As my young adult kids would say …

“Whatever!”

I looked at what you said.

You said I should pay attention to this:

Marijuana kills - end of story.

and this:
…another pothead killer…

…and ignore our own party’s efforts to decriminalize this particular drug.

So after my deep breath I have to conclude that I am still in my right mind. I don’t accept statements like that, which are FLATLY wrong, without pointing out the errors. Heckfire, there IS no known “lethal dose” of marijuana. You can overdose and kill yourself with Aspirin or Bourbon or cough medicine, but MJ won’t do that in any known quantity. I daresay it causes a heckuva cancer problem if you do too much but that doesn’t keep tobacco off the streets.

Simply, Flatly Wrong. Also wrong about the approach which actually best controls availability to kids.

See, I grew up with the lies from the government. I grew up with lies about Vietnam, and I grew up with lies about the evil weed. I learned by watching the kids at my University in the late sixties. Hell, they took EVERYTHING, and you can learn a lot just by watching. The Potheads went on to pre-med, no problems. One Guy on LSD wound up in a padded cell for 3 weeks and didn’t graduate, most survived their trips with varying degrees of minor short term disability. The boozer crashed an airplane during flying school… managed to graduate though. The drop out rate on the speed freaks was low at first, they were high achievers, driven, but they burned out and dropped off by the time we hit our senior year. Sometimes they’d be violent. Th I could see this every damned night. I know what the drugs do because I lived with a lot of people who did a lot of different drugs. Beats reading by a long long way. Then my brother did Heroin, as well as MJ and Tobacco and Booze.

What happens is that the government lies and the kids know there’s a lie. So when the government tells the truth, as with P, the kids think it’s just another lie. It undermines EVERYTHING we try to do. Lying like this, for a government or a parent, is the most counterproductive thing you can do, and to me, accepting a lie lying down is almost as bad as the original sin. Lying IS the original sin.

Communication is the most difficult trick we humans haven’t quite mastered. Each of us has our own model of reality and our specific and unique ability to manipulate it to make predictions about what will happen. One of the things that sets us at the top of the food chain is the magnitude and quality of our ability to communicate with others what we’ve discovered, and yet it is incredibly fragile and hard won. It takes years for a child to learn to talk. It takes decades before we learn the things we really need to know to have a civilized society. Lies tear apart the threads of communication that we so laboriously have woven together into a society.

Michael Ellis is not however, lying. He is repeating someone elses lies. Having seen the lies in their original form I find nothing at all amusing about them, but I will not EVER tolerate them in my presence unchallenged.

respectfully
BJ >

Perhaps when you have each taken a deep breath you might quietly re-read what I actually said !

e

Don’t believe me that it is a very small number? This was the conclusion of the 1998 Select Committee Inquiry which was specifically set up to look at the mental health effects of cannabis and which after considering volumes of evidence concluded that the seriousness of those effects has been overstated.

Anyway, why should the negative effects on the very few override the medical benefits for the many?

And even if cannabis was incredibly dangerous that is still not a reason for NOT allowing it to be prescribed for patients who could experience a medical benefit - after all morphine is allowed to be prescribed.

He is saying that we need to throw the book at users. I don’t see that as “not detracting” from people’s choices. It CAN exacerbate existing mental illness, and it is no substitute for an effective anti-psychotic medication, but what HE is claiming is that it causes otherwise normal individuals to become violent, and that is simply and purely false…. as is his unsupported assertion about Amsterdam and the Dutch. The DEA is spreading lies about them as well, they cannot STAND to see that there is an alternative model of treatment and freedom for MJ that works better than throwing all the ratbags in cells.

I’ve seen what “illegal” does, and I’ve seen what MJ does and the “illegal’ is a heckuva lot worse than the weed.

respectfully
BJ

What’s the matter BJ?

WHY the ARROGANCE of tone and content (noticeable in your contributions throughout this thread)? It is unlikely to get your message across on frogblog.

As (you) Americans would say “LIGHTEN UP BJ ! ”

eredwen

Michael Ellis is worth heeding on this subject. What he has to say does not detract from a person’s choice to use marijuana as freely as (s)he might wish.

Some people do get into trouble with marijuana. It can exacerbate mental illness (in some cases, terminally!)

eredwen
(whose family, including a psychiatrist, has read widely on the subject)

Very good that your immediate family is well. The coincidence of the name of the victim and your own is merely coincidence then?

Since that is the case, you simply have no excuse for your attitude or ignorance. I just said that Marijuana doesn’t make ANYONE violent. No medical nor psychopharmaceutical effect to create either paranoia OR violence.

The practice of lacing cannabis with other drugs isn’t exactly a new one. The drugs can be of many and varied types, but they have ALL been used… before P there was PCP or “Angel Dust” … the contaminant is CHEAPER than the marijuana and often not disclosed to the buyer of a joint. So your argument that it is Marijuana is STILL unsupported by actual evidence. Luamanu should have had a blood test at the time and the test should have included the full spectrum of controlled substances. People who want to demonize marijuana have a field day with anecdotal “evidence” like this, but the facts about the drug are very VERY different.

Shades of “reefer madness”.

Personally I do not use it. I have my own reasons, but I have long experience with people who HAVE used a whole laundry list of substances, and of them MJ is the one that does the least harm, including alcohol and tobacco.

Amsterdam? Do you really wish to take their example ?

A repressive policy does not necessarily result in less drug use. The legality of drugs is no determining factor for levels of drug use.

Drug use in the population of 12 years and older in the U.S. and the Netherlands (1997)

Ever used Used past year Used past month

USA Neth USA Neth USA Neth
tobacco 70.5* 67.9 32.7* 38.1 29.6* 34.3
cannabis 32.9 15.6 9 4.5 5.1 2.5
cocaine 10.5 2.1 1.9 0.6 0.7 0.2
inhalants 5.7 0.5 1.1 0.1 0.4 not meas.
alcohol 81.9 90.2 64.1 82.5 51.4 73.3
heroin 0.9 0.3 0.3 0.1 n meas n meas

Also to the point…

Shafer, R., et al, Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding, Chap. V, (Washington, DC: National Commissions on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, 1972)

(That’s the Nixon-Shafer report for Nixon’s National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse)

“In examining the relationship between marijuana and violent crime, President Nixon’s National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (the “Nixon-Shafer Report”) concluded, “Rather than inducing violent or aggressive behavior . . . marijuana was usually found to inhibit the expression of aggressive impulses.”

Zimmer, Lynn and Morgan, John P. Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts, The Lindesmith Center, New York, 1997.

The Netherlands, which has permitted the possession and retail sale of marijuana since 1976, ranks lower than the United States in the percentage of people who have ever used marijuana in every age category, has a higher age of initiation among those that do try marijuana, and fewer adolescents in the Netherlands than in the United States use other illegal drugs.

You seem to be in possession of a strong opinion that is unsupportable. I am presenting facts. I already disposed of your first example quite thoroughly, and only an absence of accurate reported data gives me difficulty with the second.

Don’t believe me?
So listen to a Dutchman.
http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/reinarman.devil.html

The US DEA is LYING. They have been lying since 1936 when “Reefer Madness” first came out. If you listen to them or their shills you will be unable to discern the truth because the truth is not in them. Nor can they bear to admit that their pet project is totally without merit or redeeming features. In their ideal world we would all wear control collars and evil thoughts (and they would decide what those might be) will result in punishment.

I don’t think you will win friends and influence people here with your claims.

BJ

Given this was 1998 and Luamanu was a person with no income I doubt P or Heroin was a factor. And he wasn’t trapped when he confronted my uncle - it was an alleyway, he could still have run away.

I’ve given facts in two cases - one high profile, one not so - where Marijuana contributed to the deaths of others. You’ve just said ‘when I/friends use marijuana, I’m/they’re not violent’. Then you question the memory of users, so how do you know what you really did! Not a highly scientific rebuttal.

Amsterdam is a city plagued with hard drugs and crime - other European cities do not have the same issues. More research you overlooked.

Anyway, my point is that Marijuana isn’t safe for use in everyone - neither is alcohol - but licensing drug dealers and making it a medicine isn’t a solution for marijuana.

If I was looking at this law I’d make it illegal to be in a public place in possesion of marijuana with stiffer penalties than present. Also being under the influence in a public place would attract an instant fine of say $500.

But I know I’ll have the last ‘laugh’ here - Met’s bill is doomed as UF, most of Labour, Heather Roy, Jim Anderton and all the Nats will vote against, whether it’s at the first reading or the second reading.