great quotes

[beaglebuddy]

Marijuana is already defacto legal as the penalties are usually an infraction for normal possession amounts, medical marijuana card holders can even grow it and anyone can get the card if they want for any complaint such as "I get depressed if I don't have weed". Most cops aren't too interested in busting people for grass anyways and will often let it go with a warning.
Legalization however is in effect placing a government stamp of approval on the behavior in effect removing the stigma allowing some people to get involved with it that otherwise would have not.
Personally I'm not sure legalization is such a good thing but let's be honest, it's like trying to stop an incoming tide.
Those in favor claim the government will make a lot of money by taxing it but I think that's nonsense as people will just grow it themselves for free, it is a weed after all!
All TBS, marijuana is of course physically addictive to varying degrees depending on the individual because it is fat soluble, alcohol will be gone from the body without a trace after some short hours but THC will remain for a month or more so to the body it's like you are still stoned for that duration. Potheads will routinely claim they are not addicted because they often go a week or more without toking but this is folly because they don't realize it's still with them. Try going a month or two and the cravings emerge as it leeches out of the body.
Personally I feel a lot of people are going to be addicted to getting high from some drug or alcohol and grass is definitely the lesser evil from a health, public safety and societal perspective. If someone is stoned they are much more likely to just veg out than become the combative, destructive drunk we all know.
And bizarrely they can't even make a connection between marijuana and lung cancer.

[DanWeiss]

Addiction is defined very roughly as maladaptive pattern of substance abuse accompanied by three of seven manifestations occurring in a twelve-month period. See, http://www.danya.com/dlc/bup/pdf/Dependence_DSM.PDF for the list and explanations.

The two biggies are tolerance and withdrawal. Pot use can create tolerance, just as many activities that produce endorphins, for example. I think we all know at least one activity that does.

Withdrawal is less commonly understood. Many incorrectly believe highly negative emotions within normal boundaries suffice to qualify as withdrawal. Feeling "bad" or "slow" or even "sad" without other presentations fail to rise to the level of withdrawal. Shakes, tremors, anger, schizophrenic or suicidal ideation full within the rubric of withdrawal.

The remaining five signifiers of addiction are far more open to interpretation. Given the DSM-4, it stands to reason that pot may appear to be addictive for a few, but far from addictive for most. According to an unnamed source to whom I'm married (a high-level psychiatrist) addiction to a particular substance is commonly misdiagnosed by those lacking formal training because of comorbidity. In other words, a patient presents with pot use and addictive behavior, but the patient also show clear signs of abuse in childhood, or a record of heavy drinking, or an organic brain injury. It's quite easy to claim pot causes three of the seven indicia but ignore or insufficiently document the effect of the comorbidity.

Taken alone, pot use has very little record of more than two indicia. Yet it often presents alongside other life challenges and is blamed for causing those and therefore labelled as addictive. That's my understanding of her explanation.

Others extrapolate present pot smoking to future drug use know to be addictive, like opiates. This common mistake pretzels sine qua non (that without which not) around res ipsa loquitor (the thing speaks for itself -like a piano falling onto a sidewalk imparts liability to the building owner from which the piano was removed) to arrive at a bootstrapped assertion that pot is a gateway drug by is very chemical makeup. This declaration ignores psycho-social influences such as the effect of peer pressure or reduced judgment when high, and the very common doubling-down on mood affecters, like booze and smoke.

I think that government involvement through federal and state health and human services depts. can only help demystify pot, to define its risks as well as tout discovered benefits.

Pot is a drug largely suitable as alcohol for many adults. And clearly the observed risks of excessive alcohol consumption overshadow anything seen with smoking pot. As a comparison, pot is benign compared to alcohol yet we recently demonize the former yet actively promote the latter. So goes the addiction, I suppose.

[uwindsurf]

[J64TWB]

Interesting view from the godfather of conservatism

“The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy.”

― William F. Buckley Jr.

[windoggi]

This is a quote thread morphed into a drug thread so....

"beer is proof god loves us and wants us to be happy"

Ben Franklin

[J64TWB]

“Christ, seven years of college, down the drain”.

John Belushi

[nw30]

DW: "Others extrapolate present pot smoking to future drug use know to be addictive, like opiates. This common mistake pretzels sine qua non (that without which not) around res ipsa loquitor (the thing speaks for itself -like a piano falling onto a sidewalk imparts liability to the building owner from which the piano was removed) to arrive at a bootstrapped assertion that pot is a gateway drug by is very chemical makeup. This declaration ignores psycho-social influences such as the effect of peer pressure or reduced judgment when high, and the very common doubling-down on mood affecters, like booze and smoke."

Dan, that is one hell of a paragraph, one of the better ones I've read here in a long time.

One minor add of mine, from what I've seen and lived, cigarettes are the number one gateway drug, and they are never called that.
I consider it the door that's left cracked open by society.

[J64TWB]

Good post Dan. Cigarettes led me to purple microdot. Tried twice. Isobars? At least give me a stupid quote my friend.

[windoggi]

[mac]

Windoggie--you've topped us all!!!!!