what are your opinions on this touchy subject?

i think it should because it does less harm than alchol physiologically, and less psychologically too. no reason not to, even in countries where weed is legalised alchol death rates are still alot higher.

Is drug talk okay on this site as long as we're not condoning it? because im not.  just a discussion.

sorry i have to disagree in my opinion it should not you are right about Alchol it is very bad but i don't think anything like that should be legal :/

Personally I think weed causes more damage to the cognitive ability than alcohol. Not saying abuse of alcohol is good, but you don't have to abuse weed for the negative physiological and psychological consequences; trust me, I've been there. Smoked weed for years, then when I hit rock bottom in my life, I felt the reality of life when I stopped smoking it.

No I don't think it should be legalized.

Not only is THC incredibly non-toxic, but it is not addictive. It's a heck of a lot safer than all these nasty modern anti-depressants and whatnot. More importantly, researchers seem to constantly be finding new uses for it, especially for treating, and perhaps even preventing, cancer.

There is nothing wrong with marijuana; it just needs to be used responsibly like anything else. The laws banning it are laughably outdated and I can't think of any legitimate reason to keep them.

i dont think it should be legal,alcohol only does damage if you use it in excess or if youre allergic.weed can cause damage no matter how much you use.

I do not think it should be legalised as my childhood and best friend smoked it and now has got pyscosis (unsure of spelling)

He laughs for no apparent reason he is very aggressive and also very timid, It is a very disturbing sight seeing one of your closest friends lose their life just because they thought they were cool by smoking weed

the only logical reason in preventing weed is that its a gateway drug to otherworse drugs and as for phychosis and people ruining their lives on it, i can sympathise and i also know people that have gone there but they all agree that if it wasnt weed it would be alchol or some other form of recreastional drug. if you've got a negative mentality anything can become harmful. scissors are used for cutting but can still kill.

There is nothing behind the gateway drug thing. That's why you hear about it in elementary school and then never again. As for marijuana causing psychosis, there are a few studies suggesting it could be harmful to developing brains-that is to say, children. Apart from that, there is nothing to suggest marijuana causes mental problems. Someone smoking pot and later developing psychosis is fairly unimpressive; correlation is not causation. It's about as reliable as claiming vaccines cause mental retardation.

I am not going to mention any health benefits or side affects of marijuana, as many of you all ready seem to understand them. Instead I will show that it should not have been prohibited in the first place. I am going to quote a websites article written by Kevin Zeese. The article goes into detail about new information found "declassified tapes of Oval Office conversations from 1971 and 1972"
http://www.hempfarm.org/Papers/Nixon's_Drug_War.html

*Note* All the yellow text is my personal opinion or analysis, and the white text are direct quotes from the website

As many of you probably know it was not considered a criminal offense to  posses 'weed' before Nixon's administration .  It was also allowed to be grown, often encouraged, as long as  you had government permission and paid the applicable taxes.

"Congress, when it passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, temporarily labeled marijuana a "Schedule I substance" --a flatly illegal drug with no approved medical purposes. But Congress acknowledged that it did not know enough about marijuana to permanently relegate it to Schedule I, and so they created a presidential commission to review the research and recommend a long-term strategy."

So Nixon created a commission to research more about Marijuana so it could be properly categorized. This next quote shows who Nixon appointed to the commission.

"Nixon appointed Raymond Shafer, former Republican Governor of Pennsylvania, as Chairman. As a former prosecutor, Shafer had a "law and order," drug warrior reputation. Nixon also appointed nine Commissioners, including the dean of a law school, the head of a mental health hospital, and a retired Chicago police captain. Along with the Nixon appointees, two senators and two congressmen from each party served on the Commission. "

It appears that the commission was fairly robust , with an all ready anti-drug promoting Shafer to just a common man in the mental health field. These men took part in the most extensive research in the history of the American government.

" The Shafer Commission -- officially known as the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse -- took its job seriously. They launched fifty research projects, polled the public and members of the criminal justice community, and took thousands of pages of testimony. Their work is still the most comprehensive review of marijuana ever conducted by the federal government."

Now the results of this research may surprise you, as they actually wanted to legalize marijuana.

"After reviewing all the evidence, these drug warriors were forced to come to a different conclusion than they had at first expected. Rather than harshly condemning marijuana, they started talking about legalization. When Nixon heard such talk, he quickly denounced the Commission -- months before it issued its report.

As a result of Nixon's public rebuke, Shafer met with the President. The Commission was upset, and the purpose of the meeting was to reassure them. But Nixon didn't budge. Instead, he warned Shafer to get control of his commission and avoid looking like a "bunch of do-gooders" who are "soft on marijuana." He warned Shafer that the Commission would "look bad as hell" if it came out with recommendations different from the direction of Congress and the President. 

During their meeting, Shafer reassured the President that he would not support "legalization," even though there were some on the Commission who did. He told Nixon they were looking for a unanimous recommendation. Nixon warned Shafer that he "had very strong feelings" on marijuana. Nixon and Shafer also discussed Shafer's potential appointment to a federal judgeship. "


The commission clearly didn't want to criminalize marijuana , but were told by Nixon  that they better not go against his wishes. And he had personal motives behind this as seen when he said that he ""had very strong feelings".  Nixon blamed Communists, left - wingers , and Jew's for forcing marijuana upon America (which is complete BS if you don't all ready think so) as seen in these quotes.

"That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff, they're trying to destroy us."

"Nixon's private comments about marijuana showed he was the epitome of misinformation and prejudice. He believed marijuana led to hard drugs, despite the evidence to the contrary. He saw marijuana as tied to "radical demonstrators." He believed that "the Jews," especially "Jewish psychiatrists" were behind advocacy for legalization, asking advisor Bob Haldeman, "What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob?" He made a bizarre distinction between marijuana and alcohol, saying people use marijuana "to get high" while "a person drinks to have fun." "

Here is a quote from another source (http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/node/19076) where Nixon goes on his own belief and not what the commission finds.

"Nixon once told his drug-policy adviser, Dr. Robert DuPont, “You’re the drug expert, not me, on every issue but one, and that’s decriminalization of marijuana. If you make any hint of supporting [it], you are history.” "


All of these quotes show that despite the commission coming to thet conclusion that marijuana shouldn't be criminalized, Nixon forced his own personal opinion that it should be criminalized. I suggest going to the site I intially linked, or researching this topic on your own. I am going to try and find transcripts of the "declassified tapes of Oval Office conversations from 1971 and 1972" which, according to the site I linked, can be found at www.csdp.org

smotpoker86 : holy cow is this for real!? why hasnt it been changed ? i always knew the laws were outdated and made on bad cause but i didnt know it was this corrupt thats ridiculous. my friend says that weed is becoming systematically criminalized as the general public has now seen weed in a bad light and have become ill-informed and often times wont budge alot like nixon this stuff really needs to be shown to the public in some way or another. heres a video i got shown give it a watch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwDRBm-qbQI

POKeMAD : Yes I believe the article I linked to is legit. As I said there is supposedly transcripts of this, which I haven't had the time to look into yet. I imagine it will take a lot of reading to find the areas where they talk about the drug war.

I have seen that music video before years ago. It isn't really my style of music, but it does a very accurate job showing the difference between the use of alcohol and weed. Even if you don't look at positive vs. negative health affects, I don't know how any one can argue that alcohol is safer than weed. Getting drunk usually leads to being aggressive and careless and often leads to violence (and trust me I was a border line alcoholic at one time haha) while weed is almost the opposite, leading to passive behaviour and, at least in my case, caring more about everything in general.

Here is a video you might enjoy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne9UF-pFhJY
It is a 1940's American documentary titled Hemp for Victory . It almost exclusively talks about the male hemp plant, but really the male and female plants go hand in hand for obvious reasons. I will give a quote from it to show how the government promoted growing.

"In 1942, patriotic farmers at the governments request, planted 36000 acres of seed hemp, an increase of several thousand percent. The goal for 1943 is 50000 acres of seed hemp."

Prior to the 1940's, the hemp industry in America had been declining due to cheaper imported hemp from Asia. Japan had stopped countries from exporting to America, thus the need for it to be grown in America again. Now a days there isn't very much hemp in America due to synthetic fibers. If these fibers didn't exist we would undoubtedly be growing or importing a large amount of hemp, as it is the "strongest natural fiber".
Just some interesting information I thought you and others might enjoy.

I'm rather neutral actually. I believe it could be legal but under specific circumstances. For instance, it needs a minimum age to purchase and use, it is sold only at specific places, and you can only use it, for non medical purposes, in a private residence or another place in which the owner has given consent. I will focus on two basic aspects: economic and medical.

Lets start with the economic. Typically people argues against it because it will drive people into financial ruin, but the reason it is so expensive is because of the costs of smuggling and because of the immense demand but minimal supply or suppliers. If the supply was increased, then theoretically the price can be decreased.

As for medically...from what I know it can be harmful but it is far from the worst, and...isn't it one's responsibility to decide what is an isn't good for them? What happened to freedom of choice? Isn't the banning of this substance technically against the amendments? I always been neutral in that I don't mind if people does it privately, but I don't want to use it myself. I can see cannabis being practical, and appropriate for certain people, but for it to be become the next cigarettes? Maybe, maybe not. 

Redrunelord : well weed is actually completley harmless physiologically even with the most rigoruous studies it causes some cognitive and psychological effects but thats the point of it no bdy has ever been killed by the physiological effects of weed cos there is none and as for the economic bit i can agree on althjough weed itself isnt addictive as it dosent have nicotine so people could stop whenever

POKeMAD : That is true, but the question is do people want to stop? Specifically, if their lives suck and it helps give them a form of escapism, there would be reluctance to stop, assuming no economic reasons to do so.

I do not think that it should be legal just because of the mental issues, I have seen the things it has done... So awful.

I agree with Redrunelord's post towards the medical aspect.

The following is copied from a website (gotquestions.org): "Smoking marijuana can be extremely harmful to your health. The most potent argument against the use of marijuana to treat medical disorders is that marijuana may cause the acceleration or aggravation of the very disorders it is being used to treat.

Smoking marijuana regularly (a joint a day) can damage the cells in the bronchial passages which protect the body against inhaled microorganisms and decrease the ability of the immune cells in the lungs to fight off fungi, bacteria, and tumor cells. For patients with already weakened immune systems, this means an increase in the possibility of dangerous pulmonary infections, including pneumonia, which often proves fatal in AIDS patients.

This study suggests that the use of marijuana as a medical therapy can and does have a very serious negative effect on patients with pre-existing immune deficits from AIDS, organ transplantation, or cancer chemotherapy, the very conditions for which marijuana has most often been suggested as a treatment.

Another study indicated that a marijuana user's risk of heart attack more than quadruples in the first hour after smoking marijuana. The researchers suggest that such an effect might occur from marijuana's effects on blood pressure and heart rate and reduced oxygen-carrying capacity of blood. Additionally, the smoke from cannabis—the plant from which marijuana is derived—contains compounds that can damage DNA and increase the risk of cancer just like tobacco smoke according to a recent study from the United Kingdom. In laboratory tests, Rajinder Singh from the University of Leicester and colleagues found certain carcinogens in cannabis smoke in amounts 50 percent greater than those found in tobacco smoke.

They noted that light cannabis use could possibly prove to be even more damaging because cannabis smokers usually inhale more deeply than cigarette smokers. Researchers found that the smoking of three to four cannabis cigarettes a day is associated with the same degree of damage to bronchial mucus membranes as 20 or more tobacco cigarettes a day.

In truth, marijuana causes short-term memory loss, distorted perception, trouble with thinking and problem solving, loss of motor skills, decrease in muscle strength, increased heart rate and anxiety – and that’s just for starters. According to the Mayo Clinic, marijuana smoke contains 50 to 70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than tobacco smoke and has the potential to cause cancer of the lungs and respiratory tract.

Although there remains much research to be done in this area, there are plenty of studies that indicate seriously deleterious effects of marijuana on the body. The pain controlling or analgesic effect of marijuana is roughly comparable to that of codeine, according to the DEA. However, the effect is potentiated due to the neuropsychiatric "high" feeling or euphoria that occurs when marijuana enters the bloodstream. But marijuana is no panacea. A recent study shows that high doses can actually increase pain. There is a therapeutic window for analgesia, with low doses being ineffective, medium doses resulting in pain relief, and high doses increasing pain.

It is important to note that researchers also found a significant correlation between increasing marijuana use and drowsiness, loss of control over thought and action, and transient depression and paranoia."

Yeah, so I've been there, smoked weed for years, but now I'm not, and I agree with all of this...

tRIUNE : hmm this seems a bit fishy, we've got extensive drug tests by nixon and a website called gotquestions.org with conflicting statements, one being its practically harmless with drinking being a lot worse and then you have information saying weed is actually very dangerous. If what smotpoker said was true then weed i think should be legalised but if yours is indeed true then alot of people would probably try to keep it illegal. the thing i noticed though was from yoru source ive seen a lot of 'potantially' and 'could' its true that things could happen or potentially could arise but theres no proof its not been recorded that regular pot smokers in actuality have short term memory loss or nto that ive seen or heard of. i think a case study would work really well in uncovering the truth behind the damage weed can do. Some of my friends are regulars and they look completley normal with no loss of motor coordination and some even play tennis really well even after doing it regularly.

POKeMAD : it definately
CAN cause psychological
problems such as
sktsophrenia,clinical
depresion and apparently
bronchitis.while people say
its never killed anyone there
are plenty that when they
were cut off from it commited
suicide from depresion,il
post the vid later if i find it.

thenumberone : Wrong. Marijuana has been linked to psychological problems like schizophrenia. Correlation is not causation and there is
insufficient evidence to show that it can cause these problems outright, if it only contributes to them, or if the sort of people who smoke pot
are simply more likely to develop psychological problems.

tRUINE, it isn't marijuana that is harmful, it is the smoke. Breathing smoke directly into the lungs is harmful, regardless of where the smoke comes from. Marijuana has also been shown to kill cancer cells. While marijuana smoke has carcinogens, nobody smokes the equivalent of a pack a day. In addition to that, there are other ways to ingest, from food to vapour.

What people need to realise is that, like any drug, marijuana is not perfect. Compared to a drug such as any opiate, which is also used as a painkiller, marijuana is pretty darn safe and non-addictive.

In the meantime, look this over. It has links to a wide range of studies on the benefits of marijuana.
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=95659

Traduweise : I think this all a matter of opinion, possibly even biased, the argument could just go in circles.

While marijuana can be ingested without smoking it, thereby eliminating these risks, there still remain negative physiological and psychological consequences including damage to the reproductive system, the immune system, and cognitive ability. Just like any other drug; yeah, marijuana is a drug.