Aliselia Aeon

Drug czar: There are no good reasons to legalize marijuana | The Raw Story

I have seen Marijuana work wonders for cancer patients who were undergoing chemotherapy. It helped the nausea and increased their appetites, thus helping them to eat. It also helps with pain. I think there is plenty of reason to legalize it.

Tracer Graves

I have to admit I laughed when I read the title of this thread/story. It's egregiously stupid crap like this that make me think there's private money involved in keeping marijuana illegal. <ETA> I mean, it's not like there aren't 10's of millions of pot smokers in this country who know that this is absolute bullshit. Do they really think we'll be fooled with that line?

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Nephilaine Protagonist

My money is on the booze people blocking it. They would lose soooo much market share overnight if weed became legal.

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Jahar Aabye

I also wouldn't completely rule out pure stupidity. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity alone.

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Aliselia Aeon

And some people manage to combine the two.

Dickie Swansong

They've got it ass-backwards. There was no good reason to criminalize marijuana.

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Sonja Aeghin

But...but...HIPPIES and stuff!!

Aliselia Aeon

This guy took the movie Reefer Madness a bit too seriously.

Void

never attribute to stupidty or malice anything that has a clear profit motive...

and there is one, and it doesn't need private money, it's got everyones money straight from the government. very simple setup really, create an entire industry around combating something that grade schoolers can do, by manufacturing a need to combat it. perpetual industry, because they can never really stop it, and in fact don't even really try

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Mojo Skytower

I think we should mobilize the Home Delivered Pizza lobby on this one. Think how much they would gain overnight if weed became legal.

Oh and in addition to Cancer patients, there's MS patients, those with muscle spasm problems in general and if you use it as a post operative analgesic, you don't have to wean the patient off it like you do with Morphine (and you don't have to worry about overdosing on it either).

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Innula Zenovka

I discussed this once with a GP friend of mine, and she raised an interesting point.

While she agrees that Marijuana seems to help in all sorts of circumstances (Parkinson's Disease, for example), she'd have great difficulty prescribing it even if it were legal because -- as with any natural substance -- you don't really know what dosage a given sample represents. As she said, a doctor can confidently prescribe an opiod analgysic like morphine or heroin, because she knows how much she's prescribing, and what's a suitable dose, in a way she couldn't be confident about what (or, rather, how much) she was telling a patient to take if she simply said "smoke a pipe of opium."

The medical argument, I think, is a lot stronger for trying to identify and extract the active therapeutic constituents of Marijuana and Cannabis rather than for legalising it per se.

I'm not against legalising it, by any means (though I am told that the newer strains of "skunk" are far more powerful than anything we used to smoke at college), but I'm not convinced the medical argument for legalisation is the strongest.

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Tracer Graves

Tess Whitcroft

Wolf: There's no good reason to put big fences around sheep.

Tess

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Ann Otoole

when kimmel openly calls out the president at the correspondent dinner it is time to begin firing the retarded dipshits that oppose legalization.

Kaimi Kyomoon

It got me through what would otherwise have been my stressed out 20's. I smoked a lot over a long period of time and I have nothing but fond memories of it. When I got a bit older I just unconsciously tapered off my use and then I didn't need it any more.

Kaimi Kyomoon

I read this great story somewhere about a retired cop who went all over the U.S. visiting local law enforcement officers. He asked them all "When was the last time you had to physically restrain someone who was high on nothing but marijuana?" He said everyone thought about it a few moments, then got a little surprised look on their faces then said, "never".

Then he asked when was the last time they had to get physical with someone drunk on alcohol. And they looked at their watches - like it was usually within the last 24 hours.

I wish I could find that story and link to it. I believe it because I've known lots of drinkers and lots of stoners. But I don't have any proof.

Han Held

You are correct sir! The judicial system makes money hand-over-fist with drug cases. Police departments all over the USA get outrageous budgets for drug-war toys. Also, police departments all over the USA benefit from drug forfeiture laws (some even rely on them). Private prisons require a non-stop influx of inmates and the pot laws provide them.

tl;dr Drugs will not be legal until the US government goes the way of ancient Rome.

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Ann Otoole

the sooner the planet forsakes the USA and lets the USA die it's deserved death the better.

Alazarin

It seems a shame that it would take such extreme measures. One can only hope that good sense will prevail.

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Aliselia Aeon

But if it were legalized it could be treated like any other medication. It could be manufactured to be administered orally ( capsules, for instance) and in manufactured, measured and tested dosages.

If a person obtains a drug on the street they cannot know it strength or purity. If obtained through prescription through a legal manufacturer, it has been manufactured and tested, so one can be assured of both purity and proper dosage. Imagine the money that could be made by the manufacturers of an over the counter marijuana capsule.

Jackal Ennui

Synthetic THC is already being manufactured and sold for medical purposes (thinking of Dronabinol here, not of the street drug "Spice")

As for the plant in its natural state - I have no deeper knowledge of pharmacology, but for instance I take valerian root pills for sleeping, which are made of the actual plant yet come with a guaranteed dosage of the active ingredient. Same thing with all of the other herbal medicines I can get at the pharmacy here, like cough syrup made from herbal tinctures. I imagine that with controlled cultivation, post-processing and quality control, it would be possible to ensure consistent levels of active ingredients in medical MJ. I might be totally off-base here but really, herbal medicine isn't something new, techniques for extraction and preservation have been developed over thousands of years, it can't be rocket science to apply that to MJ

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detrius

Funny, when I hear the words "drug czar" (or "Drogenzar" in German), I think of a guy making millions with selling drugs.

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Innula Zenovka

I'm not sure what you mean by "legalized" in this context. Here in the UK, certainly, it's perfectly legal for doctors to prescribe opiod analgysics like morphine or heroin in appropriate cases, but it's nevertheless illegal to possess or sell them for recreational use, just as it's illegal to possess raw opium or to try to cultivate opium poppies without a licence.

I don't see any contradiction in a situation in which doctors could legally prescribe cannabis, or cannabis extracts, rather, as a medication, while it still remained illegal to possess, supply or cultivate it for recreational use.

But I don't think that's what most people mean -- certainly I don't -- when they say they think cannabis should be "legalized".

Han Held

hope in one hand...

Innula Zenovka

/me wonders who the Drug Lenin is.

What is point of calling someone a "drug czar", anyway? I seem to remember reading somewhere that it was originally taken into American English to denote someone who was in overall charge and control of something, presumably as an allusion to the the Czar's autocratic powers (Peter the Great used to sign himself "Czar and Autocrat," meaning that he, and no one else, made the rules) but what powers does "the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy" actually have? Presumably he answers to someone.