To Legalize, or not to Legalize

oh hell yes

Pot is one of those things that is best left illegal. The truth is it *generally* doesn't hurt anyone, and it tends to be tamer than alchohol, but the claim that no one has ever died from it is bullshit. Things like weed are best left illegal but not enforced, so that when potheads decide to do retarded shit like go make a hippie circle in the middle of the street at 2am you can still call the cops on them (and yes, I know some friends who did this in high school).

Truly I'm not against other people using it - I think perhaps the penalties for getting caught with it are a bit extreme. But at the same time I think the laws help ensure that people will keep it to themselves, which is a good thing. Possession really shouldn't carry a prison sentance either... we all ready use tax money to feed and house enough morons.

It's more accurate to say that no one has ever died from an OVERDOSE on pot. I'm sure people have died in situations where they may have survived if they hadn't be high.

Naturally... but most alcohol related deaths aren't from drinking yourself to death either. The distinction that marijuana has never directly killed anyone is more of a technicality - in practice it doesn't matter if they died from an overdose, or if their judgment was too impaired to make safe decisions. The bottom line is it still kills people.

Not that marijuana related deaths are frequent... I only brought up the point because the OP made a very broad and biased generalization. For all we know someone somewhere really has died of an overdose anyway, although they would probably have to eat it rather than smoke it.

I was saying that it was the dealer's fault. Looking back at it, my words do seem confusing, even to me, but I was trying to say that a person who buys weed from a person may request harder stuff, but if the person does those drugs, the dealer is partly responsible for giving the shit to him, and the user himself is to blame as well, for wanting to do those other drugs. They're both at fault.



I don't think a lot of people, if any, have died purely because of weed. If someone lit up a fattie, and then did something stupid, the person was no doubt stupid to begin with, and the weed just pushed him a little over the line. Alcohol makes you do way more fucked up things than weed. I've heard about a guy fucking his wife's 16-year-old sister while drunk. When high, people mostly just sit around and bullshit and think of stupid stuff. The worst thing I've seen is people wanting to get naked and run around (not in the street).

For example, the people you mentioned who made a hippie circle in the middle of the street at 2am, they were high school students, right? There were some kids in my high school who would do that sort of shit without being high. And worse shit, too. I knew one guy who almost cut off his friend's finger because they were running around with knives, and that was fucking senior year, and they never smoked pot.

The point I'm making is, stupid people will do stupid shit no matter what. Not all the kids who rode on the tops of moving cars and died were stoners. Similarly, not every guy who slept with another man's wife was drunk.

But a lot of people do get behind the wheel of a car while drunk and crash into other cars and kill people. A lot more people do that than falling out of windows because they've been smoking the dope.

Neither do I, as I said its really more of a technicality. I just dislike when people make broad generalizations (in this case that no one has ever died directly from pot) without having the slightest clue if thats actually true. My common sense tells me that it has most likely happened at least once... somewhere... the world is a big place after all.

On the topic of stupid people will be stupid - I don't disagree. When I originaly posted I made an important distinction. I'm not against marijuana use per se, but I think it is important that it remain illegal. There is no need to encourage displays of stupidity, esspecially in public. "Illegal but not enforced" is sort of a special catagory that fits light drug usage particuarly well. The idea being of course that if you do get caught, it will only because you made it so obvious that authorities couldn't help but charge you with it. This encourages people to keep it to themselves.

Of course I know currently it doesn't quite work like that... lots of people making laws and people enforcing them take minor crimes like marijuana use way too seriously. A good example is the whole michael phelps fiasco. Enforcement officials in Richland County are using the incident to preform drug raids and what not... which all seems pretty rediculous to me.

On the topic of alcohol... I will agree, alcohol is generaly worse. But two wrongs don't make a right, and alcohol does have one advantage. Since you consume it rather than smoke it, the person next to you doesn't get a second hand effect. Now maybe I'm biased, because when I go places with friends I rarely drink, and I'm almost always the designated driver - but I'm personally quite glad that pot doesn't make it into bars and clubs.

I don't smoke but, I say:

Legalize.

Make it a taxed, regulated and licensed industry like alcohol & tobacco. Treat it like a mixture of cigarettes and alcohol. Make it available like cigarettes such as having them at the local grocery store or gas station. Then putting an age restriction on them (18-21) for purchasing. Then place restrictions on operating machinery like alcohol with D.U.I.'s and such.

With companies in charge of the product it'll be consistently strong. The product will be safe since the dealer can't lace your stuff due to the industry being regulated by the F.D.A. The gang related crime that is part of the drug dealer culture will decline since companies can produce more and better product for less. Less people will be put in jail for possession which will lighten the burden on the prison and legal systems. Save people tax money, increase tax revenue for states/counties that allow the sale of marijuana.

Downside: When gangs realize that they are being killed on their weed business they may retaliate by attacking the businesses that sell better weed for less than they do which will kill their bankrolls. So the violence would target the growers and the store that sell it in attempts to intimidate people from buying weed from anywhere else but, the dealers.

What you're saying makes sense, but it seems like in order for what you're saying to be true and right, cigarettes and alcohol should be made illegal, too.

Alcohol makes people do stupid things, and by having alcohol be legal (and advertised all over the place), doesn't that encourage stupid behavior? Plus, most people smoke weed in their homes. (If legalized, that may change, but at the moment, it's typically something done in a person's room or car.) A lot of people go to bars to get drunk. That's pretty public.

And though alcohol doesn't give off any sort of second-hand effect, cigarettes do. Also, I've repeatedly heard that weed smoke is much less damaging than cigarette smoke. If weed should be banned because a person next to a guy smoking a joint could have his lungs damaged, then cigarettes should be banned, too. But cigarettes are already banned in a lot of public places, and I imagine it would be the same for weed, too. Furthermore, smoking a joint is only one way to get high. There are other ways, and they typically get you higher, such as using a vaporizer. In fact, using a vaporizer, weed is safer than cigarettes, because there is little to no smoke or damage to the person's lungs.