Six months after marijuana legalization: Colorado tax revenue skyrockets as crime falls

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse
a reply to: Jakal26

Wow, so just "because it's a plant" you think it's safe to use?... really?... heck, there are many poisonous plants which are just "plants"... Are you going to eat them too because "you have been fed the poison madness which is not true"?...

I posted evidence to back my statements. You can deny them all you want. It won't change the facts.

No

But we dot need the government telling us what plant we can or can not grow or consume!

If I want to grow and consume hemlock thats MY PERSONAL right even if it will kill me!

The government should butt out!

originally posted by: TKDRL
a reply to: ElectricUniverse
I think you are misinterpreting that last one. I believe he is saying he OD on something a bit harder than MJ, and that is had nothing to do with MJ. I could be wrong, but that is how I read it.

ElecricUniverse's post really says a lot...about ignorance.
This poster obviously knows very little about this plant and what it does.

This is what the fight is all about, ignorance.

a reply to: Jakal26

Eerrr...

...
Cannabis lung health risks underestimated

Wednesday June 6 2012

“One third of people think cannabis is harmless despite the fact that smoking it is 20 times more likely to cause cancer than tobacco,” The Daily Telegraph reported today. The Independent says that young cannabis users “do not realise the huge danger to their health”.

The stories are based on a new report, published by the British Lung Foundation, which says that public awareness of the health consequences of smoking cannabis is “worryingly low”, with almost one-third of the British population believing that smoking cannabis is not harmful to health. This figure rises to almost 40% among those aged under 35, the age group most likely to have smoked it, according to the survey. The report also highlights that many of the same cancer-causing compounds in cigarettes are also present in cannabis, and that the way cannabis is smoked may mean that the body retains more of these harmful products than when smoking a similar quantity of tobacco. One study has suggested that over the course of a year smoking a single joint each day could do the same lung damage as smoking 20 cigarettes per day over the same period.

The report calls for a public health education programme to raise awareness of the impact on the lungs of smoking cannabis and on its links to wider health problems, as well as more investment in research on the health consequences of using cannabis.
...

www.nhs.uk...

Nobody has ever died from using cannabis huh?...

...
Smoking cannabis CAN kill you: German researchers identify two men who died purely as a result of using the drug

It was known cannabis could kill when used alongside other drugs
But, scientists didn't know if cannabis use alone could be fatal
They carried out post mortem examinations on people who died after using it
They found two people whose deaths couldn't be attributed to anything else
Both died shortly after using the drug when their hearts started beating either too fast or too slowly - neither had a history of heart problems

By Emma Innes

Published: 09:05 EST, 26 February 2014 | Updated: 09:05 EST, 26 February 2014

Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk... z37pja84zG
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Need more examples?

By/Crimesider Staff/AP /April 18, 2014, 11:04 AM

Two Denver deaths tied to recreational marijuana use

DENVER - This week, two Denver deaths were linked to marijuana use, and while some details of the deaths have yet to emerge, they are the first ones on record to be associated with a once-illegal drug that Colorado voters legalized for recreational use, as of January 1, 2014.

One man jumped to his death after consuming a large amount of marijuana contained in a cookie, and in the other case, a man allegedly shot and killed his wife after eating marijuana candy.

Wyoming college student Levy Thamba Pongi, 19, jumped to his death at a Denver hotel on March 11 after eating more of a marijuana cookie than was recommended by a seller, police records show - a finding that comes amid increased concern about the strength of popular pot edibles after Colorado became the first state to legalize recreational marijuana.

Pongi consumed more than one cookie purchased by a friend - even though a store clerk told the friend to cut each cookie into six pieces and to eat just one piece at a time, said the reports obtained Thursday.

Pongi began shaking, screaming and throwing things around a hotel room before he jumped over a fourth-floor railing into the hotel lobby March 11. An autopsy report listed marijuana intoxication as a "significant contributing factor" in the death.
...

www.cbsnews.com...

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse
a reply to: Jakal26

Wow, so just "because it's a plant" you think it's safe to use?... really?... heck, there are many poisonous plants which are just "plants"... Are you going to eat them too because "you have been fed the poison madness which is not true"?...

I posted evidence to back my statements. You can deny them all you want. It won't change the facts.

No one seems to be advocating the poisonous plants but you. Silly argument, really, as cannabis is one of the safest, therapeutically active plants we know of.

The ruling, issued in 1988 by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Chief Administrative Law Judge Francis Young “In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling,” determined: “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care.”

Young continued: “It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record.”

Judge Young concluded: “The administrative law judge recommends that the Administrator conclude that the marijuana plant considered as a whole has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, that there is no lack of accepted safety for use of it under medical supervision and that it may lawfully be transferred from Schedule I to Schedule II [of the federal Controlled Substances Act].”

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Drinking 1 liter of vodka CAN kill you.

How many morons have got drunk and got killed in accidents?

How many drunks have beat people to death?

It even said the store Clark WARNED the idiots not to eat more than part of a cookie each.

It ON THEM if they ignored the advice.

It called PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.


By your logic Alcohol should be banned due to drunken accidents and more frequent bouts of violence its causes.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Cannabis lung health risks underestimated

This may be the case for some people, although I'm pretty sure that no one here has claimed that smoked cannabis is completely harmless (after all, which inhaled combusted plant material truly is?), but it doesn't detract from the fact that smoked cannabis is still safer and far healthier than smoked tobacco (and alcohol, pharmaceuticals etc.), and that moderate use may actually improve lung function.

Jan. 2012 Study: Smoking Marijuana Not Linked with Lung Damage

...While tobacco smokers showed the expected drop in lung function over time, the new research found that marijuana smoke had unexpected and apparently positive effects. Low to moderate users actually showed increased lung capacity compared to nonsmokers on two tests, known as FEV1 and FVC. FEV1 is the amount of air someone breathes out in the first second after taking the deepest possible breath; FVC is the total volume of air exhaled after the deepest inhalation.

...That was a bit of a surprise, says Pletcher, since “There are clearly adverse effects from tobacco use and marijuana smoke has a lot of the same constituents as tobacco smoke does so we thought it might have some of the same harmful effects. It’s a weird effect to see and we couldn’t make it go away,” he adds, explaining that the researchers used statistical models to look for errors or other factors that could explain the apparent benefit and did not find them.

...Tashkin argues that specific properties of marijuana also matter. He says that THC has anti-inflammatory and immune suppressing properties, which may prevent lung irritation from developing into chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a devastating lung disorder frequently caused by tobacco smoking.

As for cancer, he says, “the THC in marijuana has well-defined anti-tumoral effects that have been shown to inhibit the growth of a variety of cancers in animal models and tissue culture systems, thus counteracting the potentially tumorigenic effects of the procarcinogens in marijuana smoke.”

Whatever the cause, it seems that those who argue that marijuana is harmful because of its smoke are going to have to find a different line of attack.

healthland.time.com...


June 2013 Study: Effects of marijuana smoking on the lung

...habitual use of marijuana alone does not appear to lead to significant abnormalities in lung function when assessed either cross-sectionally or longitudinally, except for possible increases in lung volumes and modest increases in airway resistance of unclear clinical significance. Therefore, no clear link to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has been established.

...In summary, the accumulated weight of evidence implies far lower risks for pulmonary complications of even regular heavy use of marijuana compared with the grave pulmonary consequences of tobacco.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

You are aware of the fact that the NHS is in bed with big-pharma? It's no great secret that the pharmaceutical industry lobbies these health authorities and Governments the world over to uphold the prohibition of cannabis as the plant is a direct threat to their industry's multi-billion dollar profits.

The NHS is well aware of the efficacy of cannabis, they've known for years, but do they push for it's trials and mainstream use? No, is the simple answer. They'd rather keep lining their pockets and prescribe fantastically expensive, often addictive, damaging and far too often fatal pharmaceutical alternatives.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry's document entitled 'A Framework for Joint Working between the Pharmaceutical Industry and the NHS' (link below), claims that "prescribing medication is arguably the most effective therapeutic activity we doctors undertake".

The same report goes on further to say that "the history of joint working between the pharmaceutical industry and the NHS is patchy, with examples of excellent partnerships but also of mistrust, idealogical differences and bad behaviours.”

www.abpi.org.uk...://www.abpi.org.uk/our-work/library/archive/Documents/jointworking_05.pdf

When taken into account that pharmaceutical drugs are responsible for more fatalities around the world each year than all of illicit drug use combined, one can be forgiven for questioning if this truly is effective as they claim. It becomes even more questionable when one considers that there is a much safer, far less toxic and addictive alternative that has already been in use for a multitude of diseases and conditions for millennia, you've guessed it, cannabis.

drugwarfacts.org - Annual Causes of Death in the United States

Drug Overdose Deaths and Pharmaceutical Drugs - In 2010, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths in the United States; most (22 134; 57.7%) involved pharmaceuticals; 9429 (24.6%) involved only unspecified drugs.

Of the pharmaceutical-related overdose deaths, 16,451 (74.3%) were unintentional, 3780 (17.1%) were suicides, and 1868 (8.4%) were of undetermined intent.

Opioids (16,651; 75.2%), benzodiazepines (6497; 29.4%), antidepressants (3889; 17.6%), and antiepileptic and antiparkinsonism drugs (1717; 7.8%) were the pharmaceuticals (alone or in combination with other drugs) most commonly involved in pharmaceutical overdose deaths.

Among overdose deaths involving opioid analgesics, the pharmaceuticals most often also involved in these deaths were benzodiazepines (5017; 30.1%), antidepressants (2239; 13.4%), antiepileptic and antiparkinsonism drugs (1125; 6.8%), and antipsychotics and neuroleptics (783; 4.7%).

www.drugwarfacts.org...


cdc.gov - Prescription Drug Overdose in the United States: Fact Sheet

Deaths from drug overdose have been rising steadily over the past two decades and have become the leading cause of injury death in the United States. Every day in the United States, 113 people die as a result of drug overdose, and another 6,748 are treated in emergency departments (ED) for the misuse or abuse of drugs. Nearly 9 out of 10 poisoning deaths are caused by drugs.

*Drug overdose was the leading cause of injury death in 2011. Among people 25 to 64 years old, drug overdose caused more deaths than motor vehicle traffic crashes.

*Drug overdose death rates have been rising steadily since 1992 with a 118% increase from 1999 to 2011 alone.

*In 2011, 33,071 (80%) of the 41,340 drug overdose deaths in the United States were unintentional, 5,298 (12.8%) were of suicidal intent, 80 (0.2%) were homicides, and 2,891 (7%) were of undetermined intent.

*In 2011, drug misuse and abuse caused about 2.5 million emergency department (ED) visits. Of these, more than 1.4 million ED visits were related to pharmaceuticals.

*Between 2004 and 2005, an estimated 71,000 children (18 or younger) were seen in EDs each year because of medication overdose (excluding self-harm, abuse and recreational drug use).

*Among children under age 6, pharmaceuticals account for about 40% of all exposures reported to poison centers.

www.cdc.gov...


Continued >

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

> Continued

Cannabis Reform Opponents Are Largely Funded By Pharmaceutical Companies

The Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America holds an annual event near Washington D.C.. This year’s event included numerous guest speakers who talked about the harms of dangerous drugs, drug abuse, and the need to fight cannabis reform at all costs. The sad irony is that the event was sponsored by Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, which is a highly addictive drug that kills numerous people every year. To say that there is hypocrisy involved is an understatement.

The fact of the matter is that the people leading the fight against cannabis reform have a direct financial incentive to keep cannabis prohibition in place. Pharmaceutical companies have long funded cannabis opponents in an attempt to keep Americans from replacing harmful pharmaceuticals with helpful cannabis. Per The Nation:

The Nation obtained a confidential financial disclosure from the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids showing that the group’s largest donors include Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, and Abbott Laboratories, maker of the opioid Vicodin. CADCA also counts Purdue Pharma as a major supporter, as well as Alkermes, the maker of a powerful and extremely controversial new painkiller called Zohydrol. The drug, which was released to the public in March, has sparked a nationwide protest, since Zohydrol is reportedly ten times stronger than OxyContin. Janssen Pharmaceutical, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary that produces the painkiller Nucynta, and Pfizer, which manufactures several opioid products, are also CADCA sponsors. For corporate donors, CADCA offers a raft of partnership opportunities, including authorized use of the “CADCA logo for your company’s marketing, website, and advertising materials, etc.”

www.internationalcbc.com...

Nobody has ever died from using cannabis huh?...

Eerm, no, nobody has ever died from using cannabis.

The 'Daily Fail' article that you linked to support your claim is fundamentally flawed in a couple of ways. Firstly, the researchers were even called out by the head of their own Association for Drugs and Addiction.

The Local, Germany's News in English: Doctors criticized for 'cannabis can kill' study

German researchers who claimed in a study that cannabis can be deadly have faced criticism for exaggerating the dangers of marijuana.

...on Wednesday the German Association for Drugs and Addiction (FDR), which is based in Hannover, told The Local the study did not help educate people about the dangers of the drug.

“Cannabis does not paralyze the breathing or the heart," head of the FDR Jost Leune said. "Deaths due to cannabis use are usually accidents that are not caused by the substance, but to the circumstances of use.”

Leune added the dangers of marijuana were “exaggerated” and it was less harmful than alcohol or tobacco.

www.thelocal.de...

This is explained by the fact that there are no CB1 receptors in the medulla oblongata, the area of the brain that's responsible for heart rate and breathing. Alcohol saturates this part of the brain (alcohol neuropharmacology, look it up), suppressing both heart rate and breathing often leading to death, for example, while the active compounds found in cannabis do not.

On top of that, there's the lethal dose ratio (LD50) of cannabis to take into consideration.

oregon.gov - Institute for Cannabis Therapeutics 

Alcohol: has an LD50 of 0.40% BAC, with approx 100,000 deaths in the US annually

Tobacco: The LD50 of nicotine is 50 mg/kg for rats and 3 mg/kg for mice. 40–60 mg (0.5-1.0 mg/kg) can be a lethal dosage for adult humans. Tobacco/nicotine accounts for nearly 1/2 million US deaths annually.

Cannabis: In summary, enormous doses of Delta 9 THC, All THC and concentrated marihuana extract ingested by mouth were unable to produce death or organ pathology in large mammals but did produce fatalities in smaller rodents
due to profound central nervous system depression.

The non-fatal consumption of 3000 mg/kg A THC by the dog and monkey would be comparable to a 154-pound human eating approximately 46 pounds (21 kilograms) of 1%-marihuana or 10 pounds of 5% hashish at one time. In
addition, 92 mg/kg THC intravenously produced no fatalities in monkeys. These doses would be comparable to a 154-pound human smoking at one time almost three pounds (1.28 kg) of 1%-marihuana or 250,000 times the usual
smoked dose and over a million times the minimal effective dose assuming 50% destruction of the THC by smoking.

Thus, evidence from animal studies and human case reports appears to indicate that the ratio of lethal dose to effective dose is quite large. This ratio is much more favorable than that of many other common psychoactive agents including alcohol and barbiturates.

www.oregon.gov...

Essentially, once this 'story' had emerged from Germany, the scientific community (of which judging by your comments in this thread I'm assuming you're not a part of) was quick to set the record straight. This story was nothing more than a display of fear and desperation by the prohibitionists at losing their so-called war on cannabis, the European prohibitionists saw the gains in the US and bricked it. Your bringing this up actually reminded me of a post I wrote on my f*cebook page at around the same time;

5 February
In the British news this past week:

"Devout Christian mother-of-three, 31, becomes first woman in Britain to DIE from cannabis poisoning after smoking a joint in bed to help her sleep"

"Oldham rapist hooked on cannabis at THREE jailed for viscous sex assault"

"Popular nightclub manager Paul Kenyon overdosed on cannabis before dying of carbon monoxide poisoning, inquest hears"

It seems that the British 'Reefer Madness' machine is going into overdrive, I find this is very telling.
It's sad and disgusting that the media will use peoples deaths in this manner, but this is how cannabis prohibition works, on a system of lies, deceit, and downright pseudoscience.

Then you go on to mention the lads in Colorado.

Levy Thamba, who fell to his death after consuming far too much in the way of edibles, clearly didn't follow the instructions he was given, I.E., to split it the cookie into 6 1/2 individual servings. Cannabis wasn't the direct result of his death, his own irresponsible actions were, much in the same way as the actions of an inexperienced driver pushing his luck on the open road after being warned of any potential hazards often lead to death.

In the case of Richard Kirk, who shot and killed his own wife (I'm assuming no one else had done this before cannabis law reform), what you've failed to mention was that he'd also taken prescription pain medication. Some of the side effects of prescription pain medication include confusion, dysphoria, agitation, hostility, and hallucinations. But hey, let's not let facts get in the way of a good story.

Surprisingly, the Daily Fail doesn't always get it wrong when it comes to cannabis. We can be pretty sure that cannabis (and let's face it, prohibition too) was almost certainly the leading cause of death in the case of this poor soul;

Drug trafficker killed by his own 500kg cargo of weed after it crushed him to death when he crashed car following police chase

www.dailymail.co.uk...

a reply to: MerkabaTribeEntity

Love your wonderfully enlightening posts. Nicotine is pure poison, hence its use in the development of certain pesticides. Cannabis literally contains medicines whose benefits to human bodies are not even close to fully understood. It's a lovely sort of mystery to be able to investigate, in stark contrast to most mysteries investigated as a result of human evil. The bit about lung function makes sense to me. Could you imagine somebody hitting tobacco from a six foot water pipe? How utterly noxious and disgusting a thought!

Eleven years of personal experience weighs more heavily on my decision making than embellished or outright fabricated studies about the dangers or cannabis and THC. I have a dream for the future of mankind and the Earth and shedding these utterly nonsensical beliefs is a major part of it.

a reply to: MerkabaTribeEntity

Gangs of strong-armed thugs chasing a man for possessing a plant which cannot be turned into a poison is indeed horrifying. People need to resist the brainwashing and do some thinking of their own, please, for the sake of all that is somehow still good in this world!

a reply to: TonyS
Everything you said is what I fear. The process is underway.

a reply to: Parthin

Be not afraid, but rather, scheme about how to profit!

originally posted by: beezzer

originally posted by: lightedhype
a reply to: beezzer

Smart mothers to be would not be smoking Marijuana during their pregnancy especially during the latter portions just as any responsible mother to be should not be drinking alcohol. Seems common sense to me.

Might be pissing on the parade of dumb selfish mothers and their children - which is a shame of course but that is all.

Teratogenic substances affect the genetic information in haploid cells. (Ovaries *eggs*, testes *sperm*)

It doesn't matter if the woman is pregnant or not.

She could smoke until she's 25 and quit.

But even at the age of 30, the damage has been done.

The same goes for males.

You seem well versed, always ahead of the curve. who'da thunk?

Say, how are you on fracking fluids? Are they teratogenic? Do you have any experience with these proprietary secret sauces? I wonder if they're all that bad. People all over the place are doing 'em.

Beez….has the damage has already been done….?

# 240

a reply to: TheWhiteKnight

Not to mention the damage done to DNA by consuming gmo, chemicals instead of food. Where's the ban on soda? Ever seen what Coca Cola does to a tooth submerged for a day or two?