The REAL problem with marijuana.

I know first hand why marijuana is doing harm to individuals all across America.

Lack of REAL drug education.

The reason is that the schools don't tell the truth about marijuana. They teach you to "just say no" and to "never ever do it". If they did actually tell you the truth they could teach you how to responsibly use marijuana and ACTUALLY help people.

When I discovered all the stuff they told me was bullshit, I started using heavily (every day all day). I WAS abusing it to escape from my problems because I didn't really have any grasp on what marijuana was... It IS a drug and SHOULD be taken responsibly.

If we actually told the truth about marijuana... well we could teach people about vaporizers, or good weed and bad weed.. Teach people about safe driving and marijuana, teach them about when to smoke and when not to smoke... but then they would have to do something they will NEVER admit.

That you can use marijuana RESPONSIBLY.

This would mean that Regan was wrong, that our country lies to us and that the things those hippies were telling us might actually be true....

Marijuana, think differently.

 

It's like teaching abstinence vs. safe sex. It's going to take a long time for the schools to admit that kids use marijuana, regardless of what they tell us about it. It happens.

I have mixed feelings on this matter though.

 

I certainly agree... real drug education is needed... perhaps then well meaning people would stop saying stupid shit like this...

 

Well, I think it's like alot like cheeseburgers.
Are they unsafe to eat? No.
Can you over do it? Certainly.

Especially if you're high, lol.

But no serious harm is really ever done, other than a blackened lung. (which could easily be avoided anyway)

 

People can become addicted to anything. For example look at the people who play those online games for 50 hours straight and drop dead because they didn't sleep or eat.

I too went through that standard "just say no" crap. It doesn't work, and kids really need to understand the difference between substances. I do think there are some drugs that are no good, and you are only confusing the kids when you lump pot in with meth or crack, or something that is truly bad.

But what do they always refer to this education as? Drug AND alcohol education. As if alcohol is not a drug. It's the legal drug, but still a drug. It's all part of the brainwashing where you are sold certain drugs and not others.

 

true but another big contributor as to why its not legal is because we keep acting like it IS completely harmless... just like anything else.. in excess it can/could be harmful

 

Just like banana's.

Edit: except that those are legalized of course

 

yeah but when you got people trying to push a drug to be legal.. it would be responsible to point out that we understand there is harm.. and that its not the worlds perfect plant that will never ever hurt anyone

 

Thats true, but we need to point out how much safer marijuana is versus tobacco, and drinking booze to excess, and stop lumping the theory that if you smoke weed, it will lead to eventual addcition to heroin or something, which sometimes happens, with or without weed being used first, usually alcohol is the gateway drug if anything. Some middle aged people actually lived through the 60's and 70's and so on without smoking weed or any drug but alcohol, and some even never drank booze or smoked cigarettes, and they still believe that all drugs are = as in weed=heroin=crack, etc.. except for the well advertised drug of alcohol usually..even though IMO booze leads more kids to try drugs that weed does..

 

I don't think we need to educate kids on weed lingo and what not, but we should be telling them the truth. Just be like "Yeah, some teenagers smoke it, odds are you will be exposed to it at one point, but not everyone here will try it." We should be teaching them about its history as a medicinal herb, and about the pros because they vastly outweigh the cons.

Over all, I think Americans are being too sensitive about everything. Remember the good ol' days when you could 'win' at something in school? Now everyone gets a ribbon.

 

your problem is that what you are stating is the same thing anti-marijuana people state.. stop being a hypocrite... do you think Tobacco or Alcohol were compared to other drugs before they became legal? Do you think medications are compared to other medications to point out the flaws of one drug to another? No.. Goods and Evils are pointed out for the drug at hand and it is decided if overall the drug is safe for the community.. this is what must be done... Show society that this is whats wrong with marijuana.. this is whats right about marijuana.. now decide is this good for the common consumer/patient...

stop playing the finger pointing game and once in your stoner life you may be taken seriously

 

What objectively documented evidence do you have to support your claim?

 

The problem is that people are really not aware. If they are made aware of how it can create magic, then the problems will be warded off.

 

That is out-and-out bullshit. The basis for our criminalization practices is only OSTENSIBLY based on the net good or harm of the drug. If the decision were really made in the way you propose, alcohol and tobacco would both have been illegal long ago. Neither one is "safe for the community" in any real sense.

Observe the Chomsky quote in my signature if you need your brain turned on about this.

The forces that keep alcohol legal and marijuana illegal are quite simple: profit and the preservation of establishment interest. Alcohol is a major product that forms a huge product class and profit-source for agro-business in this country. It is also an ego-enforcing, boundary-fortifying drug that makes people spend money and doesn't interfere with the interests of thsoe in power.

Marijuana is illegal because it is not a cash-crop for any establishment interest (in fact there is evidence showing its illegalization benefits many in power), and most importantly because it is ego-reducing and causes people to question societal assumptions.

If the decision to illegalize is based on a true assessment of community good and public itnerest, why do we find in a 2011 poll that 51% of Americans favor marijuana legalization while 0% of U.S. Senators do? This is clearly a case of an anti-democratic preservation of power by elites.

As far as I'm concerned, the case has already been made that marijuana use (divorced from the social problems of the black market) does not harm society. No open-minded person can entertain that notion. To paraphrase Terence McKenna: more money has been spent trying to find a health-risk to cannabis than to any other vegetable substance in history; the fact that so little has been found against it amounts to a clean bill of health for this stuff.

So, if that is the case, why is the shit still illegal? My man Chomsky says it all...

 

One of the first sane posts in this thread:love:

 

Truth, man! Totally agree

 

You've just identified the problem right there. And not in your first sentence, but in the second.

"people will see how safe a drug it really is."

It is not a drug. It's a plant. It's a God given, Mother Nature given entheogenic plant.

When we allow ourselves to be convinced that the things that we use in any way to be described in negative terms, we've already allowed the prohibitionists to win. When we let ourselves call it a drug, we've fallen prey to their propaganda machine.

We would not call steak or meat by it's chemical constituents, unless you happen to be in PETA. We call it meat and food. We wouldn't call trees simply 'exchangers of CO2 for Oxygen' either.

If you look at the places on the planet where it has been grown and used historically for thousands of years, it's a part of their culture. It's as normal to them as breathing and worshiping their gods and goddesses, or putting mango chutney on certain dishes. It's not a drug to them. It's a part of everyday life. It's a part of religious or community ceremony. It's a part of the medical pharmacopia of the local doctors.

Just because it has the beneficial property of getting you high does not mean that it has to be treated like a drug. Drugs are manufactured, not grown. Drugs are made up of chemicals. Willow bark is still far more effective for headache and fever than aspirin, but Aspirin is a manufactured creation that changes the salicin in willow into the acetylsalicylic acid that is aspirin. Heroin is a chemist's created formula to add an extra molecule to morphine to make it into a drug.

Certainly, chemists can break down any plant and tell you all the chemicals that compose that plant and scientists will test those compounds and tell you which ones are getting you high, but to call a growing plant a drug just leads us into the fallacy that was created last century: 'Better Living Through Chemistry'

I disagree. Better living through the gifts of Mother Nature.

And Black Lung? Are we not reading the news reports that show that smoking pot does NOT cause lung cancer, but in fact, reduces tumours in those that already have lung cancer? Yes, I agree, any time that you are inhaling burnt organic material into your lungs, you can have it accumulate and remain there and carbon compounds are carcinogenic ... but the gifts that are the compounds that make up the plant get rid of the carcinogenic effects of the burnt carbon.

And, lets not forget how many things that it is medically beneficial for now. The list has gotten to be very long.

Cannabis is a hypoglycemic, which means that it lowers blood sugar and therefore is very beneficial for diabetics like me. It lowers the blood pressure in your body and is therefore good for potential heart attack and stroke. I've already had one MI. It has recently been shown to prevent a stroke or limit the damage from a stroke by 50%. It kills many kinds of cancer and has been known to do so since 1974. It helps people with ADD and ADHD to complete college by being able to concentrate on studying. As per the lowering of blood pressure, it does so around the eyeball and therefor is beneficial for those suffering from glaucoma. It is a vasodilator and therefore is good for those with high blood pressure and at risk for heart attack or stroke. Preventative medicine. Stress is the greatest killer we have today. And it prevents stress. It's an analgesic, a pain reliever. I could continue on with many more medical ailments that it helps with, but I hope that you get the picture.

All these comparisons to alcohol and tobacco are meaningless. It should never have been made illegal. It was never made illegal to keep the populace safe from using it. Or do we have to get into THAT argument?

We should all know by now that you don't even have to smoke it for it to be helpful to you. You wouldn't even get high if you just ate the plant raw. Juicing it is now a great way to get the health benefits. But . . hey, there are those in the old school that will still smoke it or bake with it, and there's nothing wrong with that at all.

It's all about perception. Try perceiving it like good nutrition or a good prayer or a good song that you love. Cannabis has been around for a lot longer than prohibition. The truth about it has been known by the educated and the informed for a lot longer than the lies and bullshit that get spread around about it by the prohibitionists or the ones who just can't stand the thought of someone being happy.

It is not a drug at all, but a plant that has a great many beneficial and healthy properties. It's time for a new paradigm.