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1   anonymous   2018 Jan 9, 8:40am  

Imagine a world where Alcohol were treated like Cannabis, and Cannabis treated like Alcohol, by the State.


Prohibition on Alcohol went from 1920-1933

Prohibition on Cannabis went from 1937-present (with a build up of efforts in the decade + prior to 1937)


The people who say that the government is the problem, are actually correct. They just usually prescribe the wrong solutions to the wrong problems. This is the first problem that we need solved, if we honestly want to #MAGA


Conservatives could definitely deal a death punch to the soul of the Democrat party, if only they would get their heads out of their asses, and stop being on the wrong side of their War on Drugs. They could do this using Free Market principles, based in Small Government and Liberty, and Personal Responsibility. Transparency, and Information are your friend, not your enemy, so put down your propaganda pipe, get informed, and actually #MAGA
2   anonymous   2018 Jan 9, 8:41am  

The legal history of cannabis in the United States relates to the regulation of cannabis (legal term marijuana) use for medical, recreational or industrial purposes in the United States. Increased restrictions and labeling of cannabis as a poison began in many states from 1906 onward, and outright prohibitions began in the 1920s. By the mid-1930s marijuana was regulated as a drug in every state, including 35 states that adopted the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act.[1] The first national regulation was the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.[2]

Multiple efforts to reschedule cannabis under the Act have failed, and the United States Supreme Court has ruled in United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative and Gonzales v. Raich that the federal government has a right to regulate and criminalize cannabis, even for medical purposes.


Pre-1850s
In 1619, King James I decreed that the American colonists of Jamestown would need to step up efforts to do their fair share towards supporting England. The Virginia Company enacted the decree, asking Jamestown's land owners to grow and export 100 hemp plants to help support England's cause. Later the colonists would grow it to support its expansion in the Americas.[3][4] George Washington grew hemp at Mount Vernon as one of his three primary crops. The use of hemp for rope and fabric later became ubiquitous throughout the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States. Medicinal preparations of cannabis became available in American pharmacies in the 1850s following an introduction to its use in Western medicine by William O'Shaughnessy a decade earlier in 1839.[5]

Early pharmaceutical and recreational use

Cannabis fluid extract medicine bottle from 1906
Around the same time, efforts to regulate the sale of pharmaceuticals began, and laws were introduced on a state-to-state basis that created penalties for mislabeling drugs, adulterating them with undisclosed narcotics, and improper sale of those considered "poisons". Poison laws generally either required labels on the packaging indicating the harmful effects of the drugs or prohibited sale outside of licensed pharmacies and without a doctor's prescription. Those that required labeling often required the word "poison" if the drug was not issued by a pharmacy. Other regulations were prohibitions on the sale to minors, as well as restrictions on refills. Some pharmaceutical laws specifically enumerated the drugs that came under the effect of the regulations, while others did not—leaving the matter to medical experts. Those that did generally included references to cannabis, either under the category of "cannabis and its preparations" or "hemp and its preparations."[6]

A 1905 Bulletin from the United States Department of Agriculture lists twenty-nine states with laws mentioning cannabis. Eight are listed with "sale of poisons" laws that specifically mention cannabis: North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Vermont, Maine, Montana, and the District of Columbia. Among those that required a prescription for sale were Wisconsin and Louisiana. Several "sale of poison" laws did not specify restricted drugs, including in Indiana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Nebraska, Kentucky, Mississippi, and New York. Many states did not consider cannabis a "poison" but required it be labeled.[7]

In New York, the original law did enumerate cannabis, and was passed in 1860 following a string of suicides allegedly involving the substances later categorized as poisons. The first draft of the bill 'An act to regulate the sale of poisons' prohibited the sale of cannabis—as with the other substances—without the written order of a physician.[8] The final bill as passed allowed the sale without a prescription so long as the purpose to which it was issued and name and address of the buyer was recorded, and in addition, all packaging of such substances—whether sold with a prescription or not—had to have the label "poison" on them in uppercase red letters. In 1862, the section which enumerated the substances was repealed with an amendatory act, though cannabis was still required to be labeled.[9]

In some states where poison laws excluded cannabis, there were nonetheless attempts to include it. A bill introduced in 1880 in the California state legislature was titled 'An act to regulate the sale of opium and other narcotic poisons' and would have forbidden anyone to keep, sell, furnish, or give away any "preparations or mixtures made or prepared from opium, hemp, or other narcotic drugs" without a doctor's prescription at a licensed store. That bill was withdrawn in favor of one specifically aimed at opium, though further bills including hemp-based drugs were introduced in 1885 and in 1889.[5]

Background to later restrictions (late 1800s)

Excerpt from the New York Times, March 7, 1884
As early as 1853, recreational cannabis was listed as a "fashionable narcotic".[10] By the 1880s, oriental-style hashish parlors were flourishing alongside opium dens, to the point that one could be found in every major city on the east coast. It was estimated there were around 500 such establishments in New York City alone.[11]

An article in Harper’s Magazine (1883), attributed to Harry Hubbell Kane, describes a hashish-house in New York frequented by a large clientele, including males and females of "the better classes," and further talks about parlors in Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago.[5] Hemp cigarettes were reported to be used by Mexican soldiers early as 1874.[12]
3   anonymous   2018 Jan 9, 8:42am  

Strengthening of poison laws (1906–1938)
The Pure Food and Drug Act was then passed by the United States Congress in 1906 and required that certain special drugs, including cannabis, be accurately labeled with contents. Previously, many drugs had been sold as patent medicines with secret ingredients or misleading labels.[13] Even after the passage of regulations, there continued to be criticism about the availability of narcotics and around 1910 there was a wave of legislation aimed to strengthen requirements for their sale and remove what were commonly referred to as "loopholes" in poison laws. The new revisions aimed to restrict all narcotics, including cannabis, as poisons, limit their sale to pharmacies, and require doctor's prescriptions. The first instance was in the District of Columbia in 1906, under "An act to regulate the practice of pharmacy and the sale of poisons in the District of Columbia, and for other purposes". This act was updated in 1938 to the Federal Pure Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938 which remains in effect even today, creating a legal paradox for federal sentencing. Under this act, the framework for prescription and non-prescription drugs and foods are set, along with standards as well as the enforcing agency, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). "Goods found in violation of the law were subject to seizure and destruction at the expense of the manufacturer. That, combined with a legal requirement that all convictions be published (Notices of Judgment), proved to be important tools in the enforcement of the statute and had a deterrent effect upon would-be violators." Marijuana remains under this law defined as a "dangerous drug".[14]

Further regulation of cannabis followed in Massachusetts (1911), New York (1914), and Maine (1914). In New York, reform legislation began under the Towns-Boylan Act, which targeted all "habit-forming drugs", restricted their sale, prohibited refills in order to prevent habituation, prohibited sale to people with a habit, and prohibited doctors who were themselves habituated from selling them.[15] Shortly after, several amendments were passed by the New York Board of Health, including adding cannabis to the list of habit-forming drugs.[16]

A New York Times article noted on the cannabis amendment:

The inclusion of Cannabis indica among the drugs to be sold only on prescription is common sense. Devotees of hashish are now hardly numerous here enough to count, but they are likely to increase as other narcotics become harder to obtain.[17]

In the West, the first state to include cannabis as a poison was California. The Poison Act was passed in 1907 and amended in 1909 and 1911, and in 1913 an amendatory act was made to make possession of "extracts, tinctures, or other narcotic preparations of hemp, or loco-weed, their preparations and compounds" a misdemeanor.[5] There is no evidence that the law was ever used or intended to restrict pharmaceutical cannabis; instead it was a legislative mistake, and in 1915 another revision placed cannabis under the same restriction as other poisons.[5] In 1914, one of the first cannabis drug raids in the nation occurred in the Mexican-American neighborhood of Sonoratown in Los Angeles, where police raided two "dream gardens" and confiscated a wagonload of cannabis.[18]

Other states followed with marijuana laws including: Wyoming (1915); Texas (1919); Iowa (1923); Nevada (1923); Oregon (1923); Washington (1923); Arkansas (1923); Nebraska (1927);[19] Louisiana (1927); and Colorado (1929).[20]

One source of tensions in the western and southwestern states was the influx of Mexicans to the U.S. following the 1910 Mexican Revolution.[21] Many Mexicans also smoked marijuana to relax after working in the fields.[22] It was also seen as a cheaper alternative to alcohol, due to Prohibition (which went into effect nationally in 1920).[23] Later in the 1920s, negative tensions grew between the small farms and the large farms that used cheaper Mexican labor. Shortly afterwards, the Great Depression came which increased tensions as jobs and resources became more scarce. Because of that, the passage of the initial laws is often described as a product of racism, yet use of hashish by near eastern immigrants was also cited, as well as the misuse of pharmaceutical hemp, and the laws conformed with other legislation that was being passed around the country. Mexico itself had passed prohibition in 1925, following the International Opium Convention (see below).[24
4   anonymous   2018 Jan 9, 8:43am  

International Opium Convention (1925)
In 1925, the United States supported regulation of Indian hemp, also known as hashish, in the International Opium Convention.[25] The convention banned exportation of "Indian hemp", and the preparations derived therefrom, to countries that had prohibited its use and required importing countries to issue certificates approving the importation and stating that the shipment was required "exclusively for medical or scientific purposes". The convention did not ban trade in fibers and other similar products from European hemp, and traditionally grown in the United States. According to the 1912 edition of the Swedish encyclopedia Nordisk familjebok, the European hemp grown for its fibers lacks the THC content that characterizes Indian hemp.[26]

Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act (1925–1932)
The Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act, first tentative draft in 1925 and fifth final version in 1932, was a result of work by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. It was argued that the traffic in narcotic drugs should have the same safeguards and the same regulation in all of the states. The committee took into consideration the fact that the federal government had already passed the Harrison Act in 1914 and the Federal Import and Export Act in 1922. Many people assumed that the Harrison Act was all that was necessary. The Harrison Act, however, was a revenue-producing act and, while it provided penalties for violation, it did not give the states themselves authority to exercise police power in regard to seizure of drugs used in illicit trade, or in regard to punishment of those responsible. The act was recommended to the states for that purpose.[27] As a result of the Uniform State Narcotic Act, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics encouraged state governments to adopt the act. By the middle of the 1930s all member states had some regulation of cannabis.[28][29][30]

Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1930)

Federal Bureau of Narcotics public service announcement used in the late 1930s and 1940s
The use of cannabis and other drugs came under increasing scrutiny after the formation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) in 1930,[31] headed by Harry J. Anslinger as part of the government's broader push to outlaw all recreational drugs.

When the present administration took office ten countries had ratified the Geneva Narcotic Limitation Convention. The United States was one of these ten. ... It was my privilege, as President, to proclaim, on that day, that this treaty had become effective throughout the jurisdiction of the United States. ... On Jan. 1, 1933, only nine nations had registered their ratification of the limitation treaty. On Jan. 1, 1935, only nine States had adopted the uniform State statute. As 1933 witnessed ratification of the treaty by thirty-one additional nations, so may 1935 witness the adoption of the uniform drug act by at least thirty-one more states, thereby placing interstate accord abreast of international accord, to the honor of the legislative bodies of our States and for the promotion of the welfare of our people and the peoples of other lands.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 1935 in a radio message read by United States Attorney General, Homer Stille Cummings, [32]
Anslinger claimed cannabis caused people to commit violent crimes and act irrationally and overly sexual. The FBN produced propaganda films promoting Anslinger's views and Anslinger often commented to the press regarding his views on marijuana.[33]

The 1936 Geneva Trafficking Conventions
In 1936 the Convention for the Suppression of the Illicit Traffic in Dangerous Drugs (1936 Trafficking Convention) was concluded in Geneva. The U.S., led by Anslinger, had attempted to include the criminalization of all activities in the treaty – cultivation, production, manufacture and distribution – related to the use of opium, coca (and its derivatives), and cannabis, for non-medical and non-scientific purposes. Many countries opposed this and the focus remained on illicit trafficking. Article 2 of the Convention called upon signatory countries to use their national criminal law systems to "severely" punish, "particularly by imprisonment or other penalties of deprivation of liberty", acts directly related to drug trafficking.[34] The U.S. refused to sign the final version because it considered the convention too weak, especially in relation to extradition, extraterritoriality and the confiscation of trafficking profits.[35]
5   anonymous   2018 Jan 9, 8:43am  

Marihuana Tax Act (1937)
Main articles: Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 and Hemp
The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 effectively made possession or transfer of marihuana illegal throughout the United States under federal law, excluding medical and industrial uses, through imposition of an excise tax on all sales of hemp. Annual fees were $24 ($637 adjusted for inflation) for importers, manufacturers, and cultivators of cannabis, $1 ($24 adjusted for inflation) for medical and research purposes, and $3 ($82 adjusted for inflation) for industrial users. Detailed sales logs were required to record marihuana sales. Selling marihuana to any person who had previously paid the annual fee incurred a tax of $1 per ounce or fraction thereof; however, the tax was $100 ($2,206 adjusted for inflation) per ounce or fraction thereof to sell any person who had not registered and paid the annual fee.[36]


Tax stamp for a producer of hemp
The American Medical Association (AMA) opposed the act because the tax was imposed on physicians prescribing cannabis, retail pharmacists selling cannabis, and medical cannabis cultivation and manufacturing; instead of enacting the Marihuana Tax Act the AMA proposed cannabis be added to the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act.[37] This approach was unappealing to some legislators who feared that adding a new substance to the Harrison Act would subject that act to new legal scrutiny. Since the federal government had no authority under the 10th Amendment to regulate medicines, that power being reserved by individual states in 1937, a tax was the only viable way to legislate marijuana.

File:Hemp for Victory 1942.webm
Hemp for Victory, a short documentary produced by the United States Department of Agriculture during World War II to inform and encourage farmers to grow hemp.
After the Philippines fell to Japanese forces in 1942, the Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Army urged farmers to grow hemp fiber and tax stamps for cultivation were issued to farmers. Without any change in the Marihuana Tax Act, over 400,000 acres of hemp were cultivated between 1942 and 1945. The last commercial hemp fields were planted in Wisconsin in 1957.[38] New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who was a strong opponent of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, started the LaGuardia Commission that in 1944 contradicted the earlier reports of addiction, madness, and overt sexuality.[39]

The decision of the United States Congress to pass the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was based on poorly attended hearings and reports based on questionable studies.[40][41] In 1936 the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) noticed an increase of reports of people smoking marijuana, which further increased in 1937. The Bureau drafted a legislative plan for Congress seeking a new law, and the head of the FBN, Harry J. Anslinger, ran a campaign against marijuana.[42][43] Newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst's empire of newspapers used the "yellow journalism" pioneered by Hearst to demonize the cannabis plant and spread a public perception that there were connections between cannabis and violent crime.[44] Several scholars argue that the goal was to destroy the hemp industry,[45][46][47] largely as an effort of Hearst, Andrew Mellon and the Du Pont family.[45][47] They argue that with the invention of the decorticator hemp became a very cheap substitute for the wood pulp that was used in the newspaper industry.[45][48] However, Hearst newspapers owed large debts to Canadian suppliers of paper, who used wood as raw material. If an alternative raw material for paper had emerged, it would have lowered the price of the paper needed to print Hearst's many newspapers—a positive thing for Hearst.[49][50] Moreover, by the year 1916 there were at least five "machine brakes" for hemp[51] and it is unlikely that in 1930s hemp became a new threat for newspapers owners.

Mellon was Secretary of the Treasury, as well as the wealthiest man in America, and had invested heavily in nylon, DuPont's new synthetic fiber. He considered[dubious – discuss] nylon's success to depend on it replacing the traditional resource, hemp.[45][52][53][54][55][56][57][58]

The company DuPont and many industrial historians dispute a link between nylon and hemp. They argue that the reason for developing nylon was to produce a fiber that could compete with silk and rayon in, for example, thin stockings for women. Silk was much more expensive than hemp and imported largely from Japan. There was more money in a substitute for silk. DuPont focused early on thin stockings for women. As a commercial product, nylon was a revolution in textiles. Strong and water-resistant, it was possible to make very thin fibers from cheap raw materials. The first sales in 1938 in New York of nylon stockings created a line with 4000 middle class women. For years to come, nylon demand was greater than DuPont could produce. And the DuPont Group was very big; it could move on if nylon had not become a success.[59][60][61]


Hemp, bast with fibers. The stem in the middle.
In 1916 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) chief scientists Jason L. Merrill and Lyster H. Dewey created a paper, USDA Bulletin No. 404 "Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material",[62] in which they stated that paper from the woody inner portion of the hemp stem broken into pieces, so called hemp hurds, was "favorable in comparison with those used with pulp wood". Merrill and Dewey's findings were not repeated in a later book by Dewey[63] and have not been confirmed by paper production experts. The consistency of long fibers is too low in hemp hurds for commercial papermaking. Numerous machines had been devised for breaking and scutching hemp fibers, but none had been found to be fully satisfactory in actual commercial work.[50][63][64] To produce fiber from hemp was a labor-intensive process if harvest, transport and processing are included. Technological developments decreased the labor but not sufficiently to eliminate this disadvantage.[65]

There was also a misconception about the intoxicating effects of hemp because it has the same active substance, THC, which is in all cannabis strains. Hemp normally has a minimal amount of THC when compared to recreational cannabis strains but, in the 1930s, THC was not yet fully identified.[66] The methods FBN used for predicting the psychoactive effect of different samples of cannabis and hemp therefore gave confusing results.[67][68]
6   anonymous   2018 Jan 9, 8:44am  

Mandatory sentencing (1952, 1956)
Mandatory sentencing and increased punishment were enacted when the United States Congress passed the Boggs Act of 1952 and the Narcotics Control Act of 1956. The acts made a first-time cannabis possession offense a minimum of two to ten years with a fine up to $20,000; however in 1970 the United States Congress repealed mandatory penalties for cannabis offenses.[39]

The Controlled Substances Act (1970)
In its 1969 Leary v. United States decision the Supreme Court held the Marijuana Tax Act to be unconstitutional, since it violated the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.[69] In response, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act as Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, which repealed the Marijuana Tax Act.[70]

Reorganization (1968, 1973)

U.S. cannabis arrests by year
In 1968 the United States Department of the Treasury subsidiary the Bureau of Narcotics, and the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare subsidiary the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control, merged to create the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs as a United States Department of Justice subsidiary.[71]

In 1973 President Richard Nixon's "Reorganization Plan Number Two" proposed the creation of a single federal agency to enforce federal drug laws and Congress accepted the proposal, as there was concern regarding the growing availability of drugs.[72] As a result, on July 1, 1973, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) and the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE) merged to create the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).[39] On December 1, 1975, the Supreme Court ruled that it was "not cruel or unusual for Ohio to sentence someone to 20 years for having or selling cannabis".[73]

State-level decriminalization (1973–1978)
In 1973 the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse released a report entitled Marijuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding, which recommended "partial prohibition" and decriminalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana. Following this report and extensive lobbying by NORML, 11 states decriminalized cannabis to varying degrees between 1973 (Oregon) and 1978 (Nebraska).[74]

State Office of Narcotics and Drug Abuse (1977)
In January 1976, California's study of the economic impact of its law repealing prohibitions of use went into effect. The law reduced the penalty for personal possession of an ounce or less of marijuana from a felony to a citable misdemeanor with a maximum fine of $100. Possession of more than an ounce was made a misdemeanor, making the maximum fine $500 and/or six months in jail. After the law went into effect, the state's annual spending towards marijuana laws went down 74%. Prior to the law, the state had been spending from $35 million to $100 million.[75]

Mandatory sentencing and three-strikes (1984, 1986)
During the Reagan Administration the Sentencing Reform Act provisions of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 created the Sentencing Commission, which established mandatory sentencing guidelines.[76] The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 reinstated mandatory prison sentences, including large scale cannabis distribution.[77] Later an amendment created a three-strikes law, which created mandatory 25-years imprisonment for repeated serious crimes – including certain drug offenses – and allowed the death penalty to be used against "drug kingpins".[39]

Compassionate Use Act of 1996
In 1996, cannabis was legalized in California for the aid of chronically ill residents.[78] The Compassionate Use Act of 1996 allowed people to have and use cannabis but only when prescribed by a doctor/physician.[79] Cannabis was prescribed to people who had trouble with cancer, AIDS, and other medical afflictions such as glaucoma.[80] It was implemented as a way to try and help those who needed cannabis for their medical illnesses to find a source and safe way to use the drug.[81] However, this did not protect patients with medical cards to redistribute any of the cannabis they had legally obtained for themselves.[82]

United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative (2001)
Main article: United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative
In 1996 California voters passed Proposition 215, which legalized medical cannabis. The Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative was created to "provide seriously ill patients with a safe and reliable source of medical cannabis, information and patient support" in accordance with Proposition 215.[83]

In January 1998 the U.S. Government sued Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative for violating federal laws created as a result of Controlled Substances Act of 1970. On May 14, 2001, the United States Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Coop that federal anti-drug laws do not permit an exception for medical cannabis and rejected the common-law medical necessity defense to crimes enacted under the Controlled Substances Act because Congress concluded cannabis has "no currently accepted medical use" when the act was passed in 1970.[84]

Gonzales v. Raich (2005)
Main article: Gonzales v. Raich
Gonzales v. Raich 545 U.S. 1 (2005) was a decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (6–3) that even where individuals or businesses in accordance with state-approved medical cannabis programs are lawfully cultivating, possessing, or distributing medical cannabis, such persons or businesses are violating federal marijuana laws. Therefore, under federal law violators are prosecuted because the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution grants the federal government jurisdiction, pursuant to the U.S. Controlled Substances Act, to prosecute marijuana offenses.

In Gonzales the defendants argued that because the cannabis in question had been grown, transported, and consumed entirely within the state of California, in compliance with California medical cannabis laws, their activity did not implicate interstate commerce, and as such could not be regulated by the federal government through the Commerce Clause.

The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, reasoning that cannabis grown within California for medical purposes is indistinguishable from illicit marijuana and that because the intrastate medical cannabis market contributes to the interstate illicit marijuana market, the Commerce Clause applies. Even where California citizens are using medical cannabis in compliance with state law, those individuals and businesses can still be prosecuted by federal authorities for violating federal law.[85]

To combat state-approved medical cannabis legislation, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) continued to routinely target and arrest medical cannabis patients and seized medical cannabis and the business assets of growers and medical dispensaries. However, the Obama administration indicated[when?] that this practice might potentially be curtailed.[86]
8   NuttBoxer   2018 Jan 9, 10:37am  

I know too much alcohol prevents me from sleeping well. I get hotter(like sleeping cold), and can be prone to a slight headache. Cannabis on the other hand, never gives me any issues with sleeping, or feeling ill. Strictly from a health perspective, the laws really are ridiculous.
9   Patrick   2018 Jan 9, 11:02am  

Yes, I find the same.

Alcohol (more than 2 drinks) makes me wake up at 3am.

Pot makes me sleep well, and with lovely dreams to boot.
10   anonymous   2018 Jan 9, 11:16am  

Harm chart

11   Patrick   2018 Jan 9, 11:21am  

That chart is not quite right. Heroin causes no physical harm in moderate doses, though an overdose or dirty needles can kill you.

Keith Richards has been a heroin addict since the 60's.
12   anonymous   2018 Jan 9, 12:03pm  

Patrick says
That chart is not quite right. Heroin causes no physical harm in moderate doses, though an overdose or dirty needles can kill you.

Keith Richards has been a heroin addict since the 60's.


Heroin is highly addictive.

So much so that I’m not sure that there’s much point in talking about moderate doses.

I wonder where Coca Cola and M & Ms belong on that chart. The government doesn’t regulate either of those, they permit selling them to children of any age, and they certainly account for far more (frivolous) healthcare expenditures than Cannabis, even if you include all the harm that the police cause to innocent citizens in the name of Cannabis Prohibition.

I know it’s a silly argument when you consider that Cannabis use accounts for virtually no healthcare costs.

The contrary is true, that ending Cannabis Prohibition and allowing domestic production and consumption would likely offer an alternative to incalculable amounts of wasteful healthcare expenses. We’ve identified the enemies to freedom before, but it’s probably time to add pHRMA and the healthcare industry to the list. A lot of money may be at risk in that industry.

As expensive as they’ve made it to die in this country, it would be a much more palatable and cost effective alternative to have a hospice type facility where people were allowed to die in peace, and heavily medicated with Cannabis
13   Ceffer   2018 Jan 9, 12:29pm  

I would probably put cannabis higher in physical harm and lower in dependance. The physical harm is lessened by not smoking and just ingesting, which would make it not particularly physically harmful. Also, cannabis that is free of pesticides and industrial contaminants would be less harmful. I would also put alcohol higher in physical harm.

Narcotics can be physically sparing to some extent if clean drugs and needles are used, albeit wrecked and scarred veins. However, if you have ever known junkies, they are never the same. They spend every waking hour dreaming of the high and are effectively zombies. Even recovered junkies act like they are living in "borrowed flesh" as William Burroughs would say, something is gone from their affect and ability to enjoy life.
14   anonymous   2018 Jan 9, 12:32pm  

Ceffer says
I would probably put cannabis higher in physical harm and lower in dependance. The physical harm is lessened by not smoking and just ingesting, which would make it not particularly physically harmful. I would also put alcohol higher in physical harm.

Narcotics can be physically sparing to some extent if clean drugs and needles are used, albeit wrecked and scarred veins. However, if you have ever known junkies, they are never the same. They spend every waking hour dreaming of the high and are effectively zombies. Even recovered junkies act like they are living in "borrowed flesh" as William Burroughs would say, something is gone from their affect and ability to enjoy life.


So to clarify, you wouldn’t put Cannabis higher up the chart

You would put smoking cannabis as harmful, but unrelated to Cannabis itself, rather that smoking anything is harmful. I agree
15   zzyzzx   2018 Jan 9, 12:46pm  

Patrick says
Alcohol (more than 2 drinks) makes me wake up at 3am.


Fixed:
Alcohol (more than 2 drinks) makes me wake up at 3am to go and pee.
16   Ceffer   2018 Jan 9, 12:52pm  

Drugs that are short acting and intense create higher levels of craving and physical dependance. Cannabis has a gradual onset and gradual withdrawal due to it's being stored in fat and gradually metabolized from the body. That would make it lower in dependance compared to things like alcohol, narcotics or crack. Also, many of the metabolites of cannabis are active to different extents, making the withdrawal touchdown easier.

Unsmoked cannabis has harm more along the lines of prescription tranquilizers, which can make people crazy or just zonked but are not as physically harmful. However, nobody really knows harm profiles because dependance also re-wires the brain after a while and varies from individual to individual. The dependent are not the same people they would be if they weren't dependent, physically healthy or not.

Not everybody is susceptible to addiction. It is estimated that 40 percent of the population don't drink or do drugs, not out of moral purity, but simply because they just don't like them. These would be the "wallflowers" who may carry a drink around forever but never sip. I guess you could call them humanity's ready reserve of sober individuals, or permanent designated drivers.

Of the 60 percent of the populace, who may drink, one out of five are on some progression to alcoholism, which can be fast or slow. Another one in five can be heavy users, who experience harm, but can stop or cut back if they see the necessity.

For other substances, dependance is more or less severe in term of percentages. Crack cocaine and nicotine are about one in two users go on to dependance. For snorting cocaine and heroin, about one in three go on to dependance and addiction.

Physical dependance does not always mean total, helpless addiction. There are "casual" users of all substances, including cocaine, narcotics and nicotine who never become either physically or psychologically dependent, it's the luck of the draw. There are individuals who use to the point of physical dependency, but can stop if they see the harm. True addicts never stop, whether they see the harm or not. They are basically on the path to death, but in full view of society in one way or another.

The addicted are just the tailing byproduct of permissive use. They are the ultimate 'losers' in the using/drinking game. Society marginalizes all users in one way or the other, but the truly addicted are in a downward spiraling limbo until they die from it. The homeless plague in California is the picture window of the results.

I would put cannabis in the "low lethality" category. Dependence and addiction are very unlikely to result in death, barring intoxication related accidents. However, tobacco is also low lethality. Nicotine causes withdrawal related personality disorders, but lethality tends to be more related to the physical harm i.e. lung disease, coronary artery disease, stroke, cancer etc. Nicotine users tend to bear the greater brunt of their own using (if you don't count second hand smoke), whereas alcohol, speed, cocaine and narcotic users (and to a much lesser extent cannabis users) are more likely to harm others as well as themselves, mainly through accidents and societal dysfunction.
17   anonymous   2018 Jan 9, 1:37pm  

HEYYOU says
I don't need drugs! I'm high on life.
Went cold turkey from alcohol!
Went cold turkey from cigarettes!

It's none of anyone's business about my Killer Weed use. ;-)
Plausible deniability.


I thought you lived in one of those bigtime Liberal states where the liberals fought back yuge to defeat the Failed Loser Republican War on Drugs?
18   NuttBoxer   2018 Jan 9, 4:48pm  

Ceffer says
The physical harm is lessened by not smoking and just ingesting, which would make it not particularly physically harmful. Also, cannabis that is free of pesticides and industrial contaminants would be less harmful.


I don't know that smoking using hemp wick is particularly harmful. I will never inhale butane, but I was never a stoner. Butane and pesticides are not products of cannabis though, they are separate from the plant and what it produces. My grow is always 100% natural, from the soil, to the seeds(not feminized, local), to the nutrients. The only thing I've ever sprayed is BD, which is natural, and I lay off it before harvest.
19   NuttBoxer   2018 Jan 9, 4:51pm  

Patrick says
That chart is not quite right.


Agreed. Aren't anabolic steroids what wrestlers use to make their hair fallout, enlarge their internal organs, and give themselves heart attacks? Not exactly left side of the harm chart...
20   anonymous   2018 Jan 17, 9:26am  

Lower legal blood alcohol levels for drivers are needed to eliminate drunk driving deaths in the United States, according to a new report.

All states should lower legal blood alcohol levels for drivers from 0.08 to 0.05 percent blood alcohol concentration (BAC), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reported.

The report also calls for significantly higher alcohol taxes and tighter restrictions on alcohol sales.

While progress has been made in recent decades, more than 10,000 drunk driving deaths still occur each year in the United States. Since 1982, drunk driving has caused one-third of all traffic deaths on average, the report authors said.



https://consumer.healthday.com/public-health-information-30/drunk-driving-and-riding-health-news-219/reduce-legal-blood-alcohol-limit-to-cut-drunk-driving-deaths-report-730226.html
21   anonymous   2018 Jan 18, 9:21am  

Cannabis users are more likely to feel deceived and alienated by others, study finds.

Cannabis users are more likely to experience negative emotions, particularly feeling alienated from others, new research reveals.

People who use marijuana are significantly more likely to feel that others wish them harm or are deceiving them, a US study found.

Brain scans also reveal the class-B drug increases signal connectivity in regions of the brain that have previously been linked to psychosis, the research adds, which is associated with severe depression.

Link between cannabis and mental health.

Dr Cameron Carter, editor of the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, where the study was published, said: 'These brain imaging data provide a link between changes in brain systems involved in reward and psychopathology and chronic cannabis abuse, suggesting a mechanism by which heavy use of this popular drug may lead to depression and other even more severe forms of mental illness.'

People who used cannabis at least two-to-three times a week at 17 years old are more likely to experience hypomania in their earlier 20s, according to the first study of its kind.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5279825/Cannabis-users-likely-feel-deceived-others.html#ixzz54Ycqs491
22   Ceffer   2018 Jan 18, 11:01am  

Reefer Madness! It turns nymphets into voracious, nymphomaniacal cock hounds!

The evil weed causes excitatory states of gyrating madness induced by decadent music!

I'm still looking for the "bad news", wait, I think I almost found some.
23   anonymous   2018 Jan 18, 2:53pm  

anon_10ddb says
Cannabis users are more likely to feel deceived and alienated by others, study finds.

Cannabis users are more likely to experience negative emotions, particularly feeling alienated from others, new research reveals.

People who use marijuana are significantly more likely to feel that others wish them harm or are deceiving them, a US study found.

Brain scans also reveal the class-B drug increases signal connectivity in regions of the brain that have previously been linked to psychosis, the research adds, which is associated with severe depression.

Link between cannabis and mental health.

Dr Cameron Carter, editor of the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, where the study was published, said: 'These brain imaging data provide a link between changes in brain systems involved in reward and psychopathology and chronic cannabis abuse, suggesting a mechanism by which heavy use of this popular drug may lead to depression and...


People who have lived their whole life during Prohibition, what else would you expect?

They have to constantly worrying if a unionized Government employee will gun them down 24/7

It’s not paranoia, it’s a healthy fear of getting fucked up by the Government.
24   anonymous   2018 Jan 29, 11:37am  

https://www.thecannabist.co/2018/01/29/california-pot-stockpiles-go-smoke-whats-next/97719/
California marijuana demand greater than legal distribution network can handle

Will a supply shortage result in a situation similar to Nevada, where the government has to Declare a State of Emergency?
25   WookieMan   2018 Jan 29, 12:31pm  

I prefer beer over weed. That said, I'm going to Montana this summer and can fly pretty much anywhere Southwest flies for free on points. I choose Denver because I can load up on weed and then head towards Jackson, WY for a few days. Then finish the drive up to Bozeman, MT area.

Would have done Spokane, WA but those smaller regional airports eat the shit out of SW points. I could have saved 4 hours RT on the drive and loaded up in Washington, but alas, it didn't work out. A lot easier to check out Grand Teton coming in from the south, so I guess that's a benefit to a bit longer of a drive. For some reason, SLC is also pretty close pricing wise to Spokane. I guess in the summer maybe it's not a busy or worth flying to.

If I lived in a legal weed state I'd reduce alcohol consumption to the tune of 50%. At least. Let me just say beer companies love me, they would hate to see me move. At least IL appears to be making a move towards legalization. God knows we could use the tax revenue assuming our politicians don't piss it away. Ha, lol, what am I thinking. They'll piss it away regardless.
26   anonymous   2018 Feb 22, 6:18am  

It’s beyond time to remove Cannabis from Federal scheduling altogether, and move Alcohol to a Schedule 1 drug

Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Some examples of Schedule I drugs are:

heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote
27   Shaman   2018 Feb 22, 7:44am  

No way, NyQuil is what let’s me sleep when I have a nasty cold or something! Knocks me out and I feel better the next day. Miracle drug!
28   mell   2018 Mar 18, 2:33pm  

Agree with most of this. A true conservative puts personal responsibility and liberty at the top. They should abandon the war on drugs. Even heroin and ecstasy have good use cases, just not for shooting up or partying dehydrated. They should focus research on safer and/or more effective (for the medicinal use case) formulations instead of banning the drugs and research on them. Cocaine has interesting short and long term effects on NK cells for example.
29   MisdemeanorRebel   2018 Mar 18, 2:36pm  

Don't legalize Heroin.

Legalize Laudanum, the Alcoholic Tincture of Opium.

Far better to have people drinking Poppy Tea (tastes like licking a corroded battery) or a dozen drops of Laudanum in a glass of water, than injecting themselves and sharing dirty needles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudanum

And it kicks Nyquil's ass.
30   mell   2018 Mar 18, 5:40pm  

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says
Make all this shit legal and sell M134 at 7/11s and belt-fed ammo.

Finally you've seen the light!
31   Ceffer   2018 Mar 18, 6:36pm  

Legalize all of it. There is only upside, and it is gratifying that our government will have more tax revenue to implement the Great Socialist Paradise.
32   FortWayne   2018 Mar 18, 6:39pm  

Gateway drug to kids fucking their lives up. This is killing our kids. Should shoot drug dealers on sight.

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