Question for suncat: Legalizing pot: Good or bad idea?

[badrose]

.

[cattails]

I'll butt in, hell yes legalize pot!! Not as bad as drinking, when not legal puts people in contact with hard core drug users and sellers. Tax the crap out of it and put it on the open market.

[bigsky]

I'll butt in, hell yes legalize pot!! Not as bad as drinking, when not legal puts people in contact with hard core drug users and sellers. Tax the crap out of it and put it on the open market.

Prohibition has failed. WAR on pot has resulted in US having largest % incarcerated population. It's nothing more than a "cops and incarceration " industry now with cops being funded with forfeited property, and huge taxpayer subsidies. And we've lost significant civil liberties to the drug wars. People have been killed by idiotic drug raids. And mandatory minimums have ruined lives needlessly.

[badrose]

BTW, I agree. Even the "gateway" aspect loses argument points when you take away the criminal element. Just wanted to hear from someone in the law enforcement field to get his or their perspective.

[CitizenBBN]

Not suncat either but we definitely need to legalize it, and probably others. But start with pot. that's a no brainer IMO.

The war on drugs has made Prohibition look like a raving success. Massive crime has resulted, with the corresponding violence, incarceration and drain on our nation in every way. It's been a complete disaster, cost 100s of billions and we have done absolutely nothing to reduce drug use in the US. In fact it's skyrocketed since we began this war under the Nixon Administration.

It's the definition of insanity to continue this war: doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Legalize it, tax it, use the money to encourage people to not use it. Sounds wacky, but it worked for tobacco. It's a proven if counterintuitive approach.

[Catmandrew]

Agree on all of the above. I heard the former head of the dept responsible for drug enforcement say as much. He said the biggest risk to a pot smoker is getting caught smoking pot. Personally, I partake from time to time and enjoy it. It's not a gateway drug for me, while I tried things in my (very) wilder days, I saw the dangers IMMEDIATELY and had sense enough to walk away. And there's this:

[suncat05]

I am personally all for legalizing marijuana. For a multitude of reasons. Most of those reasons have already been previously stated here in this thread. CBBN is 100% correct in his assessment.

[dan_bgblue]

Love the image Cmd

[Catmandrew]

Love the image Cmd

Yep, it's funny but 100 percent true!

[Darrell KSR]

Another vote to legalize it, tax it, and commit to a campaign to discourage it, like tobacco.

[bigsky]

Another vote to legalize it, tax it, and commit to a campaign to discourage it, like tobacco.

I think that's right, too.

As for gateway drugs, tobacco is hands Down #1 for minors. It's illegal for minors so Bam! You're suddenly used to breaking the law. It's highly addicting so Bam! You're a junkie. You sneak out to stoner alley in between classes and get a nicotine fix and Miss a class or two and Bam! You're flunking high school.

The guy who started and ran the alternative high school for 14 years told me that.

[badrose]

Typical trip to McDonalds's:

You're in the drive-thru lane and the guys tell you what they want.

No way you can remember all that so you tell everybody to order for themselves.

You get to the order window: Welcome to McDonald's! Would you like to try blah blah, blah, blah, blah?

Everybody laughs.

Guys leaning all over each other to get to the window so the girl can hear. More laughing.

Girl reads back lengthy order. More, harder laughing.

Drive around to pay, get change back.

Drive forward. Forgot food.

Back up and get food.

Put foot on gas pedal. Oops! Still in reverse.

Everyone, including the girl at the window, laughing really hard.

Man, this is the best food ever!!!

[Catmandrew]

Did u follow me last nite Badrose?

[badrose]

Did u follow me last nite Badrose?

No. That was me behind the wheel about 37 years ago.

Another story from about that same time:

A friend of mine asks me to ride up to Columbus, OH (from Flatwoods, KY) to take his mom to visit her brother. About a 2 1/2 hour trip and it's late. We get there and his uncle is showing us this new TV service where he gets a bunch of channels including adult stuff, which he inclines to not show. So after a requisite amount of time my friend and I leave to drive back home. I'm driving, he rolling, then we're passing back & forth. We get on the beltway, one really, really, long turn. I resist turning on the turn signal. At some point, it seemed the centrifugal force would hurl us into space or roll over, so we're leaning really hard to prevent that. I look at the speedometer, we're going 35 mph. Again, hard, bellyaching laughter and feeling much, much safer.

When we got back home, of course we HAD to go to Jolly Roger's Donuts. It seemed we spent about a half an hour arguing who would be the one to go in to place the order. He won, I went.

I probably should feel some kind of remorse for all that stuff but, God help me, I don't. I got a million stories like these and they always make me smile.

[Catmandrew]

Nothing to be remorseful about man, it's called LIVING. My friend and I used to get stoned and hit the gravel back roads while it was snowing at night. It felt like we were in a Star Wars scene with the snow blowing past the windshield like stars. Of course we thought we were breaking the sound barrier but were really going about 12 mph!

Oh, and I'm pretty sure we invented the iPhone one night in 1999, but forcthe life of us we couldn't remember what that great idea we had was until a couple years ago

[cattails]

No. That was me behind the wheel about 37 years ago.

Another story from about that same time:

A friend of mine asks me to ride up to Columbus, OH (from Flatwoods, KY) to take his mom to visit her brother. About a 2 1/2 hour trip and it's late. We get there and his uncle is showing us this new TV service where he gets a bunch of channels including adult stuff, which he inclines to not show. So after a requisite amount of time my friend and I leave to drive back home. I'm driving, he rolling, then we're passing back & forth. We get on the beltway, one really, really, long turn. I resist turning on the turn signal. At some point, it seemed the centrifugal force would hurl us into space or roll over, so we're leaning really hard to prevent that. I look at the speedometer, we're going 35 mph. Again, hard, bellyaching laughter and feeling much, much safer.

When we got back home, of course we HAD to go to Jolly Roger's Donuts. It seemed we spent about a half an hour arguing who would be the one to go in to place the order. He won, I went.

I probably should feel some kind of remorse for all that stuff but, God help me, I don't. I got a million stories like these and they always make me smile.

Hers's one for ya (and by the way my wild day are long gone, in fact almost 40 years gone). Friend of mine is smoked up driving down the interstate, gets pulled over by state police, officer says do you know how fast you were going? No sir I was not speeding, sounds like officer says 90 MPH, friend screams out NO WAY I WAS DOING 90 MPH, OFFICER SHOUTS BACK, I SAID 9 MPH!!!! If you could only have been there.

[dan_bgblue]

What I find amazing is that you guys remember any of those events. I do not remember squat

[CitizenBBN]

This one time, in band camp.....

[dan_bgblue]

It was not at band camp but I remember a girl named Beth. Unfortunately her name is all I ever remembered

[jazyd]

Lets see if I ave this straight after reading your stories. All of you want to make it legal for even more young and old adults to use mind altering drugs where you you truly have no idea what you are doing while endangering people's lives whie you operate a vehicle on a hwy, put more cancer causing drugs into more people, make it legal for young adults to get hooked on a drug tat can and does lead to more drugs to get even higher....don't tell me I can't because I have seen too many kids in my community who have ruined their lives, committed suicide (ask Darryl), my own cousin has spent time in jail for years...all wo started on pot and the only reason all of you have stated is to get more tax dollars. And of course the limp excuse of the lost war on drugs while not addressing the fact the war could easily be won IF the higher up chain in politics were not being bought off. And somehow you seem to think that by being legall It might shut down drug lords and gangs w/o ever thinking those same people are not going to lse that stream of income and will just sell it cheaper on the streets w/o collecting any tax and the same people will still continue to steal so tey can sell the stuff to buy that drug trying to find that initial high of the first time.

Either most of you are still using or think everything you did was funny and want your children to enjoy that same "fun"

Again I say ask Darryl how funny he thinks it is

[suncat05]

But even if it's legal to consume, jazy, it will not change the laws as far as, let's say, driving impaired. That part of it will never change. Just as it is not illegal to drink within the confines of your private domicile, but if you get behind the wheel of a vehicle and drive while impaired, the very same laws exist for that purpose, which is the public safety.
I guess we disagree on this aspect of it, and do so respectfully. Let's make it legal to consume & possess within your domicile, but if you leave said domicile impaired & drive, then you go to jail. Let's regulate it and tax it and make it benefit us.
I liken this to taking sour lemons & making lemonade out of them. Take a negative & turn it into a positive.

[badrose]

Lets see if I ave this straight after reading your stories. All of you want to make it legal for even more young and old adults to use mind altering drugs where you you truly have no idea what you are doing while endangering people's lives whie you operate a vehicle on a hwy, put more cancer causing drugs into more people, make it legal for young adults to get hooked on a drug tat can and does lead to more drugs to get even higher....don't tell me I can't because I have seen too many kids in my community who have ruined their lives, committed suicide (ask Darryl), my own cousin has spent time in jail for years...all wo started on pot and the only reason all of you have stated is to get more tax dollars. And of course the limp excuse of the lost war on drugs while not addressing the fact the war could easily be won IF the higher up chain in politics were not being bought off. And somehow you seem to think that by being legall It might shut down drug lords and gangs w/o ever thinking those same people are not going to lse that stream of income and will just sell it cheaper on the streets w/o collecting any tax and the same people will still continue to steal so tey can sell the stuff to buy that drug trying to find that initial high of the first time.

Either most of you are still using or think everything you did was funny and want your children to enjoy that same "fun"

Again I say ask Darryl how funny he thinks it is

jazy, I appreciate your point of view and it certainly aches my heart for what Darryl and so many others have suffered as a result of illegal drug use. For me personally it was the only drug that I used with any regularity having tried only a couple of others once or twice. I was offered a lot of others but declined.

One anecdote I can share: We were sitting around the kitchen table talking about other drugs making the rounds and were available at that time and one guy shared that he was asked by a guy why I had declined trying any of them. His answer was, If you could enjoy pot as much as badrose does why would you need to try anything else? I think for many the drug culture was something they aspired to because of music or other entertainment icons were into it.

I had heard others describe their experiences with acid where they lost control of their perception of reality and the idea of that turned me off. Pot wasn't addictive for me. I never had to buy it. My friends always seemed to be willing to share, maybe because I'd go off on comical or philosophical rants which was probably a better alternative to watching goldfish, a second alternative at best. My instincts were to avoid driving altogether but when you get the munchies and there's nothing in the house (not my house) to work with you go get some food. Somehow I was usually the one to drive and I never swerved lanes, got in an accident, or got pulled over. Luck probably had something to do with it, but I remember being overly careful (using the turn signal on sharp curves for example), staying below the speed limit, etc. Just really focused. I don't know how driving under the influence of pot (by itself) ranks as far as traffic violations and accidents but I'll bet it's low. Maybe suncat can shed some light on that.

I first tried it because I discovered that some of my friends had been smoking it for some time. They had kept it from me out of respect which impressed me. The first two or three times I tried it I got nothing. No buzz whatsoever. Since those days I've only had it once or twice with friends I hadn't seen in a long time. If offered now, I would decline because of employment. I don't crave it, never really did. It was just there and I enjoyed it. As mentioned above, the graduation of using pot to other drugs is because of the criminal element. In my opinion alcohol is far worse and would be far more likely to cause someone to graduate to other drugs including prescription drugs which are far, far worse.

[badrose]

10 Facts About Marijuana
Marijuana is a plant containing a psychoactive chemical, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), in its leaves, buds and flowers. Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug, with forty-two percent of American adults reporting that they have used it.

Despite the fact that marijuana's effects are less harmful than those of most other drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, it is the most common drug that people are arrested for possessing. U.S. marijuana policy is unique among American criminal laws in being enforced so widely and harshly, yet deemed unnecessary by such a substantial portion of the population.

Fact #1: Most marijuana users never use any other illicit drug.
Marijuana does not cause people to use hard drugs. Marijuana is the most popular illegal drug in the United States today. Therefore, people who have used less popular drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and LSD, are likely to have also used marijuana. Most marijuana users never use any other illegal drug and the vast majority of those who do try another drug never become addicted or go on to have associated problems. Indeed, for the large majority of people, marijuana is a terminus rather than a so-called gateway drug.[1]

Fact #2: Most people who use marijuana do so occasionally. Increasing admissions for treatment do not reflect increasing rates of clinical dependence.
According to a federal Institute of Medicine study in 1999, fewer than 10 percent of those who try marijuana ever meet the clinical criteria for dependence, while 32 percent of tobacco users and 15 percent of alcohol users do. According to federal data, marijuana treatment admissions referred by the criminal justice system rose from 48 percent in 1992 to 58 percent in 2006. Just 45 percent of marijuana admissions met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders criteria for marijuana dependence. More than a third hadn’t used marijuana in the 30 days prior to admission for treatment.[2]

Fact #3: Claims about increases in marijuana potency are vastly overstated. In addition, potency is not related to risk of dependence or health impacts.
Although marijuana potency may have increased somewhat in recent decades, claims about enormous increases in potency are vastly overstated and not supported by evidence. Nonetheless, potency is not related to risks of dependence or health impacts. According to the federal government's own data, the average THC in domestically grown marijuana – which comprises the bulk of the US market – is less than 5 percent, a figure that has remained unchanged for nearly a decade. In the 1980s, by comparison, the THC content averaged around 3 percent. Regardless of potency, THC is virtually non-toxic to healthy cells or organs, and is incapable of causing a fatal overdose. Currently, doctors may legally prescribe Marinol, an FDA-approved pill that contains 100 percent THC. The Food and Drug Administration found THC to be safe and effective for the treatment of nausea, vomiting, and wasting diseases. When consumers encounter unusually strong varieties of marijuana, they adjust their use accordingly and smoke less.[3]

Fact #4: Marijuana has not been shown to cause mental illness.
Some effects of marijuana ingestion may include feelings of panic, anxiety, and paranoia. Such experiences can be frightening, but the effects are temporary.

That said, none of this is to suggest that there may not be some correlation (but not causation) between marijuana use and certain psychiatric ailments. Marijuana use can correlate with mental illness for many reasons. People often turn to the alleviating effects of marijuana to treat symptoms of distress. One study demonstrated that psychotic symptoms predict later use of marijuana, suggesting that people might turn to the plant for help rather than become ill after use.[4]

Fact #5: Marijuana use has not been shown to increase risk of cancer.
Several longitudinal studies have established that even long-term use of marijuana (via smoking) in humans is not associated with elevated cancer risk, including tobacco-related cancers or with cancer of the following sites: colorectal, lung, melanoma, prostate, breast, cervix. A more recent (2009) population-based case-control study found that moderate marijuana smoking over a 20 year period was associated with reduced risk of head and neck cancer (See Liang et al). And a 5-year-long population-based case control study found even long-term heavy marijuana smoking was not associated with lung cancer or UAT (upper aerodigestive tract) cancers.[5]

Fact #6: Marijuana has been proven helpful for treating the symptoms of a variety of medical conditions.
Marijuana has been shown to be effective in reducing the nausea induced by cancer chemotherapy, stimulating appetite in AIDS patients, and reducing intraocular pressure in people with glaucoma. There is also appreciable evidence that marijuana reduces muscle spasticity in patients with neurological disorders. A synthetic capsule is available by prescription, but it is not as effective as smoked marijuana for many patients. Learn more about medical marijuana. [6]

Fact #7: Marijuana use rates in the Netherlands are similar to those in the U.S. despite very different policies.
The Netherlands' drug policy is one of the most nonpunitive in Europe. For more than twenty years, Dutch citizens over age eighteen have been permitted to buy and use cannabis (marijuana and hashish) in government-regulated coffee shops. This policy has not resulted in dramatically escalating marijuana use. For most age groups, rates of marijuana use in the Netherlands are similar to those in the United States. However, for young adolescents, rates of marijuana use are lower in the Netherlands than in the United States. The Dutch government occasionally revises existing marijuana policy, but it remains committed to decriminalization.[7]

Fact #8: Marijuana has not been shown to cause long-term cognitive impairment.
The short-term effects of marijuana include immediate, temporary changes in thoughts, perceptions, and information processing. The cognitive process most clearly affected by marijuana is short-term memory. In laboratory studies, subjects under the influence of marijuana have no trouble remembering things they learned previously. However, they display diminished capacity to learn and recall new information. This diminishment only lasts for the duration of the intoxication. There is no convincing evidence that heavy long-term marijuana use permanently impairs memory or other cognitive functions.[8]

Fact #9: There is no compelling evidence that marijuana contributes substantially to traffic accidents and fatalities.
At some doses, marijuana affects perception and psychomotor performance – changes which could impair driving ability. However, in driving studies, marijuana produces little or no car-handling impairment – consistently less than produced by low to moderate doses of alcohol and many legal medications. In contrast to alcohol, which tends to increase risky driving practices, marijuana tends to make subjects more cautious. I guess that would be me. Surveys of fatally injured drivers show that when THC is detected in the blood, alcohol is almost always detected as well. For some individuals, marijuana may play a role in bad driving. The overall rate of highway accidents appears not to be significantly affected by marijuana's widespread use in society.[9]

Fact #10: More than 800,000 people are arrested for marijuana each year, the vast majority of them for simple possession.
Police prosecuted 858,408 persons for marijuana violations in 2009, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual Uniform Crime Report. Marijuana arrests now comprise more than one-half (approximately 52 percent) of all drug arrests reported in the United States. A decade ago, marijuana arrests comprised just 44 percent of all drug arrests. Approximately 46 percent of all drug prosecutions nationwide are for marijuana possession. Of those charged with marijuana violations, approximately 88 percent (758,593 Americans) were charged with possession only. The remaining 99,815 individuals were charged with “sale/manufacture,” a category that includes virtually all cultivation offenses.[10]

[CitizenBBN]

Lets see if I ave this straight after reading your stories. All of you want to make it legal for even more young and old adults to use mind altering drugs where you you truly have no idea what you are doing while endangering people's lives whie you operate a vehicle on a hwy, put more cancer causing drugs into more people, make it legal for young adults to get hooked on a drug tat can and does lead to more drugs to get even higher....don't tell me I can't because I have seen too many kids in my community who have ruined their lives, committed suicide (ask Darryl), my own cousin has spent time in jail for years...all wo started on pot and the only reason all of you have stated is to get more tax dollars. And of course the limp excuse of the lost war on drugs while not addressing the fact the war could easily be won IF the higher up chain in politics were not being bought off. And somehow you seem to think that by being legall It might shut down drug lords and gangs w/o ever thinking those same people are not going to lse that stream of income and will just sell it cheaper on the streets w/o collecting any tax and the same people will still continue to steal so tey can sell the stuff to buy that drug trying to find that initial high of the first time.

Either most of you are still using or think everything you did was funny and want your children to enjoy that same "fun"

Again I say ask Darryl how funny he thinks it is

I despise drug use, am about the only person I know who has never even tried pot. I can't stand to be around it, makes my skin crawl and is about the only thing that does that to me. I don't even know why. It's just always been that way.

Yet I'm strongly for legalization. You know why? B/c every one one of those stories was when it was already illegal. The law is useless and counterproductive.

It's not a "limp excuse" that we've lost the war on drugs, at least as we're currently fighting it. It's a simple fact. You say we could win "if" this or that happened, but do you see those things happening? I don't. They didn't happen in Prohibition, they haven't happened since the Nixon administration. If there's anything "limp" here it's the idea that magically the reality of politics as old as humans walking upright will change. It won't. Just like prohibition, the drug war has led to government corruption and no amount of us wishing it would change will change it.

As for being legalized shutting down the criminal distribution of pot, yes I'm sure it happens. Do you see the mafia selling liquor these days or do you go buy it at the local winery or grocery store? Do you see the mob selling beer out of the back of trucks at football games? Of course not, b/c it's legal. Now lots of people can sell it without having to have a criminal enterprise. It most certainly will stop the criminal traffic in pot to legalize it. It's so true as to be an empirical given. There isn't a single product in history that has been legalized that has remained under the control of criminal organizations.

What will happen is the price of pot will go down, almost to nil b/c it can be so readily grown privately, meaning there is no major theft for it and certainly no profit in it for criminal organizations. There may be some on the periphery but no more than we see now in tobacco. Infinitesimal. There's little crime associated with theft to buy pot now. It's possession and sales and crime from battling over distribution that is the vast majority of pot "crime". My hope is people would choose pot as opposed to meth or crack, drugs that do generate that kind of crime.

It will not break the drug cartels though, b/c pot isn't their primary product. It's already too cheap and too easily produced privately to be their mainstay. It will take legalizing far more serious drugs to fully destroy them, but we can make a minor impact on them and we can dramatically reduce crime associated with street level distribution and busts for possession.

I'm not only not "still using", I never used, but I can see we haven't done anything to stop pot or other drug use with this approach. Time to accept that, scrap it and try a different one. The one we have used for tobacco has worked very well. We didn't ban it, we battled it at a cultural and not legal level. We can do the same with pot.

You lament the ruined lives of drugs. You'll notice all those ruined lives happened with all those drugs completely illegal. What more proof do we need that this approach is failing miserably? Are we willing to accept those lost lives as an acceptable level of collateral damage or do we say this isn't good enough and try to do something different? I know it sounds backward to say legalizing something could actually reduce its use, but it's really no different than the way anti-gunners look at our view that the answer to gun violence is more people with more guns. They think we're insane, b/c it seems counterintuitive that making something that is a problem even more legal would be a good thing.

When we talk about the ruined lives of drugs, let's not exclude those who have been jailed and had their lives take very bad turns purely from the laws against pot, or the massive criminal damage and innocent deaths caused by the drug wars of this modern Prohibition. The pervading of criminal enterprises through our culture, government corruption, all of it. Those things are ills on our society as well as those using drugs. When we look at the overall ill to our society, which is worse, drug use by some people along with tens of thousands of murders and crimes and 100s of billions of dollars wasted that could have done a lot of good for people, or drug use by the same number of people or even a few more but without all the crime and harm done far beyond the scope of the use itself?

Just like the answer to gun shootings isn't more "gun free zone" signs but more guns in the hands of more people, the answer to drug use isn't to ban drug use but to legalize it and take away the criminal costs associated with it so we can face it head on as a cultural, not criminal, problem.

Drug addicts need help, not incarceration. Given that incarceration has failed and caused massive collateral damage, why not try giving up on incarceration and focus those resources on treatment and cultural pressure to not partake? People who are alcoholics don't get busted if they fall off the AA wagon, we see them as in need of help and try to get them back on the wagon. It's seen as a medical and cultural condition, not a criminal one.

I despise drug use, but I hate what the war on drugs has done to our nation even more. Right now we're getting all the ills of drug use plus all the ills of it being illegal. Better to have just one than both.

[CitizenBBN]

Re pot as a "gateway" drug, a big part o any gateway effect is it's illegal nature. You have to start working w dealers and the drug distribution system to obtain it in many if not most cases and those dealers deal in more than just pot. If you didn't have to go to those people for pot it would be less of a gateway in that respect.

I wish we could ban things and that be the end of it, but it's not. Demand for drugs isn't created by something we can ban, and once the demand exists there's not a lot left for us to do that doesn't involve all kinds of costs b/c our society and system of rights is inherently geared to providing people what they demand. It's tough to cherry pick it and still be a free nation. Unless we suspend rights like privacy and association we have little chance of stopping anything people want to obtain badly enough.

After nearly 50 years of this punitive approach to the war on drugs, with hundreds of thousands dead and wounded, hundreds of billions spent, tens of millions jailed, I can go into nearly any school in this country and buy any of a range of drugs. Folks, that's one lost war and no amount of dislike of drug use changes that reality.

The drug problem exists bc people want to consume drugs. The only real solution is to change the desire bc nothing we have done has changed the availability.

Sent from my iPhone using Forum Runner

[jazyd]

I have not nor will I ever se any drugs legal or otherwise unless it is prescribed by my doctor and will not use the mari for sickness with cancer should I ever have that. My wife had cancer and was prescribed that pill to help with sickness, it only took one pill and watching her hallucinations while sitting on the bathroom floor unable to stand to et me know how I felt about it.
My cousin went to jail for selling the wee and cannot work this day because of his habit
My neighbors son started on weed in jr hi school, stole at the mall and sold the things to get money to buy more. He graduate to more drugs and ended up committing suicide. He also scored 34 on his act test
Another friend from church had his oldest son commit suicide last fall while in college. According to the letter he left he started on weed and went from there
Two boys that graduated with my daughter, one suicide at age 27 from drugs, the other s a music groupie that stays stoned at age z31.
Darryl's great looking son, suicide, drugs
So all the trouble is claimed because it is illegal and there will be no trouble I guess if it is legal is what s being said.

The stories written here are all made it look like it was just a ball of fun to be stoned. I guess I don't find it to be funny

[Catmandrew]

So if your dr. prescribes you OxyContin you will pop a drug that puts people in their grave every day, but you wouldn't use a LEGAL Mary-j product proven to ease pain without any risk of overdose? I respect your opinion, but you are treading on a slippery slope with that comment.

And YES I AM "still using". I'm not ashamed to say it out loud, and I'm not an addict. I smoke maybe once every 2-3 months when I'm playing in a jam session with friends, safe and off the road. Judge if you want, but we aren't hurting anybody, we all have families, great jobs, and FWIW, I'm a pretty alright guy. It hasn't "ruined my life", and I don't know anyone who was on pot alone whose it did. I'm very sorry for the loss of your friend, and for what your wife went thru, I mean that sincerely. I can relate, as cancer has devastated my family on multiple occasions. However, your cousin shouldn't have went to jail in the first place, and wouldn't if it had been legal. The "gateway" argument is an extremely weak one, while I'm sure some "start" with weed and go up from there, MOST do not. I know it's east to blame one thing for everything that happened, but there are always other issues at play.

I am aware you don't particularly care for me or my opinions, but this isn't a " right or wrong" issue. There are many things to consider besides your beliefs or mine, and those must be considered before making a decision on a topic like this.

[CitizenBBN]

So all the trouble is claimed because it is illegal and there will be no trouble I guess if it is legal is what s being said.

Nope, there will still be plenty of trouble. But as your stories point out, there is already a vast amount of trouble with it despite the fact that it is completely illegal and shouldn't even exist.

Prohibition was undertaken in the 20s with exactly the same concerns. "Demon Rum" was blamed for destroying families and lives, and it wasn't completely wrong. Clearly alcoholism is an evil, and it does ruin families and lives, and that was even more the case then before it was supplanted by modern drugs like meth and crack. Like the discussion here of pot, it was (and is) a thing that can be used to have a little fun and be relatively harmless long term but can also tear apart lives and families.

The idea was simple enough. Eliminate those ills by eliminating alcohol. Between 1920 and 1933 we tried. It failed beyond anyone's worst nightmares.

The results were shocking. Not only did it not reduce consumption, it actually increased. New York alone by the end of Prohibition had as many as 100,000 speakeasy bars, illegal establishments run by organized crime. The "roaring 20s", seen by most historians as our most wild, party crazed time, all happened when the bars where it was happening were illegal.

It led to the creation of organized crime in this country. Al Capone was real, and it was all thanks to prohibition. Bootlegging, theft, crime, and the ills of alcohol all shot up. Gang wars were fought over distribution rights just like today over drugs.

It's the most exact repetition of a policy I know of in American history, with the exact same results. in the late 60s, just before the war on drugs began, only 4% reported trying pot in a Gallup poll, by the 90s it was up to 34%. The war on drugs has seen drug use INCREASE since pre war levels, and the data among high school seniors show that since 1975 50% have tried drugs with little variation despite decades of "war".

This is exactly what happened with Prohibition. Consumption increased, crime associated with providing it skyrocketed to insane levels. Even gun policy is driven by it. The National Firearms Act, the first federal regulation of civilian firearm ownership, banned machine guns in response to their use by mob families in their wars over control of alcohol distribution, just as today people call for gun restrictions due to the gun violence created by the war over drug distribution.

After 13 years of the worst crime and alcohol problems this nation had ever seen, we finally realized we were fighting the ills of alcohol in an incredibly self destructive way. We had made everything worse, across the board. Cities hoping to reduce the ill effects of alcohol were overrun with illegal bars and crime, bootlegging had become a way of life in rural America, and even more lives and families were being destroyed than ever before by both alcohol and the collateral damage of its illegality.

When we lifted Prohibition we saw no massive increase in real consumption or massive increase in the after effects of alcohol use on families. What we did see was a massive reduction in crime, and by having alcohol consumption public and "safe" again we were able to more readily address it. We have over time focused on its bigger ills directly, like DUIs. With Prohibition in place that would have been far more difficult due to the corruption it caused and the surreptitious nature of consumption.

It made little sense at one level - to address the problems of alcohol in 1933 by allowing its free and legal consumption, but that's exactly what we did and it worked. It made no sense to address tobacco consumption not by banning it but by even subsidizing its production but launching a massive campaign at a cultural level to make it unappealing, but it worked.

It's taken us a lot longer to start questioning the war on drugs. It only took 13 years of Prohibition to realize how bad it had failed, how it had done more harm than good. Carrie Nation, while well intentioned, had made Demon Rum far more powerful and a far worse ill of our society. It's time we realize we've done the same thing for the other drugs.

Legalize them, get their use out in the open where we can address it without the corruption and violence of the cartels, and attack them culturally rather than legally, just as we did with alcohol.

Just as Carrie Nation pointed to the ills of alcohol, there are ills to drug use no doubt, but that doesn't change the fact that the best way to address those ills is to treat them as consumptive activities that have a social ill aspect like alcohol and tobacco and not make them illicit and arrest anyone who comes near one.

We know what will happen if we change our policies. Prohibition has proven to be a detailed predictive road map of our war on drugs. It predicted the increase in use, it predicted the creation of the gangs and drug cartels, and it tells us what we must do to start improving the situation.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/6331/Deca...m-60s-70s.aspx

[dan_bgblue]

Marijuana has been illegal to produce, consume, or have in one's possession for what seems like forever. That fact has not curbed it's availability at all. It has made it much more expensive to buy on the street and has led to an underground economy where no taxes are paid on the profits. This high dollar street value has ruined the lives of millions of inner city kids that want a piece of the pie and enter the illegal drug trade.

I have not looked to buy any in over 30 years, but if I chose to look for it, I doubt it would take me over an hour to buy what I wanted.

As CBBN posted, the WAR on drugs is an utter failure, needs to be stopped, and the money and efforts spent to wage the war be deployed for education and rehab. Heck the taxes from the legal sale would more than fund those efforts.

[dan_bgblue]

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/new...est=latestnews