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I've noticed the pro-legalisation lobby always make comparisons to alcohol, yet ignore the more logical comparison with tobacco. Cannabis is far worse than tobacco, an unfiltered joint unleashing far more carcinogens and tar, leading to much more severe cardiovascular effects. Add to that the correlation between cannabis usage and certain neurological disorders in later life. A steady use of alcohol, in a daily but regulated amount, is beneficial to health, at the very least it's not permanently harmful. Regular doses of tobacco smoke or cannabis have lasting effects; tar and whatnot don't simply get circulated out of our systems.
You obviously have no evidence to back this up, seeing as how tobacco is chemically altered and engineered to be far more potent than the natural plant from which it is "refined". Even a small amount of alcohol imbibed daily has (albeit small) lasting side effects, positive or negative. To say that smoking a joint is worse than smoking a cigarette, is completely unfounded. First, there is lot less pot in a joint than there is tobacco in a cigarette. Comparing the two is like comparing a mixing bowl of rat poison to a handful of pure cyanide capsules. Second, very few people smoke an entire joint to themselves, seeing as how a bowl (roughly a third of a joint, depending on the paraphanelia) is usually enough to get one sufficiently "high". These tests assume massive intake rates that most users simply don't follow. The most pot that I have ever smoked in a single sitting has been three ounces. A dimebag, which is sufficient to get me and two friends high three times throughout a day, is 1.75 grams, is what is more typical of your average smoker. Since these tests are meant to reflect the average smoker and the effects of their habit, they should be using the dosage an average smoker would use, not some arbitrary number pulled out of thin-air that's on-par with the amount of cigarettes your average smoker smokes in a day (a pack and a half).
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Uh no, you evidently didn't read the research that I'm thinking of. In the study that I saw reported, the results showed that test subjects who used marijuana had higher instances of the neurological illnesses in later life, compared to test subjects who didn't use marijuana. THAT is a correlation. In the test population, dope-smokers ended up with neurological illnesses more often than non-smokers. Not my fault if anyone doesn't like those results.
Could you reference me to this research, it'd be greatly appreciated to see what corporation/"independant" study group performed this.
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They never taught us that in LAWS 101... there are enough harmful products in use in this day and age; why add more? Seems a waste, really. Banning everything we currently have would reduce rights that already exist, which is arguably a bad thing. However, choosing not to legalise another drug doesn't actively take anything away. Incidentally, there's a reason all theft is illegal: theft is a crime. If it can't be called "theft", then it's not illegal. If you take something, but think it's yours, you're not guilty of theft. The comparison is flawed.
Could it have something to do with the FACT that prescribed drugs kill more people every year than all of the illegal drugs combined? Could it possibly have something to do with the fact that Alcohol kills more people than all the prescribed and illegal drugs combined every year? You also have to remember that smoking pot, doing a line of coke, and then banging some heroin were once LEGAL things. It's not like these things have been wrong since the beginning of civilization, it wasn't until 1920s that people started getting anal about what people did with their own bodies. It's not that these people want new rights, it's that these want their rights BACK. Don't get me wrong, I think heroin is a horrible filthy thing and that 90% of heroin junkies should die, cold, hungry, and alone in a pool of their own filth, but since when was it my right to tell anyone what they can or can't do to their own body?
Just for the record, if you take something that isn't yours, even if you think it's yours, it's still theft, people are just more likely to drop the charges.
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I'm biased against the idea of having a society with yet another group of money-wasting and idle addicts - the dark side of legalising any substance, as shown by alcohol. I hate dealing with certain types of drunk people; stoned people are even less predictable, so I'm biased. However, when I'm looking at research or studies - scientific undertakings - I don't like the idea of the research being done from a biased standpoint.
What's the difference between you buying a video game, and me buying a bag of pot? We're both sitting around, doing something that is completely unproductive, and wasting time. Hell, the internet, another complete waste of time where people swap porn and blather endlessly about things that don't even matter.
How many times have we seen people bum-rush a store for that new toy that's coming out? How many riots have there been because someone's team didn't win in some sporting event? Hell, have you ever been to a hippy concert after everyone left? Compare that to the aftermath of say a metal concert, or a rap concert. How many pot-riots have you seen? Hell, how many coke-riots have you seen? None? Wow, ain't that something...
To even insinuate that because someone does a drug of some sort, they instantly become worthless, is like saying that anyone who plays games is instantly worthless. I spend my time entertaining myself with pot, you spend your time entertaining yourself with whatever it is you entertain yourself with, and chances are, you spent more money on that, than I did on pot. Sure, your product may last longer, but you'll get bored with yours long before I, or any other pothead, get bored with pot.