This my friends is why weed must be legal.

I could go on and on about how weed isent bad for you, studies say...yada yada. But we all have heard it and know it. The fact of the matter is, weed does have some slight long term risk. But there is not one sceintist who studies weed for either side that dosent know that the risks of alchol is much greater. The reason they give for having alclohol being legal is because it is too engraved in our culture and that they tried to ban it, but it led to orgainized crime, overcrowded jails, coroption and other criminal offences. Sound familiar? Lets look at all the things that weed leds to. O yeah, its all of the above. If it werent illegal the majority of these problems would go away. One in every two adult americans has smoked pot. Id say thats preatty damn engraved in our culture. I mean think of all the people that would never break any other law now labeled as criminals. Gov. Awwnold, is desperatly trying to find a way to make back the 17 billion that his state is in debt, mainly due to overcrouded jails. Id say having it illegal is doing a lot more harm than good.

Back to prohabitions. The weed prohabitions started right after the booze prohobitions. And they had the exact same results. They are just the same. So why was the alchol law lifted but not the marijuania one?

If anyone tries to claim that this makes any sense then your are fucking retarded.

 

ain't that the truth. i specially like the quote ....



"""I mean think of all the people that would never break any other law now labeled as criminals.""""



Now i'm labeled as a criminal but i ain't no fucking criminal. just like you said that's like the only law i break, besides traffic laws here and there occasionally, when nobody is around .
that's it. fuck that i ain't no damn criminal i hate to be judged as such. it's sad really
like i'm dying as a martyr for some dumbass cause

 

Ya I'm with you aesther. I've been arrested twice because of weed and when I get arrested I feel like I've really done nothing wrong, but am now labled as a criminal. It will be on my criminal records now and thats probably the worst part because I'll have to show it on job applications. I mean I don't want to be classified as the same as other criminals. Because theres a 0% chance that I would ever rob a bank, murder someone, rape an innocent person, or heck even put graffitti on the side of building.

 

Criminals suck. Smoking weed should not be a crime. To the poster above, you are no criminal. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

People with MS can get weed on prescription in some states for free off the national health, if you want pot, got to visit amsterdam, over there everything is pretty legal, including stealing a bicycle someone leaves lying against a fence!

Everyone is working class, there is no such thing as middle class or upper class in amsterdam...

Classification sucks!

 

You're kind of preaching to the choir.

Anyway, I think the illegality of cannabis has been engraved on our (sub)culture just as much as its use has, and that's why it's easier for the government to just preserve the status quo, which is basically accepted by everyone, even if there is a minority who actively disagrees with it, rather than to seriously weigh the benefits of legalization/decriminalization and make a decision as to whether or not marijuana should be illegal.
Basically, people are used to pot being illegal, so decriminalization is too risky of a move for any popular politician to support.

Also, for pot to be accepted/legal, I beleive we have to get rid of the two (negative) stereotypes of pot smokers: The gangsta, who intentionally speaks in broken english; and the burnout who does nothing but smoke pot and works at mcdonalds or whatever. Unfortunately there's a ton of people out there who actually fit these stereotypes, and I think it's people like this giving pot a bad name that actually does a lot to stop marijuana use from being generally accepted.

And here's a tip: if you want to convince people who disagree with you, try not to call them "fucking retarded". An intelligent conversation/debate has a much better chance of working. Even though I agree with you, you're being no less close-minded than those who refuse to see the positive aspects and reasons to decriminalize cannabis.

 

Weed is illegal for many reasons. And there is no country, that dares to take the step to full legalisation ... if they wanted it in the first place.

There's alot of misconception and lies around Weed. There are plenty of reasons why these misconceptions are stimulated, I don't care much about thoses. I care about the facts.

Making cannabis illegal just creates crime. Just like any other drug, though I wouldn't like to see other drugs legalized too. Cannabis doesn't MAKE people criminal, or atleast ... not as much as cigarettes and alcohol do.

Making cannabis illegal just creates a larger group of users. Some people would less likely try it when it's legal (sounds weird, but it is true). For example, pot is very available in my country. Even to complete idiots without any sources ... look at who's got more cannabis smokers, the USA or the Netherlands? That's right, USA has more.

Making cannabis illegal also makes it hard to have control over it. Even children can buy cannabis, and in my eyes ... minors (kids younger then 15 ~ 16) just shouldn't do any drugs. Not alcohol, not pot and not cigarettes (ok, maybe on some occassions under supervision of older people). None of these are considered really 'safe', especially when your brain and body is still developping. Making it legal makes it harder to get, and makes it less attractive to do.

I can go on like that for hours, but I do want to say ... making it legal also has a lot of downsides. One main issue would be the grealtly increasing prices ... police being equipped with testing gear to see if you smoked any pot and such.

And most importantly, I think this will not happen or even improve in the first upcomming 50 years of life. Maybe more countries step into the footprints of the Netherlands, Canada and Portugal. And maybe this tolerancepolicy in these countries may evaporate... who knows. One thing I know for sure ... It won't be legal for another century.

EDIT: One thing I want to add is, alcohol may have got legal status more easily because it's part of the christian tradition. I am not a christian (far from), but I know wine is a big part of their culture.

 

#1. I agree with you mostly.
#2. I like to think of (stoner) gangsters language not as broken english but as a different dialect. I can't understand a damn word that comes out of a scotsman or Texans mouth. But everyone around them does. Yes, perhaps it is the violent gangsters that leave a bad name for us, but that's not all of what it means to be a gangster. To me, there are 2 types of gangsters. The ones we think we know about that are gangbangin', dealin' and so forth. Listen to some amazing, intellectual rappers I've recently grown to love called Dead Prez. These guys are brilliant and their songs will show you gangster has nothing to do with dealing drugs, robbing liquor stores, and sitting around smoking weed. All of those things have to do with poverty and are results of where they grew up.

SO basically it's the white man (I'm white but I don't fit in as 'white man' and I doubt anybody from here would, at least not the context I'm using it in) who is ignorrant of the life they grow up in, all they see is what makes the news (because it's good enough distance from whats real to feel 'safe) and crimes, so they associate those crimes with the broken English, the drugs, and so forth. When really, in a lot of ways they're just like us.

Even if they speak in a different kind of English, any linguistics major could study British, Gangster, Southern US, and Oregon Dialects of our language and see we all say the same thing, juft different ways. And if everyone could see that, maybe we could see how we're all the same, just trying to get by and sometimes getting high.

Conclusion: It is not the gangsters with broken english who give us stoners a bad name. It is the people who allow them to think being a gangster and speaking in broken english is a bad thing and perpetuate the idea that this is a bad image. People aren't the way they are because of drugs they do, they are the way they are because of their environment. Some people in the media can't accept that idea so they think some environments and everyone that happens in that environment is bad.

Crime is bad. Gangsters commit crimes. Gangsters are bad. Gangsters smoke weed, that must also be bad then!

The cycle of hatred to stoners continues.

Although I compeltly agree with the comment you made aboiut the apathetic stoner who does nothing. Even if you take away the stoner aspects, those people are lazy and are looked down upon.

 

Weed (and coke and opium) were all initially made illegal because of racist beleifs and political corruption. It was later on that they started playing the 'Health card'. At the time of prhibition, alcohol was the white mans drug and the white man was in power so he kept that one legal. I realize my last 2 posts bash 'The White Man' but it's a sad reality.

I'm not black but there's a whole lot of times I wish I could say I'm not white.

-Frank Zappa

 

I think what I was really trying to say with the Gangsta comment was about how a lot of mainstream "gangsta" rappers use(not in the usual sense, but in the sense of using the idea of drugs) drugs (esp. pot) to identify with the "gangsta" culture, and basically just to sell albums. In itself, that isn't really a problem.
But, the problem is that (the ideas of) violence, pimping, stealing, and just general crime are used to do the same thing (identify & sell), and all that stuff is being glorified together. So people tend to think that it's stoners glorifying all that bad stuff, which is basically true (even though the often-assumed causality is not correct, there is still a correlation).

Sorry, my rant kind of went off-topic.
Basically, I agree that gangsters are not inherently bad, but I do believe that music that glorifies violence, degrades women & so on is bad, and that it is a bad thing to associate with any part of a culture that does that. (Not to mention what most mindless mainstream hip-hop is doing to the music world)
Also, I should point out that I realize that not all gangster or hip-hop culture involves the type of things I pointed out, and I actually do like some hip hop and rap.

In response to your second post, there's a related quote by the drug czar from around the time marijuana became criminalized, let me see if I can find it. Here:
"[African American]s' satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others"
That is from Harry J. Anslinger, US Drug Czar (seems to be from 1937)