Comments on NIX ON PRO-POT NDP!!

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Comedian

Point taken.  But public approval of questionable private actions can conceivably lead to negative public consequences--we have already witnessed escalating health costs and social costs due to lax laws pertaining to cigarette corporations and carnage caused by foolish use of alcohol.  I agree that private citizens have freedom of choice, but only insofar as such freedom does not constrain the greater public good.  As you say, with freedom comes consequences.  Responsibility involves ensuring that negative consequences are not only mitigated, but negated entirely.  Only when individuals recognize their obligations to society as a whole and the political will expresses itself in laws that are built around the greater good will we truly achieve real freedom.  All else is libertarianism masquerading as freedom.

posted by Ebb.and.Flow on January 11, 2006 at 9:25 PM | link to this | reply

Nix on Pro-pot

You are a persuasive writer. However my opinion is pot like gambling should be a personl decision and whatever the effects an individual should have the right to chose. Of course with choice comes responsibility for ones choice and it's consequences.

posted by Comedian on January 11, 2006 at 9:12 PM | link to this | reply

Trevor, what you say could be true, I suppose...but I observed first hand

someone I love very much change from a very bright, inquisitive, and highly motivated child into someone  I hardly recognized. He stopped being meticulous in his  personal habits, loosened up to beome too casually dressed for every occasion, read hardly any more, and wanted to spend my time talking about how lovely the universe is, and how enlightened the world could become if everyone smoked pot! I could almost hear his brain shrinking...And I am not the person to argue with about pot not being a gateway drug!

Trevor, I was the observer. I heard my son ask the same kind of question you posed. He was mesmerized by his own brilliance while he was high, and he sat in it as if it were a puddle of light...and did nothing.

posted by muser on January 11, 2006 at 2:41 PM | link to this | reply

Trevor...

unfortunately, such "studies" as the ones you cite do not prove that the physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual risks of chronic sustained marijuana use do not far outweigh the benefits, most of which are clinically unproven anecdotal reports.  By the way, what does IDMU stand for?  Most reputable social sciences or medical agencies say who they are instead of hiding behind cryptic acronyms.

posted by Ebb.and.Flow on January 11, 2006 at 10:25 AM | link to this | reply

here's the requested information.

http://www.idmu.co.uk/hol6.htm

And muser, you don't know that your son might not have had a desire to excel had he never smoked pot in his life...

posted by Trevor_Cunnington on January 11, 2006 at 10:10 AM | link to this | reply

OUTSTANDING COMMENTARY! I have personal experience with

what pot does to a teenager; my son. He has a brilliant mind that he managed to subdue all through high school and on into college. Thank God, he turned it around then, and is doing very well today. I do not think for one moment that the pot did not have adverse and lasting effects. He has not yet reached  his potential; his brain on pot managed to imprint and override his desire to excell! Pot is a great deceiver of minds...

posted by muser on January 11, 2006 at 9:04 AM | link to this | reply

Trevor

I don't dispute your personal experience, you're a hip Schroedinger's cat (whether unobtrusively unobserved or readily discerned)...  and you seem to know where it's at.  But as Hamlet might say, "Seems.  I know not seems."  I am more concerned with what "is" rather than what may be.  The studies on cognitive ability pertain to sustained chronic users, and the effects of long-term use are, in my experence, as deleterious as they are dilatory. However personal anecdotals, yours or mine, regardless of how compelling they appear, are no match for studies which reveal a more cogent and compellingly comprehensive perspective on this issue.  I welcome you to cite scientific examples which prove my own evidence is in error.  In the meantime, please don't throw the infant of an inherent case for mantaining strict censures on marijuana use out with the dirty bathwater of liberal permissiveness.  The risks far outweigh the perceived benefits.

posted by Ebb.and.Flow on January 11, 2006 at 8:48 AM | link to this | reply

I respectfully disagree.

I notice the studies you cite often come from American Health Associations.  It's no surprise that they would find the conclusions they are looking for, coming from a country where the powers-that-be (of which Doctors are indisputably a part) are committed to a war against drugs.  Have you ever explored quantum theory, which has radical implications for the validity of much knowledge?  In quantum theory, it is generally accepted that seeing something inevitably changes the something you're seeing.  This translates into many scientists and doctors finding and interpreting information which they want to be there.  It's like that old biblical wisdom, Seek and Ye Shall Find.

And despite the false consensus you create for the medical and legal establishment's indictments of pot, there are some notable exceptions.  The former Police Chief of Seattle advocates not only decriminalization of marijuana, but the legalization of ALL drugs. He sees the war on drugs as a tremendous waste of taxpayer money because the commonly accepted protocol of how to fight this war is so ineffective. 

I'm not going to deny the harmful effect of pot on the lungs... if you smoke it.  You can also eat it.  And most smokers do not smoke more than one joint a day, which is a far cry from a pack of cigarettes.  I'm also convinced that it does have benefits.  I have asthma, and since I stopped smoking pot, my asthma has gotten worse, and I've actually had to use other drugs in order to treat it, whereas when I smoked pot semi-regularly, I had less problems with it.  Many doctors have accepted the benefits of marijuana, why do you think Canadian Doctors lobbied for medicinal marijuana programs, which are currently accepted. 

Also many police do not think marijuana should continue to be criminalized.  Hell, some of them even smoke it.  I once knew someone who was charged for possession like ten years ago, and when he went to trial the "evidence" against him had been considerably diminished. 

You say "marijuana users consistently score lower than non-users on cognitive tests"
I find that ironic because I remember doing an experiment where I took an IQ test after smoking a joint, and then doing the same test a month later after I had stopped smoking pot for at least two weeks.  I scored higher on the test (a commonly used IQ test) high than I did when I was sober.  Your information (garnered from indirect sources) just doesn't jive with my direct experience...

posted by Trevor_Cunnington on January 11, 2006 at 8:17 AM | link to this | reply