are corrupted by the temptation to accept drug money as bribes. Druglords shoot each other over turf, which maybe isn't a problem in itself, but a lot of innocent people get caught in the crossfire or simply caught up in the business out of economic desperation and then become victims of the violence. Cops would rather go after drug users, who are not usually armed, than try to catch the real bad guys like murderers, who usually are. Prisons are overcrowded with non-violent drug offenders, while rapists get light sentences or probation to make room for them. Kids grow up to learn that their parents, teachers, and the entire "establishment" were lying to them about drugs, and quite naturally wonder if they were telling the truth about anything.
The laws are the same for latinos or blacks living in America as they are for whites, chinese and other people. So if you live in a state that has less penalties for pot smoking , no matter who you are, you will be given the same treatment. Most states today make pot smoking a misdemenor crime which is punishable with a fine for the first time offenders if the amount of pot is under an ounce. The laws change when your found the second time and then change once more on the third offence. Those with HIGHER amounts ,over 1 ounce, usually get a much heavier sentence on the first offence so if a black man was caught with 5 ounces (and most white people were caught with only 1 ounce) they would be getting a heavier punishment because of the amounts not their ethnic background. That is where the difference lies. That goes for other types of drugs as well.
Several points to address here.
In any case, this is one of the best arguments for legalizing all drugs. What we have now is akin to prohibition, and is having similiar consequences.
A lot of people, even those who favor legalizing drugs, dont' realize how important an issue this is. After all, drugs are freely available, and its relatively easy not to get caught. The truth is, this is an extremely important issue which effects everyone. Huge amounts of money are spent fighting a "War on drugs" whose impact on the world is almost exclusively negative. This war ranges From dropping poison on impoverished peasants growing the only crops that will make them money to smashing into houses and breaking up families because someone was smoking a joint to ease their glaucoma. Prisons are filled to overcrowding with people who are there for having committed a crime that did no harm whatsover, while rapists and murders are cleared out to make room.
And those atrocities you see on the "don't smoke pot or you're a terrorist commercials"? They're not associated with pot for the most part, but they are with cocaine and heroin, the users of which, are often addicted and unlikely to stop because they saw a commercial. The fact is, those atrocities are occuring, in part, because of the commercials themselves, and the campaign that created them, whose message is akin to saying "stop al capone, support prohibition" The war on drugs is substantially more likely to hurt the average American than, for example, international terrorism(and for that matter, the war on drugs helps fund international terrorism)
Ending the war on drugs would put a stop to these problems, free up a huge amount of money for social programs, fighting crimes that actually hurt people, etc.(or if you're a consevative, just think of the massive tax breaks you could fund with that money)
It need not lead to chaos, reasonable restrictions could be encacted. People could certainly wbe prohibited from taking certain drugs in public, or giving them to minors, etc. In addition, with the stigma removed, responsible use would be easier, and people would be more likely to seek treatment for addiction.
They have extracted it and there is a pill called marinol. It works for some people, but is hard to get and is both more dangerous and less effective than inhaled pot(especially if a vaporizer, a device that lets you inhale the THC without the tar, is used) The pill causes nausea in some people, one of the things that marijuana is used to treat. The dosage is high, the time it takes to work longer and the dosage is much harder to regulate than inhaled pot, as you have to take the pill and then wait for it to take effect as opposed to taking a puff, seeing if it helped, and then taking another. For most people, its not a good alternative.SwedishFish said:
Despite what the ads on TV tell you, pot doesn't all come from big drug cartels. Anyone who's had any association with the culture surrounding it knows that there is cheap commercial pot and more expensive quality stuff, and that the former is usually associated with organized crime, while the latter isn't(at least not in the same sense).(Q) said:
In any case, this is one of the best arguments for legalizing all drugs. What we have now is akin to prohibition, and is having similiar consequences.
The laws are the same, but they are not enforced in the same way. This can range simply from the fact that minority neighborhoods have a heavier police presence, to cops just confiscating weed from white people, while prosecuting minorities. In NYC its particularly flagrant as we have laws that allow for huge prison sentences for simple possesion which are applied much more heavily to minorities than to whites.cosmictraveler said:
A lot of people, even those who favor legalizing drugs, dont' realize how important an issue this is. After all, drugs are freely available, and its relatively easy not to get caught. The truth is, this is an extremely important issue which effects everyone. Huge amounts of money are spent fighting a "War on drugs" whose impact on the world is almost exclusively negative. This war ranges From dropping poison on impoverished peasants growing the only crops that will make them money to smashing into houses and breaking up families because someone was smoking a joint to ease their glaucoma. Prisons are filled to overcrowding with people who are there for having committed a crime that did no harm whatsover, while rapists and murders are cleared out to make room.
And those atrocities you see on the "don't smoke pot or you're a terrorist commercials"? They're not associated with pot for the most part, but they are with cocaine and heroin, the users of which, are often addicted and unlikely to stop because they saw a commercial. The fact is, those atrocities are occuring, in part, because of the commercials themselves, and the campaign that created them, whose message is akin to saying "stop al capone, support prohibition" The war on drugs is substantially more likely to hurt the average American than, for example, international terrorism(and for that matter, the war on drugs helps fund international terrorism)
Ending the war on drugs would put a stop to these problems, free up a huge amount of money for social programs, fighting crimes that actually hurt people, etc.(or if you're a consevative, just think of the massive tax breaks you could fund with that money)
It need not lead to chaos, reasonable restrictions could be encacted. People could certainly wbe prohibited from taking certain drugs in public, or giving them to minors, etc. In addition, with the stigma removed, responsible use would be easier, and people would be more likely to seek treatment for addiction.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Nice, patriotic attempt to convince everyone that America is the color-blind paradise that they promised us fifty years ago. Would that it were so. We've made a lot of progress and no one should deny that. But the fact is that certain minorities are prosecuted more aggressively than the rest of us.cosmictraveler said:
The selective traffic law enforcement in Florida.
The sudden interest in enforcing long-dormant statutes about manicurists, now that the profession has a huge influx of Vietnamese immigrants. Twelve-year-old white girls who don't know the first thing about hygiene get together and do each other's nails all the time. But an experienced adult manicurist from Indochina can't do it for a living, without spending a fortune on training and apprenticeship, because it's a public health hazard!
There's no more insidious and incontrovertible instance than the laws about cocaine. The equivalent amount, in powdered form, as used predominantly by whites, is a lesser offense than the same amount, in rock form, as used predominantly by blacks.
Yeah, umm, that was in reply to what I said... that there's plenty of :m: already without legalising it... I didn't say or mean anything about black people, assuming they exist because I've only seen them on TV, or about the justice system (though its screwed up) and I didn't even say that people use :m: just that its there... so I'm a bit confused...Fraggle Rocker said:
Oh and also to cosmictravellers comments I realised you were talking about the legal crap because I said there was heaps... I didn't mean there's heaps because the penalties aren't harsh... I just meant that if you have 20 bucks and 15 minutes then you could get loaded, if you wanted to.
Remember this, if pot were leagalized everyone would grow it and then who would be making money? Not the government for no taxes could be made, not the trafickers , not the sellers.
Exactly, cosmictraveler, so people are going to lose a good source of money and support for their families... so what's the point at all then?
Not everyone has a yard, or the inlclination to spend time caring for a plant.rainbow__princess_4 said:
People who grow it to sell now could continue to do so to support theri family without risking being taken from their family in the middle of the night by the DEA. They wouldn't make as much money as they do now, but the costs would likely be lower too as the need for concealment would be gone.
As for what's the point, see my other post in this thread.
This issue is so important, I mean, human beings have a compulsion to alter their conciousness. Kids are now abusing inhalants because they can't get :m: .
...it's not a choice between pot and nothing, but between pot and stuff like gasoline!
...it's not a choice between pot and nothing, but between pot and stuff like gasoline!