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Old 06-02-2018, 06:43 PM
 
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No. Alcohol is a gateway drug.
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Old 06-02-2018, 06:46 PM
 
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Originally Posted by Dwatted Wabbit View Post
Yes, it is a gateway drug. University studies done on our dime, BTW, often get funded only if they reach the proper conclusions. So it is with global warming and a host of others.

I would legalize, regulate, and tax all drugs. Sell them at drug stores, put the cartels out of business, put the Chinese and the Russians and the other government/cartels or drug gangs out of business.

It's anecdotal, but numbers run to perhaps 100: Everyone I ever knew who tried pot, tried other, "better" stuff. Often with eventually tragic results.
Very interesting. Especially since in my 47+ years of experience with the plant, my finding are diametrically opposed to yours. In other words: JUST THE OPPOSITE.

Further, I would be willing to bet that every one of your "tragic results" acquaintances drank alcohol before the first pot smoke ever crossed their lips.

But I very much appreciate you not being a prohibitionist.

I also must take you to task on your observation on university studies. I have noticed the outcome of such so-called "studies" are based on the required results of whomever funded the study. The results are even more dubious if the funding party is not disclosed.

Marijuana is not the "gateway" drug any more so than alcohol.
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Old 06-02-2018, 07:08 PM
 
2,129 posts, read 1,765,791 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dwatted Wabbit View Post
Yes, it is a gateway drug. University studies done on our dime, BTW, often get funded only if they reach the proper conclusions. So it is with global warming and a host of others.

I would legalize, regulate, and tax all drugs. Sell them at drug stores, put the cartels out of business, put the Chinese and the Russians and the other government/cartels or drug gangs out of business.

It's anecdotal, but numbers run to perhaps 100: Everyone I ever knew who tried pot, tried other, "better" stuff. Often with eventually tragic results.
UTTER nonsense. Sure hope you're not in charge of anything.

It is when you put the fox in charge of the henhouse that trouble arises - such as when pharmaceutical companies do their own research in house. And while they do tend to put pressure on university researchers, the vast majority of said researchers stand up to that just fine.

Scientists are scientists. But they are also human. Rarely one of them will go rogue, such as the moron who faked his results to try to make a link between vaccinations and autism. That guy hasn't had a career in decades because he was found out pretty early on. Doesn't stop people from sticking with a decades old study that was discredited shortly after it was published. That's on them at this point.

If you want to put a stop to that, just make all studies double-blind to the pharmaceutical companies, as in they are not allowed to know who is doing the research and studies to determine safety and efficacy. They can't pressure a University over a study when they don't know where it's being performed, LOL!

Absolutely NO ONE I have ever known who uses marijuana but didn't binge drink "graduated" to "better stuff" - unless you're talking about modern weed strains. A few people who were already alcoholics went on to become meth or crack addicts. Don't know many people doing that.

I know a whole lot of people who routinely smoke pot though, including myself since I moved somewhere where it's legal. Also studies - which you don't trust because you're apparently not a very thoughtful person - have repeatedly shown that alcohol is the most common so-called "gateway drug".

With regular MMJ use I drink far less alcohol and use fewer over the counter meds, and haven't needed any anti-anxiety meds since starting the MMJ. And I am not sitting around getting high all the time, I vape very small amounts at bedtime. Rarely use it any other time.
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Old 06-02-2018, 07:21 PM
 
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Originally Posted by nurider2002 View Post
Admitteldly for me, it has occasionally led to excessive dark chocolate abuse. Anyone nearby with a Lindt bar?
I must admit, my MMJ use soon led to Peppermint Patty abuse. Oh the horror!
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Old 06-02-2018, 08:31 PM
 
2,129 posts, read 1,765,791 times
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Originally Posted by goofy328 View Post
It is all about money. Once the money made through legalization surpasses the money made from the prison industrial complex you'll see things start to change on that front.
Already happening. Guess who John Boehner has gone to work for?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/u...marijuana.html
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Old 06-02-2018, 08:36 PM
 
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Originally Posted by Joe90 View Post
Workplace drug testing is a gateway to harder drugs - I know people who have stopped smoking pot and replaced it with meth, to reduce the risk of a positive in a random test.

i've been smoking pot since ice creams were 40 cents a scoop, and have literally never had the desire to try anything harder.
This. Almost 30 years ago when crack was just starting to become a thing, 60 minutes did a show on it, trying to figure out why so many people were jumping on the crack bandwagon.

They interviewed a bunch of teenagers, who universally had the following to say to the question "don't you know it's dangerous?"

"They've been telling us for decades that pot is crazy dangerous. We've used pot, its NOT dangerous. So we know they've been lying to us about pot, and we assumed they were lying to us about crack too."
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Old 06-03-2018, 12:06 AM
 
28,122 posts, read 12,473,899 times
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Originally Posted by goofy328 View Post
It is all about money. Once the money made through legalization surpasses the money made from the prison industrial complex you'll see things start to change on that front.
IDK about that.

Consider the crackdown on opioid prescription drugs, addicts were paying $120. and up for a single OXycontin!!!! and yet they enacted new laws and regulations that made them almost impossible to obtain...how much sense does that make?

If they had slapped a sin tax on Oxys and other opioid pills, and given the pharma companies, carte blanche to dole them out, they would be swimming in cash up to their eyeballs!
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Old 06-03-2018, 12:07 AM
 
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Originally Posted by usayit View Post
This! The dealers I know (of..) rarely just sell pot.

I haven't seen a correlation between people with pot habits versus "other harder" habits. One could almost say that alcohol is the common denominator since we almost all drink.

Alcohol to the extreme seems to make many more likely to go along with suggestions good or bad. I used to hang out with lots of people who liked to or needed to drink to the extreme. If I was drinking and ran out, I was offered another and accepted. I came to close to death at least once that way, plus stupid accidents walking thru the woods. If I ran out of beer, but had cannabis, too, when offered another beer, I declined.

My experience is not unique. It has been proven that cannabis does not cause cravings for other drugs. And Bill W. was wrong that alcoholics must quit. Many have used cannabis to reduce their drinking. One poster on C-D said when they were offered a good job that required they give up cannabis, their alcohol consumption tripled. Prescribed drugs, often one leads to another when former didn't work, pill gateway.

If a person uses cannabis, then tries other drugs, possibly the cannabis didn't do enough, but I don't see that as being the same as cannabis causing people to use other drugs. The effective dose of cannabis varies greatly from person to person. A man in Canada saved thousands of lives. Some had stage 4 cancers that disappeared after a few months of cannabis oil at 1,000mg a day. Heating cannabis oil to below the point of combustion maximizes effectives, vaping (inhaling). Best wishes, all.

Last edited by GWTJ; 06-03-2018 at 12:23 AM..
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Old 06-03-2018, 12:14 AM
 
28,122 posts, read 12,473,899 times
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Originally Posted by burdell View Post
As long as we're making allegations I'd say legal pharmaceutical prescription drugs introduce far more people to street dealers and 'hard' street drugs than marijuana does. Marijuana will stopp getting the blame when its lobby is as strong($$$) as BigPharma's.
That is such an incorrect myth about the pharma industry!

Do you remember how hard the govt and DEA cracked down on opioid prescription drugs a few years back? Consider this was at a time when Oxys and other opiates were flying off the shelves and the pharma companies were making mega bucks from all the sales...we are supposed to believe this super powerful/ influential industry was OK with govt coming in and killing its cash cow drugs? LOL, YEAH RIGHT!

If they were so powerful and influential, they would have stopped Govt from enacting ANY new laws or regulations aimed at its profitable drugs.

When theres profits to be made off drugs, usually they ensure they are extremely easy to obtain...not nearly impossible! LOL
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Old 06-03-2018, 12:59 AM
 
7,687 posts, read 5,092,899 times
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Originally Posted by Raddo View Post
You will never convince that poster of that fact.

There is a certain segment of people who are so hopelessly brainwashed on the subject that they believe any use of this plant constitutes abuse. 80 years of government brainwashing will do that to a person who refuses to look beyond it. The stigmatization is so strong that it has even prevented the usage of hemp in our society.

Ironically, many who fall into that group will post their biased, inaccurate views about marijuana, turn off their phone or computer, then retire to the den for a cocktail. They don't even think twice about their hypocrisy.

Those people are dying fast. Cannabis will be legal soon
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