Marijuana

[Tiffany]

Who in their right mind thinks driving while high is okay? If being high makes her a better driver, then holy shit, I am GLAD I don't live in the same town as her. I don't think I want to see how she is when she drives sober.

I don't agree with it at all, and I do believe it's a gateway drug. I've seen the effects of what can happen on a person with it. My cousin is in a phsyc hospital now because she started with weed, then progressed to acid, then heroin and crack.

Once she developed that habit, she turned to prostitution so she could afford to pay for her habit. My other friend had to constantly drive around and try and find her, one day they found her beaten to a bloody pulp by one of her 'clients'. She got pregnant twice by two different guys, and then ended up having a severe mental breakdown and is in a hospital full-time now. She'll never be mentally well enough to ever care for her own children.

Fearing what losing the children would do to her, my uncle and aunt now raise the 2 little ones. It's sad. And although I know this sounds like an after-school special about why you shouldn't do drugs, I assure you it's very real. It's awful to see a family ripped apart because of that.

Of course, not all people will have this happen to them. Unfortunatly not all people are strong enough to deal with the effects of the drugs. I've seen most my friends become lazy half-assed people because they have nothing better to do than smoke weed.

No aspirations in life. it's sad.

interesting..... but the way that i see it is that the government is making too much money having it illegal!!! just think of it... they get to arrest someone.... then they have court fees around $3,000.00 not to mention the bond they have to pay if they want out of jail till the court date! then if they get probation.... they have to pay according to what they make at work from $30.00 a month to $200.00 a month as well as pay for the rehab...... $30-200.00 a session mandatory for several months sometimes.... then you have the regular aa and na that dont charge but if you dont go you get to go straight to prision... where you end up having to pay even more... if you want ne xtras in life there it costs 3 times the amount that in the stores so they can make a proffit on it!!! i speak from experience on this that is the bad part. i am on probation right now for the next three years for posession of a controlled substance!
the government can easily corner the market on marijuanna they do it for glucoma patients.... growing and processing marijuana for medication. they could sell it like cigarettes.... just look people used to grow their own tobacco plants but when they found that they did not have to that it was being made and processed and sold for convience.... everyone stopped growing it on their own!!! we are a lazy group of people.... if it was being sold alreayd picked and dried and seeded and destemed for us we would easily give up our right to grow it on our own and just buy it. but they dont make the money there! so it will never happen!

[Removed]

I believe people who are inclined to take drugs may start out by using Marijuana, but you can't say that people who use it will start to use 'harder' drugs because that's flawed logic.

The only reason the temptation is there in the first place is becaue "This illegal substance isn't too bad, so I wonder what other illegal substances are like?"

I believe you could say exactly the same thing about alcohol being percieved as a "gateway" drug, IF alcohol was illegal.

[OnOneRyder]

It is not a gateway drug. Alcohol is more of a "gateway" than weed is. I think the majority of the people who think that aren't very educated on the subject. I'm not talking about the effects of weed, but the choices made AFTER being high. I'd say 80% of the people I was friends with in highschool smoked at least once, and maybe 5% ever went beyond that point. Those who do harder drugs started with pot most likely, but the majority who blaze do nothing else.

This may be due to marijuana users inhaling more deeply and holding the smoke in the lungs for a prelonged effect.

A good, slow bong hit gives a way bigger effect than a HUGE toke on a joint. You also don't need to keep it in your lungs for more than 1 or 2 seconds to absorb it. Those who do so are undeducated and most likely arn't smoking in large enough quantities to suffer from long term lung damage.

Tiffany, that story is quite sad yes but it wasn't the pots fault that she moved on to coke and heroine. It's her fault for getting involved with the type of people who would offer it to her. And DO NOT put acid in your list of drugs that she's done that caused her to progress to worse ones as there are 0 negative medical effects from acid that you can experience other than having a bad trip and having mental things go bad.

Now for it becoming legalized I'm against it 100%! Quite suprising for someone that is such an avid user and very supportive of it but there are problems. There is no semi-accurate "side of the road" test to see if a driver has been smoking and untill then it should remain illegal.

One more last thing, about growing this time. You can't simply throw a few seeds in the ground and expect a nice healthy plant to pop up and supply you with great bud. I've grown a few plants in my day and it takes a lot of effort to even get one to start supplying decent amounts of bud. If you want decent pot you'd better be willing to put a lot of effort in a few times a day.

[Plastik Assassin]

Well, kids... Interesting topic. Sorta.

First off, I am an addict that has been in recovery for 5 years now. My DOC was meth, but I started out smoking pot. LOTS of pot...

It started casually, but then there were times when I went weeks burning a quarter a day. I was a tad "burnt out" in my high school years. Dumbest thing I ever did....

To say marijuana is not a gateway drug is relative. To most, it is not. To some, it sure as hell is. I speak for myself and a few others when I say that after a period of time, marijuana loses its effect. By the time that happens, you are so accustomed to being under the influence, that you search for another to take its place. i.e. Meth, cocaine, X. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen...

I used to drive and "operate" normally under the influence of marijuana, and I never saw a problem with it. I believed that I drove safer, concentrated harder, and thought clearer. Little did I know I was absolutely wrong. It may have seemed that way while I was stoned half of the time, but as I gave it all up, I saw what was really happening. I was actually living in space. I wasn't doing anything better or faster, I just thought I was because the long term use had actually muted parts of my brain. Slowed everything down...

When I was using pot, I used to say the same shyt all the time. I'm smarter, I'm more creative, I drive better. I didn't. Not at all. Just tried to justify the behavior whatever way I could..

Pot doesn't make you anything but dumber. THC kills the brain. Thats fact. Justify it any way you like. Bottom line is that marijuana is still a controlled substance, and should stay illegal. I dont care what medicinal purposes it may have, to me, all it does is create an army of burnouts....

[Removed]

What about that stuff you make from the Poppy flower?

Opium I think it's called? Not sure on the spelling though.

There are perfectly legal drugs that can be considered gateway drugs, just because pot is illegal does not mean that is any better or any worse. I speak from experience. I smoked pot when I was younger an it did not have much of an effect on me. I was more addicted to ciggerettes. Then you go into a hospital an they give you a little thing called STADOL..knocked me on my ass!. I know people that get high off benadryl for god sakes!! If pot were legal, we would not be disscussing this anymore than we would duscuss any other drug in the industry. They tell you any drug, whether leagal or not, has the potential to be addictive.

Just because a drug is legal does not mean that people do not have a choice whether to take it or not.Tylenol is legal , and I don't touch the stuff unless I am in reaal really bad pain. If pot were legal, which it practically is, you would have to make the descision to take it or not. Just like on the streets.

Not only that is people do make money off pot. That little incedent that Tiff wasd talking about just gave that hospital a shit load of money because that girl could not say no. ADDICTION. An if you wanna get that taken care of, you will be popping a lot of cash out to go to rehab. Truth is, it is better to keep pot illegal. More appealing to the kiddies, and more money is dished out to get over that little habit.

To me pot is not something I will not do again, but I can't say it is any worse of a drug then some of the things the Dr, gives you. It just does not come with a label telling you not to drive, nor the side effects.

[Lethal Seraphim]

Originally Posted by darkViVi

Also it's a cure for quite many diseases, and is probobly the safest medical drug known to mankind (though it's hardly in use)

This is not true at all. I did a research paper on the legalization of Marijuana last semester. Actually I did two. I did one for the legalization of it then I had to do another against the legalization of it.

Marijuana by itself is the cure for no disease at all. All it is/was used for is pain relief and sometimes nausea and indigestion. There are THC pills that are far far more effective at relieving the symptoms of glaucoma and other conditions in which marijuana has previously been used as treatment. Also, in no way is smoking something an effective way of ingesting it for medical purposes. The fact that marijuana is smoked is almost entirely counterproductive to whatever healing properties it may contain.

Smoking marijuana helps and "cures" some people, but not all people, not even a significant percent of people. Truthfully I think the doctors just prescribe it to terminally ill patients so they can spend their last years being stoned and maybe having a somewhat amusing time.

So no, don't talk about how marijuana is the cure all for sickness. It simply isn't. If it had real medical value, it would be used more plain and simple.

That paper and clothing stuff is interesting though, and I believe all that. Just not the medical part cuz I've actually done extensive research into it.

I used to smoke some weed back in the day. Last time I did was a little over two years ago. Good stuff. It was alright, but it really didn't give me much that drinking didn't. I got sick a few times, probably because I gorged myself on ridiculous amounts of snack foods, so I quit. Sometimes I still want to roast a bowl, ya know, like if someone's talking about it around me and I start to be like oh yeah man.

On one hand I'm glad I smoked it cuz it sort of mello'd me out a bit(I'm pretty high-strung). But on the other it's sort of taken part of my mental edge away.

I dunno.

I could care less if it's legalized. Really I could. I wouldn't be smoking it either way. But I believe Rachel hit on it best: they have to draw the line somewhere.

[Tiffany]

Tiffany, that story is quite sad yes but it wasn't the pots fault that she moved on to coke and heroine. It's her fault for getting involved with the type of people who would offer it to her. And DO NOT put acid in your list of drugs that she's done that caused her to progress to worse ones as there are 0 negative medical effects from acid that you can experience other than having a bad trip and having mental things go bad.

Really? 0 negative effects? That's quite interesting. Exactly where did you get this info?

I looked it up on Wikipedia:

An LSD trip can have long lasting or even permanent neutral, negative, and positive psychoemotional effects. LSD experiences can range from indescribably ecstatic to extraordinarily difficult; many difficult experiences (or "bad trips") result from a panicked user feeling that he or she has been permanently severed from reality and his or her ego. If the user is in a hostile or otherwise unsettling environment, or is not mentally prepared for the powerful distortions in perception and thought that the drug causes, effects are more likely to be unpleasant.

Granted, it's not going to fry every brain out there, but with my cousin it did, and once she started experimenting with Acid and found it was okay, she progressed to other drugs. Do not tell me that it doesn't happen. It did with my family. Say it doesn't happen often, or whatnot, but I know ALOT of people who started out with weed, went to acid, then ecstacy, then Ketamine (Special K or whatever it's called) and then to Cocaine.



Of course, it's all in the person who uses it. My cousin must have had a weakness that the drugs exploited.

[OnOneRyder]

Really? 0 negative effects? That's quite interesting. Exactly where did you get this info?

Notice how I said

other than having a bad trip and having mental things go bad.

Yes acid (lsd) can go bad, but it goes bad mentally and does not in any way effect you physically. It won't fry your brain, you won't OD, and if it leads you towards other drugs like it did your cousin then I'm gonna have to say she was a moron to begin with.

but I know ALOT of people who started out with weed, went to acid, then ecstacy, then Ketamine (Special K or whatever it's called) and then to Cocaine.

And I live in a province where marijuana is our third largest economy and it's not even legal. I've been around it for my entire life and the majority (75%) who smoke will never try anything but weed. You're talking about things you've seen, I've experienced it. I started drinking then a few years down the line I was an idiot and did some coke, THEN I went to pot.

Well people in the US are subseptable to to "peer pressure". Thus making anything any drug dealer says a doable feat. Your country may not be as open to this because it is a normal thing. Here saying "do you want pot"an then doing it is held on a big platter, and then you feel "cool".Then try to do everything that comes a long to up your "coolness". So in our country it very much can be a gateway drug. They glamorize it, and once you do it, they come up with more shit you just "have to try".

Yes, EVERYONE is responsible for their own actions. After all, drug addicts only want to change when they have reached the addiction stage. Before that she probably felt really good an "cool" do be doing it. However, that does not make her an idiot. Just makes her human.

[Double U]

I hate it when people assume of a soft drugger that hell start to use hard drugs eventually.
thats lame thinking,
btw normal cigarettes contain a lot of nicotine and THATS the addicting element in "stickies" ya know,
sure you can get addicted to the effect of pot, but physically, regular cigarettes are more addictive.
And alcohol for that matter is a loooot more dangerous, the effect on the mind may be smaller or with less risks, but its way easier to get addicted to alcohol.

Here in belgium, pot is allowed to smoke above 18 years of age, to decrease the use of hard drugs, and guess what? IT WORKS!!!

if pot is allowed more people wil think of it like normal and cannabis will become less of a so called gateway to ahrd drugs.
people often think: well im doing ilegal drugs anyway, why not start with heavier stuff...
but this aint the case in my country.


i say: a good solution we stole from the Netherlanders

[Tiffany]

And I live in a province where marijuana is our third largest economy and it's not even legal. I've been around it for my entire life and the majority (75%) who smoke will never try anything but weed. You're talking about things you've seen, I've experienced it. I started drinking then a few years down the line I was an idiot and did some coke, THEN I went to pot

lol, I live in a province as well. Don't you realize that this stuff happens in OTHER areas as well? Just because you live in an area that has it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen elsewhere as well.

Also, have you not realized that I have done it as well? I started with alcohol, then went to weed, then acid, then exctasy. I liked the drugs better because why spend $20+ o