Illegal and why

[ashnics]

I seriously want to know everyone's opion. So yes mj is illegal, but why. Mj is naturally grown. God gave us all plant life. So why is it illegal? Why is mj such a big deal? Does anyone think that we this generation will ever see mj legalized? Are we just going to have to move to a country where it is legalized? Is that fair to us? no. So come with the opions. Good or bad I don't care. Thanks everyone for your time.

 

[FreakNature]

For one thing, people who like to live lives that don't involve illegal activities tend to trust people in positions of authority, including law enforcement officials. LEOs make their living in a large part by upholding the laws about Cannabis and arresting people that are doing no harm. Meanwhile they spread lies about fictional dangers of Cannabis so they can be sure to keep their revenue stream alive; so it's a cycle of lies, arrersts, and support by the general population. Law enforcement is backed up by the prison system, another for-profit business that perpetuates the lies.

Another reason it's illegal is that big Pharmaceutical, insurance and health care are some of the largest companies in the world. They have lots of money to lobby and finance the people that make our laws. They also all benefit from people being sick. Chemical prescription medication kills hundreds of thousands of people in America every year, and often do nothing to cure illness, while causing addiction and further harm. If Cannabis was legal and people were able to use it without fear of arrest, many of the prescription medications most commonly sold could show a huge drop in sales. Things that are prescribed to help people sleep, decrease anxiety, decrease pain, and a host of other medical issues can be replaced by Cannabis.

Oil companies are even bigger than big Pharma. Cannabis Hemp is a renewable resource that can be used to produce bio diesel, reducing our dependence on foreign sources of oil; driving prices down and reducing profits for these companies.

Only time will tell if our federal government will legalize Cannabis use. There have been many steps forward as people with open minds and the ability to think reasonably move into positions of authority; and as more scientific and medical studies are released. Common sense may yet prevail.

 

[ashnics]

that is so true. seriously I'm on pills for sleep. and bipolar. but when I smoke. I can actually sleep regular amount of time and feel refreshed instead of sleeping 18 hours because of the pills that I've been on since I was 11. I'm 27 now. My body is so addicted to them that if I don't take them now or weed that I do not sleep. Plain and simple. Sad isn't it.

I'm not some drug addict wanting it legalized. I go weeks, months, even years without. So its not habit forming. If I was a drug addict I would have it because i wouldn't be able to be without it. However I am able to be without which mean it isn't habit forming. In my opion.

I do like the way it makes me feel. I have a prescription for Klonipin. Which around here is "supposedely" a high selling street drug. I wouldn't know. I do know its an anxiety pill. Its supposed to be "weed in a pill". lol. They don't really work on me. I have bottles running out the ........ I keep refilling them for some reason.

Anyways back to subject. I get tired of always having to be scared of getting caught. Which I don't think is right. So anyways my opion back. Like it or not there it is.

 

[ItsChrome]

The reason its Illegal is racism and fear mongering. Marijuanawas used heavily as the weapon of choice used to associate the use of the drug with 'unwanted' Mexican labors whom were seen as taking jobs from white men during the depression. this is the time of Hearst's campaign against cannabis which lead the charge in the criminalization. backed by both the desire to shut down the hemp paper industry and help push out the Mexicans; which if you believed hearst would smoke marijuana, go into towns and act violently and with out any moral conscious(see rape white woman), steal and generally cause mayhem.

Why is it still illegal? Simple, control. If they repeal the drug laws the government admits they were wrong. If they are wrong about this what else are they wrong about. Questions lead to action, action leads to change. Those in control do not want change, they want us to depend on them. Also it doesn't help that these same people have pharm companies so deep in their wallets that they would never do anything to hurt their cash flow.

Also dont forget the children! Think of the children!

You know in all seriousness I never understood that argument. You know "We must keep drugs illegal to protect the childern and make sure they cant get them." Honestly how ignorant are the people who use this argument. Ever try to get alcohol when underage? Its a pain in the ass. I remember back in the day if you cant get beer you'd just give up and buy weed instead. After all its a lot easier to buy weed than beer at that age for sure! heck for that matter After high school drug start to become harder to find.

 

[ashnics]

In my opion alot should change in this nation not just the drug laws. The people in charge are wrong about alot of things. I have always said. Let someone who has lived paycheck to paycheck be in office. Let someone who has suffered be in office. Let someone who has actually lived be in office and see what changes. I guarentee you alot will change. Let a mj smoker be in office. lol. No seriously though someone who is just an average everyday joe should be in office. I would support him. I would help pay for. They always say that won't happen because everyday joe's don't have that kind of money. Well i will put bank in. If every single person but bank in for an average joe to run for office so some stuff will actually change. Oh boy look out.

 

[ledtester]

It's illegal because of the USA. Many countries would like to legalize it and already have decriminalized it but couldn't take that next step since it would break treaties with the US. About 4 or 5 yrs ago when our Liberal government = to Dem's in the states wanted to decrim pot the US gov. Brainless Bush immediately dispatched notice how difficult they would make our lives in our dealings with our brothers to the south. Since, when the US sneezes, Canada catches a cold, our leaders put their tails between their legs and now our Conservative gov, Hittler Harper, = Rep's in US. want an automatic jail term
if caught smoking a joint within so many feet of a school and if your nailed with over 200 plants.

The other thing is the "psychology" of government. Politicians know the more you fear them the longer they stay in power! How many dictators rule with rose petals?
Here's even more reason to do it since it breaks every myth about what happens when you do at least decrim. pot. Ironically the study was done by a Washington public think tank long before Obama came to power. So I;m not sure what's taking him so long to have some movement on this subject. Then again I dont understand your politics what's so ever. Up here if a party has a majority in both houses, which I thought the Dems did, they just ram everything through...look it how long they have been fighting over health care down there. There's another thread eh!...

Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)

Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze—filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis – the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, c*****, h***** and m********.

At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment – so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.



The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.
The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."
Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. THIS IS WHAT "DRUG WARS" GET YOU!Proportionally, more Americans have used c******* than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime h**** use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to h**** and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on m***** and b******** treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.

Portugal's case study is of some interest to lawmakers in the U.S., confronted now with the violent overflow of escalating drug gang wars in Mexico. The U.S. has long championed a hard-line drug policy, supporting only international agreements that enforce drug prohibition and imposing on its citizens some of the world's harshest penalties for drug possession and sales. Yet America has the highest rates of c****** and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use.
"I think we can learn that we should stop being reflexively opposed when someone else does [decriminalize] and should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn't having much influence on our drug consumption," says Mark Kleiman, author of the forthcoming When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment and director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA. Kleiman does not consider Portugal a realistic model for the U.S., however, because of differences in size and culture between the two countries.

But there is a movement afoot in the U.S., in the legislatures of New York State, California and Massachusetts, to reconsider our overly punitive drug laws. Recently, Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter proposed that Congress create a national commission, not unlike Portugal's, to deal with prison reform and overhaul drug-sentencing policy. As Webb noted, the U.S. is home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners.

At the Cato Institute in early April, Greenwald contended that a major problem with most American drug policy debate is that it's based on "speculation and fear mongering," rather than empirical evidence on the effects of more lenient drug policies. In Portugal, the effect was to neutralize what had become the country's number one public health problem, he says.
"The impact in the life of families and our society is much lower than it was before decriminalization," says Joao Castel-Branco Goulao, Portugual's "drug czar" and president of the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction, adding that police are now able to re-focus on tracking much higher level dealers and larger quantities of drugs.

Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Maryland, like Kleiman, is skeptical. He conceded in a presentation at the Cato Institute that "it's fair to say that decriminalization in Portugal has met its central goal. Drug use did not rise." However, he notes that Portugal is a small country and that the cyclical nature of drug epidemics – which tends to occur no matter what policies are in place – may account for the declines in h***** use and deaths.

The Cato report's author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, "that is the central concession that will transform the debate."

 

[ledtester]

In my opion alot should change in this nation not just the drug laws. The people in charge are wrong about alot of things. I have always said. Let someone who has lived paycheck to paycheck be in office. Let someone who has suffered be in office. Let someone who has actually lived be in office and see what changes. I guarentee you alot will change. Let a mj smoker be in office. lol. No seriously though someone who is just an average everyday joe should be in office. I would support him. I would help pay for. They always say that won't happen because everyday joe's don't have that kind of money. Well i will put bank in. If every single person but bank in for an average joe to run for office so some stuff will actually change. Oh boy look out.

Totally agree with you the problem is too many of us think they don;t count! We have to get up off our asses and vote for real change...In Canada the Green party of course highly backs our cause. With voter turn out as dismal as it is I bet if every mj smoker were to vote for them they would have a chance. Or at least have some of them voted in as a wake up call. Now that would be change rather then the same old three parties that have had their chance already with their old tired policies. I`m sure you guys have others to vote for rather then the same old dems and replublicans, don`t you?

 

[ledtester]

I seriously want to know everyone's opion. So yes mj is illegal, but why. Mj is naturally grown. God gave us all plant life. So why is it illegal? Why is mj such a big deal? Does anyone think that we this generation will ever see mj legalized? Are we just going to have to move to a country where it is legalized? Is that fair to us? no. So come with the opions. Good or bad I don't care. Thanks everyone for your time.

Personally I think it's a conspiracy. With something that can make over 50,000 products Including many parts and gas for an automobile, it would cut into and close many busineeses owned and invested in by those that make the decisions.

 

[FreakNature]

^^I wouldn't doubt it. I don't subscribe to most conspiracy theories, but this one sure seems obvious, especially with respect to pharmaceuticals and LEOs. The other thing is, while most "clean and sober" people will accept side effects of prescription drugs like liver damage, dizziness, confusion, nausea, hives, suicide, death, etc., they don't want to be bothered by euphoria and a good appetite. I think this is a result of all the negative disinformation spread through the original and ongoing reefer madness effort.