Ga Marijuana Law Reform Efforts (Atlanta, Washington: 2013, to live, legal)

[joey86]

Pro-marijuana advocacy group seeks legislators for cannabis law reform | Atlanta News & Opinion Blog | Fresh Loaf | Creative Loafing Atlanta Efforts are underway to change Georgias marijuana laws. Also the Southern Cannabis Reform Conference is taking place in Atlanta March 15-16. Sounds like a pretty big deal. Legalize it

[ATLTJL]

I think at this point it would be prudent to just sit back and watch Colorado and Washington for a couple of years before moving ahead with anything.

[WanderingImport]

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

I think at this point it would be prudent to just sit back and watch Colorado and Washington for a couple of years before moving ahead with anything.

Why? Why can't we surprise the rest of the country by leaving our little shell of conservatism and not wait for the rest of the country legalize it before us.

[ATLTJL]

Common sense?

Let someone else deal with the growing pains, learn from what happened there, and then proceed with your own better prepared rollout.

You can't possibly think that the legalization of a drug is giong to be without consequence. I'd like to know what those consequences are and be prepared to address those consequences before moving ahead.

[ATL_GUY]

I never understood why this is such big Deal to begin with when tobacco kills 500,000 Americans every year and it's still sold. If this was about health then this is a double standard, but then again, the amount of money that is made in courts, fines, etc, it seems more profitable for the politicians to keep it illegal. I myself don't need it but I don't care if others wanna do it. I smoke cigarettes knowing full well what it will do to me, and no conservative cares about that, and the government knows people die from all the chemicals that are putting the tobacco to get people addicted yet it is permitted to be sold. But it makes money and marijuana being illegal also makes money. In my humble opinion, I say go for it. People gonna smoke regardless just as minors will still smoke cigarettes regardless of age limit. Cigarettes with all its chemicals is actually more harmful than marijuana is.

[capoeira]

Check out this thread from the great debates section on marijuana induced psychosis. It is a very bad idea to make this garbage legal.

//www.city-data.com/forum/great...ana-until.html

[Brillemeister]

Originally Posted by capoeira

Check out this thread from the great debates section on marijuana induced psychosis. It is a very bad idea to make this garbage legal.

//www.city-data.com/forum/great...ana-until.html

That's an extremely rare occurrence, if it was even caused by marijuana alone in the first place. Of the dozens of marijuana smokers I've met, I personally don't know anybody who has suffered a psychotic episode from it. On the other hand, I do know somebody who's incurred some brain damage from the synthetic variety, which until last year was legal in Georgia.

[ATLTJL]

How about success?

The law probably doesn't need to get involved in telling people how to live their lives.....

BUT:

I bet if you took a person who smokes pot every day in their teens and/or early 20s, and take a person who doesn't and compare then when they are 40, it's not going to be rocket science to see who is doing better.

Of course there are individual exceptions, but I'm talking about statistics and playing the odds.

If you want to get clinical, there is a fair amount of data that points to the fact that heavy marijuana users are much more likely to develop depression at some point in their lives than non-smokers.

Because cigarettes are legal isn't really justification either. Probably if cigarettes came out today they wouldn't be legal. And driving a car 65 mph down the highway is legal, but driving 90 isn't. It's really apples and oranges.

There's no harm in waiting a few years to see what happens in Colorado and Washington. The only people really pushing for marijuana legalization are heavy users, and they have already figured out how to get around the law anyway, so it's kind of a non-issue. Just keep doing what you're doing. And you probably don't want it legal anyway, because when it is, it will be industrialized and big companies will grow it and put toxic chemicals in it and it will become as unsmokeable as tobacco is today.

[bryantm3]

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

I bet if you took a person who smokes pot every day in their teens and/or early 20s, and take a person who doesn't and compare then when they are 40, it's not going to be rocket science to see who is doing better.

president obama smoked pot pretty regularly as a teenager. they used to smoke in a junky van and let the smoke collect around the ceiling and then take one last hit before they got out. now he's president. pot use doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with success in life.

[ATLTJL]

Of course there are individual exceptions, but I'm talking about statistics and playing the odds.

I'm talking about aggregate, not your anecdote.