KiltieTuba wrote:As a retort, what about the main mind altering substance - alcohol? Its not an illegal substance, but still kills more people in a year than cannabis does in 10 years (although it is physically impossible to overdose on cannabis, even as it has been consumed over the last 2000+ years, hell just in the UK there was just one reported death from cannabis (unknown if it was caused by it or something else), compared to the high rate of alcohol related deaths). I raise a point that the whole schizophrenic relation to cannabis is still not conclusive, think about all of the Indians and Middle Eastern people that have been using it for thousands of years, it's practically a staple of their society, yet there has not been any known case to my knowledge that it induced schizophrenic behavior. The whole plot behind this is merely a control by the governments to take away more things from the people, besides the only test cases that I have read about cite that the schizophrenic activity only applies to those people with some type of family history of it, NOT the general population.
Anyway, alcohol is the leading cause for most of our problems, it is the most dangerous because it is available to everyone in every major marketplace. Alcohol even funds the Superbowl! Would you deny the harmful effects of alcohol? I mean when was the last time you heard of a cannabis related death?
In the U.S., alcohol kills more people and destroys more families than marijuana, coke, heroin, and meth COMBINED. As a person who lived with an alcoholic parent and as private investigator, I have seen first hand the amount of destruction alcohol can do, but imagine the outcry if there was even a suggestion to modify the control the sale and distribution of alcohol in this country. Who would you rather trust to operate on you: a surgeon who smokes weed at home every night or a surgeon who sucks down a fifth of whiskey at home every night (and yes both are real life examples--guess which one got sued for malpractice??) We need to stop demonizing marijuana and realize that its time to bring our drug laws into the 21st century.
Now to the original topic: I find very troubling how public debate has descended into untrue statements presented as facts, shouting matches, name calling, death threats, people carrying firearms to public political events and how the media (left, right, what have you) has helped escalating this madness. This is NOT America at its best and it does not serve the common good at all.
