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Well, there's no way to prove it, but I think that's kinda true. It comes down to what kind of world you'd rather live in, one of extremes or one of moderation. If you're trying to force the change, you'll have areas of society that are very free of drugs and their ill effects and areas into which all the negatives are pushed all at once. If you don't force it, the ill effects are felt by more people but in a weaker form, in theory. So would you rather have that drug-free place you can retreat to, or would you rather know there isn't a drug gang controlling each poor section of town and millions of people in jail? I don't think drugs are good at all, but it's just one of those things about humanity... There should be some strong regulation and rehab options, and the harder drugs should probably be classified and controlled like poisons, not as something intended for human consumption, but prohibition creates more problems (if even only slightly more problems) than it solves from what I've seen. And instead of a drug war, we should work on helping people find their way out of poverty. Drugs are a symptom, not the root problem.

And as for marijuana, all but two (maybe only one) of my friends were pot smokers at one point or another. One was emotionally addicted, but was able to quit when he had his family problems settle down. When he smoked a lot, it was obvious he was dumber than before, but when he backed off things went back to normal. Everyone else had little trouble being more controlled about it. And when they left the juvenile atmosphere of college, they were able to easily give it up cold turkey. It's a stupid crutch to avoid thinking about serious spiritual matters (while fooling yourself into thinking it's helping you "open your mind"), but if alcohol and tobacco are illegal, I really don't see why pot should be.

But it IS really stupid.

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There's a proposed amendment to Colorado's Constitution that would legalize posssession one ounce or less of marijuana for adults 21 and older statewide; the city of Denver approved a similar measure last year. However, selling and growing marijuana would still be illegal if Amendment 44 passes.

If I were old enough to vote, I would vote no, basically because of what Didy has said. In addition, some say marijuana may be less harmful than alcohol, but it still has a negative effect on driving ability.

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People love to point out how the Prohibition laws of the 1930's were completely uninforcible. However, part of the problem is that the legislators did exactly what the Colorado government is doing: making it okay to possess and use the substance, while keeping it illegal to traffic in it. The dealers are already outlaws, and can pretty much already know how to get away with their crimes. Making it legal to possess is just going to give them more business. No. If they want to keep the traffic of it illegal, they need to keep the possession and use of it illegal as well.

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i don't know where the hell i stand on this debate. personally i wont smoke it legal or illegal, but that's personal. I feel that Didy is certainly right that making possession legal but outlawing the trafficking and all that is pretty pointless and (my words now) dumb. I've seen pot screw up people's lives but i've also seen it decidely not screw up people's lives.

about the only reason i care about legality is that i would like it to stay illegal because i don't want to get a contact high on my way to class or anything, then get distracted and go buy junk food or something (kidding around!). but if it were legalized i'd sure like to see good old Vermont and Maine get some tax money for working their butts off as two serious pot-producing states. love it or hate it, its the truth, and Maine could use the money, at least.

True. Seriously, pick a position. Things are either legal or illegal, either banned or not. I may not agree with it the ban, but legal consistency is important. Overly complex law is probably a big reason people feel so alienated from their government, which is a bigger problem than whether or not weed is legal.

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I think the principle idea behind these new possession laws (not saying it's a good one) is that the number of traffickers is so much smaller than the number of people that might possess it. There just isn't enough time or money to prosecute every person caught with a half ounce of weed, and certain areas have been totally bogged down trying to do that.
However, once you tell the police to not worry about the small fish, then you turn in to a hypocrite as has been discussed above.

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Okay, lets see, if Possession becomes legal, how can consumers get the marijuana if growing it and trafficking it is illegal? would tobacco companies start to grow and sell it? possession cant become legal unless theyres a source of it to be sold.

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I don't understand this post. Growing it and trafficking it is illegal now, and there are plenty of means of getting the stuff. How do possession laws affect that in any way?

Growing & transporting pot is illegal, but people still do it. The government can't look inside every single building looking for people growing pot.

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The point is that allowing possession of a controlled substance while simultaneously prohibiting the production and distribution of that substance is contradictory. If the growing and selling of it is illegal, then the use and possession of it should likewise be illegal.

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I am against having Marijuana being completely legalized, as while it may be less bad then cigarettes and alchohol, it can lead to use of more dangerous drugs, and there's no real reason to have it legalized.

The real reason why cigarettes and alchohol are legal, is that they are widely used, and getting rid of them can't be done, and trying to via bans, will simply turn many of their abusers into criminals.

Should Marijuana be allowed for medical purposes? Perhaps, but it depends.

If addictability is dependent upon potency, then perhaps it is not viable to use pain killers past certain levels of intensity.

I think for medical uses, fine. Its better to have someone a little drugged up but die in less pain in my opinion. But why do we need to change the non-legalization? Why does it matter? If we legalize it, what would that do for us? Make more pot heads happy? They arn't the ones changing the world, and we don't need them. They probly just live in there moms house or something.

No offence to anybody.

Ok, I havent been in this converstation but here are my two cents.

I dont care whether one smokes it or not. But in my opinion, it should be legal. This is because, if it were legalized, companies would start to produce it. If companies produce it there must be standards which help to make it more organic. These people that grow right now usally add chemicals to make it 'better' but these often end up killing for making a person an addict.

Secondly, people always say it can lead into other drugs/be addictive or ruin your life. However, alcohol destroys just as many lives (maybe more) and is just as addictive. Smokes are legal yet they are addict. Even simple products like pops and coffee can be addictive. What makes weed so different from those? They are all legal, weed should be too.

Also, its natural people. I mean come on. I could go out and roll up some grass from my lawn, smoke it and no one would care. Its not like its a man made substinace like smokes, which have tons of toxins in them. We are meant to use the enviroment so why not use weed.

Please note that I dont use it, I just defend the right to use it.

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I hear this argument all the time, but I have to admit I don't really understand it. Poison mushrooms are natural, so why not eat them? Well, because they can make you sick and they can even kill you, that's why. Something being natural does not make it a good idea to ingest. Weed might be a harmful thing to ingest, and if people are ingesting harmful things, a governing body isn't going to care whether it's "natural" or not, and why should they? What matters to them is that, from their point of view, people are being harmed!

I'm not saying that I myself think that way. I don't know and at the moment don't really care if weed is harmful. I'm just saying the government's side of it is more understandable than the "it's natural, so what's wrong with it?" side.

- Kef

Two wrongs don't make a right, however. Even if marijuana is only as bad as alcohol, why have another alternative? A big reason alcohol is still legal is simply because it's legal - once it becomes a common practice, you can't get rid of it without massive uproar.

Yeah. That's worked really well with the tobacco industry, hasn't it?

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I did a project on this last year. From what I read, It has many more good effects than bad when used responsibly. But the type of people who are using it usually aren't the responsible type. It's healthier than alcohol and cigarets. It's not even addictive. Stoners ruined it for everyone.

Oh, Im not saying its good for you, or you should use it. What Im getting at is that other legal things like smokes are made with many unnatural chemicals, which cant be good for you. Did you know that even house hold objects like that Mr Clean Magic Easer have chemicals that can cause cancer? Wouldnt weed, which is proven to be not that bad and in cases helpful better then even a cancer inducing chemical.



And weed isnt a common practice? 80% of the people I know have either tried it or still use it.

Another note Id like to add. THe arguement that weed can lead to harder drugs is stupid. Could alcohol not do this as well. Example, your at a party and your drunk as hell. Someone breaks out the crack and you say "Ya, sure, ill try that" not realizing what your saying.

And as a final argument, legalizing weed could bring much needed money into other aspects of society such as education, and libraries. This is so because it would reduce black market sales, making money flow into the economy, also, it would be taxed, for the goverment. It would also save us money when all the cases that go through the courts, that use thousands of dollars, are through out.

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Finnally, we got a good looking person on our side.

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WHOAH 80%? That's huge! You're including your parents, brothers, sisters, grandpa, grandma, schoolteachers, guy at the gas station, etc.?

Amazing. Where do you live, Jamaica?

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Hehe, well, he probably just meant to say the people his age he knows. Among people my age that I know of (that is, not only people who are my friends, but everyone I know anything about), it's way over even 80%. I'm pretty much the only one I know of who hasn't tried it. And the people I know are mostly the nerds and the other smartest ones from my class. The stuff is really widespread.

But that's not a good argument for legalization of itself.

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And how do you guys know this? Did you conduct a survey amongst all the people you know -- and by that I mean actually writing down and computing the results, not simply remembering whatever was said in conversation? Because if you didn't, it's very easy to exaggerate the figures without being aware of it. If you go and do that, you can easily find yourself saying things "Oh yeah, I forgot about him/her", and you'll find the proportion may not be as high as you thought. Or maybe it will be, but you'll never know for sure unless you actually conduct a survey.

- Kef

I was just trying to disprove another argument against it. Never tried to prove it with that one.



Surveys dont need to include everyone. You just take down a percentage of the people you know and base a final estimation on the numbers you got. Thats how all surveys work, saying that surveys always show the truth is insane. So, doing a vocal survey is just as effective as a written one.

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Well, to make a valid conclusion based on a survey, you still need a large enough data sample. For example, you can't just ask ten people and extrapolate from there; the survey results from such a small sample would tell you about only those ten people, and not much else.

- Kef

Also, the people you use in the survey have to be properly randomized and all that.

So the "over 80%" thing isn't scientific, I admit. But of the people I've been in social gatherings with in my area in my age group in a wide range of cliques, the percentage is nearly 100, and I know that because I saw them all smoke it, and it was done in a way that suggests it's done all the time at social gatherings. And I don't attend very many social gatherings, so I find it hard to believe that people only smoke when I'm around, and that the few people I know of who I didn't see do it firsthand didn't do it in the majority of the times I wasn't there to watch.

So, if I was to do true statistical research, I'd certainly have a pretty strong hunch of which way it'd go. In people my age, in the area I grew up.

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Personally, I don't think medical marijana is nessary. Or rather, it isn't going to be in the near future. There are plenty of companies that are working to turn it into a drug with none of the harful side effects.

As for legalisation, I really don't see the point. There are already enough people using it, do we really need more? Frankly, I don't think smokes or beer are really needed either, there's just too many people already addicted to do much about it.

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Yes, a large enough group based on the total number in the suggested group. In my such case, people I know. For example, I would only need, say, 10 out of 100 people for a survey. If 8 of ten say they smoke I can assume, logically, that 80 of 100 smoke. Now, Im not saying that this is always acurate, but it is how they are generally done. Though they usally use at least 3 test groups for a more acurate reading.

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I disagree. I think there is simply too much variance in a group of 10 people. The sample size needs to be large not only for precision, but also to smooth out variance.

Let me explain what I mean. If you flip a coin 10 times, your variance will be much higher than if you flip a coin 100 times. For 100 flips, your range will almost certainly be between about 40 and 60 heads. However, for 10 flips, it is much easier for your result to fall outside that range. You'll almost never see 80 heads in 100 flips, but 8 out of 10 is quite possible.

However, flipping a coin 100 times won't yield results terribly different from flipping a coin 1000 times. Even though the ratio is the same -- you're sampling 10% of a population -- it works much better with large sample sizes. You can't base your sample size solely on the size of the population you're sampling.

- Kef

Generally surveys (like the ones you see on the news) will include a sample of at least 1600 people and those will be random people. And all the people you know isn't a random set of people, cause they all have something in common. Otherwise, consider my survey: Of the first 10 people I can think of, none of them smoke at all. Of the first 100, maybe one of them has smoked pot. Extrapolating that over the whole country would probably not be accurate.

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I say legalize for two reasons. . .

1.) I have a full bag of Doritos and I haven't been in the mood to eat them lately.

2.) Why does the government have the right to tell me what I can and cannot put into my body? Why do we have to be protected from ourselves? I am an adult. If I makes stupid decisions it's my own fault. I pay my taxes and I won't hurt anybody else. I'm not going to drive while under the influence of anything. Joe Redneck boozes up every night while his kids hide in their bedroom because they are afraid of him, and I can't smoke a little weed on a Friday night and watch The Grateful Dead Movie with my girlfriend?

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