'Global war on drugs has failed,' key panel says

Please also note, before you tear me apart on your moral high ground, that i never said that i agreed that it should be illegal....

I merely stated my thoughts on the consequences of it becoming widely available.

People who walk around drenched in a gallon of cheap perfume/cologne not only irritate me but have an adverse affect on my health as strong scents of that nature trigger migraines for me. Can I have that banned? Cause every time it's been tried here in a governmental sense, it's been struck down because of arguments made that it interferes with people's personal freedoms.

I don't think people should have the freedom to do drugs anywhere they please in public. I do however think that what you choose to put in your body (regardless of how toxic of stupid it is) should be your own business. If everyone in jail for a trivial drug offense was let out, the overcrowding problem would likely be solved overnight.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

People who walk around drenched in a gallon of cheap perfume/cologne not only irritate me but have an adverse affect on my health as strong scents of that nature trigger migraines for me. Can I have that banned? Cause every time it's been tried here in a governmental sense, it's been struck down because of arguments made that it interferes with people's personal freedoms.

I don't think people should have the freedom to do drugs anywhere they please in public. I do however think that what you choose to put in your body (regardless of how toxic of stupid it is) should be your own business. If everyone in jail for a trivial drug offense was let out, the overcrowding problem would likely be solved overnight.

I agree with personal freedoms until they affect my own. At which point i should be free to express my personal freedom to stop them affecting me in any way i feel inappropriate...

Or we can have a law or agreed laws that benefit everyone...

e.g. A smoker is smoking near me, when i've been standing at a bus stop for 15 minutes awaiting a bus and they just arrived and felt the need to light up. I ask them to stop anf they moan about me restricting their freedoms and some bullsh*t. How about i should be able to kill them and remove them from my sphere of existence and their negative effect on my life? Seems reasonable to me.

Seeing someone fat doesn't cause me to have an increased chance of cancer.... nor does it cause me to absorb substances that can be stored in my cuticles and hair that can cause me to be fired because my job requires mandatory drug testing. It also doesn't cause my clothes, skin and hair (and other belongings) to stink to high heaven/hell.

A frat buddy of mine had the unique ability to pass gas on command and used to make a habit of farting as loudly and obnoxiously as possible around equally obnoxious smokers. He doesn't have the opportunity much anymore because of the restrictive smoking laws but it was always hilarious when he did it.

If pot is dicriminalized you still get fired for testing positive in a workplace drug test. If it were legalized, I'm not sure you could be fired in the same situation. It'll be interesting to see where corporate American comes down on the topic.

Nevin73 wrote:

If pot is dicriminalized you still get fired for testing positive in a workplace drug test. If it were legalized, I'm not sure you could be fired in the same situation. It'll be interesting to see where corporate American comes down on the topic.

I think that's more of a work policy than a legal thing. Kind of like how you can get fired for repeatedly ignoring dress code but your flip flops and hot pants aren't going to get you arrested. Since we've got this whole Capitalism thing going on, I'm not sure the government can really interfere with that.

Nevin73 wrote:

If pot is dicriminalized you still get fired for testing positive in a workplace drug test. If it were legalized, I'm not sure you could be fired in the same situation. It'll be interesting to see where corporate American comes down on the topic.

That still remains to be seen. There's court cases all over testing this -- the most visible being the Wal mart cancer sufferer who was fired for his use of medical marijuana. Link,

Seth wrote:
Nevin73 wrote:

If pot is dicriminalized you still get fired for testing positive in a workplace drug test. If it were legalized, I'm not sure you could be fired in the same situation. It'll be interesting to see where corporate American comes down on the topic.

That still remains to be seen. There's court cases all over testing this -- the most visible being the Wal mart cancer sufferer who was fired for his use of medical marijuana. Link,

Yeah, hopefully, unfair dismissal laws would keep that sort of crap in check.

What's a little ironic about the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act is that you cannot be fired for using medical marijuana as it is intended -- but there are zero protections under the law for cigarette smokers.

well.."cannot" accord to the law, not according to Wal mart and that judge.

I don't know about other states, but the Arizona law does not give any special permission for working or driving or operating heavy machinery under the influence. I doubt that anyone could win an employment discrimination suit based solely on their use of medical marijuana. One of the reasons it passed was that businesses could get behind the law since it didn't restrict their freedom of choice of employees.

Nevin73 wrote:

If pot is dicriminalized you still get fired for testing positive in a workplace drug test. If it were legalized, I'm not sure you could be fired in the same situation. It'll be interesting to see where corporate American comes down on the topic.

I'm pretty sure I could get fired if I showed up to work drunk. I don't see how it would be any different for drugs.

Seth wrote:

What's a little ironic about the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act is that you cannot be fired for using medical marijuana as it is intended -- but there are zero protections under the law for cigarette smokers.

well.."cannot" accord to the law, not according to Wal mart and that judge.

I'm sure if you had a prescription for your cigarettes, you'd be equally protected.

muttonchop wrote:
Nevin73 wrote:

If pot is dicriminalized you still get fired for testing positive in a workplace drug test. If it were legalized, I'm not sure you could be fired in the same situation. It'll be interesting to see where corporate American comes down on the topic.

I'm pretty sure I could get fired if I showed up to work drunk. I don't see how it would be any different for drugs.

Really? So, you just had surgery and you aren't going to take those pain killers while at work? How about anti-anxiety meds? No go there?

You don't have to be stoned out of your mind for medical marijuana to work. In fact, the more research that goes on (slow as it is thanks to the government's stranglehold) they're able to better understand the mechanisms of marijuana and develop other drugs that target those specific areas.

muttonchop wrote:
Nevin73 wrote:

If pot is dicriminalized you still get fired for testing positive in a workplace drug test. If it were legalized, I'm not sure you could be fired in the same situation. It'll be interesting to see where corporate American comes down on the topic.

I'm pretty sure I could get fired if I showed up to work drunk. I don't see how it would be any different for drugs.

Considering a drug test can detect marijuana use from days ago, I'm not sure it's useful to compare to going to work drunk.

Look the problem is everyone assumes that society would go crazy and all the regular citizens would get drugs and kids with scholarships would throw it all away just because they can get it more easily.

Anyone who wants drugs can get them already, and I believe that the majority of people who don't use drugs now, won't use them when they're illegal either.

But yeah, anyone can see the drug war is failing hard, something has to change.

I personally support legalizing it, not because it's a great choice, just because it's less bad. But come on, Marihuana is a pretty lame drug, there's gotta be more people that can't handle their life on alcohol.

Mex wrote:

I personally support legalizing it, not because it's a great choice, just because it's less bad. But come on, Marihuana is a pretty lame drug, there's gotta be more people that can't handle their life on alcohol.

Not to mention that your country would likely change quite drastically for the better. For starters.

I definitely fall into the "Well, duh" camp here.

Minarchist wrote:
Mex wrote:

I personally support legalizing it, not because it's a great choice, just because it's less bad. But come on, Marihuana is a pretty lame drug, there's gotta be more people that can't handle their life on alcohol.

Not to mention that your country would likely change quite drastically for the better. For starters.

I actually don't know much about the politics and economics of marijuana. Is it really the main drug fueling the drug war? I thought the U.S. was a decent enough place to grow it. I heard somewhere that the crackdown on the U.S. Mexican border against marijuana actually served as a de facto tariff against foreign weed and helped out domestic growers.

The last I heard, pot produces about half the profit for the Mexican cartels. Legalizing it will hurt them, but it definitely won't kill them.

And, yes, a fair number of domestic growers are very against legalization, because the price will fall out from under it. Pot is >really< easy to grow. They call it 'weed' for a reason. Super-useful plant, too, it makes all kinds of useful products. (hemp paper and hemp rope are both high-quality goods, IIRC.) We really oughta have millions of acres of the stuff under cultivation for all the other stuff it's so good at.

I'm pretty sure I read it's a lot better than trees for making paper. It grows faster, so you get a lot more paper per acre, and it's a lot cheaper to harvest and process.

I remember reading about hemp paper as well, apparently the yield is 3 times higher for a given area, and it's viable in a year instead of 20. I think it was the same place I read this that said it was paper barons who were some of the prime movers for criminalisation of marijuana and all other forms of hemp.

It may help explain why the hemp and marijuana issues are conflated, you get varietals of hemp with no narcotic effect at all.

PiP wrote:

Considering a drug test can detect marijuana use from days ago, I'm not sure it's useful to compare to going to work drunk.

No it can't.

It can barely detect semi regular use. All it can detect is heavy, habitual users. It's why so many moderate to light marijuana smokers think that they "beat" the drug test. cranberry juice is a myth.

Regardless, what I do in my off time, as long as it is legal, should not be a stipulation of employment. As long as I don't show up under the influence, of course.

Nevin73 wrote:

Regardless, what I do in my off time, as long as it is legal, should not be a stipulation of employment. As long as I don't show up under the influence, of course.

This, exactly. As long as you are doing your job competently and don't show up under the influence, it's absolutely no business of your employer what you do when you're not on their dime. I'm confident my employer will never require that of me but the day they do is the day I quit.

Well, and the THC isn't even important; we could probably engineer hemp that didn't get you high. But even if it still did, it'd be SUCH a good trade -- big economic expansion from the new material, much reduced economic drag from stupid policing efforts.

Grubber788 wrote:
Minarchist wrote:
Mex wrote:

I personally support legalizing it, not because it's a great choice, just because it's less bad. But come on, Marihuana is a pretty lame drug, there's gotta be more people that can't handle their life on alcohol.

Not to mention that your country would likely change quite drastically for the better. For starters.

I actually don't know much about the politics and economics of marijuana. Is it really the main drug fueling the drug war? I thought the U.S. was a decent enough place to grow it. I heard somewhere that the crackdown on the U.S. Mexican border against marijuana actually served as a de facto tariff against foreign weed and helped out domestic growers.

It depends on what you mean by fueling the war. It is by far the most popular illegal drug in the US and elsewhere. When you get to law enforcement concerns, Meth and Heroine tend to be higher priorities. Prescription trafficking is also a major concern.

Pot was a much bigger Federal priority under Bush. The DEA was watching California, Colorado, Oregon like hawks.

As a crop, pot is a miracle plant. It grows anywhere, can be used for textiles, bio fuel, paper. It is an incredibly robust plant that can grow damn near everywhere. It is literally farmed from Alaska to Argentina and everywhere in between.

Marijuana bans are the most abhorrent due to the simple fact that hemp products are still illegal, while Coca Cola can import Coca Leaves, proces them, and use them in the production of Coke still. Or that I can still buy Poppy Seeds at any spice shop. Or how you can get a prescription for any number of opiates, if you sprain an ankle.

Let's see if Georgians want to kill Coke's imports, or Connecticut's imports of poppies in drug manufacturing.

Marijuana could be a major step in our energy independence, without more oil spills and disasters. But we live in the land of privateers of industry.

Malor wrote:

Well, and the THC isn't even important; we could probably engineer hemp that didn't get you high. But even if it still did, it'd be SUCH a good trade -- big economic expansion from the new material, much reduced economic drag from stupid policing efforts.

There's strains of hemp that have very little THC in them. Not sure if they're the kind that's useful in industrial production.

Apparently what our government is waiting for is WWIII. Then we'll start producing hemp again.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/rA7oA.jpg)

Coca-cola does not contain cocaine.

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/cocai...

But it does have coca leaves in it, doesn't it? Just sans cocaine?

Nobody knows, and the Coca-Cola company isn't telling.

BadKen wrote:

Nobody knows, and the Coca-Cola company isn't telling.

Yes, they do still use coca leave extracts and this is widely published. There is only a single company licensed by the government to import coca leaves, and they have a contract with Coke.

To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a cocaine-free coca leaf extract prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey.

In the United States, the Stepan Company is the only manufacturing plant authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant,[34] which it obtains mainly from Peru and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. Besides producing the coca flavoring agent for Coca-Cola, the Stepan Company extracts cocaine from the coca leaves, which it sells to Mallinckrodt, a St. Louis, Missouri pharmaceutical manufacturer that is the only company in the United States licensed to purify cocaine for medicinal use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Co...

Seth wrote:

No it can't.

It can barely detect semi regular use. All it can detect is heavy, habitual users. It's why so many moderate to light marijuana smokers think that they "beat" the drug test. cranberry juice is a myth.

So you agree that going to work drunk is not the same as failing a workplace drug test.