Pot in the U.S. has a 0% death rate. People can also abuse tabacco and liqour just like they can with pot. The secound hand smoke is also way more hazardest then the secound hand smoke from weed. If a child grows up in a house where everyone smokes around them, then their more likely to develop lung cancer or other server heath problems. Most people that smoke pot don't smoke it infront of their kids, so they wouldn't breath it in. Pot does not make you violent like how liquor does to a few people. The only reason I could see is driving high, but yet many people drive under the infuence of alchol, so whats the difference. Why not go after people that are using real drugs.
2006-12-02 07:23:17 · 8 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics & Government ➔ Law & Ethics
If your short term memory is still functioning at all, please try to remember to do more research on marijuana instead of listening to other dopers. (a resource other than High Times perhaps).
If most dopers don't smoke weed around their kids, how can you compare the damages of the second hand smoke? Most dopers don't even know where their kids are! Oh wait, they're being raised by grandma b/c the money for rent, presents, and food other than McDonald's goes to mommy's dealer/boyfriend who like to molest/beat me when mom's cleaning rooms at the hotel that rents by the hour.
There is no such thing as tobacco abuse.
"The only reason I could see is driving high, but yet many people drive under the influence of alchol, so what's the difference"..um..right so there shouldn't be anything wrong with driving drunk b/c dopers do it too? Currently both are illegal so what's your point?
2006-12-02 07:53:42 · answer #1 · answered by BrutalBaby 4 · 2⤊ 1⤋
I share your opinion. I feel tobacco and liquor are much worse.
And that marijuana is a natural herb.
Although I started smoking very young, pot at my house was just an everyday thing. My step dad was a dealer and my older brothers and sisters would just bring it out and roll one, my mom even smoked.
I do however now relize that I can't just stay high and make it a lifestyle.
It has lots of positives though.
They need to legalize it and go on and make that money, they stand to make quite a bit off taxing it. And you don't have to cut people off after they have had a few to many, in concern that they may run over and kill someone.
We can and I know people who grow tabacco, so I think we should we allowed to grow weed. It makes a beautiful plant. Gardeners would love it.
2006-12-02 15:40:58 · answer #2 · answered by dancinintherain 6 · 3⤊ 1⤋
You have astute observations. Marijuana was made illegal in 1932, a few years after the Great Depression started. In those days, there was not the intense pressure to be "politically correct". If you read the legislative record when this issue was being debated, legislators say such things as "we don't want the Mexicans coming here and taking jobs from Americans, and this is their drug of choice, so if we make it illegal, it will keep them out".
Add to that the well-funded alcohol industry lobby, and it remains illegal. It is among the safest of drugs possible, yet illegal. How strange is that?
Ask any cop, have you ever had to fight someone who is only stoned? You already know how they will answer.
2006-12-02 16:44:09 · answer #3 · answered by finaldx 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The only reason that marijuana is illegal and alcohol is legal is POLITICS and HISTORY.
Prior to 1917, most narcotics were legal
If you read the history of the old west, you'll hear about "patent medicine salesmen" who went around selling magic elixirs that could "cure whatever ailed ya" - they were basically the dopemen of their day, because their product was an opium derivative - basically it was drinkable heroin!
In those days, pot, heroin and cocaine were LEGAL!
What do you think Coca Cola originally was?
It was a stomachache medicine made from cocaine! That's why they call it COCA Cola! as in it was made from the Coca leaf, the source of cocaine!
But, during World War I, the federal government decided to regulate narcotics, and pot, coke and heroin became Schedule III controlled substances, prohibited by law with no recognised medical uses.
In 1918, the feds went even further. As a result of a political campaign waged by the KKK and the Republican Party, the 18 Amendment to the constitution was passed, prohibiting the interstate transport of alcohol. Shortly therafter, a federal law was passed enforcing the 18th amendment, and outlawing beer,wine and liquor.
This is what the historians call Prohibition.
Immediately, the bar owners, distillers, brewers and wineriers of America went underground, and joined forces with Italian, Jewish and Irish gangsters in the major east coast cities - and racketeers in Canada, Mexico and Cuba.
This is the birth of modern American organized crime, that's why we have the Mafia today!
The feds only had a handfull of US Department of Treasury agents to deal with this army of gangsters - and they were the only ones trying to stop the flow of booze, just about every other law enforcement agency in America was on the take and either passively ignored or actively assisted the "bootleggers"
Sounds a whole LOT like today's "war on drugs" doesn't it?
And, just like the war on drugs, gangsters rarely saw the inside of a jail cell while a lot of low level bartenders, brewery workers and liquor truck drivers were sent to the federal pen for years at a time and emerged from jail with a felony record for life!
Sounds familar, doesn't it?
By 1933, the Democrats were back in power, and they had strong political ties with the leading east coast bootleggers - in particular the 5 Italian "cosa nostra" or mafia families of New York City, Al Capone's Chicago Outfit and an Irish distiller turned bootlegger from Boston named Joseph Kennedy (the father of President John F. Kennedy - yes, JFK's people were gansters - they 're "respectable" now but they were gun toting hoodlums back in the day!) The Democrats were also supported by the American Federation of Labor - one of who's largest unions, the Brewery Workers International Union had all but collapsed when liquor became illegal.
So, when New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president, one of the first things he did was to get the 21st Amendment passed, repealing Prohibition and legalizing liquor.
That's why alcohol is legal and pot is not.
Hey, in some countries it's the other way around.
In Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibuti, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, alcohol is illegal (for religious reasons) but the local chewable variety of marijuana (known as khat) is PERFECTLY LEGAL and is sold openly in every town...
2006-12-03 01:51:30 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Because not everyone can grow tobacco or produce liquor. This small supply base makes it easy to control and tax. While with pot anyone can toss some seeds in a planter and grow all they would need. Which makes it virtually impossible to tax. Not to mention the drug cartels don't really want it legalized and then taxed since they would have to give a cut of their profit away.
2006-12-02 15:30:17 · answer #5 · answered by bofh772 2 · 6⤊ 0⤋
Culture. Our culture finds alcohol acceptable and marijuana foreign. Others' cultures finds marijuana acceptable and alcohol foreign (native america and Jamaica).
In the Ottoman empire, coffee was illegal. They would have secret coffee houses but people were permitted to smoke Opium. I am not kidding, you can look this up.
2006-12-02 15:31:28 · answer #6 · answered by bluasakura 6 · 3⤊ 0⤋
What kills me is that the govt. is so anti-marijuana, that it won't allow doctors to dispense it as a medicinal to cancer patients. BUT! Morphine is. Duh...isn't morphine a TAD more addictive than pot???
2006-12-02 23:05:55 · answer #7 · answered by megamillions1m 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
P O L I T I C S !
2006-12-02 15:26:33 · answer #8 · answered by me_worry? 4 · 4⤊ 0⤋