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Legalising Marijuana

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When you find yourself more conservative than the Swiss, perhaps it’s time to lighten up.
~ Lorne Elliott (1974 age:43)
If a guy drinks too much alcohol, he goes out, smashes up his car and gets in a fight. If a guy smokes too much weed, he rolls over on the couch and falls asleep.
~ Dave S ., A Pot Grower
Ice-cream is exquisite — what a pity it isn’t illegal.
~ Voltaire (1694-11-21 1778-05-30 age:83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire]
On 2001-07-31 medical marijuana became legal in Canada. All you need is your doctor’s ok. You must buy from registered growers. In 2002-01 it was decriminalised for recreational use.
Introduction AreoGrow AeroGarden for Medical Marijuana
Marijuana is Harmful The Dutch Experience
Reducing the Harmful Effects of Marijuana The Choices
Medical Use of Marijuana Counter Arguments
The Legal State of Medical Marijuana Dr. Grogek’s Opposition to Medical Marijuana
Why Is Marijuana Illegal? Downsides of Corporate Marijuana
The Prohibition Experience Case For Leaving Illegal
The Tobacco Experience Summary
The Netherlands Experience Books
Why Is Marijuana Still Illegal? Links
Hard Drugs WebRings

Introduction

I used to live in an apartment on Burrard Street in the heart of downtown Vancouver. Every night at 1 AM the bars would close. People would pour out onto the streets screaming at the top of their lungs, shouting obscenities. I would wake up every night to hear some couple screaming across the street back and forth to each other Fuck You!

I would walk down the street the next day to see overturned mailboxes and vandalised newspaper boxes, the victims of raging drunks. I have seen so many lives totally destroyed by alcohol. I have seen how alcohol could turn my best friend from a personable guy into a vicious wife beater. Everyone knows a family missing a loved one, the victim of a drunk driver.

We tolerate alcohol only because of the failure of prohibition. I ask myself, what would society be like if the social drug of choice were changed from alcohol to marijuana. I strongly suspect it would be orders of magnitude more peaceful.

Marijuana is Harmful

That bad medicine will make you a vegetable.
~ the 16th Karmapa , a Tibetan high Lama.
I don’t claim marijuana is harmless. Clearly putting all that smoke and tar into your lungs can’t be good for you, especially when the smoke is inhaled so deeply. A percentage of the population become paranoid or psychotic smoking marijuana. It tends to make people lazy. It can waste a lot of time. It puts people in contact with pushers who can suck them into trying heroin or cocaine, perhaps by spiking the marijuana. Marijuana may contain toxic quantities of pesticides or the herbicide paraquat.

However, the deleterious effects pale compared with the much more addictive tobacco or alcohol. If marijuana were made legal, I think it could make great inroads into alcohol use as the normal party drug. As a society, we would be much better off, as would the people taking the drug. It does not make sense to treat marijuana legally as a more dangerous drug than alcohol.

Reducing the Harmful Effects of Marijuana

Probably the most dangerous feature of marijuana is that it is a gateway drug. It teaches disrespect for the law. If it were legalised, that rôle would disappear. There would be no need for the average teen to have anything to do with drug pushers at all.

If marijuana were legalised, the drug could be government inspected and guaranteed of standard potency, without pesticide residues. With lower cost, people might start eating it in brownies or other specialty foods rather than smoking it, which would reduce the health risk considerably.

Legal marijuana would be inspected. It would not be laced with extremely dangerous addictive drugs the pushers are trying to lead their users into. The costs to society of addictive drug use are staggering. There would be huge savings. We should study the effects in places where the experiment has been tried, rather than pontificating on what the result ought to be.

Instead of all that marijuana money going to criminals to fund their cocaine and heroin smuggling, it could fatten the tax coffers.

Medical Use of Marijuana

Nausea is one of the most difficult medical conditions to treat. For most people with chronic nausea, Gravol does not do much good at all and ginger does little better. Stemetil sometimes works, though it puts you to sleep. THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol) is the only drug that offers any relief and probably that is mainly through distraction. In other words, the disorientation of THC is a necessary side effect. People prefer smoking marijuana to taking THC tablets because they can precisely control the dose. With tablets it is far too easy to overdose.

Chronic nausea is so debilitating it leads to suicidal depression. Marijuana offers a tiny respite of elation to look forward to. This pleasurable side effect, that so upsets Puritanical Republicans, is necessary for it to function.

Though there is some evidence that marijuana may suppress the immune system, it can have value for people with AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) who are suffering from wasting. They have little energy to eat, they feel nauseous and the strong medications make all foods taste utterly disgusting. A friend of mine near death on heavy duty AIDS drugs said that all food tasted like diesel oil. Marijuana can stimulate the appetite.

Who better than the people with chronic nausea to judge the pros and cons of using marijuana for nausea? Why allow the blue-nose Republican Senator Orin Hatch to make that judgement call — somebody who has never experienced a terminal illness or chronic nausea.

Reform MPs (Member of Parliaments) want to block marijuana for medical use. Perhaps they also would want to block the use of morphine for pain control simply because it can be abused. Where is the consistency is this, allowing doctors to prescribe morphine, but not marijuana? Nobody has ever died of a marijuana overdose. Morphine is acknowledged to be a highly addictive and dangerous drug. The federal Liberals are going ahead with trials of medical marijuana. This won’t help people suffering from chronic nausea now, but at least it may prevent future suffering.

Right wing Christians are so convinced of the their righteousness, they are quite willing to put others through needless suffering by denying them this anti-nausea drug. I doubt they have even the remotest inkling of the hell they are forcing others to endure. Nausea from flu for a week is one thing. Nausea endlessly year after year without a break is quite another.

Why are they so lacking in compassion? Deep in their hearts they wish torment on those with AIDS, a disease associated with both nausea and homosexuality. Perhaps someone should tell them their narrow views are also needlessly tormenting cancer-ridden heterosexuals.

Peter McWilliams, a best-selling author (Life 101 and some others) is on trial in Los Angeles for using and advocating the use of medical marijuana. He has AIDS and an AIDS-related cancer and has been taking marijuana for nausea so he can keep his medications down.

The trial was held 1999-11-21. The trial judge ruled he could not use a medical marijuana defense, nor could he mention Proposition 215, marijuana’s medical usefulness, the eight patients who get medical marijuana monthly from the federal government, or his medical condition. He faces 10 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines.

We must stop these mindless Christians from tormenting others.

To those who think they have the right to enforce their marijuana laws on the rest of this I say this: "Who do you think you are, my mother? Even my mother would not presume to tell me what to do. I am 70 years old. I’m old enough to decide for myself whether the benefits of medical marijuana are worth the risks. How dare you presume to tell me what to do when you know nothing of the circumstances. You’re not the one with the nausea. You arrogant puppy, thinking you know better how to run my life than I do!"

Medical marijuana is now legal in nine states of the USA. However, federal law still prohibits it. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the conflict. The court contains seven Republican appointees and two Democratic. Republicans generally have an irrational terror of marijuana. However, these are learned men and would have to find justification for permitting morphine for the terminally ill, but not marijuana (which has not even been scientifically shown to be harmful or addictive). They might handle it by demanding the same ultra strict standards as for morphine.

The law does not distinguish between the indica strains which are sleep-inducing and the sativa strains which cause alert euphoria.

Hawaii allows certified patients to possess up to three ounces of marijuana and grow up to seven plants. Doctors can get a registration certificate for a patient to use marijuana to ease pain caused by debilitating diseases such as cancer or AIDS. I trust pain includes nausea.

The main legal arguments against medical marijuana are:

Surely common sense has to prevail eventually. What if at some point in history religious fanatics had banned the tomato? Why would such laws continue to be upheld indefinitely without any scientific evidence the tomato was actually harmful with plenty of evidence the fruit had health benefits?

Why Is Marijuana Illegal?

Marijuana was originally made illegal for two rather odd reasons:
  1. To help the Dupont company sell its artificial fibres. Originally marijuana (aka hemp) was grown for rope and canvas fibres.
  2. As a way of giving the racist police a way to arbitrarily arrest black people since it was in common use only among blacks. It was a tool of KKK (Klu Klux Klan) think. To this day, marijuana laws are selectively enforced against blacks.
We keep it illegal based on myths about the drug’s dangers. Utah Republican Senator Orin Hatch announced on TV to explain why marijuana growers get longer sentences than rapists was that marijuana was the "biggest killer of children" What’s that man been smoking?

Christians have a fundamental distrust of anything pleasurable. Attorney General Ashcroft thinks dancing is wicked simply because it is fun. Kristians think they have a right to make everyone else as miserable as they are. They imagine they are everyone else’s mother with a God given right to tell everyone else what to do.

Unlike tobacco and alcohol, nobody has ever died from smoking marijuana, other than as a result of impaired driving. The war against marijuana is very costly, in terms of drug enforcement and the destruction of lives of the people who would not be criminals if marijuana were treated realistically. There is no benefit in continuing the war and a stupendous benefit in dropping it — reduction in the use of alcohol.

There are three groups in society that benefit from the current scheme:

  1. the breweries

    who sell the competing product, alcohol.
  2. the constructors of prisons

    and the prison industry generally. They are now one of the major lobby groups. To improve the profitability of private prisons, they push for harsher penalties for relatively insignificant crimes. They have succeeded spendidly. The USA has a greater proportion of its people in jail than any other country, including even countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia. There are two million Americans in jail costing the taxpayers a minimum of  $20,000.00 USD a year each. In 1980, the government arrested a few hundred thousand a year on drug charges and today they arrest 1.6 million, with no sign of decreased drug use. The RAND corporation points out that every dollar spent on rehabilitation and treatment saves seven dollars. On the other hand, every extra day a person spends in prison increases the odds they will cause trouble when they get out. We know prison has the exact opposite effect of its supposed intent, but persist in ever greater incarceration for ever less serious offences. Prison is supposed to deter crime though punishment, but in practice it is a school for criminals and an indoctrination center for criminal values. The prison lobby is able to dishonestly paint anyone who opposes them as soft on crime, when in reality, it is they are who fostering crime.
  3. Organised crime

    who sell marijuana at spectacular markup. It is as easy to grow as lettuce and fetches $2765.00 USD per pound or $6096.00 USD per kilogram.
  4. One of the reasons Republicans are so keen on jailing people for smoking marijuana is because they lose their right to vote for the rest of their lives. Pot smokers tend not to support the Republican party.

Perhaps those are the special interest groups feeding Republican Senator Orin Hatch his ideas and his funding for his hysterical war on marijuana.

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
~ Abraham Lincoln (1809-02-12 1865-04-15 age:56)

Frontline did a documentary on marijuana. They interviewed law enforcement officials. The officials said that marijuana should be illegal for three reasons:

  1. It is against the law. [This is circular reasoning.]
  2. It kills people. [There is not even one death attributable to marijuana overdose.]
  3. It is a gateway drug. [This a good reason to legalise the drug. The Dutch successfully decriminalised marijuana to prevent the young from contacting the criminal element who would push hard drugs on them.]
We are dealing with professional morons blinded by their religious beliefs.

The Prohibition Experience

One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.
~ Napoléon Bonaparte (1769-08-15 1821-05-05 age:51)

What happened when America experimented with the prohibition of alcohol?

Obviously, nobody is avoiding smoking marijuana because they can’t find any to buy. Prohibition is primarily making the drug trade more lucrative, not depressing consumption.

The side effects are the same as prohibition had, namely the rise of organised crime, adulterated product and extreme gang violence.

To make it more compact to smuggle, growers have evolved strains that are far more potent than the strains available in the 1970s. This concentration leads people to overuse.

It took the Americans 13 years to realise that prohibition of alcohol was not working and they repealed it in 1933. Why are the Americans and the Canadians taking so much longer to come to their senses about marijuana prohibition?

The people who repealed prohibition were not just drunkards. They were also teetotalers and people who originally championed prohibition who were sick to death of the side effects of prohibition and the ineffectiveness of prohibition to reduce excessive drinking.

The Tobacco Experience

Tobacco use is legal but restricted. What has been the experience? Consider that before prohibition, hardly anyone had even heard of marijuana. The marijuana prohibition fix is what caused the current problems with marijuana. This reminds me of man who went to the doctor and said, I am getting these terrible aches in my big toe. Could it be gout? The doctor asked When did these start? The man replied Ever since I started cutting my toenails with a chainsaw.

It is a general life principle. If circumstances go downhill, revert to the way you did things before the trouble started.

The Netherlands Experience

In the Netherlands, there are coffee shops that legally sell pre-rolled joints for about four Euros. They have glass cases and little cards describing the potency and characteristics of each type. Yet oddly, the Netherlands has lower marijuana use and lower drug use generally than either the USA or Canada. When I visited, I never saw people smoking in the streets and the coffee shops were not exactly overflowing with customers.

The result is heroin and crack cocaine are very rare.

I suspect that the casual smoker never comes in contact with underworld pushers and hence is never tempted to try the more dangerous drugs.

Obviously, nobody is avoiding smoking marijuana because they can’t find any to buy. Prohibition is primarily making the drug trade more lucrative, not depressing consumption. 90% of American high school seniors report they can get cannabis easier than alcohol. This is because liquor sales are legal and regulated and marijuana sales are illegal and unregulated.

The side effects are the same as prohibition had, namely the rise of organised crime, adulterated product and extreme gang violence.

It took the Americans 13 years to realise that prohibition was not working and they repealed it in 1933. Why are the Americans and the Canadians taking so much longer to come to their senses about marijuana prohibition?

The people who repealed prohibition were not just drunkards. They were also teetotalers who were sick do death of the side effects of prohibition.

Why Is Marijuana Still Illegal?

Given that making marijuana illegal makes about as much sense as making tomatoes or aspirin illegal, why do we bother? Surely someone must benefit from the way things are. Who are these people? What strange bedfellows!

Hard Drugs

Many argue that surely prohibition is needed for hard drugs, so the same logic applies to marijuana. Yet strange as it sounds, when Britain instituted a system of heroin maintenance in the 1960s by prescription, similar to methadone in the USA, the number of drug addicts plummeted. Drug-related crime disappeared. How could this be? There was no criminal incentive to hook new users! The drugs were hard to get since there was no money to be made selling them on the black market. New users could not get drugs, but addicts could.

This would not quite apply to marijuana because it can easily be grown even if not available on the black market, but in the same way you would not have dealers pushing it on new users, especially children.

Growing Marijuana With the AreoGrow AeroGarden Pro 200

AreoGrow AeroGarden for medical marijuana Patients who grow medical marijuana legally for themselves need something that takes a minimum of energy, care and attention. AreoGrow makes desktop computerised hydroponics units that are pretty well idiot proof. They turn the lights on and off automatically. They tell you when to add water. They tell you when to add nutrients. They come with kits for growing herbs, flowers and vegetables from seeds, but not marijuana. The image to the left was created with Corel PaintShop Pro to illustrate how you might use an AreoGrow AeroGarden Pro 200 to grow medical marijuana. The AeroGarden Pro 200 is the preferred model because it allows for tall plants, has three lamps and allows for 24-hour lighting.

I think you could use it like this:

  1. Clean out the unit after growing a batch of cherry tomatoes.
  2. Insert one marijuana seed in each foam cup slit.
  3. Measure the amount of water it takes to fill the unit. Use that to calculate how much marijuana hydroponic fertiliser to add to start and to add every two weeks. Measure out the amounts and put them in little bags labeled either starter or continue.
  4. Pinch back the shoots to keep the plants low and bushy.
  5. Cull the plants to prevent overcrowding and rearrange the foam cups to provide optimal spacing.
I don’t know if such plants would bud, but even the dead leaves of one such unit should be sufficient for nausea control.

Perhaps some enterprising soul, after experimenting could sell kits with the seeds already in the sponge cups and the fertiliser packed into tablets. Perhaps the AreoGrow company itself might be persuaded to market a special medical marijuana unit with seed packs. The specialised medical marijuana unit might be partially enclosed to reflect back more light onto the plants and to keep the plants invisible to casual observation. It might then need special convection ventilation or a small air fan. The Deluxe and Pro versions allow for taller plants, provide more light and allow for 24-hour illumination.

One problem is getting the proper nutrients in the right concentration. Without soil, you have to provide everything, including the micronutrients in exactly the right proportions. I discovered growing basil and other herbs even one nutrient missing will kill the plants. AeroGarden nutrient tablets consist of mineral salts. These provide the 13 nutrients that all plants require, plus 65 additional micro-nutrients for additional vigor, in just the right proportions for each seed kit type. The tablets also contain a pH buffer that enables you to grow using water straight from your tap and a pharmaceutical grade binder to hold the tablets together. The Areogrow people noticed that one of these minerals will break down in high heat or humidity, causing the tablets to sweat out some of the needed minerals. As a result, they will be moving to liquid nutrients in 2009-08.

You can buy fertilisers specialised for every phase of the marijuana plant’s growth, e.g. Supernatural Bloom Aqua for $30.00 CAD for 400 grams. It is fairly easy to concoct the original batch of nutrient solution. For example the AeroGarden 6 or the AeroGarden Pro 200 takes 3.2 liters of water. The instructions that come with the Supernatural Bloom Aqua say to mix up 1 to 1.5 teaspoons per 4 liters. So you need 3.2 / 4 * 1.25 = 1 teaspoon for the entire tank. Over time the water will evaporate. Replacing with water (not solution) will put it back the way it was. However, the plants absorb nutrients that you need to replace. Ideally you would chemically analyse the solution in the tank and top it up with the various individual nutrients as needed. Few of us have the facilities to do this, so you could just add another teaspoon of fertiliser every two weeks. The problem with that is, over time the solution could become too weak or too concentrated, depending on how fast the plants were growing. I suggest you discard the solution every two weeks using it diluted to water other plants and start with a fresh solution the correct concentration. Water fresh from the tap is too cold and contains chlorine. You want to let it age overnight in a bucket before use.

This is similar to a computer student project, which was intended to grow an entire family’s vegetables.

I talk more about AeroGardens in my automated greenhouse student project and my products endorsement page.

The Dutch Experience

Dutch ‘Coffee’ shop
Dutch ‘Coffee’ shop

I feel contempt for right wingers who preach about the terrible things that will happen if marijuana is legalised. They let their imaginations run riot. There is no need to speculate. BC is not the first jurisdiction to contemplate such a change. We should look at what happened in other jurisdictions that made the change, in particular the Netherlands. I visited the Netherlands in 2002. I went into a coffee shop and ordered a coffee. The waitress explained they had no coffee. I was astounded. She explained they usually did serve coffee, but just now they were out. The main thing they sold was marijuana. The various types of marijuana were displayed in glass cases, with neatly lettered cards explaining each variety’s properties. The normal approach is for a couple to buy one joint and smoke it in the café. I discovered the Dutch have had the following successes:

Don’t take my word for it; ask the scientists who have studied in detail what happened.

The downside is tourists from all over Europe pour into the Netherlands each weekend to buy the high-quality marijuana, then take it home where it is illegal. Sometimes the traffic congestion is so bad, the locals can’t go about their usual business. To deal with this, the government had to take measures to discourage marijuana tourists.

The change does not have to be perfect as the right wingers demand, just better than what we are putting up with now. I expected lower alcohol consumption, but I did not see that. It is unrealistic, for example to expect legalisation to cut marijuana consumption in half. And we would have to expect a bump in consumption, similar the bump in alcohol consumption at the end of prohibition.

The Choices

Harper’s Position Roedy’s Position
Prohibition. Legalisation
Costly law enforcement. Less costly regulation. Police can concentrate on crimes with a complainant.
Criminal gangs and organised crime taking the profit. Entrepreneur growers taking the profit.
Costly prisons. tax boom.
Contaminated, variable quality drugs. Clean predictable doses.
Children have equal access as adults. Children have restricted access, like tobacco.
No access to medical marijuana. Patients with nausea, wasting or pain could be prescribed marijuana, a much less dangerous drug than the alternatives.
Strategy well tested in Canada and the USA and thoroughly proven not to work. Strategy well tested in the Netherlands and thoroughly proven to work.

Counter Arguments

It is hard to find cogent counter arguments to legalising marijuana. The counter arguments usually fall into three categories.

  1. Arguments against smoking marijuana, a related but different question. Many people think if something is bad for you, it is automatically a good thing to make it illegal. We know full well how bad alcohol and tobacco are, much worse than marijuana, but very few people would support their prohibition. The Temperance union were instrumental in instituting prohibition of alcohol, then when they saw all the terrible side effects, they changed their mind about prohibition, but, by no means did they change their mind about the need to abstain from alcohol. You can be for or against marijuana smoking and for or against marijuana prohibition, quite independently. The relevant question is not whether it is wise to smoke marijuana, but whether it is wise to make it a crime to.
  2. Hysterical religious arguments. The thought of people smoking marijuana and having sex and thoroughly enjoying themselves, makes the devout nauseous, disgusted, outraged and envious.
  3. Arguments against the liberal/libertarian views popular among pot smokers. They think prohibition is an appropriate way to punish them for their lack of support for the Republican and Conservative parties.

However, I think there are some valid counter arguments that could be made.

Dr. Grogek’s Opposition to Medical Marijuana

On 2012-11-07 the New York Times published an op ed written by Dr. Edward Grogek. He claimed that nearly all users of medical marijuana were all drug abusers and con artists and that there was no legitimate medical use for marijuana. He completely ignored its use as an anti-nausea drug for cancer or HIV (Human Immuno-deficiency Virus) chemotherapy patients where there is no effective alternative. I posted a rebuttal on his website in the about section. Here is what I said:

I saw your article in the NY times comparing medical marijuana users with analgesic pain drug seekers.

You ignore the much more important medical use of marijuana — nausea control. Drugs like Gravol and Stemetil can’t touch the extreme nausea caused as side effects of cancer or HIV chemotherapy. They are intended for motion sickness-level nausea.

It is impossible for someone who has not experienced it to appreciate how dreadful the experience is. To approximate it, drink a glass of salt water every 30 minutes, 24/7 for years at a time. I spent so much time throwing up I taught myself to read while vomiting.

Why will you accept extremely dangerous pain control drugs for pain, but not even a relatively benign drug for severe nausea? It is irrational!

The problem with marijuana for use as an anti-nausea is the high. Surely we can develop a strain with less euphoria and more anti-nausea ability. The problem with Marinol is precisely controlling dose. It can be used to control nausea but only at the expense of losing the ability to function.

You are willing the throw chemotherapy patients under the bus to stop liars from deriving illicit pleasure. I strongly disapprove. It hard to express how strongly without using expletives.

If you have 24/7 severe nausea, even an hour a month of relief makes life bearable. Illegal marijuana is too expensive and too inconsistent quality for someone living on a disability pension. The universality of toothache creates compassion which drives physicians to risk very dangerous drugs to treat severe pain. Extreme nausea is reserved for a select few. Most physicians, including Dr. Grogek, have no idea what it is like. So they tend to lack compassion for it. Many are not even willing to risk a relatively benign drug, marijuana.

Downsides of Corporate Marijuana

Consider how the tobacco, alcohol, soft drink and junk food corporations have behaved:

Presumably we will see similar behav iour from marijuana corporations.

Case For Leaving Marijuana Illegal

Young people like to rebel. One form this rebellion takes is smoking marijuana. If marijuana were made a legal, it would lose this rebellious appeal. Young people would abandon this relatively safe form of rebellion and take up something else, potentially much more dangerous, such as amephetamines, ecstacy or drunk driving.

Summary

The drug war is a sham. Even with billion dollar budgets and by putting more people in jail than any other country in the world, the USA only manages to intercept 5% of its drug supply and confiscates only a minute fraction of the profits since the drugs themselves are very cheap to produce. The drug war is a huge expense without much to show for it.

It is naïve to imagine social engineers can curtail people from using drugs. They can’t even control marijuana use inside a prison where everyone is under surveillance 24 hours a day. How can they possibly do it in a democratic free society? If you do manage to cut off one drug, users will just turn to ever more damaging ones like cooking spray, gasoline, Listerine, Sterno, solvents, strychnine… However, it is possible for a government to do two things:

  1. Help people work on the painful personal problems that drive them to drugs.
  2. Encourage people who are likely to use drugs to use drugs that will do them less harm, use them in a safest possible way and to do less harm to others in the process of using them.
As recreational drugs go, marijuana is about as benign as you can get. It is not addictive. It does not cause violence. It creates no hangovers. No one has every died from an overdose. Dangerously impaired people tend to sit still or fall asleep. They are less likely to drive while impaired. It would be a very good thing if any of the people who would normally use hard drugs could be persuaded to make do with cheap potent marijuana. Similarly, I would far sooner deal with someone who was abusing marijuana than alcohol. They are far less likely to seriously harm themselves or others. Marijuana’s main danger comes from the carcinogens in the smoke, a problem that could be alleviated with other sorts of delivery.

It is not a choice of having a population who takes drugs and a drug-free society. That is a pipe dream. The best we can hope for is a society where drug use is controlled, and the majority of people avoid the most dangerous drugs. Dangerous should be defined rationally, not historically. Alcohol and tobacco are much more dangerous than many of the currently illegal drugs, (which even include such benign substances as protein supplements).

Only fascist Kristians are under the delusion they can control everyone else to conform to their Puritanical standards. Not only is that impossible, they ought not to attempt it.

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or to forbear because it will be better for him to do so because it will make him happier because in the opinions of others to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else.
~ John Stuart Mill (1806-05-20 1873-05-08 age:66), On Liberty

My closing argument is financial. Enforcing marijuana laws is expensive. There are police, courts jails and probation officers. Keeping a man in jail cost about $40,000.00 USD per year, plus a bundle to keep his family on welfare while he is incarcerated. This unnecessary burden on the justice system means serious crimes that actually hurt people are not being given sufficient attention. They are far more productive ways to spend the taxpayer’s money.

Nothing promotes disrespect of the law more than passing laws which can not and should not be enforced.
~ Albert Einstein (1879-03-14 1955-04-18 age:76)

Books

book cover recommend book⇒Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Outto book home
by Mike Gray 978-0-415-92647-8 paperback
birth 1946 age:71 978-0-679-43533-4 hardcover
publisher Routledge 978-1-136-78876-5 eBook
published 2000-01 B00107FBL0 kindle
This is a non-hysterical book that gives a lot of factual information about drugs and explains why things are the way they are, e.g. why crack swept the ghettos while cocaine swept the elite. It explains why it is foolish to exaggerate to youth the dangers of marijuana.
Australian flag abe books anz abe books.ca Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de amazon.ca Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de Chapters Indigo Canadian flag
Spanish flag amazon.es Chapters Indigo eBooks Canadian flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com abe books.com American flag
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book cover recommend book⇒In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addictionto book home
by Gabor Maté, MD 978-1-55643-880-6 paperback
birth 1944-01-06 age:74 978-0-676-97740-0 hardcover
publisher Knopf 978-1-926910-71-0 audio
published 2008-02-12 B0031TZABQ kindle
Maté has worked ten years on the lower east side of Vancouver dealing with patients who are plagued with drug addiction. He discovered the causes of drug addiction and, no surprise, that our current policies are almost guaranteed to keep people trapped in drug addiction with almost no chance of escape. His solutions are simple and humane, but they require giving up the desire to punish for the sake of punishing.
Australian flag abe books anz abe books.ca Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de amazon.ca Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de Chapters Indigo Canadian flag
Spanish flag amazon.es Chapters Indigo eBooks Canadian flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com American flag
French flag amazon.fr Barnes & Noble American flag
Italian flag abe books.it Nook at Barnes & Noble American flag
Italian flag amazon.it Kobo American flag
India flag junglee.com Google play American flag
UK flag abe books.co.uk O’Reilly Safari American flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk Powells American flag
UN flag other stores
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock. Try looking for it with a bookfinder.

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