Phelps

[Teresa]

I do have to say my child would have a near death experience if I ever found out......

When I hear stuff like this, I just have to compare the effects of marijuana to those of alcohol. I've seen alcohol cause people to start fights, wreck their cars, and whore it up reeeeal good. I've also seen people become addicted to alcohol and destroy their entire lives over it.
Weed, on the other hand... well, I've seen people smoke weed and WAY overindulge on Gummi Bears. So if we're actually making laws in the interest of public safety, why is alcohol the one that's legal? Of course the answer is simple. The laws aren't made in the interest of public safety.

[milesmiles]

...and whore it up reeeeal good.

[Stardog82]

Speeding to the hospital to save someone's life and the American Revolution are examples where the ends justify the means. The only reason to smoke pot is "hey man, lets go get high, man."Victimless crime is still crime.

[dufremle]

The laws aren't made in the interest of public safety.

Bingo. The government makes more money off importing marajuana than they can make off taxes. They won't give that up until they have to. It will be a while before it is legal, but it will eventually happen. Especially as the medical community starts to embrace it.

[dufremle]

The only reason to smoke pot is "hey man, lets go get high, man."

You can say the same thing about alcohol.

[nitzer]

I do have to say my child would have a near death experience if I ever found out......

When I hear stuff like this, I just have to compare the effects of marijuana to those of alcohol. I've seen alcohol cause people to start fights, wreck their cars, and whore it up reeeeal good. I've also seen people become addicted to alcohol and destroy their entire lives over it.
Weed, on the other hand... well, I've seen people smoke weed and WAY overindulge on Gummi Bears. So if we're actually making laws in the interest of public safety, why is alcohol the one that's legal? Of course the answer is simple. The laws aren't made in the interest of public safety.

Laws mean nothing if they are not enforceable. Should alcohol be legal? Probably not. Currently you can take a simple Breathalyzer to determine if you are over the limit as far as alcohol is concerned and a reasonably accurate level that you are over the limit. That is enforceable. Is there a same test to determine legal limits of "intoxication" or "influence" after smoking pot DURING a routine traffic stop? Besides a field sobriety test, I know of none and that test is highly subjective. They tried to ban alcohol, it didn't work so they made it legal through enforcement. But that is also because it was already legal. It is much harder to ban something once it is legal. Why would we want to introduce yet another legal way to kill brain cells? Most people I know that smoke pot don't have enough brain cells to spare.

Hell, let's legalize it.

Here are the results as I see them: states will tax it to the point where it will be more expensive to buy than it is now and make loads of money (good for me, bad for pot smokers), growers will find better and better methods of making it more potent (good if you smoke it, bad if you don't), those growers will still try to hide from the state since the state will be taxing the crap out of their crop and trying to regulate the potency (bad), easier access for everyone so more people will smoke it (bad IMHO especially for children), health insurance companies will start to give discounts for those than don't smoke it and penalize those that do (good for me, bad for the pot smokers), more money going into the hands of the drug testing companies (bad for everyone except the drug testing companies), and increased governmental cost to regulate it that wouldn't be offset by taxes (bad). Being that I am a non-pot smoker, that's 2 goods and 5 bad points. For the pot smokers that's 1 good and 6 bad points.

Who would benefit from legalizing pot? NO ONE...that's my point.

Disclaimer: never smoked pot in my life and frankly never will.

[dufremle]

The breathalizer can only identify alcohol. A field sobriety test can identify anything that can cause your reflexes to be impaired. Breathalizers also have to be calibrated and records kept about testing. Seems like the breathalizer fails against a sobriety test.

They also changed the laws from Driving While Intoxicated (specifically referring to alcohol) to Driving Under the Influence (referring to any drug). Treating marajuana just like alcohol is not any harder to do. You can also smell marajuana like you can alcohol.

[DarcShadow]

In the DUI vs DWI world, the only real difference is how easy it is to prosecute. DUI, over the legal limit is easier to prosecutebecause there is a clear cut line. DWI, is a judgement call and harder to prosecute. Technically if you have even a single drink, take some cold med. take any sort of med and then drive you can be arrested for DWI.

[Rhino]

he actually told me that breaking the law is NEVER moral.

I agree with him. It's not moral, even if the thing you're doing to break the law is. Now whether it's ethical or not is a different story. That's where you can have things like the American revolution or speeding to get someone to the hospital.

[Firewa11]

“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

One of my favorite quotes.

[Teresa]

Should alcohol be legal? Probably not.

I don't believe it is the role of the government to protect us from everything that might hurt us. Neither alcohol, marijuana, guns, knives, tree houses, nor friggin' pogo sticks should be illegal.
82, a victimless crime is not still a crime, in my estimation. Government exists to protect us from being harmed by others, not to protect us from ourselves.

[Telomere]

Government exists to protect us from being harmed by others, not to protect us from ourselves.

That is what mental institutions are for

[Stardog82]

For the record, I'm not telling anybody not to smoke, etc. Just be willing to accept the consequences if you're caught.

[Teresa]

For Pete's sake...

[DemonDuck]

Should alcohol be legal? Probably not.

I don't believe it is the role of the government to protect us from everything that might hurt us. Neither alcohol, marijuana, guns, knives, tree houses, nor friggin' pogo sticks should be illegal.
82, a victimless crime is not still a crime, in my estimation. Government exists to protect us from being harmed by others, not to protect us from ourselves.

I agree the federal government exist to protect us from being harmed by others and not protect us from ourselves. The local government however should be allowed to make laws that the people of that local area want. To go into this will be a whole big different story so I will leave it at that.


So the government should only go after drug dealers and suppliers..... Then they would be protecting us form being harmed by others. The users are hurting themselves so leave them alone. Only problem is the users often get others to use as well... give them the first joint or the first line... whatever. That would then make the user a dealer and personally responsible for harming another. Look the only problem I have with weed being legal is that it leads to the other drugs being legal and if my kid was using it (by the way my child will also have a near death experience if I ever catch them drinking).

The whole Alcohol argument is not a good one if you want weed legal. Alcohol kills more Americans than any other drug. So it would seem that making a drug legal only makes its used more and in the end hurts more Americans.

All of this and I still don't stand firm against making it legal but just fear the end result. Think of it this way. Right now you can not get specific jobs if you have or do smoke weed. If you do smoke while at one of these jobs and they drug test you ... you get fired. If weed is made legal then a business could no longer fire someone for being positive on a drug test. You would have no way of knowing is someone was high while working unless you witnessed them getting high or whatever. Police... firefighters... paramedics...piolets....buss drivers... truck drivers... military... you name it and there would be more of them high while at work. Is that a good thing?

[Teresa]

Alcohol is legal, and when someone is drunk at work, we just draw their blood and test it, then they get fired.
Alcohol harms more people than any other drug (except nicotine) because of the nature of the drug, not because of its legal status.
I don't agree that drug dealers harm people by selling drugs any more than I agree with people who say payday loan companies harm people by giving payday loans. If you're stupid enough to take out the loan, you deserve whatever you get.
And I know where you're going with the "local government" argument... disagree with that to an extent, too.

[Striple]

Not to mention, there are existing models where cannabis products have been legalized at the federal level for years (i.e., the Netherlands). Strangely enough, they do not suffer from any of the problems that are constantly prophesized by the anti-legalization crowd.

I also agree with S77 that it is ridiculous to ban cannabis, when alcohol, nicotine, and processed sugars are legal, considering that the damage done by each of these likely surpasses that of cannabis by several dimensions. But no, let's go after Joe Blow, because he is smoking a doobie to chill out after a long day at work. Ridiculous.

[Firewa11]

Yeah, but to repeal cannabis laws would be to admit they were wrong. And not give police a reason to arrest folks.

This year alone, to date, approx. 520,000 people have been arrested for cannabis law offenses.

http://www.drugsense.org/cms/wodclock" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This year alone our government has spent $24 BILLION dollars on the war on drugs. And, to think, we are in some sort of economic recession. Imagine how many jobs just half of that could create.

[Rhino]

That half a billion is creating jobs. Cops, corrections officers, other prison workers, court clerks, etc.

[DemonDuck]

Alcohol is legal, and when someone is drunk at work, we just draw their blood and test it, then they get fired.
Alcohol harms more people than any other drug (except nicotine) because of the nature of the drug, not because of its legal status.
I don't agree that drug dealers harm people by selling drugs any more than I agree with people who say payday loan companies harm people by giving payday loans. If you're stupid enough to take out the loan, you deserve whatever you get.
And I know where you're going with the "local government" argument... disagree with that to an extent, too.

Yes if someone is drunk at work we draw blood and test it ... then they get fired. Someone is at work high we draw blood and it shows they used drugs.... Ok but drugs are legal. There is no way to tell that the person used the drugs at work ... or was even affected by the drugs while at work. Only that they have used drugs recently.

If we are only talking about weed then ok ... it does less harm than lots of things. The problem is that it would not stop at weed. It would keep going from there and we would have legal meth, steroids, LSD, everything.

If they made weed legal it wouldn't change anything in my family so it really does not matter that much to me. Hell it might actually lower the use of it because it would all be regulated and taxed. People would be paying way more for weed than they do right now and they would probably get less potent stuff. I think it would be funny as hell. The rest of the drugs .... no way for many reasons.

[nitzer]

Not to mention, there are existing models where cannabis products have been legalized at the federal level for years (i.e., the Netherlands).

I will say that *we* (as Americans) are not of the same mindset as Europeans. They have tons of mass transit and therefore stuff like drunk driving is very uncommon and the penalties are HUGE. Here someone can get like 3 DWIs in the US and still be walking free (I have known people that have that many or more that didn't go to jail). Beer is also legal to drink at 16 in most of those countries. They learn how to drink before learning how to drive at 18. Hard liquor is usually available to those over 18. For the most part, European countries are more responsible with their drinking/smoking habits with massive penalties that are actually enforced. That's the difference. Reading this, it seems that they are not without their problems:

"In the last few years drug tourism and certain strains of cannabis with higher concentrations of THC have challenged the former policy in the Netherlands and led to a more restrictive approach; for example, a ban on selling cannabis to tourists in coffee shops suggested to start late 2011.[3][4][5] In October 2011 the Dutch government proposed a new law to the Dutch parliament, that will put cannabis with 15% THC or more onto the list of hard drugs. If the law comes into effect, it would prohibit "coffee shops" from selling cannabis of that potency. The government finds motivation from its experts' assertions, that cannabis of that strength have an "unacceptable risk" associated with its usage.[citation needed] Today, about 80% of the "coffee shops" sell, among their products, such kind of cannabis.[6]"

So, they are looking to "fix" issues with their laws. If you read the above, it makes some of the same points I stated in an earlier post.

[Striple]

I will say that *we* (as Americans) are not of the same mindset as Europeans.

No argument there. All of northern and western Europe invests heavily in education, public transportation, health care, and retirement funds. As a trade-off, the taxes in those countries are very high.

And yes, obviously drugs are an issue everywhere, but the European legislature has continued to move closer to legalizing cannabis in many of the other European countries, regardless of the debate over certain strains with abnormally high THC levels. Even in Germany, which has some of the most adamantly enforced laws in the world (you will quickly get cited if you do not properly recycle your garbage, for instance), the possession of cannabis for personal use yields a citation at worst. No jail, no trial, none of that nonsense. This frees law enforcement resources to fight criminal offenses that are arguably of higher priority than my neighbor who likes his weed.

Remember, we tried banning the sale and manufacture of alcohol in the 1920s, and the results were highly counterproductive. We have the same exact situation with cannabis right now, and this could easily be alleviated by legalizing it.

[fixxervi6]

I will say that *we* (as Americans) are not of the same mindset as Europeans.

No argument there. All of northern and western Europe invests heavily in education, public transportation, health care, and retirement funds. As a trade-off, the taxes in those countries are very high.

And yes, obviously drugs are an issue everywhere, but the European legislature has continued to move closer to legalizing cannabis in many of the other European countries, regardless of the debate over certain strains with abnormally high THC levels. Even in Germany, which has some of the most adamantly enforced laws in the world (you will quickly get cited if you do not properly recycle your garbage, for instance), the possession of cannabis for personal use yields a citation at worst. No jail, no trial, none of that nonsense. This frees law enforcement resources to fight criminal offenses that are arguably of higher priority than my neighbor who likes his weed.

Remember, we tried banning the sale and manufacture of alcohol in the 1920s, and the results were highly counterproductive. We have the same exact situation with cannabis right now, and this could easily be alleviated by legalizing it.

Prohibition is a great example that everyone loves to ignore, if there is demand for something and you make it illegal, you just opened the doors for black markets, gangs, and turf wars.

[DarcShadow]

Yeah, but till the stoners actually go to the polls and vote the vote will continued to be ruled by the senior citizens that won't let go of their social security.

[Teresa]

Someone is at work high we draw blood and it shows they used drugs.... Ok but drugs are legal. There is no way to tell that the person used the drugs at work ... or was even affected by the drugs while at work. Only that they have used drugs recently.

There are assays for actual levels of THC metabolites in serum and whole blood. They are not in wide clinical use because they have no clinical significance. Quantitative results aren't reported on legal draws (for hiring, etc.) because quantitative results are irrelevant in those cases.
There are certain THC metabolites that fluctuate directly with intoxication (insofar as that word can be used in this case), similar to the way alcohol levels fluctuate. If the market demands development of assays to quantify them, companies will develop them and make then available for wider use. We see new tests in the lab every year; just that something's not available currently doesn't mean it will never be available.
It's easy to insist that a certain freedom not be granted when it's one that you don't intend to take advantage of, anyway. Just remember that someday folks will try to take away something that's important (though maybe not essential) to you.