According to scientists at the National Institutes of Health- the world's largest source of drug abuse research - marijuana use is associated with addiction, respiratory disease, and cognitive impairment. We know from an array of treatment admission information and Federal data that marijuana use is a significant source for voluntary drug treatment admissions and visits to emergency rooms. Studies also reveal that marijuana potency has almost tripled over the past 20 years, raising serious concerns about what this means for public health - especially among young people who use the drug because research shows their brains continue to develop well into their 20's. Simply put, it is not a benign drug.

If true to any statistically significant extent, none of this is any reason to keep marijuana illegal as long as ANY other chemical vices are legal. Cigarettes and alcohol, specifically.

Weaver95: it's a bad law, that's why we care. that alone is reason enough to change it.

This.

Also, on a side note, while many people would like to get high legally and aren't pushing for marijuana to be legalized for the medical benefits, THERE ARE farkING BENEFITS. The benefits to cancer patients has been documented, and a friend in California (where it's legal as medicine) is basically only a functional and productive person because it curbs his bi-polar disorder. Frankly, I wish it was legal in New York not just so I could smoke legally, but so I could pursue other options than decades-old drugs or potentially-helpful, potentially-hurtful new pharmaceuticals that cost $700/month.

GAT_00: Again, we have bigger problems. It isn't going to be legalized. Let's move on and address things that might be changed.

You really disappoint me, man. This is a clearly unjust law. This is a law that jails and fines people who have committed no other crime and who have harmed no one's person or property. This is a law that prevents valuable medicine from getting into patients' hands. this is a law that, when you scrape away the stigma of "hippie" and "stoner," has the most farking cut and dry line between "right" and "wrong" in domestic policy. Your attitude is part of the reason why the White House's bullshiat excuse is so easy to accept. It's not the handful of people pushing for weed to be illegal because it's harmful. It's about the massive amount of apathetic people who have no problem shrugging when freedom is limited, people are arrested, and medicine is kept away from patients as long as it just happens to "hippies" and "stoners."

Weaver95: no, we don't. THIS is a big problem. i'd say its just as big an issue as our problems on wall street.

It's not as big an issue, but just because your leg has gangrene doesn't mean you don't still bandage that nasty scratch on your arm.

Weaver95: GAT_00: The amount of farks I give for stoners is exceedingly low.

what about a low cost antibiotic that absolutely destroys MRSA infections? even the nasty drug resistant ones? Cannabis can do that.

Or maybe low cost/high quality paper that won't defoliate a forest to print a book? Cannabis can do that too.

ok, ok...how about this - biofuel that can be made from a plant that grows in damn near ANY environment AND won't need to be genetically modified. As a bonus, it can turn over up to 4 crops a year AND actually regenerates nutrients in the soil. Cannabis can do that as well.

the industrial/medical applications for cannabis are very wide ranging. And yet...you lightly dismiss it as 'stoners wanna get high'. I can't tell if you're stupid or just trolling.

You know the worst thing? The hippie stereotype has become so pervasive that even by listing legitimate uses and reasons, you still "sound like one of them," and can be dismissed as a hppie.