Do you think the illegality contributes

Do you have feelings that there is something wrong with what you do in using herb? I mean in the physical sense of breaking the law each time, Is there anything else like this, that can get you arrested? Look at traffic rules, most people don't obey all rules all the time, like full stopping when no one is around ( I do bec am always afraid of police even when no weed).

But you do meet with people who could go to jail for a long time, if not you then your friend who gets it. I wonder about the effect of being a criminal in the societies eyes, how does if any, effect you, your personality, when it shouldn't be the case.

I also feel a certain depression and disappointment in life bec Cannabis is illegal ( in most states) and society wants to maintain this 'stigma' - they know there is no good reason to keep it illegal.

All they ever say is 'what do we tell the children?' this is a scam, it means nothing obviously, you tell the children it's illegal till age 21 like alchohol; sex, gambling, etc. that's all.

But I think they don't want more people to use Cannabis. Why? Are they all working for big alchohol? no they are not, but the society has and continues to have a negative image of cannabis consumers. Why this is, I am really not sure, just that the conservatives have the upper hand on this. In any case, while some would switch from alchohol to cannabis, my feeling is most people can get it if they really want so they don't bec they have come to prefer alchohol. Maybe you would have 10-20 % increase of people so what. Personally I prefer people to use cannabis over alchohol. But the trick is, we have to convince those who vote or answer polls, the truth about cannabis. without a 'cannabis lobby' it is that much harder.

Who do you mean by "they"?

I think your perception of the social attitude today is wrong. Every day we're seeing more and more evidence of social acceptance of cannabis despite its illegality. The polls have already shown this. Most of them show 50% or more support for legal cannabis. The really important finding of the polls is the support level in the 21-49 year old population, where it's over 2 to 1 in favour. In other words, legal cannabis is coming.

The problem is that the legislators don't reflect public opinion on this point. Even potheads like Obama are reluctant to do anything. That too is changing but more slowly.

There has always been that attendant paranoia about doing cannabis in the US, though I have never felt that there was something wrong with it or myself, only that society frowned on it. As a medical patient in CA that feeling is dying away for me and I am able to behave casually, if discreetly, about cannabis. It would be nice if one could be fully open about it but even in CA there are still people who are pretty uptight, mainly through ignorance.

Smokum posted this in another thread, illustrates the scourge of prohibition well.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/vivianmcpeak/2012/09/30/happy-birthday-prohibition-now-die/

Happy birthday, marijuana Prohibition. You are now 75 years old—well past retirement age. You have accomplished so much, you must be very proud of yourself. You have largely conquered the world. You’ve spread your policies of persecution and subjugation from nation to nation, perpetuating the expansion of a prison industrial complex that would have made Stalin proud.
Your righteous crusade against a largely benign, natural plant and all who dare to embrace it has been the status quo for an entire human lifetime or better. Ever since you were conceived by the Rockefellers and promoted by their henchman, Harry Anslinger, you have been relentlessly waging a campaign of hate, terror, and brutality on a populace that is almost totally non-threatening.

Using the tactics of yellow journalism, racist bigotry, and outright lies, you have sabotaged and minimized that which makes America great: Constitutional liberty for Americans. You used the United States’ military against its own citizens, on American soil. That is unprecedented.
You have invaded the homes, the cars, the businesses, and the bloodstreams of millions of otherwise decent, law-abiding Americans in order to advance your campaign of misery and suffering. You have seized homes, cars, boats, bank accounts, and property from tens of thousands American citizens, often with no due process or conviction.

You have pitted neighbor against neighbors, parent against child, and teacher against student in an effort to create a nation of simple stool pigeons. You have thrown millions of human lives into the incinerator of injustice while you line the corporate pockets of your benefactors with enough money to purchase the facts straight out of the mouth of the truth. You have co-opted history, bypassed the U.S. Constitution, and favored building prisons over schools. You paved the way for racialized social control resulting in the mass incarceration of Americans, particularly Americans of color. You have effectively created a brilliant tool for voter suppression among minority communities.

You have selectively enforced your madness on people of color, the poor, the infirm, and an entire counterculture. You have strong-armed your way into our homes, pulled Americans out of their beds in the dark night, laid them on the floor in their nightclothes, and brutalized them as if they were terrorists. You have stripped Americans of all dignity and stuck them with a stigma formerly reserved for child molesters and communists; you have treated them worse than common criminals, who do not face the routine sanctions, fines, forced drug classes, and “forfeitures” that people accused of drug “crimes” endure.

You have lied in court, falsified evidence, framed innocents, entrapped citizens, and used people as informants, sometimes at the cost of their lives. You have ruined futures, broken families, and stolen children from their parents.

You have poured enough resources into your campaign of hate to build tens of thousands of schools, daycare centers, hospitals, and food banks. Instead, you have built prisons, privatized them, created incentives to lock up Americans, and then profited greatly from it all. You have enjoyed uncompensated prison labor and a mountain of working people’s taxes, which you then used to lock up millions with impunity. You have helped to jail more citizens per capita than any nation in human history.

You have cooperated and conspired with tyrants, despots and dictators, all in the name of justice. You have promoted stereotypes while you have spread pure, raw, unadulterated hatred. You have divided Americans, and fractured our society.

You have caused murders, suicides, and suffering beyond imagination. You have denied the sick, the elderly, and the terminally ill relief from suffering by denying them access to medical marijuana. Hell, you have even persecuted crippled, broken, and dying men and women and then tossed them into jails and prisons like caged rats. You have denied medical care, treatment, and medicine to prisoners. You have made possible untold prison rapes.

You have ignored presidential commissions, scientists, physicians, and journalists, in order to manufacture the consent of the American public. You have lied, distorted, twisted, fabricated, insinuated, and attacked the truth in a vicious crusade that has been part of the most well-funded domestic government policy ever known. You have declared an internal war against citizens of your own country.

You have undermined a general respect for the rule of law among many of America’s youth, who can clearly see through the hypocrisy of treating cannabis like it is a poison, while allowing poisonous alcohol and tobacco to be legal. You have endangered the lives of law enforcement officers with no just cause and caused animosity between citizens and police that will take years to undo. You have diverted resources from investigating actual crimes, and distracted from them.

Yes, happy birthday, Prohibition. You have done well. You must be so proud. You have spread fear, mistrust, paranoia, shame, embarrassment, and hate all over the globe.

Now it is time for you to retire, old policy. You are ashen and gray, heartless and cold, soulless and unfeeling. You are evil, and it is time for you to go. You cannot have America, and we are going to take her back. She is just now learning of your lies, your hate, and your destruction of liberty, freedom and justice.

It is time to retire, fade into the past, and disappear. Your time is limited, because justice is on the march.

There was a time in the US (1920-1933) when cannabis was legal and alcohol was illegal. Were the people who consumed alcohol during Prohibition "bad" simply because it was illegal? Of course not! For the first 150 years of American history, it was accepted that what a person put into their own body was their business...not the government's. The current prohibition is completely antithetical to the American ideal.

Salutations,

As a Cannabian i consider the most critical moment in anti-cannabic history occured while this man was in power:


(Richard Bedford Bennett, conservative gov.)

Here's a version of the prohibitionist story which makes sense to me:


The date was October 17th, 1932. That's when Canada signed some United Nations treaty, whatever...

I have to feel that if at all possible, we should visit the legalization states once they have fully legal retail shops called dispensaries it seems, not coffeeshops.
Looks like each country will want to call legal stores something different.
But it would be a news splash that tourism will be up alot in Denver and Seattle, this will be talked about in the media, and if all goes well, they will start the ball rolling it will be easier for semi decent and decent politicians to ask what about my state, we want that tourist money, then it will be a question of what happens in a place like New York, which doesn't even have medical Marijuana. They get alot of tourism as it is. The conservatives like to demote the financial part as not that significant. But I am sure on a local level, if Massechusettes will legalize, as it is being predicted, that would affect alot of regional tourists, I for one would make the journey quite a bit. What I am not quite understanding yet is how are states like Washington so different from Eastern States, or is it that one or 2 exceptional activists, say like a Mason Tevert really engineered this thing to legalization and the Eastern states don't have the core group of activists, except for it seems Mass. but then maybe it's an overall liberal/conservative indication? It's perplexing how couple of states are so bright and exceptional and most of the rest are proudly in the dark ages.

Hi,

Is it possibe? Not until people learn to respect each other's ways IMHO.

That's how it all started, some intolerant persons believed they were justified to call others names, in fear of their difference. I say lets hear those justifications 1st!! After a long silence i'm hoping some people will want to discuss in good faith with some others... Once it becomes accepted that there's no good reason to treat differently a man intoxicated with alcohol compared to another who consumed cannabis then we can make progress. The problem with that is about a chicken vs egg scenario: how do we organize and speak up as a decent minority if we must live in fear constantly?! Allowing unjust laws to divide us in 2 groups, as a matter of fact: the medicinal guys with papers vs the criminal ones with police records...



That fear can only confirm the anti-cannabic warrior's opinion that we must be guilty of something, although it's all artifically maintained as "The Truth" as if there couldn't be another.

Yes, fear weakens social cohesion that's a fact; remember this old sentence: "Divide ut regnes"
That's what I see every day in our democracies (at least the dictatorships don't even bother to hide their intentions), that's why a french journalist said sometime ago that we were living in "démocratures" (it means more or less a dicatorship hidden into a democracy, really pervert!).

But with social media, more progress is more possible I think. It's inevitable that more people will read the truth.

Consider how most people do not know the truth about Cannabis. They beleive Cannabis is a horrible terrible thing. I am not being stupid you know. This is many or most adults. Young people know the truth. Not only that it's not as harmful as etc. but that it is a very good thing in its own right.

They are perplexed as to why it is still illegal. But they are not doing activism, it is not an issue that moves people to protest. IMO, there should be a public Legalize Cannabis rally in every town and city and as as able per place. It is a specific demand that would I think help alot.

Hi,

Social medias are a precious tool but a globally acceptable "truth" won't emerge instantly just because of it alone. At the moment education and respect constitute some infernal loop where both dimensions are wrong... When i read at my local library about hallucinations under the picture of a cannabis plant, illustrated in a botanic book, euh... How can things change? I create my own hallucinations with my imagination as the engine, at best cannabis only helps ME to access it. If i got real ones i'd start worrying about my mental health while sober, as a matter of fact! Yet that book and many others are perpetuating this way of interpreting reality about a plant which i know differs greatly from mine. The thing is the editor was on the right side when he printed it and i'm not. Anyone could denounciate me, i could get my door broken by police and then get executed where i stand, without a summary trial if i'm foolish enough to raise a golf iron high, out of surprize at 2 am... But the chances this will happen are slim as i live in Canada after all.

Our police would never go wild as in a goose chase, would they?

Now, does fear make things worst? I think it does, the mere fact of enjoying nature these days exposes people to bear traps and whatnot. Why? Because people can't grow in their own garden, for all practical purposes, that's why. But why can't they grow whatever they want one might ask? Euh... This could go on and on and it will end with the ultimate argument: society must protect its children. Can we find more noble values than that?! End of argument, the prohibitionists win. HarePeur gets elected, we pay the prisons.

Etc., etc. ... Etcetera.

I'm sick of all this hate.

Egzoset said:

. . . and it will end with the ultimate argument: society must protect its children. Can we find more noble values than that?! End of argument, the prohibitionists win. HarePeur gets elected, we pay the prisons.

Click to expand...

Egzo, just ask any of those people if they think the ending of alcohol prohibition was a good idea. Remember if it really is all about the kids then alcohol and tobacco should be illegal as well. Anyone that toasts cannabis prohibition with an alcoholic beverage is a hypocrite.

Here's a link to a 1936 Modern Mechanix propaganda article about the dangerous plant. Amok! Amok!

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/uncle-sam-fights-a-new-drug-menacemarijuana/3/#mmGal

Salutations

I've just used about 20 minutes of my serenity time to refresh my memory, reading comments from people
with no moral issues when it comes to death by gun during a raid. Their reasoning varies: the kid
is responsible for his own death, his parenting was defficient, etc. Few thought of pointing out that
there could have been no chase in absence of anti-cannabic laws in the 1st place.

t-dub said:

Anyone that toasts cannabis prohibition with an alcoholic beverage is a hypocrite.

Click to expand...

And more. Actually, there were comments falling in the "purity" category but that was unpleasant reading once so i'll just let others find for themselves the level of bigotry which some intolerant persons are capable of. It seems the goal has become even more important than the life it pretends to protect - but you've already highlighted this contradiction using only 1 word!

Papa Woody said:

Amok! Amok!

Click to expand...

Gee! I had almost forgotten everything about being an addict!! And those who make a living out of addictions which are not their own, like honest writers publishing articles in Popular Science Monthly... I mean, there's the "science" word in it, euh...



For those who like the many-words versions go to StopTheDrugWar.Org or similar sites...

...but don't vape before you do if you value your peace of mind because it can be emotionally disturbing.

It sucks that because of ignorant,self-serving politicians I'm forced into committing multiple state and federal crimes on a daily basis.
If the powers-that-be would wake the fuck up and actualy listen to public sentiment I could cut that number in half.

yes not only that we commit crimes, but we are just about everyone who works in something besides Cannabis related has to be silent about it.
Just this past week, my boss was discussing 'pot' with this guy near me. The boss felt that stoned drivers would be a menace to all, but he linked legalization to gun control that is, he says, those who want Cannabis legal, are for more strict gun laws, his point that they are hypocrites.
How the hell does he know, we have cannabis people both Republicans and Democrats, and independants.

I had a lot to say on this discussion, but kept shut up. Like you know instintively how we have to survive. I would have said that Cannabis is not something that makes you cause an accident, in fact I would argue that it makes you a better driver.

I would have said that don't u realize there are already a few million of us on the road anyway. Rarely do we read about an accident where they found a lit joint.

most of your road rages which usually end up with deaths are alchohol related. Most of your hard core alchoholics if they drive will cause some accident.

What a shame my boss is a very smart man, very entrepenuriel, and he has no clue at all about this subject, he is dead wrong in his belief and I can enlighten him, but I stay silent.

Salutations,

Egzoset said:

...


...

Click to expand...

The more i look at that picture the more i get absolutely mesmerized.



Those were times of crisis so i feel it's better just to avoid judging those persons right away, but this woman looks just like a modern version of Jeanne-D'arc shall i say!! At least to me.

What would have been my thoughts in HER position?? Because, lets be objective here: that picture's main subjet isn't a Prime Minister the way i see it...

His sister was the true heroïc figure on this fine capture, IMO!

Reefer Madness had some limited distribution in 1936, which is only 4 years later if i'm not mistaking (by the way, i don't mean the photograph was taken in 1932). Though it seems the soup really turned bad at some point soon after WW2: e.g. in times of peace when plenty of men returning from the war fileds suddenly became available to occupy all sorts of jobs, including that which requires to wear a policeman uniform, i figure.



Well, what i'm most curious about is the period when the social status of cannabis flipped from legit to criminal..

adamster said:

...I can enlighten him, but I stay silent.

Click to expand...

I say cannabis users are being discriminated against on the basis of premices which are simply wrong.

Then i wonder. Where did the hate waves came from and when?
I wish i could find some answers in this section:

Euh...

Woups!! It IS the "Cannabis News and Activism" section! Ha! Ha!

Oh my...

Anyway.

adamster said:

...I would argue that it makes you a better driver.

Click to expand...

If i were around the place of discussion then i might want to add my and comment that i wouldn't want to share public transportation space knowing there are individuals driving while intoxicated with cannabis.

Sorry, that's a whole different battle - no love there from me as i also happen to believe it's a matter of "survival", a word with a lot of sense if something doesn't go as planned initially...

In a recent article, published this week ( http://www.lien-social.com/ sorry that's french only), it appears clearly that in countries where it's still illegal, the number of cannabis smokers is still increasing day after day no matter how strong is repression; although in countries like Spain or Portugal where it's widely accepted the number of users doesn't change really.
There could be many reason to explain that, but I really think the misinformation, which is mandatory to keep things illegal, is the main culprit.

Lol @ making you a better driver. That's just stoner talk!

It's true that you can become more prudent when driving baked/vaked. And I take driving under influence of MJ over alcohol 100% of the time. But still, your reactions and especially your reaction speed are way off when baked or vaked.

I bake&drive from time to time since I was 16, moped >motorcycle>car (I'm 32 now) and never had an accident where I was to blame. I really do not recommend doing it on a motorcycle btw. That's where you feel it the most. I almost never did bake&drive on the motorcycle for that reason.

Anyway. No it's not a guaranteed accident, but I believe you have to be very aware of being vaked when driving and drive accordingly. (Or even better, don't!)