Maybe Normalization starts when other people, exept the weed smokers, do not have difficulties anymore with the smoking of it in public. Don't see the problem, you don't hurt any one if you are smoking outside. Normalization starts when people who are in pain and have weed to stop the pain, dare to say in public they have weed for the pain, without feeling uneasy, because they use weed. Normalization starts when the public exepts weed as being a pain killer and a good smoke. No fighting if there are only people smoking weed. It is not like alcohol. That's what most people get agressive of, alcohol. And that you can drink as much as you want for it is an allowed drug. It is more bad for your brain and the rest of your body, so maybe people have to start and think good about this weed 'problem', for it is no problem......Maybe it is a solution......
education is the key it seems to me the problem with the drugwar and public awareness is education,the american public(can't really speak for the uk or rest of the world) has been horribly miseducated about drugs from the very beginning hell our founding fathers wrote the constituion on hemp paper,and grew fields of hemp as a cash crop,the american school system and government have been feeding anti-drug propaganda to the public since the turn of the 19th century mainly the excuse the government had to making marijuana in particular illegal was mexican immigrants during the depression were coming in from mexico looking for work,these workers brought with them the tradition of smoking marijuana with them from mexico,that and some other factors of the cotton industry trying to get a hand in where the hemp industry was doing business(hemp was used during ww2 to produce parachutes and other necessities for the war),the cotton businesses basically struck a deal and bought out some govt officials and as you know money greases the wheels of any controlling party.also marijuana was used alot in speak easy's and jazz bars where whites and blacks were mingling together and at the time racial harmony wasn't exactly on the agenda,so marijuana in particular has never been proven to be as harmful as the government would lead you believe infact several medical journals as of lately has disproven most of the 'facts' the government has about marijuana.the bottom line is people need to educate themselfs about what is dangerous and whats not you can't live your life by the advice of other people,the government once considered slavery humane because after blacks weren't as human as whites,so before you believe everything you've been told,open your mind look at the world and question EVERYTHING also for more information about drugs and the war on drugs check out http://www.lycaeum.org http://www.erowid.org http://www.drugwarfacts.org http://www.smokedot.org Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Tshort, you said that well Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! May peace be on your way Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! You understand the whole thing.....
To defend alcohol in regards to a common misperception, alcohol does not induce violence. Alcohol lowers inhibitions. Most of the drunks I have known want nothing more than a good time. I drink. On the occassions when I get plastered I find that I am less offended by anyone's snide remarks about me or anybody I'm with. Normally, I'd knock the block off of anybody who came around spoiling for a fight. When I'm 8 sheets to the wind I usually just raise my glass and say something like "Yeah, I remember my first beer." (Dang! I quote Robin Williams when I'm drunk? I must have been wasted!) Keeping the subject on marijuana, it's not an innocent substance. As I said, the smoke from marijuana has a substantially greater amount of carcinogens than the smoke from the much-villified cigarette. Neither one is a good thing to use if you're pregnant. Marijuana is not a health food. (Put down that brownie. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) Marijuana, however, is not "the most violence-inducing drug in America". This was a quote in a Wm. Hearst newspaper. Hearst had every reason to begin spreading nasty rumors about pot. Hearst controlled lumber mills that were producing paper. All of his newspapers were printed on paper made from trees. He didn't control any hemp fields. His competition was printing on paper made from hemp plants. His competition made many other things from hemp. They were of a higher quality. Hearst's big friend, Dupont, was trying to push its plastic lanyard as an alternative to natural rope. Hemp rope was outselling it like crazy. Hearst, therefore, started playing up hemp like it was the driving force behind all of the evil in the world. Because he controlled so many newspapers, he was able to effectivley use a tactic employed successfully in Europe by Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels: Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public's ignorance of the substance coupled with their (by modern standards) staggering lack of healthy cynicism, made them pigeons ready for plucking by the self-serving Hearst. "They can't put it in the papers if it's not true." There was even an episode of "Dragnet" where one kid snuck a joint into a theater and sparked up, which drove the other patrons in the theater into a wild, uncontrollable frenzy. Hey, if you can't trust Sgt. Friday, who can you trust? Of course, with marijuana "obviously" at the root of all this violence and discord in America (What? PTSD from WW2 and Korea? Don't be silly. Our boys weren't screwed up by the war. They came back as healthy, happy heroes and resumed their places as productive, well-adjusted members of society. Besides, as real men, they could handle it.) all that had to be done was to lump it inextricably with the worse stuff in the minds of the public and voila!, Hearst no longer has any competition to worry about. Kinda makes Bill Gates look like a cherub, doesn't it?
This sounds like the America I hate............ Can't you see people do believe what others write down. And because it is an important figure, it has to be true. There are pro's and con's to alcohol and weed, Every thing has a negative side if you let that happen. Most of the times you have to teach yourself to use it well. Sometimes you loose and it becomes a great problem. But that is with every drug, even the sleeping pills you get from your doctor. That can be an addiction too. And a lot of people who have to say the most rotten things about weed, use this sleeping-, or calm down pills, which are far more addictive then weed is. And so we can go on, and they stay the same narrow-minded persons who doesn't want to hear that they are addicted to their pills. Because that ones, you have gotten for free, from the doctor, so it is ok. It is not. They are all liars, they do not want to know, so they do not have to think about that. Crazy people....refuse to think, but judging every one who smokes marijuana. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Even free speech and the right to self-government has a negative side. But do the negative points outweigh the positive points, or vice-versa? And if there is a negative side to certain activities, does thefact that someone practices them involve the experience intruding on the life of someone who doesn't want to (i.e., a contact high, getting hit by a drunk driver, etc.) I don't see very many positive things about, say, bungee jumping. I've never done it, and I don't care to put myself through that level of stress just for a rush. (Of course, if I ever worked up the nerve to try it, I might change my tune.) But I don't condemn bungee-jumping because the activity itself only involves the person doing the jumping. Now, if bungee-jumpers were in the habit of grabbing the nearest observer and taking them on the jump with them whether they wanted to go or not, then I'd be justified in condemning the activity. Fortunately, I don't know of any bungee-jumpers who are in that habit. No offense to any bungee-jumpers out there. Just don't do like this one guy did and use 60' of bungee for a 75' drop.
I am curious about a source O2-- I'm inclined to ask if you found your source on that one; the only reason I'm picky on this point is twofold. First, a 1972 Bureau of Narcotics report to Congress documented little carcinogenic effect in marijuana and went so far as to include anecdotal data of Jamaican men who claimed to smoke marijuana all their lives without severe lung damage. By severe, we can suggest that the hardest of pot smokers face possible emphysema. The study downplayed the health risk compared to other, everyday habits of Americans (diet, &c). Secondly, I have seen reports which note the presence of "potentially carcinogenic" substances in marijuana. Now, nobody's going to be so presumptuous and preposterous as to suggest that setting something on fire and inhaling it isn't unhealthy, but the presence of substances thought to be possibly carcinogenic, in uncertain quantities leaves many questions to be answered. Are the compounds themselves carcinogenic, or only in combination with other chemicals? Do any of those combinations exist? What is the proper balance that creates the carcinogenic effect, and does this chemical balance exist? The '72 Bureau of Narcotics report is difficult to produce at present; I have in the past possessed a copy, but returned it to the University of Oregon library upon my departure as a matter of conscience. What is most notable, however, is that if one looks a PDFA advocate in the eye over a report showing carcinogenic effect of marijuana and asks a simple question, the whole thing comes apart: How many of the marijuana users surveyed also smoked cigarettes? This is a vital question; marijuana has long been asserted to complicate health risks from cigarette smoking. In pursuit of the Devil's Weed, the warriors generally overlook mighty Nic. And this leads back to another idea I've pushed here: if marijuana was legal, most people I know would eat the stuff. As I noted to Deadwood, Thanksgiving Dinner would probably run me about $700, all told. To that end, let me note that the late Scott Cunningham, in Encyclopaedia of Magickal Herbs (it's buried in a box somewhere; full title and publication info later if necessary) notes that traditions indicate an hallucinogenic effect in bay leaf; one can, apparently, burn bay leaves, inhale the smoke, and receive "prophetic visions". You can't tell me this is any more or less healthy than smoking pot, yet nobody worries about the carcinogenic effect of bay leaves in their spaghetti sauce because it comes out when incinerated. I suggest the same of marijuana. Brownies, cookies, and the like are not the only place you can utilize it. Hemp-garlic butter is amazingly delectible, and goes well on bread, in white sauce, &c. The nutritional value of hemp is alleged to be amazing, and I apologize for not having those already-suggested statistics on hand. (DSL woes; I don't get nearly as much research time these last two weeks, so I write a little more quickly than wisdom suggests I should.) Given a free hand to learn how to cook the stuff more diversely, I doubt you'd have to put up with my secondhand smoke in public. Until then, that's me sneaking off into the shadows, guided by the beacon glow of a purple Bic disposable lighter. thanx, Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I was actually going to identify the source, but when I went to put a footnote to my post doing so, I had lost the information. I will reserve comment on that subject, then, until I can point the way. In regards to inhaling the fumes from a bay leaf as opposed to using it for cooking, well, any chef or holistic physician can tell you that it's all in how it's prepared. Cooking with alcohol won't get you drunk. Drinking it will. Snorting rosehips can't break up your bronchitis. Drinking it in a tea can. See, there's no generalization. Nothing is all good or all bad. Cocaine is not all bad. It's use in hospitals is testimony to that. The same goes for a good number of other drugs when used in a supervised setting. What I don't believe is that legalizing them so that anybody who wants them can get them will solve anything except to get a bunch of junkies to overdose and kill themselves. Booze was a federal crime once. The Mafia moved in quickly and controlled the illegal trade. There was blood in the streets comparable to what we have now. Legalizing booze again didn't end the crime. It just moved it to a new market; drugs. I do agree that laws that make it illegal to sensibly educate people regarding drugs is just a way of hiding our heads in the sand. The truth should be allowed to be told without propaganda from either side ("They'll make you start eating kitten brains!" or "They aren't harmful, you won't get hooked." are both a load of BS that represents the worst both sides have to offer.) Perhaps we should, in the interest of free speech and education, find out how we go about getting such prudish sweep-it-under-the-rug-and-it'll-go-away laws repealed nationwide. We couldn't use a magazine like "High Times", since we would just be preaching to the choir. You sound pretty educated on the subject. Have you written any papers for publication?
Can you explain me how you can get a overdose from marijuana? I never came to that point, most of the time I stop when I am done making them. Too much work. The joints I mean. Marijuana...... How do you get an overdose from that?? Explain please. Thank you. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
"Where are all these flashbacks people have been promising?" As a long time tryptamine afficionado, I am curious to learn how to get these flashbacks that everyone assures me I’ll get. I’ve been told that tapping the base of my spine will induce them (no such luck), I’ve been told that smoking marijuana will. (alas) So how might I emulate those elusive people who have taken acid once and been sent on a permanent trip? I wouldn’t, after all, mind saving the money that would otherwise be spend on LSD or psilocybin.
Overdose is simply overexposure. An overdose of TV, LSD, etc. As far as flashbacks go, first you have to get off the stuff, then when you least expect it you have a sensual re-experience of a trip.
Flahbacks Mostly flashbacks come suddenly. I used a lot of LSD and Mescal a long time ago now. And sometimes when I smoke marijuana I get the trip back, if you can say it that way. It is nice when it comes, I like it, no problems with it. But you don't get a whole trip back. You just feel a little 'trippy', you know what I mean?? So it doesn't come whenever you want, just now and then. Suddenly, without warning, it happens and if you recognize the feeling, and don't freak out which some people do, then you can have a nice hour or so. But it is completely different from real tripping. A little bit, nicely deep inside, you feel it... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Let's also remember that it has a lot to do with the individual. I don't recall who, but someone on this site quite some time back had asserted that they had used cocaine but never got hooked, and from this tried to base an argument that cocaine, therefore, was really non-addictive and the government was just lying to us. I know of one person who has vivid flashbacks. Not necessarily a complete re-experience, but intense enough that he has staggered up to his friends and asked if he has taken anything.
