Is marijuana really that bad?

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Originally posted by Sier
(I don't know why people think it's not addictive either, my coworker needed some so badly he was twitching in a corner.)

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Sier, someone you were working with was twitching because they need weed? I have to agree with Eno on this one, it's not possible man. That sounds like either, dope (Crystal Meth) or crack. People don't twitch from withdrawals on weed. Why, because there are no withdrawals from weed.

And about the citations. All my information is from here.

http://www.cannabis.com/untoldstory/

I'll definitely post more and get cits for info, but I'll need a few days to perform a little more research and then Frobozz, we'll get down to the actual facts.

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Originally posted by Frobozz
I think it's quite clear that marijuana frequently is putting children in the emergency room. That sounds like a problem to me, for their health. AND it sounds like a problem to me as a tax payer.

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Oh and this one is for you Frobozz.

Myth: Marijuana is a significant cause of emergency room admissions.

Fact: The U.S. government reports that marijuana-related emergency room episodes are increasing. The government counts an emergency room admission as a marijuana-related episode if the word marijuana appears anywhere in the medical record. If a patient tests positive for marijuana because he/she used marijuana several days before the incident occurred, if a drunk driver admits he/she also smoked some marijuana, or if anyone involved in the incident merely possessed marijuana, the government counts the emergency room admission as a "marijuana-related episode." Less than 0.2% of all emergency room admissions are "marijuana related." This so-called marijuana-causes-emergencies statistic was carefully crafted by the government to make marijuana appear dangerous.

If it's not possible, then why did it happen? I know it was weed and for a fact that he doesn't do any other drugs. Your sources must not be accurate, unless he is suffering from a bout of insanity.

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Originally posted by Sier
If it's not possible, then why did it happen? I know it was weed and for a fact that he doesn't do any other drugs. Your sources must not be accurate, unless he is suffering from a bout of insanity.

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Assuming this really did happen, and assuming you really do know for a fact that your coworker does not do any other drugs...Maybe the weed was laced with something else? Maybe he was just acting like an idiot on purpose? Maybe he's mentally unstable? Maybe he drank too much coffee that morning? Maybe he had health problems that were unrelated to drugs? We don't always know our coworkers as well as we think, and obviously you aren't familiar with marijuana or those who use it, or if you are you haven't learned much from observation. Seriously this sounds like something just made up. Twitching uncontrollably while standing in a corner, or whatever he was doing, is just not something that happens to even heavy users of marijuana.

This topic always throws up some interesting replies..

With the regard to the benefits of growing hemp, that is kind of irrelevant because the hemp grown for commercial purposes will not get you high. You'll get as much thrill out of smoking corn or cabbages as if you smoked commercially grown hemp. The reason it is very hard to get licences to grow it, and is illegal in many countries, is because it LOOKS like marijuana, so an evil crafty drug harvester could pretend to be growing hemp but could actually be growing evil drugs. Or it would be easy for someone to just go stick a few marijuana plants in a hemp field and harvest themselves before the good hemp growing farmer harvested his fantastic hemp crop. Its a bit sad that we have to miss out on such a great crop because it looks like evil drugs. (I guess its lucky heroin doesn't come from anything that looks innocuous. Oh yeah, except poppies. hmm.)

A couple of reasons cannabis should be legalized are:

-Its a gateway drug. But only because it is illegal. What I mean by this, is that when people buy marijuana, they are buying it from a drug dealer. Now, often these are just little small time marijuana dealers, however often they also have other drugs to sell. If the dealer relies on drug dealing as a full time trade, they tend to prefer to sell higher profit items, or items with greater customer loyalty (ie physically addictive drugs). As such they will encourage their existing customers to try some of their other wares. Thus people buying marijuana are offered other dangerous drugs. That is the only reason it is a gateway drug. If it was legalized and sold in a controlled manner it would be no more, and no less, of a gateway drug than nicotine or alcohol towards hard drugs.


-It is fucking stupid putting people in prison for smoking or posessing it. It costs taxpayers a fuck load of money to put people in jail for this, and I don't want my tax dollars(or pounds or whatever) to be spent on locking up potheads. Especially since it costs MORE to lockup a pothead for a year than it does to pay him dole money for a year. I'm not convinced that prison is the best place to rehabilitate pot smokers either. It'd be interesting to find out how many quit marijuana use after being released from prison subsequent to a marijuana conviction for posession/dealing.

-Almost everyone smokes it at some time or other. If the American War on Drugs was actually carried out effectively, and these 'evil drugfiends' were actually being caught you'd find that you'd have to punish and criminalize the majority of college students, at least half of all high school students, most of Congress, most of the military. In short, most adults and teenagers in the US. In order to be a 'dealer' all one has to do is pass a joint or a blunt or whatever on to someone. that is drug dealing. Thus there are a lot of drug dealers out there.

Actually it wasn't really a topic about the war on drugs so I was a bit off track there, however most of those defending the continuing prohibition have not said they want punishments downgraded, so I guess its fair to assume they think what is happening now is ok =)

-tharun

ps (I also think lots of other drugs should be legalized too, but thats for another day!)

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Originally posted by tharun

-It is fucking stupid putting people in prison for smoking or posessing it. It costs taxpayers a fuck load of money to put people in jail for this, and I don't want my tax dollars(or pounds or whatever) to be spent on locking up potheads. Especially since it costs MORE to lockup a pothead for a year than it does to pay him dole money for a year. I'm not convinced that prison is the best place to rehabilitate pot smokers either. It'd be interesting to find out how many quit marijuana use after being released from prison subsequent to a marijuana conviction for posession/dealing.

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It also costs tax payers substantial money to pick up the tab on overdosed, burnt out, dieing druggies in the ER.

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-Almost everyone smokes it at some time or other. If the American War on Drugs was actually carried out effectively, and these 'evil drugfiends' were actually being caught you'd find that you'd have to punish and criminalize the majority of college students, at least half of all high school students, most of Congress, most of the military. In short, most adults and teenagers in the US. In order to be a 'dealer' all one has to do is pass a joint or a blunt or whatever on to someone. that is drug dealing. Thus there are a lot of drug dealers out there.

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Bahah Tharun that is so much unfactual, purely opiniated bullshit. Most people do not smoke weed, half of high schoolers do not smoke weed, a majority of college students certainly do not smoke weed. You may have been smoking weed when you wrote that though. See above links for more accurate references.

I'm against illegal drugs, period.

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Originally posted by Frobozz
Bahah Tharun that is so much unfactual, purely opiniated bullshit. Most people do not smoke weed, half of high schoolers do not smoke weed, a majority of college students certainly do not smoke weed. You may have been smoking weed when you wrote that though.

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Well the original post did ask us what we thought about it, it didn't ask us to spew out a whole bunch of random numbers and facts and web sites claiming to be sources of accurate information.

I'd guess most of the facts posted so far in this thread are either manipulated stats or just outright lies anyway, the question is who can apply all this nonsense to suit their argument better.

I just wasted 10 minutes of my time with an Internet search on our topic and didn't find anything but more bullshit, so I'm not even going to bother citing any of the ones that would seemingly help prove that Frobozz is, in fact, the one who's full of unfactual, purely opinionated bullshit. For every one of those sites there is another saying the exact opposite, so, screw it.

I do have one 'fact' from a non-web-based source to contribute:

I remember taking a survey my senior year of HS which asked all sorts of questions about drug use, sexual activity, and other stuff. The survey was given by my school district. It took three hours and was given to everyone in the school.

When the survey results came back for my class, the stats really surprised me. I remember specifically that, by the end of their senior year, 87% of students in my class had tried marijuana at least once.

87%!

So for my HS at least, Frobozz is right: half of high schoolers do not consume weed. Over 3/4 have used it at least once.

That was 10 years ago, I've no idea what the stats would look like today, but I doubt they're any lower, and if they are, likely it's because marijuana has been replaced by other drugs. It seems like kids these days are more into drugs than when I was that age.

Anyway I was shocked that 87% of my graduating class had tried it at least once. I had an (obviously incorrect) stereotype in my mind of the typical pot smoker, and I'd suspected maybe only 5-10% of my class had even tried it.

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Originally posted by Enosekel

So for my HS at least, Frobozz is right: half of high schoolers do not consume weed. Over 3/4 have used it at least once.

That was 10 years ago, I've no idea what the stats would look like today, but I doubt they're any lower, and if they are, likely it's because marijuana has been replaced by other drugs.

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That number sounds accurate for my graduating class as well, and that was only two years ago.

I don't know what campuses Frobozz has been on, but the handful I've been on in this state, most people do smoke marijuana. I'm not claiming to have some strictly factual statistics, just what I see around me. Most people have tried it at least once. *shrugs*

Heh. I know for a fact that practically every friend I had at Bozzy's undergrad (which was also my undergrad), smoked up at least occasionally. Considering I was in the music, computer science, and sociology departments, I knew a pretty broad range of people. And finding pot there was easier to come by than alcohol (due to the drinking age and the fact that it was harder to walk into a store and buy a bottle of wine under 21 than it was to find a dime bag.)

For all these arguments against pot, here's the main thing... alcohol is worse. It's legal. I'm NOT gonna OD on pot (no one ever has!), I could die from alcohol poisoning. Sure, I could smoke up and go get in a car wreck, but, I'm a LOT less likely to do that than get drunk and get into a car wreck cuz I'm less likely to WANT to drive while stoned than drunk. It may be psychologically addicting, but it's NOT physiologically addicting. Alcohol is both. So, again, why in the hell is it illegal and not alcohol?

And, those overdosed, strung out, dying druggies? never once seen a pothead (even those serious stoners) THAT bad. It's no worse (possibly less considering you won't have all those liver damage issues) than a serious alcoholic. You don't get hungover from pot, so, you can smoke at night and go to work the next day, unlike drinking. Seems to me that most people lump all "drugs" together except for alcohol and combine the pot smoker with the crackhead in their imagination. Which is... ridiculous!

I just gotta ask again, why is it illegal while alcohol is legal? That's what makes no bloody sense.

Oh! I dont disagree that alchohol isn't a drug, can have bad effects upon someone or anything of that nature!

Yep! I was fortunate enough to go to the same place as Tali, but in the short amount of time between her graduation and mine things have obviously had to have changed. I don't think anyone that actually knows me could argue that Im not out at places where drugs and alchohol are being consumed. I certainly am, some bastards tried to shoot up at one of my parties *side rant*.

In either case I think it's incredibly easy to get alchohol in Geneseo, we could ask the other threshers from there if that's still true or not. Personally, I think alchoholism is just as bad as being addicted to marijuana. What I have been arguing is that it's lame to say that you can't become addicted to marijuana and that being addicted to marijuana has no serious negative consequences.

As far as stats go. I think every site that I've been too that is not sponsored by a legalizing marijuana group or an outright anti-marijuana group has produced staggeringly extreme numbers. I really do not believe that "Hey man, smoke up eeeveryone's doing it" holds up anymore than "Man, that's lame.. no one does it."

Statistically speaking:

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The University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future Study, an annual survey of the nation’s youth, indicates that in 1998 past month use of marijuana among 10th graders dropped significantly. Among 8th and 12th graders, the rates of marijuana use remained stable from between 1997 and 1998. Nevertheless, marijuana use is still widespread among youth, with nearly a quarter (23%) of all 12th graders stating that they had used marijuana in the past month.

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And for my buddy Kianier who's reading from a pro-maryjane cite:

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In addition, according to the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), the number of nationwide marijuana/hashish emergency room visits quadrupled from 16,200 in 1991 to 64,700 in 1997, the most recent year for which DAWN data are available.

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Both quotes come from:
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/intel/99028/99028.html