Alembic Guitars Club
Connecting => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: cozmik_cowboy on February 24, 2012, 06:44:36 AM
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A paper released by researchers from Montana State University, University of Colorado, and San Diego State University states:
Our results suggest that the passage of a medical marijuana law is associated with an almost 5 percent reduction in the total suicide rate, an 11 percent reduction in the suicide rate of 20- through 29-year-old males, and a 9 percent reduction in the suicide rate of 30- through 39-year-old males.
Peter
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Obviously,I'm not. Of interest would be a closer look to see how many suicides are related to pending criminal charges. Also, I believe another study has found a reduction in DUI rates in medical cannabis states.
Bill, tgo
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Legalization is long overdue.
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I think there's going to be a public referendum on that in Colorado this year. Hopefully sanity will finally prevail. Wish us luck.
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Just make sure the THC level (or what's it called) doesn't go through the roof, as I am told is the case here in Neder-wiede-wiede-wiet-land. Don't believe the hype either way.
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That's a problem???
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I thought the point with recreational drugs was to not let sanity prevail, but I may be missing the point. And now I'll shut up.
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Me, too. Is it 4:20 yet?
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Now, Bill, if you can just get Quaaludes back...
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I don't see the correlation. Hope the study was conducted with private funding as opposed to tax dollars.
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Did somebody say Quaalude!? I LOVE The Tubes! =)
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The Tubes used to practice down the street where I used to live in San Francisco ,they were then called The Beans . I used to listen to them .
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Very cool Bay area band.Would like to have seen a show.I'm also an Oingo Boingo fan.Lots of performance art down there.
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back on topic, someone sent me this link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg) taken from a lancet article.
Graeme
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Lancet? It's Wikipedia. And as reliable as any Wikipedia article; there are some obvious inaccuacies: cannabis needs to move left & way down, tobacco needs to move way right and way up!
Peter
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About halfway down the wiki entry there's alink to the original 2007 lancet article (http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673607604644/abstract). Sometimes wikipedia info is based on real information :-)
graeme
p.s. maybe macdonalds should be on there too. very addictive and VERY bad for you.
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...especially if you are a cow or a chicken :/
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McDonalds uses real meat??!! ;)
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From the New York Times, March 5, 2012:
In Colorado, a proposal to legalize possession of marijuana in small amounts is likely to be on the ballot in November 2012, urging voters to ?regulate marijuana like alcohol,? as the ballot proposition?s title puts it.
Here's the link: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/m/marijuana/index.html (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/m/marijuana/index.html)
And also, from the Boulder Daily Camera:
On Jan. 4, 160,000 signatures were submitted to the Colorado Secretary of State that will allow Coloradans to vote on whether we want to regulate marijuana in essentially the same way that we regulate alcohol. Coloradans will have an opportunity to show America how to introduce sanity into our drug policies. Conventional wisdom has it that conservatives will oppose legalization, but I think that's dead wrong. Real Republicans will, without a doubt, support legalization. And, lest you think this simply the fantasy of a libertarian-leaning Boulder Republican, let me point out that Republicans have already shown Coloradans what they think. First, at the 2010 Boulder County Republican Caucuses, a resolution entitled Legalization of Marijuana was voted on by 73 precincts, of which 56 voted for legalization and 17 against -- over 76 percent in favor of legalization. Second, the guy who received the most Republican votes for Colorado Governor in 2010, Tom Tancredo, clearly stated his support for legalizing marijuana. Third, the Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul is a vocal advocate for legalization.
Here's the link to that:
http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_19785252 (http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_19785252)
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I don't think it's going to happen. Regardless of whether or not a state decriminalizes marijuana, it's still against the law federally. That trumps local law. As much as people like to pontificate about states rights, the Constitution is not a treaty. It's the law of the land and gives the Federal Government the last word in things like this.
Further, there is the issue of intoxication while driving. The scientists I've talked to who are considered expert witnesses on intoxication in Colorado seem to agree that a blood level of 5ng/ml is definitely indicative of presumptively impairment and that 1ng/ml is most likely impaired. You can have a blood level of 1ng from second hand smoke. You can have a residual background level much higher than that if you are a habitual smoker. If smoke habitually, you can abstain for several days and still have blood levels well above 1ng/ml. If you area a habitual smoker and quit and then lose weight a year later, the stored THC in your fat cells gets released and your blood level can rise above a presumptively impaired level. What does this all mean? Probably that half the drivers in Colorado at any given time are impaired. Even if we legalized it here, anyone who uses it would be prohibited from driving, maybe even for days at a time.
I would like our society to have the what level of impairment is too much conversation, though. 1ng/ml might have some perceptible level of impairment so that a driver might lose some reaction time, but is it any more significant than having a bad headache, a fight with the wife, stress from work, etc?
There are no easy answers about marijuana. From its demonization under Anslinger to the present, it's been controversial and saddled with cultural baggage that has not always been about the direct effect the drug has on users and society. I believe our current policy of incarceration for drug crimes is misguided at best. The idea that we are populating our prisons at great cost both directly (prisons are pricey) and indirectly (cons don't get jobs easily and it can be an incredibly negative experience to one's life path to go to prison leading to negative social outcomes) with people who are not an inherent danger to society shows a pretty strong dysfunction. I just finished reading Prisons of Poverty by Waquant, and it's a pretty strong indictment of the prison system as a method of class control where drug prohibition is an essential tool of the supporters of the neo-liberal theories of law and order. I think it should be read by everyone who feels seduced by the law and order arguments. Anyway, I digress. Marijuana is complicated, even if you don't smoke it!
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Wow Edwin, I never heard that argument before.
Thank You