MasterP said:
new_rayz, cite your sources. If it’s as harmless and helpful as you claim it should be fairly easy to back it up with government studies and medical research performed by REAL labs.
Also, the whole “it’s a nonviolent crime” argument is garbage. There are thousands of people put in jail each year for nonviolent crimes, it doesn’t mean they aren’t crimes. You know doing it is against the law and you do it anyway. Stop pretending that just because “the law is wrong” makes it ok to break the law. Enron execs were jailed for a nonviolent crime. Barely drunk drivers are jailed. Tax evaders are jailed. Drug dealers are jailed. What makes the laws against your crimes so special that you shouldn’t be penalized for breaking them?
You are right, thousands of people are put into jail each year for nonviolent crimes, and that doesn’t mean they are not crimes. But just because it is against the law doesn’t mean it’s wrong. We just recently got rid of segregation, oh iono less than 50 years ago…A black kid going to a white school was considered very wrong, and people who attempted to integrate prior to the “official” change were considered criminals. If that is the case, then you would consider Rosa Parks a criminal because she refused to sit in the back of the bus. I don’t consider Rosa Parks a criminal, even though she broke the law’ just as I don’t consider smoking marijuana a crime, even though you can go to jail for it.
Unlike every single one of those people you just listed, smoking a joint harms no one. Enron execs ruined thousands of peoples lives. Tax evaders harm our nation economically. Drug dealers kill both directly (guns) and indirectly (the more harmful drugs they sell). Yet not all drug dealers are bad. Some of the prescriber’s of marijuana are nationally labeled as “drug dealers’, yet they aren’t killing anyone, but ACTUALLY allowing thousands of people with ache’s and pains to get relief. Alot of people cultivating and growing the stuff aren’t Mafiosos or part of some cartel, but farmers struggling to make ends meat.
Tobacco and Alcohol by the way, kills hundreds of thousands every year. Lets check the Marijuana death toll = 0. Oh look it’s ZERO. T and A are both legal and kill thousands, marijuana kills no one and is illegal. Please explain the logic in that.
You want Sources? fine.
Reefer Madness – Eric Schlosser
this book refers to not only the economic and social affects the marijuana laws have on our nation, but also includes different sections of the black market, including prostitution and cheap labor.
“Health Aspects of Cannabis” – Dr. Leo Hollister
former president of the American College of Neurophychopharmacology and taught at the University of Texas Medical School
Dr. John P. Morgan’s section called “Drug Use and Dependence” in The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy
Debunks almost any horror story spread about marijuana.
Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts – Lynn Zimmer
Points out many of the myths, separates fact from fictional made up stories.
There have been many government studies of marijuana. Just to name a few:
Indian Hemp Drugs Commission 1894- British government exposes the overriding and pervasive powers of contemporary collective denial and moral failure underpinning policies of cannabis prohibition. This was the one most conclusive and thorough investigation of marijuana to date. No other committee since than has gone into as much detail as the IHDC.
National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse 1972- While the Controlled Substances Act was being drafted in a House committee in 1970, Assistant Secretary of Health Roger O. Egeberg had recommended that marijuana temporarily be placed in Schedule I, the most restrictive category of drugs, pending the Commission’s report. On March 22, 1972, the Commission’s chairman, Raymond P. Shafer, presented a report to Congress and the public entitled “Marijuana, A Signal of Misunderstanding,” which favored ending marijuana prohibition and adopting other methods to discourage use. They also found that possession should be decriminalized.
The House of Lords, Science and Technology Committee, 4 Nov 1998 – “recommend that the Government should take steps to transfer cannabis and cannabis resin from Schedule 1 to the Misuse of Drugs Regulations to Schedule 2, so as to allow doctors to prescribe an appropriate preparation of cannabis, albeit as an unlicensed medicine and on the named-patient basis, and to allow doctors and pharmacists to supply the drug prescribed.”
I’ll put up more later, but this should be enough for now.