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Tuxedo Gin posted:I find it really interesting that a lot of you are using the "alcohol users beat their wife and kids" example in your pro-weed conversations. I think that is pretty counter productive. Not even close to all alcohol users beat their families. That just encourages anti-weed folks to classify you guys: lazy students mooching off of society. Not a really accurate description, I'm sure. Except that guns and cars really aren't the same sort of product whereas alcohol and marijuana are both mind altering substances. I'm not saying calling alcohol drinkers out as wife beaters is a good idea (it isn't) but it's not that bad of a comparison if you stick to the statistics, which bear out that alcohol is much more dangerous than marijuana, not to mention 90% of the schedule 1 drug list.
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Oct 12, 2012 18:07
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PT6A posted:I've had worse experiences from overdoing pot than I have from overdoing booze, thus my anecdote trumps yours! http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2810%2961462-6/fulltext  No, all drugs are not the same, regardless of whatever stupid anecdote you're going to put forth
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Oct 12, 2012 23:02
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Loving Life Partner posted:Ahh noble psilocybin, does nothing but trip people out It's too bad psychedelics aren't more popular amongst the general public, there's a lot of good that could come from the legalization of them as well.
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Oct 12, 2012 23:08
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Ah Pook posted:I did. The data they are referencing is from the article I linked earlier. Hence "(Reprinted from Nutt et al., 2010 with permission from Elsevier)." being put under the chart. Lancet is down but you can read the BBC article here until it's back up: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2010/11/drugs_debate_hots_up.html http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2810%2961462-6/fulltext Another article: http://www.ias.org.uk/resources/publications/theglobe/globe201003/gl201003_p5.html quote:Within each of these categories, they recognized three components, leading to a comprehensive 9-category matrix of harm. Expert panels then gave scores, from zero to three, for each category of harm for 20 different drugs. All the scores for each drug were combined to produce an overall estimate of its harm. I'd imagine it's close to this but I guess we'll have to wait until Lancet is back up for more details. a lovely poster fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Oct 13, 2012 |
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Oct 13, 2012 10:45
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PT6A posted:Why are weed evangelists so defensive? I like weed, alcohol, tobacco, mushrooms and acid all just fine, and I'm deeply addicted to coffee if you want to count that as well. All I'm saying is that all these things should be perfectly legal for adults to put into their body. Having some stupid conversation about which are more dangerous is not constructive assuming we're all coming from a position of legalization. Sure it is, it's a perfectly good argument that many drugs should be legalized. If more dangerous drugs are already legal how is that not support for the idea that those less dangerous should be legal? Nobody is saying ban alcohol and legalized weed, they are saying "hey, alcohol is legal, marijuana should be too".
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Oct 13, 2012 20:29
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fade5 posted:For the "feels good" part, I just picked video games as my fun thing to do. I'd say it's less expensive, but I'm not sure that's true. Try smoking pot and playing video games at the same time. Thank me later.
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Nov 12, 2012 21:39
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Well anyway, thanks for the education everyone. I'm happy to change my views if someone shows me I'm wrong.
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SilentD posted:I know a lot of hardcore "legalize it all" (which is my position) advocates who wanted to use pot as a stalking horse for everything. Pot is a drug that most people agree should be legal, opiates, cocaine, acid, DMT, x, ketamine not so much. The logic is if you had sweeping drug reform some of those substances could ride in on pots coattails. But if you take pot out of the fight a lot of the support instantly vanishes. I do think we should recognize that this is a step in the correct direction but the entire CSA needs to be re-worked and if we're actually going to use it, needs to be based on science. The entire class schedule is hosed from top to bottom. Having MDMA and LSD as schedule one is as absurd as pot being there. I'm sure you already know how different that list of drugs is you posted but I'll be damned if it doesn't irk me something fierce when I see LSD, DMT or MDMA compared with opiates. cheese posted:Probably because some of those substances listed are highly addictive, physically damaging and outright dangerous. There is a reason pot legalization has much more support than heroin legalization. The way I see it we either trust adults to manage their substance intake or we don't. Treating everything case by case is pretty drat pointless considering the most dangerous recreational drug of any meaningful popularity is already legal, alcohol. a lovely poster fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Nov 14, 2012 |
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Nov 14, 2012 07:55
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Crackbone posted:No it doesn't. It's still a chemical compound that interacts with your body. The distinction of it being "natural" doesn't mean poo poo. The whole word "drug" doesn't even have a real clear definition. As far as I can tell, by the definition most people use, sugar is a drug. Food is a drug. Everything we ingest interacts with our biochemistry on some level. The bottom line is that the government should not really be in the business of telling people which substances they can or cannot ingest. There's just no upside to punishing ingestion as a criminal offense. The only two things that will "fix" America's "drug problem" are education and a more expansive healthcare system.
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Nov 14, 2012 19:44
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Install Gentoo posted:Uh yeah it is, it's like 90% of food regulations. And medicine regulations. We do a ton of things to prevent people from using lead and other such things in stuff people will ingest. The government does have a job in ensuring that the consumer is informed 100% about what they are ingesting, especially if they are receiving that product through the economic system the government manages. That being said, if people want to eat lead after being told the consequences, that's fine with me. I'm all for putting the dangers front and center (for example, warning labels on tobacco products) but allowing consumers to ignore them if they elect to. I find this much preferable to the government deciding which substances we should or should not be able to ingest.
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Nov 14, 2012 21:43
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Sylink posted:Bullshit they try to do anything about 4/20 anymore. This past year they cracked down hard and there was no 4/20 celebration to speak of on campus. There were also a shitload of cops everywhere, you had to show a student id to even step foot on campus.
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Dec 11, 2012 21:11
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Full Battle Rattle posted:Seriously though, I don't envy that guy's position. There's still a whole lot that's up in the air with this, and losing that federal grant money is a pretty important thing to keep under consideration. It's also really disheartening for people to think this is license to go toke up on your local street corner. You can't chug a bottle of Old Crow on the steps of the county court house, what makes you think it's okay to consume a mind altering substance on the quad? There's no risk of them losing federal funding. CU Boulder is not about to allow weed on campus, they already don't allow alcohol. It's bullshit political posturing. Nothing in Amendment 64 says anything about forcing CU Boulder to allow marijuana on campus.
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Dec 11, 2012 22:40
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Delta-Wye posted:
Why should it be? If it's done responsibly I don't see what the issue is.
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Dec 15, 2012 00:31
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Delta-Wye posted:Now I'm curious, what is an example of 'resposible' diversion? Something that involves an undue level of danger, exploitation, and/or violence? I don't even know, all I'm saying is that drug dealing is not immoral in of itself unless you've got some reason for it to be.
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Dec 15, 2012 07:59
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Install Gentoo posted:Also "good" marijuana is completely subjective. Ahh yes, let's be obtuse for the sake of it. There are definitely well agreed upon differences between something good and something bad. Growing quality cannabis is pretty easy in the sense that a lot of information and resources are out there if you go looking. Basically what Broken Machine said.
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Dec 24, 2012 02:20
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KingEup posted:Why? Because there's been a fervent media campaign over the past 30 years intent on misinforming the populace regarding "illegal" drugs.
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Mar 18, 2013 14:35
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computer parts posted:Yes, and the argument is whether or not schedule IV drugs (and all scheduled drugs) should be freely available to everyone. I'm saying no. What is a "date rape drug" and how do you think they should be controlled?
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Mar 18, 2013 15:10
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computer parts posted:A drug which allows you to receive sex without meaningful consent*. They should be scheduled or regulated as the current scheduling system allows (which is schedule IV for a lot of them). Should Dimenhydrinate be a schedule IV drug? What about Diphenhydramine? There are so many drugs that cause the sorts of drowsiness that could lead to date rape, do you really think it's realistic to keep them as illegal? Has the CSA stopped a meaningful amount of date rape thus far?
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Mar 18, 2013 15:29
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computer parts posted:I'm not saying illegal, I'm saying "hard to get in large quantities". We already allow people to take currently scheduled drugs in small quantities (even the Schedule II ones, ie Desoxyn).
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Mar 18, 2013 15:34
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computer parts posted:The negative effect being "making a girl unable to consent to sex" and the positive effect being "whatever recreational effect you wanted from it". I was being lazy, so sue me. This isn't lazy, it's just meaningless. I think you'll find that the distinctions you believe exist don't when you look closely. quote:The point of the tobacco analogy is to show that "I can do whatever I want with my body" ends when you hurt someone else. You can use drunk driving as a more appropriate example, as that does ruin lives both literally and in a legal sense. Exactly. The answer isn't the ban GHB, it's to prosecute date rapists. computer parts posted:And again, you're taking "CSA" as meaning "Schedule I drugs". Guess what, Schedule IV drugs can be refilled several times in a six month period with a prescription! Guess what, you can still be thrown in jail for possessing them!
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Mar 18, 2013 15:56
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computer parts posted:Oh, so recreational use of GHB is for use in date rape, is that what you're saying? Because "the distinctions you believe exist don't" sounds a lot like it. No, that's not what I'm saying. If you want to know more about GHB can I recommend erowid? quote:Which is pretty hard as is, and there's no reason to not restrict the use of it aside from "ideological consistency". There's actually a great reason to not restrict the use of it, and that's that we shouldn't be restricting things without good reason. Freedom and all that jazz. The fact that a crime can be committed using it is not a good reason to ban something. quote:Yes, because you have a prescription drug without a prescription. There's a pretty good reason for not allowing that. Sorry, but "a good reason for not allowing that is that it's illegal" isn't a good reason for not allowing something.
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Mar 18, 2013 16:05
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Red_Mage posted:1. You do in fact have people in this thread arguing that what they put in their body is solely their own business. Certain substances prove that is categorically untrue. While no one drug (at least that I am aware of, there are an awful lot of RCs and Pharmas out there) is going to turn anyone into a murderous sociopath, there are plenty of drugs that impair judgement to a degree where it is impossible to claim that their use solely affects the user. Like? quote:2. As many anti-prohibitionists rightly argue, Alcohol and Tobacco have devastating societal effects, and they are legalized. This is used as an argument for why other substances should be (because they are not as bad as Alcohol), I think this is backwards. While the cost would go down, and substance addiction might harm the families of victims slightly less, I think what we know of the Great Binge and the Opium wars period suggests the number of people addicted would go up. Much like alcoholism or a gambling addiction can be financially ruinous, despite being perfectly legal, I think the number of innocent people hurt would increase if addiction increases. On the other hand, countries like Portugal have decriminalized drugs recently and have seen nothing close to "the Great Binge" or "the Opium wars" There's nothing to suggest that prohibition reduces addiction rates. quote:Now to be honest, much of this could just be my opinion. I would like to see what would happen if a modern first world nation took most drugs off of the various schedules and bans. I don't think that nation should necessarily be the United States though, because I think the existing problems we have with healthcare, class inequality, and lack of socioeconomic mobility are the prime causes of most of the issues you listed, and ditching the CSA and letting Heroin stores open up in poor neighborhoods is going to be even more devastating than the lovely status quo. It already happened 
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Mar 18, 2013 19:45
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RichieWolk posted:Yeah, god forbid the poor have a safe regulated substance to ease the pain of having a poo poo life. That'd be way worse than the status quo of going to the crazy dealer in the alley. It's really sad that the government has managed to brainwash such a large amount of the population into believing that drugs are the driving force behind the lower quality of life for the poor and not our draconian economic policies.
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Mar 18, 2013 19:57
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Red_Mage posted:1. I'd have a hard time saying someone abusing Ambien, for example, is in completely in control of their actions. Same for my friend who decided to slice his hand open and spray a crowd with blood while robotripping and on acid (I have no loving idea why he did this). There are obviously different degrees and different people react in different ways, but its willfully ignorant to say that drugs people do only affect themselves. You could say the same thing about literally anything. The bottom line is that Ambien, LSD, and DXM can all be done safely without negatively impacting those around you. "It could be dangerous for those around the citizen" should not be an argument for banning something unless you can show that those risks are large enough. The whole point of drugs is to not be completely in control of your mental state (if such a thing exists in the first place, obviously not the thread for it) and to "let go". quote:2. Props for you to avoid making them, but it doesn't mean they aren't being made repeatedly by people in this thread. The primary harm of many drugs (IMO) is economic in nature, and if they were given away freely, I would care far less about addictions to them, because then then addiction would only hurt the addict. Drugs don't have a primary harm, the primary harm is from the government trying to eradicate them from society. quote:3. I doubt the war on drugs is as large of a factor on the lack of access to healthcare in this country is as large a factor as you say. This doesn't make sense. quote:Portugal's approach is actually great, but it isn't really legalization (unless this changed recently), its decriminalization. There are still penalties levied for drug use, they are just not Jail time, they are more productive things like "get treatment" or "stop coming around this neighborhood." This is something I wholeheartedly support, it is not however what was being called for. Except that it is. Everyone I've seen who's gone into any depth about planning for legalization speaks volumes about how we should be focusing on treatment and rehabilitation. This is exactly what the CSA doesn't do and exactly why it shouldn't exist.
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Mar 18, 2013 20:21
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Install Gentoo posted:No a lot of them just want people to do as much of whatever they want as they want. "No one should tell me what I can put in my body ever" is kinda incompatible with "focusing on treatment and rehabilitation". How so?
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Mar 18, 2013 20:30
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Red_Mage posted:This post beat me to it, but exactly. If drugs have no harm (other than the legal consequences of using them), than there is no need for treatment or rehab. I didn't say that drugs have no harm, I said that the primary harm from drugs comes from the establishment trying to eradicate them. It's like the minute you hear "all drugs should be legal" your eyes just glaze over and you ignore anything else said past that. 800peepee51doodoo posted:all I can say is rape culture is the problem, not drugs. Scheduling is in no way going to stop some shithead from using drugs to commit rape, but it will fill prisons and destroy people's lives and communities. Chitin posted:While it feels correct, emotionally, to ban substances that we know to be harmful to society and their users outright, we would do better to regulate and tax psychoactive substances and provide access points to treatment for users.
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Mar 18, 2013 20:34
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Install Gentoo posted:If you're focusing on treatment and rehab, you're saying that certain drugs are actually bad for some or all people and we can't just let people have as much of them as they want. Especially the decriminalization programs where "caught with drug, go to jail" gets replaced with "caught with drug, mandatory rehab and detox". I don't suggest programs involving mandatory rehab and detox. What I suggest is having those facilities open to whoever wants to use them free of charge and providing much better information regarding individual drugs and all of the stuff that comes with that (dosage, names, desirable effects, side effects, etc) There are many addicts in our society that want to get better but our system doesn't offer them a way to do so at this point.
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Mar 18, 2013 20:38
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Red_Mage posted:I am aware of what you said the primary harm is, but saying that any drug use in and of itself doesn't have a primary harm (outside the fact that it is illegal) is completely incompatible with reality. Drugs don't have "harms", they have "effects". Some of them are desirable, some of them are undesirable, and it's up to the user to decide whether or not the effects fall into each of those categories. quote:When someone leads with "all drugs should be legal," they've made their point. No, they haven't. What they've done is manage to make people like you tune out because you're already convinced that 'drugs' are bad. quote:If the point is something like "we need to look at and revamp the way we punish people who abuse substances, to focus on treatment" or "the criminalization of drugs in this country is problematic," than lead with that. Leading with "all drugs should be legal" is a great reason to ignore things said past that, because its a dangerous and simplistic position to take. "All drugs should be illegal" is just as simplistic and dangerous, because of the simple fact that all drugs are not the same. Drugs covers an exceptionally broad spectrum of things. Or you could just read the rest of the argument that is being posted instead of fixating on one line you really hate because the word drug scares you.
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Mar 18, 2013 20:46
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snorch posted:Which is weird, because that's been mostly debunked. From it's inception the anti-drug movement has started form the point of ignoring all scientific data, it's kind of unfair to say it's weird.
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Mar 19, 2013 18:00
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Red_Mage posted:Yeah your own links only really debunk it if you are only smoking once or twice a month to a week. Not that I think marijuana users are going to be moving to a 9 joint a day regime now that its legal obviously, but smoking anything in the amounts that cigarettes are smoked is going to cause damage, so they aren't really lying. Nobody smokes a pack (20 for cigs in the US) of joints a day or if they do, they are an extreme outlier.
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Mar 19, 2013 18:30
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ColoradoCleric posted:I know that some of the edibles sold in Colorado's dispensaries do have labeling saying how much THC is in each dose, though I don't think it is required as of right now. Personally I don't know how they go about measuring how much THC or other active chemicals are in raw cannabis or related products, but it seems that trying to get consistency down on a very fickle plant might be hard. There are lab tests that can be done and as far as I know (I have a friend who worked in a thc bakery in CO) they have to be tested by law. I was under the impression they also had to put the corresponding information on the packaging but I'll admit I've seen some product that didn't have it. I think the lab tests they have are pretty accurate though, I could be mistaken. They certainly act like they are.
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Mar 19, 2013 21:14
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ColoradoCleric posted:Do you know if they measure strictly THC or do they also measure the other cannabinoids? One thing that bothers me about using the THC amount as a measurement of potency is that it does not account for the effects that the varying amounts of cannabinoids have on making someone "high". Of course now with things like strict CBD cannabis strains you could end up buying something that just gives you "couch lock" without realizing it, though I doubt it would happen too often with an experienced bud tender. I've seen some of the labels that have come out of the place where he works and all the individual cannabinoids are mentioned (at least the big ones I know about, CBD, CBN, THC). I'll see if he can send me an example label somehow.
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Mar 19, 2013 21:33
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thekeeshman posted:Am I the only person who thinks that what we really need is some kind of ability test that determines whether you are actually capable of driving? It seems like whether it's weed or booze the limits are a really crude and sometimes ineffective way of determining whether someone actually has the ability to drive. Surely we could figure out some way of doing this, maybe some kind of little video game you have to play to actually see what level your perceptivness or reflexes were like. Hell, we could use it to figure out which old people should be allowed to drive too, which would be a bonus. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been sitting in a DMV watching as an employee holds the hand of an elderly person who clearly can't pass the eye test.
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Apr 3, 2013 16:03
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh, there's a small part of my hindbrain that wonders if Obama will do a last-minute mass pardon or something, but yeah, such is extraordinarily unlikely. Yes, he'll take off his mask at the end of the show and his last act as president will be a progressive whirlwind of pardoning the victims of the same policies he spent the past eight years pursuing. Sounds like a great movie.
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Aug 13, 2013 04:08
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Loving Life Partner posted:While I agree that everybody locked up for non-violent drug offenses should be released, I can just imagine FOX with their CRIME TOLL counter just running the names every day looking for recidivists who maybe escalate their crimes, god forbid a rape or murder occur. Yeah, I mean, Fox News would totally capitalize on the moment and make Barack Obama out to be a complete monster. Way too risky.
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Aug 13, 2013 15:22
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The Warszawa posted:My problem is that I'm not sure I want U.S. companies officially, legally in business with Los Zetas, Inc., who are able to employ cost-control methods that domestic production can't (officially/as easily) use, like "enslave people" and "murder organizers. I think most people agree with this, but the bottom line is it's already been that way for a long time w/r/t the finances of the cartels and the US government has explicitly excused those banks from any sort of prosecution due to their relationship with the cartels. Bottom line is legalizing pot isn't going to open some new chest of horrors for the government to unleash, the horrors are already out of the bag, it's the reality we're living in.
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Aug 19, 2013 17:01
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The Warszawa posted:Good thing I'm not advocating for the status quo, then. What exactly are you advocating for?
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Aug 20, 2013 02:02
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Invisble Manuel posted:http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/21/no-change-in-marijuana-laws-coming-white-house-says/?hpt=hp_c4 Hypocritical piece of poo poo
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Aug 22, 2013 00:43
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computer parts posted:Basically the only determining factor for 2016 is going to be the results of the 2014 election, and there will be only two possible decisions based on that election, and I can basically guarantee that "legalizing marijuana" will not be part of the national platform. Why? Do you really not think that there will be a tipping point where the corporations that want pot legalized for profit manage to build enough influence to change the positions of one of the major parties? Living in a swing state like Colorado where Obama won basically on the vote of the youth. It appears to me that the GOP is going to have to move towards being a libertarian option, especially if the Democrats keep pursuing conservative policy. The legalization of drugs could be a way to revitalize the demographics of the GOP, which suffers when it comes to young progressive voters. Considering how poo poo poor the progressive bones are that the Democrats throw, why wouldn't the GOP start doing it? quote:Completely unsurprised that Obama is a shithead on drug policy though. Doesn't poll quite strongly enough yet and he'd have to deal with the fallout of changing drug schedules as a black president. Yeah, that fallout would be nasty. I mean, Fox News would definitely run some pretty nasty attack ads. Definitely not worth pardoning the tens(hundreds?) of thousands of non-violent offenders in jail due to smoking the same goddamn thing he did. Definitely not worth attempting to reform the biggest domestic public policy debacle of the past forty years. It's not like we need the additional revenue. Plus, just because we imprison more of our citizens per capita than any country on Earth, doesn't mean we can't step that sucker up a notch. Yes siree, that fallout would be terrible! Vote team blue! We'll defeat those dastardly Republicans some day. a lovely poster fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Aug 22, 2013 |
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Aug 22, 2013 16:24
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Powercrazy posted:If you are super successful on every possible metric, what is stopping you from smoking 15 joints a day right now, why is the availability of weed in a gas station going to change your habits? Because as the risk/cost of things that consumers desire get lower, consumers are more likely to use/buy them. Welcome to reality, enjoy your stay.
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Aug 23, 2013 01:54
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Full Battle Rattle posted:Dear god, it's as though all recreational drugs have potential for abuse but this fact alone does not mean they should be illegal, or that people should be put in prison for it, or that it's wise to use it to a great extent just because you can! This idea is literally laughable in "realistic" political circles. 
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Aug 23, 2013 02:03
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