Zach Galifianakis smokes a joint on Bill Maher's show

[addicted]

bad ass

[manleyistheman]

I commented on a post about "its his right to do to his body what he chooses".

And I added "now if only we could get rid of taxes on cigars and cigarettes."

It's about CHOICE.

There are ridiculous taxes attached to tobacco that in my opinion should be removed.

Are there huge taxes on junk food b/c of the later chances of bad health and obesity? no. At least, not yet.

Like I said, it's ridiculous.

Ban indoor smoking. Fine.

And taxes or no taxes, you still have a CHOICE to buy your tobacco. Last I checked tobacco is still legal. So again, not relevant in any way.

[Backpack3r]

Why is marijuana illegal but alcohol is legal?

I am a user of both, but just think of this:

When you are at the most drunk part of your night, are you able to operate a motor vehicle? Let alone remember where you are? No

It is the complete opposite with weed, considering i could be completely annihilated, blazed out of my skull, high as ****, and still driving perfectly...

Just an example right there

[Ellis]

And taxes or no taxes, you still have a CHOICE to buy your tobacco. Last I checked tobacco is still legal. So again, not relevant in any way.

It is relevant. You're being stubborn purely to be difficult.

Smoking tobacco is a choice. The gov't taxing the hell out of it is absurd.

Smoking marijuana is also a choice. Illegalizing, publicly chastizing, and generally LYING to the America public for decades about it is also absurd.

People should have the freedom to choose, within reason, what they want to put in their body. Gov't can claim they're looking out for the general welfare of the nation with regulations and taxation all they want but there comes a point where what they are doing has a negative impact on the public, both financially and of public opinion. Both of these items (tobacco and marijuana) have been demonized AND taken advantage of by the gov't. They are making a mint on both of them. Similar things happened with alcohol during prohibition.

To claim that they are not the same is ridiculous.

There can fair regulation.

[Enzo]

You could say that about heroin and meth. Is it OK to do those?

To compare heroin & meth to marijuana is just plain ignorant. Besides the continued illegallization of marijuana has nothing to do with safety. The facts are that the beer, wine, & liquor industry as well as the pharmacutical industry doesn't want the competition. If it had to with health & safety then alcohol would be illegal & marijuana would be legal.

[Enzo]

Nutmeg can get you high & can make you very sick or kill if too much is taken. It is much more dangerous than marijuana but I can go to the store & buy as much as I want.

[ixcuincle]

It's a real damn shame Prop 19 failed today. It shows you how illogical the mainstream is.

When I come in this thread, I am surprised and wonder ,"How did Prop 19 fail...we know marijuana is illegal basically for racial reasons."

Then I remember that the government threatens states that legalize it, and a fear campaign perpetuates that says marijuana kills young children, or that "Marijuana is addictive", or that "Marijuana is a gateway drug".

What pothead do you know that used pot and moved on to crack or heroin?

None.

[Backpack3r]

Another example of alcohol vs marijuana (i use both so)

If i get drunk as hell one night, i will call out of work the next day, cause there is no way in hell i can wake up early with that type of hangover

If i get high as hell one night, i will be at work on time...In fact you wake up feeling better lol if you fall asleep high

[Botched]

So how liberal is California anyway? They vote against gay marriage, vote against legalizing weed, and elect Republican governors. Isn't that state supposed to be some ultra-liberal hippie mecca? Seriously, I don't understand.

[Sikbug]

Not to me. I don't condone the use of any drug or narcotic (or whatever category marijuana falls in); but if it's what a person wants to do, that's up to them. It's not my body they're ruining.

I bet you take aspirin and cold medicine though, right?

[Sikbug]

Have you all seen this?

funny and true

[NavyDave]

Nutmeg can get you high & can make you very sick or kill if too much is taken. It is much more dangerous than marijuana but I can go to the store & buy as much as I want.

Weak attempts at Moral Relativism by drug addicts or those who chose to smoke illegally does not win over those who will be stuck paying the medical bills of smelly hippies, their accident victims or other useless citizens who prefer to be under a haze since they do not have the cajones to deal with real life.

[Sikbug]

Weak attempts at Moral Relativism by drug addicts or those who chose to smoke illegally does not win over those who will be stuck paying the medical bills of smelly hippies, their accident victims or other useless citizens who prefer to be under a haze since they do not have the cajones to deal with real life.

So how much beer do you drink to live in your reality?

[PF Chang]

Weak attempts at Moral Relativism by drug addicts or those who chose to smoke illegally does not win over those who will be stuck paying the medical bills of smelly hippies, their accident victims or other useless citizens who prefer to be under a haze since they do not have the cajones to deal with real life.

Let us know when you get the bill for the people smoking peacefully in their homes (Seriously, what??)

It'd be way easier for you to talk about paying the medical bills related to alcohol, I'm sure you're in favor of banning alcohol. Right?

[generaltso]

the medical bills of smelly hippies, their accident victims or other useless citizens who prefer to be under a haze since they do not have the cajones to deal with real life.

pocket change compared to the bills to keep you geriatric baby-boomers alive.

[Chicken Fried]

I'm curious as to why you're strongly against pot, you don't drink any alcohol at all, but you would consider dipping.

Which (besides the wreck it turns your mouth into) is arguably the biggest pain in the ass to do (have to carry a can or pouch around as well as something to repeatedly spit in, unless you want to walk around spitting on the ground), makes you look the silliest with a big lump in your lower lip, and is the biggest turn off in general to women out of all of those choices.

If you spend a lot of your time in a tree stand in the woods hunting, maybe dip is understandable. Otherwise I can't fathom how you'd even consider it, let alone consider it but not consider drinking or smoking.

That's actually a good question and something I thought about after posting. It has to do with it being somewhat of a southern tradition (not really everywhere, but in some areas). A lot of my friends dip. Also, there's no second hand smoke factor that could harm other people. Basically, if I could get that jolt people who dip talk about without any of the nasty health problems, I might do it occasionally. The main reason I'm against alcohol and the rest is because they change your mental status, which I feel is not a healthy experience. Smoking and dip give you a jolt (however you describe it) without really altering your mental status to the point you would do something you might not normally do, but the health problems involved are definitely not worth it. I do like having something to chew on which is one attraction to dip, but I don't like gum, so I eat sunflower seeds. Plus, throw in the fact that cig smoke is gross to walk through and be around, that's one major reason I wouldn't smoke.

And as for attractiveness, it depends on the girl. Some will go for it like crazy, while others (probably most) won't. I was at a PBR event and saw a hot girl with a huge piece of chew in her lip. I have to say it sort of got the blood flowing haha.

[Diesel Hog]

The War On Drugs is a joke. Prescription pills to get you high = OK, but pot = bad? That's just dumb. Legalize pot, sell it in ABC type stores, tax the hell out of it, and let people, if they choose, to toke up in the privacy of their own homes. What's so wrong with that? This 40 year "war" has been an epic failure, and is not winnable.

[Backpack3r]

Weak attempts at Moral Relativism by drug addicts or those who chose to smoke illegally does not win over those who will be stuck paying the medical bills of smelly hippies, their accident victims or other useless citizens who prefer to be under a haze since they do not have the cajones to deal with real life.

I work in a hospital as a 'sitter.' My job is to literally baby sit alcoholics who are detoxing, which can take days or weeks. BABY SIT. I am baby sitting a grown man, who is out of his mind because what the alcohol has done to his body and brain, it is actually very sad witnessing a 50 year old man lying naked in a bed ****ting himself and asking me to get him some aristocrat vodka. Alcohol literally destroys lives, i witness it every day at work. And you were talking about the financial aspect, they waste so much money on these alcoholics to stay in the hospital, and that doesnt even count the rehab programs. The medical bills for an alcoholic are through the roof.

Ive never had a patient come in for marijuana, why would they? It is generally harmless

You are ignorant as hell

[Kostaskins]

gotta love us greeks lol.

[fullnelson9999]

Weak attempts at Moral Relativism by drug addicts or those who chose to smoke illegally does not win over those who will be stuck paying the medical bills of smelly hippies, their accident victims or other useless citizens who prefer to be under a haze since they do not have the cajones to deal with real life.

Dude, shut up. Most people smoke to enhance their life, not define it.

Ignorance is bliss, but it's not a very good excuse for being dumb.

[Popeman38]

It's a real damn shame Prop 19 failed today. It shows you how illogical the mainstream is.

When I come in this thread, I am surprised and wonder ,"How did Prop 19 fail...we know marijuana is illegal basically for racial reasons."

Then I remember that the government threatens states that legalize it, and a fear campaign perpetuates that says marijuana kills young children, or that "Marijuana is addictive", or that "Marijuana is a gateway drug".

What pothead do you know that used pot and moved on to crack or heroin?

None.

Wait. What? Pot is illegal for racially motivated reasons? Seriously? Is everything about race these days???

[generaltso]

Wait. What? Pot is illegal for racially motivated reasons? Seriously? Is everything about race these days???

pot wasnt made illegal yesterday...

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/history/mustomj1.html

"The anti-marihuana law of 1937 was largely the federal government's response to political pressure from enforcement agencies and other alarmed groups who feared the use and spread of marihuana by "Mexicans." Recent evidence also suggests that the Federal Bureau of Narcotics resisted the enforcement burden of the antimarihuana law until mounting pressure on the Treasury Department led to a departmental decision, probably in 1935, to appease this fear, mostly in the Southwest and West, by federal legislation. Previously unpublished documents clarify the role of medical research in the campaign for a federal anti-marihuana law and in the Treasury Department's preparation for congressional hearings."

[generaltso]

Rising Domestic Fear of Cannabis: 1920-1934

Fear of cannabis, or as it was beginning to be known marihuana, was minor throughout most of the nation in the 1920s. Nevertheless, it still concerned the federal government. For example, in January 1929 Congress authored two narcotic farms to be operated by the Public earth Service largely for the treatment of addicted federal prisoners. The law specifically defined "habit-forming narcotic drug" to include "Indian Hemp" and made habitual cannabis users, along with opium addicts, eligible for treatment.13 Although there seems to have been almost no transfer of cannabis users to the two "farms," later known as the Lexington and Fort Worth Hospitals, it is significant that congressional worry about cannabis continued after passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and clearly was present before the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was established in 1930.

In certain areas of the United States, however, the fear of marihuana was more intense. These areas mostly coincided with concentrations of Mexican immigrants who tended to use marihuana as a drug of entertainment or relaxation. During the decade Mexican immigration, legal and illegal, rapidly increased into the region from Louisiana to California and up to Colorado and Utah. Mexicans were useful in the United States as farm laborers, and as the economic boom continued they received inducements to travel to the Midwest and the North where jobs in factories and sugar beet fields were available. 14

Although employers welcomed them in the 1920s, Mexicans were also feared as a locus of crime and deviant social behavior. By the mid-1920s horrible crimes were attributed to marihuana and its Mexican purveyors. Legal and medical officers in New Orleans began studies on the evil, and within a few years published articles claiming that many of the region's crimes could be traced to marihuana. They implicated it particularly in the most severe crimes, for they believed it to be a sexual stimulant which removed civilized inhibitions.15 As a result, requests were made to include marihuana in the federal law which controlled similar substances, the Harrison Narcotic Act.16

When the great Depression settled over America, the Mexicans, who had been welcomed by at least a fraction of the communities in which they lived, became an unwelcome surplus in regions devastated by unemployment. Considered a dangerous minority which should be induced to return to Mexico by whatever means seemed appropriate, they dwelt in isolated living groups. A contemporary writer described their mood in 1930, the first year of the Depression:

A ... factor in decreasing Mexican immigration is what officials call "the fear of God." It may be indefinite, but it is very real; and the quality is standard all the way from California to Texas.

And that fear hovers over every Mexican Colony in the Southwest is a fact that all who come in contact with them can readily attest. They fear examination by the border patrol when they travel; they fear arrest; they fear jail; they fear deportation; and whereas they used to write inviting their friends, they now urge them not to come.17

Naturally, the cotton, fruit, and vegetable growers in the Southwest and sugar beet farmers in Colorado, Michigan, Montana, and the Northwest favored further immigration. On the other hand, the American Federation of Labor understandably favored strict bars against foreign labor. But another group which worked for an end to Mexican immigration as energetically as those with economic interests did so for social reasons, afraid that mixture with an "inferior race" was causing "race suicide." Citizens anxious to preserve what they believed valuable in American life banded together into "Allied Patriotic Societies," "Key Men of America," or the group which united many of these associations, the "American Coalition" whose goal was to "Keep America American." 18

One of the prominent members of the American Coalition, C. M. Goethe of Sacramento, saw marihuana and the problem of Mexican migrants as closely connected (New York Times, Sept 15, 1935, section IV, p 9):

Marihuana, perhaps now the most insidious of our narcotics, is a direct by-product of unrestricted Mexican immigration. Easily grown, it has been asserted that it has recently been planted between rows in a California penitentiary garden. Mexican peddlers have been caught distributing sample marihuana cigarets to school children. Bills for our quota against Mexico have been blocked mysteriously in every Congress since the 1924 Quota Act. Our nation has more than enough laborers.

Southwest police and prosecuting attorneys likewise raised a continual protest to the federal government about the Mexicans use of the weed (H. J. Anslinger, oral communication, June 30, 1970).

In 1934 a US Marshall in Tulsa, Okla, wrote to the FBN, describing marihuana as a most dangerous and crime causing drug which gave its users the feeling that they had "superman and superwoman" powers.19 Newspapers occasionally headlined the weed as a cause of horrible crimes. For example, in 1933 the New York Mirror presented an article in its Sunday supplement on "Loco Weed, Breeder of Madness and Crime." That same year Dr. Walter Bromberg, a respected researcher, informed a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association that some authors had estimated the number of marihuana smokers in the southern states to be one out of four.20 Dr. Bromberg, who did not subscribe to the alarm over marihuana displayed by some writers, nevertheless told of its spread from the South to the large cities and to New York, "where its use is widespread."20 (p. 307) He noted that marihuana's inclusion in the Harrison Narcotic Act had been requested. Although denying that crimes were directly and simply caused by marihuana and asserting that it was something like alcohol in its effect, nevertheless, on the basis of good physiological and psychological studies of cannabis, he was persuaded that it was "a primary stimulus to the impulsive life with direct expression in the motor field."20 (p. 328) Marihuana "releases inhibitions and restraints imposed by society and allows individuals to act out their drives openly," and "acts as a sexual stimulant," particularly to "overt homosexuals."20 (p. 308)

[WVUforREDSKINS]

It's a real damn shame Prop 19 failed today. It shows you how illogical the mainstream is.

When I come in this thread, I am surprised and wonder ,"How did Prop 19 fail...we know marijuana is illegal basically for racial reasons."

Then I remember that the government threatens states that legalize it, and a fear campaign perpetuates that says marijuana kills young children, or that "Marijuana is addictive", or that "Marijuana is a gateway drug".

What pothead do you know that used pot and moved on to crack or heroin?

None.

To many to count, actually.

Still, I am for the legalization of MJ. Its the person, and not the drug IMO.

[Skinsfan4life83]

Weak attempts at Moral Relativism by drug addicts or those who chose to smoke illegally does not win over those who will be stuck paying the medical bills of smelly hippies, their accident victims or other useless citizens who prefer to be under a haze since they do not have the cajones to deal with real life.

Really? How many beers do you drink a day? Maybe you drink because you dont have the balls to deal with everyday life. Yours is the typical conservative response. Truly a ignorant and uninformed opinion.