Cool, nice thread
Putting marijuana in the same class as coke/speed/heroin/crack/whatever is totally and utter fucking rediculous. For starters, marijuana is not physically addictive (you're body doesn't need it or doesn't mind going without it) also how many people die because of marijuana? and how many people die of alcohol? How many families get fucked up by alcohol? and how many by marijuana? How many barfights get started because of alcohol? How many barfights get started because of pot?
There are just a few gripes I have with pot:
it's a very anti social drug, you're not really talkative and are a lot less likely to go out and meet new people if you're stoned
it makes your short term memory a bit hazy (but only to a limited extent)
Alcohol is a far worse drug then marijuana, however every 16 y/o kid here can go to the supermarket and buy some beer.
About legalization:
Legalizing pot is actually a very good move for every government to make, now I will hear some of you nay sayers ask why? Well, legalizing it really removes it from the criminal sphere associated to allmost every other kind of drug. It's also proven here in the Netherlands that the use of soft drugs does not create a hard drug addiction, we have about half a million pot smokers in holland (which is growing every year) yet we have about a hundred thousand people who use hard drugs (which is shrinking every year). If the use of soft drugs led to the use of hard drugs it is only because the soft drugs are sold by the same people who sell the hard drugs (they have no pot, so you just buy some LSD or something). However in most (90%) of all coffeeshops you will never ever enter again if you try and sell harddrugs there. Also in my opinion, what the fuck gives a government the right to tell it's people to not use a plant which can practically grow everywhere and has a lot of other uses then just as a drug. It's not like the government outlaws all coffee plants because caffeine is addictive? Furthermore, it's a huge tax income for goverments if they allow controlled sale of marijuana.
Oh and refalm, we call pot "wiet", which is the flower of the cannabis plant. And we call stuff "hashj" which actually is a compressed THC extract from the bark of the plant. The effect is roughly the same, but it's still different.
And shrooms are fucking filthy, like eating some french stinkcheese wrapped in sweatsocks and stored in a damp room for 4 weeks .....
Chooco:
marijuana itself doesn't contain any tar, if you smoke it without tabacco it actually cleans your lungs (slowly, but surely) however if used with tabacco your statement is allmost correct (though it's more like 6 times then 10
)
Paladin:
your friends didn't magically became assholes through smoking pot, however, smoking pot does emphasize some personality traits, e.g.:
someone who is pretty paranoid by nature will get extremly paranoid when smoking pot
someone who is pretty introvert will get extremely introvert when smoking pot
so they were already assholes, they just didn't show it
one more thing:
it's also extremely fucking cheap, I grow my own, I pay about 5 euro per plant (20 euro for 4 plants) which take about 12-16 weeks to grow of which I reap about 100-150 grams (at 5 euro/gram coffeeshop price, 100-150 grams for 20 euros is pretty fucking cheap
). I don't have some kind of super duper hyper special pot growing installation, I just use a lamp and a closet
(well ... and some various other cheap stuff, like Ph meters (marijuana likes ground Ph to be 7 spot on) and some nutricious goodies for the plants)
[ September 20, 2002: Message edited by: BadKarma ]