We have lost the battle folks

[DammitJanet]

I heard on the news tonight that pot cures or kills or something brain cancer cells.

This is all that our kids (or really anyone) needs to hear to give them the excuse or reason to light on up. Never mind that it kills the other brain cells...the ones that werent cancerous...lol. So you kill all the brain cells I guess. I keep picturing the Hulu commercials.

Oh well...I guess we wont have to worry about brain cancer for any of those who partake or partook of maryjane.

 

[witzend]

Of course, this only applies if you actually already have brain cancer... They'll never hear that part!

 

[DammitJanet]

I like their final sentence...lol.

 

[BusynMember]

Marijuana DOES have medical uses. But not if you use it every day. Then you get apathetic and lazy. However, I think most of our kids, whether or not we know it, are WAY beyond pot.

 

[Jena]

ok i know this was an informative post but sheesh janet that had me laughing..........

 

[ThreeShadows]

husband thinks drugs should be legalized and taxed. Please give me some good arguing points for dinners with him. I know it's all legal in Holland but it creeps me out. I don't want to have Sunday dinner sitting across a child with needle marks up and down his arms. My instincts tell me it's wrong but I don't often win these intellectual arguments.

 

[DammitJanet]

3shadows...everyone in my family thinks it should be legal and taxed just like liquor. Not anything harder than pot, just pot. I happen to think that opiate pain killers should be on the shelf at the pharmacy...or behind the shelf to sign for them...and have the tylenol be by prescription only. Tylenol can kill you! I have never in my life heard of someone dying from smoking too much pot. Really. Maybe smoking and driving...smoking and doing something else stupid...but not just smoking.

 

[ThreeShadows]

Yes, Janet, it's the behavior behind the wheel that really scares me, and I understand the temporary loss of psychological pain provided by pot. difficult child 2 told me he will never stop smoking weed. He will suffer from the physical consequences of taking cigs and weed into his lungs. I'm so sad that he can't find his peace some other way. I have read that THC helps calm the effects of ADHD.

I did not do drugs when I was a "love child", I was a freak in my own way, watching others partake. husband did smoke so we have our differences. He gave it all up the day he got into medical school.

 

[ThreeShadows]

By the way, it made him "glow with sexual desire" but that was before we met!

 

[Hound dog]

Well.............

Just so you all know............

Chemotherapy kills good cells along with cancer cells too.

I don't have a problem with pot being legal. As it does have many medicinal uses. Many argue that it's a stepping stone to more serious drugs. Maybe, maybe not. But then, I've seen alcohol serve the same purpose and of course it's legal and will remain so.

Other drugs out there are illegal because they're either the substances that make up prescription drugs (opiates and the like) or because they are actual prescription drugs.

Legalizing things like opiates and cocaine ect wouldn't help. Because if the govt did that, and taxed the heck out of them......you've just created a black market for it which would ruin what you'd be trying to do. Then the crime rate would soar because addicts would have an even harder time trying to get money to feed their addiction.

But I have no problem seeing difficult child's twisting this to make them think that pot is good for them. sheesh

 

[ThreeShadows]

So, why don't they just make THC pills? It would not ruin lungs...

 

[everywoman]

Well, there are exceptions to every rule. The biggest pothead in my family (except for difficult child) died of .....brain cancer in 1990. And he smoked everyday, all day for 10 years.

 

[AnnieO]

THC doesn't just calm ADHD, it calms everything! I tried it a few times but honestly, I can get a better high legally, without drugs. Family will do that to you.

I can think of a lot better ways to cure brain cancer, or any kind of cancer for that matter. Why don't we just isolate the cause and destroy it? Duh, no one even gets cancer. I know they are working on this. But I don't think legalizing drugs is the answer.

 

[C.J.]

Three Shadows:

Arguments against legalization of drugs: http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_2_a1.html

My favorite paragraph of this essay:

"It might be argued that the freedom to choose among a variety of intoxicating substances is a much more important freedom and that millions of people have derived innocent fun from taking stimulants and narcotics. But the consumption of drugs has the effect of reducing men's freedom by circumscribing the range of their interests. It impairs their ability to pursue more important human aims, such as raising a family and fulfilling civic obligations. Very often it impairs their ability to pursue gainful employment and promotes parasitism. Moreover, far from being expanders of consciousness, most drugs severely limit it. One of the most striking characteristics of drug takers is their intense and tedious self-absorption; and their journeys into inner space are generally forays into inner vacuums. Drug taking is a lazy man's way of pursuing happiness and wisdom, and the shortcut turns out to be the deadest of dead ends. We lose remarkably little by not being permitted to take drugs."


"

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

In my opinion the laws regarding which mood-altering substances are legal, illegal, or by Rx only are somewhat arbitrary and illogical. Pot is much milder than alcohol, for instance. It does with long-term frequent use develop a psychological (not physical) addiction and have a deleterious effect on motivation: makes you lazy and apathetic, in other words. It certainly harms the lungs -- you could counter the brain-cancer argument with increased lung-cancer risk, I would think. The "gateway drug" argument is only valid insofar as any drug at all, legal or not, can be considered a gateway drug; also, an illegal drug might open the door to the idea of using other illegal drugs on the "I might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb" theory, but that is only a function of it being illegal, not any intrinsic property of the drug itself.

I would be in favor of rationalizing the drug laws and penalties based on harmfulness/addictiveness, I think. I do not think that drug use by itself, without violence or selling, should be dealt with by jail or prison -- I think some sort of mandatory treatment would work much better and relieve prison overcrowding at the same time.

 

[Star*]

Janet......

I was going to......oh wait a minute my j fell on the......okay now what I was saying. (um) What was I saying? I forget. Oh look a squirrel. Nope, nope not a squirrel it's ahhhhhh ah......what the heck is that called again? Oh yeah.....paper bag.

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

C.J., that essay was excellent. I think he makes the case very well. In fact, I'm persuaded that he is correct: "The present situation is bad, undoubtedly; but few are the situations so bad that they cannot be made worse by a wrong policy decision." Amen!

 

[DammitJanet]

Star...I sound like that anyway and I havent had a thing to smoke that is illegal since the Carter administration!

 

[Star*]

Me too..........

I was in the Salvation Army the other day - and I am anti-drug, but there was a shirt hanging for sale - on the front it said - I just smoked a big fatty....on the back Myrtle Beach bike week.

And they wonder WHY people want to cancel that event? DUH......

So I took the shirt up to the manager and said - I'm the pain who throws all the toy guns away. I'm the one that makes you remove all satanic worship guide books, I'm the one that makes the girls get rid of the shirts with pot leaves and now this......(hands shirt) and she said - Well whats wrong with that?

(I was like.) - then educated her on the vernacular of a big fatty.

She threw the shirt in the garbage.

 

[TerryJ2]

Aw, Star!!! LOL.
I could have been that clerk.
My kids are always "educating" me.