There are at least five marijuana-related ¡°sub-reddits,¡± or reddit sites dedicated to specific topics and managed by users. Those include the subreddits trees...So where would I go on Reddit to talk about actual trees?
(1) Schedule I.¡ªLSD, psylocibin, and peyote are all on schedule i, not like the relatively decent citizens of schedule ii like cocaine and heroin.
(A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
(C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision."
I seriously doubt if there are many rigorous studies demonstrating pot increases the over all quality of ones life or even that those who regularly use it report an over all increase in life satisfactionWhy would you need a rigorous study? If people didn't like it, they wouldn't do it. And anyway, people's happiness and satisfaction are pretty much constant. People in jail have just as much self-esteem, as people who aren't, for example. People are unhappy when things are getting worse, and happy when things are getting better. But when things are static they'll revert to their normal levels.
If you are a single-issue voter then your vote will tend to get used by cynical politicians who will pander to your cause but, in practice, do very little to move it forward. See: most Republicans and abortion.In order to legalize abortion, you need a constitutional amendment. Or you need to replace the members of the Supreme Court, which they're working on. They also work to close abortion providers to make them impossible to acquire. There are some states with only a handful of providers, for example. The fact is republicans have done a lot for anti-abortion people, but they can't actually make it legal - yet.
Yeah, god forbid we base laws on actual empirical study, instead of random biases!Studies have actually shown that marijuana does not increase the risk of accidents while driving.I'm extremely skeptical.Anecdotally, those who have hung around marijuana users are probably familiar with their stories of driving 10mph in a 25mph zone, etc.Yes, because it's hard to judge what speed you're going. Not a recipe for safety.
I'm all for legalization (fuck decrim, say I), but let's not be stupid about this.
And "NORML" says this was the result of "crash culpability studies". Run experiments instead of working backward from correlation and then get back to me.Generally if you want to prove something, like that driving while stoned causes crashes, you have to prove it, rather then just assuming and then badmouthing any studies that show it's not true. That's certainly not scientific rigor. My only legal 'hobby horse' is that laws should be based on empirical evidence. If evidence showed that smoking pot increased the risk of accidents the same way that alcohol can (beyond certain BACs), I would be all for making it illegal to drive stoned.
But god forbid you should let scientific rigour get in the way of your favourite legal hobby horse.
Fine? Sure. Do it again and again? Court-ordered treatment. Something. Jail, eventually, if it comes to that. But ruining lives for something stupid-but-not-deadly? Not a fan.The way the laws work now, if you have more then a certain amount, you're automatically considered to be a dealer, regardless of whether you are or not. And anyway, most of the people in jail for marijuana are there for dealing. I don't think many states imprison people for simple possession, not more then a couple days. Making something legal to have but not to distribute doesn't make much sense.
Dealing? Jail. Now.
My point is this: clearly there would be costs associated with the future misuse of legalized pot, as there are for the misuse of tobacco and alcohol. We are a linked society -- we all share these costs in direct and indirect ways. This stuff matters.What stuff? The only thing you've pointed out is DUIs, which you think were lower during prohibition. You just assume that marijuana legalization will cause an increase in 'injury and death'. But you don't have any numbers to back up your claims at all. How many injuries and deaths are caused by marijuana use today? You don't say. If MJ caused 5 deaths a year due to traffic accidents, and use doubled, then you'd be up to 10 deaths. Which is not very many. Far less then the number of people killed while texting while driving.
I can argue on emotional grounds -- I am minus one aunt and minus one uncle, and their downward slide began or accelerated with pot, then on to other things -- but arguments from an emotional place end up nowhere good. (For instance: much of this thread.)So what? Marijuana was illegal at the time and it didn't prevent anything from happening. What does that have to do with legalization? Besides, if marijuana was legal then it would be much harder to move from it to illegal drugs. Generally if you know someone who can get you pot, it wouldn't be hard to get other drugs from them, whereas if you just bought it at a store you wouldn't have any way to 'move on' to 'other stuff'. And did they drink alcohol? Why not blame that?
No public education program or penalty will stop people from smoking it, since for many people it is a rational tradeoff to get a good high in exchange for some risk.Not to mention, people will think the 'education' they're receiving is a lie, because the government lies about the harmful effects of drugs all the time. You can't "educate" someone into believing something that's false.
What, seriously? Are you unaware of this?How can I be unaware of something that doesn't exist? I realize rappers rap about smoking weed. But how many stereotypical 'stoners' do you meet who are black? And again studies show more white people smoke pot. I've seen a couple episodes of Chappell's show, but not all of them. I don't remember a joke about that so it couldn't have been in every episode. Maybe Chappell thinks white people think black people smoke a lot of pot because he smoked a lot of pot and it was obvious to other white stoners?
Hell, if nothing else, I'm sure you've seen Chappelle's show, which featured "white people think all black people smoke pot" as a joke at least once an episode or so.
and that that association with black people played a strong role in the outlawing of marijuana and in continued resistance to its legalization.During the Nixon administration the association that reflected negatively on marijuana was with hippies, mainly white hippies. I still think the average "stoner" image is sort of descended from the hippie/ cheech-n-chong image (well, cheech was Hispanic, but you know what I mean).
I once had a friend who told me that he could never really "accept" my gayness because his younger brother was once molested by an older gay man. He intellectually understood that I'm not a child molester, and that gay men weren't to be feared, but emotionally speaking, he could just never get beyond the trauma that his family went through and he blamed it all on gays. He still does. Just can't get past it.
Four other heavily populated counties ¨C Santa Clara, Sacramento, Contra Costa, and Fresno ¨C each with a population from just under two million to just under one million, arrest African Americans at double to triple the rate of whites. In Santa Clara County, blacks are less than 3% of the population but 11% of the arrests. In Sacramento County, blacks are 10.4% of the population but 38% of the marijuana possession arrests.posted by rtha at 9:28 PM on September 2, 2010 [2 favorites]
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posted by mathowie at 12:06 PM on August 27, 2010 [87 favorites]