Obama administration goes back on its words about medical marijuana.

Cultural inertia, probably.

Also because theres probably less cultural acceptance of hookah Pipes and vaporizers than there is of a cigarette

I never said that I didn't believe people use marijuana for medicinal purposes, but I don't really buy that that's what even the majority of people who claim they're using it for really use it for, and I think that this is a public relations issue for the overall cause of ending the War on Drugs.

My response to that is, so what? There's more abuse of normal prescription drugs than there is of medical marijuana. There's more people regularly showing up to hospitals looking for drugs. There's always going to be that unscrupulous doctor who prescribe things people don't need. Crack down on them. Don't take away helpful drugs from the people who need it.

That or prescribe something non-addictive like pot in place of more addictive prescription drugs and help cut down on addiction all together.

Vaporizers are expensive as hell. Trust me, every stoner wants one but a $5 dollar pipe or a 3 cent paper is the much more affordable option.

I won't argue that pot doesn't have medical benefits. Alcohol does to and yet we don't prescribe it for aches and pains. Oh wait, we did during prohibition. Huh, funny how that works out...

False economy, mate. A good pipe, well looked after, will eventually cost you less, as you don't have to continue buying paper. Add the health-benefits of not burning the paper along with what you're smoking and inhaling those toxins on top of whatever is floating your boat... and... <shrugs> Lung or mouth cancer ain't cheap to grow or treat.

edited 7th Jul '12 10:55:21 AM by Euodiachloris

And you can get a basic vaporizer for $30. It's not that expensive. Yes, you can spend as much on one as you want, but that's true of anything.

I'd redirect to the "smoking is cool" page if I knew how to do that. Some people just prefer smoking over other things, for whatever reason. T Hat and cultural inertia, as was pointed out. There's a high probability that a lot of people don't know it can be vaporized and stuff.

Smoking is also much more portable than a vaporizer, though I don't think marijuana use should be portable in that way, but more to use it as an example of why I would still smoke rather than use a vaporizer for something in the same caliber as tobacco.

There are legitimate people who use medicinal Marijuana. In the state of California, they are the minority. The majority are idiot stoners who are cheating the system in cooperation with quack doctors.

I can attest that the vast majority of stoners here aren't using it as medicine.

Though here I swear it'd be easier to get some marijuana than a pack of cigarettes and some vodka here headdesks

Using marijuana as medicine is sorta awkward, when you're stoned a lot of issues you might have are fixed... well sort of and temporarily... but then again is getting high really much of a treatment?

edited 7th Jul '12 4:52:32 PM by Aqueos

Because reality is perception, and if you've set up a system that was intended to and almost purely exists to be abused, people who are against ending the War on Drugs can now point to it and note that the supporters of legalization are willing to use doctors to do it and thus get people on their side, even though legalization is superior overall to illegalization.

From the point of view of pragmatism, I'm not the one to claim on principle that it's wrong to use doctors to legalize marijuana (though I contend that it presents a practical problem just as the abuse of any other prescription drug does), but in terms of public relations and perception it's a massive problem and I think the negatives outweigh the positives in this case.

In essence, I'm not claiming that it's morally wrong to use doctors in this way. I'm saying that it's inconvenient politically to do so because you cannot do it without getting caught, and if you are going to get caught you can't play dirty.

edited 7th Jul '12 5:44:16 PM by DerelictVessel

So go after the doctors who are being dumb instead of after the people who are using it legitimately. Go after the ones writing the prescriptions. Treat it like they do all issues of people falsifying a prescription. There's more people getting phoney prescriptions for vicoden even in California than pot.

Well, that would work if the goal was to go back to illegalization. I would rather legalize marijuana fully but ban smoking in public places and ban doctors from prescribing marijuana in smokable form, so people who need it will get it in a way that doesn't function as a carcinogen.

I agree, going after the source is more important, and because of the legitimacy and low risk environment involved, sending narcs in to try and get a prescription out of a quack dispensary doc is easy.

You seem to be convinced that the benefits are only of the "I'm so high I no longer care about my problems" sense. Not true. It works quite well to dull or kill pain that is not responsive to most regular treatment, or is responsive only to things that get you just as high, if not more. High-strength painkillers are narcotic drugs, after all. And way riskier than pot, which you pretty much cannot truly overdose on.

Marijuana also helps a lot of people with nausea issues — such as the side-effects to anti-HIV medications or other strong medication — and doesn't require generally enough to be stoned.

I also seem to sense, at times, and from some people (here and elsewhere) a kind of puritanical feeling that things of medicinal value should under no circumstances give a pleasurable high in addition to their therapeutic results, that someone enjoying the side-effects of a medicinal substance is proof that they should not have it.

That's, frankly, fucked up. Puritanical 'No fun for you!" absolutism bothers me in the extreme.

In actual fact, the pain-killing part of the cannabis plant isn't the THP (the bit that gets you high), but another molecule entirely, whose name has escaped me for a bit (there are a lot of other things going on in that there plant). There are horticulturalists attempting to breed low-THP medicinal cannabis that has a high proportion of the useful bits (other compounds also have uses in e.g. skin healing).

THP itself might have medical benefits of its own, but getting high when you're wanting to be less stiff is a pain in the neck, as losing coordination to gain mobility is not much of a trade.

The more you know.

edited 8th Jul '12 5:13:48 AM by Euodiachloris

I just figure that if gels are an option, what doctor with a conscience would prescribe weed in its smoked form over gels. Cool. Let's trade. A painkiller for lung cancer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a smoker, it just seems rather ridiculous from a doctors POV to do such a thing. If it was just a gel you wouldn't have such a huge percentage of fakers.

Pills... that'd be a quick way to reduce the smoking glamour quotient: some conditions would need ingestion of some sort, rather than a topical treatment.

Vaporizer or gels. Depends on if it's a topical pain or not. Gel works best for a localized pain. Active ingredient works better inhaled for a general pain killer, but asthma inhalers work on the same principle and seriously lack the cool factor. Make the vaporizers look like asthma inhalers. Those are real cool.

edited 8th Jul '12 5:12:56 PM by shimaspawn

Or asthma inhalers will become cool.

Thank you Morven, for pointing this out. Plenty of prescription and over-the-counter medications can induce pleasurable feelings as a side effect of consumption. I for one react very pleasurably to Valium (even in the doctor-prescribed doses); does that mean, when I hurt my neck on the job, that I should not have been given it? *

Now, doctors need to exercise due diligence in prescribing these sorts of medications. I have an aunt with a serious pill problem, but she's always been able to find a doc willing to write her a scrip. But simply saying "you enjoy taking this, so you can't have it even though it helps you" is just dumb, for the reasons Morven was kind enough to mention.

As to the subject of pot...plenty of people come home after work and have a couple of beers (or a cocktail) as part of their post-grind routine. I ought to know, I'm one of them. A couple of frosted barley pops or a good stiff drink does wonders for the physical and emotional side effects of a day with ones nose pressed to the grindstone...I see no moral or practical difference between a joint and a beer, provided both are consumed responsibly and at the proper time.

the problem I have is that most stoners do not consume their chosen substance in this fashion.

Yes, I'm a drinker. I drink a goodly amount and don't see any problem with doing so. But I know the limits; I don't start my day with a shot of whiskey in my coffee, and I don't duck out on break to nip off a flask. If I did these things people would be setting up chairs in my living room and making me suffer through an intervention. Pot smokers on the other hand see nothing wrong in starting their day with a bong-hit, or ducking out of work for a "smoke" on break.

I support marijuana legalization on principle; that is, I won't vote against it. But until the recreational pot-smoking community gets its collective act together I won't really lift a finger to help them, because they (as far as I can see) aren't showing the level of responsibility society forces me to show with my chosen indulgence.

Oh, and as far as Obama "going back on his word" is concerned...Jesus, people. He can't get anything done in Congress right now. They've fought him on everything. I think legalizing pot (for medical or recreational reasons) has a low place on his "to-do" list, and quite honestly I'm happy as a clam about that. We've got bigger problems, yo.

There's certainly a fair degree to which many stoners use pot to distance themselves from reality, and they become emotionally/psychologically dependent on maintaining that distance to get through the day. Personally, I'm inclined to amateur-diagnose untreated psychological disorders in many of these; they are self-medicating with pot instead of admitting that they may be sufferers of depression or anxiety disorders or whatever.

Now, in some cases it may be that pot works better than pharmaceutical medication for those conditions, but I don't think many of these people have seriously tried. Instead they risk the lives of others by driving while stoned, working while stoned in positions that could endanger people, and they risk their own livelihoods by being in a state of poor judgment.

On the other hand, these people are the stoners one notices because they can't control their behavior; they are the pot version of alcoholics. Since marijuana use is illegal, a lot of people won't let on that they consume it, while they would have no problem being seen consuming alcohol sensibly. So it's entirely likely that our perception of recreational marijuana users is colored by (a) hidden use among the more sensible, and (b) people who'd like to be recreational users not doing so out of fear of consequences — thus the illegality is sorting for irresponsibility.

I think also in general that while America has somewhat got the message about how dangerous alcohol can be in terms of things like driving, the message hasn't got through about drug effects (legal AND illegal drugs), or for that matter exhaustion. People who'd never drink and drive will get stoned and drive, or be woozy on painkillers and drive, or be an inch from passing out from tiredness and drive.

As for Obama's actions, I don't dispute that he can't change the laws on the books without cooperation from Congress, which he can't get on much less controversial matters than this. What he can change is the priorities of Federal law enforcement. Law enforcement is not bound to investigate all things that might be crimes, nor to expend resources on them. It's within Obama's power to say, for instance, that the FBI will not investigate medical marijuana operations that are legal within state law. Nothing compels him to channel Federal funds and manpower towards those investigations. There are huge numbers of laws that are effectively never enforced, after all.

Yet, despite campaign promises, Obama's administration has drastically increased the amount of Federal attention and funding directed at shutting down state-legal medical marijuana operations. They're harder-assed about it than Bush's administration was. THAT, I can get mad at.

And, for that matter, look at the recent articles in the press about how the street price of drugs is effectively unchanged from a decade ago, and further back. This says that drug law enforcement is having no effect whatsoever on the availability of illegal drugs; they're still just as available and just as cheap. That's a huge amount of effort and money thrown at a problem without any results.

Worse, it's had huge negative effects on the way law enforcement and the justice system interact with society — encouraging things like police militarization, a "war" mentality, highly dubious asset seizures (which make an utter mockery of the Fourth Amendment, and should IMO never have been approved by the Supreme Court — but "War On Drugs!" made it OK), and many others.

Tired and driving... it's one reason why I believe people with an illness/ condition with a large judgement impairment issue as standard should not be allowed behind the wheel. And, I practice it: I haven't even got a drivers licence. Other people with MS and/or CFS who insist on their right to mobility allowance scare me: they'll complain about the brain fog one minute, and praise their cars the next and say they can't live without 'em. Scary, scary, scary, scary, scary, scary.

Also, those who get prescribed medication that provides brain fog as part of the package should have their licences temporarily revoked, imo. It might get the point hammered home: don't drive on drugs (legal or illegal). Don't work heavy machinery on drugs. Not clever. Heck, I have to check myself on the use of the oven, just in case, every time I use it.