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I will be interested to see what happens in terms of hard drug usage once marijuana is legalized and separated from illegal drug culture. One way weed is a gateway drug is people go to the black market for it, and some of the same dealers sell the harder stuff. Legalizing weed will almost certainly reduce access to harder, more dangerous drugs.
Alcohol is the gateway drug.
There is no "gateway" drug. Nearly all heroin, meth, cocaine, prescription med users drink alcohol and drank alcohol before they ever used those "hard drugs." Most of them also are addicted to cigarettes.
I hate marijuana by the way. Well... I strongly dislike it, dislike the high it gives, so I almost never smoke it. I took to enjoying alcohol at a very early age though.
Is alcohol a "soft drug"? What about when it swells the skinny persons belly into a hard ball (symptoms of a failing liver), turns their eyes yellow (symptoms of failing kidneys), gives them diabetes, their brain develops early Alzheimer's, they shake waking in the morning because their body demands hits of alcohol, they routinely fall and break bones, their nose turns red, they end up homeless on the streets begging for money?
So, just because alcohol is legal no employer can ask you if you have been drinking?
Ever see the fictional movie Denzel Washington played in in which his character was a commercial airline pilot?
The dude drank alcohol and snorted cocaine before flying. Then he drank more as he boarded his plane. He flew that plane like nobody's business though. But that he drank legal alcohol and snorted illegal cocaine must present a dilemma for you. Everything you consume is made up of chemicals including alcohol and heroin. The mind altering effect of both are chemically produced.
You have simply been conditioned to believe a drunken state is "natural" and the mind altered state of a marijuana high is "unnatural." All mind altering states from any substance are equally "natural."
Unfortunately the neural pathway (most research says drd4) is strongest in specific:
Opioids
Alcohol
Opioids take the serotonin path
Alcohol takes the dopamine path
Specifically those chemicals fill in the deficiency in that gene receptor for each. It's why the addictions are the worst (you can put benzo's in the alcohol side...)
I'm still for legalizing. Apply for a license to sell just like a liquor store. The ONLY caveat I'd stipulate is production must be (to best of ability) domestic. Create a whole new crop of farmers! Lol
And it would be well within an employers right to terminate an employee for use of any substance on the job, probably even if it's use did not affect performance. Surely, the latter could result in a lawsuit but no one would deny that a taxi driver losing his job for being drunk on the job is a reasonably result. As would the case be if they used any currently illegal substance in a situation where said substance was legalized. It's not like legalizing drugs means every Walmart cashier will be strung out 24/7.
Yeah, that was kind of my point I was hitting at, along with the fact that fictional movie Denzel played in presented a more complex dilemma, because the protagonist while flying illegally and acting unethically, still landed his plane heroically. That along with the fact illegal cocaine was not the only substance in his system but legal alcohol. It is easy to "hate" cocaine if it is illegal and the protagonist flies the plane. But what if he also consume the good and virtuous alcohol which is legal for all American of minimum legal age to drink? Does alcohol become as "evil" as cocaine then? That was more my earlier point.
And it would be well within an employers right to terminate an employee for use of any substance on the job, probably even if it's use did not affect performance. Surely, the latter could result in a lawsuit but no one would deny that a taxi driver losing his job for being drunk on the job is a reasonably result. As would the case be if they used any currently illegal substance in a situation where said substance was legalized. It's not like legalizing drugs means every Walmart cashier will be strung out 24/7.
Absolutely. Besides weed, we have the metabolite life down to determine legal toxicity at time in question and weeds getting better continuously.
Unfortunately the neural pathway (most research says drd4) is strongest in specific:
Opioids
Alcohol
Opioids take the serotonin path
Alcohol takes the dopamine path
Specifically those chemicals fill in the deficiency in that gene receptor for each. It's why the addictions are the worst (you can put benzo's in the alcohol side...)
I'm still for legalizing. Apply for a license to sell just like a liquor store. The ONLY caveat I'd stipulate is production must be (to best of ability) domestic. Create a whole new crop of farmers! Lol
Yeah, drug use should be treated by the government like cigarettes but more severely in pointing out its danger and immorality.
But not everything immoral needs to be made criminal and against the law. But the government should still promote good moral behavior by not promoting or celebrating or glorifying something like heroin, meth, or cocaine use. Or marijuana for that matter.
Yeah, drug use should be treated by the government like cigarettes but more severely in pointing out its danger and immorality.
But not everything immoral needs to be made criminal and against the law. But the government should still promote good moral behavior by not promoting or celebrating or glorifying something like heroin, meth, or cocaine use. Or marijuana for that matter.
Or alcohol. Government should be neutral except in warnings: hazardous to your health.
My plan goes so far as releasing those convicted of possession and/or distribution unless also charged with other (violent, gun possession) crimes.
Drug addiction is not quite what some people think it is. It is estimated that 20% of the military in Vietnam was addicted to heroin. The government was afraid what would happen when they came home. What happened was that almost all just quit using it when they came home. Experts say that family connections filed the void that had been taken by the drugs. So the soldiers no longer needed the heroin.
Legalize drugs, prostitution, gambling. Free up the jail cells and use the difference of housing criminals and the tax money obtained from the legalized activities to fund groups to help detour such behaviors.
The system we have now sucks.... when you are a technical troubleshooter type person you don't follow a path of actions that has been proven to not work, you make adjustments when you want to fix things, you don't stubbornly cling to your silly moralistic ideals of how stuff should be, you go with what is.....
Man has been using drugs and partaking in prostitution since the dawn of time, none of those vices are going to go away, no matter how hard we wish them to. You simply figure out a way to regulate it on some level.
IDK... you say this stuff and the religious right just goes completely ape on you......again... the war on drugs has FAILED. Time for a new approach.
For the life of me, I've never been able to understand this. The underground black market drug industry is estimated to be worth close to $900 billion dollars a year.
You need to balance that against the costs to Society....all costs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by branh0913
So to the people who want drugs to remain illegal, do you actually have a legitimate reason?
Here's four reasons right here:
Video shows heroin-related crash that killed man, injured baby
... the war on drugs has FAILED. Time for a new approach.
90% of Americans abstain from illegal drugs....that's an "A-", which is definitely not an "F."
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