1st off,,,i always have disguished marijuana from cocaine...they shouldn't even be mentioned in the same paragraph when talking about dangers or toxicity. Cocaine has much more in common with alchohol than it does marijuana any day.

when i discussed mortality rates and pot i was referring to toxicity (overdose) as compared to alchohol. cigarettes have been proven to cause certain health problems, but so has a good steak. and then there's the pollution we breathe every day that causes disease and death. in my state, which has the distinction of "cancer capital" of the nation, delaware, we don't have unusually high smoking rates or drinking rates or anything like that...people get cancer in this state from corporations pumping crap into our air and water.

and insurance companies already factor in marijuana related health costs in today's numbers as people already smoke it..

i never claimed that marijuana had no adverse health concerns...but again, so does red meat. and ozzy osbourne's problems have been with alchohol mostly and smack some....not pot.

thank you for your thoughts:)

if it were to be legalized, i would support any measure to keep it off the roads,,,just like with drinking. of course, cops are already trained to look for signs of a "high" driver and have been for decades. and i don't remember hearing about an epidemic of stoners crashing into stuff...i do hear about drunks ruining lives every day with their car though.

When I was comparing Marijauna to Cocaine it was in an effort to show that there can't be distinctions made between the two without saying, well it's not as bad as coke so it should be legal. Because then the slippery slope argument comes into play, legalize pot because it's not as bad as this drug and it's more like this other drug, then what are the standards for other drugs? I don't think legalizing a drug should come as a result of how many people use it or even in terms of its potency, and definitely not in comparison to other drugs. Because every drug can have an argument in that scenario, and having all drugs legal is something I think we can all agree is not good news. There just seems to be a mudslide waiting to occur.

Thanks for the information on insurance. I wasn't aware that it was factored in already.

The American people don't want MJ legal. They don't want the government to profit from a material that has no purpose beyond intoxication. They want people who use and sell MJ to go to jail. Isn't Democracy great?

Debate the perceived benefits all you like, it doesn't matter. The vast majority of Americans, and the vast majority of nations in the world, have decided how they want to handle MJ. At the end of the day that is all that matters, unless you want to impose the will of drug users on the rest of society to make money. I think that would be a hard sell during an election.

What, can't he advocate his position in the hope of changing people's minds?

Actually, having pot illegal is actually better for the government that having it legal. I smoke pot, I admit it, but truthfully, I started smoking it to "be cool" and fit in with the rest of my friends back in high school (I'm 21 now). Now, you make pot legal, and all the kids who want to be bad won't start smoking pot...they will find the next illegal substance that is readily available, such as cocaine, ecstasy, etc. Instead of a kid smoking a harmless joint to fit in, he snorts a harmless line of coke to fit in, and what you will end up with won't be pretty. If you go to Amsterdam, Holland, where pot is legal, the #1 drug there is not even pot, it's cocaine. People are more attracted to things when they are illegal, it gives them a sense of excitement, breaking the law and all. Tobbaco and Alcohol are both highly ADDICTIVE substances which is why both are widely used today, even though they are legal.

Hope that all makes sense...

What, can't he advocate his position in the hope of changing people's minds?

He isn't changing people's minds about MJ, he is telling them that if they swallow their beliefs about it, they could make a killing. Not very persuasive to me.

Rephrasing that: he's pointing out that there are costs to the current policy, and there would be benefits from a change in policy. Sounds like advocacy to me. Whether it's *successful* advocacy is an entirely different question.

Yeah, but the exception people take with MJ isn't the cost, it is the general malaise of the potheads we see every day. We don't agree with its use, and we really don't care if there would be benefits from changing the policy. The cost/benefit ratio isn't the issue, we just don't want MJ legal.

one of the things about this forum and what i wrote is that it is not necessarily supposed to be complete thoughts all the time. what i offered was 1 of many points about legalization. there certainly are other pros and cons. And of course, i would welcome more ideas and thoughts on the subject.

also,,,thanks to those who have posted on this so far,,,thanks for keeping everything on a "civil" tone.

Timeless argument..

I dont really have much to contribute, other than the fact that i am 100% on your side Sconn1. You present excellent arguments, and as a fellow smoker who sees alcaholics dying on the road and getting into fights with a government sanctioned product, i beleive it is a tad unfair...

I also never knew that Hemp could be used as a fuel source, so you got an insiteful from me

Keep it up!

BAM!!!

"as a fellow smoker who sees alcoholics dying on the road and getting into fights with a government sanctioned product, i believe it is a tad unfair..."

So we need another government sanctioned product for people who die on the road and get into fights?

The basic fact people overlook is that getting drunk is the abuse of alcohol, and millions of people use alcohol as a beverage every day without abusing it, without getting drunk For thousands of years it was the primary source of drink in most cultures and the world wasn't destroyed by alcoholism, and drunkards were still singled out as abusers.

On the other hand intoxication is the sole purpose of MJ. I see a huge difference. If I go and have a beer with lunch, no one accuses me of needing a buzz. If I go and smoke a doob, what other reason did I have? Call it hypocritical, but intoxicants are frowned upon, over and above their addictive qualities. When there is no other use beyond intoxication for a product, you'll have a hard time making people understand why it should be legal.

BakerStreet, beer is a relaxant, same as pot. It seems to me that there isn't much different as long as it's carefully used.

Like I said before, there is users and there is abusers.

XX: My point was, beer is a beverage that happens also to be an intoxicant if used in excessive amounts. MJ is an intoxicant... period. No other use. If you abuse alcohol, you get drunk, if you use pot, you become intoxicated. There is a big difference.

Why should anyone legalize any substance and profit legally from it when it's illegal status provides a mean of a kind of control over the population and shifts certain portions of it from free markets to controlled markers (aka the recent business model of using prison population as underpaid workforce)? Definitely, the longer drugs are forbidden, the longer the government and corporations would benefit from it's collaterial damage.