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Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin

nytimes.com

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Re: Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin

#241

Post by e40 »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #24
e40 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you think heroin is a demon and marijuana(or alcohol) is ok you are sadly mistaken. 1 of the 3 is ok, by some definition of ok. My definition: doesn't have serious health effects and users can (and do) live normal lives.

I can't for the life of me work out which one you think is OK. Neither marijuana nor alcohol, in non-excessive quantities, will necessarily cause serious health effects, and people consume either whilst living perfectly 'normal' lives.

Marijuana is the one with the least side effects. Alcohol in small amounts causes many, many deaths each year. And by small amounts I mean less than would cause health effects, but enough to DUI and killing people. I think the people here saying heroin users live "normal" lives are just kidding themselves.

Re: Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin

#242

Post by e40 »

aaron695 wrote: post #51
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't for the life of me work out which one you think is OK. Neither marijuana nor alcohol, in non-excessive quantities, will necessarily cause serious health effects, and people consume either whilst living perfectly 'normal' lives.

Personally I'd rate marijuana the worst. Obviously many people use heroin and have normal lives. Alcohol is destroying, but in incidents rather than marijuana which I think is long term damage. Heroin destroying lives is so complicated because most of it is societal based, it's not the drug destroying lives in current society.

Personally I'd rate marijuana the worst.

Why's that?

Re: Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin

#243

Post by e40 »

maccard wrote: post #20
e40 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you think heroin is a demon and marijuana(or alcohol) is ok you are sadly mistaken. 1 of the 3 is ok, by some definition of ok. My definition: doesn't have serious health effects and users can (and do) live normal lives.

Plenty of people have opiod problems and live normal lives.

People that use opiods have to use greater and greater amounts to get the same effect, and people that take a lot of opiods may live a normal life but they have a much higher risk of sudden death. Prince, for example. I call that "not OK."

Re: Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin

#244

Post by metaphorm »

njloof wrote: post #175
metaphorm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its legal to advertise pharmaceuticals. why should there be a special ban for advertising cannabis? if your objection is to "mass-brain washing", I think you're gonna have a lot of 1st amendment trouble arguing that case legally.

I have the same concern about the advertising of pharmaceuticals, both directly to consumers and especially to providers. What were the arguments used to regulate the display and advertising of tobacco? Those might be a model for the advertising of other potentially harmful substances. Certainly how beer is advertised is no model to follow.

afaik tobacco is not treated as a drug or medicine and historically was not regulated by the FDA (it began to be regulated by USDA and FDA in 2009).

in any case, regardless of whether or not beer advertising is a good "model for society" is kinda irrelevant from the constitutional law perspective. the legal rulings have repeatedly found that commercial marketing is, with a few exceptions, free speech and that the government is limited in its ability to regulate that type of expression.

from an ethical perspective, I think that people living in a free society have an ethical responsibility to educate ourselves and our communities about drugs (of all kinds, including alcohol and tobacco) independently of the commercial promotion of those products. at some point you have to just let people be responsible from themselves. trying to enforce health and safety through prohibition or censorship is not a good strategy.

Re: Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin

#245

Post by cmurf »

gaur wrote: post #146
poof131 wrote: post #82

The DEA needs to go bye bye, and be replaced by the DRA, Drug Rehabilitation Agency. While I respect the risks operational agents take against crime syndicates, the war on drugs is a disaster. Even the government’s own RAND corporation concluded enforcement is far worse than rehabilitation, with rehab being 7 times more effective than policing, 400 times more effective then border interdiction, and 800 times more eff…

> If the goal is for politicians to sound tough and maintain a never ending drug war so they can keep sounding tough, then it’s a success. Part of their goal is also to provide their cronies in the prison-industrial complex with a steady supply of victims.

Part of their goal is also to provide a quasi-monopoly to the pharmaceutical-industrial complex with a steady supply of victims. (Yes fine, some of the drugs are quite remarkable, but $1000 per pill per day x 12+ weeks, please GFY.) http://www.healthline.com/health/hepatitis-c-treatment-cost#...

Re: Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin

#246

Post by hurricaneSlider »

davidf18 wrote: post #111
davidf18 wrote: post #102

A problem is that women are smoking marijuana and may not yet know they are pregnant. Medical marijuana laws and pregnancy: implications for public health policy. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27422056 "Although there is much to learn yet about the effects of prenatal marijuana use on pregnancy and child outcome, there is enough evidence to suggest that marijuana, contrary to popular perception, is not a harmles…

Why are people allowed to downvote medical studies from highly regarded journals? Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Obstetrics and Gynecology? What kind of human being would want increased babies neurologically deprived from marijuana exposure or additional stillbirths? Instead of downvoting, why don't you explain why you want these effects in infants?

I suspect it is because they don't appreciate the whole "think of the children" argument.

Re: Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin

#247

Post by [deleted] »

martinald wrote: post #13

While I'm totally for drug (all drugs - not just cannabis) legalisation/regulation, I do think the "dangers" of marijuana have been really downplayed over the last few years. I know a lot of people at university who got into smoking it very often and basically lost 10+ years of their life to complete apathy to anything. Some have now stopped and are totally different people - just 10 years behind. While it doesn't ca…

[deleted]

Re: Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin

#248

Post by ImTalking »

martinald wrote: post #13

While I'm totally for drug (all drugs - not just cannabis) legalisation/regulation, I do think the "dangers" of marijuana have been really downplayed over the last few years. I know a lot of people at university who got into smoking it very often and basically lost 10+ years of their life to complete apathy to anything. Some have now stopped and are totally different people - just 10 years behind. While it doesn't ca…

Another anecdotal story about someone's sister's friend's aunt's barber who shot-up marijuana and now is in hospital with 6 tubes running out of every orifice.

Let me tell you the truth... addiction is not about the drug. Addiction is about the environment. So if these students were apathetic, it was because they had deeper-rooted issues that they were attempting to mask via some drug.

And cannabis is not physically addictive. Psychologically addictive as I pointed-out but not physically. Even coffee is more addicting.

Re: Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin

#249

Post by hyperdunc »

ImTalking wrote: post #248
martinald wrote: post #13

While I'm totally for drug (all drugs - not just cannabis) legalisation/regulation, I do think the "dangers" of marijuana have been really downplayed over the last few years. I know a lot of people at university who got into smoking it very often and basically lost 10+ years of their life to complete apathy to anything. Some have now stopped and are totally different people - just 10 years behind. While it doesn't ca…

Another anecdotal story about someone's sister's friend's aunt's barber who shot-up marijuana and now is in hospital with 6 tubes running out of every orifice. Let me tell you the truth... addiction is not about the drug. Addiction is about the environment. So if these students were apathetic, it was because they had deeper-rooted issues that they were attempting to mask via some drug. And cannabis is not physically…

Are you saying they injected a marijuana solution? I've never heard of that before.

Re: Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin

#250

Post by 55555 »

tamana wrote: post #212
55555 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend people read The Politics of Heroin and A Legacy of Ashes. Both great books. Basically, The US makes drugs illegal and then enforces embargoes against other countries so they comply. Drugs have a very inelastic demand so this doesn't actually stop people from using them, but it DOES make drugs an extremely profitable enterprise. Keeping drugs illegal has at least one massive 'benefit' -- if law enforcement…

How does CIA stop the DEA from stopping foreign drug dealers?

They essentially tell them that the person is an asset to the United States Government and should be left alone because the work they are doing for the USG is more important than anything else they may be involved in. There are some good quotes in The Politics of Heroin. Things like (paraphrasing), "We are not generally in the habit of attempting to build criminal cases against our strategic allies."
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