JJ had a poll last week asking the question "Should Mississippi legalize and tax marijuana?" A slight majority said yes. Although not a scientific poll, I would not be surprised if true polling showed similar results.
It is time the state legalized it, regulated it, and taxed it. Most of the harms associated with marijuana are already covered by other laws. Don't want it around kids? There are laws covering contributing to the delinquency of minors. Don't want someone high on weed causing a wreck and killing someone? There are already DUI laws. Don't want people being stoned in public? There are public intoxication laws. Don't want to see it at concerts or other outdoor venues? No problem as I'm sure the public smoking laws can be easily amended to cover such behavior. I've always thought it was ridiculous to bust some guy listening to some Pink Floyd or Tool in his own living room. More than a few cops have told me they would have no problem with its legalization and think some of the arrests they have to make because of marijuana laws are ridiculous.
Marijuana is a depressant. I fully support the laws banning cocaine, PCP, heroin, crack, meth, and other similar drugs. They are stimulants, they are artificially produced, dangerous, and a true threat to society and users. However, weed is not addictive and does not have the same effect on a user as do other drugs. How many bar fights have you seen where everyone was high on weed as compared to whiskey? Would Ole Miss fans really have anything to worry about in Tiger Stadium if they smoked week all day instead of funneling beer for 12 consecutive hours? It will not surprise me at all if it is legalized one day as more and more people support legalization.
Yes | 150 (53%) |
No | 74 (26%) |
Undecided | 13 (4%) |
Study it further | 7 (2%) |
no and strengthen laws against it | 36 (12%) |
28 comments:
To think, alcohol can be obtained legally, but not weed. I firmly believe alcohol causes more damage in every way possible, compared to marijuana. How more likely is someone to become belligerent or combative while drinking/drunk than if they have been smoking weed? Much, much more likely. Physically and mentally, alcohol is vastly more damaging. Yet, it's legal. Marijuana should have been legalized, not alcohol, as far as I'm concerned.
Years ago I had a boyfriend that worked as part of a security crew for any type of large crowd; concerts, festivals, etc., all over the States and even Canada. He said that he always cringed to see a crowd drinking, it was a certainty that they would have problems if the crowd was using alcohol. On the other hand, if they saw weed being smoked, especially widespread in the crowd, they knew the smokers were likely more relaxed and there to enjoy the show or event.
I know the above goes without saying, but even professional crowd handlers agree that weed produces a calmer outcome than alcohol.
It's a shame that stigma and/or bigotry may have stood in the way of marijuana being legal in the first place.
[IMG]http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q16/sloshenburg/tool.gif[/IMG]
Ok, that didn't work... Ditto what anon @ 10:20 said.
We have problems with Alcohol and now we want to give people something else to abuse? Wonderful.
The problem I have with marijuana legalization is that, for what I have seen and read, it leads to the use of harder drugs. Everytime I have seen or read about someone with a meth or crack addiction, they always say they started with pot. I worry that if it is legalized, that we will end up having more meth and crack heads out there.
Not that it matters, but public intoxication(as opposed to DUI)only covers alcohol intoxication. I enjoy your blog.
The stigma of marijuana started long ago but to believe the American people can still be that small-minded & naive is outrageous. How many times have you heard of a "high" person killing people on the roads versus a drunk driver? Marijuana is all natural, more a herb. You hear of celebrities smoking weed and we all think that's ok, no uproar at all. At the same time we all know our friends are roasting up too. The stigma of weed is based on one man's ego trip & was picked up by a president as a campaign advantage & run into the ground. Weed does not kill, is not addictive and should be legalized, regulated & taxed, taxed, taxed.
My ex husband was a Marijuana abuser, and he one time picked me up by the neck and threw me across the room, no alcohol was involved. People who are Marijuana abusers, lack the drive to do most anything with their lives. And a person who drinks does not get other people high just by doing it in the same room.
It.will.never.happen.in.Mississippi.
Just watch "Reefer Madness"
The idea of pot as a gateway drug is ridiculous. I'll bet most, if not all, drug abusers started with alcohol.
Watch the tv show Intervention sometime. All the hard core drug addicts say they started with pot.
More likely today the gateway is pills, but I bet they all started with Alcohol. Or maybe it was milk. Or maybe, just maybe, breast milk. Oh the glory days when one thought just one beer won't hurt, the next thing you know, your high on meth, standing on a ledge, pants around your ankles yelling, "Freebird, Freebird!!!"
see, you completed the link for me. I wondered how Salter did it yesterday.
Child abuse and child porn came from meth which came from weed which came from beer which came from milk which came from mother's milk. case closed.
There is a fundamental problem with the "pot as a gateway drug" argument. Namely, that nearly every person who at one time smoked pot and got addicted to a harder drug was also drinking alcohol.
Alcohol is at least as big of a gateway drug as pot, probably more so. The problem that I have always had with the issue is that the government has arbitrarily picked some dangerous substances to legalize (alcohol, nicotine), yet chosen to make criminal another substance that has arguably less damaging effects than alcohol.
Alcohol causes lots of agression. Pot is a depressant and tends to make people less aggressive (generally). @11:15, I would guess that your ex-husband had other addictions that he didn't disclose to you.
Anyway, no one who is being intellectually honest can rationalize why alcohol is legal and pot is not.
Kaptain Kangaroo said..."the next thing you know, your high on meth, standing on a ledge, pants around your ankles yelling, "Freebird, Freebird!!!"
OMG!! you too Kapn?
well, hot damn, Kapt, you beat me to it. It's MILK!
For those of you who believe that pot is a gateway drug, you are all just sheep. How can you be the "judge" of something you know nothing about??
I think all abusers look for something to blame their issue on, don't you? Perhaps it was a choice they made themselves.
And for the lady who's husband abused her....I will assume you blamed the episode on the weed, not your husband. SHAME ON YOU!!!
Keep the uneducated opinions coming....
@11:15, I would guess that your ex-husband had other addictions that he didn't disclose to you.
Yes, completely a guess only thrown out to buttress your opinion.
Ironghost,
Your mommie over at JFP is too scared to even bring this topic up on her website. I so admire Kingfish for starting this discussion. If weed is so bad, then why do they grow it at UM? And why are other states trying to study it like Ole Miss is doing?
Weed is much easier to get now than claritin and sudafed. Speaking of, JFPer's were certainly a day late and dollar short on that topic. Why didn't they realize sooner that the doctors will now make an extra buck off of this bill?
Actually the meth legislation is a secret backdoor to get Two Lakes built. Keep that a secret, okay?
And points well taken on the laws I mentioned above but they can be amended. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hired to get public intoxication to include a stoned element. hehe.
too hired? rofl...did that tpo include a stoned element maybe? j/k, dude. lol...yer killin me here.
whoops, typo, I mean. Hehe @ myself.
If someone wants to try and use cocaine, heroin, meth, any drug for that matter, I firmly believe a majority of them are going to do it regardless if they smoked weed first or not. Some personality types are going to get into it regardless of anything.
I don't believe that weed is the gateway drug to "hard" drugs. Have you ever tried hard drugs? If so, you know they are an entirely different deal than weed will ever be. There is so much more involved and at risk with dangerous drugs than there is weed. Hard drugs are a real pita, whereas weed, well, it's not even in the same league.
There may be some who would say trying it led to other things, but the same arguement can be made for alcohol leading to smoking cigs (totally agree that smoking and drinking are experimented with at the same time), etc.
When scientists ranked drugs from the most harmful to the least based on 1) physical harm to the user; 2)addictive potential of the drug; and 3)the drug's overall impact on society, heroin was the worst, alcohol was no. 5, nicotine no. 9 and marijuana no. 11.
Well, having smoked pot and drank, the biggest problem I see is that you can have a beer or two but not be drunk. Not so with pot. Also, most pot smokers I know wake up and grab a joint so are in a mellow all the time. It affects their whole demeanor. I understand we have alcoholics but not all drinkers are alcoholics. However, I think most pot smokers abuse it. Who cares if the drug is a depressant or an upper. That justification is silly!
Alcohol affects every single person differently. Some people can actually get pretty tight on just one or surely two beers.
A drug may still be a drug, but there is a world of difference between a stimulant or a depressant. Alcohol is actually clinically shown to work both ways; initially it affects your body as a stimulant, and as it works and wears down through your system, it becomes a depressant. That's one reason people may overdrink and not even realize why; the giddy, feel good affects begin to wear off, so they keep drinking to prolong the more desirable affects of drinking. At that point, they either keep drinking, or snort a line or two to keep from feeling worse than they did when they started drinking.
Post a Comment