Do you think Marijuana should be legalized?

Answer 1

Yes, and regulated and highly controlled by the FDA. All profit should go to getting people to quit.

Answer 2

Every time this question is asked, the vast majority of the answers come from people who really don't have a clue about the subject.

First, read the short history of the marijuana laws so you understand why it was outlawed in the first place. See http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

It is quite a funny story -- and not one that they teach in school.

Then you should take a look at the major government commission reports that have studied the subject. You can find them at http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/studies.htm

They all concluded that the marijuana laws were the product of racism, ignorance, and nonsense. They all said that there was no sensible reason for marijuana to be illegal.

The evidence is simply overwhelming. If you find someone who thnks it should be illegal you can be 100 percent sure that they could not pass the most basic quiz on the subject. How do I know? I have been through the debate thousands of times. In fact, they are so ignorant, and it is so easily demonstrated that the drug warriors have stopped even coming out to debate the subject. Every time they debate it they lose sooooo badly that they have realized that they do better if they don't show up at all.

One funny example. I was on a TV show against the head of the California Narcotics Officers Association and one of the top representatives of the DEA. At one point I turned to the host and said "I think I can demonstrate the real drug problem just by asking a few questions."

The host said, "I'll bite. Go ahead."

I turned to the narcs. "Can either one of you tell me when drugs were originally outlawed?" They shook their heads.

Then I asked, "Can you tell me why they were outlawed?" They shook their heads again.

"Can you tell me how many people are killed by drugs in a typical year?" They shook their heads again.

"In the past 100 years there have been at least a dozen major government commissions that have studied the issues and made recommendations for changes. Can you name any of them and tell me what they said?" They shook their heads again.

Then I turned to the host. "In 1973, President Nixon's US National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse concluded the largest study ever done. At the end of their study they said the real drug problem was not marijuana, or heroin, or cocaine. The real drug problem, they said, was the ignorance of our public officials who have never bothered to read the most basic research on the subject. You can see the problem sitting right here in front of you."

It is true every time. If someone thinks that marijuana should be illegal, you can be absolutely sure that they could not answer even the most basic factual quiz on the subject.

BTW, you can find all the answers to those questions at http://druglibrary.org/schaffer

Answer 3

Yes.

I believe the government spends a great deal of time trying to justify it's war on marijuana, but in reality there are many, if not more deaths related to alcohol and tobacco. Further, the amount of money spent yearly on cigarette/tobacco related illnesses should make smoking illegal too.

I work for a DME company, where we supply oxygen to those whose lungs cannot saturate enough to sustain everyday activities (not everyone who smokes gets cancer). The first thing I hear from them when I cart in the O2 Concentrator (a 70 pound and somewhat noisy behemoth) and a backup E cylinder is 'I wish I stopped smoking, and now I need this'. We have several hundred patients, and I would say 75% of them were smokers. Of that 75%, at least 20% continue to smoke! Almost all of our patients are medicare or medicaid, where the tax payer foots the bill.

Further, we're one of six DME companies in the philadelphia metro area. There is absolutely no lack of work.

That tangent is to demonstrate that there is a huge financial burden on society that we bear for smokers. And there is no lack of alcohol related fatalities.

So, to criminalize this plant but not tobacco or alcohol is disingenuous. Especially after numerous studies have demonstrated at the very least that the harm of continuous use is no different than tobacco OR alcohol, even over a long term. And if prohibition taught us anything, it's that people will continue to try growing/buying/selling marijuana, regardless of its legal status.

Let me leave you with one last thing - possession of marijuana as a first time offense leads to more prison time on average than a first time rapist. How does a non-violent offender get more time than a violent one? And there are scores upon scores of non-violent offenders in jail - and again, we (the taxpayers) are footing the bill.

Answer 4

when people think of marijuana they think of 1 of 3 things
1) Thugs who smoke and rob people (Stereotype)
2) Hippies wearing tye-dye (Stereotype)
3) 15 year old kids in high school and skate (Stereotype)

Studies in marijuana show that even heavy use of marijuana has no connection to cancer or disease in any form. Actually the opposite. Marijuana can help those with glaucoma ease the pain, people with aids gain weight and those with cancer ease the symptoms with chemotherapy. Marijuana should be legalized and does not need to be higely regulated bu the FDA because it is safer then many products on the market mainly ciggerettes

Answer 5

Yes, it should be.
As for all the health concerns...meh. One of my criminology classes pulled an experiment, called a hospital for number of people admitted for alcohol related, (be it poisoning, DUI, both the drinker and the nondrinker) tobacco/nicotine, and marijuana. Alcohol of course had a huge number, then came chainsmokers with lung cancer and asthma and all of that.Pot? A big, fat effing ZERO.
The DEA has a list of drugs and then the harmful things that the drug can do to you. A good bit of that is bull. Now, if someone were to read that, and then figure that bit of information out, then this person might presume that theyre also BSing about some of the drugs that actually ARE quite dangerous, perhaps, heroin.
Legalized, and at the least, decriminalized. Like mentioned earlier, making pot illegal is opening huge doors to other criminal activities, people who are willing to go overboard to get their next joint and do something stupid, smugglers, the like.
It disgusts me when I see videos of DEA agents burning acres of woodlands because of a couple of cannibis plants, and looking so proud of themselves, or SWAT dressed DEA agents storming someones house to find a couple pots in someones closet.
Is THIS what my tax dollars are paying for?

Answer 6

It SHOULD be, but probably never WILL be.

Tobacco companies pay billions to ensure their products aren't outlawed, and have for years. Only now are we starting to learn exactly how harmful THOSE are.

Marijuana as it's sold now contains less chemical compounds than your average box of Marlboros, but as of yet, there is no one willing to step up and lobby the government into making them legal.

And no, your little 4/20 protest where 20 people show up and yell for a little while about legalizing weed in front of the state building isn't going to do any good, you need to bribe a senator. Preferrably multiple.

Answer 7

Yes, but with restrictions. Such as if you smoke and drive, it's the same punishment as drinking and driving. But if it's used in the privacy of your own home, it's ok. Obviously not large amounts, but small. Just chalk it up to the equivalent of liquor consumption. THC levels can be measured in the blood, just like alcohol. So what's the difference? Both impare judgement and response time. At least marijuana doesn't kill your liver.

It would definatley cut down the prison population so that we can keep serious offenders in longer and not have to release them due to overcrowding. Seriously, pedophiles get released to make room for people who are their 3rd offense for marijuana posession. Come on.

Answer 8

HI, I have smoked marijuana now for 12 years. Im 23. I believe it should and will be legalized. They say im a criminal they say im a thief but wheres the christmas dinner for the people on relief. Im only a criminal because the government says im a criminal.. in some countrie i would be a perfect samaritan. *** america anyways but yeah they should leagalize it for sure. Usin it for medical purposes is the first step to legalization.

Answer 9

Of course I do. Anyone who has researched for themselves would vote for cannabis to be RElegalized (it was legal for 10,000 years, illegal for only 63 years).

For those who are worried about psychological addiction (there is no physical addiction with pot), look around you: If we outlawed all possibly psycholocially addictive items, we could get rid of TV or video games, sports and hobbies.... How about people addicted to money or power - definately psychological.

It would make as much sense to criminalize people with psychological addictions because human beings can become mentally "addicted" to anything. We could build prisons from now till doomsday and not hold them all. Oh, wait, we're already doing that - 1 out of every 32 Americans were in prison, jail, on probation or parole last year! Land of the free? I think NOT!

Speaking of prisons, we used to send people to prison because we were afraid of them. Now we think it perfectly okay to send them there because we don't like their choices. Shamefully unConstitutional!

Prohibition has been proven over and over throughout history to be an expensive, ineffective policy. Why would we continue to use such a harmful policy? Besides which prohibition strikes a blow to the foundation of our nation, which is personal freedom.

Answer 10

Do you mean legalized, with no restrictions being placed on it whatsoever? No, of course I wouldn't advocate that.

There are way too many people who have become psychologically-dependent upon it for everyday use. Stressed out? Smoke a doober. Bummed out? Smoke a doober. FEH!

Is it any worse than alcohol in that way? No. AAMOF, I see marijuana abuse as being pretty-much in the same league as alcohol abuse.

OTOH, it's easy to grow your own pot, but it's not so easy to ferment your own alcohol (especially the distilled stuff); so there's a lot of potential for MJ use to become even more wide-spread than it is now if it were to be completely legalized.

I'm also seeing many tobacco smokers becoming increasingly-militant about "Smokers' Rights," to the point where people on the other side of the country are literally personally outraged that a small town near where I live is considering a total city-wide tobacco ban outside of everyone's private, single-family homes. They feel that they have a right to pollute everyone's air with their filthy tobacco smoke, just because tobacco is legal. Would marijuana smokers feel free to similarly pollute the air if marijuana were legalized? I hope not! Still, though, it seems to be happening anyway. I'm constantly smelling MJ smoke at my community college (and it's ANNOYING!).

A pretty-good case could be made for legalizing all drugs. People would be free to do what they wish, Our prison systems would be far-less-impacted (only those who actually commit crimes would be jailed, and we could write "special circumstances" laws to penalize those who commit drug-related crimes) than they are at present. We could also allow employers and others to legally discriminate against those who use all of those newly-legalized drugs (after all, no one should be REQUIRED to hire or rent to a drunk or a druggie). Increased health care costs potentially brought on by the use of newly-legal drugs would probably be more-than-offset by savings to the prison system, through not jailing people who use--but don't abuse or commit crimes around--drugs (it'd be the same as with alcohol, in that only people who abuse drink are jailed for their behaviors).

Marijuana is useful for some things, 'though it's certainly NOT "harmless," as some claim...but I feel that criminal penalties for its use in some states far outweighs any actual harm that it does.

I'd prefer to see its use (and all drug use, including alcohol and tobacco use) socially discouraged and disparaged, but not criminalized.

Answer 11

I know a bunch of hard Asses are going to say yes, but the government and law enforcement should be concentrating on that CRACK and heroin, now thy are the culprits to the erosion of a country not marijuana and buy the way I would bet BIG that 95% of government and law enforcement has smoked it at one time or another in their life not to mention their kids and definitely their parents.