Cancer everyone?
 

The FDA (and\or industry's) couldn't do any worse,,, if they did something right :scratch: but the FBI? :mad:

It's hard for me to stay on subject in these off-subject threads... :D here I kinda want to say if you get trained to always be in control (whether for a "grater good" or not) you will at points come off as a prick to others, especially those simply trained by life. Law-enforcement (if at all) takes the same physic class as elections!?.

P.s: I (Asthma) don't smoke but have a really nice vaporizer and grate scientifically-designed recipes; I never got as high as an over doing it youthful pot-head until more recently, I had some Marijuana caramels yum!

Julia Lee / The Spinach Song
Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit
Mos Def - 2006 True Magic - Thug is a Drug
Black Sabbath - Sweet Leaf w/ Lyrics
Sunfest 2014 - Legalize It

on a purely principle level I fully understand that my freedom is necessarily curtailed to a degree that I am not a hazard to my neighbors so owning, say... fissionable material, poisons that can leech into the water table, etc need to be firmly regulated. However I really can't for the life of me see the logic behind any democracy prohibiting the possession of a naturally growing weed.

Too bad the masses decide all and not logic.
 

As a plant can't control it like something needing to be manufactured $o they milk it one-way or another.

I was taught that drugs were "evil" and struggled with them at a young age, like money being the root of... :rolleyes: but kids who learn proper respect would hardly struggle with such non toxic things.

I live in WA, and find it ironic that I did smoke all those years while it was not legal to do so and, now that it is state-sanctioned, I choose not to smoke. I see the reason for this decision as two-fold:
a) spiritual growth, which probably has something to do with stages of maturity and concommitant changes in priorities
b) the fact that the 'goodness' of the herb has been bred out with its commercialization and emphasis on THC content.

I beleive humans tend to take something once a good natural medicine and turn it into a poison, all for the profit motive.

For the above reasons, I now choose not to smoke.

Whot? No spacecake?
LOL
Melissa

Hi."b)" was a thought tho "a)" to me seems like a two sided coin, one sides always positive and the other,,, until you flip it... ie "spiritual growth" and "maturity" have nothing in common.

I feel hypocrisy and want to control rule as long as we allow "voting" (control may hang in there even longer?) 16 to drive, 18 to KILL, 21 to die and 35 to be the mf president; "facts" and "reality" are different from what we use?!. :banghead:

If you say addiction is a disease, you may not be smart enough to unlearn that?!

Happy trees! :p

Phoenix Arizona was a blast while my brother in law and his friends pumped me full of their medical marijuana while I was visiting. Medical prescriptions are easy to get there I guess.

LOL, well, as long as it's all inthe family :)
Melissa

I was milpo and gov sec for a while. Then I went to Vegas and bounced on the strip for kicks for a while. From a purely LE/sec POV I'd much rather deal with stoners than drunks. Drunks almost always want to fight; like 99.999999999 percent of the time. Even if you're just trying to get them to go away. Stoners are like: "O.K. I'm sorry" and will walk off if you let them.

From a personal POV: Well the "damage" done socially and physically is no worse than drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette at the same time. Both perfectly legal effects to obtain; so long as I purchase them separately. But I can't do the equivalent of basically "smoking a beer"?

Medically: I have a rather nasty something autoimmune going on in my gut. They haven't nailed down 100% what it is. But, pot has been shown in studies to help with stuff like that. However, I can't get it legally in my state and I won't buy it off the street for two reasons: 1) From the street it could have anything, including rat poison, in it. 2) Street level sales fund terrorism.

Crime prevention: MS13 is bad news. They are a lot more than just the punks in blue you see tagging in the hood. They are a multinational nacro-terrorist organization that is in to human trafficking, exploitive sex trades, murder, bombings, extortion and on and on. They also lend material assistance to organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS and help their operatives penetrate our borders. MS13 makes 85% of their money from trafficking in pot. Let me repeat that: They make 85% of their money from trafficking in pot! Make it legal, tax it, regulate it and cut them out of the loop. Any business that looses 85% of it's revenue either goes out of business or seriously down sizes and restructures.

Taxes: Make it legal and tax it. That money can go to roads, education, substance abuse programs and on and on instead of financing criminal enterprises.

Make it just like alcohol: Gotta be 21, can't drive or go to work under the influence. Which wont be hard to figure out soon b/c there is already at least one prototype breathalyser test in alpha testing to see if you're currently under the influence. They plan on being able to come to market soon.

I still look back to the prohibition of alcohol. It was pointless and I really think it is a matter of time until the rest of the US will legalise Marijuana. I don't see the sense in keeping it illegal, but vestiges of it remaining illegal are due to racial reasons for first, since back when it was 'demonised' it was used mostly by immigrants and non-whites. Second, though this is more of a conspiracy sounding theory, but I think it is plausible; that the tobacco industry had a hand in getting it made illegal, since that would also hit their profits after all tobacco is a pretty big cash-crop itself.

Also perhaps the paper industry would risk losing their profits, since hemp is much more durable but I digress with more 'conspiracies.'

Anyways, comparing this to the prohibition to alcohol you saw a rise in illegal bootlegging and of course organised crime; and now you have hit the nail on the head with narco-terrorists such as MS-13, etc.

Legalising this would greatly reduce their power; after all the so-called 'war on drugs' has been a pointless endeavor. I am not advocating the legalisation of all drugs, such as Portugal did only because the US and Portugal are two vastly different countries, but the US should take a page and legalise Marijuana.


Now whether or not the 'age' limit should be at 21 like alcohol, I find kinda dumb - only because at 18 you can legally enlist in the armed services, and kill someone and vote - so if at such an age one is given such responsibility then waiting until 21 to drink seems ass-backwards to me, but perhaps that is for another thread.

Actually, if you go back and look at the history it was the cotton and the burgeoning pharmaceutical industries combining to form one of the first ever PACs that got it outlawed.

Cotton has been a power block in the US since its founding. Hemp is bad for cotton. It's cheaper and easier to grow, has higher yields, more uses and as a fabric lasts much longer.

In the 30's we were starting to figure a lot of things out in medicine. That's when the first antibiotics were synthesized and the active ingredients in willow bark, opium and a lot of others were isolated. It was big business with a lot of money behind it.

The two teamed up with adversing firms on Madison Avenue to cook up the "reefer madness" campaign that included films, ads and an "educational" campaign for the schools. BTW, on this subject, like so many others, the whole "poor little subjugated minority" crap is a crock that was cooked up by people with an agenda. Just as was the whole "oh terrible minority" crap of the reefer madness campaign.

But, with the voting public thoroughly scared in to crapping their pants and the kiddies brainwashed it was time to head off to DC and throw money at the politicians. So they formed a PAC: Read "a legal way to bribe our representatives in to ignoring the interests of we the people and representing their corporate interests".

Tada: Dope is illegal and the political / social / education landscape of this once great nation, where no less than George Washington himself both farmed and consumed hemp (it made his wooden dentures hurt less), has permanently taken a turn for the worse!

Well 10K years ago we didn't coddle our kids and they had to grow up fast. They were adults by age 13; hence the age of judgement.

Now, we coddle our kids and have turned them in to a bunch of whiny jack wagons. Personally I think the age for everything should be raised to 21: sexual consent, majority, voting, drinking, smoking, driving, military service, all of it. B/c our current society has screwed them up so bad that today kids at 21 are about as mature as kids were at 13 10K years ago.

I say 25 (closer to when our brains stop physically-developing and nearer to the age limit of "the USA presidency" :rolleyes:) but control won't get much unless backed by education... if someone is "abusing" drugs, there's no education. Many conspiracies are right on point with that!.

More often than not growing up in (-_-)"brew city"(X_X) if I got caught with some pot they'd let it slide but in Racine county, where everyone says look out their police are all about quota$... sure enough! ...was it an average cop?
(...as a kid I remember hating him as a tool-racist? :scratch:) :banghead:

Edits done!

For the reasons mentioned above and due to not wanting any kind of criminal record in recent years I have only smoked pot when visiting Amsterdam and, then, because it tends to be a couple of years between visits I only have one joint of the weakest grass and enjoy it almost as if it were a cigar.
I also believe that marijuana should be legalised as I see no reason for the prohibition other than some people being puritanical fascists wanting to ban anything which gives pleasure (see also "vaping" suddenly being banned all over the place because it got around the anti-smoking laws).
Mins you, I would also decriminalise all drugs and, instead of paying for ineffective policing I'd pay for rehabilitation programs.
Funnily enough I've been reading Ian Fleming's and he writes about his meeting with Charles "Lucky" Luciano and how Luciano was in favour of much the same thing.