Board index › Topical Discussion › Politics, Philosophy, and Religion

Japan managed to win its war on drugs. Why can't we?

Page 6 of 12 [ 186 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1 ... 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ... 12  Next

Previous topic | Next topic

cberg
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 31 Dec 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,183
Location: A swiftly tilting planet

14 Feb 2019, 10:01 am

Dude! You're reading way too far into this. I just enjoy something you don't. There is no excuse for this kind of animosity in what's called a free country. The constitution wasn't written on wood-paper. Stoners aren't going to stab you in an alley, this thread opened with a snap judgment about the character of total strangers.


Solve your own problems instead of slandering people you refuse to understand.


_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos :mrgreen:


techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,195
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi

14 Feb 2019, 10:01 am

So I've just about finished the Joe Rogan interview with Michael and Alex.

I think the thing that can be gathered from this is that marijuana seems to have pronounced effects on brain plasticity. Toward the end Michael sites how it can help people bounce back from traumatic brain injury, and at the other side its also considered to be much higher in correlation with bad outcomes for children and young adults under 25 - at a time where the brain is attempting to prune receptors for stronger and better neural connections which means that a rapid increase in plasticity can often times be a bad thing. In that sense it's a double-edged sword and 'context is king' with respect to how its used.

This is really where anyone who says that it's only good is as off-point or ignorant as anyone who says it's only bad. To the extent that our culture is still stuck in these black and white purely 'for or against' debates whether online or in the media it shows that we still have a really bad time with nuance, and that could be maybe because we're still dogmatically clinging to the idea that if we want to believe in meritocracy or 'all men are created equal' we have to sweep all evidence to the contrary under the rug to keep our worldviews intact.

Where I really think the future of drug use needs to go - these need to be tools that people use more for self-improvement and thought of less as vice or recreation. Self-improvement use is a significant factor for a non-trivial portion of the population with both THC and CBD and even larger for the portion of the population who can at least use something like CBD for overcoming phobias, panic disorders, and the like. Also if we can have genetic screening and some degree of gating with respect to who these things are legal for or at least whose allowed by high-yield vs. only allowed to buy low-yield. We could, especially for things like more traditional psychedelics, go for something similar to a CCW model where the people need to be educated, screened, pass tests, and go through psychedelic therapy before they have a license to buy which gets voided in the case of committing any kind of felony that would be related to substance abuse.


_________________
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin


AspE
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 31 Dec 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 4,114

14 Feb 2019, 10:26 am

Mikah wrote:
The strangest thing about this argument is the same people who can see exactly what Big Tobacco is cannot see that they are being manipulated by exactly the same kind of cynical, amoral suits. Big Tobacco Dope is going to make a killing, again, in more ways than one. Where do you think all this pro-cannabis propaganda comes from?

If the tobacco lobby had told you in the 1930s that we should ignore the correlation between tobacco smoking and lung cancer because it's likely that smokers are "self medicating" for preexisting lung problems would you fall for it?

If tobacco were illegal in the 1930s and billionaires were trying to make it legal, knowing that there was a correlation between smoking and many lethal lung conditions, would you fall for it?

Fine with me. Forming a corporation to make money is totally legal. Vaping cannabis is healthier than smoking. And you can eat or drink it. It's use lowers alcohol and opiate consumption. It has a history of human usage at least as long as alcohol. It doesn't cause cancer, quite the opposite. Lots of unhealthy things are legal, it's a matter of degree, and weed hasn't been shown to be a public health hazard.



Crimadella
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Jan 2019
Age: 41
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,644
Location: Warner Robins, Ga

14 Feb 2019, 10:40 am

Prometheus18 wrote:
As I tried to make clear in my post, no human being exists in social or intellectual vacuum; there will be peer pressure, there will be advertising and there will be the constant eulogy on cannabis smoking (and it will generally be smoked, which means a resurgence of THAT habit, too) in the media which we're already seeing. Free will, as I also tried to make clear above is at worst an illusion and at best very, very far from being a guarantee of rational decision-making. Edward Bernays, the father of advertising and public manipulation, bragged in the 1920s, nearly a hundred years ago, that after being employed by the major tobacco companies to do so, he had persuaded the women of middle-America, for whom it had previously been taboo, to smoke in public; within a generation, it seemed all but impossible to find a woman who refrained from this habit.

I never claimed that support for legislation of cannabis was a minority position in the United States, which proves once again that you weren't paying attention when you read my post. I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that you're quite right in thinking it's a popular policy, but this only proves how easily public opinion is manipulated. Popularity is not a guarantee of moral or rational justification - after all, a large portion of the American public also believes the world is six-thousand years old and that Moses and Jesus were contemporaneous with one another.


I've read an article that suggested marijuana use among teenagers has dropped since recreational use has been legalized(In California). but, to make another point let me ask this question, what is the purpose you feel marijuana should be ban for recreational use? Is it for health issues or simply because it gives a person an euphoria/buzz?

Where are you willing to draw the line? Products that contain processed sugar are constantly advertised and are widely consumed and are very unhealthy, should we make sugar illegal? How about bad diets? Should we enforce people to eat healthy? Should we enforce people to make intelligent decisions and penalize them when they don't? I really don't get the argument.

Free will most certainly is not an illusion. People can be persuade, that's the basic principle of all advertisement, that doesn't go against free will. People are born with free will, even if something is illegal you can still choose to do it, your choice is your free will. People can make stupid choices and people can make smart choices, false advertisement is wrong on both sides, whether trying to promote a product or demonize a product.



Prometheus18
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Aug 2018
Age: 28
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,866

14 Feb 2019, 11:32 am

Crimadella wrote:
Prometheus18 wrote:
As I tried to make clear in my post, no human being exists in social or intellectual vacuum; there will be peer pressure, there will be advertising and there will be the constant eulogy on cannabis smoking (and it will generally be smoked, which means a resurgence of THAT habit, too) in the media which we're already seeing. Free will, as I also tried to make clear above is at worst an illusion and at best very, very far from being a guarantee of rational decision-making. Edward Bernays, the father of advertising and public manipulation, bragged in the 1920s, nearly a hundred years ago, that after being employed by the major tobacco companies to do so, he had persuaded the women of middle-America, for whom it had previously been taboo, to smoke in public; within a generation, it seemed all but impossible to find a woman who refrained from this habit.

I never claimed that support for legislation of cannabis was a minority position in the United States, which proves once again that you weren't paying attention when you read my post. I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that you're quite right in thinking it's a popular policy, but this only proves how easily public opinion is manipulated. Popularity is not a guarantee of moral or rational justification - after all, a large portion of the American public also believes the world is six-thousand years old and that Moses and Jesus were contemporaneous with one another.


I've read an article that suggested marijuana use among teenagers has dropped since recreational use has been legalized(In California). but, to make another point let me ask this question, what is the purpose you feel marijuana should be ban for recreational use? Is it for health issues or simply because it gives a person an euphoria/buzz?

Where are you willing to draw the line? Products that contain processed sugar are constantly advertised and are widely consumed and are very unhealthy, should we make sugar illegal? How about bad diets? Should we enforce people to eat healthy? Should we enforce people to make intelligent decisions and penalize them when they don't? I really don't get the argument.

Free will most certainly is not an illusion. People can be persuade, that's the basic principle of all advertisement, that doesn't go against free will. People are born with free will, even if something is illegal you can still choose to do it, your choice is your free will. People can make stupid choices and people can make smart choices, false advertisement is wrong on both sides, whether trying to promote a product or demonize a product.


The reasons for keeping cannabis illegal are a combination of its effects on the individual and - more so, for me - its effects on society.

I don't believe that the fact that I argue for cannabis' remaining illegal on the basis of, among other things, its health effects, leaves me duty bound to argue that all things currently legal that are unhealthy should also be banned. This is a French Enlightenment fallacy; I don't accept the eighteenth century view that every generation can - far less should - build itself anew. Every one of our laws in Britain and America (at least before Britain became an EU - for which read "Franco-German" - colony) is the product of countless compromises over hundreds of years and dozens of generations. The order and prosperity which have resulted from the miracle of Common Law mean that it is not something to be played with by some feckless social-science graduate just because he thinks he knows better; it's a delicate and finely tuned system which isn't amenable to revolutionary changes.

Regarding advertising, people can be persuaded to do many things, including give away their freedoms, agree to foreign wars designed to enrich arms manufacturers and to dismantle the welfare state. The fact of the matter is that when persuasion is used for destructive ends, it can no longer be trusted to continue working unmolested.



Crimadella
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Jan 2019
Age: 41
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,644
Location: Warner Robins, Ga

14 Feb 2019, 11:45 am

What about obesity? That has very large impacts on the individual and society. Should obesity be outlawed? It still seems that you are trying to attack one substance while neglecting many other things that also impact the individual and society. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems more like you are so passionate about marijuana simply because people get high when they smoke it. Else, there are many negative things that are widely negative for the individual and society, to attack peoples free will to me is to enforce dictatorship.

I have heard that psychedelics possibly played a huge role in curiosity, expansion and evolution of the human mind. There is also a funky little monkey that likes to sit on a tree branch and rub a poisons leaf all over it's body specifically to hallucinate. Wish I could remember that funky monkeys species name.

But also, smoking marijuana or consuming marijuana is not all negative, it has it's ups and downs, seems you should be more passionate about making processed sugar illegal as it mainly consists of negative impacts.



VegetableMan
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 11 Jun 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,208
Location: Illinois

14 Feb 2019, 12:18 pm

Prometheus18 wrote:
Crimadella wrote:
Prometheus18 wrote:
As I tried to make clear in my post, no human being exists in social or intellectual vacuum; there will be peer pressure, there will be advertising and there will be the constant eulogy on cannabis smoking (and it will generally be smoked, which means a resurgence of THAT habit, too) in the media which we're already seeing. Free will, as I also tried to make clear above is at worst an illusion and at best very, very far from being a guarantee of rational decision-making. Edward Bernays, the father of advertising and public manipulation, bragged in the 1920s, nearly a hundred years ago, that after being employed by the major tobacco companies to do so, he had persuaded the women of middle-America, for whom it had previously been taboo, to smoke in public; within a generation, it seemed all but impossible to find a woman who refrained from this habit.

I never claimed that support for legislation of cannabis was a minority position in the United States, which proves once again that you weren't paying attention when you read my post. I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that you're quite right in thinking it's a popular policy, but this only proves how easily public opinion is manipulated. Popularity is not a guarantee of moral or rational justification - after all, a large portion of the American public also believes the world is six-thousand years old and that Moses and Jesus were contemporaneous with one another.


I've read an article that suggested marijuana use among teenagers has dropped since recreational use has been legalized(In California). but, to make another point let me ask this question, what is the purpose you feel marijuana should be ban for recreational use? Is it for health issues or simply because it gives a person an euphoria/buzz?

Where are you willing to draw the line? Products that contain processed sugar are constantly advertised and are widely consumed and are very unhealthy, should we make sugar illegal? How about bad diets? Should we enforce people to eat healthy? Should we enforce people to make intelligent decisions and penalize them when they don't? I really don't get the argument.

Free will most certainly is not an illusion. People can be persuade, that's the basic principle of all advertisement, that doesn't go against free will. People are born with free will, even if something is illegal you can still choose to do it, your choice is your free will. People can make stupid choices and people can make smart choices, false advertisement is wrong on both sides, whether trying to promote a product or demonize a product.


The reasons for keeping cannabis illegal are a combination of its effects on the individual and - more so, for me - its effects on society.




Prohibition policies do far more damage to society than any drug ever could.


_________________
What do you call a hot dog in a gangster suit?

Oscar Meyer Lansky


JohnPowell
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2016
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,806
Location: Palestine

14 Feb 2019, 12:35 pm

cberg wrote:
You clearly have no idea what Marijuana prohibition is. It began as a Jim Crow law that was disproportionately applied to African Americans.

You say I'm spreading cancer? My mom is a cancer researcher & she favors legalization because cannabidiol saves lives. I wouldn't be alive to write this had I not been introduced to medical Marijuana.

I think you just don't care about others cancer nor seizures, PTSD, neuropathy, or pretty much any chronic pain conditions.

The fact that you mentioned cancer as a casual bit of slang says a lot about you. Bye.


Your posts aren't really doing your argument any favours. What are you on about? You mentioned cancer! My parents have both had cancer and I'm not against cannabis being used as treatment. That is completely separate to just wanting to get high.


_________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"


JohnPowell
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2016
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,806
Location: Palestine

14 Feb 2019, 12:38 pm

Crimadella wrote:
JohnPowell wrote:
cberg wrote:
JohnPowell wrote:
I find it outrageous that a lot of staunch opponents of freedom of speech and expression make an argument that people should be free to do what they want when it comes to cannabis when that actually does affect others.


Plainly none of you seem to care about cancer therapy, little kids' seizures or even your seniors' ailments.

This thread is disgusting & bigoted. If you're going to drag me through the mud for smoking, say it to my face & prepare for no drama whatsoever.


What the f**k are you talking about? Get a grip, your post is the definition of bigotry. Don't start bringing in cancer as propaganda, that's disgusting. No one said a word to you so drop your phony outrage.

The plan from the beggining was to use the medicinal argument to eventually legalise the drug.

It has been proven to have medical use, a lot of medical uses. I give my dog CBD to reduce tumor growth. Smoking weed is not 'harmful to everyone'. It becomes a real issue when people start dictating what another chooses to do with there own body. Perhaps we should ban sugar, coffee, tobacco, sports, cars and on and on.


It's already illegal like a lot of other drugs.


_________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"


JohnPowell
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2016
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,806
Location: Palestine

14 Feb 2019, 12:40 pm

AspE wrote:
JohnPowell wrote:
I find it outrageous that a lot of staunch opponents of freedom of speech and expression make an argument that people should be free to do what they want when it comes to cannabis when that actually does affect others.

Stop slandering the left by suggesting we are against free speech. I support the first amendment more than Trump does.


I didn't realise you'd become left wing, I must've missed that. A lot of the new left/liberals are against free speech.


_________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"


JohnPowell
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2016
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,806
Location: Palestine

14 Feb 2019, 12:42 pm

Mikah wrote:
The strangest thing about this argument is the same people who can see exactly what Big Tobacco is cannot see that they are being manipulated by exactly the same kind of cynical, amoral suits. Big Tobacco Dope is going to make a killing, again, in more ways than one. Where do you think all this pro-cannabis propaganda comes from?

If the tobacco lobby had told you in the 1930s that we should ignore the correlation between tobacco smoking and lung cancer because it's likely that smokers are "self medicating" for preexisting lung problems would you fall for it?

If tobacco were illegal in the 1930s and billionaires were trying to make it legal, knowing that there was a correlation between smoking and many lethal lung conditions, would you fall for it?


Exactly.


_________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"


Prometheus18
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Aug 2018
Age: 28
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,866

14 Feb 2019, 12:44 pm

Crimadella wrote:
What about obesity? That has very large impacts on the individual and society. Should obesity be outlawed? It still seems that you are trying to attack one substance while neglecting many other things that also impact the individual and society. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems more like you are so passionate about marijuana simply because people get high when they smoke it. Else, there are many negative things that are widely negative for the individual and society, to attack peoples free will to me is to enforce dictatorship.

I have heard that psychedelics possibly played a huge role in curiosity, expansion and evolution of the human mind. There is also a funky little monkey that likes to sit on a tree branch and rub a poisons leaf all over it's body specifically to hallucinate. Wish I could remember that funky monkeys species name.

But also, smoking marijuana or consuming marijuana is not all negative, it has it's ups and downs, seems you should be more passionate about making processed sugar illegal as it mainly consists of negative impacts.


Your first paragraph shows that you missed my point re Common Law entirely. The fact that we currently tolerate some unhealthy practises as a society doesn't mean that we should introduce new ones, and scrapping the current ones wholesale with, as it were, one motion of the hand, places too much confidence in the ability of bureaucrats to determine what will be good for us and to avoid unforeseen effects of legislation. Of course, even if I did have to drop my argument from individual health effects which, by the way, I acknowledge isn't wholly clearcut, there is still the much, much stronger argument on the basis of neighborhood effects. I think I stated earlier that the paternalistic argument for cannabis prohibition is, for me, secondary to the one made on the basis of public morals and crime levels.

As for your accusation of puritanism on my part, I have no objection to anybody's enjoying their pet vices, generally speaking, provided they're aware of the risks involved and harm nobody else. This is implicit in the fact that, unlike those on what passes for the "left" of the political spectrum today, I don't advocate banning cigarettes or covering the packaging in pictures of dying children and I don't advocate banning meat.

VegetableMan wrote:
Prohibition policies do far more damage to society than any drug ever could.

What makes you think this? I suppose we should relax our laws prohibiting murder and burglary, then.



JohnPowell
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2016
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,806
Location: Palestine

14 Feb 2019, 12:47 pm

Prometheus18 wrote:
^ This is it - those in what passes for the left seriously believe that by campaigning to legalise cannabis they're "sticking it to the man"/being rebellious/being good Marxists, when all the time, they're playing right into the hands of the neo-liberal (neo-feudal), corporatist agenda. People's gullibility, particularly those desperate to be accepted as "liberals" never ceases to amaze me.


Most of the propaganda comes from Hollywood, so people are being indoctrinated while they are being "entertained". There wouldn't be a global campaign to legalise it because billionaires and millionaires care about 'freedom'.


_________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"


JohnPowell
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2016
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,806
Location: Palestine

14 Feb 2019, 12:50 pm

There's a strong correlation with illegal/legal drugs with mass shootings and terrorist attacks. It is lunacy to try and legalise more.


_________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"


VegetableMan
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 11 Jun 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,208
Location: Illinois

14 Feb 2019, 12:55 pm

Prohibition gave us the crime syndicate.


_________________
What do you call a hot dog in a gangster suit?

Oscar Meyer Lansky


cberg
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 31 Dec 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,183
Location: A swiftly tilting planet

14 Feb 2019, 1:00 pm

JohnPowell wrote:
cberg wrote:
You clearly have no idea what Marijuana prohibition is. It began as a Jim Crow law that was disproportionately applied to African Americans.

You say I'm spreading cancer? My mom is a cancer researcher & she favors legalization because cannabidiol saves lives. I wouldn't be alive to write this had I not been introduced to medical Marijuana.

I think you just don't care about others cancer nor seizures, PTSD, neuropathy, or pretty much any chronic pain conditions.

The fact that you mentioned cancer as a casual bit of slang says a lot about you. Bye.


Your posts aren't really doing your argument any favours. What are you on about? You mentioned cancer! My parents have both had cancer and I'm not against cannabis being used as treatment. That is completely separate to just wanting to get high.


You're completely wrong, THC is necessary in moderate amounts if someone wants the maximum benefit of non-psychoactive cannabinoids. People are dying all the time from legal opiates & those get them higher than weed ever could. Demeaning people for getting high but making an exception if someone's dying is a double standard I'm not inclined to put up with, ever. It's legal to sell cigarettes laced with industrial toxins, enough fentanyl to kill entire towns, rat poison as heart medicine but god forbid some weirdos dancing around a flower.


_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos :mrgreen: