Why is smoking legal?

[damn-I-Suck]

By your logic, all drugs should be illegal Heaton, which doesn't work.

Think of it this way: Marijuana is currently under prohibition status, a TON of people smoke it in defiance of the law, just like moonshiners did back when alcohol was under prohibition.

What did it accomplish? More crime, more problems.

And finally, you seem to be stuck on how dangerous or damaging pot is. I listed several PRACTICAL reasons why it should be legal, that have nothing to do with it being dangerous or not.

But since you're so stuck on one aspect of this argument, let me say something else:

Did you know that about 25% of prisoners in America are locked up because of marijuana related "crimes"? The prison system here in America is a joke, it costs the tax payers a shit ton of money, and in the last 20 years, America has spent FOUR TIMES AS MUCH MONEY on building new prisons as they do on education.

If they legalize marijuana, tax the crap out of it, you would see a DRASTIC reduction in incarcerations, it would stimulate the economy, people would no longer be unfairly denied work because of a drug test, and it would eliminate the black market value among gangsters.

Since people are gonna smoke pot anyway, regardless of it's legal status, would you rather they support gangsters, or help support the US economy? I for one think that the tax money from pot should go to education.

 

[Heaton]

By your logic, all drugs should be illegal Heaton, which doesn't work.

Uh, no. That's what the argument of "marijuana isn't as bad as" accomplishes. That's not my argument at all.

And finally, you seem to be stuck on how dangerous or damaging pot is. I listed several PRACTICAL reasons why it should be legal, that have nothing to do with it being dangerous or not.

This was also something I never touched on. Not to mention there is very little that's practical about most of your reasons.

Did you know that about 25% of prisoners in America are locked up because of marijuana related "crimes"? The prison system here in America is a joke, it costs the tax payers a shit ton of money, and in the last 20 years, America has spent FOUR TIMES AS MUCH MONEY on building new prisons as they do on education.

Put some numbers and sources down. Not to mention crime doesn't magically "stop" just because marijuana is legalized.

If they legalize marijuana, tax the crap out of it, you would see a DRASTIC reduction in incarcerations, it would stimulate the economy, people would no longer be unfairly denied work because of a drug test, and it would eliminate the black market value among gangsters.

Since people are gonna smoke pot anyway, regardless of it's legal status, would you rather they support gangsters, or help support the US economy? I for one think that the tax money from pot should go to education.

I don't think you can reasonably make those conclusions without putting down at least some numbers. Not to mention legalization leaves a lot of questions unanswered. What exactly are we legalizing? What are the penalties for breaking these new laws? Is the FDA regulating this? If so, who's enforcing this? And what of the stuff that's still going to be on the black market? It doesn't just suddenly "eliminate the black market value" since it's still pot, and isn't subjected to any of these regulations that WILL exist.

Let me be clear - marijuana legalization does not affect me in any way. I also think that there are some good arguments for legalization. There are also fucking terrible ones, and it's those terrible ones that I see that get the most lip service for some ungodly reason. You need to rethink your arguments. Or just stop posting altogether like you said you would.

 

[Supa]

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.

The last bit is funny because funny. You seem to have skipped the entire section where I explained people do more than smoke to get THC - they also refine it into oils and even inject-able liquids. How much do you have to shoot up to overdose?

You also seemed to have missed the part about the carcinogens. Not everyone smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, but those that do are at least smoking a filtered product. Depending on the brand, some cigarettes even have charcoal filtering that reduces a significant amount of carcinogens (still not enough to be "safe", of course).

I've seen people smoke pot out of an aluminum can (did you read the part about cancer and Alzheimer's?), tear pages out of Bibles (not quite rolling papers - significantly higher carcinogen output that might even contain lead), use water as a "filter", etc. All of these methods produce more carcinogens than a cigarette. The fact that you personally consume more cigarettes than pot doesn't have any relevance here.

I'm not even going to bother quoting the rest of a post that tells me to read the whole post that it quotes but misses all of the relevant parts of.

 

[damn-I-Suck]

Okay. You want some numbers? Here we go.

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Marijuana#Share

Go to the section near the bottom, the chart "US Marijuana Arrests Percentage Share of Total Drug Arrests".

What this basically is saying, is that 52.1% of all drug related arrests involved marijuana. This is HALF. Just put that into perspective, I won't bother explaining why this is significant. Of that 52.1%, 45.8% of those were just POSSESSION, the other 6.3% was trafficking.

So just in case you aren't following me thus far, 45.8% of all drug related arrests are simply because of POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA.

So yeah, I don't consider this justice. I once again, LEGALIZING MARIJUANA WILL GREATLY REDUCE PRISON COSTS!!

PS: these are statistics for 2010

 

[damn-I-Suck]

The last bit is funny because funny. You seem to have skipped the entire section where I explained people do more than smoke to get THC - they also refine it into oils and even inject-able liquids. How much do you have to shoot up to overdose?

I will admit, I honestly don't know about inject-able THC. In my 15 years of pot smoking, I have NEVER heard of anyone shooting-up THC. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I do agree with you that it has the potential to be much more dangerous than simply smoking raw pot.

Anything you shoot-up is more dangerous simply because you're injecting it. I thought that was common sense.

 

[Senzait]

I've seen people smoke pot out of an aluminum can (did you read the part about cancer and Alzheimer's?), tear pages out of Bibles (not quite rolling papers - significantly higher carcinogen output that might even contain lead), use water as a "filter", etc.

Water is a filter. Quite decent one at that too. And by NO means a negative when smoking either tobacco or ganja.

 

[JDub]

We're a society that is perfectly willing to pay the cost of putting systems/computers in cars that can sync with a home computer for entertainment purposes such as Facebook or to watch shows while driving but gets mad when safety measures like blind-spot camera's are proposed. I'd personally like to see magnetic strip readers in cars that read your driver's license strip. When you renew insurance you have to show it at the DMV and they code your strip to operate for that amount of time. Run out of insurance and car no worky. That would save us consumers a lot of dough in the long run. Sure the cost would be added to the price of the car but if every motorist on the road was insured I think the cost of insurance for consumers would go way down. They could also put technology in steering wheels that sense alcohol from the pores of the hands of the driver and shut off. These things are no more expensive than built in GPS, DVD players, HUD's for Facebook etc...but who cares about people killed by drunk drivers or these other contraptions of distraction. We're also a society that less than 20yrs ago, when Republicans proposed an individual mandate on health care, Democrats shot it down. Now Democrats got it passed and Republicans want it shot down. The fact that people can drink and be ass holes but not smoke pot and be mellow pisses me off too. Oh, wait, we also say drinking and driving is illegal but all the bars have parking lots.

We're still crawling out of a hole caused by Wall Street and who's going to be the Republican candidate this year? A guy from Wall Street who lobbied for the very financial procedures that caused the global economic meltdown. Credit-default-swaps have not been outlawed. The rating agencies that rated junk stock as triple A stock have not been investigated. We've got tea-baggers who complain out of one side of their mouth that government is too big, but when they need something they complain the government doesn't do enough. The supreme court just okay'd the US as a police state by allowing strip searches by police for even minor infractions like jaywalking or speeding. And this is in a country that imprisons more of it's own population than China. I always think back to a line in a NOFX song: "Democracy doesn't work in mental institutions".

 

[Hot Rod Dave]

I always think back to a line in a NOFX song: "Democracy doesn't work in mental institutions".

For you to even quote a NOFX song makes you automatically win, at like everything. Its nice to see other old fucks like me remember such a great band.

Yet another NOFX song fits in here that I will quote. "He spent 15 years, getting loaded. 15 years till his liver exploded. No whats Bob gonna do, now that he cant drink"....Let that be a lesson kids.....Dont be like Bob!!

HRD

 

[Supa]

Water is a filter. Quite decent one at that too. And by NO means a negative when smoking either tobacco or ganja.

The original purpose behind water pipes was not to filter but to cool and humidify.

Water pipes do not remove a significant amount of carcinogens or even a comparable amount as fiber filters. It is not an acceptable filter.

 

[Senzait]

The original purpose behind water pipes was not to filter but to cool and humidify.

Water pipes do not remove a significant amount of carcinogens or even a comparable amount as fiber filters. It is not an acceptable filter.

Homie, your wrong. Water pipes do filter a significant amount of carcinogens and toxins and as such are denominated filtration devices. Saying its not comparable to fiber filters is completely irrelevant. ( An atom bomb is extremely more efficient in its purpose than C4, that doesn't mean C4 isn't an explosive).
Here is an academic article that touches on the effects of water filtration on tobacco and THC, (Very relavant to our argument) since your not likely to believe me.

 

[Supa]

Homie, your wrong. Water pipes do filter a significant amount of carcinogens and toxins and as such are denominated filtration devices.

Sometimes, I wonder if I type more slowly if it would be easier to understand. But that's just silly.

d-I-s says cigarettes are worse than pot. The way that pot is consumed is generally not filtered the way brand cigarettes (not Top rolling tobaccy) are consumed. Even water filtration without a traditional fiber filter is not "safe" when consuming either one. Using a fiber filter is not "safe" either. Inhaling either burned substance is not safe - do you follow? There is no reason to think that smoking cigarettes are worse than smoking pot (other than d-I-s's admitted consumption problem) and the way that pot is usually consumed is FAR WORSE than cigarettes (ie: off of an aluminum can). Relevant: the amount of consumption does not directly correlate to the diseases associated with smoking (such as cancer) so even d-I-s is missing the point.

The argument you've *created* here is that water is a wonderful filter for tobacco and/or pot and you plan to prove that to me. Well, I'm OK with that. It is. But.... you're missing the point, guy. Like really missing it......

This thread with you and d-I-s is like watching a blind person play Angry Birds. Seriously.

 

[Senzait]

Sometimes, I wonder if I type more slowly if it would be easier to understand. But that's just silly.

d-I-s says cigarettes are worse than pot. The way that pot is consumed is generally not filtered the way brand cigarettes (not Top rolling tobaccy) are consumed. Even water filtration without a traditional fiber filter is not "safe" when consuming either one. Using a fiber filter is not "safe" either. Inhaling either burned substance is not safe - do you follow? There is no reason to think that smoking cigarettes are worse than smoking pot (other than d-I-s's admitted consumption problem) and the way that pot is usually consumed is FAR WORSE than cigarettes (ie: off of an aluminum can). Relevant: the amount of consumption does not directly correlate to the diseases associated with smoking (such as cancer) so even d-I-s is missing the point.

The argument you've *created* here is that water is a wonderful filter for tobacco and/or pot and you plan to prove that to me. Well, I'm OK with that. It is. But.... you're missing the point, guy. Like really missing it......

This thread with you and d-I-s is like watching a blind person play Angry Birds. Seriously.

I think your missing my point. I never argued that pot was any less or more deadly than cigarettes. I also never said anything about water being a wonderful filter or making anything safe. Don't put words in my mouth as an attempt to gain an edge in an argument that you cant win.
All I said was that water is a filter. You said it wasn't. I proved you wrong.

My point being, if your going to argue for or against ANYTHING at least do your damn research, dont spew things straight out of your ass. Yes, the internet is a shit hole of misinformation, but that does not mean you should add to it.

PS: Attempted ridicule gets you nowhere. Specially a lame attempt like that. All it does is indirectly prove that you having nothing constructive to add to a conversation.

 

[Jrasta111]

"Why is smoking legal?".

My guess is people like, perhaps even need, something to complain about...

Also;

... As you were

 

[Supa]

I think your missing my point. I never argued that pot was any less or more deadly than cigarettes. I also never said anything about water being a wonderful filter or making anything safe. Don't put words in my mouth as an attempt to gain an edge in an argument that you cant win.

GTFO of the conversation. The words aren't being put in your mouth - they're in the thread you're participating in.

There is no argument about water being a filter. There is a discussion about cigarettes being more harmful than pot.

Do you normally take Ritalin? Did you miss it today? :\

 

[Synraii]

GTFO of the conversation.

Do you normally take Ritalin? Did you miss it today? :\

Sometimes, I wonder if I type more slowly if it would be easier to understand. But that's just silly.

This thread with you and d-I-s is like watching a blind person play Angry Birds. Seriously.

Dude, shut the fuck up. Keep it civil or maybe you should gtfo.

I appreciate the irony in my post being wholly antisocial, but hey - I'm using an evil Pikachu for an avatar, what did younexpect, lol.

 

[damn-I-Suck]

and the way that pot is usually consumed is FAR WORSE than cigarettes (ie: off of an aluminum can).

LOL... I had to laugh...For the record, pot is not "usually" consumed with an aluminum can. It can be, but that method is impractical and stupid.

The fact that you even said this proves how little you know about marijuana.

 

[Supa]

I'm using an evil Pikachu for an avatar, what did younexpect, lol.

Lightning. I expected so much lightning. :(

LOL... I had to laugh...For the record, pot is not "usually" consumed with an aluminum can. It can be, but that method is impractical and stupid.

Ok. Let me send you a quick PM to introduce you to how much I know about marijuana....

 

[Hot Rod Dave]

I now am a strong advocate of the "ignore feature". Last page and a half was nothing but ignored members....I LOL'd.

Seems no one can have an intelligent conversation about things these days. At least not from here!!

I thought a certain scrub was gonna STOP POSTING! cause his vagina has sand in it

HRD

 

[damn-I-Suck]

I stopped posting on anything SC related. I suck at the game, know nothing about the game, and won't post anything about the game.

But on any other topic, you can suck it. Were all on equal grounds here.

 

[Hot Rod Dave]

But on any other topic, you can suck it. Were all on equal grounds here.

Obviously....No we aren't.