NEWS: U.S. Attacks Canadian Pot Laws

Originally posted by 27jd
Those who are so against marijuana should fight equally as hard to stop alcohol and tobacco as well. They are all drugs and are all poisonous, marijuana is the least harmful of them all and should be legal before tobacco or alcohol. Look at the facts, the effects of alcohol on the body are similar to radiation poisoning, and tobacco is cancer's best friend, weed would probably be just as bad as tobacco except you don't have to smoke nearly as often, I couldn't imagine smoking 20 joints a day. The only reason marijuana is illegal is because it is so easy to grow that it couldn't effectively be taxed. That's it. Somebody could easily maintain enough plants to support their habit. It would not be so easy to make enough beer at home or grow and process enough tobacco to support one's own habit.

Taken from www.cancer.ca...

"Because of this, some estimate that smoking 3 to 4 marijuana cigarettes per day is roughly equivalent to smoking 20 tobacco cigarettes. Marijuana users may have many of the same health problems as cigarette smokers, including an increased risk of cancer."

A spliff contains about the same tobacco as a third of a cigarette, and the weed in it is apparently a lot worse for us. There is also no filter, the rizla is thick because it's wrapped round on top of itself, so therefore doesn't that mean smoking a spliff is a lot worse for you that a cigarette? I've always thought that it was worse; apart from the cancer and lung disease it also messes up your head.

Alcohol in proportion is not bad for you. A glass of wine a day is actually meant to be good for you.

Taken from www.docguide.com...

"One glass of wine, beer, or hard liquor per day improves arterial elasticity, even in patients with hypertension, researchers reported."

Therefore you could go the whole of your life drinking a glass of wine a day and lead a normal healthy life, but if you were to smoke a joint everyday i'm sure you'd soon notice the effects. A nice article about the long term effects of smoking joints can be found here.

Happy Toking!

I smoke everyday due to my medical problems no need to smoke it and get all that nasty stuff in your lungs use a vaporizer

Indeed! I am yet to try one of those. They're about £70 over here.

well worth it preserve your lungs iIt cooks the active ingredients inside rather then burning up the fibers and whatnot

When I was growing up they taught us in school that anyone can become President of the United States.

The last two Presidents admitted to trying marijuana. It is the Patriotic Duty of the American People to follow in their Presidents' footsteps and try marijuana at least once in their life. Those that have not tried it are simply un-American and have no basis for argument concerning the drug or it's effects.

Yeah but I didn't inhale!
-Bill
P.S. Bush did coke and skipped out on his Reserve Duty.

Originally posted by phixion
Taken from www.cancer.ca...

"Because of this, some estimate that smoking 3 to 4 marijuana cigarettes per day is roughly equivalent to smoking 20 tobacco cigarettes. Marijuana users may have many of the same health problems as cigarette smokers, including an increased risk of cancer."

A spliff contains about the same tobacco as a third of a cigarette, and the weed in it is apparently a lot worse for us. There is also no filter, the rizla is thick because it's wrapped round on top of itself, so therefore doesn't that mean smoking a spliff is a lot worse for you that a cigarette? I've always thought that it was worse; apart from the cancer and lung disease it also messes up your head.

So, you mean to say that you believe the propaganda about 3 to 4 joints being equivalent to 20 cigarettes? You know it used to be 1 joint is equal to 200 unfiltered cigarettes. I guess they figure they can't even fool you that way and toned it down a bit. Try thinking for yourself and maybe you'll realize that cigarettes contain many chemical additives and the notion that a plant that has no additives somehow has more deadly chemicals than 1 cigarette, let alone 20, is insane.

And here's a bit more about the joint to cigarette myth:

Is smoking marijuana more harmful to your lungs than smoking cigarettes?

Likely not. Though marijuana and tobacco smoke are virtually identical (see report below), marijuana users generally consume far less than tobacco users. Typically, a tobacco user will consume more than 10 tobacco cigarettes a day, while a marijuana user will consumer one marijuana cigarette a day or less. There are exceptions, but generally speaking, marijuana users consume less than tobacco users.

As a result, marijuana users will have fewer lung problems (or at least to a lesser degree). Strictly speaking, however, inhaling any burning substance in to your lungs will cause pulmonary irritation, which could lead to adverse respiratory symptoms.

Huber, G.L. et al, "The Effects of Marihuana on the Respiratory and Cardiovascular Systems," pp 3-18 in G. Chesher et al (eds), Marijuana: an International Research Report, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service (1988).
www.answerbag.com...

Alcohol in proportion is not bad for you. A glass of wine a day is actually meant to be good for you.

So, you should push for a law that prohibits the drinking of more than 1 alcoholic beverage per day.

Some effects of alcohol on those who do not follow phixion's 1 drink per day policy:

The Negative Effects of alcohol abuse include:

Water loss: There is rapid water loss (diuresis) within the first several hours of AB ingestion due to decreased secretion of antidiuretic hormone, a pituitary peptide.

Electrolyte Depletion: Depletion of tissue magnesium (the serum magnesium level may not be reduced). Replacement of magnesium deficits is a recognized part of treatment of post-intoxication states. Hypocalcemia may also result from magnesium depletion by reducing parathyroid hormone-induced mobilization of calcium from bone. Reduced serum phosphate may lead to muscle weakness and degeneration.

Vitamin Deficiency: Folate deficiency occurs in the majority of binge-drinking alcoholics and is a common cause of anemia. Inadequate dietary intake, intestinal malabsorption, and impaired folate storage in the liver all contribute to folate deficiency. Alcohol ingestion also interferes with vitamin B12 absorption. Deficiencies of the two vitamins cause large-cell (megaloblastic) anemia.

Thiamine deficiency may occur in long-term alcohol users as a consequence of both inadequate ingestion and malabsorption of the vitamin. With severe deficiency, major brain disturbance or alcoholic psychosis emerges (Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome). The brain dysfunction is global, with disordered thinking, feeling, remembering, and disturbed motor coordination. Thiamine replacement corrects the grosser dysfunctions of the brain and it has been proposed that alcoholic beverages be fortified with thiamine as a means of preventing this syndrome.

Pyridoxine: (B6) metabolism is disturbed by the process of alcohol oxidation, contributing to anemia. Pellagra, or niacin deficiency, is common in chronic alcoholics. Pellagra is recognized by the three D's: Diarrhea, Dermatitis, and Dementia.

Vitamin A storage is commonly decreased in alcohol-induced liver disease. With ABAB, protein-calorie malnutrition often occurs. Liver disease may lead to low blood protein and decreased serum levels of branched-chain amino acids.

Micronutrients: Trace element metabolism may be disordered with regular AB input. Alcohol may increase the urinary loss of zinc and the gastrointestinal absorption of iron. Zinc deficiency aggravates vitamin A deficiency, since zinc is needed in the transformation of vitamin A into its active form. Contamination of beer with arsenic or cobalt has caused death from heart failure.

Liver damage is the best known result of alcohol abuse. The liver will swell with acute intoxication, sometimes painfully, and will show fatty infiltration and enlargement if AB ingestion continues regularly. With excessive AB over many years, the ravaged liver becomes scarred, shrunken, and relatively non-functional. This end-stage cirrhosis is associated with the yellow, demented alcoholic, belly swollen with water (ascites).

Pancreatitis is a consequence of alcoholism. Alcohol stimulates pancreatic secretion. Malnutrition with deficiencies of protein and vitamins contributes to chronic pancreatic dysfunction. Impairment of pancreatic enzyme production spoils digestion and contributes to malabsorption of nutrients. Decreased insulin production may cause or aggravate diabetes.

Alcoholic beverages contribute to malnutrition by replacing foods needed for essential nutrients and by interfering with absorption, storage or metabolism of the essential nutrients. Ethanol may suppress appetite and consumption of food. In some individuals, however, AB's trigger excessive eating instead. Food choices follow an addictive pattern, with nutrient deficiencies based on poor food choices. Bowel distension and diarrhea are common GIT effects and are correlated with increased brain disturbances. The increased absorption of undigested proteins sets the stage for all the food "allergic" diseases.

www.nutramed.com...

Happy Toking!

Indeed. And to you, bottoms up! You choose your poison, and I'll choose mine.



[edit on 16-3-2005 by 27jd]

Perhaps Bush should?, that way Canadians wont do anything about it !

Dallas

you know back when i was in high school we had to do a project on drugs in i belive a grade 10 english class (long time ago).my friend and i both smoked a bit of pot at the time so we chose to do pot (amusingly the "straight classmates took alcohole and cigarets lol go figure, no duplication was alowed). anyway we figured we had a leg up as it was a mild drug and we knew it's effects first hand.well were we wrong we found nothing realivant in either the school or area libraries other then in the encyclopedias. wellwe ended up going to the metro refrance library not much luck either we were stumped why was there no information? well we did a search through the stacks (basicaly old publications that were almost irreplacable). well we finaly found some info cool. well what we were able to find was us congresional (blue book?) reports. we were shocked at the information they contained.
acording to these reports from the united states government. pot is not adictive chemicaly, (that is any addiction is to the "high" not a chemical dependance). that the health effects were of the same type a cigarett smokeing, (albeit a bit worse, but the same health risks) and of course the behavior studies on both animals and humans, stateing prety much as we already knew, that typicaly the subject is peacefull and to be honest prety much docile, and of course in humans some stupidity. well this being all the information we could find this is what our report came down to. we went in fully prepared to damm this evil substice that woud probably get you hooked for life (afterall we wanted a good grade). well after we gave our oral report my friend and i were asked to stay after class a minute. ok no prob we stayed. the teacher then told us that our report was well presented, well reserched (we had lots of photocopies of our source books to back us up. in fact i had blown over 20 bucks on 5 and 10 cent photocopies). but since we seemed to glorify the use instead of an "a" we were going to get a "c-". and that she was sorry as from what we presented it seemed clear we didn't try to make the info say what we wanted it to, and as well that the next time she would try to keep weed out of the choices. we had complained at the lack of dockumentation about it available before hand she was the one to sudjest we go to the refrance library.
so it comes down to this from our reserch one of the main reasons it was illigal was that it was hard to prove unlike alcohol and aparently considered a "gateway drug" basicaly you might want to try other drugs. that seemed to be why we had a hard time finding information as aparently they didn't want people to know how benighn it realy wa. so why is it illigal. if it was legalized it would cut the bottom out of a lot of criminal enterprises. not to mention that the weed grow houses here tend to be so electricaly overloaded that the frequintly catch fire. if it were grown on farms that would get rid of that problem as well. aside from the fact that if pot was legal they could devote more energy going after the dangerous drugs.
heck it wasn't illegal here for almost a year and i never once heard of any problems because of it. includeing the pot smoke in at the biggest police precint in the city, in fact the police cheifs comment was " it's actualy rather peacefull" and "just people haveing a good time and generaly being cheerfull" unknown reporter. so why not stop waisting money trying to enforce bad laws? oh yes and with cigarets almost $9/pack weed is actualy a much better deal right now anyway a friend figured out he pays about $300/month on cigeretts and under $60/ month on weed and that was being high most of the time he wasn't at work. and yes he is a good honest hard working person at his job. we have people who drink alcohol dureing work hours but no-one i know smokes pot dureing work hours, just an interesting fact. also how many vilent drunks do you know, i bet you don't know any people being violent while smokeing just weed, kinda makes you think eh.

60 dollars a month on pot and he was high all the time? How does that work out?! 2 dollars a day on pot? Surely that isn't going to get you that hight! I know people who spend £20 a day on pot, yeah thats £600 a month and they're still not high ALL the time.

Intelearthling:

Tell your fellow Canadiens to stop smuggling your dope into my country and we won't have to invade your doped up country to stop it!

Hey tell your fellow Americans to not have such an appetite for our good pot. Stick to Tijuana stinkweed and let us smoke our own.

The only reason pot is smuggled into the US is because there's a huge market for it. Don't blame the grower, blame the consumer.


Pot itself is not harmful to soceity. Pot smokers rarely get violent. Alcohol is 1000% worse, it's far more insidious and far more harmful, healthwise.

Have you ever heard someone say "My family was torn apart by marijuana"? Or "Yeah my dad was a good guy but he was a violent stoner and when he smoked he would beat me"? Or "I was stoned but I figured I could drive and I plowed into three people, killing them all."

You're more likely to hear, "Uh, wha?"

All we are sayiiiiiing, is give weed a chance...

Oh, and since it's our country, we can do what we want. Nyah.


Jako

(cough cough)

Originally posted by phixion
60 dollars a month on pot and he was high all the time? How does that work out?! 2 dollars a day on pot? Surely that isn't going to get you that hight! I know people who spend £20 a day on pot, yeah thats £600 a month and they're still not high ALL the time.

gee the reason i used his is because i need even less 1/2 quarter ounce used to last me over a month and a half guess useing a pipe realy is cheeper joints are a waste aparently. and here i thought i was stoned far too much lol guess differant stokes for differant folks. either that or bc has realy good stuff. ah well either way by legalizing pot you would knock a lot of people off at the knees. can you imagine a guy buying a ton of pot and then the morket falls out from under him oops all that wasted money. chances are he woulden't even be able to cover the price he paid for it.
chances are people would be very surprised to learn just how many people actualy do smoke up. i was shocked to see how many actualy showed up to the smoke in last year. i think it shocked a lot of people

Jokeamo, you posted this:

Oh, and since it's our country, we can do what we want. Nyah.

First off I am for legalizing weed and every other drug out there. I would however have very stiff penalties for driving under the influence.

I do want to debate what you said quoted above just a little bit.

Now what if we in the US decided to make meth legal? Everyone can make it at home, as much as they want. Now some enterprising organization riding motorcycles decides that Canadians need meth. Lets ship tons and tons of this stuff across the border to Canada in order to make huge profits. More and More Canadians get hooked and more and more meth goes across the border. All of the profits involved bring in other gangs and they decide to fight over the profits killing each other as well as innocent people. It costs the Canadians more dollars for law enforcement, more dollars for treatment, more dollars for housing prisoners for doing meth and selling meth and stealing to be able to buy meth. Now what if I then say to you, we can do whatever we want becasue it is our country. Isn't that the type of attitude that does not promote good neighborship? What you do on your side of the border affects people on the US side and vice versa. We all live together even if we have an imaginary line on the dirt saying this is your side and this is our side.

cryptor:

Now what if we in the US decided to make meth legal? Everyone can make it at home, as much as they want. Now some enterprising organization riding motorcycles decides that Canadians need meth. Lets ship tons and tons of this stuff across the border to Canada in order to make huge profits. More and More Canadians get hooked and more and more meth goes across the border. All of the profits involved bring in other gangs and they decide to fight over the profits killing each other as well as innocent people. It costs the Canadians more dollars for law enforcement, more dollars for treatment, more dollars for housing prisoners for doing meth and selling meth and stealing to be able to buy meth. Now what if I then say to you, we can do whatever we want becasue it is our country. Isn't that the type of attitude that does not promote good neighborship? What you do on your side of the border affects people on the US side and vice versa. We all live together even if we have an imaginary line on the dirt saying this is your side and this is our side.

The thing is, if there is a need for crystal meth up here, that's our problem. Supply and demand. If there is illegal drugs coming up through the US, we need to protect our borders better and educate people about drugs.

Not just stick em in jail and let em rot.

Good question, though. But I believe that it all comes down to the consumers.

jako

But I believe that it all comes down to the consumers.

Good point. That is why I am for legalization. Prohibition does not work. People (consumers) will do what they want especially when it comes to getting high.

I started a post about legalization with reasons for doing so and graphs showing reasons for my opinion. Post

Peace!!!

Originally posted by cryptorsa1001
Jokeamo, you posted this:

Oh, and since it's our country, we can do what we want. Nyah.

First off I am for legalizing weed and every other drug out there. I would however have very stiff penalties for driving under the influence.

I know people are are quite stupid and take the risk of driving while they're stoned. I don't know what to think because they seem to drive better when they are. They know, and I know know that they wouldn never drive while under the influence if they thought there were too stoned. If they are just chilled out (these guys smoke a few spliffs of strong stuff a day, so one or two joints would just chill them out) they usually drive better. Always keep to the speed limit and are just generally concentrate more.

Originally posted by phixion

Originally posted by cryptorsa1001
Jokeamo, you posted this:

Oh, and since it's our country, we can do what we want. Nyah.

First off I am for legalizing weed and every other drug out there. I would however have very stiff penalties for driving under the influence.

I know people are are quite stupid and take the risk of driving while they're stoned. I don't know what to think because they seem to drive better when they are. They know, and I know know that they would never drive while under the influence if they thought there were too stoned. If they are just chilled out (these guys smoke a few spliffs of strong stuff a day, so one or two joints would just chill them out) they usually drive better. Always keep to the speed limit and are just generally concentrate more.

This is how I see it:


If I want to smoke a substance that makes me feel good, I'm going to. If it's not hurting other people directly then mind your own damn business, government.


They have no trouble with 13 year old smoking cigarettes, apparently, so when it comes to what I choose to do in my free time, my government has no right whatsoever to tell me what to do if I am hurting nobody.

Jakomo,
Besides black market profits, the reason weed is illegal is pretty much the same as the reason that poverty is illegal. I mean, there is no legal place for a homeless person to sleep in Los Angeles (where I live), except for at a camp ground or homeless shelter. Most homeless are homeless because they can't function in places like shelters and camp sites. Our prisons are also full of the impoverished and when a rich person commits a white collar crime (Martha Stewart)... or any crime for that matter (Courtny Love), they get a slap on the wrist and maybe rehab or 5 months in a minimal security country club. The government doesn't want poor people or high people. Governments tend to think both types of people are useless.
-S

Good post ServoHahn,

Hemp could be used so well to any countries advantage as it has many uses and is generally a better material than cotton.