Would you smoke marijuana if it were legal?

[Deacon51]

I didn't say I would smoke it mowing the grass... that would be dumb.

If your high, you should sit on the couch and enjoy a movie...

It really does enhance a otherwise not so good movie.

"Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" "The Wall" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" where all great flicks when I was stoned.

And FYI, I have not smoked any since 1992 because my girlfriend at the time, now wife, said she wouldn't date a pot head.

[lobster_roboto]

Deacon.. Yeah I know what you mean... I just persoanally hate downtime. I am always busy doing something...Working/research/shooting/fishing/working/working.

Sitting in my recliner to watch TV is a luxory I only afford monday nights at 8pm cst for a an hour of 24.

[XD45Auto]

There are alot of other illegal drugs besides weed. Fact of the matter is that crime commited in the name of marijuana is very small when compared to crime commited in the name of all illegal drugs together. Legalizing pot will make little or no difference in drug related crime. Even after legalizing it there will pop up a whole new type of crime being commited because of marijuana. Do you think that the street corner/high school pot dealer is going to stop pushing it? No, he either A.) stops selling pot, and moves on to another more addicting/damaging illegal drug. Or B.) keeps selling it, but at an illegal lower tax free price. It would be similar to all of these people abusing perfectly legal presription drugs. Not to mention all of the social problems it will cause.

I like it when I see people hitting a pipe or smoking a joint while driving in their car. That means I get to be a good person and call the cops to turn them in...the same as I do when I see someone driving who is obviously drunk. Believe it or not THC does effect your fine motor skills and judgement, which in turn effects your driving. No, I am not talking about the guy who hits a oney and drives to the store to get a pack of smokes, I am talking abouth the guy who has been smoking dope all day and then goes out for a drive. This whole argument that weed doesn't effect driving like alcohol does is BS. If you are impaired, you are impaired. I dont care if it is booze, weed, crack, pcp or acid. You are putting my life in danger, as well as everyone else on the road. And then there is the argument about people not being voilent while high on weed. Yes, most pot heads are generally mellow people that just want to party, but most drunks I have encountered are the same way. There are people who flip out when they get high, just the same as people who flip when they get drunk.

Like someone else previously stated, if you want to do it privately in your own home go right ahead. It doesn't affect me.

Legalizing pot solves nothing...It actually creates problems, IMHO. If you want legal drugs move to Amsterdam...

EDIT:

Sorry for the long rant. I am very passionate about this. There have been about 7 people from school, a few of them good friends, that have ruined they're lives because of drugs. Now they are dead because of it. I graduated in '99. Thats too many people to die for such stupid sh!t.

[Ryan102676]

Sorry to hear about your friends, I also lost a buddy to an overdose of H.

Honestly, this may make me sound weak minded, but I take back most if not all of what I said. I really dont have any facts to back up what I stated, it was just my opinion, but the counter arguments made alot of sense, especially yours 45AUTO... good point on the legal prescription meds, they are actually all over the streets here in NWK. I could get an oxi-conton, or however its spelled in less then 5 minutes of walking out there...But, my initial answer of NO still stands when asked if I would smoke if legal.. i smoked alot of it in high school, and a year after.. getting a job at home depot, having to take urine tests got me to quit, then I never went back, wasnt going to loose my job over pot. Now im just to old for that crap. Rather play with my daughter.

[Krackels]

Originally Posted by Deacon51

I didn't say I would smoke it mowing the grass... that would be dumb.

If your high, you should sit on the couch and enjoy a movie...

It really does enhance a otherwise not so good movie.

"Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" "The Wall" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" where all great flicks when I was stoned.

And FYI, I have not smoked any since 1992 because my girlfriend at the time, now wife, said she wouldn't date a pot head.

I'm sorry I didn't mean to imply that you said "smoke it mowing the grass" I used it to demonstrate that marijuana impairs far more than it helps or enhances.

What does that say about a society that feels that we constantly need to be entertained. Bad movies are still bad movies when you're stoned; you just forget why they are because you're hardly paying attention anyway.

[Pugs]

Originally Posted by Krackels

A few other topics have cropped up:

Is it really a right to get high? Would our founding fathers say that when they talked and wrote about inalienable rights they would say that being drunk (marijuana/hashish usage was rare) was one of them?

Some of the founding fathers were avid home-brewers. I don't think that getting high is a right, but I believe that doing whatever you damn well please that hurts noone else in the privacy of your own home is.

Originally Posted by Krackels

Does marijuana really have saving qualities that outweigh the downsides?

Sure. In fact, I'd argue that it has more saving qualities AND fewer negative effects than alcohol.

Originally Posted by Krackels

Originally Posted by Krackels

Many of these things seem to be band-aids for an otherwise dissatisfied life. Shouldn't one work on being happy with one's life and circumstances instead of trying to mask it.

I don't really disagree or agree with you or your assessments. I primarily was posting the list of some of the concentration related effects of THC from an informational stand point, not necessarily a "pot is good" stand point.

One more:

Originally Posted by Krackels

People can have a beer or two in an hour's time with friends with no impairment depending on metabolism and physiology. Can the same be said about marijuana?

Absolutely. One hit, good buzz, interesting (though sometimes weird and even foolish) conversations. Two hits, things get weirder, mellower, and more foolish. Three hits, etc... Four hits, etc...

One beer, looser inhibitions, more gregarious, a little more honesty. Two beers, even looser inhibitions motor control and reflexes slightly impaired. And so on until we get to stupid falling down drunk with blackouts, vomiting, belligerence, gross mistakes in judgement, no inhibitions at all, maudlin self-pity, weeping, etc...

Originally Posted by Krackels

How would the government control it to provide moderate or mild strength marijuana as opposed to high THC content?

I don't think the government should, though I believe it could be done quite easily through cross-polination as pot farmers have been doing for years to produce more potent strains.

Look, my point wasn't that "pot is good". I'm not even saying that "alcohol is bad" (and I know that you didn't specifically address alcohol much in your post). What I am saying is that if we can legalize something as dangerous and uncontrollable as alcohol, we can legalize maurijuana. We can regulate it in similar ways (can't drive or operate machinery while baked, can't operate a firearm while baked, can be nailed with child neglect if you're watching over children while baked, etc...).

I personally might use it the same way my wife has a beer or two or a glass of wine when we go out (I don't drink... it's too dangerous ). I wouldn't drive and we'd have to figure out alternative transportation if she was gonna drink or smoke up, too. I personally haven't used any alcohol since I was sixteen, pot or any other intoxicant in the last decade and a half or so. I choose not to use alcohol 'cause my body doesn't process it properly and it could kill me (we found this out the hard way in High School). I choose not to use pot or other intoxicants because they are illegal and I like my life as it is without heaping potential legal problems on top of it. There's also the fact that if you buy pot or other intoxicants, you are buying from criminals and there is no quality control. The crack/crank/blow/tar/meth/X/whatever you buy may have been cut with drain cleaner and will kill you. The pot you smoke may be laced with opium/PCP/LSD/any other damned thing that totally ruins the experience that you were looking for.

I've got a good life, a good wife, a good gun, a good bike, three good cars, a good house, good friends, good family, good voting rights, etc... To me, potentially losing any of those things is not worth a the temporary high of an intoxicant. And I've got one of those personalities that don't need no drugs to be stupid/funny/uninhibited/shameless.

[XD45Auto]

Originally Posted by Ryan102676

Sorry to hear about your friends, I also lost a buddy to an overdose of H.

They were my friends in junior high/high school. I hadn't really talked to them since school, simply because I didn't want to associate with people like that anymore. It is still saddening to get a phone call 5 years later telling you that someone that you used to be close to blew their head off while stoned. Another one jumped off of a bridge. one of them ODed on presciption depression meds. The rest of them were just classmates that I didn't know that well, and I am not too sure how the rest of them did it, but I know that they are 6 feet under...What a waste.

[aeneas26]

Originally Posted by deepdiver

Interesting point. About 15 years ago when I was studying this issue (my BS is in psych and I did an independent study on drug abuse and treatment options) the research was indicating that when drugs were legalized, there was an initial increase in useage. Within a generation, the usage actually stabilized at a level significantly lower than pre-legalization levels. Once it was available and legal, the allure, especially for teens, evaporated. Until the late teens early 1920's, pretty much all now illegal narcotics and marijuana were legal and usage levels are thought to have been lower than today (it is difficult to be sure as such things weren't tracked back then like they are today).

I think this is a valid point, I came to the same conclusion when I researched this subject. I had to write a paper on this vey topic and I think that this would be less of a problem if it were made legal. I think that consumption would eventually decrease, and we would be spending less money on trying to prevent people from consuming it.

However I have strong Libertarian leanings, so maybe I am too biased to give a truly objective analysis. I dislike the government telling anybody what to do.

[beaterar]

Originally Posted by XD45Auto

They were my friends in junior high/high school. I hadn't really talked to them since school, simply because I didn't want to associate with people like that anymore. It is still saddening to get a phone call 5 years later telling you that someone that you used to be close to blew their head off while stoned. Another one jumped off of a bridge. one of them ODed on presciption depression meds. The rest of them were just classmates that I didn't know that well, and I am not too sure how the rest of them did it, but I know that they are 6 feet under...What a waste.

Well to be fair I had friends who were anorexic or bulimic, is this the fault of food?


People again just need to take personal responsibility , its not my job or right to protect some idiot from himself. I only care that the idiot dose not hurt anyone else on his trip of self pitty. I smoked pot in school and in to my 20's, I never wanted to swallow a slug or hurt myself, in the same notion I have seen many people who didn't do drugs eat lead, in the end the person and person alone is responsible for his actions drugs are just a weak excuse. We as Americans always try to blame some outside force or influence for the actions we take, funny though the cure for all the things we blame just happens to be personal responsibility. This leads me to believe that its not the drug that is at fault, is the ignorant person that wants to blame the drug, and as long as they can blame the drug they will not have to except responsibility for there actions.

[Pugs]

Originally Posted by beaterar

We as Americans always try to blame some outside force or influence for the actions we take, funny though the cure for all the things we blame just happens to be personal responsibility.

ABSOLUTELY! My student's get tired of my constant speeches about how they have to empower themselves and take responsibility for their lives. Daddy might be an alcoholic and screwed up their childhood's, but they are responsible for their adulthood. Mommy may have smoked meth and had a string of abusive boyfriends making their live's rough, but they are responsible for what happens next!