Notice How Only "Legalized Pot" Makes You Crazy Enough To Shoot People and Jump Off Buildings!

[Solomon]

People been smoking pot for more than a 100 years, probably more. But only "legal" pot is dangerous.

Wonder what they putting in that stuff?

[randome]

1. If you refuse to be objective, you will only sound defensive.

Pot being illegal in most states makes it much less likely for accidents to happen. Different people react to drugs in different ways. Refusing to recognize reality will not help.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]A ton of bricks, a ton of feathers. It's still gonna hurt.[/center][/font][hr]

[Solomon]

6. wtf? lol

What the heck are you talking about? Did you lose your sarcasm tag? Lol.

[randome]

7. Basic statistics.

With less pot available in states that keep it illegal, you are less likely to see adverse reactions. Where it is legal, you are more likely to see adverse reactions.

The number of adverse reactions is likely miniscule but shouting that it's all a conspiracy anytime one occurs will have the opposite effect you want.

People will distrust marijuana more because they will think it's hard-core fans will say anything.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]TECT in the name of the Representative approves of this post.[/center][/font][hr]

[2pooped2pop]

9. lol, that is all

[Igel]

24. It's essentially the Linda problem.

The Linda problem asks if it's more likely that a woman, "Linda," fitting a certain description is a bank teller or if it's more likely that she's a "bank teller who is a feminist."

The set of bank tellers is certainly going to be larger than the set of bank tellers who are feminist--the two sets can, at most, be equal, but that's not going to happen. The only reasonable answer is that Linda is a bank teller. To add "feminist" would be to reduce the size of the set and reduce the probability.

Yet if you separate the answers in the set of choices that respondents can pick, you find that more insist that the less likely option is more likely. Evidence that all things being equal, people are really bad a gut-level statistics. You have to phrase things just right to get them to do "tolerably good" stats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy


This is the Linda problem. The ease of getting pot in a state in which it is only illegal is going to be lower than the ease of getting pot in a state in which it is legal but also sold illegally. I think that this is going to be a trivial distinction--all the stats for medical marijuana basically show that the people who are medical users are, with a small percentage difference, just those who'd be illegal users anyway. I suspect the number of new users in states with pot legalization, those who wouldn't use illegal pot but would use legal pot, is a vanishingly small percentage. Which is how to argue against the previous poster.

[RobinA]

12. [Snort]

Haven't been around pot much, have you?

There are decades of data on what pot does to people. At this point it has been ubiquitous enough for long enough that any anti-legaizationer hopes for a sudden increase in pot-related murders is just, well... a pipe dream.

[EC]

13. Really?

There is no pot shortage where it is illegal. So where's the difference? Anyone that wants to smoke in states where it is illegal, DO SMOKE. There is no shortage and it being illegal doesn't stop them.


You're being naïve.

[randome]

15. I'm sure you live in every state, right?

Sounds like you know your own area, perhaps, but that's not the entire country. If the odds are one in a million that someone will have an adverse reaction using marijuana, how much more likely is that to occur where it's legal and more easily available?

It's simple math.

What I see in this and the other threads on this incident is vociferous denial that anyone ever suffers an adverse reaction. That's not a realistic position to take.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Precision and concision. That's the game.[/center][/font][hr]

[RainDog]

17. So, more than a decade of legal marijuana

for medical use in CA, plus 21 states with such laws, along with the complaints that anyone could get legal medical mj in CA, plus the twenty-plus years of hybrid cannabis that has made stronger strains available for more than a decade...

and only now, when full legalization is on the table do we get stories about reefer madness (ignoring the past history of violence, alcohol abuse, and the existence of other substances in the person's body.)

Don't be so gullible.

It's simple math to understand that millions have used cannabis for decades without these spectacular reefer madness stories - which, btw, are variations on the same lies told when prohibitionists created their legislation IN SECRET, with no input from doctors who wanted to keep cannabis legal oh so many years ago.

You're smarter than this.

[randome]

18. So your position is that no one EVER has an adverse reaction to marijuana?

I know you wouldn't say something like that. But instead of reflexively shouting 'Conspiracy!' as some have, maybe it would be wise to get the facts and acknowledge that while marijuana may not have been the sole cause of this guy's breakdown, it probably had an aggravating influence.

Someone posted 'Who buys a gun and keeps it in the house?' on one of the other threads. Nonsense comments like that do not help legalization.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Precision and concision. That's the game.[/center][/font][hr]

[BlindTiresias]

20. no?

There has never been evidence of cannabis use causing aggression. Considering the fact it has been in widespread use for thousands of years and known to sophisticated empires one would think they would have noted a potential for aggression to exist somewhere along the line.

[randome]

21. I don't believe anyone -including me- said that cannabis CAUSES aggression.

When taken into account with other factors, can it have unpleasant consequences? I'd say that's likely, wouldn't you?

It would probably be best to isolate what those other factors might be instead of insisting that cannabis never, ever has an affect on people, no matter how drugged or drunk they may already be.

In fact, that's a direct contradiction for people wanting marijuana in the first place. They want to be stoned. Can being stoned while you're drunk or on meds have bad consequences?

On edit: Well, maybe in the 30s they said it causes aggression but we know better now.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Precision and concision. That's the game.[/center][/font][hr]

[BlindTiresias]

22. Generally speaking, not really

It doesn't have an approachable LD/50 and has no directly adverse psychological effects. It certainly doesn't cause blackouts and full blown interactive hallucinations like what was reported in the case with the man who shot his wife.

As someone who "crossfades" (drinks alcohol and uses cannabis) I can also inform you that it doesn't really do anything aside from make the subjective experience more intense, but the higher threshold of that is basically going to sleep. There is a certain point where where you have consumed so much cannabis you basically go to sleep, which is why "ego loss" stories among cannabis users are considered t be bullshit as the kind of dose one would needs far exceeds what can be realistically attained.

[randome]

23. We've heard from DUers who had unpleasant effects. Including mild hallucinations.

Of course DU is not the world and anecdotal evidence is not conclusive but I would bet that anything that affects the mind has the potential of worsening an already medicated or weakened mind. Just sounds logical to me.

If it didn't affect the mind, people wouldn't want to smoke it.

It's like video games, I think. Do they cause psychotic breakdowns? No. Can they worsen the outlook of someone who already displays psychotic tendencies? Yes.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]

[BlindTiresias]

27. Mild hallucinations

Are called open or closed eye visuals, they happen at very high doses. This man had been experiencing blown interactive hallucinations which is not something characteristic of cannabis use and would be the first time I have heard of such a thing.

Also if someone is unstable anything can set them off. A poor grade at university, a poor performance report at work, being fired, etc. Certainly not the basis for a legal restriction on the activity.

Also, video games? Come on.

You are right it has an affect on the mind but that alone doesn't mean anything. Cannabis is pretty unique in that it maintains a good deal of lucidity, certainly more than the megalomania of legal amphetamines and the delirious state of alcohol. I wouldn't recommend its use while operating heavy machinery or an automobile, an especially at high doses, but its a fairly benign drug overall.

[RainDog]

25. My position is this:

The guy had a history of violence, arrest for DUI, was using far more powerful, legal substances - but the marijuana is singled out?

That smells like propaganda - that we have seen more of since the CO and WA votes.

Hell, one LE person believed the report that 37 deaths had occurred in January due to cannabis (that was posted on a satirical site.) That police chief had months to verify that this was a hoax (a hoax was immediately apparent to anyone not suffering from reefer madness.) Yet the police officer presented this as truth.

We also know that Ronnie Raygun went to town on a fake "scientific" study that indicated brain damage - and only years later, after the threat of a lawsuit, was the actual research released - which demonstrated the scientist had lied in order to create a reefer madness scare at the behest of conservatives. This study, however, is still cited by some as reputable.

That's the bg for all of this that someone needs to take into account - including the recent reports that do not indicate causation but are touted in the media as proof that marijuana causes "brain abnormalities."

I am inclined to view any such reporting as propaganda until proved otherwise - because that's the history of this sort of reporting by the mainstream press and the agencies whose function is to create propaganda - we have an entire bureaucracy whose sole function is propaganda to justify the war on drugs.

We all know that truth is the first casualty of any war.

Again, since marijuana use is little changed since the 1980s - you have to wonder how, suddenly, when states want to address legalization, marijuana has suddenly become the cause of this or that when forty years of marijuana use at the same rate has not regularly seen such actions.

[BlindTiresias]

28. Yeah I agree

Well said

[randome]

31. I don't know if it's propaganda so much as sensationalism. Business as usual for mass media.

The media tend to focus on one nugget of truth instead of presenting a full picture. They want eyeballs more than anything else.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"If you're bored then you're boring." -Harvey Danger[/center][/font][hr]

[RainDog]

32. Since we have an 80 year history of such propaganda

specifically related to cannabis - I'm inclined to view this as direct response to the change in laws.

Republicans are calling out the Obama administration over Holder's statement that they will "let the experiment go forward." Republicans want the feds to arrest people in Denver and shut down legal businesses (state legal, at this time.)

Here's a quick and dirty look at this same sort of reporting back when the prohibitionists said marijuana was a danger to society - this is all considered "yellow journalism" - sensational stories in the media put forward, largely, by Hearst.

http://reefermadnessmuseum.org/chap10/GorePart-1.htm

Here's the "scientific" evidence of the harm of "marihuana" when it was prohibited (all put forth by our own govt.)

There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”

“…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.”

“Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.”

“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”

“Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing”

“You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.”

“Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”

hmmmm. which is it? violence-causing or pacifism-causing? "Degenerate races?" really? Equality is a bad idea? really?

All that said - I don't doubt that some people should avoid cannabis - anyone with a family history of schizo-affective disorders - not because cannabis causes schizophrenia, but because, for those with this vulnerability, schizophrenia may be expressed at an earlier age - iow, it's STILL not the cannabis that creates the illness.

The guy mentioned in the article had a past history of violence and alcohol abuse - so anything he did was more indicative of what he had done in the past, it seems to me. He didn't require cannabis to become violent in the past.

Some people think he's using this as a "twinkie defense" to claim temporary insanity. Maybe he's doing this on purpose, or maybe he's blaming cannabis for pre-existing problems in his life - I don't know.

All I know is that I expect to hear more of these stories as Republicans try to find a way to avoid addressing legalization, and as the head of the DEA attacks Holder and Obama for attempting to bring some sanity to the debate. (Leonheart specifically attacked Obama for the quote that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol.)

[Vincardog]

30. Bingo. That is my position. " no one EVER has an adverse reaction to marijuana" in GOV FUNDED STUDY

[noiretextatique]

33. weed was always readily available in california, even when it was illegal

i think that's probably true in places where it is still illegal. people who "distrust" marijuana probably don't know much about it from personal experience.

[theaocp]

10. That must be why so many are pushing for a return to alcohol prohibition, heya?

What about tobacco, too, since prohibition makes for less accidental lung cancer? Maybe cars should be illegal, to allow for the reduction in automobile accidents? After all, different drivers react to driving situations differently, yes? Are you not recognizing reality?

[eShirl]

14. I love your sense of irony.

[G_j]

29. Over 100 Million Americans Have Smoked Marijuana nt

[arcane1]

2. It was legal forever, until the 1930's.

They like to make us forget that.

[hobbit709]

3. More like several THOUSAND years

[Jesus Malverde]

4. astute observation...nt

[RandoLoodie]

5. There's been plenty of "media placement"

of Drug War Industrial Complex® propaganda lately.

It will get worse as the push for legalization continues.

[2pooped2pop]

8. funny how it never once caused this kind of problem before

I know what they are putting in it-threats to empty prisons and stop putting people who can't afford an attorney away with a record that might keep them from voting dem.

[malaise]

11. That's perfectly logical

Some folks are making gazillions off of illegal ganja. Once it's legal their gray train is no longer running.

[frylock]

16. kickeroo

what's the deal with that?

[dilby]

19. Could be people who don't know how to handle their intake.

I noticed a lot of these issues are with edibles which leads me to believe people who have never experienced pot before are taking way to much through eating it and this is the problem. The shit hits you all at one time, it would be like taking someone who has never had a sip of alcohol in their life and watching them down a 5th of whiskey in 10 minutes. Yeah something bad is going to happen.

[Spider Jerusalem]

26. Cannabis sativa can trigger a psychotic break in people with latent schizophrenia

this isn't anything new, and it's something that's been known for some time. Cannabis indica doesn't have the same effect, and cannabis of any variety doesn't trigger psychotic episodes in people who don't already have latent schizophrenia.

[WhiteTara]

34. I thought

Twinkie Defense.