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Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

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Re: Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

#41

Post by gizmo686 »

DamnYuppie wrote: post #3
tptacek wrote: post #2

This is a surprisingly thoughtful article for CNN.

I too am surprised to see such an article on CNN. The one thing it doesn't touch on is the cost we have incurred as a nation by making it illegal. We have seen this before with prohibition, it didn't stop people from drinking it just made better criminals. Once we legalize it we can stop spending money fighting it and start taxing it! Of course the funny thing will be watching all the farmers in Illinois plow down th…

I'm not increadibly fammilar with current agriculturual laws in the US, but my understanding is that we are still artificially limiting crop production (a temporary measure from the great depression). Given that, it is not clear to me what the actual cost to farmers of replacing corn with weed is.

Re: Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

#42

Post by Terretta »

tptacek wrote: post #22
Shivetya wrote: post #19

I found it interesting they did not comment on the means of using weed. Smoking it cannot be much better for you than smoking cigarettes. Even after the Feds remove it from the list there will be regulation governing its sale. You can grow tobacco all you want; most people don't because prep is much harder than marijuana; but run afoul of a few laws should you try to sell it. It would certainly reduce the jailed popu…

It's an article of faith that cannabis is a major contributor to US incarceration, but I think that's a belief worth questioning. I looked into this briefly for a thread a year ago and in the states I researched, domestic violence was far and away the leading cause of incarceration. In many major metro areas, you're more likely to be ticketed for cannabis than arrested. I haven't taken the time to come up with a conc…

And this is why I typically upvote your remarks even outside of security expertise.

Re: Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

#43

Post by angersock »

tptacek wrote: post #7
rickdale wrote: post #5

One of the biggest issues with marijuana in this country is the lack of research behind it. Here in Michigan where over 60% of the people voted for medical marijuana, they just outlawed medibles. Meaning no pot brownies for patients. Which makes no sense when applying medical marijuana. Caregivers and patients are outraged because they feel like they know more than the judges or politician do, and I have to agree. On…

It seems clearly safer in some respects, and I agree with you on the policy implications, but I think the apples-oranges safety comparison that gets made between MJ and (alcohol, tobacco) is misleading and a little dangerous. MJ is not purely benign. There's some evidence that it reacts very badly with a small subset of the population. That's obviously true of alcohol too, and if you want to argue that it's "as safe…

I'll go one further--it's clearly safer (in all respects) than either alcohol or tobacco.

My only fear with legalization is that it will get pulled from the grassroots production into industrial methods, and that in turn will lower its safety (as was the case, for example, with cigarettes and the additives in the paper for them).

Re: Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

#44

Post by apalmer »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #11

Better late than never I guess, but what changed his mind really? "I actually did more research and was shocked, shocked by what I found!" or "I'm making a documentary and the tides of public opinion continue to shift, writing's on the wall, time to change my tune..." Maybe (probably) I'm being overly cynical, but people like him have lent support and legitimacy to a machine that literally destroys people's lives for…

Your not being cynical at all, its pretty much right on the money. Its pretty cut and dry either:

LAST TIME, he didnt really look at the evidence and was just regurgitating the standard line without really doing scientific analysis

OR

THIS TIME, this time he is just trying to jump on the bandwagon and get out in front of this controversal topic...

either way he doesn't hold to much weight with me, i am all for smoking ganja but the whole medical marijuana being pushed by recreational smokers thing is kinda perturbing to me

Re: Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

#45

Post by madaxe »

ahoy wrote: post #13
tptacek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems clearly safer in some respects, and I agree with you on the policy implications, but I think the apples-oranges safety comparison that gets made between MJ and (alcohol, tobacco) is misleading and a little dangerous. MJ is not purely benign. There's some evidence that it reacts very badly with a small subset of the population. That's obviously true of alcohol too, and if you want to argue that it's "as safe…

Food coloring also reacts very badly with a small subset of the population, but we aren't banning M&M's

HFCS reacts badly with the majority of the population, inducing adiposis. So does MSG. Don't forget about the pesticides you chow down on with every meal, or the chloride in your water, or the phthalates in your soda, or the BPA in your nalgene, or...

The US is terrible for substance safety. Dire. Awful. Hell, on the note of colouring, you still use bloody anthracine red, which has been banned for decades in the rest of the planet, as its carcinogenic.

Re: Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

#46

Post by dragonwriter »

tptacek wrote: post #7
rickdale wrote: post #5

One of the biggest issues with marijuana in this country is the lack of research behind it. Here in Michigan where over 60% of the people voted for medical marijuana, they just outlawed medibles. Meaning no pot brownies for patients. Which makes no sense when applying medical marijuana. Caregivers and patients are outraged because they feel like they know more than the judges or politician do, and I have to agree. On…

It seems clearly safer in some respects, and I agree with you on the policy implications, but I think the apples-oranges safety comparison that gets made between MJ and (alcohol, tobacco) is misleading and a little dangerous. MJ is not purely benign. There's some evidence that it reacts very badly with a small subset of the population. That's obviously true of alcohol too, and if you want to argue that it's "as safe…

Shellfish, tree nuts, pumpkin, soy, and lots of other things very clearly react very badly -- indeed, fatally -- with a small subset of the population.

To the extent that we let this affect policy at all, its not to ban the products, its to make sure that (1) they are clearly identified when present in a composite product, (2) we very narrowly (usually as a matter of policy of particular facilities, which may be public policy to the extent that those are public facilities) restrict their use in circumstances where there is particularly high risk that extremely sensitive people might be subject to dangerous passive exposure.

Re: Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

#47

Post by orf »

rorrr2 wrote: post #27

Just a hype for his movie. This all reminds me of how some famous supposed atheists convert to a religion X and then write books about it selling millions of copies. Same shit. You're being manipulated. We don't need a mediocre surgeon to tell us weed is OK. Any idiot with internet access knew that for the last 15 years.

Who are you to say he is mediocre? Can you back this up with any evidence, perhaps with some neuroscience studies you have published?

Plus you would be the idiot if you believed everything you read on the internet over the last 15 years.

Re: Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

#48

Post by mason240 »

rickdale wrote: post #5

One of the biggest issues with marijuana in this country is the lack of research behind it. Here in Michigan where over 60% of the people voted for medical marijuana, they just outlawed medibles. Meaning no pot brownies for patients. Which makes no sense when applying medical marijuana. Caregivers and patients are outraged because they feel like they know more than the judges or politician do, and I have to agree. On…

"I am so tired of the US lagging behind the rest of the world"

Can you give a list of countries that are "ahead" of the US in regards to marijuana decriminalization?

Lets see, there is North Korea, the Netherlands, and Uraguagy might decriminalize this year.

I am so tired of the "the US lagging behind the rest of the world" trope. It's the same thing with same sex marriage. The US has been and is ahead of curve when it come to sex marriage rights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World-cannabis-laws.png

Re: Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

#49

Post by jarrett »

tptacek wrote: post #22
Shivetya wrote: post #19

I found it interesting they did not comment on the means of using weed. Smoking it cannot be much better for you than smoking cigarettes. Even after the Feds remove it from the list there will be regulation governing its sale. You can grow tobacco all you want; most people don't because prep is much harder than marijuana; but run afoul of a few laws should you try to sell it. It would certainly reduce the jailed popu…

It's an article of faith that cannabis is a major contributor to US incarceration, but I think that's a belief worth questioning. I looked into this briefly for a thread a year ago and in the states I researched, domestic violence was far and away the leading cause of incarceration. In many major metro areas, you're more likely to be ticketed for cannabis than arrested. I haven't taken the time to come up with a conc…

This data point is over a decade old, but still:

"the proportion of state prison inmates who were sentenced for marijuana-only offenses rose from 2.6% in 1990 to 3.6% in 2000"

http://www.aclu-wa.org/library_files/BeckettandHerbert.pdf

The DOJ reported that there were 1,236,476 state inmates in 2000 (http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p00.pdf). So 3.6% of that would be 44,513 state inmates who were imprisoned for marijuana only in 2000.

Re: Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

#50

Post by madaxe »

Shivetya wrote: post #19

I found it interesting they did not comment on the means of using weed. Smoking it cannot be much better for you than smoking cigarettes. Even after the Feds remove it from the list there will be regulation governing its sale. You can grow tobacco all you want; most people don't because prep is much harder than marijuana; but run afoul of a few laws should you try to sell it. It would certainly reduce the jailed popu…

It's less harmful than cigarettes - nicotine is a vasoconstrictor and bronchioconstrictor. Weed is neither, and actually also has expectorant qualities, so you tend to cough most of the tar back up.

That said, smoking anything is not good for you, but IMHO it's up to the individual what risk they take with their body.

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