You should watch the Penn & Teller episode because it is VERY well done and is very to the point. Penn, btw, is completely straight edge. The biggest drug abuses and the causes of most drug deaths in the US are alcohol and tobacco. When alcohol was prohibited it created the crime families. Criminalization of drugs creates a black market. They had to revoke it because of the massive problems. In Netherlands, drugs are decriminalized. Pretty nice country. You have a point about the big pharms and cotton industry. In Netherlands they have multi million dollar growers. I just know that Hemp is a superior material and for the same price I can get better hemp products than cotton products of comparable quality.
Well, most insurance companies are going to raise premiums through the roof. Not like they are not doing that already. But they will go even higher. Alcohol, tobacco products, and obesity create a huge strain on our healthcare system. The way our healthcare system deals with this problem is by screening people for these problems when they start a new policy and by raising the averages of everyone. See look, let's just say when you filled out your blue cross blue shield form and you told them you are a moderate smoker and drinker right. Now they have statistical tables that tell them on average how much it's going to cost them to insure you over your lifetime. Now, if they actually priced in that cost to your policy, you would pay something like 10k a month for insurance and probably would not take the policy. So they skew the avg cost of every policy holder to make you fit into their policy. In other words, they may charge you more money then they charge me, but in order to keep your cost reasonable, they charge everyone else a slightly higher premium. They do this with auto insurance as well. Well, all insurance. So that is why healthcare premiums in this country for everybody, not just the unhealthy people, have gone through the roof the last 10 years. All the smokers, drinkers, and obese people are paying more then the avg person, but the avg person is paying substantially more then if the unhealthy people were removed from the population pool. They have to do it this way for reasons I just stated. So if we legalized pot, basically you could expect everyone's premiums to go up substantially whether they used pot or not. Now as a pot user, your premiums might be still 20% higher then mine, when in reality, they should be 50% to 75% higher but then you would never pay that much money. See, it works the same way as an option on a stock. In fact many people in the insurance industry go into derivatives later on life because they price them very similar. See, options are very rarely priced accurately on big moves, because they can't be. If option's were priced what they should be, it would create lopsided markets. So premiums are set so that there is enough paper on both sides to facilitate trade. Same thing with insurance premiums. If a very obese person would pay what he should be paying, he would never buy insurance because it would cost him 50k a year to have a policy. So insurance companies average his expected cost into everyone else's policy. Now let's say those health insurance premiums do go through the roof, well what will happen. Well, even more people will go without insurance, many of those will be the actual pot smokers and many of them will be families who simply cannot afford to get basic coverage for their whole family because they can't pay the higher premiums. Now the gov't gets f*cked on this because now, there are even more people without insurance and what will they do? They will simply use the free emergency room whenever they have a healthcare problem. This would put a huge burden on our emergency care in this country and ultimately it would shut it down. They wouldn't have any choice. So then in order to pay for it, the gov't would have no choice but to raise taxes substantially to pay for all that. Again, increasing the burden on working class families. So basically, it's a lose lose proposition for everyone. Those who smoke pot and even more of a burden to those that don't because healthcare cost will go even higher and taxes will go up substantially. This is why in my opinion you will never see legalized drugs in this country unless, like I said earlier, if you somehow remove the drug users from the entire healthcare system including private insurance. BTW, before you even ask about why are they not doing this with alcohol, tobacco and obese people, trust me, they are working on it as we speak. I think you are going to see massive changes in our healthcare system in the next 5 to 10 years regardless of which party is in the White House. And the unhealthy people are going to pay a very heavy price for their lifestyle choices. It's the only thing we can do to get healthcare cost down. We really don't have a choice here.
Actually that is not true. Pot doesn't kill you, but lung cancer does. But when somebody dies from lung cancer they don't differentiate between pot and tobacco.
Yup, I have a friend at Merk that told me years ago, if pot wherever legalized, Merk already has a synthetic compound they could market to the public, they have had it for years, in fact, my buddy that worked in pharm sales for Merk said it was being sold overseas. Merk would be all over it and why wouldn't they? If there is money to be made, the big pharms will dominate that market trust me.
First of all, they have never, to my knowledge at least, proven that the toxins released through the use of Marijuana consumption are carinogenic. Now if I'm wrong, then simply point me to a scientific study. Common sense tells me that it more than likely would, but I don't trust common sense -- I want numbers. Regardless if it does or does not, you don't smoke 20 joints a day, so even if the toxins were on par with cigarettes the effects of the two would not even be in the same realm; as the comsumption of cigarette smoke would outwigh that of marijuana smoke 20 fold at a minimum...
Yes I agree with that. Pot smokers tend to smoke substantially less then tobacco smokers which does minimize the dangers. Marijuana smoke contains more tar, carbon monoxide and known cancer causing agents than tobacco. Marijuana is especially harmful to the lungs because users often inhale the unfiltered smoke deeply and hold it in their lungs as long as possible. Since the smoke is in contact with lung tissue for long periods of time, the lungs become more irritated and damaged than when smoking tobacco. Scientists know that tobacco causes lung cancer. One joint of pot deposits 11 times the amount of tar and 5 times as much carbon monoxide as a cigarette does. Many pot smokers also smoke tobacco. That is double trouble for their lungs. From the studies which have been conducted, we know that incidents of cancer from cigarette smoking are far more numerous than cancers from smoking pot, at least in part because more people smoke cigarettes. Also, even frequent marijuana users consume less than heavy cigarette smokers. But like I said earlier, marijuana smokers do tend to inhale more deeply and keep the smoke in their lungs for a longer period than tobacco smokers. It is possible that these behaviors increase the lung's exposure to the chemical by-products of smoking. Burning marijuana for smoking releases many substances other than THC, the ingredient which produces the drug's psychoactive effects. THC does not appear to be carcinogenic, but some of the other chemicals released by both marijuana and tobacco smoke are problematic. These include tar, carbon monoxide, and cyanide. One known carcinogen, benzopyrene, though found in both types of smoke, seems to be greater in pot smoke. Anyway, I don't want this to turn into should you smoke pot or not, I don't care if you do, or if you eat fried foods, or down a fifth of Jack Daniels every night. It's your choice and you live with it. But like I said, it would destroy the healthcare system in this country and that is how it relates to me and most everyone else. And that is very problematic.
How many emergency room visits & deaths have been caused by the impurities/ substitutions caused by street dealers? How many kids OD on 'ecstasy' pills they THINK are MDMA, but actually are MDA, PMA, or AMPS? How many heroin OD's are caused by the varying cuts & purities of the drug? Ending prohibition would solve all these problems, as the ingredients and purities would always be standarized. Your 'This will destroy American healthcare' argument is almost as dumb as the government commercials claiming that we druggies are 'terrorist supporters'. People will get high no matter how hard our Orwellian nightmare of a government chooses to rape us of our freedoms.
What's Wrong With the Drug War? Everyone has a stake in ending the war on drugs. Whether youâre a parent concerned about protecting children from drug-related harm, a social justice advocate worried about racially disproportionate incarceration rates, an environmentalist seeking to protect the Amazon rainforest or a fiscally conservative taxpayer you have a stake in ending the drug war. U.S. federal, state and local governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make America âdrug-free.â Yet heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other illicit drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get than ever before. Nearly half a million people are behind bars on drug charges - more than all of western Europe (with a bigger population) incarcerates for all offenses. The war on drugs has become a war on families, a war on public health and a war on our constitutional rights. Many of the problems the drug war purports to resolve are in fact caused by the drug war itself. So-called âdrug-relatedâ crime is a direct result of drug prohibition's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand. Public health problems like HIV and Hepatitis C are all exacerbated by zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean needles. The drug war is not the promoter of family values that some would have us believe. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse. http://www.lindesmith.org/drugwar/
Well you know what Reardon, then I take it you will sign off on free emergency room healthcare and you will accept higher health insurance premiums so mine won't have to go higher. And if you do that, I am all for the legalizing of drugs. Look, I don't care what you do to your body. I just don't want to pay for it, I want you to pay for it. And btw, this is not just a knock on pot users, but also obese people, tobacco smokers and heavy drinkers.
You could have at least provided the links to the sites you just pulled that from... did you really think you were the only one in america with google? http://www.well.com/user/woa/fspot.htm and http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/0598.html "How does marijuana affect the lungs? Scientists believe that marijuana can be especially harmful to the lungs because users often inhale the unfiltered smoke deeply and hold it in their lungs as long as possible. Therefore, the smoke is in contact with lung tissues for long periods of time, which irritates the lungs and damages the way they work." So funny how you cut and paste and then fuck with the wording to make it seem like these theories about the effects of smoking marijuana are conclusive known fact... Was it really so hard to keep the Scientists believe part in there? You really are a dildo man, lol. Did you really agree with it or did Alice?