Writer's Block: 420 friendly?

[pandaemonaeum]

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1. I am in the UK, not the US. This doesn't even apply to me.

2. In the course of my degree, we examined the effects of various psychotropic substances, both at the cellular level and upon the whole body. I find marijuana a particularly thorny issue, as two of my friends at school committed suicide after imbibing a large amount of marijuana (one threw himself off a roof, another took a whole bottle of painkillers and died in agony). Several more progressed to hard drugs. It's all very well to look at marijuana as a recreational drug from the viewpoint of the occasional user from a nice home; the reality is vulnerable people in the worst areas. I have seen the actual, peer-reviewed, scientific papers on the effects of marijuana, and it's not easy reading. I have never touched the stuff and have no intention of doing so.

Besides which, if we're working on banning one kind of smoking, what point is there in encouraging another?

I should probably point out that there is no worse trigger for my asthma than marijuana smoke...

Although, the one thing it would do is deprive organised crime of an income stream. That's the only positive I can think of right now.

If a government legislature must legalise it, then controls must be rigorous. It's an individual's choice and I don't agree with the state dictating what we do to our own bodies, but I do think that some substances need to be controlled.

Comments

[saturnial.livejournal.com]

Hello, I found you from the writers block thing - is there any way you could point me towards the scientific papers on the effects of marijuana on the body? It's remarkably hard to find decent information on what the actual risks are.

[sparklewren.livejournal.com]

"Besides which, if we're working on banning one kind of smoking, what point is there in encouraging another?"

Yes! This always has me stumped too. I truly think that the main reason smoking is legal is complacency. Smoking was a global habit before the effects were truly known, by which point it may have been almost impossible to make illegal. But everybody knows that it is so very bad for your health (and the health of those around you).

Further, it *does* alter people's behaviour. Any addiction does. My mother has had various doctors tell her that quitting nicotine is harder than quitting other (supposedly more dangerous) drugs due to the way the addiction works in your brain. She began smoking as a social thing after smoking marijuana in her early twenties. She grew out of using marijuana (which, as I understand it, is very different now to then), but nicotine has been a lifelong companion and will, likely as not, kill her. I can see no rational reason why smoking should be legal at all, or why it is seen as "less bad" than other drugs.

[czol.livejournal.com]

You forgot:

3. Self-righteous potheads. You never seem to see smackheads going on about how if you don't think drugs are awesome you're just sheeple.

4. Personifying a drug. I can't help but lose a bit of respect for someone when I see they have some kind of paraphernalia featuring a weed leaf & some slogan about how the Maaaaaan is keeping them down.