It also might be worth pointing out that driving under the influence of marijuana is pretty far removed from the original point of this conversation. It's hard to argue that legalizing marijuana would be good for the safety of other drivers.

But, there could be other advantages. We have only mentioned two. People would be able to easily access it if they feel they need it for medical reasons. And also, legalizing it would make the social aspect of it being a 'gateway drug' mostly disappear. Meaning, since you don't know a drug dealer, and other druggies, with connections to the underworld, it would be harder to find access to harder drugs.

I think it's really important that if we're going to continue have an intelligent discussion on the matter that we consider all aspects of it's legalization and not get stuck on a particular issue that seems to have no benefit.

Indeed, if lifted to a political level, extreme pre-emptive thinking can become very ugly -- regardless of what "colour" ideology we are talking about. To me that is anathema. And it is an intellectual perversion.

All too easily, it can degenerate into: "Do unto others, before they do unto you."

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Zalister, just saw your last post. My apologies if you deem me off-topic.

It is a bit, though it is wells stated :).

I hope we can keep this thread on topic, it would be a waste for it to wash into political generalities...

.
...but I would like to make an addtional point.

There are numerous societies that use substances (or music) that induce altered states of consciousness. The Huichol Indians with peyote, for one. As far as I know, "drug problems" caused by said substances are virtually unheard of amongst such peoples.

I have a theory: There, the substances are taken only during particular ceremonies, and there are experienced "guides" who help the participator integrate what they experience during their altered state of consciousness.

Only rarely is this the case for perception-altering substances taken for recreational purposes in "modern" society. Quite the contrary, it is striking that we lack traditions for integrating such experiences! I think in some respect this lack of sensory/experiential integration may often be more damaging than the physiological effects.

What recourse, then? To re-imbibe the substance? (Mind you, I’m not thinking of Cannabis here.) All too often the result is an experiential schism. And in tragically many cases, addiction or severe mental problems.

That said, there is great value in breaking through our "bubble of consensus reality", if only for glimpse. One of my university professors argued that that should be mandatory. But I don’t believe that it has to be drug induced.


With best regards,
ArcticStones

Carlos, apologies if I misconstrued your points. It sounded like you were saying that the harmful behavior of (some) drug users is a problem, with which I agree, but that you weren't connecting the drug use to the harmful behavior. It would be great if we could have the one (drug use) without the other (harmful behavior), but that's not been the way things shake out.

I'm pretty much a social libertarian with no interest in pre-emptively controling anyone or anything needlessly. But freedom is a tricky thing to define, as one person's freedom ends where anothers' begins. E.g., one person's right to smoke comes up against anothers' right to smoke-free air. So you have to weigh these and see what kinds of compromises can be negotiated. Same goes for drinking alcohol and smoking pot. It would be great if people who did so didn't get on the road to drive, but they do (partly because the drugs impair their judgment), and even if they are punished for doing so, lots of innocent people get creamed. Everyone's right to a highway free from drunk drivers is therefore jeopardized not only by the fact that some people abuse substances, but that their right to use them in the first place increases the incidences of abuse. So that issue has to be on the table in the interest of considering the rights people have to safe highways.

Nevertheless, fewer lives have been lost on the highways since the drinking age was raised, and that's not merely a correlation, imo. Is the good of several hundreds of lives saved each year a higher value than more teenagers getting busted for purchasing alcohol illegally? I think so.

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Arctic, one interesting thing that's come out about alcohol is that the older a culture, the less incidences of abuse you'll find -- most likely because the genetic factors associated with alcoholism have been "selected out." The Jewish race has a very low incidence of alcholism, while your home country of Norway is higher than the Jews, but much lower than in the U.S. Native Americans apparently didn't have alcohol in their cultures, and the incidence of alcoholism among this is very high. All neither here nor there re. Cannabis, but there might be some genetic factors at work there as well (re. how one deals with THC).

I think your distinction between using chemicals in the service of religious and other social rituals with a guide has merit as well. That's quite different from the kind of social recreational use that we find in many cultures.

Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts and many others from the 50s and 60s held that view about LSD. Problem is, it's not at all clear whether what they were glimpsing was indeed a "higher realm," or only a consequences of scrambled brain impulses. Still, it was an "alternative reality."

In this case (my post), I am not making any claim of experiencing a higher realm. That is a separate worthwhile discussion. I merely point out that:

In other words, for anyone who is attempting to learn and walk a conscious path in life -- striving to be awake -- I think it is important to realize that we don’t live in reality! Instead, we are trapped in an artificial construct, a consensus reality into which we have become initiated at an early age. We filter and organize perception in a way that is highly selective, and which separates us from more comprehensive possibilities.

A glimpse is enough to realize this. But as I added:

Quite the contrary! What I have experienced by other means, certainly makes my substance-induced experiences pale by comparison. Furthermore, in terms of natural experiences, I think that our physiological and psychological organism by and large "protects" us from that for which we are not ready. When we imbibe substances outside a guided or socio-religious context (which we lack!), we risk short-circuiting these safeguards.

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One more point: Do I believe that certain substances can be a door-opener to a "higher realm"? Yes, I do. But the perception-altering chemistry is just an aid; many other factors come into play, one of which is the "guiding" that I referred to.

Meditation, similarly, can just as easily result in an involuntary submersion into forgotten mental refuse. For many of us, that can be an extremely uncomfortable and traumatic experience. For that very reason Patanjali (a writer who lived 1600-1800 years ago), amongst others, warns of the dangers of certain techniques.

It is obvious that similar warnings are called for when it comes to perception-altering drugs.

But I have never heard of anyone really "flipping out" on weed. (Unless you consider the munchies or horniness to be flipping out.) I have, however, witnessed shockingly many episodes with alcohol intoxication.

I have known at least half a dozen people who have "flipped out" after marijuana use. Smoking dope is a really bad idea for anyone with a latent psychosis. It may be argued that there was an underlying mental illness to begin with but I have seen it too many times to take any connection lightly.

TBH I dont think weed is the drug we need to be concerned about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MDRPrDteY0&feature=user

EWWWW

Just needed to add…

legal precedence has established that federal law supercedes state law wherever they conflict.

The legalization of Marijuana in California is a sort of case of legal limbo. It won’t *really* be okay until the rest of the US catches up and it becomes part of federal law.

As far as the health effects here is a recent study in the composition of marijuana smoke;

A Comparison of Mainstream and Sidestream Marijuana and Tobacco Cigarette Smoke

That's not always true. Study the 10th amendment and the cases surrounding it. Also note the part of the Constitution where it delineates the limited privileges granted to the federal government.

The federal government has encroached on states' rights by using the commerce clause of the Constitution. The clause was intended to cede control to the federal government for things that directly affect interstate commerce. However it's been twisted around a bit to also include things that have traveled in interstate commerce in the past, even just parts of something greater. Selling home-grown marijuana, which has not crossed state lines, even under this expanded definition, should not be federal jurisdiction. However it hasn't gone to a high enough court yet to see the results.

The Supreme Court, in earlier decisions in various other completely unrelated cases, has essentially stated that the 9th and 10th amendments have less validity than the others (if that's even possible, but I won't go there).

For all practical purposes, the 9th and 10th amendments have been freely ignored by the executive and legislative branches of government and, with not too many exceptions, have been upheld by the Supreme Court. Even so-called "strict constructionists" have been loath to strictly construct them.

Skimming through this thread, I recall that as a kid in a New York City high school, pot was always painted as the beginning of a slippery slope to a heroin addiction because whomever you bought it from was inevitably going to escalate your habit by offering samples of better stuff.

What I found interesting about that warning was that if pot had not been illegal, that wouldn't have been a problem -- users would buy it in a store. Funny how laws often have precisely the opposite effects to those intended -- selling drugs is big buisiness now, just as bootlegging was during prohibition.