True. Yes, there is a kind of worship of weed amongst some users, the weed t shirts, slippers, …in fact whole stores of merchandise.
It should be looked as , as what it is “A relatively safe way to get high.”. People do not like to admit they just like getting high it is no different to glue or opiates in that respect , except way safer. 
Potheads: weed is totally not a gateway drug, maaaaan!
Also potheads: if it weren’t for those doctors prescribing opioids to cancer patients for pain relief, nobody would get addicted to opioids!
I dont use drugs, and fully understand what people.like gain are saying. There are valid points, but i feel things are either getting.confused or people are thinking in black and white terms when EVERYTHING biological, including.societal, have many deeper issues not just A or B. I will write back later tonight on my thoughts a i am in the car headed to a meeting. But wanted to say i get gains point of view, i just think it is not founded quite right and too simple an excuse to find a scape goat. Again, ethanol makes people far (FAR!!!) more high and is WAY more deadly (it kills you easier and faster) than weed, so it is ironic people have this idea without talking about legal narcotics…eg: opiates and ethanol.
Uniformed parrots: Anyone who uses cannabis is a “POTHEAD!”, braaak!
Also uniformed parrots: Opioids and opiates are the same or different and only cancer patients are getting whichever…BRAAAK!
A good friend of mine died from overdose of opiates. He was a health nut and a fitness competitor. He drank socially, occasionally. Didn’t partake of the “weed, maaan” since it’s a banned substance. One day he hurt himself, I presume, while working out. After doctor consultation, he started using opioids/opiates to reduce the pain. He was hooked on that shit which ultimately led to his demise. It’s an anecdote, sure. I also have a very good friend who used cannabis instead of pharma to combat the side effects of chemotherapy. He’s doing well and is glad he went that route where people in his shoes who’d gone pharma are still using them. Another anecdote, sure sure.
I don’t have any problem with medical marijuana in the event that it works, but stoners are not using it for pain control, they use it because they are assholes.
I agree. I get what Gain is thinking as I also felt the same in the past. I’ve done the research because of what my friends went through. A mind can change.
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Ok. I wouldn’t say assholes but, I get what you’re saying.
Stoners can be annoying, but they’re rarely if ever unpredictable and threatening in the way some drinks can be.
Actually it turns out no, “prescription pain relievers” is defined as opioids only (with one very limited exception):
Use of Prescription Drugs
The four categories of prescription drugs (pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants, and sedatives) cover numerous medications that currently are or have been available by prescription. NSDUH reports and tables combine these four prescription drug categories into a group referred to as “psychotherapeutics.” Prescription pain relievers include opioids such as hydrocodone (e.g., Vicodin®), oxycodone (e.g., OxyContin® and Percocet®), and morphine. Opioid pain relievers act in the central nervous system to reduce the perception of pain. Questions about specific pain relievers in NSDUH focus only on opioid pain relievers. However, respondents may specify that they misused other nonopioid pain relievers that require a prescription. Prescription tranquilizers are…
It makes sense in at least as much as if it was aspirin etc., it would surely be much higher.
They use it because they are assholes?
Would you like to substantiate that claim?
I’ll let you know where I am going with this, some of the most psychotic people I knew growing up mellowed out a great deal after smoking a bit of weed.
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What’s your point? Correlation does not equal causation. The report concludes:
Conclusions and Relevance Support for the Republican candidate in the 2016 election is a marker for physical conditions, economic circumstances, and cultural forces associated with opioid use. The commonly used socioeconomic indicators do not totally capture all of those forces.
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The same causes of opioid addiction cause Trump support.
If there’s no causation, that usually means something else is causing both.
If anythig, the only debate is on legalizing various compounds fully in an open way. There are legitimate reasons fent isnt sold next to ginseng tablets at 711. Thats just reasonable. Same reason ither incredibly powerful AND dangerous chemicals are controlled. But for non dangerous stuff…the control mechanisms are maybe more along the lines of aspirin, gas, kitchen knives etc. All controlled in various ways, but not banned nor criminalized.
However there is zero reason to criminalize the USE of any plant material. Unless used to harm others. Ever notice castor beans grow everywhere and you can kill people easily with them…google it, its off topic but WAY more dangerous than weed or mushrooms. This enters the realm of oppression and obvious corruption issues which is more a political arena, and sometimes a control/religious hybridization.
For me, i get @gains perspective in not liking it. Thats totally fine, he/she is absolutely free to have that personal opinion. But the discussion isnt about personal opinions, its about controlling peoples choices in using such a thing on alegal basis and most importantly a “you can be caged for extended periods of time, tortured and have your shit stolen by the government” situation. Some places straight murder you. Sorry, “death penalty” sounds better…lol. I get “stoners are annoying” argument. They are. So are facebook users, everyone in a department store, drivers, people that love fashion, people that talk while chewing, people that dont wash their hands etc etc etc. But that argument is so low down the pole it becomes petty and childish to use it as a means to create laws the LITERALLY destroy lives (jail, records and everything that follows). If anything, people that dont wash their hands after taking a shit should be jailed before someone burns a plant at home and breathes in its air. Seriously, especially during the covid paranoia…
The only thing more retarded than a hardcore stoner eating 711 and playing video games all day are the laws banning entire species of plants because they dont like how some people behave when consuming them…we have laws on behaviour already, enforce them first…controlling manufacturing is probably the best compromise. Much like many places limit the size of a tobacco garden (tell me thats not lobbyists excercising their rights to get politicians to become mini dictators), they can (and do now, eg. Canada) this with things like weed.
People should have rights, and i feel species should not be extirpate based on such hollow arguments as “i dont like them”. Species that are endangered, even with worldwide government agreements (eg. CITES), should not be having governments forcing people to ONLY harvest wild populations and jail people growing them sustainably. The peyote situation in the states is a perfect example of oppression as well as absolute intentional extinction efforts towards a protected and endangered species. As an example. Its the definition of retarded if there ever was one, both the literal and the rude one.
I understand many people may not be aware of these laws and regulations, and just be against “drugs” because they somehow were taught the controlled substance type acts in various countries are the golden standard of cutting edge scientific logic. But they are not. Simply, just not. Riddled with bullshit, often based on one religious ideology trying to either conquer or eliminate the other. That is a TERRIBLE basis for law and our culture should divorce ourselves from such old styled primitive mechanisms for gaining cheap labor. That said, as many US prison systems are for profit, and even private, and the government of the US more or less forcing other countries to adopt their war on drugs policy…we see a clusterfuck on a scale even larger than most other wars. It is going to go down in history as a huge embarrasing .failure. honestly, i would put the war on drugs on the same tier as Mao’s great famine in many aspects of retarded brainwashing and forced violence! Just that the war on drugs is a far longer timeline, which makes it all that much more shameful.
Anything? @gain and to mods, i really dont mind being called completely stupid. If anyone, gain included wants to say my opinion ia retarded thats fair game. Hope mods dont need to care about it. Anyone can kick my opinions ass as much as they like, just dont piss off the site administrators with naughty language i guess? (my apologies cause i curse a lot)
However i find it quite…not sure the word…when such strong/matter of fact judgements are put forth by someone, and people want to further discuss them they just clam up. Lets have a back and forth. Who knows, maybe you have a very legitimate claim that stoners are shit, should be jailed or weed is bad etc etc. I am coming from a completely unbias perspective, and just going by what my personal common sense, equality, and experienced has shown me. I am nothing but willing to change if new, and good, information surfaces a that will help adjust my personal common sense and experience in order to improve my efforts of equality!
Private message me if interested and you do not want to discuss in public. I dont bite, but i do care about society a great deal so short bits about its bad without follow up reasoning seems quite disingenuous.
I already made my position clear on the topic of legalizing marijuana which is to say I am in the "for’ column, for many reasons but not the argument you made above.
There are some pretty potent psychedelics that come from “plant material”, in the UK magic mushrooms are everywhere, it used to be the law that it was illegal to prepare them or sell them but picking them was fine, I think that law has changed and not sure what the law is in the US but mescaline is a pretty powerful psychedelic that comes from the cacti plant material.
Then there’s the plant material poppies which morphine, codeine, and heroin are derived from (not sure you would argue any of those should be legal because they just come from plants) and we can go on and on, cocaine derived from the coca plant.
Well, you mentioned ricin, which rather contradicts your position that there is ‘zero reason’ to criminalize the use of certain plant materials. Surely the government has a duty to curtail the use of certain substances - whatever their provenance - if they cause overt harm? That doesn’t imply that they ought (for example) to outlaw the growing of castor beans. It’s the dangerous substance itself that ought to be the target of legislation.
All drugs - medicines - are subject to very stringent laws, and if you allow individuals to distribute such things without any need to demonstrate safety, purely on the basis that they come from plants, then logically you have to allow pharma companies to do the same thing. Not so long ago the world actually worked like that, and although I tend towards laissez-faire capitalism, I don’t think that was a good thing.
Of course there are shades of grey here. Alcohol (is yeast a ‘plant’?) causes enormous problems, but we accept those problems on the basis of all sorts of complex tradeoffs. Weed has the potential for certain harms, but probably less so than alcohol. Drugs like heroin, OTOH, seem to serve absolutely no purpose outside of carefully-controlled medical settings.
Fungus. Beer is good, shrooms are too.
You sure know your fungus.
I used to have an amazing collection of psychedelic fungi. I ordered every print I could find and had a large room full of plastic tubs constantly producing goodies. Cheaper and less obvious to law enforcement than growing weed and very profitable.
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