For once Pat and I agree on something!
Here's what I had to say in response to comments in favor of continued incarceration of "marijuana" users because of its negative effects on a person, physically, socially, and mentally:
The real question here is not whether or not something is harmful but rather whether anyone has the natural right to lock another up for harming themself. We tried that with alcohol......remember?
Take a look at how drugs rank in a study by UK professor, David Nutt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt
Here's another graph which is a little easier to read:
http://lsdimension.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/bbc-horizon-is-alcohol-worse%C2%A0than%C2%A0ecstasy/
Is Alcohol Worse than Ecstasy?
1. Heroin 2. Cocaine ..... 5. Alcohol .... 9. Tobacco ... 11.Cannabis
Additionally, cannabis would greatly help my husband who suffers severe pain from sickle cell. It would be incredibly safer and better for him to use cannabis than use morphine (the regularly prescribed drug for sickle cell pain crisis) which is nothing less than a more slowly absorbed HEROIN, and equally addictive at a slightly larger dose!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphine
"Diacetylmorphine (better known as heroin) was synthesized from morphine in 1874 and brought to market by Bayer in 1898. Heroin is approximately 1.5 to 2 times more potent than morphine on a milligram-for-milligram basis. Due to the lipid solubility of diacetylmorphine, it is able to cross the blood-brain barrier faster than morphine, subsequently increasing the reinforcing component of addiction."
Drug Library: Morphine and Heroin
"The only significant difference between them is that the acetyl molecule allows heroin to cross the blood-brain barrier more quickly than ordinary morphine."
Even the government lumps both the illegal heroin and legal morphine together http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/job185drugs/morphine.htm
NOTE: #15, Methylphenidate, is what we commonly refer to as "Ritalin", the drug millions of kids take daily, is more harmful than anabolic steroids and ecstasy. Ecstasy is apparently not the danger it's believed to be (only 10 UK deaths a yr from ecstasy vs thousands from alcohol use), and Ritalin isn't as harmless as we're supposed to think.
The most telling bit of info I've found in all my cannabis reading is that while we're being told that cannabis is the worst kind of evil, big pharma wasted no time patenting synthetic versions of THC (the active AND SUPPOSEDLY DANGEROUS ingredient in the cannabis plant). AND the CDC has never had the pleasure of reporting a single death from "marijuana", meaning you can't overdose.
"Marinol" an FDA approved synthetic version of THC is responsible for at least 4 deaths. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrocannabinol (scroll to "Dronabinol")
Other drugs prescribed in place of "marijuana" claimed 192 lives between 97-05. http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000145
It might cost a chronic sufferer a few dollars to grow their own never-ending supply of cannabis. Guess how much the Marinol pills cost? $200+/30 capsules. http://www.healthpricer.com/marinol-25mg-compare-prices/5242255.html
Other Facebook commenters were covering the Constitution aspect, so I stuck to educating the FB masses on the scientific info most people just don't know, and don't care to find out. Watching a "30 Days" episode I learned that over 50% of our prison population are drug-only offenders. Imagine if they were all convicted of drinking, making, or selling alcohol, like in the prohibition. It's the same thing, only many of these drugs they used, cannabis in particular, are FAR less harmful than alcohol and FDA approved pharmaceutical drugs. I'm glad we learned our lesson, and my 10+ family members and myself aren't locked up in prison right now for our past or continuous alcohol use. My heart breaks for those who are and their loved ones who suffer this needless destruction of families.
The list of things I can do that have the potential to harm me both accidentally (driving, using bleach, mountain climbing), or intentionally (stabbing myself in the leg, jumping off my roof, banging my head on concrete) is INFINITE. None of those things are illegal, and rightfully so. I have no right to come and forcibly keep you from any of those activities, or punish you in any way after the fact. Yet we allowed the authorities to do that very thing.
I think Thomas Jefferson said it best.
"But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
