I don't know if the correct solution is to criminalize it, but please keep in mind that drugs change who you are. That is truly the unique thing about them compared to other addictions. And again, if you think heavy marijuana use doesn't change a person, you don't know any heavy marijuana users.
For example, banning alcohol and marijuana probably isn't going to work, but selling bottles of cheap vodka at the grocery store 24/7 is setting up a lot of people who are trying to get clean to fail.
Is the evidence available strong enough to suggest that it's the marijuana causing this? Marijuana is often used by those suffering from depression and anxiety as a form of self-medication.
In BC, Canada the province's leading medical doctors have come out in strong support of legalization.
As a somewhat-in-denial marijuana addict that now recognizes the health impact it has had on me over 10+ years of regular use, and have seen lots of people placated by marijuana use I think you are assuming causation where there is only correlation. I'd consider myself somewhat high-functioning, but often wonder at where my mind and body would be today had I taken better care of myself (now that I'm in my 30s).
More to the point though:
> selling bottles of cheap vodka at the grocery store 24/7 is setting up a lot of people who are trying to get clean and recover their lives a lot more difficult.
If a well functioning government is thought of as a securely-running application, outlawing cheap vodka at grocery stores at 2am is like monkey patching. Allowing monkey-patching into production creates vectors for bugs. Allowing the state the outlaw victimless crimes is like allowing monkeyh patching in production.
If the problem is that there are people who are abusing themselves by drinking too much vodka: then using resources to find and help those who need it, and separating the ones who are causing harm to others from everyone else, is going to be a better long term solution.
While the idea of "lets just make it really hard for people to get vodka, then they will drink less.. problem solved!" is great, the reality is that sometimes people will go to great lengths to get their vodka anyway. You just created criminals out of the very people you were trying to help by legislating vodka distribution laws.
If so, I wouldn't doubt that you have a lot of friends addicted to marijuana.
In terms of a response to your post, I am less than 4 months away from turning 30 years old. All of my friends were "potheads" in high school (and college). Zero of them had their life destroyed by it. They are all productive, upstanding people. If anything, I think the fact that some of them were stigmatized so heavily by being potheads really set them back.
Now, this is just anecdotal and I may not represent a "representative sample". So that's just my experience.
I think that you yourself will be surprised when it's more accepted by law - you'll find that many people you know and respect smoke, and they keep it from you because they're afraid of your judgment.
edit: There's actually one difference that I've noticed between my pot smoking and non pot smoking friends - the smokers tend to be small business owners, contractors and freelancers more often than the non-smokers, who are more wage-laborers. I don't have a theory about it, but I've noticed.
My guess is that simply reflects a difference between those who are in a position to drug test, and those who are in a position to be drug tested. That would be interesting to study though.
I wish I was unaware of addiction, particularly alcoholism, while growing up.... It sounds like you had a nice sheltered childhood.
Nevertheless, my experiences have not rendered me a prohibitionist.
The same is true of other drugs, and this is an important thing to understand about society in general and its relationship to law. We cannot legislate morality. We cannot run people's lives. We cannot, fundamentally, stop people from making major mistakes with their lives. Even life threatening mistakes.
Nor should we.
Liberty means the ability to fuck up your life. And to the extent that all of our lives are intertwined in a modern society it means to a certain degree the ability to fuck up other people's lives too. That's part of the bargain. But in every instance liberty has proven to be superior to oppressive collective control, even when that control attempts to be benevolent. Ultimately responsibility must devolve to the individual, because regardless of the law it does anyway. As you yourself point out people are still having their lives ruined by drug use. And those drugs are very, very illegal. It's tempting to imagine you can get rid of something by making it illegal, but in some cases, recreational drug use being the prime example, it often just causes even more problems.
Maybe in your case. I was seeing people badly damaged by drugs (alcohol and heroin, mostly). I also know the only reason some kicked the heroin addiction was because they were allowed to ask for help without fearing imprisonment, since drug usage is not a crime in my country.
Cause or effect?? Marijuana isn't addictive in the since that cigarettes and heroin are. It's highly likely that your friends that are unsuccessful are merely using marijuana to medicate for other issues.
But there are some real issues to be worked out, as someone who had a friend sent to hospital after being hit by a stoned driver who blew through a stop sign. Whats the legal limit?
I'm not sure how easy it is to detect if someone is "under the influence" as the drug is detectable for weeks in the blood (in this case the join was in the car).
[0] http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/thc-breathalyzer-could-help-pol...
Sorry that happened to your friend. Was it proven that the driver was stoned? If so I'm guessing they have an accurate way to measure it. Either way this is always going to be a problem. Look at the number of people killed by drunk drivers. The only solution is harsh prison sentences imo. Some people, willing to take the risk of DWI, disregard the danger they pose to others and if they can't understand that they should be severely punished. DWI shouldn't just lose you your license and get you probation. The punishment should be much more severe.
As for your question on the legal limit - there shouldn't be one. If you get in the car you should not have had any marijuana in the last 24 hours.
Not saying it should be ignored as an issue all together, but it seems to be the last issue the opposition can attach itself to and sound sane, and its getting a little carried away.
Thats the point - there are literally 100s of other ways to be just as (if not more) impaired while driving and be completely legal. We don't parade those issues around (namely because the big pharma companies would like people to not realize just how impairing their products are)
The difference is that there is a large enough group opposed to legalization that they make this issue a primary one in their fight against legalization and blow it vastly out of proportion to the actual scale of the problem.
You can actually be arrested for an 'OUI' in some states, an Operating Under the Influence, for when you are clearly impaired, but fall below the legal cutoff for a DUI. This would likely necessitate being the same sort of thing, a legal recognition that you were driving recklessly, and you exhibit the signs of recent marijuana usage (or if we have some way of actually measuring it, then that too).
All that said, there's little correlation between the amount of THC in one's system and the level of intoxication. A chronic user (no pun intended) will have a much higher concentration of THC in their system and be affected less by it as compared to say, a tourist coming in and trying it for the first time in 20 years.
I don't agree with the GP however. There are significant differences in effect between the strains of MJ that it isn't rational to make statements like the GP.
http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/tc/medicines-that-cause... http://www.drugs.com/clonazepam.html
> Amoxicillin may cause dizziness. This effect may be worse if you take it with alcohol or certain medicines. Use amoxicillin with caution. Do not drive or perform other possibly unsafe tasks until you know how you react to it.
That said, I can find nothing similar for penicillin. Eg, it's not listed in the "impressive list of drugs [which] may cause vertigo or dizziness" at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3853661/ , though several other antibiotics are listed.
Source? I would drive in neither case, but I certainly feel far more able to drive after a penicillin than after a few drags off a joint.
[citation needed]
> Furthermore, the risk is far less than the risk of driving at .08
[citation needed], again
> which is legal in most states.
No, driving at or above BAC 0.08 regardless of impairment is illegal in all 50 states, and in most states driving with any impairment due to alcohol is also illegal (though a lesser offense) even if the BAC is below 0.08.
http://norml.org/news/2014/04/03/study-higher-thcblood-level...
And your point about .08 being illegal is pedantic. Driving at .0799 would be legal, and the risk is identical.
"Driving dangerously" should be the metric. Not whether your body contains chocolate milk, weed, alcohol, oxycotin, aspirin, or whatever.
Too many people under the influence of alcohol or drugs are under the impression that because they can drive in a straight line and stop at red lights they are not dangerous and are being 'careful' and 'responsible', yet their judgement and reflexes are nonetheless impaired and this makes them dangerous.
Besides, you can't reasonably equate aspirin and chocolate to the dramatic effects that even a moderate amount of weed and alcohol have on your attention and brain response.
I'm all for the decriminalisation of drugs but I'm also in favour of zero tolerance if you choose to get behind the wheel.
I don't really mind a nearly-zero-tolerance policy for driving while on any kind of drug. Some people are way more tolerant to weed than others, and may be nearly sober even with a THC concentration that makes someone else couchlocked, but I think it's better to err on the side of caution.
[citation needed], as I could be considered one and believe it should be handled similar to DUI, and I've never met another "marijuana activist" that thought differently.
MJ has a HUGE group of people who use it medicinally. My wife can not eat or drink without it, due to chronic nausea to the point that without it, she throws up every 20 minutes. Medicine like Zofram barely help even at max dose, which carries with it other side effects.
Calling everyone who smokes stoners is the equivalent of calling everyone who drinks a glass of wine an alcoholic. I regularly enjoy MJ - and I think it would be short-sided to consider me a stoner, considering im a successful father of 2 with a great salary and a happy family.
The good news is - the "minority" you speak of is people like you... the outdated mentality is in the minority now, with the majority of the country FOR legalization - even in traditionally red states like TX.
This makes the practicalities of banning marijuana different to those of alcohol but is not necessarily a comment on the ethics of doing so.
Damn, right there's almost good enough reason to oppose legalization.
- How to deal with driving under the influence is not a question with a perfect answer yet