Why is Marijuana Illegal?

[sanctus]

Also Borseun, I have no good friends who now are on hard drugs, but I have many good friends who smoke mj every day since years...I know, this does not prove anything (since only my word for supporting it), but I am pretty sure I am not the only one here who has many smoking friends...

[Ganoderma]

i think there are many who would agree. but i think there will always be people saying that opposite that they know someone, friend of a friend, that ruined their life from marijuana.

i am not going to deny the risks involved with intoxication, as there are many things that can happen when in altered states. but i must say that the 12 years i smoked pretty much daily, nothing happened to me except a good body weight (i under eat) and good night sleeps which allowed me to do school and go to work.

living here in taiwan its almost non existent and for 3 years have not done it once, so once again i don't eat for a day sometimes and am up until sunrise gardening or something most of my friends back home are still smoking and still working living and generally having a good happy (safe) time. but their mental "profile" does not fit the hard drug/junky/need a fix type personality so curiosity doesn't really get the cat.

[maddog]

Maybe I can't speak for all culture as I am only familiar with the States. Here MJ is no
Gateway drug. In fact (there is yearly variance), use is on the decline younger adults
for the last few years.

For myself, I have taken up Meditation as I find it more enjoyable.

maddog

[Ganoderma]

Think yoga will ever be controlled? The effects on the body are everlasting!

i tried meditating, how do you like it. honestly i cant sit still long enough so i tend just to go to sleep after i sat there for a few hours (surprisingly tiring that meditation stuff).

[lemit]

It's off-topic, but I don't think meditation is right for people with short attention spans. That doesn't mean you can't get some of the same results. For example, I like art, so I look for aesthetic patterns around me every day. They give me that same feeling of connection and transformation that meditation is supposed to give.

Putting my head against my cat's head seems to lengthen my attention span and somehow transform me. It helps, I suppose, if your cat is a Vulcan. ( I hope I don't get into as much trouble as I did the last time I mentioned my cat.)

--lemit

[lemit]

I was looking through the Political Sciences forum for things I might want to comment on when I discovered something that by posting this I will destroy.

This thread, "Why is Marijuana Illegal?" was directly above the thread "The type of ignorance that is responsible for corruption."

Bingo!

--lemit

p.s. "The type of ignorance that is responsible for corruption" now immediately follows "What would happen if we legalized drugs?"

Is a higher power at work here?

[sanctus]

So Lemit, do you mean that the ignorance out of which results mj being illegal creates corruption or the other way around? Or the fact of questioning it?

[alexander]

First of all, i don't even consider cannabis as being a drug, really, from all the health benefits you can get out of the plant, to making clothes with it, as a plant, it is no more harmful to you then a cow, but is a hell of a lot better for you.

Hemp oil for example, it's 3:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, it's made up of about 80% of essential fatty acids (linoleic acid, alpha-linoleic acid, gamma-linoleic acid, omega-6, omega-3 and stearidonic(moronic) acid), and 20% protein, of which 6.6% is edestin, and the rest are albumins, it is much lower in saturated fatty acids then any other culinary oil... (Reference 2)

Now as a so-called "illegal drug" cannabis is actually better for you then tobacco. Here's another way to look at it:
Scenario 1: say you choose to smoke either substance
Tobacco, contains nicotine, that leads to chemical addiction, you get a mild high off of it, but your body quickly becomes adapted to this higher level of nicotine that quickly makes the whole point of smoking mute. You start smoking more and more, progressively increasing from maybe a few cigarettes to a pack, to 2 packs, etc, etc. What you get out of it is, ofcourse the satisfaction of not getting the cramps, and lots and lots of soot in your lungs.
Cannabis, contains no chemicals that lead to physical addiction, gets you reasonably high for longer periods of time, continues to get you reasonably high, even as your mind adopts to the level of highness. You smoke much, much more rarely then a cigarette, and quitting is as simple as not buying the "drug" anymore.
Scenario 2: vaporising
Tobacco, with the oils, you still get nicotine in your body, which still makes you dependent on it, while no soot will accumulate in your lungs, you will still continue to seek more and more nicotine to beat the urges
Cannabis, once again, it contains THC, but its not physically addictive. Vaporising gets you a clean high, and the much better extraction of only the oils that contain THC makes you use even less plant then you would before, essentially making it much more harmless then Tobacco.

But wait, what are the effects?
Well, lets compare Cannabis to another legal substance, alcohol.

Alcohol, well rather ethanol, C2H5OH, is passed through the stomach to the small intestant, where it is rapidly absorbed into the blood stream, which makes it quickly effect all body's functions. It acts as a depressant on the central nervous system. "In low concentrations, alcohol reduces inhibitions. As blood alcohol concentration increases, a person's response to stimuli decreases markedly, speech becomes slurred, and he or she becomes unsteady and has trouble walking" (see reference 1)
As we go through the different stages of intoxication (Euphoria, excitement, confusion, stupor, coma), at even the most beginning stages of intoxication (0.03 BAC (g/100ml blood)), we can see diminishing of attention, judgement, control, impared motory reflex, which means that even low levels of alcohol in the blood impare driving abilities of a person, when we get to confusion state (0.18 BAC) all of this is extremely excentuated, person looses the sense of ballance, we see imparement of judgement on a grandiose scale, leading to apathy, this also puts you in an exaggerated emotional state, that ofcourse with violent tempers lead to some violent and explosive people, the sensory perception starts blurring vision, decreasing color and dimensions perception, increasing pain threshold, etc. Also i should note that there are numerous death every hear from overdose on alcohol.

THC, C21H30O2, the effects of the drug are achieved by this chemical bonding to cannabioid receptors (C1 and C2, central nervous and immune systems), "the lack of receptors in the medulla significantly reduces the possibility of accidental, or even deliberate, death from THC, and the lack of receptors in the mesocorticolimbic pathway significantly reduces the risks of addiction and serious physical dependence."(2) Here's what erowid (reference 3) says about negative effects: "
* nausea, especially in combination with alcohol, some pharmaceuticals, or other psychoactives
* coughing, asthma, upper respiratory problems
* difficulty with short term memory during effects and during periods of frequent use (Ranganathan M, D'Souza DC, Psychopharmacology, 2006)
* racing heart, agitation, feeling tense
* mild to severe anxiety
* panic attacks in sensitive users or with very high doses (oral use increases risk of getting too much)
* headaches
* dizziness, confusion
* lightheadedness or fainting (in cases of lowered blood pressure)
* paranoid & anxious thoughts more frequent
* possible psychological dependence on cannabis
* clumsiness, loss of coordination at high doses
* can precipitate or exacerbate latent or existing mental disorders
"
All in all, not extremely unlike alcohol, but not extreme like alcohol.

There has never been a documented death from ODing on Cannabis, this is likely also due to the fact that the ratio of effective to lethal dose of THC is around 1:1000, other examples are alcohol 1:10, cocaine 1:15, and heroin 1:6. Lethal dose seems to differ from animal to animan, and from the way of intake, in rats lowest value is by inhalation and is around 42mg of THC per kg of body weight. If it effects humans the same way, this would amount to a massive 8.6 grams of THC for an average 175lb person. Slightly extrapolating here based on some data from Erowid, average weight of high potency dried bud that is required is around 1/30g to get lightly high, 2/30g to get average high, and 1/10g to get a strong high, that ofcourse is nowhere near 100% thc. So to approximate the THC content, medical dosage is 5mg 3 times daily, which in size terms is around 1 cigarette a day weighing less the 1g, so extrapolating, 1 gram of weed yeilds around 15mg of THC, thus to get 8575mg of THC one would need to smoke 571.6g of high potency weed in about 15 minutes of time (also considering that 1lb of high quality bud can go for $1200-2000 (all info from Erowid), and you need 1.3 or so lb, that would be quite an investment). Monkeys show higher lethal threshold values (but no data on inhalation).

After all that, my points being (here referring to the "drug"):
1 Cannabis is much less health damaging then tobacco or alcohol, especially if vaporised
2 Cannabis is much less judgement inhibiting and motor-sensory inhibiting then alcohol
3 Cannabis is much safer of a drug with regard to ODing then alcohol or any orther "illegal drug"
4 Cannabis does not effect areas of the brain that are responsible fo body's vital functions, unlike alcohol

And to answer 3 questions that will come out of that post, "no i dont", "yes i have" and "yes it should, and it still wont make me run to the store and get some"

References:
1 - Physiology / Alcohol and the Human Body / Alcohol Properties
2 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
3 - Erowid

[Jway]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

Turns out later that it was a good thing, because whether you agree with it or not, there is a very good argument to be made that marijuana acts as a "gateway" drug, seemingly innocent, but opening the door to ever-more addictive and ever-more harmful and dangerous drugs.

Marijuana might have been banned for all the wrong reasons, and the original motive would not pass any monopoly laws anywhere in the world, but it sure as hell is no reason to lift the ban, as far as I'm concerned.

Can we hear that "very good argument?"

In my experience, I used it and when I found out it wasn't nearly as bad as "they" had said, then I wondered what else they could be lying about while peer pressure said "c'mon dude. It's totally cool and it won't kill you."

I'm still alive today.
Oh and virtually drug free for several years. If a doctor prescribes drugs (intended to numb the senses), I'm generally very reluctant.

The gateway argument is like saying: squirt guns are a gateway to nuclear weapons. This is why we need squirt gun control in our society. It's to protect the children.

LOL.

[alexander]

Also on that "gateway" thing, cannabis does nothing to force you into using other drugs, I think that argument was made by people looking to manipulate data. Their data showed them that people who use Class A drugs used marijuana, perhaps showing that the first "illegal" drug they tried was cannabis. The gateway effect is achieved by saying that cannabis is what led these people to using other drugs, I say if we look at it from another perspective, these people wanted to use drugs to alter the state of conciousness, they tried different drugs, starting from the "mild and safe" cannabis, and then gradually progressing to where they found the drug they want to use, that they like, their discovery route from mild to harder, to hard, merely started with the mildest of the "illegal drug" family. But the same evidence will show that these people have also already used alcohol and/or tobacco, which perhaps altered their state of mind, and they were looking for that high again in a different form (because you need more of each over time to achieve the initial effect). Thus alcohol and tobacco should be called the "gateway" drugs. This gateway effect is stupid, people would use another "illegal" substance if cannabis was nonexistent, perhaps another plant, like salvia (salvia divinorum) or mushrooms, the "gateway" effect is merely a way of manipulating data to support a propaganda point, there are no walls in the drug world, if you want, you can go and start out with LSD, nothing, literaly, nothing stops you, it just so happens that Cannabis is easier to produce in larger quantities, and at a low enough cost and higher availability it is easier and cheaper to "try" then LSD, which is not as readily available, and is hard to dose, mainly because it is hard to guess the concentration in the medium that it comes in, and the onset happens in 20-60 minutes, where marijuana is nearly instant with onset starting in less then a minute, and peaking in about 20 min, making it much easier to dose (I think erowid says something like, take 2-3 hits, wait 5-10 minutes, dont feel enough, take 2-3 hits again, and wait again). Also cannabis is much more predictable, from what i read on erowid, color can determine quality, while the level of thc in the drug will fluctuate, it wont vary as much as say mushrooms which seem to have a very unpredictable reputation...

Gateway effect is merely a way to describe a simple pattern in some data...

(BTW all the info is from Erowid here)