Why is smoking legal?

i do extra work just to support my habits/addictions. i would not otherwise do it. sure, it is expensive, but it doesn't really hurt me financially because i have incentive to make more money. people don't really think about that either.

think about crackheads. they often have next to nothing, yet somehow spend hundreds of dollars A DAY on their habit. if they were as creative, morally flexible, and opportunistic about making money to invest in foreign banks as they are to buy crack, they'd all be millionaires.

i'm not saying that we're like crackheads, but as humans, we certainly do find ways to beef our income to fill gaps left by things such as cigarettes.

also, when i was at UNM, they tried that "no smoking within 20 feet of any public doorway" thing. what they got was a bunch of self righteous dipshits standing outside of the popular halls, with 20 foot semicircles drawn in chalk, attempting to scold us and create some vigilante supernerd enforcement squad.

what they got was a whole bunch of water and lit cigarette butts thrown in their faces. yelling, self righteous dipshits make excellent butt flicking target practice.
 
The state I'm currently living in for college has a 20 ft law. No one really takes it seriously. There are also some areas on campus where it would be impossible to get 20 ft away from a building.
 
Despite all of the well known health issues with smoking, it's still a matter of personal freedom. It's the same reason why I support euthenasia, if you wanna kill yourself that's your right.

Same reason why I support the legalization of pot; it's a matter of personal freedom, and pot is practically harmless anyway.

Trying to outlaw tobacco is like prohibition all over again: it won't work, not EVER. They tried to ban alcohol and look how far that got them.

It makes no sense that tobacco and alcohol are legal and kills thousands every year, and yet pot hasn't killed a single person in all of recorded history (actual fact!).
 
It makes no sense that tobacco and alcohol are legal and kills thousands every year, and yet pot hasn't killed a single person in all of recorded history (actual fact!).

I really really wanna....You sir are a fuc....NOPE.

You must be a stoner to boot huh? Pot is perfectly harmless huh?

Alchohol and pot go hand in hand as far as what kills people. Ever heard of a DUI. Called "Driving Under the Influence". You think you cant hurt someone while driving and being stoned? You are young and foolish then.

Youre just making it to easy.

HRD
 
Actually, pot doesn't kill. Even behind the wheel, it doesn't.

Check your statistics before you sound like an idiot
 
I really really wanna....You sir are a fuc....NOPE.

You must be a stoner to boot huh? Pot is perfectly harmless huh?

Alchohol and pot go hand in hand as far as what kills people. Ever heard of a DUI. Called "Driving Under the Influence". You think you cant hurt someone while driving and being stoned? You are young and foolish then.

Youre just making it to easy.

HRD

Alcohol and Pot dont go hand in hand at all. There are scientific studies on this matter.
One of them made in France where between 2001 and 2003 every blood test taken after an accident was tested on THC/Alcohol. THC rises the chance to cause a deadly accident by the factor 1,8, whereas alcohol raises it by a factor of 8,6. Even one/two beers raises the factor up to 2,7, real drunkness up to 40.

All the deaths between 2001 and 2003 were evaluated, 2,8% of them were caused by THC, 28% were caused by alcohol.

While its quite stupid to drive under the influence of any of those, its not a matter of an opionion- alcohol is a lot worse.

There are more studies on this, one of the biggest one made by a german professor with thousands of blood tests etc evaluated. Without ANY doubt alcohol is the number one risk, followed by medication and THEN followed by drugs, Cannabis etc.

So yes the chance of hurting someone driving stoned is way lower than hurting someone under alcohol. Its a fact.

Here is even a new american study which examined the influence of legalization of cannabis (medical) on Traffic fatalities. Their paper comes to the conclusion that the legalization and therefore higher consume even lowers the traffic mortalities by 9%, since marihuana is used as a substitute to alcohol.

http://ftp.iza.org/dp6112.pdf

I dont want to argue much, just show some rational facts, since im a man of science :) Given studies etc, i dont see how weed vs alcohol can even be argued.
 
^thank you. Here's a little more "proof" just in case you didn't believe me.
henningfieldbenowitz_sm2.gif


That's right folks! Caffeine is worse for you than pot!
 
@Doc... Wow. Thats really educational. A very intelligent response to what might my slightly off base post. At least you posses the skills to educate someone using facts that are proven in extensive study. You put my perspective on the matter at a different angle and for that i thank you.

It is common sense that drinking plays a much bigger role in car fatalities. I never doubted that. But the fact still remains that pot went from "never killing anyone in recorded history" to "it actually does kill a small percentage of car crashes". So in stead of calling it "hand &hand" can maybe be call "hand & foot" for arguments sake.

But Doc i appreciate the educational response. Its nice to know that there are some intelligent people left here.
 
For the record, when I said "pot hasn't killed anyone in recorded history", what I should have said was "no one has ever overdosed from pot". I admit that what I said the first time was an exaggeration. I was strictly talking about the physical harm to the body, which is hardly any truthfully.

What I'm curious about, is how many fatal car crashes happen when the driver is 100% sober. Doc's post seems to assume that every fatal car crash involves intoxication, which is misleading. I would be willing to bet that almost as many sober drivers kill people than pot smokers do.

But, for all practical purposes, it's impossible to overdose on pot. You literally have to smoke twice your body weight in pot in under 15 minutes!

And especially considering that something as innocent as caffeine is actually worse for you in just about every way, why does marijuana deserve to be illegal?

But, getting back to the OP's main point, I believe that all drugs should be legal, tobacco included. The simple reason? Because people should have the freedom to do whatever they want, provided they don't hurt anyone else in the process.

I mean look at me, I go to work, I go to college, I pay my taxes, I don't steal, and I consider myself a moral person. Do I deserve to go to jail just because I like to smoke pot? Or better yet, do pot-smokers deserve to get denied employment because of a failed drug test? We all need to make money, we all should have the right to work, regardless of whatever personal choices we make in life. It's not fair that a full-blown alcoholic can pass a drug test, because alcohol is legal, and yet even the occasional pot smoker get's denied because THC stays in your fat cells for about a month? Where's the justice in that?
 
also, when i was at UNM, they tried that "no smoking within 20 feet of any public doorway" thing. what they got was a bunch of self righteous dipshits standing outside of the popular halls, with 20 foot semicircles drawn in chalk, attempting to scold us and create some vigilante supernerd enforcement squad.

what they got was a whole bunch of water and lit cigarette butts thrown in their faces. yelling, self righteous dipshits make excellent butt flicking target practice.
I guess people in Ohio are just more civilized. We get a law that says no smoking within 20 feet of the door, and people don't smoke within 20 feet of the door. No nerd squad required.

Really though, I'm sufficiently happy with no smoking inside the building. The tiny bit that may waft in through the door is nothing compared to the frigg'n smokehouses that used to be restaurants and bowling alleys.
 
For the record, when I said "pot hasn't killed anyone in recorded history", what I should have said was "no one has ever overdosed from pot". I admit that what I said the first time was an exaggeration. I was strictly talking about the physical harm to the body, which is hardly any truthfully.

I like when people use this. It's like when little children tell you the stars are holes poked in a blanket over the world. Very cute.

The actual facts are that there are plenty of deaths contributed to marijuana but none directly contributed to an overdose of marijuana in the U.S.* The primary chemical in marijuana is THC, of which there have been fatal overdoses recorded by the U.S. FDA. There's a difference there - you could say the coca leaf doesn't kill anyone, but cocaine kills plenty. The majority might consume marijuana as dried leaves, but there are plenty that refine it into oils, hash and even inject-able liquids. Tarballs (not the Linux kind) kill - the primary ingredient is what most people call pot resin.

Smoking tobacco has the same risks as smoking marijuana. There are still plenty of the same carcinogens. You can still "get cancer" by smoking only pot just as easily as you can by smoking cigarettes. The average pot smoker doesn't even bother to filter (water doesn't count) which should actually make it more harmful. Worse, a lot of people choose to use aluminum as screens or even as pipes - burning aluminum has been linked to cancer and even early Alzheimer's Disease.

As HRD mentioned, driving under the influence does include marijuana. If you think that the intoxication of coffee is more dangerous than being stoned.... well, you must be stoned. You can find a ton of actual facts about the effects on motor skills, decision making and alertness pretty easily. You would be surprised - driving under the influence of THC actually appears worse than alcohol.

* I'm pretty sure it was Australia that stated that just last year someone died of an overdose of WoW and bong hits where the THC caused the victim to forget to breath. Don't ask me if that's even possible, but it is a recorded pot fatality.
 
everything kills you if not used in moderation, red meat, water, ice cream (great examples, i know)

oh and ive never been in an auto accident and ive never gotten a speeding ticket in my life.

<<<<just sayin, for those who dont know me ;)
 
I don't hate smokers or smoking, I would have started smoking if I had enough income anyway. Obviusly I myself not a user of the thing. I do not use alcahols either.

My friends think if I start smoking or drinking, It'll ruin my aura or personality or something. They say it wouldn't look right for guy like you to smoke or drink.

I don't know, most of the time, when I get anrgy or upset, I want to start to damn thing even if I know it is harmfull. But people stop me from starting it.
 
There is plenty of propaganda going around about anti-pot, one of them that it contains just as many carcinogens as tobacco, which is flat out false. And even if that were true, the average quantity of daily pot smoke doesn't even compare to how much tobacco the average smoker smokes in weight. Example: I smoke an entire pack of cigarettes a day, and If I'm lucky, I might smoke an average of a single joint a day. You do the math.

Secondly, as I've stated before, you literally have to smoke twice your body weight in under 15 minutes to overdose. I'm 200 lbs, that means I have to smoke 400 pounds in 15 minutes, which is impossible because I would pass out long before I even scratched the surface.

And you should really read my entire post, because I said that coffee is worse for you than pot, which is true in terms of toxicity, addiction, withdrawal. Pot may have a more intense intoxicating effect than caffeine, but everything else about caffeine is worse for you.

I even provided a reliable reference to back up my claims.

You wanna know why marijuana is illegal? I'll tell you why: The pharmaceutical companies can't make money off of it, because anyone can grow it. The cotton companies back in the 1920's put out all kinds of propaganda (Reefer Madness!!) because hemp is superior to cotton is almost every way. The American government at the time really shunned on Mexican American immigrants, and blamed them for smuggling in marijuana, which was nothing more than a scapegoat.

And last but not least, America buys it's hemp from Canada to make all sorts of products, soaps, clothes, you name it. The only reason America has to dodge this legal loophole is because Marijuana is illegal, and is forced to get it from Canada.

And then on top of it, you have thousands of people abusing medical marijuana cards when they have no legitimate medical reason to smoke pot. Can't we just skip all this and make pot legal in America?

As far as hash, it might be slightly more "dangerous", but that's an overstatement at best.
 
Wasn't it thought that either unrefined hashish from Nepal or headache medicine led to Bruce Lee's death (not really conclusive either way)?

On the topic of smoking. My main beef with it is that women who smoke greatly increase their risk of having unhealthy premature babies. Normally I would say smoking has no victim (as the smoker chooses to engage in it) but this has a direct negative impact on society in general. Subject is pretty complicated when you get right down to it.
 
You guys do realize that "Nicotine/caffeine/alcohol is way more dangerous" isn't actually an argument for legalizing pot, right?

Also I thought that scrub was done posting here on 8-Way...
 
Please Heaton. Share your wisdom with us and tell us why "Nicotine/caffeine/alcohol is way more dangerous" isn't actually an argument for legalizing pot. Because that IS a great argument for it IMO.

If you read my entire post, I listed several reasons why it should be legal that had nothing to do with it being dangerous or not.

Read before you post.

Also I thought that scrub was done posting here on 8-Way...

I AM a scrub. That's been well established already, but if you wanna beat a dead horse, or kick a man when he's down, then I have nothing more to say.
 
Please Heaton. Share your wisdom with us and tell us why "Nicotine/caffeine/alcohol is way more dangerous" isn't actually an argument for legalizing pot. Because that IS a great argument for it IMO.

You have a poor opinion.

Just because something else is more dangerous and legal does not necessarily obligate us to legalize everything that is less lethal than that. When put like that it's akin to complaining that Jimmy Stainton's mom lets him stay up until 10:00 PM and eat ice cream from breakfast, and your mom should let you do those things, too. It makes perfect sense if you're trying to convince someone that those things should be illegal - who wants to have a national economy run on something that kills you or gives you cancer? But for saying that something else SHOULD be legal because it's less dangerous? By that logic we can legalize literally anything that kills people less than smoking or alcohol - that is to say, A WHOLE FUCKING LOT.

then I have nothing more to say.

I thought that was the point. You seem to have missed that by a wide mark, however.
 
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