<p>1of42: "Hello spideygirl, interesting to see you've retreated here from the Parents Cafe where your anti-factual, baseless and ridiculous arguments have quickly lost traction. Maybe you'll have more success here - but I think not.</p>
<p>(Note to anyone who's unsure what I mean by this, go read the thread "Alcohol" - it's in the Parents Cafe, probably a few pages off the latest page. In it, spideygirl asserts that marijuana is adulterated regularly with cocaine, crack and or heroin, despite no actual proof of that assertion, and direct contradiction from mini, who actually sits on one of NIDA's epidemiology committees, meaning it's his job to actually know drug use and adulteration statistics, facts and trends.)
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<p>About three things are incorrect in the above quote, but I will not address them directly. I am trying to dislodge myself from a beating-a-dead-horse debate. </p>
<p>I will continue to pass on information I have heard from reliable sources which tells the truth about drugs.</p>
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...its attendant waste of scarce money
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<p>we are too financially strained at the the moment to care?</p>
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through jailing otherwise productive members of society
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<p>....why exactly should they be set free(or get off easy)? because marijuana jails a large portion of productive members of society? because they are productive? lol</p>
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and loss of tax revenue (which could come from the sale of marijuana)
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<p>we could tax Russian hookers, heroin, crack cocaine, etc. and make a lot of $$$$, it does not mean we should.</p>
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as well as inhibited scientific process through dampened research and loss of funds
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<p>you need to elaborate on that one...</p>
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There is - in my opinion - only a single good argument for banning marijuana: to reduce the harm to people and thus to society that comes from its use.
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we are too financially strained at the the moment to care?
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<p>Basic economics. You commit to economic transaction X if MB >= MC and repeat it until MB = MC (taking into account opportunity cost). </p>
<p>In this case it's not that society is financially strained (in the relative sense), but MC simply exceeds MB in this case, not in the least because the deprivation of liberty is a direct detriment to society, which in turn has other economic effects. Maybe when 90% of people are living in palatial residences the opportunity cost will go down enough to justify it, but not until then.</p>
<p>You are resorting to line by line rebuttals here. Your position has been lost. Please mature.</p>
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why exactly should they be set free(or get off easy)? because marijuana jails a large portion of productive members of society? because they are productive? lol
<p>Justice is founded (by social contract and rule of law) on what is beneficial to society. Hence murder and thievery are outlawed because they result in net detriment to society (the latter reducing allocative efficiency, the former resulting loss of human capital, both of which undermine confidence).</p>
<p>Thus when a body, entrusted with enforcing portions of the social contract, considers whether to initiate prosecution against people who commit to a certain action, they must evaluate 1) what detriment is posed by that individual to the social contract 2) the marginal costs the proposed penalty would cause 3) whether the penalty would repair the initial detriment and yield a net benefit over the penalty's marginal costs (which would include direct detriments and opportunity cost).</p>
<p>Prosecution of cannabis users fails on all three points.</p>
<p>Pot is bad for you. It causes things to happen to your body that are not positive. No, it isn't as bad as a lot of other things, but it still should not be used. I've posted links to what I've read elsewhere on CC, and discussed things I have been told by professionals, which can be found by looking at my previous posts. </p>
<p>Basically, though, if a person is adamant to not only smoke pot, but also BELIEVE no matter what is put out there that it is also not harmful, then nothing anyone can say will change that. To disregard 99% of good information and jump all over the 1% that agrees with what you want to do does not seem like good reasoning to me. </p>
<p>If I were going to smoke pot, I would just say, "Yep, I know it isn't good for me, but I am going to do it anyway". Because that would be reality.</p>
<p>On another point, it is true that too much money is going toward law enforcement and incarceration and not enough toward research which is desperately needed to help those who suffer from the disease of addiction. There is so much stigma associated with chemical dependency. If the same percentage of the population suffered from something like MS, you can bet that there would be a lot more effort to find a cure. Yet a dopamine deficiency in an addictive brain is not unlike problems with insulin regulation in diabetes. Also, many people still don't completely buy the "disease theory" of addiction. Addiction and partying are very different things.</p>
<p>The best reason for finding an alternative to jailing drug addicts (and instead treating them like the sick people that they are) is that it is the moral and humane thing to do. There is a big disconnect between what professionals know about addiction and how the government responds to it. I think mandatory treatment would have a better outcome than incarceration for a surprising number of people and situations.</p>
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To disregard 99% of good information and jump all over the 1% that agrees with what you want to do does not seem like good reasoning to me.
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<p>Of course, this is what you assert.</p>
<p>I'm talking about peer-reviewed scientific literature here, not conservatively-funded partisan drivel. </p>
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It causes things to happen to your body that are not positive.
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<p>Ice cream is also bad for you, as are computer games ... </p>
<p>Everything has a cost. </p>
<p>Of course, if you realise it's a simple matter of MB > MC, then this gives reason to why we eat ice cream even though it's full of sugar, and why most of us do not eat too much.</p>
<p>In effect, if you use the marginal theory of value, use in moderation is justified.</p>
<p>"I'm talking about peer-reviewed scientific literature here, not conservatively-funded partisan drivel."</p>
<p>I am as well. And my views on how addiction should be handled in our society is about as different to that of conservatives as it can get. Most official right wing positions on drug policy make me sick. But that still doesn't mean that I need to put my head in the sand about pot being unhealthy, and I do not think it is helpful to cite other unhealthy things to buttress an argument.</p>
<p>I have watched people decline from eating too many calories, and from too many drugs. Amotivational syndrome, caused by smoking too much weed, is a cruel fate, and way worse in my opinion than obesity.</p>
<p>I guess it comes back to what I said earlier. Just know what the vice is that you are choosing, and make an educated choice.</p>
<p><------- reaches our her wrist and seemingly leaps from off of the roof top. She sails through the air, one arm after the other, between the skyscrapers. With barely any effort, she reaches down, grabs the bong, the XBox controller, AND the Doritos, and steals off into the night.</p>
<p>People need to calm down. Pot is a mild lung irritant, but it's not as bad as alcohol and tobacco. I smoke pot at least once or twice a week, am in college, doing great academically, having the time of my life. I have yet to experience these adverse effects, .....btw could you stop hogging the pipe..let me get a hit of that dank por favor.</p>
<p>Marijuana is less offensive to the human body than many, if not a majority, of perscription drugs, and has actually been shown to be healthier than pretty much every other drug of abuse. The design of the experiments done in regards to mental illness are flawed, and there must first be determined that there is no correlation between self-medication and depression, and then that there is no correlation between self-medication and marijuana, and then one must consider the implications of marjuana withdrawal, something that actually does exist.</p>
<p>If you guys want, I can start pulling out quotes from my Drugs and Human Behavior text book.</p>
<p>Thank you for offering to pull out your textbook, but I prefer to get my advice about drug use from people with MD's, a specialty in addiction, and years of work in the field.</p>
<p>I can assure you that it is better not to smoke pot, even if it is less harmful than other illicit drugs. It still can do some pretty undesirable things to your mind and body.</p>
Thank you for offering to pull out your textbook, but I prefer to get my advice about drug use from people with MD's, a specialty in addiction, and years of work in the field.
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<p>Who do you think writes the textbooks? Undergraduate students? -_-</p>
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I can assure you that it is better not to smoke pot, even if it is less harmful than other illicit drugs. It still can do some pretty undesirable things to your mind and body.
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<p>Don't have sex, drink alcohol, eat fast food, eat ice cream, eat any fatty foods or sweets, watch any TV, read or do any eye-straining activity, type on a keyboard, drink acidic sodas....</p>
<p>To avoid undesirable things that can happen to your body, why not join a monastery and be a nun?</p>
<p>I'm a big fan of the term "individual variability" in terms of drug effects. </p>
<p>Will marijuana cause you to get a mental illness? Probably not. </p>
<p>Will marijuana enhance your overall health? Probably not. </p>
<p>Is marijuana completely harmless? No. </p>
<p>The idea that marijuana is "healthier" than any other drug of abuse? That kind of makes me laugh. So it's okay because it's the least bad? And using the words "healthy" in this context seems...odd and vague. I think of wheat grass and carrots when I think of healthy - things with proven benefits that outweigh the risks for animals across the board.
Just a strange use of language, I guess. </p>
<p>I agree that a lot of studies are flawed. There is also the MAJOR flaw that most of the marijuana studies going on right now are using pot with much lower THC levels than regular street level marijuana. Whoops.</p>
<p>is it bad to try pot just to know what you should NOT do for the rest of your life. Like can it be harmful? Is it possible to just try it once or a few times and never touch it again?
I know a lot of friends who unfortunately have this bad habit :(</p>