AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Wow all the anecdotal evidence in this thread sure is meaningful (it's not). If your personal experiences with pot users in a large way decides how you think about marijuana, you should really reconsider how you view the world.


Weed has been proven to narrow your peripheral vision and decrease your reaction time. Even if you don't notice these effects it's still very likely that they are there. Please, for the safety of yourself and the people around you, do not ever drive under influence.

My problem with the way marijuana, alcohol and tobacco and other substances are regulated is that it seems completely arbitrary and is based on little other than cultural history.

I agree with about 80% percent of this. I have driven several times while high, and I know several others that have done the same for longer. And not one accident. However I don't think that is an excuse because just because it HASN'T happened doesn't mean it wont. I feel the same way towards marijuana that I do with alcohol. If you can't handle it and/or not let it affect you negatively then that's your own fault and the rest of us shouldn't be punished for it. I have maintained at least a 3.4 GPA for the entire school-year and I have been smoking since last summer. I have not gotten in on accident or hurt one person. The tax will help boost our economy as Marijuana is the number one cash crop in the world (if not correct then at least in the usa). This "drug" does not cause people to hallucinate or anything like you might have seen in cartoons. The closest feeling I would describe it to is that of when you first wake up and you're slightly disoriented and confused. Also, its not exactly a bad thing to get addicted to happiness is it?



YES! Very true, especially true with weed from mexico which has very little THC amounts and is very tampered with. I used to smoke this but have moved onto better stuff. This is another reason that legalizing marijuana would benefit people. Why buy illegal Mexican dirt-weed that is actually worse for you and than going to store and picking up better shit legally?

Please watch before saying anything else positive/ negative towards Marijuana.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7fa4gV ... verified=1

Anecdotal evidence picks and chooses evidence based on a general statistic. It doesn't look at the fact that 90% of people who do X thing end up with Y problem, it notes that "My Uncle Tommy" did X thing and didn't have to deal with Y problem, which doesn't disprove the significant correlation with X and Y, it just means your Uncle Tommy is a part of the 10%.

While I'm opposed to non-medical drug use, I think it should not be a criminal offense. People are ultimately free to do whatever they want as long as they don't cause prejudice to others. Though I think it should be taxed like Turbo said, if only to pay for collateral damage.

From my point of view, reason is what makes you a person, so willingly forsaking/skewing your reason by taking drugs and seems like a very bad idea to me. Drugs/coffee/energy drinks/alcohol/whatever never fix your problems, they just hide them temporarily and let them build up. If you can't get going without 3 Red Bulls, can't get anything done without 2 coffees, can't spend an evening with your friends/family without being drunk, can't deal with a rough time without getting high to avoid thinking about it, there's a problem somewhere and it's not getting solved.

Sometimes you just get sick of all that reason and need to cut loose.

As for caffeine, it's pretty much cheating how good it works. I only use it when I have to so the effect is pretty undiluted, gets me through an 8 hour shift with a minimum of sleep like it's no biggie.

While I agree with you (to an extent), I'm still unsure how I'm meant to solve the problem of "have to get up early" and "can't go to sleep early due to the stress of having to get up early." When someone tells me I'm wrong for drinking coffee because I'm just hiding the symptoms to the real problem, all I can say is "Yes, I know. That symptom is 'I'm tired in a situation I can't afford to be tired in.'" Saying "You shouldn't be tired" is just reaching into the realm of historian fallacy for solutions to issues you don't know the specifics to.

We develop, and use these things from nature to overcome some shortcoming we have as an organism. Technically, we can use the logic you used to say that there's some problem we're masking by taking in Vitamins from the food we eat. That problem is called "We don't produce it ourselves, and thus require it from an outside source."

Vitamins don't affect reason and they are necessary for survival so they're besides my point.
Drugs and stuff are neither a primary need nor a natural progression. I'm not sure I see what you mean by shortcomings. Being tired when we don't get enough sleep? It's a matter of balance, not a design flaw that we are supposed to overcome.
I'm not saying you're wrong for drinking coffee, I'm saying you'd be wrong to think you don't have to get enough sleep because you can just drink coffee later. I don't care if you drink coffee because you didn't sleep well or have something important ahead, all I'm saying is that its not a long-term solution if you have frequent sleep problems or important responsibilities.I'll have to take your word for it.

I experience reality through reason. Without reason, I can't tell if something is right or wrong, if I'm having fun or being in pain, or living at all. I can't understand why in my right mind I would want to disconnect myself from that (except maybe to escape from something really unbearable) and I need to know I can trust my senses. But that's just me.

It's not like your sense of reasoning goes right out the window after smoking. I've yet to smoke and then think, "You know what would be great, drinking poison". I've been black out drunk several times in my life and that compared to smoking is like comparing a cut on your leg to getting the whole leg decapitated. Since smoking I've yet to put myself back into a black out drunk situation because of how vastly different getting drunk and getting high is.

I'd like to believe that humans are rational enough to be able to decide when/if they want to alter their mental experience, so long as it doesn't cause harm to anyone.

of course, it's when things get out of hand (addiction, stuff like drunk driving, or more dangerous substances) that we run into problems. There's a lot of grey area there. I don't think the concept of altering one's mental/physical state is inherently wrong, but I can also see where you're coming from, Obnosim. The idea of losing a certain degree of control over your decisions can be uncomfortable. When I drink, I never have more than 1-2 drinks, for example. Smoking tobacco doesn't really change reasoning much, but it can be addictive, which is still losing a degree of control over your actions because you could feel forced to continue smoking. Smoking pot has pretty obvious effects on decision-making, in contrast.

So the question here is, where do we draw the line to protect people from themselves? Is being high more destructive, harmful to others, or unhealthy to oneself than being drunk, or taking legal drugs that change your mental state like antidepressants? How do we measure something like that? The effects are hard to quantify, let alone the point at which the effects are deemed "acceptable". That's why the policy is so culture-based.

What about this.

People smoke for the same reason anyone else would participate in whatever their hobby is. It makes them feel good, and it's something they can share with their friends.

I mean hell, half of the reason I drink coffee is I like the taste.

I think his point is that a lot of people become addicted to their stimulant of choice, and cant function properly without a cigarette every other hour or so, or a few cups of coffee a day. You dont need those to survive, but your body is so use to the enorphines you get from it that you get withdrawal if you go without. Now, wether thats a BAD thing or not is another argument entirerly, since personally, I find that indulging in stimulants is just about the only thing that makes life enjoyable at all.

My views on marijuana use are pretty lax.
I don't care if someone chooses to smoke, but I will judge them if:
A. They're inconsiderate and/or dangerous
B. They're too stupid to take proper precautions.

There's a lot of drug use on my campus, and it simply astounds me how many people are stupid enough to smoke in their dorms and get caught. The local police department will bodaciously tell college kids about places they can safely smoke in isolation (some nearby forest, for example) and some people still feel the need to toke up in a high-occupancy residential building.

Also my old suitemate smoked pretty often and we could smell it in the bathroom, so I planned to talk to him about it and ask him to go elsewhere to smoke. He got kicked out before I had the chance.