Buzz,
While I agree about the safety and employment testing issues related to this, I'm not sure of your last paragraph.
Not every one who enjoys alcohol is an alcoholic....and not everyone who enjoys MJ is a pot head. Those generalizations you attach to 'pot heads' can be applied to alcohol, yet you don't see an over abundance everyone driving reckless causing accidents and killing people because alcohol is legal. Most people who enjoy alcohol, enjoy it responsibly and don't suddenly go into crime spree mode.
There are many examples of people losing their jobs and families, getting their cars repossesed and going on 'nothing to lose' shooting sprees on alcohol.... Just because it happens with alcohol does not automatically imply that the same will happen to someone that uses MJ. They do not affect people the same way. You will rarely encounter an aggressive stoner, but there are pleny of aggressive alcoholics.
The fact that legalization of MJ was approved by a significant amount (beaten by 10%, here in Washington State) shows that there are actually people who enjoy pot and still maintain a job, raise families and have a happy successful life...unless your premiss is only the crazy gun toting potheads were the only one's voting for it's legaliaztion and all the non potheads decided not to vote, or didn't even care to vote ...
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These mythologies about how MJ affect people are sustained by the FACT that the govt refuses to lift the ban from the study of pot and would prefer to use myths and scare tactics to justify their ban. Like I said earlier, this is a natural growing plant, not manufactured by big Pharmaceuticals and yet is the least studied. All we get is exagerrated claims and scare tactics.
It is not out of the realm of possibility, the 'hold up' is that the big money interests don't like that,
-pot is not habit forming (like alcohol or tobacco or many of the opiate derived medicines in your cabinet)
-does not cause extreme withdrawal symptoms when you try to come clean, like the listed above
-and can be grown in your back yard. Far harder to do that with alcohol, tobacco or their pharmaceutical equivalents (so you have to pay their prices to get it)
I challenge you to find a connection between someone OD'ing on Pot and going on a shooting rampage...there are plenty examples of that with people drunk on alcohol. Even Ambien...a 'sleep aid' has been tied to suicide, depression, sleep walking, and violent black out episodes....and that's just so you can get to sleep!!
Quote:The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world."
- Carl Sagan
Quote:"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."
- Albert Einstein quote on Hemp
Quote:"Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."
- William F. Buckley Jr. quote on Marijuana
Lastly, think of all the money that's been wasted the last 3 to 4 decades on this...and all the jail cells filled with minor pot possession, while many repeat rapists and murderers are released because of no room in the jails...
The war on pot has been only impactful in the huge amount of money and resources wasted that could have been applied on more significantly dangerous things, and how far have they gotten on this 'war' since it started? You're basically about the same as far as stamping it out, in fact now majorities of populations are finally awakening to the waste and refuting it ......
