the stereo type of people being stupid when they are high gets on my nerves.
i mean i know that all forms of media potray it this way, and many people do act stupid but i propose that the people who act stupid are the ones who are either a)new to it and just doing it to be cool or something b)people that arent that smart to begin with.
ive seen a lot of both types i call them all pudding heads.

in my youngers days marijuana helped in making me a bit less productive and i could of fit into the 'pudding head' type somewhat. but now that im older and more mature i lead a very productive life, i do not get stupid when i smoke and in fact doing my math or computer science homework high is a lot of fun. weeee. but in high school i usualy just sat around and did nothing. so i do strongly believe that maturity is needed with marijuana so the same laws as alcohol should be in effect. or stricter. like 26 or something. or you have to take a class and be liscensed to buy it.

......... just stay away from LSD - the people who make/produce that stuff want locking up for a long time..........

yes, you should stay away from all man made drugs or drugs that need refining before being used. stay natural.

Uhmmmm.....
Opium is basically "all natural".
Not exactly something , I'd advise consuming ; Talk about becoming unproductive....

"All Natural" is definately NOT a safe-guard ; The poison of the blue-striped Krait is "all natural".
It kills you within a minute.....

Well, let's face it, Opiates are still used in medicine today. Morphine is still used as a painkiller and is essentially a pure form of heroin. (Diamorphine)

In fact, opiates are relatively harmless to the body. The reason behind most heroin deaths are due to the stuff it's cut with, not the actual drug itself.

Heh...
I know that.
I just meant : I don't advise its use for leisure-use , whereas I don't see any objections in using marijuana for that.

On Heroin ; tried it (once , oral consumption ; no needles for me) , and I definately can't understand what kind of "kick" people get out of that stuff ; all it does (aside from painkilling) is numbing down your emotions to the point of non-existance.
Kinda scary , actually.(If I could be scared at all , that is , but that's another story alltogether....

Well, if you go back to Victorian England, before recreational drug use was illegal, you had opium dens and stuff like that. The drug quality was pretty much guaranteed, because the opium dens wanted your repeat custom. I suppose the modern day equivalent would be "shooting galleries". The point is that as soon as you make something illegal, you hand control of it over to the criminals. You then get the situation where you have unscrupulous dealers cutting the pure product with god knows what. Far better for it to be legalised so that control can be given back to the government and a limited number of licensed companies.

That's the way to deal with drug dealers, take their market away from them. If a heroin junkie knows that he can get a safe, dosage controlled fix from his local chemist at a price that's not extortionate, the drug dealer is out of business, the junkie doesn't have to resort to crime to feed his habit, he/she doesn't O/D because the fix he bought is at a fixed dosage in a tamper proof package. If you want to smoke a joint, you buy them from the tobacconists or the supermarket, next to the Embassy No. 1's, again, the dealer has no market and you are getting a product produced under strictly controlled conditions.

opium is natural, but i would consider that to fit in the 'refined' category because as far as i know( could be wrong) you dont just go pick a bud off the plant and smoke it.

Nope : You squeeze it (the fruit , that is) and smoke the juice.
But smoking the fruit as a whole would have a similar effect. (Tried it , don't ask...)

I think you're stretching the concept of "refining" a tad too far IMO.

Bunch of dope smokin hippies

To quote Neil from "The Young Ones"

"Oh, yeah, that's right, everyone pick on the hippy."

key kev, don't be dissin

I couldnt have put it better myself, drugs do more damage when theyre illegal.
Think of the poor cancer patients that have to buy a bit of grass off a heroin or crack dealer just to alleviate their chronic pain. Now thats just wrong

I'm 23 and I've been smoking since i was about 15. I'd also like to note that I'll be graduating from coolege with a B.S. in CSC soon, so that's to all those "druggies lead a dead end life" type of people.

Of course, I only smoke occasionally, and don't do stupid crap like toke up before going to class or doing something serious! Marijuana is just like alcohol, but the fact is, and this comes from years of usage, you tend to have more control over yourself after smoking, say, 10 bowls than you would if you drank about 10 shots of tequila!

I really wish the US gov't would ease up on marijuana, because the only issue I've ever had with it is having to deal with criminals in order to buy some.

Geez, I'd expect better from this group. Drugs are an EXCUSE, anybody that says different is full of it. Beer == ugly wakeup call? Only if you want it. LSD...Psycho drugs make you insane...only if you want that excuse. The sick truth is that people act how they're expected to. You took PCP? You'd better bite some chicken's heads off.

I'm not saying they're good for you...in fact, they are a mild poison. On the other hand, the reason most are illegal is because some putz used them as an excuse to act like an a$$holio.