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Twig

The Great Debate: Legalization

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If I hadn't already created this bullshit thread today I would totally start a new one about legalization so we could continue this discussion as it is a topic I find super interesting. But I think I've been overbearing enough already.

 
I did it for you!

 

I did it because I like watching smarter people than me talk about stuff, and also I pretty much firmly fall on the pro-legalization side of the debate, but admit I don't actually know that much about it. So that's my contribution to the thread! Now Zeus HAS to make a post about it!

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It's legal in Washington, so I got to try it. I don't really think it's all that, but to each their own.

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Oh man Twig, you don't know what you just fucking unleashed! Unfortunately I am at work and I won't dare try to provide links but here is a brief list of benefits that cannabis provides (I'll try to expand more on this later):

  • Hemp seeds are one of the most nutritious foods on earth.
  • Hemp + lime juice + sand = hempcrete. Some houses have been made using hempcrete and not only is it super insulating, but super cheap and environmentally friendly. These are the houses of the future.
  • Hemp paper.
  • A very long list of medical benefits from helping with cancer to minimizing the effects of epilepsy.
  • I need to find a solid link for this but apparently an acre of cannabis produces more oxygen than an acre of trees.
  • It can grow in almost any climate.
  • Hemp clothing. And it has a much smaller footprint and is less wasteful than growing cotton.

Then there is a long list of benefits that legalizing it would bring to society:

  • More tax revenue for local and federal governments.
  • Reduced impact from cartels distributing it illegally.
  • Lower prison populations thanks to this being one less thing people can be arrested for.
  • Some funding for police departments freed up to focus on actual important stuff.
  • New industries opened up creating more jobs.
  • Probably other stuff too.

I rushed through this post much faster than I typically do so it is probably a bit exaggerated and hyperbolic. I'll stop in later and provide some more specific and coherent thoughts.

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Yeah, I think the most compelling argument for the decriminalization of marijuana for me personally is the prison population one.  Maybe with that tax revenue they would be able to provide support to those exiting the prison system and attempting to reintegrate into the population. Ha ha ha, they would never do that. Prisons make too much money off of keeping people in prison, and getting people back in once they've been released.

(When I think about how hard it must be to live life in the United States as a Black person with a felony record, it pretty much makes me cry.)

 

The fact that our justice system over-incarcerates people of color, specifically Black People (Black Men in particular) make me inclined to advocate for the release of non-violent offenders especially those with possession without intention of distribution charges against them.

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Zeus, you forgot -

  • Being high is really fun
  • All food tastes better while high

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Zeus, you forgot -

  • Being high is really fun
  • All food tastes better while high

 

Hehehehehehehehe. That list should be way way longer.

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I can't imagine being a big enough douchebag that I would be willing to force someone into a cage and remove them from their friends and families because they smoke or sell pot. I would be more than willing to support criminalization of such actions because people who are willing to perform such an ethical oversight are incredibly violent and dangerous.

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The prison population would be affected by legalization, but the crimes would also just be shifted slightly. It hasn't been legal long enough for there to be meaningful numbers, but I've seen strong anecdotal evidence that marijuana is still used to keep marginalized populations in the margins even after legalization. Because Driving While Intoxicated/Driving Under the Influence convictions have a stunningly low bar in most places, having smoked a blunt in the last few weeks would probably lose you your license if a cop decided he didn't like you -- and guess who cops don't like! So you end up without a driver's license to get to work while huge bills are piled on you, and things start to spiral and there's a possibility that you end up in jail anyway.

 

Legalization isn't an end to the prison problem. It would help some people a little maybe, and it would definitely end up just demonizing the victims of the police even more ("I got an MIP" is a lot more aw shucks man i'm sorry than "I got a DUI" is).

 

I still support legalization warily, and will strongly support it once there's a breathalyzer type test for it -- the current abuse of law stems from the fact that blood tests are required to test how much is in your system, and it stays in there for a long time after it's stopped affecting you.

 

But I haven't read up on this in, like, a year so who knows maybe I'm wrong now!

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I think it is also worth noting that there are actually some conflicting studies on whether or not being high on MJ actually impairs driving, and certainly not in the way alcohol does. But of course a lot of how impaired a person is will also depend on the strain that they consumed and other factors. DUI laws in general are really fucked up anyways and there is little room for nuance.

 

Edit: Thank you for posting that tegan. That is one of my favorite scenes in any movie ever.

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I must abstain from this conversation due to my position as an educator, but I will say apropos of nothing that Zeusthecat is a great guy and probably has some valuable things to say.

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It should be noted that even in places where pot is legal, the pricing and local authorities are still slanted in favor of white people who are somewhat affluent. So while I think it's great to legalize, there's definitely people who have been and still are enjoying the benefits but we still live in a carceral society that enjoys free labor from people of color being imprisoned. 

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It should be noted that even in places where pot is legal, the pricing and local authorities are still slanted in favor of white people who are somewhat affluent. So while I think it's great to legalize, there's definitely people who have been and still are enjoying the benefits but we still live in a carceral society that enjoys free labor from people of color being imprisoned. 

All the more reason for widespread legalization. Especially at the federal level.

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I don't have much to add to this conversation, other than that I find it interesting that the legalization movement has gained so much steam in the States, while it seems to have stalled in Canada, even though I get the sense that Canadian society is in general far more accepting of marijuana. That might just be me coming from a very pot-friendly environment though (although not being a smoker myself). Anecdotally though, it seems that other people share the same feeling. I have a hard time imaging moral outrage at pot smoking here on the same level that I've seen it among Americans. Maybe that's why people aren't as anxious to legalize here, because there's not as much to fight back against?

 

That might be complete bullshit though. I'm sleepy from reading for school.

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I am not sure of this but I bet a lot of our culture re: drugs is largely based on Reagan-era politics/War on Drugs, making marijuana a schedule 1 drug, etc. I think this is also what made cartels so incredibly powerful, but again, I know very little about that. 

 

Canada produces quite a huge amount of pot itself, particularly British Columbia, I know that much. 

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Yeah, it's mostly that Harper still has a hard-on for the Bush years and is holding Canada back from doing worthwhile things. I have no doubt that one of the last things that he does in office is try to get rid of Medicare once and for all, instead of just undermining it like he's been for the last nearly-ten years. Canada as a whole is fine with legalization, Harper is a backwards idiot.

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I honestly have NO idea how Canada can look at the US and go, "Oh yeah I'm completely okay with that."

 

If Canada gets rid of its socialized medicine, I will feel so bad for you guys. Healthcare is a horrible crushing nightmare here, choosing between debt or dying or both is really a horrible thing.

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On 1/15/2015 at 7:13 PM, miffy495 said:

I must abstain from this conversation due to my position as an educator, but I will say apropos of nothing that Zeusthecat is a great guy and probably has some valuable things to say.

 

Hey, thanks for the kind words miffy.

 

Now, getting down to business and starting with some of the usages and benefits of cannabis. (I would encourage people to read the entire articles in these links if they have time, especially if this is new information)

 

Let's start with the nutritional value of hemp seeds. They are basically super fucking healthy and one of the only naturally occurring foods that contain all 9 essential amino acids (thus making it a complete protein). Here is a link with a good nutritional analysis of hemp seeds (full disclosure, I put that shit on everything and have replaced cow's milk with hemp milk in my diet as I found it actually has a pretty good flavor compared to soy milk): http://www.purehealingfoods.com/hempHeartsAnalysis.php

 

Hempcrete. It turns out I exaggerated a bit on it's insulating properties so my apologies for that (although it is still a decent insulator). But this article does a pretty good job laying out the advantages it has over lumber: http://magazine.good.is/articles/a-house-of-hemp

 

Hemp vs lumber. Almost everything we use lumber for can be made more efficiently and with less impact to the environment if it were made with hemp instead (and in fact, Marijuana became illegal due to concerted efforts by the lumber industry to get it banned back in the 1930's (and they even went as far as to appeal to the white man's fear of the black man to help it gain traction)). Here is one article: http://www.ehow.com/info_8748052_hemp-vs-wood.html. Here is another http://didyouknow.org/hemp/

 

Medical benefits of marijuana. The list is fucking staggering. Read up on some of this and ask yourself how the fuck we ended up in a society where this isn't widely available for medical use. http://www.businessinsider.com/health-benefits-of-medical-marijuana-2014-4. And amazingly, here is a story of a 5 year old girl with a severe form of epilepsy who went from having hundreds of seizures a week to only one small episode each month thanks to medical marijuana: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharda-sekaran/sanjay-gupta-medical-marijuana_b_3733143.html

 

On oxygen production, I couldn't find a goddamn thing to support what I said so I retract my statement that it produces more oxygen than trees. From what I was able to find, it looks like it's oxygen production is similar to other plants.

 

Climates hemp can grow in and how it compares to cotton. Long story short, it is superior to cotton in many ways. It consumes less water, no pesticides are required, and overall it is just a better material to make cloth from. I like the way this article lays it out: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/07/17/hemp-vs-cotton-the-ultimate-showdown/. This article touches briefly on the variety of climates it can grow in: http://www.hempbasics.com/shop/hemp-information. Specifically this excerpt:

Quote

Cotton grows only in moderate climates and requires more water than hemp; but hemp is frost tolerant, requires only moderate amounts of water, and grows in all 50 states

 

Now as far as the benefits of legalization go, I think most of what I provided in my original post is pretty self evident. Since there isn't a lot of hard data on this yet, it is mostly speculation at this point but I don't see how you could argue against the fact that it would bring in more tax revenue, reduce the amount of people incarcerated for drug offenses, reduce the negative impacts from cartels distributing it illegally, allow police departments to re-allocate funding that is currently being spent on busting people for possession and distribution, and create entirely new industries and jobs. What I find interesting though is that I can't really think of any downsides to legalizing it. Sure there are people that still argue against it but from what I have seen none of those arguments really hold up to reality. I am super biased on this though so perhaps someone here can present an example or two showing how legalizing it might have some negative impacts.

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So there's like four different questions in this topic:

 

  • Should drug offences be a priority for law enforcement? (Personally, lol no, treating it as a public health problem is way more effective at dealing with abuse)
  • Is marijuana actually safe? (Given that my uncle, a long-term pot smoker, developed schizophrenia over the years, and that there's been research that suggests cannabis does increase the risk of schizophrenia, I think maybe it's not? Like, it clearly affects the function of the brain, and we know most of those chemicals have pretty serious side effects.)
  • Is marijuana safer than legal chemicals? (Well, hmm. Alcohol serves a vital social function in Western societies, but is banned in large parts of the Middle East, and has been responsible for a public health crisis widespread enough that the American constitution banned it in an effort to curb it. Smoking's legal in most of the West, but it's increasingly heavily restricted as we acknowledge that it's really dangerous, and it's effectively banned in parts of Australia - one of our states has restricted sales to people born before 1986, and we were the first country in the world to mandate government-designed packaging for cigarettes.)
  • Should marijuana be legal? (I don't know? It kind of feels like we might have dodged a bullet by banning something for bullshit reasons that might actually be a risky thing, but it's still a bullshit reason and it's not a great idea to have a law that's based on bullshit reasoning. For instance, LSD research appeared promising, but because it's widely banned, it can't be developed further - but then you hear about that time researchers used LSD to keep going a really ill-advised experiment where a female human lived with a male dolphin for a month. [it ended up about where you'd fear it would.])

And then there's the question of how people feel about hemp that's been genetically modified so it doesn't produce cannabinoids, which is obviously a slam-dunk but I strongly suspect will really put the cat amongst the pigeons. Take, for instance, Zeus's post up there where he conflates cannabinoids with hemp as a fibrous material.

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I still support legalization warily, and will strongly support it once there's a breathalyzer type test for it -- the current abuse of law stems from the fact that blood tests are required to test how much is in your system, and it stays in there for a long time after it's stopped affecting you.

I guess this is similar to where I stand, I support marijuana legalization, but with some reservations. It's hard for me to talk about it though because all I really know is that my view of the situation is incredibly skewed. Where I live in California marijuana is so decriminalized that I don't know how much different things would be if it were legalized. Last summer there was a big music event in downtown San Jose and while driving by I saw a guy standing next to a cop giving out free joints to people who signed up for a card with him (I thought I hard a picture, but I couldn't find it). I have a friend who grew a lot of marijuana and it wasn't even a sketchy ordeal. A couple of times he even had a cop see it and laugh (he lives maybe a few hundred feet from a high school). I live in a fairly well to do neighborhood though and I'm well aware that this isn't standard and in other places the criminalization of marijuana is very harmful for a lot of people so I have a hard time because I personally don't see it as a big deal at all one way or another, but that's obviously not the case.

I don't know what else to say so I'll just leave this picture here. 06kush.jpg

By the way I personally never smoke marijuana.

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So there's like four different questions in this topic:

 

  • Should drug offences be a priority for law enforcement? (Personally, lol no, treating it as a public health problem is way more effective at dealing with abuse)
  • Is marijuana actually safe? (Given that my uncle, a long-term pot smoker, developed schizophrenia over the years, and that there's been research that suggests cannabis does increase the risk of schizophrenia, I think maybe it's not? Like, it clearly affects the function of the brain, and we know most of those chemicals have pretty serious side effects.)
  • Is marijuana safer than legal chemicals? (Well, hmm. Alcohol serves a vital social function in Western societies, but is banned in large parts of the Middle East, and has been responsible for a public health crisis widespread enough that the American constitution banned it in an effort to curb it. Smoking's legal in most of the West, but it's increasingly heavily restricted as we acknowledge that it's really dangerous, and it's effectively banned in parts of Australia - one of our states has restricted sales to people born before 1986, and we were the first country in the world to mandate government-designed packaging for cigarettes.)
  • Should marijuana be legal? (I don't know? It kind of feels like we might have dodged a bullet by banning something for bullshit reasons that might actually be a risky thing, but it's still a bullshit reason and it's not a great idea to have a law that's based on bullshit reasoning. For instance, LSD research appeared promising, but because it's widely banned, it can't be developed further - but then you hear about that time researchers used LSD to keep going a really ill-advised experiment where a female human lived with a male dolphin for a month. [it ended up about where you'd fear it would.])

And then there's the question of how people feel about hemp that's been genetically modified so it doesn't produce cannabinoids, which is obviously a slam-dunk but I strongly suspect will really put the cat amongst the pigeons. Take, for instance, Zeus's post up there where he conflates cannabinoids with hemp as a fibrous material.

 

I'm sorry but where did I conflate cannabinoids with hemp as a fibrous material? And I fail to see how there is any evidence to support the claims you are making. Even with the schizophrenia thing, there is conflicting evidence considering it is hard to know whether a person developed schizophrenia because of smoking weed or whether they used weed as a way to cope with the fact that they were developing schizophrenia. 

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Two of the things you're saying are benefits to hemp are that it can be used in place of lumber, and that it has medical uses. The hemp plant stripped of cannabinoids is useful only for the former, but the question about legalising cannabis is almost entirely focused around cannabinoids, not the other properties of the plant. I can't imagine anyone would object to genetically-modified hemp plants being used as a fibre, so it's hardly a benefit of legalising cannabis.

 

I acknowledge that duelling studies aren't especially helpful - the appropriate way to settle a medical question like this is to wait for a meta-analysis that combines everything we know about cannabis use and all the studies that have been done so far, and whether there's enough evidence to make a call one way or the other. I don't treat that research as particularly authoritative. It's only interesting because of how close it tracks to the personal anecdote.

 

Actually, that's a fifth thing: is medical marijuana still useful in countries that have more effective public mental health programs than the US?

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So as I said I am really uninformed in the whole debate.  My question is, what would be the problem with just having things similar to the way they are in California (though I can;t actually speak for all of California as I don't know if it's treated different in other areas).  That is, have it very heavily criminalized and widely available for "medical patients" while still technically not having it be flat out legal for recreational use.  I'm not against it being legal, and there are still problems with the way things are here (for example one of my friends in currently not smoking for a couple weeks because he might be moving to a new job and they're going to have him take a drug test), but it seems like a lot the arguments for it being legalized stem from it's medical properties and marijuana criminalization  being used as an excuse to lock up groups of people so if nationwide it was decriminalized/available for medical patients would that not solve most of the problems?  If I'm way off base here, which I probably am, feel free to have at me.

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  • A very long list of medical benefits from helping with cancer

 

Damnit, I'm pro-legalisation but cannabis smoking is far more likely to cause cancer than help in any quantifiable way. Cannabinoids also have some short term usage side effects, which while aren't life threatening, aren't particularly pleasant. I'm sure there are long term, but I don't know of any major studies looking at them.

 

A lot of the research on cannabinoids and cancer therapy is pretty poor and rather biased in my opinion. 

 

I'm mainly pro-legalisation because I don't care what people do in their own time and own space. Like cigarettes, I think it should be banned from all public spaces, but let anyone do it in their home.

I kinda feel the same way about cocaine, performance enhancing drugs (colloquially steroids although that term is inaccurate) and ecstasy too, they're moderately safe drugs, and cost the UK far less in medical bills than alcohol, high fat diets and smoking. They also cost the UK far more in police enforcement and keeping offenders in prison that is necessary for something so relatively safe.

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Damnit, I'm pro-legalisation but cannabis smoking is far more likely to cause cancer than help in any quantifiable way. Cannabinoids also have some short term usage side effects, which while aren't life threatening, aren't particularly pleasant. I'm sure there are long term, but I don't know of any major studies looking at them.

 

Maybe this is pedantic, but he could have easily been talking about eating or vaping?

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