desertrat218

Seriously, who cares if people smoke weed or not? I personally know dozens of people getting prescription pain killers for "chronic pain" and have been getting them for years. How is that any different? In my opinion, our drug laws are ridiculous in the first place, and there has never been anyone that ever came up with a convincing argument that weed should have ever been illegal in the first place.

AzStevenCal

I'm not sure about that. I think there are several very convincing arguments in favor of making marijuana illegal. In the end, though, I think the argument in favor of making it legal is a stronger argument. Making it illegal has not worked. All it's really done is ruined lives and wasted money.

I've often wondered how things would look today if they had gone after tobacco instead of marijuana. Would people be dying every day, going to prison, spending their last dollar etc in order to obtain cigarettes and cigars? Would pot smoking be on the verge of being banned almost everywhere because of the health risks? I think the answer is yes to both questions.

Steve

LVG

I care greatly if someone is on my jobsite and they are high or intoxicated - regardless if it is from weed, coke, heroin, huffing paint, prescribed pain killers, alcohol, or whatever. People get injured and killed that way.

You show up intoxicated on my jobsite and I even suspect it - it's an automatic drug test for you. If I catch you using on my site - you're fired. Don't even bother getting your tools - get the hell off right now and I'll have one of your buddies do it for you. And if you don't. I'm calling Metro.

However, that being said, I don't care what people do in their own homes, so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.

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desertdawg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOEgjkfuMOg

I no hurt nobody, but I pay taxes and I am down with anybody that can benefit. Done getting too deep in this one. Much love.

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Shane

Conversely I don't know a single soul who legitimately needs medical Marijuana. But have met 2 who most certainly didn't need it and have their card making it legal for them.



Also what studies would you be referring to and what makes you think any study would be wholly accurate? Just depends on which side of this argument did said study.

Gaddabout

A couple of points:

1. Any argument that starts off with "the majority of people who get it are abusers" is nothing more than hyperbole and strawman argument. Prove it. I think it's right in line with people who think most chronic pain patients are liars. Do you know what kind of quality of life you have to lead to live on partial or full disability? I've been there and seen it. My wife was an accountant who traded in her $65K a year salary for pennies on the dollar and health bills that I'm still paying for 18 mos. after her death. Anyone faking that to get pain meds deserves to be as miserable as I'm sure they are.

2. Reality: Medical marijuana costs a lot more than illegal marijuana. I know this from personal experience; my mother-in-law is a licensed dealer. It will cost you about $200 to get what you can get for $25 with your local street dealer.

3. No one on any kind of pain medication should be driving, period, but I'd much rather be on the road with a pot head than anyone on Oxy, which has a variety of effects and absolutely fry a newbie like funneling a case of beer if you get into the larger dosages. Furthermore, the scariest drugs are those like Soma, which can cause people to have seizures, walking dreams, and all kinds of weird behavior that endanger us all. But I don't see anyone vehemently against Soma. Why don't we demonize that? That's right. Because Soma hasn't been illegal and doesn't have a 40-year underground culture bringing to light all the stupidity abusing any mind-altering drug. Or what about Pramipexole, which is treated for mysterious new symptoms like "restless leg syndrome?" What's that? It's now directly linked to compulsive gambling and compulsive sexual behavior in people that have never had such problems? Well, it was worth the risk to treat Parkinson's I guess. Or what about SSRIs like Prozac that have been linked to violent, manic behavior when the dosage is messed with, and has been linked to many of our most famous school shootings like Columbine? Well, that drug is still on the market and still be handed like like M&Ms at Halloween. The truth is marijuana's biggest issue is it's not backed by Big Pharm -- it's actually a threat -- so we get bogus social science about how legalizing it would greatly endanger our lives. Meanwhile Big Pharm feeds us stuff that actually is killing us and killing off dissent with off-the-books agreements and non-disclosure forms that keep all that messy stuff out of court and public records.

4. There are more kinds of marijuana with varying effects than you can count. Some are extremely potent. Most are mostly mild. The kind of pot typically used is for baseline pain. It's not meant to incapacitate a person like morphine. More than anything it's meant to lower stress levels which cause pain to spike. I can't emphasize this enough. Opiates jack with your ability to handle reality to the point they seem to encourage you to continue upping dosage. Opiates often end up being the cause of pain rather than a mask for pain. This is why opiates are the worst-case scenario for every day baseline chronic pain and why marijuana as a sedative can be something of a stop-gap and even miracle cure. It offers the ability to dramatically raise the quality of someone's life precisely BECAUSE it doesn't incapacitate one's brain. I find too many people who are against marijuana because they have no personal experience with the drug and just assume it's like heroine or LSD. It's not the same kind of high. I can just about guarantee you work with a functioning pot head every single day and you probably don't even know it.

I write all this as someone who hates pain meds and never takes anything more than an Ibuprofen. I can't stand the feeling of getting high. I just want people to GET REAL about this issue and stop making assumptions.

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bankybruce

Matt, you rock!!!!!

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DWKB

Coming from someone who preaches a lot of personal responsibility and small government platform stances on here, this sentence is what is disturbingly sad.

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Dback Jon

Bingo!

I don't trust a lot of people that have guns, or drive, or have kids.

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Mulli

That sounds like AW's guarantee.

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DemsMyBoys

I don't know what your definition of "needs" is but I actually qualify. I have heavy-duty chronic pain AND I have one of the debilitating diseases (which shall go nameless) that the state of Arizona says qualifies me for medical marijuana. And, if it looks like this is actually going to be implemented, I'm going to have a serious talk with my doctor.

No way on earth is pot going to be worse for me than some of the perfectly legal medicines (pain meds and otherwise) I have had prescribed for me by the doctors over the years. Including "black box" drugs and the drugs that were perscribed to help with the horrific side-effects of the black box drugs I've had to take.

Brian

Did you just go through 5 pages of this thread, without contributing anything, just to find this one single line, quote it, and then take a jab?

That's pretty pathetic, but even still you're going to have to expound on it since I'm not sure of the point you're trying to make.

I'm also not sure why Jon doesn't trust people who drive?? Or have kids??

Louis

Sorry to hear Dems. My mom suffers from a disease that is incurable and right now the only treatement she has is pain medication. They've tried patches, pills, morphine scrips, eletric shock therapy (some kind of thing she can wrap around the area and it sends small shocks to dull the pain), and gels, nothing works for long periods of time. Her condition is only worsening and will never get better.

Essentially she was assigned a death warrant and until that day it would be nice to see her suffer less as her body slowly kills her. The pain and combo of painkillers destroys her appetite and it's not too uncommon to see her go stretches of 2-3 days with little to no intake of food.

Unfortunately MM was greatly defeated in South Dakota, so until those who judge without full knowledge of what happens to people can go on deciding how others should live their life.

Russ Smith

In general I agree with you but I would say this, if you live next door to me and are growing pot illegally (or even legally to be honest) I care. Front page story in my local paper about this today, there's been 10 fires this year in San Jose alone that authorities say were caused by illegal marijuana growing that led to overloaded circuits that shorted and started a fire.

I have a friend who works for PG&E meter reader, he says frequently he does meter reading in areas that have a high volume of foreclosed empty homes with reports of huge unexplained bills in occupied homes, he finds situations where someone illegally tapped into a neighbors electricity. He reports it to his boss who reports it to the police and 9 times out of 10 there is someone in the foreclosed home growing pot and tapping into the neighbors electricity to power their lamps. So the neighbor is wondering why their electric bill is so high, PG&E investigates and there is a pot farm in the house.

To be honest I'm not convinced legalizing pot would stop that although presumably people would grow their own, smaller growth footprint means less need for electricity and less chance of fire but who knows.

Alot of the dangers of pot are related to it being illegal. I would hope if written correctly a bill legalizing pot would remove alot of the criminal element making it safer and of course taxing it too.

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LVG

That's the real problem with anecdotal information and drawing conclusions from it - it's not necessarily representative of the whole or of the current situation.

I did a quick search on an Academic Journal website last night - what I'd be interested in is a study of participants to determine if they need MM based upon their described symptoms and previous medical history. There's no article fitting that description, but I haven't checked the Med Journals yet.

Of course, there's going to be all sorts of problems that arise with such a study that will need to be addressed in the methodology, such as the inherent problem of underreporting & study of those who do not really need MM but nevertheless have a prescription for it.

My guess is that eventually, some medical records will be available to conduct a statistics study on it.

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