Should Marijuana be legalized? Why or why not?phoenixJea
I don't drink and I don't smoke, and I don't do drugs. I wish no one did any of those things, but I'm a pragmatist. You can't make people obedient to your will, even when it's in their best interests... because smoking and drinking are just not good for you... and then add in the taxation and it's not good for your wallet. Heck, sugar and caffeine aren't much better that alochol or tobacco, but you don't hear people saying anything about them.
But like I said, I'm a pragmatist. People are going to do these things, whether I or the government says it's okay or not. That's what the whole Prohibition was about, and look how that turned out. All it did was make the Kennedys rich.
The best way, in my opinion, to control drug use, is to make it legal, make quality control an issue, tax the heck out of it, and turn public attention against it. Smokers have already been banned from many establishments, and though there's the whole alcoholism is an illness BS, people give alcoholics the thirty yard stare too.
Let's be clear. I hate marijuana more than I even hate alcohol and tobacco. My father was an alcoholic to the day he died, and my mother has smoked cigarettes since before I was born. (I always tell her if she had quit smoking when she found out she was pregnant with me, she could have sent me to college.) Marijuana, another of my dad's bad habits, makes me nauseous in the extreme. But while alcohol made him violent, pot calmed him down. So if I had to choose, I'd rather deal with the smell of pot over the smell of alcohol (another smell I'm not too fond of). Apply the same social restrictions on marijuana as are placed on cigarettes, and there'd be just as many books and programs to help you quit that as there are to quit cigarettes.
Besides, you rarely hear of anyone murdering someone due to marijuana usage. Not too many instances of pot induced car crashes. At most, we'd have to worry about someone getting low blood sugar and going on a munchie related crime spree. I can just imagine the cops yelling something like, "Put down the Twinkies and no one gets hurt!" Besides, I heard they just found marijuana in a 3000 year old Chinese tomb. If they've been using pot as long as alcohol, I really don't think it's something we're going to get rid of just by saying boo. Besides, I read the other day that Carl Sagan got his best ideas on pot, so (aside from the smell) it can't be all bad.
March 12th
Hypatia, the divine pagan, martyred by a Christian death squad, is remembered today. She was a famous philosopher and mathematician and dean of the Neo-Platonic school of Alexandria. She was considered an oracle for her wisdom, and was consulted by the magistrates in all important cases.
In Mesopotamia, this day is holy to Marduk.
Today is considered the deadline for planting onions in England.
This is the birthday of Stewart Edward White, psychical researcher, who became the president of the American Society for Psychical Research in San Francisco.
On the 27th day of Parmutit, Sekhmet initiates the End of the World.
Comments (6)
Carl Sagan got his best ideas from pot?
Oh my gosh, I have to send that to my mom....
I've been thinking about answering this question, but I can't decide whether to be serious or sarcastic.
Aren't pot and mild anti-depressants similar? (as in taking the edge off) I say legalize it and tax it. A cop friend of mine much preferred pot arrests to alcohol arrests - I think he kept brownies in his car.
Michigan voted For legalization of Medical marijuana this past election. I'm not a user (medical or recreational), but I agree that if it is controlled then it might be less of a problem.
I know that some scholars debate that a certain line in Shakespeare referencing "grass" (I think? I read this article a few years ago, don't have time to look it up at the moment) may be referring to marijuana, I've also read that somewhere in the archeological record they've found traces of marijuana on some Elizabethan castle grounds/burial/whatnot (this might have been from the same article, I'll really have to try to find it at some point).
Drugs have probably ended up "inspiring" a lot of people.... Absinthe certainly had an effect on VanGogh and possibly Lewis Carroll (there is a possible migraine connection for both of these but I can get into that at another point).
@heidenkind - lol... I get my best ideas from lack of sleep.
@travelerblue - haha, were they "special" brownies? lol
@ImKatWoman - What's the migraine connection? I know when I have or am getting one, the smell of anything burning plays havoc with my headache. Though the smell of pot or alcohol is nauseating to me even at the best of times.
@harmony0stars -
http://www.migraines.org/about/abouawar.htm
I found out about the VanGogh thing on a migraine website, there
was a section on creativity and ways you can turn the migraines or
effects of the migraines into something better. It's argued by some that both Van Gogh, George Seurat and Lewis Carroll all suffered from migraines.
In Alice in Wonderland, there's a quote, "One pill makes you big, one pill makes you small, and the one mother gives you doesn't do anything at all." Some people think that this was a reference to trying to treat migraine then - the 'suggested' or 'safe' remedies (the ones given by "mom") don't work, and the "pills" are a suggestion of self-medicating out of desperation... possibly absinthe/hallucinogens or other drugs that would seriously mess with your head (the big/small thing. although i'll admit some prescription stuff has made me feel way wierd, that stuff usually gets discontinued right away). I know I had heard about the Carroll/migraine thing long before I came across this website, so there's probably more support for this argument.
The Seurat thing: He used Pointilism, and if you remember the painting in "Ferris Bueler," that's Seurat's (Ille de la Grande Jatte). This site argues that Seurat used migraine auras (visual disturbances occuring before or with a migraine, for those not in the know) and just painted what he saw while he had one of those. I know there have been times where I've seen things like that (although the majority of my migraines are without aura).
They claim that when Van Gogh was institutionalized, one of the diagnoses was "migraine personality." I've seen things from critics saying that there is little evidence for this, though, but I still find it intriguing.
@ImKatWoman - interesting... I've had the bigger/smaller hallucination, but not in conjunction with drugs or migraines per se. Mostly it's when I've been sick with a high fever and not always when I had a headache with the fever either. My auras are big bruise colored splotches that obliterate anything I'm looking at. At the same time, I get a "cold" spot right between my eyes and my stomach feels like it drops out of my body.
Comments are closed.