Let's talk about drugs

That's easy: don't.However, if legalization of mind-altering or addictive substances really presents terrible legal problems, there've gotta be ways around them. We should sit down over a beer and a pack of cigarettes, and figure it out.

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"I know some of you are going to say 'I did look it up, and that's not true.' That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut."
-Stephen Colbert

As it pertains to the DEA? Yes. Though, as an agricultural enterprise, I'm sure you would still have to deal with zoning issues and whatever other agencies have sway over crop growing, what pesticides you can use, etc. etc. etc.It's completely legal for you to distill alcohol in your house, but if you want to sell or distribute that legal product, you have to deal with all sorts of regulations.MJ should be no different

I gotta disagree with the "don't draw a line" stance.There are certain drugs which are obviously much more severe than others.Crystal Meth is not the same as Pot on a number of levels.What continued use does to the Meth head is very different than what pot does to the pot head.The manufacture of crystal meth has put a very severe strain on our emergency rooms and burn units (seriously, a large percentage of patients in burn wards are people who's meth labs have blown up).I don't think there's a really severe uptick in the number of pot growers who've had to go to the emergency room planter's warts.The artificually manufactured / processed drugs clearly are a teir onto themselves

The issue I was hinting at when I said "beside the highway" is: What if a few thousand of my closest friends and relatives and neighbours (and maybe even a few complete strangers) decide to "just pick it"? You might put the drug-enforcement agents out of work, but the highway patrol would have to hire them just to manage the parking.Legalization won't necessarily solve any problems - it'll just change them to different problems. And politicians are slow to recognize new problems, let alone deal with them.As I mentioned earlier in the thread, don't hold your breath waiting for the drug underground to just disappear, either. One morning I'll wake up to find my crop baled up and heading down the road.

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True. Doesn't mean a person shouldn't be able to fuck themselves right on up if they want to. Legalization would reduce the number of basement meth labs, just as legalization of alcohol pretty much wiped out backroom distilleries. The safety of manufacture is a reason to introduce the government control that comes with legalization.

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"I know some of you are going to say 'I did look it up, and that's not true.' That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut."
-Stephen Colbert

Homemade booze put a strain on emergency rooms as well during the prohibition. It doesn't mean that all alcohol bevs are lethally dangerous. I say we regulate meth and every other currently illegal drugs the same way we currently regulate legal ones. If a drug harms people, we fine the hell out of the companies that make it.

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Disclaimer:

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

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He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

Well that doesn't really equate, does it?First off, if pot is legal, like tobacco is legal, there wouldn't be much insentive for people to be raiding the crops.I mean, do tobacco growers have a huge problem with people storming their fields?I'm not suggesting that legalization is a cure all for criminality, what I am suggesting is that making a plant that grows wild in the US illegal is sort of silly. If dandelions were illegal, how would we enforce?

Yeah, you probably got me there.

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Also, in the US, even thought tobacco is legal, it is still illegal to "grow your own".ya know?

Nope!http://home.ktc.com/bdrake/faqs.html#twelve

Here in the USA we are morons when it comes to growing pot, the variety that would be grown for non-drug uses is worthless to smoke, anyone who has run across wild hemp growing can vouch for that. There was several states trying to get the DEA to approve it.

quote:

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Vermont and North Dakota have passed laws enabling hemp licensure. Both states are waiting for permission to grow hemp from the DEA. Currently, North Dakota representatives are pursuing legal measures to force DEA approval.[79] Oregon has licensed industrial hemp as of August 2009.[80]

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quote:

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There are broadly three groups of Cannabis varieties being cultivated today:

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Varieties primarily cultivated for their fiber, characterized by long stems and little branching, extreme red, yellow, blue or purple coloration, or thickness of stem and solid core, such as hemp Cannabis oglalas, and more generally called industrial hemp.
Varieties grown for hemp seed oil which is high in protein and essential fatty acids and has no psychoactive properties.
Varieties grown for medicinal, spiritual development or recreational purposes.

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A nominal, if not legal distinction is often made between hemp, with concentrations of the psychoactive chemical THC far too low to be useful as a drug, and Cannabis used for medical, recreational, or spiritual purposes.

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Wiki

I hadn't really considered this before, but how demonised must cannabis be!
All those greedy companies and governments are still too scared to touch it with a barge-pole.Considering how much cash is rolling in from the sale of alcohol: what is stopping a full-on advocacy of cannabis?
It can't be moral considerations - business and government consistently display a lack morals.
All I can think of is some kind of cultural brainwashing that makes people think that dope is worse than alcohol.But I am finding it difficult to identify any of this brainwashing.
Is it just a hangover (no pun intended) from those black and white "Reefer Madness" films?

That pretty much sums it up. The people who can legalize it think the only people who enjoy weed are "pot head stoner losers".

I think so and to some extent the churches here in USA have far too much influence in politics. Here in NC we have a dry county just to my south, not too many of them left but there is still a few. No alcohol sales at all on Sunday in SC. With backwards thinking like that it's no wonder people are morons when it comes to their knowledge of drugs, specifically cannabis.