UN: cannabis law changes pose 'very grave danger to public health'

These are not impossible to answer questions and that is not a contention.

Well it seems be to a point of contention for people studying the effects of decriminalization. The answers aren't clear. Take Portugal, for instance. Drug use reportedly went up after a change in Portugal's drug policy. However, it's not certain whether more people were being honest in reporting usage due to no longer being afraid of prosecution, or because drug use was already on the rise in nearby regions, or because decriminalizing drugs in-and-of itself actually causes drug use to increase.

It matters in what order we decriminalize drugs?

How can it not? To illustrate: if natural cannabis & synthetic cannabinoids shared the same scheduling, which do you think would be the best candidate for decriminalization? Natural cannabis, which has a long history of being a safe drug source? Or synthetic cannabinoids, which have a very short history of use, and which have the potential to cause serious health issues?

pmose, I honestly can't tell if you're trolling as devil's advocate or if you truly believe all your assertions. But I will say this: I can appreciate the effect your presence has here on Bluelight :) If it was all one big circle jerk BL would be a boring place. At the same time I applaud everyone's efforts at keeping a cool head and not letting the discussion degenerate into an all-out flame war =D
 
1. There are people who do not smoke pot because it is illegal. Polls exist on this.

2. We have to grudgingly accept the error of statistics but also recognize these are our best estimates.

3. Teenage drug use in Portugal decreased. But look at Portugal. Look at what the law is exactly. Look at the culture. Every law and land shall be different. I hope to see similar results in CO/WA.

4. We also live in a monkey see monkey do kind of world. Simply seeing people openly smoking marijuana will produce an increase in smoking.

5. More people testing positive for marijuana, I feel, tells a rather unambiguous story. To me it is stronger evidence than self reporting. Fine, it could be merely thatpeople are not caring when they may be tested and smoking at different hours, but if that is the case, then people are taking greater risks with it.

6. Marijuana is not as harmful as it was made out to be at some point in time (1970?). There are some reasonable people now who do not overstate the harm that it does. They, some, conduct positive research for marijuana. You will always be able to find some fundamentalists to argue and fight with. Look at this, they find one guy to cute for their opposition in this TIME[URL] article. How far off is his estimate, honestly? (Point is, I do not see the army prohibitionist encampments? beyond the gates.)

7. Spreading the truth works in favor for all sides. These horns are coming from the bone. Bluelight has introduced me much more to your ways of thinking and I try my best to consider them from a personal perspective, even if perhaps I do not embrace them.

Taking face to face has a much greater impact on belief than this forum and I know I can be overly detailed and pointy, but I argue because I do have an interest in understanding. Albeit, to dispatch the evil seed from the wicked pit of the Earth, but whatever.
 
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These laws are made to benefit society.

These laws were made to benefit a few bitter, delusional old farts.

I do not feel you have a right to do as you please with yourself because we are all linked collectively.

That is to say, I do not see you using a substance without a recognized benefit and harming yourself (statistically/theoretically of course) as doing no harm to me.

I very much doubt we are linked in any meaningful way. And I really couldn't care less if you think my rights don't include consuming a substance in private - which I will continue to do if I feel like it.

I feel your sense of autonomy is culturally bound, not a universally recognizable human right.

Hah, I wish.
 
Do these farts have names?

We are connected, not at directly as the people between us.

You wish? I don't quite follow.
 
Yes, they have names.

I sense no connection - shall I try a proxy server?

If my "sense of autonomy" was culturally bound, I assure you that I'd have a never-ending supply of any drug I want.
 
Only someone who is borderline retarded would think telling the truth works in the favour of both sides. The alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical, law enforcement and corrections industries would lose billions if the lies and fake science about drugs stopped. You live in a naive fantasy world pmoseman. Why do you think the over 65 demographic has the highest proportion of people against weed?
 
Only someone who is borderline retarded would think telling the truth works in the favour of both sides. The alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical, law enforcement and corrections industries would lose billions if the lies and fake science about drugs stopped. You live in a naive fantasy world pmoseman. Why do you think the over 65 demographic has the highest proportion of people against weed?
Because that worked?
 
Holy shit, I've had it with your poorly thought out one-phrase responses. It is because that was the era of successful propaganda, and it only worked in their generation, whose elderly minds are simply not plastic enough anymore to take in new information. It was not targeted at them in the present either as you seem to think. There's is simply the generation that has kept on believing the lies originally told.

What kind of accomplishment is that? What point are you trying to make? Why is this success a good thing? Don't try to weasel your way out answering this either, you started with a half response now explain yourself.

The fact that each subsequent generation believed less and less propaganda is telling.
 
It accomplished survival.
You need to ask old people to find out why they are against weed.
Life is not a good or bad thing. Do you think we've grown immune to propaganda?
 
The survival of propaganda? Weed cannot kill you but the drug war has killed thousands. And no, we are more skeptical of government lies now as well more as having information is more readily available to us. Old people are against weed because they believe old government lies, I don't have to ask.

Once again you lazily and pathetically dodged responding to my questions just to spew pseudo-philosophical bullshit. Why do you even post here?
 
Pmoseman, I've been thinking about what you wrote - in that we are connected, which I interpreted as you trying to tell me that we depend (in an indirect manner) on each others' contributions to society.

Here's the honest to God deal with me and my situation:

- After decades of struggling to find a way to go about my workday as comfortably and as efficiently as possible, I find that I can work much more efficiently, and for longer periods of time when I'm "high" on my drug cocktail of choice. Why? Because mental and physical distractions (I suffer from chronic pain) are at a minimum. I do not nod away at my job, and I do not behave in a manner which undermines the productivity and safety of me or my co-workers. And you can argue that I'm wrong simply by the fact that I show up to work intoxicated. Well, that may be, but it doesn't impede my ability to do my job. Overall, because I'm free of pain and other unsettling health issues, I do my job much better.

- In contrast, when I have worked sober, I find I'm constantly distracted by chronic pain, difficulty concentrating, a generally dysphoric mood, and many other issues. And so my productivity level takes a nose dive. And what I just mentioned does not take into account any type of drug withdrawal, as I have worked full time for years without physical dependency and/or addiction issues (with mediocre results at best).

- In truth, I wish I could live a drug-free life in which I am free of the health issues which provoke me into self-medicating myself. Unfortunately, after countless attempts to do so over the past 2 decades, I have failed time and time again.

- Before resorting to my own selection of drugs, I spent several years and close to $100,000 USD on conventional approaches to health issues. In the grand scheme of things, I experienced limited success with this approach, mostly because of all the bureaucratic bullshit doctors and patients have to deal with. For example, I was not granted access to what may have worked for me because I did not have enough objective medical evidence to meet the criteria required in order to gain access to certain treatments. And I'm sure this happens every day in North America with countless other patients who end up suffering needlessly - all because their medical issues could not be clearly shown on an X-Ray. And it made me lose any confidence I had in the system. And this is ultimately what made me decide to self-medicate.
 
Even with the possibility of slight increases of the "harm" caused by marijuana, it should all come down to human rights.
I should have the right to smoke whatever fucking plant I want in the privacy of my own residence, and no government or authoritative body should have the right to tell me otherwise, let alone fine or imprison me for doing so.
And furthermore, I should have the right to have safe regulated access to said plant and not have to acquire it through possibly sketchy black market sources.
If I can buy liquor legally and drink it everyday till my liver fails then I should be able to buy marijuana everyday and smoke it till my lungs give out, it's my fucking body and my life so quit telling what to do with it
 
My idea of survival might include dispatching those like pmoseman from the Earth.

Hmm.

I do agreewith some of what he says. We are connected. And while I tend toward a libertarian idea, he is right that we are connected, and what one does does eventually effect the other. But the balance is WAY off with these laws. At best, we run damage control. We minimize harm. Drug laws in the forms that are challenged now, the draconian ones, do NOT minimize harm.

Sure, monkey see monkey do but we NEED to be allowed to as a society processes through this. Perhaps some negative might come in the short term but the perpetual nannying is severely limiting to society. People may smoke more, more of them may smoke with lessened restriction, but I doubt that it will always be that way, if there is really a reason not to. And time will tell that... But we need to be able to process.
 
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