I'm against the legalisation of marijuana. A close friend of mine is a researcher in the field so I tend to hear all that's going on. I'll keep it brief though.
You get people who smoke, who get high and who never have health problems. Unfortunately, those people are a large minority and tend to use examples like "I have a friend who's been smoking for 20 years and he's fine" to defend their habits. Then you get those who smoke weed and slowly descend into dependancy and ultimately into permanent states of mental illness.
The major problem tends not to lie with the smoker, but with the smoked product itself. Jamaica has such a large culture of weed smokers yet has very low rates of cannabinoid-related schizophrenia and other related mental illnesses. Then there are countries like the Netherlands who have much higher ratios of mental/physical illnesses to the amount of weed they smoke.
The secret to the matter is the component tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). This is the major killer in marajiuana and a high proportion of this in your 'erbs is what'll get you. Jamaica tends to grow it's weed supply outside in the sun where it grows naturally in day/night cycles. Therefore, their cannabis has a low level of THC and they can puff away for a long time (though the risks are still there). European weed (and I take this from research samples taken in London and Amsterdam), is mostly grown indoors on a 24 hour bright light cycle. That shoots up the THC levels in the final product and creates, not a mind-altering smoke, but what can be pretty much deemed a poison.
It's true that smoking kills so many more people than cannabis per year but the legality of it is that it doesn't make you dangerous when you smoke it unlike cannabis, which plunges you into an unpredictable state of mind (different people react differently to being high - kind of like the difference between 'happy drunks' and 'angry drunks').
Medical marijuana is regulated and is fine and helps a lot of people every year.
In conclusion, if you want to take that risk and spend money to play lottery with your life, it's your choice. However, that lottery could make you dangerous for society and that's not cool. I personally know too much about what's inside it and the likely short & long-term side-effects to ever want to touch the stuff
(07-26-2012 04:09 PM)Arjahn Wrote: I'm for legalizing it. It doesn't mess with your mind nearly as much as you're led to believe, all it really does is relax you like crazy, and it's safer than Booze, which is legal pretty much everywhere.
I've got to say that yes, in many cases, it's safer and kills many less people than alcohol. Sometimes the laws make no sense but if we can keep just one more mind-altering substance from being legal, [epic music]someone somewhere won't die because of it[/epic music]
