There is no known lethal dose of THC. Think about that for a moment. No known lethal dose. (There is no known lethal dose for LSD either, but that's off topic.) I know for a fact there is a lethal dose of alcohol; students die every year on campus from acute alcohol poisoning. And yet alcohol remains legal and our politicians happily collect billions in taxes off its consumption every year.

So what? It's called natural selection. If you have an irrational urge to ingest a lethal quantity of a known toxin, perhaps your genes aren't meant to pass themselves on to the next generation. Some idiot college student got drunk this week, climbed up on the roof of a building, and subsequently fell 35 feet, and is now in critical condition. Good riddance. Nature is not friendly -- it seeks to weed out (no pun intended) the unfit. I've been drunk plenty of times in my life, and I've never done anything stupid under the influence, so I know alcohol doesn't "make" people do dumb things. They choose to act out and use alcohol as an excuse. But that's their choice, and I would never begrudge them that choice.

As George Carlin said, the kid who swallows too many marbles doesn't grow up to have kids of his own.

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The problem is, with marijuana, you have no idea if something else is in it. Who KNOWS what you might be smoking?
I myself don't care. If you want to smoke it, smoke it.

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You can be quite the cold hearted guy. Especially for a medicine student.

There's no reason for natural selection to excist in these times. You know that we have everything in abundance in pretty much every western civlization. That's not something any kind of animal or human is used to. Therefor, there should be some regulation by someone. If that's the government, I'm all for it. If alcohol wasn't woven into pretty much every society, I'm sure it would've been outlawed, as well. The only thing you can do is put a shitload of taxes on it. And hey, if it helps out the government that way as well, all the better. They need some more money if they want to imply a little more socialistic system. ::lol:

Like you said, though, you don't kill yourself with weed. You do dumb shit, but not the alcohol-like dumb shit that'll kill you, usually. I'm all for legalizing it.

Maybe have it legal only at special zones and your own house, though. The crap stinks like crazy.

I'm anything but cold hearted. I'm compassionate almost to a fault. When I was in Iraq, I was recognized (and frequently ridiculed) for being one of the only two or three medics on the entire base who actually gave a shit about the Iraqis and other prisoners as people.

I stand for freedom, but I also believe that with freedom comes responsibility. So if someone wants to exercise their freedom, they better be willing to accept responsibility for whatever consequences accrue. So if someone drinks himself into oblivion, I'll respect his right to choose that self-destructive behavior, and I won't feel the least bit sorry for him.

That won't stop me from doing whatever the hell it takes to save his lousy life if he comes into my emergency room, though. It won't stop me from feeling guilty and depressed, probably for days or weeks, if I lose him on the operating table. But neither will I think he person's death is a tragedy. Just an inevitable consequence of causality.

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[youtube]E_PFZ92dMys[/youtube]

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I agree with you so much. It's your body and you can do whatever you want to it as long as someone else doesn't suffer the consequences of your actions. That doesn't mean I don't care about other people but ultimately it's not my decision to make, it's yours.

There is where one of the problems will lay. If it's legalized, the "alcohol-like dumb shit that'll kill you" that happens with drinkers will rise drastically with the increase of marijuana use. That WILL happen. You don't see it as much because it IS illegal. Thus, many people shy away from it.
Plus, as it is, they have outlawed smoking regular cigarettes just about everywhere. So the only place you COULD smoke is at someone's house.
Plus, anyone that thinks it wouldn't cause cancer, just like regular cigs is fooling only themselves. That stuff is HARSH.
So if you want to argue to make it legal, i don't mind. But you have to be honest as far as what all would happen. What the backlash would ultimately be.

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It's legal here and it doesn't happen over here. Usually the ones that take drugs are the ones that drink a lot as well. There are some exceptions, of course.

One doesn't amplify the other. If you've had 5 beers, you'll most likely take another 5 if you have the chance to. Marijuana doesn't change a thing about that. And when you're high, you usually don't get a craving for beer or anything.

If someone dies and smoked both marijuana and drank beer, it's just magnified. Just like with video games for instance. When you hear that someone has been killed, the first thing they do is look if the guy played any violent video games. If so, the media will go crazy over it, mostly disregarding the unstable psyche of the murderer.

It's legal in the San Francisco Bay Area pretty much. Cops all over are told to "look the other way." We got over 50% of the population (VERY conservative estimate) who have tried it at least once.

We don't have anyone going crazy with it.

We do however have a lot of drunk assholes getting in fights. So the cops pretty much have to patrol the bars and break up fights. Great use of our tax money there.

I'd much rather see stupid young males in their 20s stoned than drunk. It's not even close.

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I agree. Cheesey, you do make great points but I think Rock hit the nail on the head. Just because someone got arrested doing something stupid and they were high, doesn't mean they did it just because they were high. I think weed is a scapegoat in some form. People normally already have these intentions before ingesting a substance. The drugs just get the blame because of the way they're perceived.

And yes, making weed legal doesn't mean "hey, we can smoke it anywhere!" There will be laws and regulations. No selling to minors. No smoking in public. No driving under the influence. Company policies against smoking it. It's not like people clamoring for the legalization of pot want it legalized so they can be high all the time. They just want to be able to use their drug of choice in the comfort of their own home without worrying about the law. That's all.

Also, whole cancer thing. Of course I don't think weed doesn't cause cancer, there are so many unknowns about the chemicals in weed it's hard to say. I'm not ignoring the fact that marijuana has negative side effects, I just think that they're a non-issue when comparing them to the negative side effects of other, legal drugs like prescription drugs, tobacco and alcohol. You can open your medicine cabinet and hypothetical kill yourself by taking too much of anything in there, while people have been smoking weed their whole lives and have no significant health problems. Although I do think pot clogs a persons brain a bit and makes their thinking convoluted and slower.



I've already told most of my friends (I'm in college) that pot is my drug of choice way over alcohol. All my friends say they'd rather have alcohol.

My mom's side of the family is torn apart by alcoholism and they all have addictive personalities. Her second cousin has been on and off the streets in San Francisco because his alcoholism lead him into cocaine and a crack addiction. Her dad died when I was 4 because of heart problems related to his alcoholism. My mom's mom pops two vicodin and drinks a glass of wine before going to the grocery store.

My dad? He still smokes a little pot from time-to-time but that's it. Never had a drinking problem and has always been my hero even to this day. He enjoys his life to the fullest and understands that being happy with what he has is how he wants to live.