New Study documents the brain damage caused by marijuana

[ehcks]

So I don't know all the problems down the road, I doubt anyone really knows. That doesn't mean it's a free-for-all until we find out too; that's stupid.

Oh also heroine friggin' kills you.

So does skydiving, but we were doing that back when it was still a free-for-all. What right does anyone have to tell other people how they can and can't die?

I am only for the restricting of drugs, and any other activities, that are known to cause harm to people other than the user. It is neither my nor my government's job to tell other people how well they must treat their own bodies.

 

[Lowpro]

So does skydiving, but we were doing that back when it was still a free-for-all. What right does anyone have to tell other people how they can and can't die?

I am only for the restricting of drugs, and any other activities, that are known to cause harm to people other than the user. It is neither my nor my government's job to tell other people how well they must treat their own bodies.

Dude are you listening to yourself or do you know anything about skydiving?! Do you know the regulations and the liability for skydiving or do you think it's a free for all too and no one has a say from the pilot to the lead jump to the person who packed their own chute in front of a qualified instructor (which are the rules, though I'm sure more cavalier jumpers have ignored them; some have met a comical end in that regard -.-)

Again this comment deserves the -__________- face.

If it's not your job or the government's (who should be an extension of you anyways but facts are facts the government seems a bit removed from public will at times; that and they play a consistent 50 year catch-up) then who should? Should we ignore skydivers who decide to not pack their chute to regulation? Or do we distribute that responsibility along all party members like we already do?

 

[The Dark Lord]

It's "heroin."

A big reason that injecting heroin kills people is because they can't be sure of purity. So they get a batch that is more pure than usual, end up taking too much without knowing, and die. Thanks prohibition.

FYI: I occasionally smoke heroin (no more than once every few months or so). It would be very hard to smoke enough heroin to overdose.

 

[marplots]

Has anyone in this conversation ever been addicted?
That's where the rubber meets the road and freedom has left the building. You are asking me to support slavery because you want me to believe people choose to become slaves.

If addiction is a disease, and it can be mitigated by restricting access to drugs, doesn't society have an obligation to restrict that access? If the objective is to lessen the societal costs of the war on drugs, that's fine, change the way you fight. But to abandon everything because it isn't working as is seems to miss the point of making them illegal in the first place.

 

[ehcks]

Do I need to start listing everything people do that can cause harm to themselves and only themselves until you find one you can't handwave?

Should I or the government get involved if someone's not eating healthy and is sedentary? If someone sunbathes too much? If someone swims at a beach with no lifeguards? If someone drinks too many caffeinated beverages and gets addicted?

People do harmful things to themselves. You can't babysit everyone. Restricting a few drugs over any of the billions of other forms of possible self-harm is nonsensical and a complete waste of time.

Restrict what can cause people to harm OTHERS. Drunk driving is known to kill people beyond just the one bad driver, so we punish people who do that. We don't ban alcohol just because some people kill their livers or get all punchy in the bar. We tried that, we know it doesn't work. We also know it doesn't work for anything else we've tried it on.

 

[Lowpro]

Do I need to start listing everything people do that can cause harm to themselves and only themselves until you find one you can't handwave?

Should I or the government get involved if someone's not eating healthy and is sedentary? If someone sunbathes too much? If someone swims at a beach with no lifeguards? If someone drinks too many caffeinated beverages and gets addicted?

People do harmful things to themselves. You can't babysit everyone. Restricting a few drugs over any of the billions of other forms of possible self-harm is nonsensical and a complete waste of time.

Restrict what can cause people to harm OTHERS. Drunk driving is known to kill people beyond just the one bad driver, so we punish people who do that. We don't ban alcohol just because some people kill their livers or get all punchy in the bar. We tried that, we know it doesn't work. We also know it doesn't work for anything else we've tried it on.

Yea I'm also saying Salus Populi Supreme ex Lesta in that there is a duty not just in government but all the way up to government to determining policies that are legal, educated, applicable, resourced, economic, and proper. The issue I see with it echks is that we can all agree that drunk driving is bad; that's obvious, right?!

But then we also have drug use, we have nutritional deficiencies that lead to chronic illness. These are JUST AS OBVIOUS dude. They kill people, they ruin lives and they put an undue burden on us. Yea it's not as immediately tragic but it's still there man! Why is that so hard to process?! I made this before with kids. We are actually smart enough to recognize child health deficiencies so that we intervene in their public school diets but we don't even look in a mirror?

I notice a disconnect here, I'm not sure if you do. I'm sure you could if you really thought about it though.

 

[ehcks]

The issue I see with it echks is that we can all agree that drunk driving is bad; that's obvious, right?!

But then we also have drug use, we have nutritional deficiencies that lead to chronic illness. These are JUST AS OBVIOUS dude. They kill people, they ruin lives and they put an undue burden on us.

They're not the same.

Self-harm is usually consensual, unless there's something very wrong with you. If we're banning consensual self-harm, then we start banning all consensual harm.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

The fact that you can't see the contradiction here disturbs me. Such a nanny CAN ONLY BE A NANNY STATE. There's no other option.

Libertarian hogwash. The government (as a representative of the people) has an interest in the general welfare of the country. If the people wanted drugs to be legalized then they would have voted for it. The fact that they haven't is proof that the majority of them don't want to live in a drug-addled society.

Sure, we could just leave it up to 'personal responsibility' and wait until drug users become a danger to themselves and the rest of society before doing anything about it. But by that time it's too late, and trying to clean up the mess becomes a much harder job. We know this because it has happened before. Prevention is better than cure.

Right, because when alcohol prohibition was lifted huge swaths of the population died of alcohol poisoning.

Did you read the rest of my post? I fully appreciate that we don't have a solution for alcohol abuse - which is not surprising considering its over 2,000 year old history and entrenchment in society. But that doesn't necessarily apply to all drugs. Heroin, Cocaine, Meth, even Cannabis is sufficiently marginalized that its use can be (and is) restricted.

What we need are legalized safe alternatives that can be regulated like regular foodstuffs and other products. If research shows that cannabis can be consumed in relative safety then it may be OK to legalize it (with restrictions, just like alcohol is supposed to be restricted to responsible adults). However, until/unless that time comes it makes sense to err on the side of caution - rather than opening the floodgates now and then regretting it later.

Numerous advocates have argued that people will get the drugs they want anyway, and therefore keeping them illegal is pointless. Then in the next breath they complain about how their freedoms are being restricted! The country I live in is known to be a nation of potheads and yet in 55 years I have only once seen someone with a 'joint', and none of my friends or acquaintances are users (or if they are they keep it well hidden). Would that change if cannabis was legal here? Sold in supermarkets? Advertized on TV? I bet its popularity would explode!

READ YOUR HISTORY. This isn't a new thing--it's been tried before. And ignoring the data doesn't help your cause.

Prohibition in America? That is not the only example of efforts to restrict drug use, and the fact that it failed is not proof that it can't be done.

Learning a bit of economics wouldn't hurt, either.

Riight. Perhaps you could enlighten us on the rosy economic future we will have when all drugs are legalized! (please show your work).

 

[Lowpro]

Because it's the same drug that is in you if you injected it in you? What you think by lighting a fire under all the opiates they'll be gentle? My advice to you is don't smoke it before you go to sleep.

[SNIP]

Look you're going to have to deal with the facts: Heroin pisses all over your muscles and your nervous system. You might keep breathing under any dosage, that's a factor of your physiology at that point. If it were compromised in any way, be it being tired, stressed, maybe you had a bit of alcohol, opiates piss on all of that; I mean a long dark stream of piss I'm not talking about a 2 year old's tinkle here. It depends on how your body is at that point. The variable is the physiology of your body interacting with the opiates. All it takes is what you could consider your normal dosage but you take 50 winks and wind up dead. It's that easy, because that's what opiates do.

Now I'm glad to have educated you fair lot on this but we've moved a bit on the discussion of policy. If you want to go read Erowid some more or whatever you stoners do, knock yourself out.

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[KoihimeNakamura]

Because it's the same drug that is in you if you injected it in you? What you think by lighting a fire under all the opiates they'll be gentle? My advice to you is don't smoke it before you go to sleep.

[SNIP]

Look you're going to have to deal with the facts: Heroin pisses all over your muscles and your nervous system. You might keep breathing under any dosage, that's a factor of your physiology at that point. If it were compromised in any way, be it being tired, stressed, maybe you had a bit of alcohol, opiates piss on all of that; I mean a long dark stream of piss I'm not talking about a 2 year old's tinkle here. It depends on how your body is at that point. The variable is the physiology of your body interacting with the opiates. All it takes is what you could consider your normal dosage but you take 50 winks and wind up dead. It's that easy, because that's what opiates do.

Now I'm glad to have educated you fair lot on this but we've moved a bit on the discussion of policy. If you want to go read Erowid some more or whatever you stoners do, knock yourself out.

Edited by kmortis: 

Removed response to previously moderated content

.. you do know the method of taking matters for effects, dosage and concentration, right?

 

[Lowpro]

.. you do know the method of taking matters for effects, dosage and concentration, right?

Yes. That still doesn't address the other side of the coin, your physiology. You could easily pop an oxycodone and still overdose from a sensible "dosage" and die if your physiology isn't going to play under par too. You could slam the H train harder than Nikki Sixx too and come out playing Kickstart My Heart in front a live audience.

That's the point I'm trying to hammer home. The dosage isn't the problem as much as it is your response to the dosage. Is that hard to understand for you guys, I swear I'm not speaking in riddles.

 

[The Dark Lord]

Because it's the same drug that is in you if you injected it in you? What you think by lighting a fire under all the opiates they'll be gentle?

What I know is that when you smoke it, you do only a little at a time and it hits you almost right away. So it would be hard to smoke enough to kill you. I won't pretend that it is impossible to die from smoking heroin, but yeah, it is much less risky than injecting it.

My advice to you is don't smoke it before you go to sleep.

I don't, it would be a waste anyway.

[SNIP]

I mean seriously by your logic we could take the purest of pure straight from the heart of Afghanistan but if we keep breathing by golly we didn't overdose! If that's the case then there's no such thing as dosage; it's either live or die (or get taken to a hospital, though I doubt we'd get to on in Afghanistan...)

When I say the danger of heroin is overdosing, I think it is pretty obvious I mean taking enough to die.

Look you're going to have to deal with the facts: Heroin pisses all over your muscles and your nervous system. You might keep breathing under any dosage, that's a factor of your physiology at that point. If it were compromised in any way, be it being tired, stressed, maybe you had a bit of alcohol, opiates piss on all of that; I mean a long dark stream of piss I'm not talking about a 2 year old's tinkle here. It depends on how your body is at that point. The variable is the physiology of your body interacting with the opiates. All it takes is what you could consider your normal dosage but you take 50 winks and wind up dead. It's that easy, because that's what opiates do.

OK. I don't do that.

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Removed previously moderated content and response to same

 

[Lowpro]

When I say the danger of heroin is overdosing, I think it is pretty obvious I mean taking enough to die.

THAT is the problem. The metric of taking enough to die is the wrong metric because concentration and purity are just the players. It's your body that's the white hat referee and its his calls that matter and he ain't the same at all times of the day.

I can understand every few months you dim the lights, put on your nice silk robe. Maybe light a few sandlewood scented candles before you take a nice well-deserved toke of that ol' smack but if you want to be safe about it, date a well trained nurse. You don't get to make a conscious decision to stop breathing on heroin, so when your body decides today wasn't the day having a nurse on standby is doing yourself a solid.

 

[WildCat]

The jury is still out on marijuana, but evidence is mounting that it is not as harmless as many people think.

It's been used by millions of people for hundreds (probably thousands) of years, surely any significant health effects would be apparent by now if it was actually dangerous?

Pot was made illegal not because of any known effect on health, but as a way to harass Mexicans and blacks, at least in the USA.

 

[WildCat]

The highlighted part is exactly the problem. That reasoning is so goddamned divorced of compassion and consideration for everything from the spectrum of your family, your neighbor, your lifetime partner, or a guy you've just met but never knew beforehand. What you've just said is so wrong and so vile and yet you're so goddamned quick to say "throw em' in prison!" that it's just....DAMN dude! really?!?!? That's so sick that you should be ashamed. I mean let me put on my big boy ignorant Texan voice and maybe you'll understand the satire: "Hey who gives a !@#( if it hurts him as long as it dun't hurt anyone else then by all means let him totally get right tight with whatever he wants, after all @#(! em' right?!"

And the tens of thousands of people killed in the "war on drugs", or the tens of millions of people incarcerated or with criminal records because of it? Is it worth it to keep someone from smoking a joint?

 

[WildCat]

Nearly 5,000 people die from choking in the US every single year.

It should be illegal to sell, possess, or ingest any food item bigger than a pea.

 

[ravdin]

Has anyone in this conversation ever been addicted?
That's where the rubber meets the road and freedom has left the building. You are asking me to support slavery because you want me to believe people choose to become slaves.

If addiction is a disease, and it can be mitigated by restricting access to drugs, doesn't society have an obligation to restrict that access? If the objective is to lessen the societal costs of the war on drugs, that's fine, change the way you fight. But to abandon everything because it isn't working as is seems to miss the point of making them illegal in the first place.

A lot of people are addicted to alcohol. Alcohol addiction has one nasty effect that no other drug has: withdrawal can kill you (quitting other drugs cold turkey can be extremely unpleasant but no other drug is known to be potentially lethal when you DT).

I think that we have an obligation to help people who abuse alcohol, but most of us would agree that it makes no sense at all to prohibit it for everyone. We would not be "helping" alcoholics by throwing them in jail.

To your other point, we should absolutely abandon failed policies. I don't know what you think the "point" is of the War On Drugs, but it is a failure in just about every measure- there is more supply, and more demand, and more money in this black market economy than there ever was.

 

[roger]

Perhaps you, Dinwar are a part of the group that can handle smoking pot every so often or perhaps everyday, but there are people out there that can not handle it. These people will have a negative impact on society. Out of the people I know, the majority of them smoke for the wrong reason(s). Trust me, I wish personal freedom and liberty were the only constructs, but in a society as closely intertwined as ours it doesn't work that way.

This is a pure hypothetical, right?

Because since it is illegal to smoke pot, clearly these people are not actually smoking anything, right?

Another construct that you have to take into account is the fact that the drug laws stop few people.

 

[ravdin]

This is a pure hypothetical, right?

Because since it is illegal to smoke pot, clearly these people are not actually smoking anything, right?

Another construct that you have to take into account is the fact that the drug laws stop few people.

It's worth repeating that drug laws do not stop people from getting access to drugs. We can't even keep drugs out of prison!

 

[ravdin]

Here's a recent victory in the War On Drugs: a SWAT team in Billings, Montana recently dropped a flash grenade on a 12 year old girl during a no-knock raid. She suffered first and second degree burns on the side of her body. The police officers declined to comment on why they burned a child, other than to say that they did not know there were minors in the house despite their extensive preparation. They also turned up precisely nothing: no arrests were made and no charges have been filed.

http://missoulian.com/news/state-an...cle_71d1f226-1474-11e2-b4b4-0019bb2963f4.html

Just a few more of these and we'll definitely have the drug-free society we've been promised.