Obama administration goes back on its words about medical marijuana.

Of course it doesn't. No-one's even pretending that it's not simply a legal loophole there for the purposes of stopping people from acquiring the drug entirely illegally.

Actually, many marijuana breeders are trying to produce strains that give greater medicinal effects with less "high". They're having some success.

I actually saw television documentary special a few weeks back that said that at least one store in California was getting their medicinal cannabis into things like candy bars. I was thoroughly impressed.

My friend with MS uses a vaporizer. It's cheaper and healthier. She's tried a couple of other things, but her pain is too wide spread for a topical.

Pot is bad for you.

I hope all the people who have to have it for medicinal reasons are okay and can get the medicines they need without getting addicted.

not to mention there was a study recently that found it is more likely to cause cancer than smoking cigarettes.

Pot is better for you that most prescription medications. That's something agreed on by the medical community and it has an almost negligible addiction rate compared to prescription medication that's highly addictive. We as a country have far more trouble with prescription medication addition than pot addiction.

So am I to take your statement as you would like people to take dangerous drugs as opposed to one with low health, safety, and addiction risks?

Cancer rates are only if you smoke it which is about the worst way to use it as a drug. Vaporizers or topical gels work much better for actually treating people. Neither of those carries a cancer risk.

edited 6th Jul '12 2:25:11 PM by shimaspawn

I'd like to point out that smoking tobacco is legal anyway, in spite of the cancer risk. I put this down to the fact that it doesn't noticeably impair judgment the way something like heroine can, so not many people are going to seriously consider the idea of illegalizing it anymore.

A little education on the relative harm of different substances.

If we cared about our health, we'd ban alcohol and tobacco, then legalize acid and shrooms.

Interesting, alcohol is significantly worse than heroin...

I've seen that chart linked several times before, and I've never gotten a straight answer on how the methodology weights incidence. I somehow doubt the potential for drug-specific mortality in alcohol is higher than crack cocaine on a case-by-case basis as that chart shows, which makes me think it reports on total cases observed instead of estimating it as a fraction of the sample space within each drug as you would have to do for relative risk assessment.

Which in effect nulls the entire thing, because of course alcohol would be at the top of that — almost everyone partakes of it very regularly. Your sample space is going to be so much bigger that lesser risks will happen more often than far greater risks with drugs that people don't do nearly as often.

And yet, which is most marketed?

edited 6th Jul '12 4:43:27 PM by Pykrete

Yeah, you don't see California dispensaries talking up their gels.

I think it would be easier to market gels or whatever if it got legalized the nation over. *shrug* Though if it does get legalized I really see no reason for people not to smoke it.

In any case, I don't think it's marketing so much as that's the image that's in peoples heads of the whole drug culture. If it got legalized I think producers and such would marketing those particular products. And hopefully the smoking kind would also carry the same surgeon general's warning that tobacco does.

Of course they're marketed, but the fact that they're so downplayed by the dispensaries themselves in places that try to legalize it tell me it's not a problem that would fix itself.

@Ace- it's WORSE THAN tobacco. to put it another way, tobacco's better for you than marijuana. that would be a reason for tobacco being legal.

and while the gels and stuff are a good idea, most "medical" stuff seems to be tje smoking type.

edited 6th Jul '12 7:58:43 PM by Joesolo

worse how? Most of the negative effects from both come from inhaling burning paper and chemicals. Except you know. Theres little medical evidence of THC being nearly as deadly as nicotine.

It begs the question: Why is medical marijuana in smoking form legal if it's unhealthy then? Why aren't these quack dispensaries putting out gels?

Because "medical" marijuana is simply being used as a form of backdoor legalization, of course.

Yeah.

Guess I just wanted someone else to say it. When I talk about the issue with people in my state they rant about it being medicinal et cetera.

I'm pro legalization, but it shouldn't require quacks prescribing it to people and a bunch of lying and misconceptions about it. That's dishonest. All the idiot stoners who act like Marijuana being illegal is equivalent to a war crime and hate the government for it. Really fucked up priorities if you ask me, I end up hating on marijuana in front of them just to be contrary to their fucked up worldview.

edited 6th Jul '12 9:27:42 PM by Barkey

A moment of silence for our lovely anarchist friend who entertained so many of us, hm?

Anyhow, I can't say I disagree. Using doctors to "legalize" elicit substances is just going to give doctor's a bad name and in the age of things like bird flu and super viruses created by our own overuse of antibiotics that is definitely not what we need nor desire.

It's quackery, and I can't support that even in the pursuit of a minor good like backdoor legalization for the reason you mentioned, it's doctors giving up their integrity and discrediting the profession.

I know quite a few people who use medical marijuana legitimately — in that it seriously helps them with things in which the drugs available from pharmaceutical companies either are much less effective, have much worse side effects, have much higher risks, or indeed two or all three of the above.

Those of you who are convinced that all this is about is stoners who want to get high: are you going to call me a liar, here? Seriously?

And all of those people use vaporizers or edibles by preference. They don't want to smoke it. It's bad for your health — exactly what these people don't need — and it's inefficient, because large proportions of the active ingredients get burned up rather than absorbed.

MS and Motor Neuron aren't... illnesses you really want to go through without palliative steps taken, you know.

Seriously. I've had my brushes with acute fibromyalgic spells with my CFS, and I wouldn't wish the bigger, badder cousins of that on even my worst enemy. <shudders> It's not like standard pain, so normal painkillers have a dulled effect on it. If any at all. I'm lucky that mine is cute enough to actually respond to tricyclics still (yes: not just an anti-depressent... and hard to come off, I might add, if you've been on it a while). But, get advanced enough in those illnesses, and even that help stops dead.

Cannabis keeps working for longer, but even after a while, that becomes dead in the water, as well, as those degenerative illnesses advance.

Mine's a cute puppy dog in comparison and I love it to bits. <strokes puppy>

edited 7th Jul '12 3:31:41 AM by Euodiachloris

So why do people even smoke marijuana recreationally when they can use a vaporizer?

It makes them look cool.