Do you think marijuana should be legalized?

[crazyincalifornia]

Colorado, Washington DC, have both legalized MJ use for recreational in additional to medicinal.
Other states are considering it.
What is your opinion.

No for any use

Yes for medicinal only

Yes for medicinal and recreational.

[xHoneyxBeex]

Yes, I don't really understand why it's illegal. As history has shown us, prohibition does not work. People will still find ways to get their hands on it and it typically just causes more violence and causes prisons to be overcrowded. Personally, I don't see the difference between drugs and alcohol. Except for the fact that alcohol causes more deaths each year than weed does. Just think of all the vehicular accidents that result from drunk driving. Also, I will admit that I'm not fully aware of all of the effects weed has on the body, but is it really worse than cigarettes which harms the lungs and alcohol which harms the liver (among other things)?

[crazyincalifornia]

Alcohol assaults every single body organ.
It is devastating.
Tobacco is a far worse addictor than most people realize.
They are both worse than MJ

[xHoneyxBeex]

Exactly, that's what I was thinking.

[xHoneyxBeex]

thanks for MH :)

[lace1228]

They should legalize it everywhere. However it should be like alcohol and should be illegal to drive high which like alcohol it can impair your judgement. It should also be an age limit for the use of MJ unless for medical reasons.

[AleDeEurope]

It should be legalized for both reasons. Tobacco kills thousands each year, and Marijuana hasn't kill anyone yet, and if it's used for medicinal reasons, they do more good than harm. I see no doctor recommending tobacco for medicinal use.

It should definitely be legalized.

[crazyincalifornia]

I think there have been some MJ related fatalities. I'm not too sure though.
I will say this. About 5 years ago a kid crashed his bicycle into the side of my moms car and he tested positive for THC.

[AleDeEurope]

Maybe if you have some health problems, weed can worsen them and get you killed, but for what I've read (today a guy at college gave a presentation about Tobacco vs Weed) no one has ever died by weed, but now I don't know if this is just in the US or worldwide.
Weed affects your brain, it's not harmful, but it gets you in a state of relaxation, so you shouldn't do activities that require reflexes or skills, maybe that's why the kid crashed his bicycle.
I think it should be legalized, but with some rules, like no driving and smoking (just like alcohol).

[sovetskii13]

I don't use it and never will. If it really does have some medical benefits for certain people then I think it would be okay for that. But using it for the fun should not be legalized because that could lead to craziness. Marijuana does all kinds of evil things to the brain.

[WhiteSteve]

Yeah, it's absolutely absurd that weed is still illegal in 2014. Less addictive and harmful than alcohol and tobacco, but I can walk down the street and buy either of those legally. That's ridiculous. (Not that I don't enjoy hitting the booze, haha) It all comes down to money. Watch how fast the government fat cats change their tune when they see the revenues from Washington and Colorado.

[crazyincalifornia]

Said it!

[heavensgift2girls]

I believe it should be legal for medical and recreational purposes. Living in a free society means people being able to make choices that the rest of us may not agree with. While I am not interested in smoking pot myself, I don't like my tax dollars being spent to take away the freedom of others.

[crazyincalifornia]

well said.

[Prof_Don]

I voted C... completely legalize the stuff.

The tax money will be enormous! 8-)

Plus it's not worse than alcohol nor tobacco... which are both legal here in the USA and create loads of tax revenue.

As the saying goes..."a $5 pack of cigarettes cost $1 to make, and you pay $4 in taxes"

[Mesonfielde]

I think they should ban tobacco instead, and keep marijuana legalized only for medicinal purposes. Alas, the state gets a whole bunch of cash from addiction, so they have no intention of doing that.

[crazyincalifornia]

You know that's not a crazy idea.
Tobacco is ruinous to your health.

[Red_Dragon]

Where I live we are known for tobacco.

[Red_Dragon]

Very deadly stuff.

[AdamThomas]

Like most things, tobacco is actually okay in moderation. There are flaws in a lot of the studies behind tobacco, a lot of exaggerations, and some flat out lies. Did you know for example that Japanese men are twice as likely to smoke than American men, yet they're less likely to get lung cancer and they have a higher life expectancy?

[Bear_of_Death]

@AdamThomas that has more to do with their diet than their chain smoking.

[Mesonfielde]

@AdamThomas okay, give me one benefit of tobacco why it's better to smoke it than not.

[AdamThomas]

@Bear_of_death - sure that suggests that diet is much more likely to be the cause than smoking?

@Mesonfielde - benefits of smoking: improved concentration, improved memory, decreased risk of obesity (many people I know who quit smoking immediately gained a lot of weight) decreased risk of parkinsons, decreased risk of alzheimers, decreased risk of preeclampsia in expectant Mothers, children of smokers have lower rates of allergic rhinitis, allergic asthma, atopic eczema, and food allergies.

[Mesonfielde]

@AdamThomas I'm pretty sure you are making parts of this up. If you want to reduce risk of obesity and improve your memory, SLEEP PROPERLY. Considering the tar screws with your veins and the smoke screws up your nose and your lungs, I'd rather claim it's not good for you.

[AdamThomas]

I'm not making any of that up, look it up yourself. You can say the same about other things e. g. alcohol screws up your liver - however that only applies when you drink excessively. It's perfectly fine to drink alcohol in moderation. Sugar gives you diabetes. But only if you eat too much of it. Saturated fat is bad for you, only if you eat too much.

[Bear_of_Death]

@AdamThomas, it's the diet that prevents Japanese smokers from getting cancer.

[AdamThomas]

@Bear_of_death - exactly.

[yaddayaddayadda02]

I believe all drugs should be legalized. Marijuana is a good start.

[crazyincalifornia]

No on that.
If anything, we need to be better educated on drug use, without all the hysteria.

[yaddayaddayadda02]

Prohibition has been disastrous. How can you apply logic to one drug and make it ok, but keep others illegal?

[LastGirlScout]

Got to agree, Portugal has gone down that route and it seems to be working well, crime rate down, rehabilitation up. Less addicts and it being legal means you aren't forced to deal with dodgy people just to buy a gram of weed.

[aumshivashanti]

Im with @yaddayaddayadda02 on this one.
If all drugs were at least decriminalized, there would be less violence having to do with bad drug deals. I dont think that there needs to be heroin shops like there are for weed and alcohol, but if someone is a drug user, its not going to make a difference to them if the drug is illegal or not. Our prisons are overpopulated due to drugs, and its just stupid.

[crazyincalifornia]

Well, one nagging problem is we don't have effective measuring devices for driving while under the influence.
Field sobriety tests are too subjective and are often struck down by the courts.
A responsible society proceeds with caution on anything that could be injurious to large portions of society.

[yaddayaddayadda02]

The DUI concern is a legitimate one. But it seems a test would be fairly easy to do, the legal limits of alcohol consumption are quite arbitrary if you think about it. Used to be.10, now.08

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

@LastGirlScout

Crime rates are down because doing a drug doesn't count as a crime anymore-- Crime rates would be down if we legalized rape, assault and murder too... not a very logical conclusion regarding Portugal.

Aside from that, crime has more of an impact on a society than just crime rates. Check out Portugal's unemployment rate. It went from 4% in 2000 to 17% in 2013. There are of course hidden variables, but a drugged out nation is most certainly a large contributing factor. The only thing decriminalization has done positively for Portugal is make it so you can use a clean needle and making your drug use so easy you don't have to overdose when you finally get some. So basically, better life for criminals/drug-addicts and a worse life for healthier, law-abiding, non-users.

[yaddayaddayadda02]

@NotJustAnotherGuy - you understand that the US is a drugged out society now? 25% of all women are on prescription mental health medicine. We use caffeine to get us moving in the morning, alcohol to get us calmed down at night, There's no such thing as a drug-free society. There never has been. By keeping certain drugs illegal, we are missing out on a lot of benefits. Hallucinogens have shown quite a bit of promise treating PTSD and anxiety, but since they are illegal, it's impossible to get treatment for those suffering.

[LastGirlScout]

@NotJustAnotherGuy Erm, aren't you forgetting the drop in employment EVERYWHERE since there was a recession? And as for the other points, well yadda just addressed them. If you think unemployment rates have a direct correlation to drug use then you must be high yourself. Not only can controlling drugs help eliminate the organised crime behind it but it can generate revenue for the country, it can cut down prescription med use, it can help people stop becoming addicts. If you think that the world is able to be drug free then you're a total fool. It will always happen whether it's legal or not.

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

@ both
No one said anything about a drug-free society. Stop making up topics, to try to sound correct. You'll never have a murder-free society, does that mean murder should be decriminalized? Please try to make rational, coherent arguments.

@LastGirlScout The Great Recession hit in 2007.. not in 2001 where Portugals employment started plummeting. Your dates aren't even close. You should probably give up debating anything ever- especially since unemployment rate got better briefly (2007-2009) during the recession (awkward).

@yaddayaddayadda02 1.) caffeine can be great for daily health, it's entirely different from weed and hallucinogens. 2.) Hallucinogens having medicinal benefits would not be proof towards benefits of recreational use. Morphine has medicinal uses, but we don't just legalize it for recreational use because recreationally it has no good use-- same with hallucinogens, weed, etc...

[yaddayaddayadda02]

@NotJustAnotherGuy the point being is that to say a 'drugged up' society is in ineffective one is bogus.

The war on drugs is an utter, expensive failure. The prohibition on alcohol should have taught us that.

We've spent $1.5 trillion on it, and the addiction rate is virtually unchanged.

cdn.thewire.com/.../drug-spending-v-addiction.gif

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

Again, frequency of general drug use currently has nothing to do with whether illegal drugs should be widely available for recreational use. Not all drugs are the same. But there are some well known ones that we refer to when we say "drugs" and alcohol that have no good recreational usage. If I must give examples, meth, weed, heroine, crack, cocaine, LSD etc.. etc..

[yaddayaddayadda02]

You are purely making an opinion that none of those drugs have a good recreational use. How are you qualified to tell me what I should put into my body? Not all drugs are the same, but the ones that are legal can and do cause just as much harm as any illegal drug.

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

There's a difference between what you're implying drug means, and what most people would regard what drugs means in context of what I just said.

Let's go to Merriam to give us a clue: "something, and often an illegal substance, that causes addiction, habituation, or a marked change in consciousness"

What I was referring to was not caffeine, not prescribed meds, what I was talking about, which you can easily deduce from the context, was the fact Portugal has increased weed, cocaine, heroin, etc usage bringing its economy down. That's the drug definition I was referring to, because those are the drugs we were talking about. I didn't I think I'd have to specify, specifically only illegal drug that was legalized, because you would try to justify those drugs being used by using other drugs as an example. Caffeine is not an accurate example of our nation being drugged up like Portugal. It's extremely different, we're talking about entirely different drugs.

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

Caffeine being used daily in society does not mean daily use of heroin, meth, and crack would work out.. no logical person would draw that conclusion either.

[yaddayaddayadda02]

The only reason certain drugs are legal or not is largely political. Are you that convinced that marijuana is worse for "society" than alcohol only because it's illegal? We can easily see the negatives to society because alcohol is illegal. Nicotine costs us billions in health care. Still legal.

But I'll ask you again, why is it YOUR business what I put in my body.

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

No. Alcohol is only legal due to popularity. Otherwise it's widely known as a hindrance on society. Again, making up topics like I believe alcohol is good because it is legal, is not a rational argument. I have never even drank a single beer, so your assumption isn't anywhere near the truth of my beliefs.

And it's my business when what you put in your body affects people around you because you're mental state breaks down and you become a risk to those around you. Unless you're gonna go live isolated from the rest of the world, you're a factor in whether our environment is safe and/or healthy. So you taking bath salts and eating people like you're a zombie-- yeah it's not just your business. Sadly, we have to live you and at least the rules help a little.

[yaddayaddayadda02]

I am not making that argument, you are. You have been implying all along that illegal drugs are that way because of some inherent safety in legal drugs.

And you are confusing two issues. Eating people is against the law whether you are on bath salts or not... the bath salt consumption is irrelevant. Plenty of people probably do them without eating people's faces off.

And ironically, bath salts and other synthetic drugs have gained popularity ONLY because their natural counterparts are illegal. No reason to smoke some unknown chemical when you can smoke weed legally.

[guitar94]

^best answer

[crazyincalifornia]

Heroin was a major problem in the UK during the 80s. So they opened several Meth clinics throughout the urban areas as a less hazardous alternative to heroin.
The results have been disastrous, with a 300% increase in meth addiction, and n noticeable reduction in heroin use.
It is not a fair comparison, and the paper is over 10 years old, so I really don't know the current stats.
One constant, drugs lead to other drugs, for sure.
So the legalization is not without hazards.

[yaddayaddayadda02]

Here is my theory on your statement that "drugs lead to other drugs". As an experimental drug user, I agree with you. I went from smoking pot to trying mushrooms. Never tried coke, but was very tempted.

I think that is because when you start using illegal drugs, you are brought into a "culture" of people doing illegal things. So, after being terrified of the effects of drugs throughout your childhood thanks to the propaganda of the anti-drug folk, you try pot. The experience is overall enjoyable. But since you are now a criminal, you're associating with people in an "underground". As people are varied, there will be access to other drugs. And since pot was no problem, heroin might not be a problem, either.

That's why I advocate legalizing all drugs. Then you're not around that element.

[Outofthegrey]

I say legalize all the drugs. If you're going to end up living under a bridge addicted to crystal meth the gov't may as well make some money off of it.

Besides, legislation can't fix retarded.

[Dessertfox]

Mj has been used for medical use for centuries and has only been illegal for about 70 years now to enable pharmacy companies to make insane profit from mad made medicines with side effects that are worse that what's being treated.

[TrackisLife]

I guess so, but they will decrease the money of the drug dealers because selling it illegal gets them more money. But, it would benefit the economy and make less illegal actions be performed.

[justbanANNAz]

No i do not. Im pretty sure people in the med industry r smart enough to come up with alternatives.

[crazyincalifornia]

I think I agree with that.
I would have voted for decriminalizing rather than legalizing it.
I strongly suspect our government has lost the war and adopted the mentality of if you can't beat them, then join them.
also, expect very high taxes on these products, especially recreational.

[justbanANNAz]

yeah thats a better war to put it.
thanks for being open minded. i just fail to see how such intelligence can possibly limit itself to using that particular substance for medicinal purposes. watch how fast other alternatives will come about. its like technology, always being updated.

[aumshivashanti]

We actually leagalized it in oregon as well.
I think its a good think. Look at prohibition on alcohol; didn't work out so well, did it?

[Red_Dragon]

It will be eventually whether people like it or not.

[Red_Dragon]

And I mean in reference to all states.

[crazyincalifornia]

This question is certainly generation sensitive.
I plan on doing an age related spreadsheet for future reference.
I'll probably do a paper on it for my soc class if I can get it approved.

[Red_Dragon]

Oh okay. I'll vote for you. I mean I guess I'm indifferent about it. I don't smoke, but if others choose to do it that's them. Plus to try to stop it is to deny the inevitable.

[ThreeIn]

If alcohol is legal and much worse than weed, then weed should be legal.

But there are downfalls to it too, I can't remember them now but there are some pretty bad ones. I need to look it up again.

[crazyincalifornia]

Pot should be judged on it's own.
To legalize one drug because another is legal does not make a sensible argument.

[ThreeIn]

It does when the more harmful one is legal. That's like saying blacks shouldn't vote just cause whites do.

[crazyincalifornia]

I guess I'm missing the point, especially the reversal part. But thank you anyway.

[redroses1996]

I think it should only be legalized for medical use only. Legalizing it would be like legalizing guns without background checks!!!<3

[aumshivashanti]

Please elobrate how that guns and pot are the same? I dont understand how this comparison can even be made.

[Red_Dragon]

Background checks don't do anything. If someone wants to shoot and kill someone without a background checked gun they'll do it anyway. It's just one more hurdle for the responsible and "good" gun owners to jump over.

[redroses1996]

They both kill.

[LastGirlScout]

Weed doesn't kill.

[aumshivashanti]

@Opinion owner
Um, I dont believe pot kills. Sure there have been some accidents involving people eating edibles, but that is completely different than smoking...

[LucyColes]

I think that it should stay illegal, except for medicinal purposes. Weed ain't good for you, and it impairs judgement

[Bear_of_Death]

So we should make doing stupid things to yourself illegal? EVERYONE would be in prison.

[LucyColes]

Good use of over the top arguing. I didn't say that anything bad for you should be illegal, I just stated that weed is bad

[Bear_of_Death]

As long as we have similar rules like we have for alcohol I'm fine with it. Don't drive high.

[Bear_of_Death]

I have tried marijuana, and when I did it hit me hard. So driving while high would be similar to driving drunk.

[Klaatu51]

of course it should be legalized. regular cigarettes are worse

[nerdyasianman14]

No, too many crazy people these days, let alone they take on drugs.

[ThatGuy98]

Thank God it's not going to be legalized here in Finland for a while. I don't see the need of making something bad acceptable just because there are worse things that are legal...

[guitar94]

Of course it should be legalized. ALL drugs should be legalized. I don't know, just never been a fan of other primate animals being able to have dominion over MY body

[kheserthorpe]

Don't use it.

Voted C.

[crazyincalifornia]

Ok rhx