If footbag is outlawed only footbaggers will be outlawsville wrote: Well, if it's grown locally then it's an even bigger problem, the money goes to your local criminals. So it's a bigger threat to you than foreign countries.
I smell tautology. I think it's disconcerting that most of our governments have laws that criminalize consensual behaviour like smoking weed that in effect places weed in the hands of the more violent elements in our societies like gangs. This really is the consequence of its legal status. The exact same thing happened with alcohol in the states during prohibition. It was solved by making alcohol legal again.As Jeremy mentioned Afghanistan is a big producer of opium, not weed. Smoking weed doesn't sponsor terrorism! God that is a terrible lie that has been spread around, it's really just classic case of McCarthyism in action, evolved to fit our new almost non-existent boogieman that is terrorism.
Actually it's not at all about being childish, it's about assessing our laws and seeing if they are hypocritical or not. It's about being intellectually rigorous. If you ban weed because it's bad for people’s lungs, then you should apply the same standard for cigs (even more fierce standards with relative addiction considered). It's a precedent of sorts.Saying that weed should be legal 'cause alchohol and tobacco are is childish
You don't any more? It's still valid. A heavy smoker will go through packs of cigs a day...Compare this with how much weed a heavy marijuana user would use. Even if a joint is many times worse than a single cig, which I think it is, it's still not going to be as bad. This wouldn't matter if vaporisers were more widespread - you don't get the bloodshot eyes or the smell either...Anyway, preaching to the choir probably Jmosher wrote:I smoke many times per day. Each time I get high I think about how stupid it is. I AM paying money just to die! i used to argue that cigarettes were way worse than weed because you didn't even get anything out of it.
The whole 'why pay for something that hurts you' argument just annoys me on a couple of levels. Firstly so many things 'hurt' you in life, infact almost everything hurts us in varying degrees, and people pay for it presumably because they find that the benefits outweigh the costs. Lets take a handful of things I will pay for or do that will hurt me. There are loads of carcinogens in my diet (diet leads to about 35% of cancer in the US), like coffee as mentioned, black pepper, beef, milk, lots of preservatives and colouring, mushrooms, all of them have a high relative cancer risk (which is still very low overall mind you) but I pay for those lovely carcinogens. If I choose to pay to see a game of cricket I'll be exposing myself to dangerous UV rays that can lead to cancer, alternatively I could pay to see a movie but then I'll be depriving myself of Vitamin D, something which actively prevents certain cancers. If I choose to pay to enter footbag nationals then I may well be adding to my risk getting osteoarthritis if I fuck my knee, if I don't pay and sit at home I'll increase my chances of cancer since it is linked with a sedentary lifestyle. Basically every choice has some associated negative impact so saying ‘x hurts you, why pay for it’ doesn’t say much unless you put it in some wider order of an individual’s views about risk and the weight of certain preferences.
Secondly, there is a point where I just have to say fuck it, I don't care if it hurts me. The pleasure that I derive from certain admittedly self destructive tendencies outweighs their downsides. Maybe this comes from differing ideological backdrops or something, since I don't think my body is a temple or anything like that, it's just a tool. I mean if leaving behind a pristine corpse is someone's thing, then they're more than welcome to it, but the survival rate for us all eventually hits zero and we'll all be just as dead as each other in the end. While I'm here I'm going to enjoy myself, and y'know if I ever hit 85 and I'm lying in my hospital bed, weak and limptastically impotent at least I won't be gnawed away by the knowledge that I didn't look into all avalible options to make my life good, and as a result I'll also have a bunch of tales of youthful foolishness to amuse myself with during those hourly diaper changes
Yes I think so, but I'd probably look to Amsterdam for a real answer. The massive economies of scale that big business gets are pretty frightening. While it is a bit different from homebrew, the same sort of argument applies. People still buy their liquor from the store and not from the crazy old guy down the street who brews it up in his bathtub - one because the price different isn’t massive but mainly two, you're not going to go blind from it since certain important things are going to be guaranteed (or else the company will be held accountable in some way) - taste and alcohol % = type of high and/or potency in this case. Guaranteed product quality at a fairly low price would be pretty attractive I’d say.Do you think it is possible to have a North America with almost equal distribution methods for both alcohol and weed one day? As in having specific government operated weed stores that carried crops from various growers just like fine wines.
Hah - but what about homegrow? It's a little different than homebrew eh?
I was going to answer Jeremy's "Why?" but I've already written enough.
