o.k my 2 cents worth
People have been bandying around 'the gateway effect' but from what I can see not a lot of thought has been put in to what it actually is in a 'sociological' aspect..
Do you not think that people might move on to harder drugs because they're available from the same place most of the time.. i.e chances the guy you get your bit of smoke from also happens to have or knows some one who can get speed xtc acid etc..
So surely If you legalize then you are removing the immediate connection that provides the gateway to these more harmful drugs. How often have you all been to the supermarket to pick up some general shopping and then decided to get a bottle of wine or some beers because they're on special..
I know where I would prefer to go to pick my gear up - some ones house where there is a people coming and going all day and night (asking for trouble as it stands at the moment) OR a shop/coffee bar where you can go in choose from a selection that suites your needs (i.e mild to strong) and you know that the quality/ weight is assured - you are contributing something back into the economy through taxes.
You then hopefully don't need to worry about legal repercussions affecting your social/professional life for what you do in your spare time.
Yes smoking can have a detrimental effect on people but it's a sweeping generalisation to say that every one who smokes is an unmotivated un focused waster. As long as you know that there is a time and a place for it then there's no reason why you shouldn't enjoy it if that's your thing.
I personally think that it's pretty hypocritical to say its ok to go out and get drunk but not ok to get high. (by the way the study on airline pilots - what do you reckon the results would have been if they'd drunk a bottle of vodka the night before then tried to land the plane with the same accuracy..)
I honestly believe that weed is a LOT less harmful than alcohol (just look at the statistics for emergency admissions that are alcohol related especially on a fri/sat night). I mean how often do you see caned people picking fights with strangers because they dont like the way a person is looking at them etc..but that happens on a huge scale with alcohol every single night!
The key is to take away the control of the sale of mary jane from people that just make an easy buck from it and put it under a controlled environment where it can be sold and consumed responsibly and yes educate people about the risks involved but please dont just base your opinion on outdated stereotypes of what the effects are.
See link below for a film that was produced in the 1930's about the dangers of smoking weed.. (and no it wasn't meant to be a comedy!)
http://www.tv-links.cc/movie/reefer-madness.htm Also quote from wiki on the history of laws about smoking weed below
DuPont, William Randolph Hearst and hemp
The decision of the United States Congress to pass the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act was based on hearings[2], reports[19] and in part on testimony derived from articles in newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst, who had significant financial interests in the timber industry, which manufactured his newsprint.[20]
Marijuana activtist Jack Herer has researched DuPont and in his 1985 book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Herer concluded Dupont played a large role in the criminalization of cannabis. In 1938, DuPont patented the processes for creating plastics from coal and oil and a new process for creating paper from wood pulp. If hemp would have been largely exploited, Herer believes it would have likely been used to make paper and plastic (nylon) , and may have hurt DuPont’s profits. Andrew Mellon of the Mellon Bank was DuPont's chief financial backer and was also the Secretary of Treasury under the Hoover administration. Mellon appointed Harry J. Anslinger, who later became his nephew-in-law, as the head of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (FBNDD) and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), where Mellon stayed until 1962.[21]
In 1916, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) chief scientists Jason L. Merrill and Lyster H. Dewe created paper made from hemp pulp, which they concluded was "favorable in comparison with those used with pulp wood in USDA Bulletin No. 404."[22] Jack Herer, in the book "The Emperor Wears No Clothes" summarized the findings of Bulletin No. 404:[23]
USDA Bulletin No. 404, reported that one acre of hemp, in annual rotation over a 20-year period, would produce as much pulp for paper as 4.1 acres of trees being cut down over the same 20-year period. This process would use only 1/4 to 1/7 as much polluting sulfur-based acid chemicals to break down the glue-like lignin that binds the fibers of the pulp, or even none at all using soda ash. The problem of dioxin contamination of rivers is avoided in the hemp paper making process, which does not need to use chlorine bleach (as the wood pulp paper making process requires) but instead safely substitutes hydrogen peroxide in the bleaching process. ... If the new (1916) hemp pulp paper process were legal today, it would soon replace about 70% of all wood pulp paper, including computer printout paper, corrugated boxes and paper bags.
Hemp was a relatively easy target because factories already had made large investments in equipment to handle cotton, wool, and linen, but there were relatively small investments in hemp production. Big technological improvements in the wood pulp industry was invented in the 1930s, for example the recovery boiler, and other improvements came later. So, there is a niche market for hemp paper, but the cost of hemp pulp is approximately six times that of wood pulp,[24] There was also a misconception hemp had an intoxicating effect because it has the same active substance, THC, which is in potent marijuana strains; however, hemp only has minimal amount of THC when compared to recreational marijuana strains.
An alternative explanation for Anslingers opinion's about hemp is that he believed that a tax on marijuana could be easier to supervise if it included hemp and that he had reports from experiments with mechanical harvesting of hemp reporting that the machines was no success and reports about marijuana farms[25]
"The existence of the old 1934-1935 crop of harvested hemp on the fields of southern Minnesota is a menace to society in that it is being used by traffickers in marihuana as a source of supply "[26]
"they were able to cut only a part of the Tribune Farm crop by machine, two thirds of it they did by hand with a sharp hand cuttertuff".[27]
Argument for the alternative theory is that hemp was not an alternative as raw material in the new commercial products from DuPont, the nylon-bristled toothbrush (1938) followed more famously by women's “nylons” stockings (1940). Nylon was intended to be a synthetic replacement for silk not hemp.
Also you're interested in more facts then you might want to do a bit of research on the socialogical reasons for the prohabition of it as well...( could it be that there was a 'slightly' discriminatory view on the ethnic groups that were smoking origionally
)
*edit
Also just one more thing, one of the first things that came up in google for productivity losses from the consumtion of alchohol..
http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/ … ivity.html
Last edited by sinnik (2008-04-14 08:00:46)