WatersMoon110
(?)Community Member
Offline
- Posted: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 04:37:32 +0000
PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE THE FIRST POST, IT'S REALLY LONG. IF YOU ARE ANSWERING A PART OF IT, PLEASE JUST INCLUDE THAT PART!
Thread formally called: Marijuana - A Controversial Topic
Thread formally called: Marijuana - Some Actual Facts
I am going to start banning people who post one liners, because I'm sick of it. If you can't be bothered to write out two sentences about a topic, you probably don't have anything ED-worthy to say. Consider this your WARNING!
Also, posting a link to the ******** foamy rant on medical marijuana (among other things) will get you kicked out of this thread, because it does not contain factual information, and is not a valid source. I consider this spam.
There are only about a hundred post in here about pot, so I figured, why not be one of them.
I didn't know where to add this, so I thought I would stick it in right at the top. Marijuana can be used medicinally, usually to treat pain or nausea. However, other uses have been brought to my attention. Marijuana might also treat: Depression (I have used it as an anti-depressant, it is the only one that has ever worked for me), Early Alzhemiers' Symptoms, Glacoma (this is a tested use, it does eliviate all symptoms of glacoma), and is used as a poultice to help cure wounds. There is speculation that it might prevent or cure some cancers (but little evidence to back this up). Also, it has been shown to promote growth of or protect neurons, at least in mice (I think, or rats). Please post more if you know of any uses/studies.
I would love to hear what you think about smoking pot, people who smoke pot, not smoking pot, people who don't smoke pot, and the government anti-drug commercials!!
Marijuana is also called:
Weed, Pot, Mary Jane, Reefer, Bud, Grass, Dope this can also be a term for Herion I forgot Cannabis, this is part of the scientific name for pot! Also Chronic! (this can also be marijuana mixed with cocaine, and comes from a variety of Marijuana it turns out) and Kind or Kind Bud which are names for really potent marijuana also Hydro which is short for hydroponic, a way to grow pot mostly in water. Ganja! Also Sensimilla which means marijuana without any seeds in it, because the females are kept seperate from the males.
The effects of smoking marijuana are called:
Stoned, High, Buzzed, ******** Up, Baked, Ripped, Burned, Blazed, Twisted, Gone, Faded, and Toasted.
Some myths about pot, and my replies to them, now with studies to back my own experience up:
1. Marijuana makes you stupid.
While you are high, pot does impair your short term memory. The "what were we talking about phenomenon". It will also slow down your reaction time, because you don't perceive time in the same way as you do when you are not high. Long term use will give you a more extended version of this, which goes away after you stop using. Pot kills no more brain cells than breathing [edit] and pot smoke kills no more brain cells than sitting around a campfire, so you can regain whatever mental capacity you had before you started using it.
Some personal evidence:
I smoked daily for my first semester of college, as did one of my good friends. Both of us got all A's in all of our classes and made the Dean's List. Only morons do that, huh?
Not that marijuana makes you get A's, of course, just that it doesn't make you braindead.
Study to back me up:http://www.webmd.com/content/article/70/80972.htm
2. Marijuana is so addictive that if you start you will never stop.
Pot is not physically addictive. Your body will never crave pot no matter how much of it you smoke. It is true that some people have problems with marijuana, it is also true that some people become addicted to the Internet, porn, sex, tetris, and multiple other things. These are examples of mental addictions*. You get addicted to the feeling of being high, and crave that rather than the weed itself.
Some personal evidence:
I smoked around twice a day for over two years. This past summer, I smoked around twice a month. I have felt no symptoms of withdrawal. At all. This transition was an easy, natural one to make for me.
Study to back me up:http://www.webmd.com/content/article/54/65298.htm
3. Marijuana is more dangerous than cigarettes or alcohol.
Weed, as I said before, does not kill brain cells. Well, at least no more brain cells than breathing in any sort of smoke. Cigarettes and alcohol do. And other drugs, like cocaine, actively kill brain cells (cocaine and heroin go after sections of the brain and destroy them). Smoking anything is not good for your lungs. Inhaling smoke into your lungs does not make them happy. But, unlike cigarette smoke, pot smoke will not kill you. There have never been any reported cases of lung cancer from marijuana. Ever. Don't you think that it would be all over those Anti-Drug commercials if there had been?? The study that sites from organizations like the NIDA and the FDA quote about the carcinogens in reefer actually found that marijuana contained many chemicals similar to those carcinogens found in cigarette smoke. I understand that weed smoke contains tar, and that you can eventually get a cough (the black lung, as some of my friends call it) from smoking great amounts of pot, but this goes away after about a week or two off from smoking.
The LD-50** of pure THC is very very high. Nutmeg is more poisonous. To OD on pure THC (pot usually is from 1 to 15% THC) you would need to smoke around 36 bowls*** in under an hour in a small, poorly ventilated room. This would be a great trick, I think that smoking one or two bowls of pure THC would probably knock you out for a while.
Some personal evidence:
The most I have ever smoked in one day was around 15 or 16 bowls, 9 or 10 of which were in the evening. Some people say they get pot-hangovers, but I did not feel anything but stoned, and woke up the next morning feeling fine.
Study to back me up:http://www.webmd.com/content/article/23/1728_57309.htm
Warning:
Mixing marijuana and alcohol can be dangerous. Some people get sick when mixing the two, which is never fun. But it can kill you, weed can keep you from vomiting, and if you drink enough to get alcohol poisoning, your body will throw up to get the alcohol out faster. If you can't throw up, you might die, so be careful if you drink and smoke up.
4. Marijuana makes you unable to function.
Actually, though weed makes it harder for you to perform memory tasks and slows down your reaction time, it doesn't affect your performance on visual tasks. Test have shown that people who are high do as well or better on a series of computer tests. Also most people report being able to suppress their buzz when they need or want to do something that it might hinder. Should you get really high and try to drive? Probably not, but if you need to take a friend to the hospital, or pick up your little brother from a party, you should be able to make yourself come down enough to do so.
Some personal evidence:
I have been a very very very bad person and driven while high. This is not something that you should do, just like you should never drive if you have been drinking. But I have never had any problems with doing so. But it's bad. Very very very very bad.
Website to back me up:http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_myth12.shtml(Ok, this one only mentions highway accidents, but it still does agree with me, and quotes its sources.)
5. Marijuana causes you to lose your motivation.
Pot accentuates who you are. If you are a active, motivated person, you will still be one when high (I find that these people want to get out and do something while stoned). If you are a lazy bum (like me) who wants nothing more than to sit around and watch television, then that is what you will do while you're high. Does it make you into a drugged out loser? Only if you let it.
Some personal evidence:
I worked for two years, every night after work, I would smoke pot. I didn't skip work to get high, I didn't get high at work. Then I went to college, where I smoked pot every day, but managed to make the Dean's List first semester. Since then I haven't been getting straight A's, but that is because I've been taking harder classes. I have never had a problem with school because of my marijuana use.
Website to back me up:http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_myth11.shtml
*For those that want to know I'll explain how a mental addiction works, briefly. A mental addiction is a real addiction, you are not addicted physically to something (like porn say) but to the emotion that that something gives you. Your brain and body see emotions not as abstracts, but as chemicals. All emotions have a protein or set of proteins that correspond to them. When you feel an emotion (like lust) your brain creates the protein that represents this and sends it out to your cells. The emotional chemicals attach to your cells at the type receptors that your cells use to receive oxygen, food, and release wastes. When you bombard your cells with these emotional chemicals, when they reproduce (or split) the new cells will have more receptors for those chemicals, and will crave that chemical more than others. So you are not addicted to the actual something (porn) but the emotion it causes (lust).
**Ld50 - Poison Level - this is the amount of a substance where half of the rats die in a lab test.
***A bowl is the rounded or bowl-shaped part of a pipe or water-pipe. (I figured that some people might be confused, since I have already explained it to a couple people.)
A good article on marijuana, its history and its illegalization:
Wikipedia Cannabis
A nice, though possibly biased, site:
http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/factsmyths/
A good site for information about many different drugs:
http://www.erowid.org/
A good book on marijuana:
Saying Yes by Jacob Sullum
A great documentary on marijuana:
Grass (it's a little out of date, because it was made in 1999, but it tells mostly about the history of marijuana)
First Poll:
"Do you or have you ever used marijuana?"
Out of 4430 Gaians
* No - and I never will! - 46% - 2057 votes
* No - but I want to! - 5% - 224 votes
* No - and I'm not sure if I will or not. - 16% - 724 votes
* Yes - but I won't ever do it again! - 7% - 343 votes
* Yes - and I still do occasionally. - 15% - 672 votes
* Yes - and I do it all the time! - 9% - 410 votes
Second Poll:
"What are your feelings on marijuana use?"
Out of 1453 Gaians
* I use marijuana, and I think it should be legal. -15% -230 votes
* I don't use marijuana, but I still think it should be legal. - 42% -351 votes
* I use marijuana, but I don't think it should be legal. -3% -47 votes
* I don't use marijuana, don't think it should be legal, but don't care if people do it. -25% -365 votes
*I don't use marijuana, and I don't think anyone else should. -31% -460 votes
Third Poll:
"Do you think that people use marijuana ONLY to escape from their problems?"
Out of 340 Gaians
*Yes - I have never used marijuana, but I think that this is the reason other do. - 15% - 54 votes
*Yes - I have used marijuana a couple of times to escape from my problems, and so I know that everyone does it for this reason. - 1% - 6 votes
*Yes - I use marijuana to escape from my problems all the time, and for no other reason. - 1% - 5 votes
*No - I have never used marijuana, but I know that people have many reasons for using it. - 47% - 163 votes
*No - I have used marijuana once or twice, and I know that people have many reasons for doing so. - 12% - 43 votes
*No - I used marijuana pretty often, and I know that there are many different reasons for doing so. - 20% - 69 votes
Fourth Poll:
"Is marijuana good, bad, or neutral?"
Out of 1371 Gaians:
*Good - I use it for fun. - 20% - 282 votes
*Good - I use it for medicinal reasons. - 3% - 48 votes
*Good - I don't use it, but I know people who do. - 8% - 112 votes
*Neutral - I use it, but it's just ok. - 4% - 65 votes
*Neutral - I don't use it, and I don't care if others do - 23% - 325 votes
*Bad - I use it, but I don't like it and am trying to quit. - 1% - 14 votes
*Bad - I used to use it, but now I hate it and don't. - 2% - 31 votes
*Bad - I have never tried it, but I think it is bad ONLY because it is illegal. - 2% - 36 votes
*Bad - I have never tried it, but I think that it physically harms people, and so is bad. - 6% - 85 votes
*Bad - I have never tried it, but I think that it mentally harms people, and so is bad. - 27% - 373 votes
Fifth Poll:
"What do you think should be the punishment for using marijuana?"
Out of 3449 Gaians:
*No punishment - people should be free to use it. - 40% - 1404 votes
*No punishment - people who use it are going to die anyway, right? - 9% - 314 votes
*Small fine - less than $100. - 7% - 216 votes
*Medium fine - between $100 and $1000. - 8% - 304 votes
*Large fine - over $1000. - 6% - 207 votes
*Jail Time - less than 3 months. - 4% - 145 votes
*Jail Time - between 3 months and 3 years. - 7% - 246 votes
*Jail Time - over 3 years. - 4% - 139 votes
*Life in Prison. - 1% - 68 votes
*The Death Penalty. - 10% - 361 votes
Thread formally called: Marijuana - A Controversial Topic
Thread formally called: Marijuana - Some Actual Facts
I am going to start banning people who post one liners, because I'm sick of it. If you can't be bothered to write out two sentences about a topic, you probably don't have anything ED-worthy to say. Consider this your WARNING!
Also, posting a link to the ******** foamy rant on medical marijuana (among other things) will get you kicked out of this thread, because it does not contain factual information, and is not a valid source. I consider this spam.
There are only about a hundred post in here about pot, so I figured, why not be one of them.
I didn't know where to add this, so I thought I would stick it in right at the top. Marijuana can be used medicinally, usually to treat pain or nausea. However, other uses have been brought to my attention. Marijuana might also treat: Depression (I have used it as an anti-depressant, it is the only one that has ever worked for me), Early Alzhemiers' Symptoms, Glacoma (this is a tested use, it does eliviate all symptoms of glacoma), and is used as a poultice to help cure wounds. There is speculation that it might prevent or cure some cancers (but little evidence to back this up). Also, it has been shown to promote growth of or protect neurons, at least in mice (I think, or rats). Please post more if you know of any uses/studies.
lumnata
Pro-Medical Marijuana Studies
You asked for proof; here it is!
Beneficial for Nausea with Chemotherapy:
Improves Taste Responsiveness:
May Be Useful in Dystonic Movement Disorders:
Affects Neurocognition? Think again:
Completely Unsafe to Drive? Not quite:
Increased Risk of Lung Cancer? Nope:
Improves Appetite and Weight Gain:
Decreases Formation of Free Radicals:
Why isn't there much more research? More trials and studies from which to quote?
You asked for proof; here it is!
Beneficial for Nausea with Chemotherapy:
Oxford Journal
The Food and Drug Administration issued a statement in April that no sound scientific studies support the medicinal use of marijuana for treatment. This conclusion left some researchers puzzled.
"I don't understand where that came from," said John Benson, M.D., a professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, who chaired an Institute of Medicine panel that wrote a 267-page report, Marijuana and Medicine, Assessing the Science Base, published in 1999. "We found sufficient evidence that [smoking marijuana] had benefits for some patients, such as to help with nausea and chemotherapy for cancer treatment. We recommended that further research be done, but it hasn't been." (source)
"I don't understand where that came from," said John Benson, M.D., a professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, who chaired an Institute of Medicine panel that wrote a 267-page report, Marijuana and Medicine, Assessing the Science Base, published in 1999. "We found sufficient evidence that [smoking marijuana] had benefits for some patients, such as to help with nausea and chemotherapy for cancer treatment. We recommended that further research be done, but it hasn't been." (source)
Improves Taste Responsiveness:
Oxford Journal
Cannabinoids purportedly improve taste responsiveness and enhance the sensory appeal of foods.
(source)
(source)
May Be Useful in Dystonic Movement Disorders:
Oxford Journal
An early study by Consroe and colleagues suggested that cannabidiol may be useful in dystonic movement disorders (Consroe et al., 1986). Sandyk and Awerbach then described three TS patients who had incomplete responses to conventional anti-TS medications and who then reported a significant reduction in both motor and vocal tics following recreational use of marijuana; the authors, however, note that the patients may have used marijuana to reduce the stress and anxiety that occurred secondary to TS, as all three reported reduced anxiety when using marijuana (Sandyk and Awerbach, 198 cool . Moss and colleagues then suggested that cannabinoids may increase the effectiveness of neuroleptics in TS (Moss et al., 1989). Hemming and Yellowlees reported a 36-year-old man who failed to respond to either haloperidol or pimozide, but who, several years later, found that his nightly intake of marijuana rendered him absolutely symptom free (Hemming and Yellowlees, 1993). In the author's clinical experience several patients have reported a reduction in symptoms with the recreational use of marijuana. It has also been documented, however, that cannabis has no effect on tics and increases the individuals inner tension (Meuldijk and Colon, 1992). A recent study evaluated the effect of marijuana smoking in 47 TS patients; of the 13 patients taking marijuana, 11 (85%) reported a marked tic reduction (Muller-Vahl et al., 1997). (source)
Affects Neurocognition? Think again:
University of California School of Medicine
An analysis of research studies with long-term, recreational users of marijuana has failed to reveal a substantial, systematic effect on the neurocognitive functioning of users. According to researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, the only deleterious side effect found was a minimal malfunction in the domains of learning and forgetting... Published in the July issue of the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society... "Surprisingly, we saw very little evidence of deleterious effects. The only exception was a very small effect in learning new information," said Igor Grant, M.D., the study's senior author, a UCSD professor of psychiatry, and director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR), a collaborative, state-supported program between UCSD and UC San Francisco, that oversees 11 studies of the safety and efficacy of medicinal cannabis to treat certain diseases. (source)
Completely Unsafe to Drive? Not quite:
Quote:
The safety hazards of smoking marijuana and driving are overrated, says University of Toronto researcher Alison Smiley. (source)
Increased Risk of Lung Cancer? Nope:
University of California
"We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use--more than 500 to 1,000 uses--would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana," explains physician Donald Tashkin of the University of California, Los Angeles, and lead researcher on the project. But looking at residents of Los Angeles County, the scientists found that even those who smoked more than 20,000 joints in their life did not have an increased risk of lung cancer.
(source)
(source)
Improves Appetite and Weight Gain:
Marinol
According to results published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, both the cannabinoid agent Marinol® (dronabinol) and the hormonal agent megestrol acetate oral suspension appear to improve appetite and weight gain in patients with cancer-associated anorexia. (source)
Decreases Formation of Free Radicals:
NY Academy of Science
Using cyclic voltametry and a fenton reaction based system, it was demonstrated that Cannabidiol, THC and other cannabinoids are potent antioxidants. As evidence that cannabinoids can act as an antioxidants in neuronal cultures, cannabidiol was demonstrated to reduce hydroperoxide toxicity in neurons. In a head to head trial of the abilities of various antioxidants to prevent glutamate toxicity, cannabidiol was superior to both a-tocopherol and ascorbate in protective capacity.
(note: hyperoxides break down to form free radicals) (source)
(note: hyperoxides break down to form free radicals) (source)
Why isn't there much more research? More trials and studies from which to quote?
Quote:
"The FDA has approved marijuana studies and, if it were possible to get marijuana in order to conduct the studies, there would be a lot more research proposed and the FDA would approve more," said Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project (search), a lobbying group that seeks to legalize medical marijuana and reform drug-related crime laws. "Our problem is that the [Drug Enforcement Agency] is blocking effective research from moving forward." (source)
I would love to hear what you think about smoking pot, people who smoke pot, not smoking pot, people who don't smoke pot, and the government anti-drug commercials!!
Marijuana is also called:
Weed, Pot, Mary Jane, Reefer, Bud, Grass, Dope this can also be a term for Herion I forgot Cannabis, this is part of the scientific name for pot! Also Chronic! (this can also be marijuana mixed with cocaine, and comes from a variety of Marijuana it turns out) and Kind or Kind Bud which are names for really potent marijuana also Hydro which is short for hydroponic, a way to grow pot mostly in water. Ganja! Also Sensimilla which means marijuana without any seeds in it, because the females are kept seperate from the males.
Piotr Stoochat
Waters, you said in your first post that weed is called "hydro". Where I live (Montana), hydro usually refers to hydrocodone (also called "hillbilly heroin" wink . This may be a geographic discrepency, but I'm just throwin' that out there to avoid confusion.
The effects of smoking marijuana are called:
Stoned, High, Buzzed, ******** Up, Baked, Ripped, Burned, Blazed, Twisted, Gone, Faded, and Toasted.
Some myths about pot, and my replies to them, now with studies to back my own experience up:
1. Marijuana makes you stupid.
While you are high, pot does impair your short term memory. The "what were we talking about phenomenon". It will also slow down your reaction time, because you don't perceive time in the same way as you do when you are not high. Long term use will give you a more extended version of this, which goes away after you stop using. Pot kills no more brain cells than breathing [edit] and pot smoke kills no more brain cells than sitting around a campfire, so you can regain whatever mental capacity you had before you started using it.
Some personal evidence:
I smoked daily for my first semester of college, as did one of my good friends. Both of us got all A's in all of our classes and made the Dean's List. Only morons do that, huh?
Not that marijuana makes you get A's, of course, just that it doesn't make you braindead.
Study to back me up:http://www.webmd.com/content/article/70/80972.htm
2. Marijuana is so addictive that if you start you will never stop.
Pot is not physically addictive. Your body will never crave pot no matter how much of it you smoke. It is true that some people have problems with marijuana, it is also true that some people become addicted to the Internet, porn, sex, tetris, and multiple other things. These are examples of mental addictions*. You get addicted to the feeling of being high, and crave that rather than the weed itself.
Some personal evidence:
I smoked around twice a day for over two years. This past summer, I smoked around twice a month. I have felt no symptoms of withdrawal. At all. This transition was an easy, natural one to make for me.
Study to back me up:http://www.webmd.com/content/article/54/65298.htm
3. Marijuana is more dangerous than cigarettes or alcohol.
Weed, as I said before, does not kill brain cells. Well, at least no more brain cells than breathing in any sort of smoke. Cigarettes and alcohol do. And other drugs, like cocaine, actively kill brain cells (cocaine and heroin go after sections of the brain and destroy them). Smoking anything is not good for your lungs. Inhaling smoke into your lungs does not make them happy. But, unlike cigarette smoke, pot smoke will not kill you. There have never been any reported cases of lung cancer from marijuana. Ever. Don't you think that it would be all over those Anti-Drug commercials if there had been?? The study that sites from organizations like the NIDA and the FDA quote about the carcinogens in reefer actually found that marijuana contained many chemicals similar to those carcinogens found in cigarette smoke. I understand that weed smoke contains tar, and that you can eventually get a cough (the black lung, as some of my friends call it) from smoking great amounts of pot, but this goes away after about a week or two off from smoking.
The LD-50** of pure THC is very very high. Nutmeg is more poisonous. To OD on pure THC (pot usually is from 1 to 15% THC) you would need to smoke around 36 bowls*** in under an hour in a small, poorly ventilated room. This would be a great trick, I think that smoking one or two bowls of pure THC would probably knock you out for a while.
Some personal evidence:
The most I have ever smoked in one day was around 15 or 16 bowls, 9 or 10 of which were in the evening. Some people say they get pot-hangovers, but I did not feel anything but stoned, and woke up the next morning feeling fine.
Study to back me up:http://www.webmd.com/content/article/23/1728_57309.htm
Warning:
Mixing marijuana and alcohol can be dangerous. Some people get sick when mixing the two, which is never fun. But it can kill you, weed can keep you from vomiting, and if you drink enough to get alcohol poisoning, your body will throw up to get the alcohol out faster. If you can't throw up, you might die, so be careful if you drink and smoke up.
4. Marijuana makes you unable to function.
Actually, though weed makes it harder for you to perform memory tasks and slows down your reaction time, it doesn't affect your performance on visual tasks. Test have shown that people who are high do as well or better on a series of computer tests. Also most people report being able to suppress their buzz when they need or want to do something that it might hinder. Should you get really high and try to drive? Probably not, but if you need to take a friend to the hospital, or pick up your little brother from a party, you should be able to make yourself come down enough to do so.
Some personal evidence:
I have been a very very very bad person and driven while high. This is not something that you should do, just like you should never drive if you have been drinking. But I have never had any problems with doing so. But it's bad. Very very very very bad.
Website to back me up:http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_myth12.shtml(Ok, this one only mentions highway accidents, but it still does agree with me, and quotes its sources.)
5. Marijuana causes you to lose your motivation.
Pot accentuates who you are. If you are a active, motivated person, you will still be one when high (I find that these people want to get out and do something while stoned). If you are a lazy bum (like me) who wants nothing more than to sit around and watch television, then that is what you will do while you're high. Does it make you into a drugged out loser? Only if you let it.
Some personal evidence:
I worked for two years, every night after work, I would smoke pot. I didn't skip work to get high, I didn't get high at work. Then I went to college, where I smoked pot every day, but managed to make the Dean's List first semester. Since then I haven't been getting straight A's, but that is because I've been taking harder classes. I have never had a problem with school because of my marijuana use.
Website to back me up:http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_myth11.shtml
*For those that want to know I'll explain how a mental addiction works, briefly. A mental addiction is a real addiction, you are not addicted physically to something (like porn say) but to the emotion that that something gives you. Your brain and body see emotions not as abstracts, but as chemicals. All emotions have a protein or set of proteins that correspond to them. When you feel an emotion (like lust) your brain creates the protein that represents this and sends it out to your cells. The emotional chemicals attach to your cells at the type receptors that your cells use to receive oxygen, food, and release wastes. When you bombard your cells with these emotional chemicals, when they reproduce (or split) the new cells will have more receptors for those chemicals, and will crave that chemical more than others. So you are not addicted to the actual something (porn) but the emotion it causes (lust).
**Ld50 - Poison Level - this is the amount of a substance where half of the rats die in a lab test.
***A bowl is the rounded or bowl-shaped part of a pipe or water-pipe. (I figured that some people might be confused, since I have already explained it to a couple people.)
A good article on marijuana, its history and its illegalization:
Wikipedia Cannabis
A nice, though possibly biased, site:
http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/factsmyths/
A good site for information about many different drugs:
http://www.erowid.org/
A good book on marijuana:
Saying Yes by Jacob Sullum
A great documentary on marijuana:
Grass (it's a little out of date, because it was made in 1999, but it tells mostly about the history of marijuana)
First Poll:
"Do you or have you ever used marijuana?"
Out of 4430 Gaians
* No - and I never will! - 46% - 2057 votes
* No - but I want to! - 5% - 224 votes
* No - and I'm not sure if I will or not. - 16% - 724 votes
* Yes - but I won't ever do it again! - 7% - 343 votes
* Yes - and I still do occasionally. - 15% - 672 votes
* Yes - and I do it all the time! - 9% - 410 votes
Second Poll:
"What are your feelings on marijuana use?"
Out of 1453 Gaians
* I use marijuana, and I think it should be legal. -15% -230 votes
* I don't use marijuana, but I still think it should be legal. - 42% -351 votes
* I use marijuana, but I don't think it should be legal. -3% -47 votes
* I don't use marijuana, don't think it should be legal, but don't care if people do it. -25% -365 votes
*I don't use marijuana, and I don't think anyone else should. -31% -460 votes
Third Poll:
"Do you think that people use marijuana ONLY to escape from their problems?"
Out of 340 Gaians
*Yes - I have never used marijuana, but I think that this is the reason other do. - 15% - 54 votes
*Yes - I have used marijuana a couple of times to escape from my problems, and so I know that everyone does it for this reason. - 1% - 6 votes
*Yes - I use marijuana to escape from my problems all the time, and for no other reason. - 1% - 5 votes
*No - I have never used marijuana, but I know that people have many reasons for using it. - 47% - 163 votes
*No - I have used marijuana once or twice, and I know that people have many reasons for doing so. - 12% - 43 votes
*No - I used marijuana pretty often, and I know that there are many different reasons for doing so. - 20% - 69 votes
Fourth Poll:
"Is marijuana good, bad, or neutral?"
Out of 1371 Gaians:
*Good - I use it for fun. - 20% - 282 votes
*Good - I use it for medicinal reasons. - 3% - 48 votes
*Good - I don't use it, but I know people who do. - 8% - 112 votes
*Neutral - I use it, but it's just ok. - 4% - 65 votes
*Neutral - I don't use it, and I don't care if others do - 23% - 325 votes
*Bad - I use it, but I don't like it and am trying to quit. - 1% - 14 votes
*Bad - I used to use it, but now I hate it and don't. - 2% - 31 votes
*Bad - I have never tried it, but I think it is bad ONLY because it is illegal. - 2% - 36 votes
*Bad - I have never tried it, but I think that it physically harms people, and so is bad. - 6% - 85 votes
*Bad - I have never tried it, but I think that it mentally harms people, and so is bad. - 27% - 373 votes
Fifth Poll:
"What do you think should be the punishment for using marijuana?"
Out of 3449 Gaians:
*No punishment - people should be free to use it. - 40% - 1404 votes
*No punishment - people who use it are going to die anyway, right? - 9% - 314 votes
*Small fine - less than $100. - 7% - 216 votes
*Medium fine - between $100 and $1000. - 8% - 304 votes
*Large fine - over $1000. - 6% - 207 votes
*Jail Time - less than 3 months. - 4% - 145 votes
*Jail Time - between 3 months and 3 years. - 7% - 246 votes
*Jail Time - over 3 years. - 4% - 139 votes
*Life in Prison. - 1% - 68 votes
*The Death Penalty. - 10% - 361 votes
