Impressed Holy shit, America in forward thinking shocker

[DaGaffer]

Not quite, it exploits everyone, its just those at the base take the hardest hits, shit flows downhill.

That's a wider taxation argument, in fact its an argument about capitalism, which is kind of beyond the scope of this discussion. It we assume the system we've got isn't going to change then this is no different to any other commodity tax.

Exactly, however like most things in life I don't think this option has been particularly well thought through, it simply smacks of a fiscal policy decision, i.e. it's cheaper to enforce taxation than punishment so they're now going for taxation.

When you get right down to it, that's as good a reason as any. There is a middle ground ("decriminalisation") but its a fudge. Why not just accept reality and decide to make money out of it? Particularly in the US, it kills two birds with one stone (helps make up a tax hole and slows the ridiculous growth in prison numbers), so there's obviously a broad measurable social good there, versus a more nebulous social ill (the whole population turns into wasted hippies), which can always be fixed by recriminalisation if it turns out to be true.

 

[caLLous]

What you get when you buy legally in Colorado

 

[Scouse]

Looks like the yanks, as usual, aren't doing the job of legalisation properly:

Spoiler

It isn't that hard to make sure you set up a monitoring regime for growers. The obvious place for harm to occur is during it's manufacture and it should be subject to the same rigourous monitoring regime as any other legally available foodstuffs.

Not tested (or rather monitored)? That's one of the prime reasons to make it legal.

 

[Job]

I love the smell of weed/skunk/whatever, but I hate smoking it.

 

[Scouse]

Hate the smell, hated smoking it, loved it's effect in the short term but my personality makes it unsuitable for use by me.

I stopped and life got much better for it as I filled the time much more productively. The vast majority of people I know who smoked it have done the same and laugh at the waste of laugh they had.

A couple of people didn't stop. They've dropped off the radar. They're happy in themselves but don't lead lives I'd want to be a part of.

 

[rynnor]

Hate the smell, hated smoking it, loved it's effect in the short term but my personality makes it unsuitable for use by me.

I stopped and life got much better for it as I filled the time much more productively. The vast majority of people I know who smoked it have done the same and laugh at the waste of laugh they had.

A couple of people didn't stop. They've dropped off the radar. They're happy in themselves but don't lead lives I'd want to be a part of.

You seem to be supplying your own counter argument here - we all know people who got hopelessly dependant on weed yet you still want to legalise it?

 

[rynnor]

Disagree completely.

It's very real pleasure from an external source and used responsibly is far from an inward bound dead end but instead is an occasional scream - happily augmenting physical, mental and sexual acts.

It's fake - you are just supplying your brain with chemicals to substitute for emotions you don't feel. And the side effect is that you will feel far worse afterwards as your brain compensates for the artificial chemical imbalance. It's a mugs game.

I think that drugs are not the problem though - if we won the war on drugs people would turn to something else - the real battle is to give people lives that are fulfilling and interesting.

 

[TdC]

if we won the war on drugs people would turn to something else

Tbh you're actually contradicting yourself here Ryn: one can not win the "war on drugs" if people will then take to the next thing. It's more aptly named the War On Human Nature imo! It's naturally unwinnable and simply a political construct to allow people to get away with shit that otherwise would be refuted by the populace. EURRMURRGURR I AM TURNING IN TO SCOUSE

 

[Scouse]

You seem to be supplying your own counter argument here - we all know people who got hopelessly dependant on weed yet you still want to legalise it?

Some people are hopelessly dependent on alcohol. I'm not, and neither are most of the people I've ever met.

In fact, the vast majority of people who use alcohol do it in a safe, responsible and enjoyable way. Those who don't have something wrong with their personality in the first place.


Weed will be the same. Albeit without the actual physical addiction side, without the cirrhosis of the liver side, less of the cancer problems (especially if you're just eating cake - and that's all good unless you're going to complain about some imaginary obesity epidemic).

And add to that - a severely reduced criminal network. Win, and indeed, win.

It's fake - you are just supplying your brain with chemicals to substitute for emotions you don't feel

Not true. It's a real experience. All experience is experienced in the mind - including the real feeling of contentment and euphoria you get on weed. And it's one that evolution has enabled us to feel - and if you believe in survival of the fittest then drug use must have a positive side to it. If it was all negative then then humans with the propensity to feel the effects of cannabis would have died out.

But they didn't. Cannabis effects all of us. It's ubiquitous in the race.

Maybe it's because shagging and cannabis go together like cheese and biscuits?

And the side effect is that you will feel far worse afterwards as your brain compensates for the artificial chemical imbalance.

You get a hangover don't you? Same with weed. It doesn't mean you wake up the next morning and start all over again unless you're an alcoholic or a problem user.

Same shit, different (but clearly and measurably safer) drug.

the real battle is to give people lives that are fulfilling and interesting.

Can't do that when working for the man. Reform capitalism maybe eh? (As gaff said, it's outside the remit of this argument). But I do agree - habitual users of cannabis aren't addicted to the drug - they're using it to compensate for shitty meaningless lives. For those people the drug is a (very real) escape from misery.

As I've already said. Thanks for backing up my argument m8

 

[Scouse]

This to me is the much more interesting conversation @rynnor :

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZqYV9KKOZQ#t=145

[there is a] real feeling of contentment and euphoria you get on weed...it's one that evolution has enabled us to feel....Maybe it's because shagging and cannabis go together like cheese and biscuits?

Maybe the hippie movement was so caught up in "peace and love" because the vast majority of them had smoked a lot of weed and the realised there was a better route to a happy and content population than commercialism and hard work.

Maybe humans are meant to sit about eating cannabis and shagging all day eh? And why not?

 

[rynnor]

Not true. It's a real experience. All experience is experienced in the mind - including the real feeling of contentment and euphoria you get on weed. And it's one that evolution has enabled us to feel - and if you believe in survival of the fittest then drug use must have a positive side to it. If it was all negative then then humans with the propensity to feel the effects of cannabis would have died out.

You are utterly and completely wrong here - we did not evolve to use weed. It just happens to have chemicals that effect the brain in certain ways.

We evolved to feel certain types of pleasure in order to propagate the species and reinforce the family/social group.

Drugs just falsely trigger these in built mechanisms - some of these arguments you are using are becoming increasingly strange mate.

 

[rynnor]

Some people are hopelessly dependent on alcohol. I'm not, and neither are most of the people I've ever met.

In fact, the vast majority of people who use alcohol do it in a safe, responsible and enjoyable way. Those who don't have something wrong with their personality in the first place.

If you legalise it you will inevitably create thousands more addicts living pitiful lives - I don't think the freedom of the individual outweighs the harm to society.

 

[rynnor]

Tbh you're actually contradicting yourself here Ryn: one can not win the "war on drugs" if people will then take to the next thing. It's more aptly named the War On Human Nature imo! It's naturally unwinnable and simply a political construct to allow people to get away with shit that otherwise would be refuted by the populace. EURRMURRGURR I AM TURNING IN TO SCOUSE

We could theoretically take out all the suppliers - people would turn to other things but those could be better or worse. All I was pointing out is that it is peoples crappy stress filled lives that creates the demand - everyone always looks to tackle the supply but perhaps a successful campaign would tackle demand.

 

[DaGaffer]

We could theoretically take out all the suppliers - people would turn to other things but those could be better or worse. All I was pointing out is that it is peoples crappy stress filled lives that creates the demand - everyone always looks to tackle the supply but perhaps a successful campaign would tackle demand.

Most of the people I've known who smoke weed haven't had crappy lives at all. In fact most of them have been comfortably satisfied with their Waitrose and BMW-filled lives.

 

[Overdriven]

Cheaper/Easier/Legal to get opiate prescription painkillers. Though, it is the US - So they probably cost more than £8.

 

[rynnor]

comfortably satisfied with their Waitrose and BMW-filled lives.

Clearly not - appearances are often deceptive.

 

[Deebs]

I really wanted to go to America next year but now I will look elsewhere. Fucking NSA cunts.

 

[DaGaffer]

Clearly not - appearances are often deceptive.

Since I smoked weed with them, I'd say no, things are pretty much as they seem. There are vast numbers of people for whom a bit of light drug use is just a social thing, no horrible backstory required.

 

[Raven]

I am actually surprised and a little saddened that so many seem to have fallen for the Daily Mail fuelled propaganda machine

More people than you know smoke weed, many of your colleagues smoke weed, members of your family smoke weed. They didn't rob old ladies to feed their habit and they got up for work perfectly fine the next day. You probably bump into several people every day that smoke on occasion.

While I know this may be a scary thing to hear for many of you but that's the reality. Other than a little pot they are normal, responsible, law abiding citizens.

 

[soze]

It seems to some people druggie means your are a toothless jobless smack addict who would kill a granny for a fix. People who can function just fine and only break the law because their drug of choice is not a nice taxable drug do not exist.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Look hasn't this discussion been over since me and Scouse were on the same side? Those are the rules afterall

 

[Aoami]

Also, what's to stop weed dealers just moving into harder drugs?

 

[rynnor]

Also, what's to stop weed dealers just moving into harder drugs?

Most of them already do.

 

[rynnor]

Since I smoked weed with them, I'd say no, things are pretty much as they seem. There are vast numbers of people for whom a bit of light drug use is just a social thing, no horrible backstory required.

They aren't happy though - your original question is quite revealing - material goods in themselves do not actually make people happy in the longer term - despite everything we are brainwashed with from birth by advertisers

There are lots of functioning drug addicts the same as their are functioning alcoholics - there's a guy at work who is a bit of both - from years as a functioning alcoholic he got onto the plant food a few years back and ended up having a heart attack - it hasn't stopped him though - even subsequent collapses don't stop him - he will be dead in a few years time.

 

[caLLous]

Most of them already do.

You're so blissfully ignorant.

 

[rynnor]

You're so blissfully ignorant.

Mr Pot meet Mr Kettle.

 

[Aoami]

Most of them already do.

None that I have known do

 

[caLLous]

Mr Pot meet Mr Kettle.

Well I don't claim to know "most" of the drug dealers like you but the few that I've had contact with over the years have only sold grass/resin and nothing else.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Don't you know callous, if you know two cases of something(person, event, outcome etc) then you know ALL of them. That's the law of logic on the internet

 

[Scouse]

Clearly not - appearances are often deceptive.

I wonder if you've got first-hand experience of the drug (other than the occasional puff on a spliff in your teens or at Uni)?

What Gaff said is totally uncontroversial but conversations on such a basic and widely-accepted level seem impossible to have with you.

I'd love to have the conversation about marajuana, after being spread around the whole planet by humans from it's original place of origin due to it's many beneficial properties, being a sort of "cultural mutagen" - but you seem to think there are only downsides to what most people who've tried it think is an incredibly positive and harm-free experience.