Scientists have observed that smoking pot may stave off Alzheimer’s Disease. Hmm. I am not a medical expert, but this is not the first time that people have claimed medicinal benefits for smoking this substance. There appears to be quite a steady drumbeat of support for the idea that marihuana may beneficial and that some of the scare stories are just that – scares. Of course, there are certain downsides to a “spot of blow”: such as a desire to suddenly consume the entire contents of one’s fridge (I speak from
experience over several years’ ago).
The War on Drugs is a disaster on many levels. Besides the encouragement to organised crime, the corruption of the legal system, and the obvious assaults on individual liberty, one of the stupidest aspects of said war has been the way in which substances like pot, which might have useful properties in dealing with certain conditions, are ruled off-limits by the law. It is high time (‘scuse the pun), that the law was changed.
Remember, when was the last time you heard of a bunch of young British youths getting into a fight because of lighting up a large bong as opposed to being blind drunk?
Well at least it’s a welcome change to the usual “Oh my God! It’ll rot your brain, turn you into a paedophile, lead you on to smack and ensure your eternal damnation in the flaming pits of Hell!” mantra spouted by Those Who Know Better Than The Rest Of Us.
Society didn’t collapse before prohibition- it won’t collapse after it, either.
The problem we face is that prohibition itself is a huge market. It won’t just disappear overnight- there’s an industry out there dedicated to it and they won’t go without a fight.
Careful there Johnathan: too much logic will make you persona non grata.
Best regards
I am reminded of something Dennis Leary said in one of his stand up shows; “If we’re fighting a ‘War on Drugs’ then that means the people on drugs are winning!”
Ne’er a truer word spoken, there is only one argument that is necessary when discussing the drugs; prohibition does not work. Blows everything else out of the water.
Amazingly enough, this statement is an understatement in the extreme.
Back in the 70s, I used to be called occasionally to help retrieve a substance abusing friend from various venues. My, did I ever hope that pot was the high of choice. When it was alcohol, he was generally easy to find. On a roof or somewhere extreme yelling obscenities at passing cars. Or picking a fight with a football team.
When pot was the high of choice (the usual case) he could typically be found watching a test pattern on the TV, listening to the static at the end of an LP, and eating cake mix out of the box.
The memory of finding him and a cat sitting on a couch, entranced by at test pattern, and him trying to explain what it meant, still cracks me up.
Mandrill, I’m sure that quote was from the late, great Bill Hicks. And he was right, we are winning.
They. I meant they, of course…
I could easily believe that controlled dosages may well have beneficial effects (if snake venom has useful medicinal ingredients then why not pot?) but I feel compelled to disagree with the love for potheads being expressed here. In my thankfully limited experience, long term chronic potheads are a major drag to be around and tend to become paranoid, sneaky jerks when they’re not busy being as useless as large piles of laundry.
But, yeah current pot laws go past insane into total, assinine stupidity. If you told me 30 years that the laws would generally be worse than in the 70’s I wouldn’t have believed it.
Abuse of one’s own body is against God.
Abuse of one’s own spirit is against God.
Abuse of one’s own soul is against God.
You may define ‘abuse’ and ‘God’, in detail, as you choose, but you surely know what I mean.
Taking one’s problematic abuse to one’s family, neighbours, friends, or the whole of society, offends these too (even though they might choose to tolerate you, or even to help you).
But none of this needs, intrinsic of the human condition, to make one a law-breaker, just someone in need of serious help that has failed (possibly as a miserable wretch) to find in, or for, one’s self.
However, those who facilitate, encourage and extend such abuse of self, as their business or contribution to society, should stand condemned in the law of men (as well as before God) to a proportionate extent: hence justification of our specific taxes on alcohol and tobacco.
Oh that we could we wise enough to take the same proportionate view on recreational drugs, prostitution, etc.
Best regards
I always make a point of saying to those awfully sad Alzheimer’s charity beggars one encounters in London’s streets these days that I’d love to donate but I’ve forgotten my wallet. Now I have an even better excuse, “sorry but I’m fresh out of hashish right now.”
Not as good as the chap who asked the Big Issue seller if they did an online version …
michael farris,
I pretty much agree with your assessment of potheads, but compared to a similar level of chronic abuse of alcohol, I think the alcoholics fair much worse. Both in the effect on themselves, and their effect on society.
Drunks are extremely likely to drive. And kill themselves. Or other people. Stoners are more likely to sit for long periods of time doing nothing.
I’ve often heard of “fighten’ drunk”. I’ve never heard of “fighten’ stoned”. That difference was my point.
Mr. Sedgwick, if the abuse of one’s body, spirit and soul may be an abuse against God, then let God punish me when we meet. While I’m still breathing, only I have a claim on my body, spirit and soul, not the “noble” do-gooders of society.
Scramaseax, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Leary pinched it from Mr Hicks (who I sincerely hope is having a whale of a time wherever he is) I saw it on a video of Mr. Leary’s standup called “No Cure For Cancer”.
and I agree wholeheartedly with your last;
My body, my soul, my spirit and I’ll do whatever the hell I want with them and I will live with the consequences. Freedom of associaton is a wonderful thing. (and so are test patterns :P)
Scramaseax wrote:
Is that not what I wrote: though in somewhat different words, and perhaps (even probably) from a somewhat differnt philosophical basis?
In other words, it’s nice of you to agree with me, even if you did not realise it.
Best regards
“The problem we face is that prohibition itself is a huge market.”
No lie. Without prohibition and the cartels, DEA would collapse, and wihtout DEA and the other agencies, prices would collapse and the cartels would wither. Symbiosis is an very powerful evolutionary strategy.
The exception is meth trafficking, and not because meth is so destructive as a drug, but because the manufacture is so destructive of everything. It’s not a drug issue, it’s an issue of industrial waste disposal. It’s true that meth destroys people to the point where their children suffer, but that again is not a drug issue, it’s a parenting issue.
I would suggest that those of us in favour of legalising cannabis should be rather careful of the ‘it’s not as bad as alcohol’ argument.
There isn’t a snowball’s chance of it advancing the case for marijuana, and it is much more likely to result in restrictions on drinking beer.
I normally avoid such arguments as needless. If the argument that what one puts into ones body is their own affair isn’t convincing, then marginal arguments to sway fence sitters won’t terraform the landscape any time soon. At best you’ll get a small concession for medicinal use, licenses to use etc etc, which we’ve already had. Getting such back won’t change much.
The best argument for the Utilitarians who see drug use as a scourge on society is that the War has done more harm than good overall. The cost and the increase in calcified bureaucracy does not offset the incremental reduction, if any, to drug use. Not that even if it did have a dramatic effect on drug usage would it be conscionable, but anyway….
I have known three broad types of pot smokers.
Type one: Dropouts, often ‘arty’ types, for whom smoking the stuff is part of the lifestyle and generally an excuse for not getting anything done. Mostly harmless, apart from their propensity to depend on the welfare state. Some of them, sadly, never graduate from this way of life.
Type two: Professionals, including doctors, lawyers and engineers, for whom the occasional joint is a social pleasure and whose smoking (as far as I could tell) had little or no effect on their ability to be effective in their occupations or their lives in general.
Type three: Ordinary folk of all stripes who, in their youth, (over)indulge at the weekend in alcohol, weed, pills or whatever takes their fancy. They usually grow out of it and get married, have children or start climbing a career ladder with no great harm done.
Recreational drug use is not a simple picture and most people who use them are quite capable of coping. I accept that there are many casualties as well but, I submit, they generally have other problems and would likely have found another way of firkin up their life if drugs were not available.
One of my uncles is a case in point. By all accounts, his was a fragile ego from an early age. It seems he never recovered from a doomed love affair with a Catholic girl whose parents would not let her have anything to do with a Methodist boy, let alone marry him. Weed and pills gave way to alcohol and alcoholism, a place where he has been for decades. The welfare state has supported him since his family, after many years, grew tired of trying to help him. I doubt that anyone, other than himself, could have saved him. The drugs were a symptom, not the cause.
All the best, uncle. May you get well soon against the odds.
Although I could care less whether someone decides to smoke pot, I am almost ALWAYS skeptical of reports like this- or at the very least reports purporting to support the conclusion that smoking pot ought to be made legal.
Although marijuana probably should be decriminalized for a number of reasons, if there really is some clinical benefit to a particular property of marijuana, it should be fairly straightforward to reduce that property to its essence in pharmaceutical form. In fact, this is already the case for at least some medicinal properties of marijiuana, in the form of a drug called Marinol, which is completely legal in the United States- but somehow the pot smoking advocates of drug legalization don’t care for this fact when advocating the medicinal benefits of marijuana. They have to resort to subjective bases for their arguments when you point this out to them.
There is no other medical drug that I know of in which smoking an unregulated, probably impure form of the plant from which it is derived is the preferred method of application- because smoking is in and of itself an unhealthy practice, not to mention the lack of any regulated dosage.
If pro-marijuana advocates concentrated on legitimate uses of the plant for medical purposes I’m sure they would face little to no resistance from politicians or the public.
This constant refrain that is obsessed with smoking it forces me to believe that they could care less about the medicinal uses, and are simply trying to justify their bad habit.
In my not-so-humble opinion, those who believe that terms such as “God” or “soul” or “spirit” refer to anything real already have a good head start on me, hallucination-wise, before the first joint is lit. If the contemplation of such phantasms gives them pleasure, then I wish them the joy of it; however, if their beliefs are to be made the basis of laws telling me I can’t do things, then I am no more willing to submit to such laws than to edicts based on the arcane wisdom emanating from Midwesterner’s friend’s test pattern. As for the body, “abuse” is for its resident (adult) guiding intelligence to define.
Disclaimer: I do not use drugs or religion. I am merely speaking in the abstract.
One of the things that really irks me in these types of discussion is the degree to which people rely on the word ‘abuse’.
That someone having a couple of pills, a spliff or a few lines is done relatively safely, with self-control and of their own free will (not chemically) does not seem to occur to those on high, who ritualistically determine this sort of casual use as ‘abuse’.
It’s incredibly easy to offend the bizarre sensibilities of people when I don’t share their same horror or disdain of people who choose alternatives to alcohol and cigarettes.
James, I was the first person to introduce the word ‘abuse’ into this thread. I take your point and agree with it.
However, in the context I used it, I do mean ‘abuse’. Another person from that same circle never saw 50. The coroner performing the autopsy apparently thought there were to many possible causes of death to be certain of one. Every system was destroyed by chronic drug use.
While I use humor on this topic, it’s not without more than a twinge of sadness. Most people have no problems with drugs or alcohol. But for the few …
I oppose drug laws not because I think drugs are harmless, but because I think drug laws are far more consistently harmful to everyone.
James identifies his problem with the word “abuse”, perhaps best summarised as overuse of the word in the case of moderate consumption of alcohol or recreational drugs. Agreed.
However, there is (at least in my view) abuse of alcohol and recreational drugs that not only wrecks the life of the abuser (perhaps a personal choice, freely made) but also the lives of those around: spouse, children, parents, friends (perhaps not their choice). Surely such abuse is not decent behaviour.
The difficulty is that government, in its enthusiasm to save us all from ourselves, creates problems for the moderate users, whilst not saving (enough of) the serious abusers or those subject to collateral damage.
The issue in this thread, as I see it, is whether making some things (recreational drugs) totally illegal is helpful. This is when we know that making some other and somewhat similar things (eg alcohol) totally illegal (ie USA prohibition) was a failure.
The big question is whether the similarity between recreational drugs and alcohol is close enough for the two classes of things to be treated in a similar way.
Personally, I think there is the possibility that a good case can be made: recreational drug by recreational drug, with separate decision in each case.
However, that does not stop the abuse (by which I mean serious abuse) being a problem.
The best way forward, from the examples of alcohol and tobacco, strikes me as regulation of the supply chain and taxation at a level that assists in mitigation of the consequences of abuse.
Thus, and very importantly, just the removal of illegality is not sufficient. [And I say this in full knowledge that the historical reasons for licencing and taxation of alcohol and tobacco have nothing to do with abuse mitigation, and that the current levels of taxation are set for other purposes than mitigation (even by deterrent).]
Best regards
“I’ve often heard of “fighten’ drunk”. I’ve never heard of “fighten’ stoned”. >>>>>
So all those GI’s who went into combat in Viet Nam while high on pot were happy, peaceful people handing out flowers to the villagers of My Lai and other places……..
To expand on Ben’s comments above:
Yes, I’m very much in favor of legalization, especially of marijuana. Although reasonable (but still ultimately unconvincing, IMHO) arguments can be made in favor of banning the more dangerous recreational drugs, I’m totally baffled as to how marijuana remains illegal. I’ve never heard a reasonable argument in favor of that position at all. Not only that, but it is searingly ironic that what are probably the most dangerous of all recreational drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, are the only legal ones.
Having said all that, though, I agree that the legalization advocates squawking about marijuana’s “medicinal benefits” are just making themselves look stupid. I’m an engineer at a pharmaceutical company, and can assure you that manufacturing drugs with a high degree of control over dosage and purity is really not a piece of cake. You’d be amazed at just how insanely careful we have to be to control our output as tightly as we do. To suggest that smoking a natural product with highly variable properties is in any way a proper medicinal application is nuts.
Major pharma companies depend completely on the output of their research pipelines. It’s so important that if nothing promising comes out of a company’s discovery research for a couple of years, many of the better employees start to leave the company in a panic. If there really are genuninely promising medicinal compounds in marijuana, they will be (and probably already have been) thoroughly investigated by multiple well-funded and very skilled research departments. A couple of dozen multi-billion dollar corporations depend completely on their research output for survival. And no, they are not prohibited by the FDA or anyone else from investigating compounds found in marijuana. The suggestion of some legalization advocates that drug companies are banned from such research just makes them sound like garden variety conspiracy theory idiots.
I hate to see people I basically agree with resorting to such discreditable arguments, and I wish they’d stop.
I’m blogging this, but feel moved to add a comment with this observation.
Whatever the stated reasons for controlling drugs, the less honorable ones, left unstated or alluded to are essentially racist. It’s not aimed at the drug, so much as the culture the drugs coexist within. That is why alcohol is not under particular threat, it’s long been an essential part of our western culture.
Pot (and hemp, as a resource) was part of Native American and Mexican culture – and we didn’t like that culture, so we waged economic as well as literal war against it.
I should point out that all cultures are, in a sense, centered around “the marketplace,” very much defined by shared needs, wants and desires which are expressed in commercial activities and shared customs which tend to mitigate the downsides of culturally accepted drugs.
Hence, prohibition is as much as anything a ham-handed attempt to shut down a particular market to the disadvantage of those participating in it.
The irony of course, is illustrated by this particular story; in closing markets we lose the potential benefits of that market – while at the same time, forcing the products themselves into illicit markets that are unlikely to produce any great benefit at all other than to those participating. And after all, why should it?
Karma, baby.
So then how do you explain British, French or German prohibitions on drugs? We are not exactly over-run with Native Americans or Mexicans here 😀
“Remember, when was the last time you heard of a bunch of young British youths getting into a fight because of lighting up a large bong as opposed to being blind drunk?”
Well steady on, I am, on balance, in favour legalising cannabis. But that doesn’t stop it from being linked to psychosis whose sufferers can be even more dangerous than rummed up lads.
“In my thankfully limited experience, long term chronic potheads are a major drag to be around and tend to become paranoid, sneaky jerks when they’re not busy being as useless as large piles of laundry.”
So what? That’s none of your business.
On prohibition and markets:
I still recall the first time I ever came across the domestic greens that are everywhere in the American market now. 1977. At the time, I didn’t realize what it really meant. It wasn’t very long before the wonderful golds, browns, and reds from Central America and the Caribbean were just disappearing. I believe what is perhaps obvious: that those foreign strains were supplanted by the domestic greens as import prohibition approached the height of effectiveness (market shortage) and homegrowers took up the slack.
The upshot is that marijuana became the single most valuable cash crop in American agriculture. It was the United States Government that did this.
Around where I live, the pot coming out of the cornfields and woods is astounding.
And there is nothing that anyone can do about it. They’re going to have to destroy this “village” in order to “save” it.
I am reminded of something Dennis Leary said in one of his stand up shows; "If we’re fighting a ‘War on Drugs’ then that means the people on drugs are winning!"
Not too sure it was Leary who said that, but Bill Hicks. Leary has pissed off a few folk by copying rather heavily from Hicks’ routine, if memory serves. That said, Leary is hilarious and one of the more decent guys in the US entertainment industry
If marijuana use is injuring God, I invite God to sue me in the civil courts. I play the statistics and I’d bet a lot of money on God v. Morris not happening any time soon. God is too busy exposing himself to gullible people through bleeding statues, malformed chocolate, Pizza Hut signs, toasted cheese sandwiches, pretzels, wood panel doors, Chicago expressway underpasses and cinnamon buns in Nashville for him to be too bothered about any recreational drug use on my part.
“However, those who facilitate, encourage and extend such abuse of self, as their business or contribution to society, should stand condemned in the law of men (as well as before God) to a proportionate extent: hence justification of our specific taxes on alcohol and tobacco.”
What paternalistic tosh. If it’s fine for me to smoke weed – morally – why is it not fine for someone to sell it to me? Why should I have to go undercover and buy from criminals? If I want to buy weed, I’d far rather buy it from my local newsagents rather than having to go to a street dealer – whose whole chain of business is supporting organised crime. The Police claim that a large amount of British cannabis production is done by Vietnamese people smuggling gangs who are running their operations using children in very unsafe conditions. By supporting paternalist policies, you are supporting this type of production, distribution and retail.
It was Bill Hicks who said we are winning the war on drugs. I have him on CD saying it. Leary just copies him , to this day.
Making a plant illegal is tantamount to saying God is wrong. Funny, how the people who are so against these plants are usually “for” God.
Too much black market money being made to legalise drugs. All of them are worth more during prohibition.
@Tom Morris, who wrote:
Well, I thought I was taking a position intermediate between current UK law and what Tom wants, or at least supporting serious consideration of it: ie licensing and special taxation, rather than the current legal total prohibition. Also, much closer, of the two, to what Tom wants. Still, this is not the first time I’ve found my partial support viewed at least as badly as outright opposition.
As to individual freedom versus paternalistic (government) intervention, I’m not quite sure what Tom wants, for those who go beyond moderate consumption of such recreational substances, to actually doing themselves serious harm.
Would he like them to be left alone:
Would he like them to be sent the bill after treatment? Or have to present a credit card before treatment?
Would he prefer society to pay out of general taxation and/or charity?
Or would he like my suggestion of specifically targeted taxation to the extent necessary to cover all those extra costs?
And Tom wrote:
I was talking about serious abuse. For that, God pursues his case, on final appeal, in the morgue.
Finally, and more paternal than paternalistic, I’m a father and have sat through school lectures for parents on drug abuse. Despite my natural instinct for free personal choice, that experience makes one think a lot.
On that, perhaps Tom would like to consider the appropriate ages for personal decision and purchase on: alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, ecstasy, amphetamines, heroin, cocaine, etc.
Unless Tom’s true answer to that question, in each case, is “from birth” (or perhaps that should be whenever the kids start shopping), I’m just wondering how he is going to organise it: that is avoiding any hint of that wicked paternalism.
Best regards
Tom Morris said
But you currently do support such criminal networks? Does your short term gratification outweigh the support you give to organised crime? Or is your craving so powerful it controls your personality and destroys your better judgement?
If the war on drugs could be won, it certainly would have been..long ago. The “war” has filled jails and prisons to overflowing; expanded law enforcement ranks in order to fill those prisons;ruined several countries whose citizens illegally provide much of the supply of these drugs. All of this and more account for a staggering cost to taxpayers in exchange for absolutely nothing more than an alternately smaller supply of certain drugs from time to time. I fought in this “war ” and believed in it’s efficacy for a long time. I now see what a fool’s errand it has been. Drugs are bad, don’t use them but forget about prohibition.
Thanks jaydee.
Is there any chance you might expand, on the basis of your experience, on either or both of why what we do now is a bad idea and what we might be better doing in the future.
Best regards
I think the fact that they can’t even keep drugs out of the prision system shows how flawed the whole policy is.
A few years back they introduced random drugs tests into the UKs prisions, did it reduce the amount of drugs in UKs jails
Did it heck it just meant that our jails are now awash with heroin (heroin only shows up in drugs tests for 3 days rather than 1 month for weed)rather than more beign substances.
Also the UK is now totaly self suffient in weed production! Which i find quite amazing in a damp cold island with the largest number of users in europe.