LLD101

[Kody]

Yea im really not that knowledgable about this stuff (11th grade atm lol) but i love to read about the stuff some of yall talk about. hmmmmm so lets see what we can start off with.... how bout the legalization/taxation and what not. (i realise this was touched in my other thread although its just a starter topic)

[Goky]

I guess I'll start!

To be honest, the legality of things doesn't bother me nearly as much as the social stigma. I was in the chemistry computer lab the other day and there was this big discussion going on about how drunk they all got the weekend before and how they all love <insert alcohol brand here> so much and how they can't wait to get drunk again at the bar this weekend blabla.

Then there was this other kid a few minutes later who mentioned how he got high the weekend before and you could almost sense the eye rolling and under the breath scoffing and tension in the room.

Why is it that drinking is practically a right of passage, yet if you smoke you're this dirty bum who must live in his parents basements and your life must revolve around getting high? I think a lot of the problem is that the people who are the most vocal about the fact that they smoke are the ones who actually DO smoke all the time. The ones who just do it occasionally and live perfectly normal productive lives never really tell anyone out of fear of the stigma, and being ostracized.

As far as legal issues go, whether you agree with people smoking pot or not, I think it's obvious that people are going to do it regardless of whether or not it's illegal. By having it illegal, you create more crime than you stop, because you start an "anything goes" black market (since you can't exactly call the cops to tell them some guy ripped you off when you went to go buy an ounce).

Look at alcohol prohibition in the 1920's--it didn't work. Organized gangs took advantage of the fact that there was a demand for an item that people couldn't get anywhere else. You then have people killing eachother over the commodity (not for the item itself, but for the potential money behind it) and control over that commodity. It also affects the end user, because you have an unregulated product which could be practically anything. I can imagine that the bathtub gin of the 1920's wasn't entirely healthy for you considering all the additional crap that was in it.

Likewise, prohibition now doesn't work. In addition to the whole black market crime thing, a lot of the dangers in drug use are actually because of the whole unregulated product thing--heroin addicts dying because they get a new batch which is much less cut than before, so they overdose; people out to purchase MDMA getting meth/DXM/whatever else causing all sorts of adverse reactions that wouldn't have been there otherwise.

You also have otherwise crime-free citizens getting arrested, losing their jobs, students losing financial aid because *gasp* they'd rather smoke a joint than get drunk. People inherently think that alcohol is somehow not harmful at all, and I guess you really can't blame them considering you see a myriad of BUY OUR BEER! commercials on TV everyday. I've actually met people that sincerely believed that alcohol wasn't a drug. It perplexes me.

Going to a college which has it's share of drinking and parties, you constantly encounter loud obnoxious drunks who decide to yell things, make retarded decisions, start fights and vomit all over my balcony, but if someone wants to sit in their room and smoke pot and listen to music for a while then he's a felon? Great! (Yes, I realize that not everyone who drinks vomits and tries to start fights, and not everyone who smokes pot just chills in their room with their favorite album).

Ok that's about it for now.

[Goky]

Ok I have more stuff to say I forgot.

The last time we had one of these threads, Shade was very adament about his anti-drug stance, with the reasoning being that whatever you put in your body doesn't just affect you, it affects others as well.

To be honest, I agree with him. The more libertarian stance of "it's my body I can do what I want with it argument" is sort of flawed, because you are affecting more people than yourself.

Where I disagree with him, is the extent to which he takes it. To be honest, EVERYTHING we do affects other people. Should we just ban everything that could possibly cause us to hurt someone? Shade was a huge fan of fast, powerful cars, and statistically people with fast, powerful cars are much more likely to cause wrecks. Should we ban fast cars then? After all, someone might be irresponsible and hurt someone!

Honestly, there are irresponsible stupid people in the world. Whether it be cars, guns, or drugs, people are going to abuse and misuse them. However, it just isn't practical or realistic to go banning and outlawing everything that people are irresponsible with, because no matter the item, someone will always find something else to be irresponsible and retarded with. The issue is more of that of human nature than it is any given item.

Ok bye again.

[Kody]

ok well lets say they did happen to legalize marijauna and perhaps drop the drinking age to 18 or what ever. Do you think that doing this would help people of future generations be able to better regulate thier alcohol intake? and with the legalization of marijauna possibly the same thing happen somewhat? and if it did get legalized i do think the number of ilegal dealers drop by a rather large number considering they probaly only deal the most common type of marijauna (shwag or at least where i am that is) although i dont think if marijauna did get legalized they would legalize all the different kinds so this would still allow the distribution of it illegally (i hope this has made sense lol) and just a little side note to ya goky i like some of the points you made in this thread and the other one dealing with hemp

[Knifer]

[Elusive]

to me both arent terrible unless you become dependent.

i guess weed is seen as "worse" because a lot more people i know have dropped out of school or messed up their lives due to drugs rather than alcohol, and weed is usually the starting drug that people get hooked on.

[Meegz ?]

actually, from what i've seen either cigarettes or alcohol come before the weed. and a lot of my friends didn't finish school and now smoke a LOT of pot...

i didn't know that someone could be so stoned they couldn't remember their name until i went over to a buddy's house one night...ya...i didnt go home...and they do that shit on a very regular basis.

[Knifer]

[SoaringSquirrel]

[Goky]

The "gateway drug" argument is a pretty big load of poop.

The idea is that because most heroin addicts started with marijuana, then marijuana must be some form of gateway drug into harder things. What they don't tell you is that most people who do marijuana don't start doing heroin. If that was the case, then they'd have a little more of a valid argument.

I think it's just an issue of some people being more curious about drugs in the first place--obviously if you are, you aren't going to hop directly to heroin or something, you'd start with the more easily available and more benign of the choices.

Also, last time I checked they also included tobacco and alcohol as gateway drugs. Most people do those before they even smoke pot.

Come to think of it, I used to spin around in circles as a child way before I ever did drugs. We better get moving on this one.

KC, as far as psychedelics and things go, I'm not sure. A part of me would want them legal, but a major part of me also realizes that most people are pretty silly, and are just going to take them "to get fuzxed up yo" which just sort of makes me sad.

[Knifer]

goky do you know about the effects of salvia vs lsd/pcp and such? i always kinda wondered why salvia is legal when i heard so many stories of people just tripping out for hours.

[BloodRose]

I just want to make a note...

you never see people dieing from marijuana
but alchohal poisoning kills hunderds of thousands yearly

you never see people that are high killing people/themselves or commiting serious crimes

but drunks are always killing themselves/people and breaking/destroying property

point stated??

[Goky]

[James]

few points to cover here:

salvia (salvia divinorum, aka the divine sage) is a member of the sage family and is a beautiful plant. the salvia trip is very different for each person. moreso than just about anything short of DMT (at least, from my experience). it can be pleasant or a pain in the ass, depending on how you accept its effects. i personally enjoy the mental aspects of it, but it gives me a pins and needles kind of itch over my entire body for about 5-10 minutes. it's a short trip, peaking at about 5 minutes after inhalation and beginning to decline about 5-10 minutes later. baseline state is returned to about 30 minutes after initial inhalation.

lsd is an entity unto itself. don't even ask too much about this one. for every fact that we can verify 100%, there are a hundred unanswered questions concerning its method of action.

pcp...as goky stated, it's a dissociative. it's in the same mismatched family as ketamine and dextromethorphan. i say mismatched, because the only commonality between these three is that they create a schism between body and mind. i do have to agree with goky not understanding why pcp is hyped by DARE and anti-drug groups. after being involved in the illicit substance scene for almost a decade, i've only seen it around the midwest three times that i can remember.

and shura shulgin. he is a god among men. he has personally created (and tested) well over 200 psychedelically active substances. he has written two full-length novels with his wife, anne: TIHKAL (tryptamines i have known and loved) and PIHKAL (phenylthylamines i have known and loved). both of these works also contain a second half composed of nothing but lab material. 100% textbook chemistry recipes for many of the substances he has created.

oh, i shouldn't forget: shulgin is also personally responsible for the rediscovery of MDMA (ecstasy)

[Meegz ?]

i havent tried salvia (yet) but my buddy did, said he hit it, then rolled over in the back seat of the car and laughed so hard he was drooling. 30 secs later he sat back up and said it was a fun trip, but not worth $30 a gram.

also, i'm into guns and whatnot so i read a lot of gun magazines, which include stories written by cops. the few i've read of ppl on pcp interracting with the cops always ended up bad. but i know its not that common, in fact thats one of the few drugs i dont think i'd be able to get in my town if i wanted to (which i really, really dont...)

one thing about some of the other drugs you listed kc, is that they are addicting to the point of sacrificing everything you own just to get 1 more fix...no one does that for cigarettes, alcohol, or weed. and the reason is it doesnt form a physical dependency like the opiates and coke do (yes, alcohol does form physical dependencies MILDLY, as compared to coke/opiates. even tobacco to some extent, but much less than even alcohol)

that is the main reason i wouldn't like coke/opiates/etc... to be legalized...