Top Ten Reasons For Making Marijuana Legal

[SCREAM]

10. Prohibition has failed to control the use and domestic production of marijuana.
The government has tried to use criminal penalties to prevent marijuana use for over 75 years and yet: marijuana is now used by over 25 million people annually, cannabis is currently the largest cash crop in the United States, and marijuana is grown all over the planet.
Claims that marijuana prohibition is a successful policy are ludicrous and unsupported by the facts, and the idea that marijuana will soon be eliminated from America and the rest of the world is a ridiculous fantasy.


9. Arrests for marijuana possession disproportionately affect blacks and Hispanics and reinforce the perception that law enforcement is biased and prejudiced against minorities.

African-Americans account for approximately 13% of the population of the United States and about 13.5% of annual marijuana users, however, blacks also account for 26% of all marijuana arrests. Recent studies have demonstrated that blacks and Hispanics account for the majority of marijuana possession arrests in New York City, primarily for smoking marijuana in public view. ME: Being a New Yorker I can affirm that it's also less likely that a white kid will smoke weed in public. He may smoke the same amount but he is more likely to do so indoors.

Law enforcement has failed to demonstrate that marijuana laws can be enforced fairly without regard to race; far too often minorities are arrested for marijuana use while white/non-Hispanic Americans face a much lower risk of arrest.


8. A regulated, legal market in marijuana would reduce marijuana sales and use among teenagers, as well as reduce their exposure to other drugs in the illegal market.

The illegality of marijuana makes it more valuable than if it were legal, providing opportunities for teenagers to make easy money selling it to their friends. If the excessive profits for marijuana sales were ended through legalization there would be less incentive for teens to sell it to one another.

Teenage use of alcohol and tobacco remain serious public health problems even though those drugs are legal for adults, however, the availability of alcohol and tobacco is not made even more widespread by providing kids with economic incentives to sell either one to their friends and peers.


7. Legalized marijuana would reduce the flow of money from the American economy to international criminal gangs. Marijuana's illegality makes foreign cultivation and smuggling to the United States extremely profitable, sending billions of dollars overseas in an underground economy while diverting funds from productive economic development.


6. Marijuana's legalization would simplify the development of hemp as a valuable and diverse agricultural crop in the United States, including its development as a new bio-fuel to reduce carbon emissions. Canada and European countries have managed to support legal hemp cultivation without legalizing marijuana, but in the United States opposition to legal marijuana remains the biggest obstacle to development of industrial hemp as a valuable agricultural commodity. As US energy policy continues to embrace and promote the development of bio-fuels as an alternative to oil dependency and a way to reduce carbon emissions, it is all the more important to develop industrial hemp as a bio-fuel source - especially since use of hemp stalks as a fuel source will not increase demand and prices for food, such as corn. Legalization of marijuana will greatly simplify the regulatory burden on prospective hemp cultivation in the United States.


5. Prohibition is based on lies and disinformation. Justification of marijuana's illegality increasingly requires distortions and selective uses of the scientific record, causing harm to the credibility of teachers, law enforcement officials, and scientists throughout the country. The dangers of marijuana use have been exaggerated for almost a century and the modern scientific record does not support the reefer madness predictions of the past and present. Many claims of marijuana's danger are based on old 20th century prejudices that originated in a time when science was uncertain how marijuana produced its characteristic effects. Since the cannabinoid receptor system was discovered in the late 1980s these hysterical concerns about marijuana's dangerousness have not been confirmed with modern research. Everyone agrees that marijuana, or any other drug use such as alcohol or tobacco use, is not for children. Nonetheless, adults have demonstrated over the last several decades that marijuana can be used moderately without harmful impacts to the individual or society.


4. Marijuana is not a lethal drug and is safer than alcohol. It is established scientific fact that marijuana is not toxic to humans; marijuana overdoses are nearly impossible, and marijuana is not nearly as addictive as alcohol or tobacco. It is unfair and unjust to treat marijuana users more harshly under the law than the users of alcohol or tobacco.


3. Marijuana is too expensive for our justice system and should instead be taxed to support beneficial government programs. Law enforcement has more important responsibilities than arresting 750,000 individuals a year for marijuana possession, especially given the additional justice costs of disposing of each of these cases. Marijuana arrests make justice more expensive and less efficient in the United States, wasting jail space, clogging up court systems, and diverting time of police, attorneys, judges, and corrections officials away from violent crime, the sexual abuse of children, and terrorism. Furthermore, taxation of marijuana can provide needed and generous funding of many important criminal justice and social programs.


2. Marijuana use has positive attributes, such as its medical value and use as a recreational drug with relatively mild side effects. Many people use marijuana because they have made an informed decision that it is good for them, especially Americans suffering from a variety of serious ailments. Marijuana provides relief from pain, nausea, spasticity, and other symptoms for many individuals who have not been treated successfully with conventional medications. Many American adults prefer marijuana to the use of alcohol as a mild and moderate way to relax. Americans use marijuana because they choose to, and one of the reasons for that choice is their personal observation that the drug has a relatively low dependence liability and easy-to-manage side effects. Most marijuana users develop tolerance to many of marijuana's side effects, and those who do not, choose to stop using the drug. Marijuana use is the result of informed consent in which individuals have decided that the benefits of use outweigh the risks, especially since, for most Americans, the greatest risk of using marijuana is the relatively low risk of arrest.


1. Marijuana users are determined to stand up to the injustice of marijuana probation and accomplish legalization, no matter how long or what it takes to succeed. Despite the threat of arrests and a variety of other punishments and sanctions marijuana users have persisted in their support for legalization for over a generation. They refuse to give up their long quest for justice because they believe in the fundamental values of American society. Prohibition has failed to silence marijuana users despite its best attempts over the last generation. The issue of marijuana's legalization is a persistent issue that, like marijuana, will simply not go away. Marijuana will be legalized because marijuana users will continue to fight for it until they succeed.

[clownboy]

There's really eleven reasons, The actual Number One: I wanna get baked!.

[SCREAM]

We can do that now.

[ninjalooter1701]

Originally Posted by clownboy

There's really eleven reasons, The actual Number One: I wanna get baked!.

I see two really nice reasons in that post.

[Gilles de Rais]

You get me a night with the girl in the pic and i'll agree to any and all policies she wants me to...

[SCREAM]

Then you'll like these...

[Gilles de Rais]

Not quite as good, imho but I am not fussy...

[witnesstheday]

I give it 5 years tops. It will be legal in the USA and UK, totally. The recession now demands it. Before the west had much more room for choice. Now it is desperate for money. Holland has shown that marijuana can be a legitimate billion-euro industry. I gave up weed specifically to empower myself to make more noise about it.

[witnesstheday]

But for the moment I have no compulsion to give up ogling chicks like that. I don't think I can compete with that bong, though!

[witnesstheday]

phwaaaaaaaaaaaaa

i know what's smokin in THAT picture.

[Bennett]

Originally Posted by witnesstheday

I give it 5 years tops. It will be legal in the USA and UK, totally. The recession now demands it. Before the west had much more room for choice. Now it is desperate for money. Holland has shown that marijuana can be a legitimate billion-euro industry. I gave up weed specifically to empower myself to make more noise about it.

I think five years is very optimistic. Even in the midst of a recession, with high numbers of repossessions and unemployment you'll still get members of the Ronald Regan war-on-drugs crowd waxing lyrical about the dangers of drug abuse and the harm it does our kids.

But as with most policy decisions, once America changes its approach so the rest of the world follows suit...

[witnesstheday]

The economic power blocking things like cannabis decriminalization has been destroyed in all but name. The independent scientific body asked by the government to decide if cannabis should be legal has firmly and publically declared that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than cannabis (the graph is even on this forum in a thread called hang-gliders of the mind). It is a viable growth industry with 100 million to a billion global users, and it's only exploited properly in Holland which is raking it in whilst the rest of the world catches up.

In California cannabis is widely used "legally" now, and no doubt other western places have toyed with the idea of becoming soft on cannabis. Under most of Tony Blair's regime the police had orders to "let people smoke cannabis in their own homes". Gordon Brown has merely indicated that the police currently do NOT have orders to "let people smoke cannabis in their own homes" he hasn't really indicated where he would stand on genuine drug-law reform.

The biggest argument against the present status quo is the fact that it has not reduced drug abuse in society but massively increased it. If drug abuse is what we want to stop then it is important to change the laws. We have currently merely had people obeying different industries and making the law to suit them. There has not been any real attempt at making genuinely utilitarian laws.

In this new political wild west, maybe future Prime Minister Gordon Brown, after the next election, can institute constitutional reform, tax reform, policing and drug reform, gender and race reform - all the things his predecessors in Kinnock's opposition once dreamt of being able to give Britain rather than the sand and cement of Thatcher's Britain.

Brown and Obama are, at this point, still the most likely pair to be in charge together for the next 4 years. The income is VERY big. No financially responsible government would fail to legalize cannabis during the downturn in order to "add value" to Britain's economy. Do you want the dutch to beat us to the money? Or the Americans? Or the goddamn a-rabs????


(forget reagan... the mccain generation have gone to bed - their last few cracks of the whip may make a bit of noise, but no matter who they kill between now and obama-day, there is nothing more they can do to preserve their power - their whole bankroll has folded)

[witnesstheday]

that picture of the woman in the leopard print dress really makes you appreciate what's more important out of the drugs and the woman

if only cold showers came in a pill

[potter]

Originally Posted by SCREAM

Dayammmmmmm...this is the only reason I need....fire up that fattie girl.....

[biblethumper]

No way, then there would be more burnouts like so many on this board, excluding myself, my vice was booze, but Jesus saved me from my alchoholism, tell ya what all you stoners, who believe in helping others, take your drug money and by a homeless person a coat, or a meal.

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by biblethumper

my vice was booze, but Jesus saved me from my alchoholism

You went from one crutch to another.

The jury is still out on which one was worse.

[witnesstheday]

Originally Posted by biblethumper

No way, then there would be more burnouts like so many on this board, excluding myself, my vice was booze, but Jesus saved me from my alchoholism, tell ya what all you stoners, who believe in helping others, take your drug money and by a homeless person a coat, or a meal.

That's just bullshit. From 1992 to 2008 I smoked weed. From 2002 to 2008 out of the grand total of about 15 to 20k of money I lived on, I spent more, or at least as much, on giving money to "homeless people" for their meals, in palestine and iraq and elsewhere, as I did on weed, and that's INCLUDING the fact that weed is totally overpriced.

It's just lame to pick on one random thing a person spends on and say "that's why you didn't give money to homeless people". As my case indicates, it is totally not valid! I gave SHIT loads of food to palestinians and if I hadn't been stoned, I probably would have not been so carefree about giving my own food money away! Still, I ate enough, I'm still alive, and I even quit weed, for my own reasons, mostly to prove to myself that I was never hooked on it in the first place. Which, now that I've succeeded, does occasionally leave me wondering about whether or not there's any case for going and smoking some more! But there isn't really. It's a bit pointless when you're not a child or immature young adult... it mongs your head, makes you numb to the crap in the world and causes you to forget that there is an urgent reason (womankind) to permanently keep your ass in gear.

But that little thing about money is so wrong. If society made cannabis legal, the amount kids spend on it would drop significantly. Part of the illegalization is all about making it overpriced and difficult to get, so as to "stop usage" - whereas as we see it just creates warped usage and makes it work hand in hand with crime.

I gave PLENTY to homeless people when I was a toker, and I expect that I'll give plenty more to homeless people, and probably, particularly if they legalize it, smoke loads more weed in my time (well, women take waay too long to even change their clothes - waiting for something considerably more serious, changewise, than clothes... leaves quite a lot of time for more tokes, when the meat of my work is out of the way and the ass can slip down a gear or two and enjoy the spring air).

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by SCREAM

That's enough to make your tongue hard.

[Underhill]

Originally Posted by witnesstheday

That's just bullshit. From 1992 to 2008 I smoked weed. From 2002 to 2008 out of the grand total of about 15 to 20k of money I lived on, I spent more, or at least as much, on giving money to "homeless people" for their meals, in palestine and iraq and elsewhere, as I did on weed, and that's INCLUDING the fact that weed is totally overpriced.

It's just lame to pick on one random thing a person spends on and say "that's why you didn't give money to homeless people". As my case indicates, it is totally not valid! I gave SHIT loads of food to palestinians and if I hadn't been stoned, I probably would have not been so carefree about giving my own food money away! Still, I ate enough, I'm still alive, and I even quit weed, for my own reasons, mostly to prove to myself that I was never hooked on it in the first place. Which, now that I've succeeded, does occasionally leave me wondering about whether or not there's any case for going and smoking some more! But there isn't really. It's a bit pointless when you're not a child or immature young adult... it mongs your head, makes you numb to the crap in the world and causes you to forget that there is an urgent reason (womankind) to permanently keep your ass in gear.

But that little thing about money is so wrong. If society made cannabis legal, the amount kids spend on it would drop significantly. Part of the illegalization is all about making it overpriced and difficult to get, so as to "stop usage" - whereas as we see it just creates warped usage and makes it work hand in hand with crime.

I gave PLENTY to homeless people when I was a toker, and I expect that I'll give plenty more to homeless people, and probably, particularly if they legalize it, smoke loads more weed in my time (well, women take waay too long to even change their clothes - waiting for something considerably more serious, changewise, than clothes... leaves quite a lot of time for more tokes, when the meat of my work is out of the way and the ass can slip down a gear or two and enjoy the spring air).

But Thumper thinks anyone who disagrees with him is incapable of charity or being good in any way shape or form. Atheist, pot smokers and those who enjoy sex are all guilty, therefor evil and incapable of good.

Obviously he is full of shit. But that has never stopped him before.

[Suraklin]

Originally Posted by biblethumper

No way, then there would be more burnouts like so many on this board, excluding myself, my vice was booze, but Jesus saved me from my alchoholism, tell ya what all you stoners, who believe in helping others, take your drug money and by a homeless person a coat, or a meal.

From alcohol to opiates - a sad decline...