4 More States Legalize Cannabis - who's next?

Moses said:
Reckon based on what? Policy decisions should be based on more than what you reckon. Can you show a boozy weekend now and then is more harmful than a chilled night in with weed now and then?
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What change would the policy decision make to how harmful weed is?
 
Pawnless Endgame said:
It can be taxed and regulated like alcohol, then proceeds can go into the struggling NHS.
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Last thing the NHS needs is more money that the middle management can syphon off and mis-spend!!
Put the money toward more and better medical professionals and better treatment of patients. Use it to drive out the semi-privatised model they're currently destroying our healthcare system with!

Arsonist said:
These are good points, but one might still question whether legalising cannabis simply to alleviate the strain on society from the criminal underworld is justified. Crime will always exist, if not for cannabis then for something else.
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Indeed - If anything, it will bring cannabis to a wider market and open the way for criminals to supply their cannabis cheaper to this market.

Tefal said:
And also youre forgeting most places you go to socialise won't let you take your own product's.
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You never known anyone sneak their own snacks, bottles of brandy and stuff into a cinema?

Tefal said:
And not to mention most people arent going to invest in costly indoor grow set ups to get a harvest every 3 months
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They invest in costly manufacturing set-ups in order to flog knock-off phone cases and USB drives and rucksacks and mice and trainers and belt buckles and...... why not this?

Besides, if you want any decent mead, that's usually the way to go.

Gabbatek said:
but crappy victorian England cant do anything.
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Shut up and get back to the workhouse, you ragamuffin peasant-orphan!!

dirtychinchilla said:
Also, cannabis isn't a gateway drug. None of the other drugs that I've ever tried have been in any way, shape, or form, like cannabis.
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ALL the other drugs I've tried were made possible from knowing people involved in cannabis. This includes cocaine.

dirtychinchilla said:
Trying them just meant that I would never have them again because I didn't like the affects.
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I tried mine because I didn't like cannabis...
I tried cannabis because a lot of my associates (and one girlfriend) at the time were into it.
It is a gateway drug.

dirtychinchilla said:
Most people don't turn from cannabis to ecstasy, which is probably next up the ladder, for example.
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How strange... that's exactly what I did and what most of the aforementioned associates did... but it's not a gateway drug and most people don't do that. It was only those three large towns that did it that way, yeah....
 
The arguments over harm are a bit of a moot point really. Most things in life lead to either higher medical costs in the long run or reduced life expectancy.

Stress
Too little sleep
Bad diet
Too litter exercise
Smoking
Drinking

I don't have an issue with any of the above but I liked smoking weed (until the dastardly missus came along). I would put a lot of money on my general health being better than 95% of people in the country even if I smoked weed on a semi regular basis.

As is stands though the government will never legalise it. You will have some overweight middle aged man who drinks too much and is generally an unhealthy specimen telling people why weed is bad for them.

The main reason it seems America has done it is because it makes them a **** load of money.
 
Moses said:
Reckon based on what? Policy decisions should be based on more than what you reckon. Can you show a boozy weekend now and then is more harmful than a chilled night in with weed now and then?
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I agree, policy decisions should be based on the recommendations of learned people who have formed their opinions from statistics and scientific evidence, like Professor David Nutt, the chief drugs adviser for the government who got sacked because his views weren't conservative enough. Remember him?

Sadly though, I'm not a Professor. I only have some life experience and anecdotal evidence, just like everyone else in this thread.
 
Arsonist said:
Your argument is invalid in so many ways.

Cannabis should be legalised because you don't like the stigma associated with smoking it? There's a stigma for a reason...This is like saying 'shoplifting should be legalised because I'm quite fed up of it being taboo that I steal'.

To an extent you are right. It doesn't make that much sense when alcohol and tobacco are probably more harmful than cannabis. But you can't base an argument on legalising something because something else is legal.
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Fair enough, I didn't really put an argument across, mostly just my own selfish reason.

It's demonised because it's illegal; it make no different that it happens to be your vice. What if my vice was killing people? 'It's so unfair that some people unwind with a glass of wine at the end of the day, I do it with a murder. Yet some people demonise that just because I have a different vice to the majority.' Where should the line be drawn?
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Oh of course it's demonised because it's illegal. But my point is just because I smoke cannabis on a regular person doesn't make me a bad person. But to some people drugs = bad therefor people who do drugs also = bad. That's my problem with being demonised.

It's even better when I have someone who has no issue with people going out and getting hammered on the weekend yet I say I smoke and it's like I just confessed to being a war criminal.

If the government can be happy enough to sell and gain tax from Alcohol and tobacco then why not cannabis? Oh that's right, because it's too easy to grow your own. Plus it would probably be political suicide for any party to legalise it and that's why we are in the situation we are in now.

When you have professors calling for legalisation shouldn't that speak for itself rather than some guy in parliament pretending to look out for us?

Don't forget your smoking IS having a negative impact on your partners health, especially if you do it indoors. She has the choice to damage her own health with alcohol, but has no choice if you smoke. That's just plain selfish.
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Well you are assuming that I smoke around her. Which I do not. I always smoked in the spare-room or mostly outside.
 
I guess it was the point that the government had someone more educated than those in parliament and when he came back with the answer that they didn't want to hear, they fired him.
 
Moses said:
I do remember him. Not sure what point you're trying to make.

If you only have anecdotal evidence, why not do some research?
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My point is...

JunglistE said:
I guess it was the point that the government had someone more educated than those in parliament and when he came back with the answer that they didn't want to hear, they fired him.
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This.

But to expand on it, my feeling (and the feeling of people who are far more knowledgeable than me) is that the risks from cannabis are not proportionate to its legal classification. I acknowledge that it can be dangerous in some circumstances, as can alcohol/caffeine etc, but generally I think it would be more beneficial if it were legalised.
 
Sunbed said:
I agree, policy decisions should be based on the recommendations of learned people who have formed their opinions from statistics and scientific evidence, like Professor David Nutt, the chief drugs adviser for the government who got sacked because his views weren't conservative enough. Remember him?

Sadly though, I'm not a Professor. I only have some life experience and anecdotal evidence, just like everyone else in this thread.
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I'm fairly sure that that's not what happened to him:

"Professor David Nutt, the government's chief drug adviser, has been sacked a day after claiming that ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.

Nutt incurred the wrath of the government when he claimed in a paper that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than many illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis."

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/oct/30/drugs-adviser-david-nutt-sacked
 
dirtychinchilla said:
I'm fairly sure that that's not what happened to him:

"Professor David Nutt, the government's chief drug adviser, has been sacked a day after claiming that ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.

Nutt incurred the wrath of the government when he claimed in a paper that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than many illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis."

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/oct/30/drugs-adviser-david-nutt-sacked
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How's that not what happened to him?
 
Arguing that some "top" scientific journals had published "horrific examples" of poor quality research on the alleged harm caused by some illicit drugs, the Imperial College professor called for a new way of classifying the harm caused by both legal and illegal drugs.

"Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth," he wrote in the paper from the centre for crime and justice studies at King's College, London, published yesterday.

"Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively."

Saucy stuff
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So you see no problem in a government giving a professor the sack for him stating his opinion based on the field he works?
 
dirtychinchilla said:
I'm fairly sure that that's not what happened to him:

"Professor David Nutt, the government's chief drug adviser, has been sacked a day after claiming that ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.

Nutt incurred the wrath of the government when he claimed in a paper that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than many illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis."

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/oct/30/drugs-adviser-david-nutt-sacked
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I don't see how the article contradicts what I wrote?

> Chief adviser makes claims that some drugs are less dangerous based on physical harm for typical use
> His views don't align with those of conservative party cabinet members (or rather MPs views on what they think conservative voters expect to hear) so they fire him
> "The home secretary's action is a bad day for science and a bad day for the cause of evidence-informed policy making."
 
Sunbed said:
I don't see how the article contradicts what I wrote?

> Chief adviser makes claims that some drugs are less dangerous based on physical harm for typical use
> His views don't align with those of conservative party cabinet members (or rather MPs views on what they think conservative voters expect to hear) so they fire him
> "The home secretary's action is a bad day for science and a bad day for the cause of evidence-informed policy making."
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Pretty much right, although it was a Labour government (so 'conservative' rather than 'Conservative')
 
Yeah I think I got caught up in the moment. There's a chap on here that works in government drug research who has a slightly different perspective on what happened to the professor, so he may comment, but I'm not sure that it's as clear cut as that article says.

It's obviously ridiculous to fire a scientist for providing a factual perspective on something controversial.
 
dirtychinchilla said:
Yeah I think I got caught up in the moment. There's a chap on here that works in government drug research who has a slightly different perspective on what happened to the professor, so he may comment, but I'm not sure that it's as clear cut as that article says.

It's obviously ridiculous to fire a scientist for providing a factual perspective on something controversial.
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Ah OK I thought you were saying the Professor's views were ridiculous to begin with... got our wires crossed...
 
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