Eureka!!!!

[Conan71]

No, it's "Eufreaka" Springs []

[mspivey]

Yawn......

Hey, lets argue about Global Warming. Everyone knows it's a myth invented by the libs so they could raise taxes.

[rwarn17588]

I'm pretty "Feh" about pot legalization. That's because I've never used the stuff (no lie; why risk jail when beer is available). I've found the biggest proponents of pot legalization are the ones who use it the most (no surprise). So the pro-pot people don't exactly do it for altruistic reasons.

Then again, I'm not militant against pot like MH2010 is. It's disingenuous to say how horrible pot is when a legal drug like alcohol has far more widespread and damaging effects on society. And to say pot decreases productivity is simplistic: pot certainly didn't seem to limit the music production of Willie Nelson or Louis Armstrong.

But if Eureka Springs or any other state or municipality ever decides to legalize it, then treat it like booze. Tax the hell out of it and make sure only licensed stores offer it. Strictly regulate the production. Throw people who drive under the influence of it in jail. Keep the employer drug tests; the last thing we need is a half-baked forklift driver. There are limits to alcohol consumption; make sure there are plenty of limits to pot usage, too.

[Conan71]

Hangovers from alcohol cause a lot more absenteeism than people who "smoked it up" the night before.

[TulsaFan-inTexas]

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

Hangovers from alcohol cause a lot more absenteeism than people who "smoked it up" the night before.

I'll vouch for that! []

[USRufnex]

Marijuana is routinely called a gateway drug  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_drug

quote:The term is often used by governments, pressure groups and the media to describe the scientifically controversal concept that illegal drug use is a continuum. According to this concept, using one "soft" non- or only slightly addictive drug will lead to the use of other "harder" drugs and the associated criminal and social consequences – the first drug used is thus described as a gateway to further abuse.

There is no scientific evidence to support the idea that use of one drug will lead to use of other drugs – that physiological and neurological changes make it unavoidable. Individual social histories show that "hard" drug users do progress from one drug to another, but the drives behind this are not clear enough to generalise a gateway.[1] Furthermore, some "hard" drugs, such as alcohol, may be legal, while other "soft" drugs, such as marijuana, may be illegal.

In 1998, a French scientific report, led by Dr. Pierre-Bernard Roques from the INSERM-CNRS, classed different types of drugs according to their lethality and addictiveness. Heroin, cocaine and alcohol were classed in the most addictive and lethal category; benzodiazepine, hallucinogens and tobacco in the medium category; and marijuana in the last category. Health secretary Bernard Kouchner, founder of Médecins Sans Frontières, declared that: "Scientifical facts show that, for cannabis, no neurotoxicity is demonstrated, to the contrary of alcohol and cocaine."

Why is a "gateway" drug put under Schedule I status?  Is it health or politics???
Richard Nixon was the first to declare "war on drugs"...
http://www.csdp.org/news/news/nixon.htm

quote:Washington, DC: "We need, and I use the word 'all out war,' or all fronts...." That was Richard Nixon's reaction to his national commission's recommendation that marijuana no longer be a criminal offense, according to Nixon's Oval Office tapes. The year after Nixon's "all out war" marijuana arrests jumped by over 100,000 people.

Highlights of Nixon comments on marijuana:

Jews and marijuana: "I see another thing in the news summary this morning about it. That's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob, what is the matter with them? I suppose it's because most of them are psychiatrists..."

Marijuana and the culture wars: "You see, homosexuality, dope, immorality in general. These are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff, they're trying to destroy us."

Marijuana compared to alcohol: marijuana consumers smoke "to get high" while "a person drinks to have fun." Nixon also saw marijuana leading to loss of motivation and discipline but claimed: "At least with liquor I don't lose motivation."

Marijuana and political dissent: ". . . radical demonstrators that were here . . . two weeks ago . . . They're all on drugs, virtually all."
Drug education: "Enforce the law, you've got to scare them."

Back when Ronald Reagan was a wee lad, marijuana was legal and alcohol was illegal...
then came Harry J Anslinger and the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937...
http://www.ukcia.org/potculture/20/lies.html

quote:Many of Harry Anslinger's marijuana horror stories have been tracked down to stories in the yellow press. Of 200 specific cases referred to by Anslinger, his accusation that marijuana was the cause of a gory crime was proved false in 198. The other two stories were untraceable and no account of them ever appeared in print where the crimes allegedly occurred.

Quotes from Harry Anslinger...

quote:"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."

"...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."

"Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."

"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."

"Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing"

"You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother."

In this tradition, the "war on drugs" is NOT colorblind.  From Human Rights Watch:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/Rcedrg00.htm

quote:
Since the mid 1980s, the United States has undertaken aggressive law enforcement strategies and criminal justice policies aimed at curtailing drug abuse. The costs and benefits of this national war on drugs are fiercely debated. What is not debatable, however, is its impact on black Americans. Ostensibly color blind, the war on drugs has been waged disproportionately against black Americans.
Our research shows that blacks comprise 62.7 percent and whites 36.7 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prison, even though federal surveys and other data detailed in this report show clearly that this racial disparity bears scant relation to racial differences in drug offending. There are, for example, five times more white drug users than black. Relative to population, black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of white men. In large part because of the extraordinary racial disparities in incarceration for drug offenses, blacks are incarcerated for all offenses at 8.2 times the rate of whites. One in every 20 black men over the age of 18 in the United States is in state or federal prison, compared to one in 180 white men.

Shocking as such national statistics are, they mask even worse racial disparities in individual states. In seven states, for example, blacks constitute between 80 and 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison. In at least fifteen states, black men are admitted to prison on drug charges at rates that are from 20 to 57 times greater than those of white men. These racial disparities in drug offenders admitted to prison skew the racial balance of state prison populations. In two states, one in every 13 black men is in prison. In seven states, blacks are incarcerated at more than 13 times the rate of whites.

The imprisonment of blacks for drug offenses is part of a larger crisis of overincarceration in the United States. Although prison should be used as a last resort to protect society from violent or dangerous individuals, more people are sent to prison in the United States for nonviolent drug offenses than for crimes of violence.
---------------------------------------------
Prison is a legitimate criminal sanction -- but it should be used sensibly, justly, parsimoniously, and with due consideration for the principles of proportionality and respect for human dignity required by international human rights law. The incarceration of hundreds of thousands of low-level nonviolent drug offenders betrays indifference to such considerations. Moreover, many drug offenders receive egregiously long prison sentences, particularly because of the prevalence of mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenses that do not permit judges to calibrate sentences to the conduct and level of culpability of each defendant.1 Many factors -- the transformation of crime and punishment into key issues in electoral debates, the persistence of drug abuse, the desire to "send a message" and communicate social opprobrium, ignorance about drug pharmacology, and concern about crime, among others -- have encouraged politicians and public officials to champion harsh prison sentences for drug offenders and to turn a blind eye to the extraordinary human, social, and economic costs of such policies. They have also turned a blind eye to the war on drugs' staggering racial impact.

[aoxamaxoa]

Alcohol is just as much a gateway drug but worse.

[Hometown]

quote:Originally posted by Rico

quote:Originally posted by inteller


in order to gain legitimacy and "fairness" you have to have better reasons other than "everybody does it" and "its not as bad as alchohol".  

You don't gain liberty and freedom "just because".  That's a typical demand from today's entitlement generation.

You could apply those lame excuses to a myriad of things...speeding, prostitution, etc.  However the cops still crack down on all of them equally because a sin is a sin and a crime is a crime.

Furthermore, all those "pot arrests" "filling up prisons" are not there just because of pot.  Mary jane possession is one of many charges those people are usually charged with.

Sir,
You wanted examples that would bring the item "legitamacy"........

The following from a Canadian Medical Journal regarding testing of a product that experts say could replace "Prozac"... in the not so distant future..




New antidepressant drug increases 'brain's own cannabis'
This press release is also available in French.

Researchers have discovered a new drug that raises the level of endocannabinoids--the 'brain's own cannabis'--providing anti-depressant effects. The new research published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), suggests the new drug, called URB597, could represent a safer alternative to cannabis for the treatment of pain and depression, and open the door to new and improved treatments for clinical depression--a condition that affects around 20% of Canadians.

In preclinical laboratory tests researchers found that URB597 increased the production of endocannabinoids by blocking their degradation, resulting in measurable antidepressant effects. "This is the first time it has been shown that a drug that increases endocannabinoids in the brain can improve your mood," says the lead investigator Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, an MUHC and Universit� de Montr�al researcher.

Endocannabinoids are chemicals released by the brain under certain conditions, like exercise; they stimulate specific brain receptors that can trigger feelings of well-being. The researchers, which included scientists from the University of California at Irvine, were able to measure serotonin and noradrenaline activity as a result of the increased endocannabinoids, and also conducted standard experiments to gauge the 'mood' of their subjects and confirm their findings.

"The results were similar to the effect we might expect from the use of commonly prescribed antidepressants, which are effective on only around 30% of the population," explains Dr. Gobbi. "Our discovery strengthens the case for URB597 as a safer, non-addictive, non-psychotropic alternative to cannabis for the treatment of pain and depression and provides hope for the development of an alternate line of antidepressants, with a wider range of effectiveness."

Cannabis has been known for its anti-depressant and pain-relief effects for many years, but the addictive nature and general health concerns of cannabis use make this drug far from ideal as a medical treatment. The active ingredient in cannabis--THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol)--stimulates cannabinoid receptors.

Funding for this study was provided by the Fonds de la Recherche en Sant� du Qu�bec (FRSQ), the Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation (CPRF), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and an MUHC fellowship.


Good Day....!


[}:)]

Oh my gawd.  Don't take away our Prozac.  Half of the United States is on Prozac.

[USRufnex]

I had a roommate in Boston who was both a pothead and a raging alcoholic...

When he was binge drinking, he'd tell me how he was gonna "go out and beat somebody up."  Another night he'd tell me after discovering a dirty coffee cup I left in the sink, that "you need to move out... tomorrow!"  The next morning, he'd completely forget what he said the night before.

When he finished "smokin' a bowl," he'd tell me how I "worried too much" and then would call pizza delivery for two large pizzas with everything-- one for him and one for me...

Then, after I spotted a crack pipe on an end table in the living room, it was time to find another roommate ASAP...

So, which set of behaviors is more detrimental to public safety?... and which of the two (the booze or the pot?) could accurately be termed his "gateway" drug???

[USRufnex]

quote:Originally posted by inteller

a yes, with all of this "alchohol is much worse" talk, we should just legalize pot here and now!

Hey, smarty... explain this away...

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/thenethe.htm

quote:Lifetime prevalence of marijuana use (ages 12+) Year 2001,  USA = 36.9%, Netherlands = 17.0%
 
Past month prevalence of marijuana use (ages 12+) Year 2001,  USA = 5.4%, Netherlands = 3.0%
 
Lifetime prevalence of heroin use (ages 12+)  Year 2001, USA = 1.4%, Netherlands = 0.4%  

Incarceration Rate per 100,000 population  2002  USA = 701, Netherlands = 100

How 'bout we have our own government do something they're actually good at for a change.  Rather than allow the continuation of a failed drug war that includes the prohibition and criminalization of marijuana possession, we could legalize and then proceed to REGULATE IT TO DEATH!... seems to work for smoking...

http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/Media/pressrel/r051110.htm

quote:The percentage of U.S. adults who smoke cigarettes continues to decline and more adults have successfully quit smoking than remain current smokers. The study estimates that 20.9 percent — 44.5 million people — are current smokers, down from 21.6 percent in 2003 and 22.5 percent in 2002, according to an article in this week's issue of CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
------------------------------------------
The report also indicates that the prevalence of heavy smoking (25 or more cigarettes per day) has declined over the past decade, from 19.1 percent of smokers in 1993 to 12.1 percent of smokers in 2004.

Contrast this to our current "lock 'em up and throw away the key" policy.

http://www.justicepolicy.org/article.php?id=537

quote:Washington, DC—According to a new report from the Justice Policy Institute, data shows little relationship between growing arrest rates for marijuana offenses and the drug's use rate, despite it surpassing heroin and cocaine as leading category of drug arrest since the mid-1990s.

In Efficacy and Impact: The Criminal Justice Response to Marijuana Policy in the United States, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) measured the effectiveness and consequences of national drug control policies that have resulted in the U.S. spending 300 times what it did 35 years ago on drug control. Criminal justice responses to marijuana - including law enforcement, judicial and corrections-accounted for $5.1 billion in 2000, according to Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron. Despite this increase in spending on drug control from $65 million to currently $19 billion, and the imprisonment of 30,000 people for a marijuana offense, marijuana usage has remained relatively unchanged regardless of arrest rates going up or down.

"Despite billions in new spending and hundreds of thousands of new arrests, marijuana use seems to be unaffected by the huge criminal justice response to this drug," said Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of JPI, and co-author of the report. According to Ziedenberg, as law enforcement focuses marijuana, a significant number of people are suffering from the impact of policies that do not seem to be deterring drug use.

The report shows that throughout the past 20 years, marijuana usage has remained relatively stable, except for a dramatic drop of 61 percent during the eighties, when arrest rates declined 24 percent. When arrest rates increased 127 percent during the 1990's, the rate of usage remained stable climbing only 22 percent.

In North Carolina and South Dakota marijuana arrests constituted 74 percent of all drug arrests. In 7 out of 10 states marijuana arrests make up over half of all drug arrests and in almost 3 out of 10 states marijuana arrests make up almost 60 percent of all drug arrests. The U.S. locks up more people for marijuana than the individual prison populations of 8 of the 10 European Union nations—and locks up more people for marijuana than the prison populations of the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Portugal.

According to Jason Colburn, policy analyst at JPI and the report's co-author, the U.S. drug policy is not only having very little effect on marijuana usage, but it also imposes hefty collateral consequences on those being locked up for marijuana use.

"There are 13 million people with former felony convictions in the U.S., and thousands of people have been convicted of a felony offense involving marijuana. The collateral consequences they will face will not only impact them but their families and entire communities," said Colburn.

"Depending on what state they live in, they may be denied public assistance, face substantial barriers to employment, experience drivers' license suspension, and lose the right to vote. Our criminal justice response to marijuana is impacting their ability to take care of their families or contribute as normal taxpaying citizens," added Colburn.

 

[patric]

quote:Originally posted by rwarn17588

if Eureka Springs or any other state or municipality ever decides to legalize it, then treat it like booze. Tax the hell out of it and make sure only licensed stores offer it. Strictly regulate the production. Throw people who drive under the influence of it in jail. Keep the employer drug tests; the last thing we need is a half-baked forklift driver. There are limits to alcohol consumption; make sure there are plenty of limits to pot usage, too.

I cant support absolute legalization, but I do understand that the present enforcement of absolute prohibition is way out of proportion with the threat it represents.

The consequences of chemical dependencies costs us all in the long run, so it makes more sense to focus our attention on those dependencies that characterize the greatest social and medical risk (rather than those rooted in racism or outmoded moral fundamentalism).

As far as getting a big dose of the Real World goes, rwarn's comments made the most sense of anyones here sofar.

[waterboy]

I didn't do it! Nobody saw me! You can't prove a thing!...Bart Simpson.

Really, where does the decrease in enforcement end? Is a well regulated but doped up culture what we're shooting for here? Oxycontin is regulated too but Rush didn't do too well with it. My favorite, a little Prozac at stress times, may very well be the Soma of our times.

[DM]

quote:Originally posted by inteller

a yes, with all of this "alchohol is much worse" talk, we should just legalize pot here and now!

Now you are talking. lol! At least we would be able to collect some taxes from the sale. []

[patric]

quote:Originally posted by waterboy

Really, where does the decrease in enforcement end?

Where common sense begins.

Sometimes laws fly through the houses that make favorable headlines but become lead balloons when they hit the cold air of reality.  Our police chief realized that when the last feel-good offender-registry law went far, far beyond protecting children from predators.

By not aggressively pursuing what was obviously poor lawmaking, the Chief spared the citizens and the courts a lot of unnecessary grief, and  demonstrated a better working knowledge of the world around him than our Governor.    

Does this put police in the position of second-guessing career politicians?
When Reefer Madness is the scourge of the Earth but getting kids hooked on tobacco and wine coolers is OK, you have to wonder what's really on some people's minds.

[USRufnex]

quote:Originally posted by inteller

if they drop the "importance" of pot enforcement then I have a laundry list of other things that should recieve a drop in priority....starting with prostitution, moving on to speeding, and ending with software piracy.  because geeks should be able to speed down the BA with their whore downloading MP3s without fear of being caught by the law....and of course its less dangerous than alchohol.

Why?

Using the above logic, let's look back at the  repeal of the archaic liquor by the drink law from over 25 years ago... why stop there?... how 'bout this laundry list?  After passage of liquor by the drink, we could've started with prostitution, changing the speed limit on the Will Rogers Turnpike from 55 mph to 75 mph, and ended it with the repeal of illegal copying of sheet music, LP's and illegal duplication of videos on betamax... because preppies should be able to speed down I-44 with their whore making Air Supply mix tapes on cassette without fear of being caught by the law....and of course its less dangerous than alcohol.

As for alcohol, is thumbody gettin' a little defensive over their legal entitlement to imbibe brewskis, cosmos and long islands?

BTW, I'm pretty much a beer-only guy myself... I could probably count the number of times I've "taken a hit" of pot on one hand... the last time was close to a decade ago... and the only way I'd support outright legalization of pot is if Oklahoma found a way to restrict its manufacture to 3.2 marijuana... []