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Featured Ten good, solid reasons marijuana should remain illegal

Discussion in 'Political Debate & Discussion' started by thisnumbersdisconnected, Jan 31, 2014.

  1. thisnumbersdisconnected

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    Most of you know I'm a substance abuse/disordered gambling counselor and licensed marriage and family therapist. Some on this board advocate legalizing marijuana. Some even go so far as to advocate for the legalization of other, harder drugs. To those I respectfully say, you have no idea what you're advocating. I see it every day. I don't oppose drug legalization because it would "cut into my practice," as one person on here accused not long ago. In fact, it would increase it. It would make addictions counseling the fastest growing profession in the U.S., and I truthfully have no desire to see that necessitated. Here is my reasoning for opposing marijuana legalization.
    1. Marijuana legalization would bring increased marijuana use, especially by children.
      • Legalization of any illicit drug increases its availability. Increased availability results in increased use, lower risk of transport, and lower costs of that drug.
      • Children are especially vulnerable to low prices and increased availability of any drug. Many children now think marijuana cannot hurt them because it is “medicine” and because so many of their pop idols use it and promote its use in movies and music.
    2. Use and distribution of marijuana is clearly against federal law under the Controlled Substances Act.
      • The use and distribution of marijuana is still illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970. Recently, several states’ Attorneys General have warned that people who assist in the distribution of marijuana can be vigorously prosecuted as federal laws are enforced.
      • Those include drug dealers, dispensaries, landlords, and even doctors or state employees who help facilitate “recommendations” for marijuana. This is true, even if such activities are permitted under state law.
    3. Marijuana is a harmful, addictive and dangerous drug that harms both body and mind.
      • It contains more cancer-causing ingredients than tobacco, and is especially harmful to the respiratory system.
      • Marijuana makes the heart beat faster, and research has found that marijuana users’ risk for a heart attack is four times higher within the first hour after smoking marijuana.
      • The drug compromises the immune system and lowers the level of white blood cells that fight infection.
      • Marijuana can cause acute toxic psychosis, panic attacks, flashbacks, paranoia, and depression.
      • It can trigger attacks of schizophrenia and bi-polar psychosis.
      • It is proven that it causes the newly defined "Amotivational Syndrome" as researched by contributors to the new DSM-5, resulting in lower student scores, lethargy, lack of sex drive or any other kind of drive.
    4. Marijuana is not medicine.
      • Marijuana is a dangerous, addictive drug that can compromise the human immune system and make sick people sicker.
      • We Americans take our medications many ways, but we don’t smoke them.
      • In states that have allowed marijuana to be declared medicine, many criminal, social, political, and economic problems have been created.
    5. Marijuana use has, indeed, caused death.
      • The marijuana lobby is not honest when it tells us no one has ever died from marijuana use. The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) reports consistently list deaths by marijuana overdose in their lists of the top American cities’ drug statistics.
      • That doesn't include those who, from the paranoia and depression that develops from chronic marijuana use, commit suicide because they can see no way to break their addictive cycle.
      • Suicide seems to become for them the only option because they come to know that not quitting leaves them without motivation, opens the door to lung cancer at a rate seven times greater than those who smoke tobacco, and leaves them highly subject to having malformed children due to the genetic defects smoking pot causes.
    6. Marijuana-related traffic crashes, injuries, and deaths would increase, as they have in "medical" marijuana states.
      • One 2008 study found that 1,240 persons were killed in California (the first state to approve so-called "medicinal marijuana") in marijuana-related traffic crashes in the 5 years since legalization. In the five years before marijuana was legalized, 631 people were killed in marijuana-related crashes in California –- an increase of almost 100%.
      • Total legalization will only increase the numbers, until one day they will match alcohol-related deaths. Intoxicating drugs cause impaired drivers.
      • There is no known test to determine levels of intoxication from marijuana, thus making enforcement of our laws extremely difficult for law enforcement personnel. Also, intoxication levels from marijuana vary widely among users, unlike alcohol which has a predictable effect based on weight and fat content.
    7. Crime would increase as it has in "medical" marijuana states.
      • Increased crime, including robbery and murder, surround the increased distribution of “medical” marijuana.
      • Pot dispensaries are special magnets for crime. Neighbors often complain of open marijuana sales, vandalism, open pot smoking, public urination and sex acts near marijuana dispensaries. Drugs and money attract crime.
      • Colorado is already seeing increased burglaries and armed robberies with marijuana stores being the target. Someone is going to get killed, because the drug gangs don't like having their market "legalized."
    8. Our prisons are not filled with "low level" marijuana users.
      • The marijuana users and promoters want us to believe that our jails are filled with prisoners whose only crime has been to smoke marijuana. The truth is, studies have found that less than 1% of prisoners are jailed for simple possession of marijuana.
      • Even then, many of them have pleaded down from other charges, including drug trafficking. There are literally millions of men and women who have served prison time because they were using marijuana, but the crimes for which they were convicted were trafficking, burglary, robbery, forgery, assault, and even murder. Had they not been using, they might not have gone to prison.
    9. Hemp will not save our environment.
      • Marijuana hemp is not a “cousin” to illicit marijuana. It is the exact same plant. The only way to tell the difference is to conduct scientific testing on each plant. It is very easy to conceal high-grade, smokeable marijuana in low-level-THC hemp.
      • No law enforcement agency can afford to test every plant in a field. Hemp can only be profitable if there is abundant cheap labor or where governments subsidize its production.
      • Canada legalized hemp in 1998, and many hemp farmers have gone bankrupt because the market for hemp is so small.
    10. Legalizing and then taxing and regulating marijuana would not offset the cost to society associated with increased use.
      • Even if marijuana were legalized, taxed and regulated, there would always be an illegal black market to undercut the cost of the drug to the user.
      • With legalization would come increased use, more accidents, more healthcare costs incurred, and a decrease in workplace productivity.
      • Legal alcohol serves as a good example: The $8 billion in tax revenue generated by this widely-used drug does little to offset the nearly $200 billion in social costs attributed to its use in America.
    11. Finally, the Bible does not endorse marijuana in Genesis 1:29
      • God does not require society to put up with the risk of human beings who lose control of their faculties by being high, whether through alcohol or other drugs.
      • The Bible teaches that negligence has legal consequences. If the government wrongly decriminalizes some activity, then the government itself would share in the guilt for the resulting harm.
      • While THC prescription drugs made from marijuana are currently available, if the normal use of any chemical or herb, such as crack cocaine, ecstasy, or marijuana, makes a person intoxicated, then the government is right to outlaw or to classify that drug as a controlled substance.
    There will be those who will argue with these points. Feel free. You're wrong. Nothing you can say, particularly that which originates with this wigged-out lobby that wants marijuana legalized for no other reason than they don't like going to jail periodically because they are hopelessly addicted, won't admit it, and think they can make it a sociopolitical cause rather than telling the truth: They are addicts, they want what they want, when they want it, and that is "right now." They are narcissists,
     
    #1 thisnumbersdisconnected, Jan 31, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 31, 2014
  2. kyredneck

    kyredneck Well-Known Member
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    U.S. farmers, especially KY farmers :), should be free to tap into the booming/growing industrial hemp trade. As far as legalization, that's all I'm concerned with.
     
    #2 kyredneck, Jan 31, 2014
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  3. InTheLight

    InTheLight Well-Known Member
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    Solid post, TND. Thank you.
     
  4. kyredneck

    kyredneck Well-Known Member
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    HEMP VS. MARIJUANA: Hemp legalization poses complex issues for all involved

    "....Take Canada, where marijuana also is illegal but hemp has been legally grown since 1998: "Health Canada's Industrial Hemp Program has never found marijuana growing in hemp fields instead of hemp," the agency said in a statement.

    They've looked. A lot.

    Canadian inspectors take samples annually from each field and have found THC levels slightly above 0.3 percent from stress during growing, but not above 0.5 percent, Health Canada said.

    Keith Watson, Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives agronomist, has seen and tested most of the hemp grown in his province in the past 15 years. Does marijuana creep in?

    "I've never run into it," Watson said. About 95 percent of the crop is sampled annually, and he said that marijuana and grain hemp might look just alike and could be planted side by side and only an expert eye might distinguish the difference. But in his experience, it just doesn't happen.

    "Over the years, that's taken me out to an awful lot of fields," Watson said. "I've never found marijuana in the field or any trace of it."

    He said a "handful" of times he has seen paths cut into the fields, places where people have topped the plants. But it doesn't happen much anymore.

    "After a couple of years, nobody bothers it," he said.

    What about marijuana?

    As for marijuana growers using hemp to pad their illegal pot, "the general impression is that's a self-regulating industry," Watson said. "They'll get away with it once ... but if the quality (of the marijuana) isn't up to par, there will be a lot of broken kneecaps."

    Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner James Comer and others say marijuana growers would not want hemp anywhere near their illegal crop because the extra-low THC varieties of Cannibis sativa known as hemp would cross-pollinate with the high-THC Cannibis sativa that is marijuana and weaken the potency of the illegal product......"

    And besides, necessity is the mother of invention. LE would develop more efficient ways to check THC levels.

    And another thing, all the farmers I know would never risk their land being confiscated for growing marijuana. Ain't worth it.

    ".... "Let the bureaucrats get out of the way," Comer said, "and let the market dictate what happens." ...."
     
    #4 kyredneck, Jan 31, 2014
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  5. JohnDeereFan

    JohnDeereFan Well-Known Member
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    And you base this on??? Did it ever occur to you that people who don't smoke marijuana already have a reason for not smoking marijuana that has nothing to do with it's legalization?

    First of all, you're introducing what is commonly known in the legal profession as "facts not in evidence".

    Second, yes, legalization does increase its availability.

    It also ends black markets, which are responsible for violence and related crimes.

    So, you'd rather keep it illegal, thus enabling black markets who don't care who they sell to, than to legalize it and have it sold by retailers who are bound by law to not sell to minors?

    ...in violation of the 10th Amendment.

    Yep. So are many other things you're not currently claiming should be illegal.

    People should have the right to ingest harmful things if they so choose.

    Only when smoked in massive amounts over a long period of time. Alcohol has the same effects.

    So is alcohol. We don't ban alcohol. We pass laws punishing driving while under the influence.

    How many were killed in alcohol related accidents? Texting related accidents?

    Demonstrate, please.

    That's not an increase in crime. That's the location of the crime.

    How many pharmacies have been burglarized by addicts trying to get drugs?

    Kind of shoots your "marijuana causes crime" argument in the foot, doesn't it?

    My, what a compelling argument.
     
  6. kyredneck

    kyredneck Well-Known Member
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    ....and d-CON, you really need to make it a habit to post a link or state a reference along with your posts that contain 'other than' your own compositions. Whether you're doing it intentionally or unmindfully you could be construed as being a plagiarizer; you don't want that do you?
     
  7. thisnumbersdisconnected

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    Sorry, you're right, I forgot to include the link. Came in one of my many professionally oriented emails. Here's the link: Marijuana Legalization: Don't be stupid
     
  8. kyredneck

    kyredneck Well-Known Member
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    I appreciate that you, along with many others, don't use the 'quotation wrap' function that's available across the top of the menu bar, because, when the quotation wrap function is used a responder to your post must c&p from what's included in the quote wrap, it won't show up when hitting the quote button. However when we choose not to use the quotation wrap function the onus is on us to include a link or a reference and use quotation marks.

    IOW, I don't use the quotation wrap function for the convenience of others that may wish to comment on that which I've quoted.
     
  9. thisnumbersdisconnected

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    I fail to see the relevancy of that statement. Sorry.
    Did Probhibition really work? The answer found in the article is a resounding "yes."
    One would think. However, it doesn't work that way. For example, Sweden, Denmark and Germany all legalized prostitution several years ago. But a study published in World Development showed the legalization efforts actually increased the black market sex trade. Taxes on legal marijuana will especially drive the lower economically statused to continue to buy from the street dealer.
    As I've pointed out, it won't decrease, but will increase black market trade in the drug. Your quesiton is based on the previously stated false assumption. Also, does the ban on the sale of alcohol or cigarettes to minors keep them from drinking or smoking? Neither will it keep them from smoking marijuana, and like alcohol and cigarettes will be more readily available to them through older, legal purchasers on their behalf, or stealing from mommy's and daddy's stash.
    Not so. While I'm all for States' Rights, allowing each state to define Schedule I-IV would create a disaster for not only law enforcement from state to state, but doctors, hospitals, addictions and mental health treatment centers, etc. Nothing is in violation of the the Tenth Amendment that seeks to provide a uniform regulation of all varieties of drugs, foods, agricultural products, etc. The last line of the Amendment, " ... or to the people," implies their will being expressed through the Congressmen who passed the drug, food, etc. laws initially.
    Nonetheless, they are regulated, and their use is regulated. And we see how well that works out with alcohol and prescription drugs, don't we?
    "Because it doesn't hurt anyone but themselves," right?

    [​IMG]

    Just because you can't see the victim doesn't mean there isn't one. Somewhere, for every illegal act, including lighting up a joint, there's someone suffering, and that is why the laws are there. The guy lighting up a joint isn't taking care of his job, his grades, his family, whatever it is he's neglecting. You can claim all you want that marijuana is "harmless" and smoking it is "victimless," but it's a lie. It's a nice way for the irresponsible one to assuage his/her own conscience, escape culpability, or make himself or herself out as something less than a "real" criminal.
    The amount of marijuana that must be smoked to bring on schizophrenic episodes of the paranoid type is miniscule compared to the years and years of heavy drinking someone has to do in order to suffer the same kind of episode from alcohol. Research done at the University of Bristol in the UK have found that just one joint can trigger such a reaction.
    Don't go off on how "rats aren't people," either. The brain function of lab rats and humans are nearly identical.
    So now we will have to go to the expense of researching the effects, spend millions developing a valid sobriety test for marijuana and what constitutes a "legal limit" of use in operating a motor vehicle, and still see traffic deaths due to intoxication/impairment double because we've added another dangerous drug to the status of "legal" whereas none of that has to be done now because it is illegal? Brilliant reasoning.
    As just stated, why increase the risk? At least now, with marijuana illegal, people are more afraid of operating a motor vehicle while stoned. Tell them it's legal, and the inhibition is gone, and the aforementioned doubling of traffic deaths becomes reality. Again, brilliant reasoning.
    Read the post more thoroughly. Colorado is already experiencing more crime around marijuana stores, customers being mugged and stroes being burglarized and robbed. Those most likely responsible? The very gangs whose livelihood came from selling marijuana before it was legal.
    Crime occurance has gone up. That's not location, that's an increase. You're trying to make an excuse, and getting irrational about it as you do so.
    From the Drug Enforcement Administration
    That's a 13-month period from January 2012 to January 2013. It is reported that there have been over three dozen marijuana stores burglarized in Colorado Springs since July 1 when the retail marijuana law took effect, and two armed robberies. Colorado's experience with crime around medical marijuana dispensaries before that showed a marked increase. Fox 31 in Denver last year reported huge numbers of additional crime due to the dispensaries. Compare that to nationwide numbers of pharmacy related crime -- those numbers from the DEA are national -- and it is obvious marijuana stores draw crime like honey draws bees.
    Selective quoting is beneath you, JDL. You know full well that segment of the post details how usage doesn't typically result in arrest, but what the user does while high results in arrest. I cited burglary, robbery, assault, forgery and even murder. That's what marijuana users go to prison for, not usage.
    Facts is facts.
     
    #9 thisnumbersdisconnected, Jan 31, 2014
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  10. JohnDeereFan

    JohnDeereFan Well-Known Member
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    To everybody reading this thread, please note that this ad hom was completely unprovoked.
     
  11. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Don't take it personal that's just how TND reacts whenever someone exposes the misinformation and fear based propaganda in his posts. If you really want to see his true colors come out just ask him who benefits most from drug prohibition. It's a practically guaranteed outcome of either insults or silence. :smilewinkgrin:

    None of the keep it illegal crowd will answer this question.

    You can see the lengths they'll go to avoid answering it here . . . http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=91492
     
    #11 poncho, Jan 31, 2014
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  12. InTheLight

    InTheLight Well-Known Member
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    I'm fairly certain you're on TND's Ignore list.

    I answered you, twice.
     
  13. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Probably so. I did point out that most of his arguments stem from progressive authoritarian big government roots. I also pointed out that News Corps (Faux Snews) second largest shareholder is Sunni Muslim Saudi Prince Alwaleed and Rupert Murdoch holds over 18% of an Islamic TV network. Several times.

    Neocons pretending to be true conservatives tend be touchy about that sort of thing.

    Where did you answer the question "who benefits from drug prohibition"? Show me.
     
    #13 poncho, Jan 31, 2014
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  14. kyredneck

    kyredneck Well-Known Member
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    The prison industry and the economy built around it for certain. I agree with you, the war on drugs is an absolute failure.
     
  15. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Yes you did indeed. My mistake and I sincerely apologize for casting doubt on you unnecessarily.
     
    #15 poncho, Jan 31, 2014
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  16. Gina B

    Gina B Active Member

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    Ah, this is great! I needed a laugh tonight. So it should remain legal because it's

    Dern. So much for scrambled eggs in the morning!

    And because it cause lack of sex drive or


    Well that does it. It's clear that this is a valid study, as they have probed the "any other kind of drive" associations and have them pinned down.

    Followed by more blah blah blah, but then...



    There goes my eggs again! Double dern!

    And if the above isn't enough to convince me, let's close it all with...

    This really needs to go in the humor section! :laugh:
     
  17. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Be careful now you might end up in TND's ignore section. :laugh:
     
    #17 poncho, Jan 31, 2014
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  18. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    Hmmm.. I'm kinda left wondering if you made the strongest case for the criminalization of alcohol consumption or the legalization of marijuana????;)
     
  19. Gina B

    Gina B Active Member

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    Might have been meant tongue in cheek, but in all seriousness...

    I cannot take anyone seriously at all when they say they want marijuana to be illegal unless they are also 100% for making alcohol just as illegal. It is far more dangerous and addictive or, if they want to push it, they can even say marijuana is "just as dangerous and addictive as alcohol." Fine by me if they want to say that, but don't have a double standard.
     
  20. Revmitchell

    Revmitchell Well-Known Member
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    I am puzzled. Why would Christians argue that marijuana should be legal?
     
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