By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - General - Is it right for Marijuana to be illegal/Legal?

Torillian on 08 July 2008

I've never understood why Marijuana is illegal in most countries, especially America. When you think about it it's just smoking something to change your state of mind and get you intoxicated. So for some reason smoking regular cigarettes is fine, and drinking to become intoxicated is fine, but smoking to become intoxicated is illegal.

Just seems silly to me.



...

Around the Network
NiKKoM on 08 July 2008

Can't even remember when it was still illegal in the Netherlands...



 

Face the future.. Gamecenter ID: nikkom_nl (oh no he didn't!!) 

SamuelRSmith on 08 July 2008

@Torillian - Well, they did try and ban drinking, but that didn't work (US).

Ever since it became a class C drug here, in the UK, you can pretty much get away with using/growing weed as long as you don't intend on selling it. Hell, it's always been perfectly legal to buy the seeds.



Onyxmeth on 08 July 2008

Why is Marijuana Illegal?

Top 7 Reasons

By Tom Head, About.com

From a prohibition-based perspective, marijuana is illegal in the United States primarily for these seven reasons.

1. It is perceived as addictive.

Under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug on the basis that is has "a high potential for abuse." What does this mean?

It means that the perception is that people get on marijuana, they get hooked and become "potheads," and it begins to dominate their lives. This unquestionably happens in some cases. But it also happens in the case of alcohol--and alcohol is perfectly legal.

In order to fight this argument for prohibition, legalization advocates need to make the argument that marijuana is not as addictive as government sources claim.

2. It has "no accepted medical use."

Marijuana seems to yield considerable medical benefits for many Americans with ailments ranging from glaucoma to cancer, but these benefits have not been accepted well enough, on a national level. Medical use of marijuana remains a serious national controversy.

In order to fight the argument that marijuana has no medical use, legalization advocates need to highlight the effects it has had on the lives of people who have used the drug for medical reasons.

3. It has been historically linked with narcotics, such as heroin.

The first piece of federal legislation to formally regulate marijuana was the Narcotics Act of 1914, which regulated heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. The only trouble is that cocaine and marijuana are not technically narcotics; the word "narcotic," when used in English, has historically referred to opium derivatives such as heroin and morphine.

But the association stuck, and there is a vast gulf in the American consciousness between "normal" recreational drugs, such as alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine, and "abnormal" recreational drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. Marijuana is generally associated with the latter category, which is why it can be convincingly portrayed as a "gateway drug."

4. It is associated with unfashionable lifestyles.

Marijuana is often thought of as a drug for hippies and losers. Since it's hard to feel enthusiastic about the prospects of enabling people to become hippies and losers, imposing criminal sanctions for marijuana possession functions as a form of communal "tough love."

5. It was once associated with oppressed ethnic groups.

The intense anti-marijuana movement of the 1930s dovetailed nicely with the intense anti-Chicano movement of the 1930s. Marijuana was associated with Mexican Americans, and a ban on marijuana was seen as a way of discouraging Mexican-American subcultures from developing.

Today, thanks in large part to the very public popularity of marijuana among whites during the 1960s and 1970s, marijuana is no longer seen as what one might call an ethnic drug--but the groundwork for the anti-marijuana movement was laid down at a time when marijuana was seen as an encroachment on the U.S. majority-white culture.

6. Inertia is a powerful force in public policy.

If something has been banned for only a short period of time, then the ban is seen as unstable. If something has been banned for a long time, however, then the ban--no matter how ill-conceived it might be--tends to go unenforced long before it is actually taken off the books.

Take the ban on sodomy, for example. It hasn't really been enforced in any serious way since the 18th century, but most states technically banned same-sex sexual intercourse until the Supreme Court ruled such bans unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas (2003).

People tend to be comfortable with the status quo--and the status quo, for nearly a century, has been a literal or de facto federal ban on marijuana.

7. Advocates for marijuana legalization rarely present an appealing case.

To hear some advocates of marijuana legalization say it, the drug cures diseases while it promotes creativity, open-mindedness, moral progression, and a closer relationship with God and/or the cosmos. That sounds incredibly foolish, particularly when the public image of a marijuana user is, again, that of a loser who risks arrest and imprisonment so that he or she can artificially invoke an endorphin release.

A much better argument for marijuana legalization, from my vantage point, would go more like this: "It makes some people happy, and it doesn't seem to be any more dangerous than alcohol. Do we really want to go around putting people in prison and destroying their lives over this?"


Tag: Became a freaking mod and a complete douche, coincidentally, at the same time.



rudyrsr8 on 08 July 2008

Legalize, regulate, tax lol



"Like you know"

Around the Network
tallgnome on 08 July 2008

Actually the government's and states should sell and regulate this take all the drug dealer's money and actually use that money for something like medical benefits and improve schools :O



PS360ForTheWin on 08 July 2008

i dont think i can openly say it should be legal or illegal without knowing more about it, at the moment i have a very limited knowledge of it and as i have never abused drugs i have no idea how it affects a person, if anyone has a link to some definetive and unbiased research, i would like to read it before deciding where i stand on the matter.



Onyxmeth on 08 July 2008
PS360ForTheWin said:
i dont think i can openly say it should be legal or illegal without knowing more about it, at the moment i have a very limited knowledge of it and as i have never abused drugs i have no idea how it affects a person, if anyone has a link to some definetive and unbiased research, i would like to read it before deciding where i stand on the matter.

Go to this website, www.google.com and find a magical white box in the center of the window. You then type whatever your heart's desire is, press enter, and information (or porn) pops up in the next window. Rinse and repeat.

 



Tag: Became a freaking mod and a complete douche, coincidentally, at the same time.



Starmistkarmic on 08 July 2008
rudyrsr8 said:
Legalize, regulate, tax lol

That's what I was gonna post!. The national debt would be wiped out overnight! j/k But it would be a lot in revenue. I'm an occasional user(I smoke it if offered, but don't buy) and I'd like to see it legalized and regulated identically to how alcohol is regulated(same DUI laws, 21 ond over to partake, etc.) The could sell 'em in package stores and specialty bars and the like. It won't happen, however. The drug companies and their lobby would never let it. They'd lose hundreds of millions from the loss of aspirin sales alone, not to mention the thousands per week/per patient in cancer pain relief cocktails. Of, course, it' not just the drug companies. They're just an example. There's so much good that marijuana could do: the police wouldn't have to waste their time with petty stuff, prisons could lose a large portion of their population of people who don't deserve to be there anyway, etc. This would save the government money while high taxation on marijuana would go to pay for other necessary thing. But, alas, the moneyed interests would never let that happen. **if it ever does happen, though, buy stock in whoever owns Cheeto's.

bouzane on 08 July 2008

The government has no business in enforcing a prohibition against marijuana, I'm a user and I support legalization.