Like Manz said...

The stuff within alcohol and weed lowers your inhibitions.

Definitions of inhibition on the Web:

• (psychology) the conscious exclusion of unacceptable thoughts or desires.

Then when your inhibitions are lowered... you say, think and do things you normally wouldn't do.

Like how drunks are either really emotional or do retarded things... like sleep with people they wouldn't ("beer goggles"), or start fights over petty things.

Your inhibitions are what keep you from acting upon impulse, and what make you think before you act.

I think the key phrase to memorize in this situation is "correlation does not equal causation." Cannabis also tends to lower aggressive feelings. If anything, it would have a calming influence on a person. I have to say tends, because anything dealing with the human body could affect different people in different ways, but because someone develops a rash with penicillin, should everyone be barred from using it?

I'm not saying that everyone who tokes up is a harmless fuzzball, that depends on how the person is without being on weed. If you're a dick sober, you'll still be a dick on weed. Did the person also watch TV the night before? Should we ban TV? Did the person drive to the crime? Should we ban cars? Yes, those are ridiculous examples to jump to, but they have as much evidence linking the causality to the actions as weed.

That was just my point. I believe from what I have seen of this thread it is all gumdrops and flowers when people toke. I was just trying to show a different perspective that it isn't all fluff and happiness with regards to those that toke.

I really don't stand on either side of the whole leagalization usage point. I don't see much difference between pot and alcohol (except that you can have a beer and not be drunk but you really can't have a joint and not be high). I believe I have stated something similar in every post. I just wanted to show that it isn't all giggles when it comes to the people that use weed.

But I think the point is getting lost.

Well, on that we can agree. There are some dangers of using pot. I don't think anyone has really denied that. I think the gist of what's been said is that the percieved dangers aren't borne out by facts.

However, people engage in activites all the time that could cause some harm to themselves. Life is about risk. Should a government be in the business of protecting citizens from themselves? For their own good? That's antithetical to what this country was founded upon. My arguments might not hold sway in the nanny-states of the UK or Australia, but personal freedom should be our highest ideal in the US.

Im gonna go ahead and weigh in with my opinion here...

first, i'd like to state my position here. im against pot. im against all drugs. that includes alcohol, cigarettes, weed, etc, etc... it's shown throughout musical history that it's no good. Hendrix took too many sleeping pills, and i believe alcohol, and choked on his vomit. Kurt Cobain suffered massive depression because of heroine, and though i still doubt he killed himself, he was certainly on the verge of it. Elvis, (though i dont particularly care for his music) OD'd. Sid Vicious OD'd, i believe, and the life of his girlfriend Nancy is popularly believed to be extinguished by either drug dealers or a drug-crazed Sid. John Lennon didnt die because of drugs, but he nearly lost his wife because of alcohol abuse.

Hrae, as for your last statement, the government IS in the business of keeping people from things that'll ruin their life. How are drug dealers who know the damaging effects of their drugs any different from murderers? how are tobacco industries, who know that their products kill people from the inside out, any better than people selling cyanide-laced donuts?

You may claim that it's a matter of freedom, if you wish, but what about teenagers, who are influenced heavily by their peers? do they have full freedom to choose, or are their choices forced by their "friends"?

And don't claim i'm just some conservative republican who's got his head in the past. im an anarchist. i consider myself an independent, only due to the democratic views which disregard life for freedoms (i.e. abortion.)

I don't judge people for their choices. it's their life, not mine. but if they start pushing drugs, it's a matter of other people's personal freedoms. To some, peer pressure can override their own morals.

This, of course, ignores all of the contributions that drugs have made to the various creative processes to musicians, of course. Do you think we would have had Yellow Submarine without drugs? It's sort of a wash. Bill Hicks put it nicely (coarse language, be warned):

But this is not really the topic at hand. I'm not advocating for the legalization of ALL drugs, after all.

Because with alcohol, tobacco, and weed it is consensual. Donuts without the cyanide will kill you if you ingest enough of them...should they be rationed out for our own good? If we win a fight with Eurasia, will our chocolate rations go up?

Trust me, if a teenager wants to get weed, he or she can get weed now. Drug dealers don't check IDs.

That sounds like a personality flaw, then. Why should my freedoms be abridged because some people lack self-control? Sometimes sex can be detrimental to public health. Should sex be regulated by the government as well? Should we ration donuts because someone can't stop eating them?

On a side note, I haven't brought political parties into this. Why? I'm for the most part a Republican, in the Goldwater vein. I'm fiscally conservative and socially liberal. The neoconservative movement getting into bed with religion has brought the party to near ruin. There are some of us left that actually believe in personal responsibility. I suppose that's more of a topic for another thread...

I was simply providing something to prevent me from getting attacked, i have respect for the republican party, as much of my family was republican. im sorry, i shouldn't have brought that up, in retrospect. However, i stand by the rest of what i said. a person's life is more valuable to me than music, especially something like yellow submarine.

Hmmm I was talking about this to a friend and he said 'Bob marley' died from Cannabis overdose, I'm too lazy to check but yeah D:

EDIT:
Looked it up and yeah, my friends are retarded :D

wiki says:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_marley


<_< you editted while i was reading

Part of the reason this topic is so clouded and confused has to do with the history of how pot was made to be illegal.

Here's a brief synopsis. It was 1929 and there was a lot of corruption (as there is in all government) in the Bureau of Prohibition. Harry J. Anslinger was appointed as Commissioner to a newly created Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). He needed a campaign that would take the scrutiny off of the government, his agency and himself.

He held a conference on the limitation of Marijuana where he invited 42 experts from around the nation to ask them what they knew about it. Only one person out of the 42 fit the viewpoint of Anslinger, but that was all it took to help him have a small amount of credibility in his campaign of lies.

Over the next few years he convinced the american public, with no scientific consensus (only his lone "expert") that marijuana causes "insanity, criminal acts and death."

Later his story changed to "Marijuana is the gateway drug" because too many people were using the statement that the drug caused insanity as a defense in court for murders. But the perception remains.