Is marijuana really that bad?

[Kianier]

I'm just curious as to how many of you think it's the devil. I have many strong positive points on marijuana, but I'll post those a little later, after I see people's inital reactions. And for the ignorant on the subject, look at this site if you're interested. http://www.cannabis.com/untoldstory/ - It's a little lengthy, but it has many strong, convincing arguments.

[Jozep]

Yes and No

It's a good drug, in the sense that i like the high and it's relatively cheap, and in my opinion less overall harmful than alcohol, but ...

It really does have a tendency to keep you from doing anyhting productive with your life.

Based on my 5 years of being a chronic pot smoker.

[Daekyn]

I always felt that if a person had a point, they should make it early on.

[Bramond]

I smoke it to relax, and chill. I also use it to help me sleep deeper, i was a terrible light sleeper waking 3 or 4 times a night.

I also us it for some meditation work and some spell working.

Like anything, it can be abused and its true gift can be overlooked and replaced as a mere "get off my face" drug.

[Pyrosama]

Every time someone mentions anything about marijuana not being THAT bad, I always recall a commercial I watched years ago where this guy is smoking dope in his room with a friend listening to him babble about how marijuana never did anything to him.

He'd go something along the line, "It never did anything to me...I never became violent, never did harsher drugs, never drove while high, etc....as a matter of fact, I'd say I'm the same person I was the day I smoked my first joint...nothing ever happened to me."

Then you hear mother's voice downstairs, "Hey, did you go out looking for a job today!"

He jumps up and opens the window, attempting to air out his room while calling out to his mom..., "no, ma...I called...."

Then a narrative voice goes, "Marijuana can make nothing happen to you too."

I'm remembering back so word for word it may not be exact, but you get the meaning behind the Ad.

The thing is, it's illegal.

I don't understand why people who smoke dope insist that there is nothing wrong with it and try to justify smoking it. If you smoke it, so what. You don't have to announce it to the world and try to get it to be legal just so you don't have to worry about getting caught.

It's illegal and I hope it stays illegal. The last thing we need is another crutch on society and more health care premiums to care for victims addicted to harmful chemicals and on top of that...condoned by the government as legal for consumption.

[Frobozz]

People who do it want to feel ok about it, they want to be reassured that it's ok to do it. The FDA and the ADA both highly condem it.

Why? It puts unfiltered, unfetered burning substances directly into your lungs. (among a lot of other things). Normally it is done in small doses, but if someone really lights up the amount of damage is huge.

Marijuana is not comprable to Alchohol on a by volume basis. You cant say that smoking one joint is the same as doing a shot, but the same arguments are heard if you've ever listend to people try to justify their alchoholism "It's not thaaat bad for me." Im in toooootal control." "I can stop at aaanytime" "I just need one more" "This my last one"

[kiania]

If its prescribed for you, then sure, smoke it, or whatever you get told to do with it.

Apart from that, I'm pretty much against it (then again, I'm against a lot of things).

Although, as long as you don't keep going into hospital/losing your job, and raising my taxes, do whatever you like...won't bother me, just don't expect me to pay for you to live....

[kestra]

I used to smoke it, but no longer.
I just wasn't getting much out of it anymore.
Ganga has been used for centuries by many many cultures for a long list of reasons.
Canada is in the process of decriminalizing it. And I think that is a good thing.

The Masses still more or less assume that "against the law" is a synonym for "wrong"--George Orwell

[Frobozz]

"Cotton grows only in moderate climates and requires more water than hemp; but hemp is frost tolerant, requires only moderate amounts of water, and grows in all 50 states. Cotton requires large quantities of pesticides and herbicides--50% of the world's pesticides/herbicides are used on cotton. But hemp requires no pesticides, no herbicides, and only moderate amounts of fertilizer."

Hehehehe... I read the website, it was hilarious!!! Why do we think it doesnt need any pesticides or herbicides? Having grown up on a farm I know this answer, because the only other plants that I remember not needed herbicides/pesticides were fatal upon consumption. (Which marijuana is..)

[Enosekel]

Frobozz, if marijuana is fatal on consumption, then why do people bake it into brownies and stuff? I've seen people eat it in the form of sauces, baked goods, and raw before, with no side effects. And they cook it to activate the THC, not to make it edible. Though why anyone would want to eat something like that is beyond me. Yuck. Unless you meant it's fatal to bugs (?).

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Well. At first I wasn't going to post here because I'm far from an expert with file cabinets of facts and figures and general crap to throw out here, but I seriously doubt any of us are truly experts on this topic, so I figured why not

I've known a lot of people who've used and abused alcohol, and a lot of people who smoked marijuana. The addictive qualities of alcohol and tobacco cigarettes (I've never seen anyone addicted to pot, despite what some people claim...sorry Frobozz but you're way off with the "I can stop anytime I want comment", though it did make me laugh) and the debilitating side effects to a person's social and physical self from alcohol and tobacco seem far more harmful to me than whatever the side effects are from marijuana...

I say "whatever the side effects are" because other than the temporary symptoms of being high, I haven't seen anyone completely burnt out or experiencing permanent negative side effects from taking in too much marijuana. And my town has a LOT of holdover hippies from the 60s, not to mention a notoriously liberal college campus where a significant percent of the student body indulges in marijuana on occasion. I've read reports about medical side effects and social side effects from both pro- and anti- marijuana organizations, and they're always the exact opposite so I have no idea what to believe other than my own eyes.

I tend to think both sides are lying. The government claims to be an "unbiased" source, but that to me is obviously a big fat lie and I believe many of their publications and "studies" are only there because of lobbyists with commercial reasons for wanting to keep marijuana illegal. I have heard over and over that tobacco cigarettes have worse long-term effects than marijuana, but the tobacco corporations are keeping marijuana illegal and prevent tobacco from being outlawed...and I have heard over and over that hemp was originally outlawed because of the lumber industry long ago, not because pot is harmful. If that is true then perhaps we should re-examine why marijuana is illegal. And if marijuana is illegal because it is harmful, then alcohol and nicotine and whatever other addictive substances are in tobacco cigarettes should certainly be illegal as well.

I'm not advocating use of marijuana, I'm just saying that the situation seems wrong considering how some other obviously harmful drugs are legal (whatever they put in tobacco cigarettes, and alcohol). But as for using marijuana in the U.S. right now...The fact remains that marijuana is illegal. So perhaps people should work harder to legalize it instead of just using it on the sly.

Then again, people set off illegal fireworks and think nothing of it or carry them over state lines illegally for their own pleasure and consider it harmless, though it is illegal. I bet a lot of people may think it's wrong to take marijuana just because it's illegal, yet they might do other illegal things just because they think that what they are doing is harmless or it is wrongly forbidden. Like walking your dog without a leash. Cheating on taxes. Etc...

Most marijuana users I know are very successful, normal people who go to work every day and have wonderful family lives, not stereotypical losers like you see in a Hollywood movie. On the other hand, most alcoholics I know are just that. Alcoholics. They have a terrible disease and their personal and professional lives are nearly always troubled as a direct result of their addiction.

How many alcoholics anonymous groups and support groups for people who are trying to quit/keep off smoking tobacco cigarettes are there in your community? And how many for those who are "recovering potheads"? How many products and service organizations are there for people who are trying to quit tobacco or alcohol, and how many are there for people who are trying to break an "addiction" to marijuana? See what I mean?

I'm not denying that some people with addictive personalities who fail to remember the golden rule (all things in moderation) will abuse marijuana. But the kind of people who abuse it seem to me to be the kind of people who could abuse/overdo anything. Like the so-called "gamer addicts" discussed in another thread, the people who overeat, or who drink coffee and soda daily for the caffeine, etc.

Legalizing marijuana would not only make it cheaper and possibly lower the price of competing substances, it would also make it safer. People who buy it could be assured of quality, it wouldn't be cut with anything dangerous like PCP, people who sell it would not be leading a dangerous life of crime and -sometimes- committing evil acts against others for profit.

I would never suggest we should outlaw tobacco cigarettes or alcohol (and prohibition was a big fuckup anyway, we should realize that the same thing is happening with marijuana) and thus I don't think marijuana should be illegal either.

That being said, IMHO Americans never really get up the nerve to exercise their political rights or lobby to make improvements and changes on the scale that they could be operating. We're so complacent, and we could be doing so much more. So I doubt anything will change, unless big tobacco or some other producer realizes they can make a profit by legalizing marijuana and putting additives into marijuana cigarettes, to keep people craving them and coming back to buy more.