Should marijuana be legal?

[Musician]

Marijuana is a wonderful, natural plant given to us by God. God is omniscient. He knew ahead of time that drying and then smoking this stuff would be done by humans, and yet he created it anyway. All of its marvelous qualities (it helps glaucoma, it helps reduce pain, helps flagging appetites and is great for nausea) with an additional side effect that our American Puritanism just can’t stand: it also makes you feel pretty darn good.
And that, my CAF friends, is why it is against the law. We can’t have people feeling good naturally. Why, that would be SINFUL.

 

[Holly3278]

I believe that it should be legal but only for medical use.

 

[littlebum2002]

Of course Anyone who is claiming there is a fundamental difference between alcohol and marijuana has never tried one of them.

You can drink a little alcohol to enjoy it and not get drunk.
You can smoke a little marijuana to enjoy it and not get high.

Drinking too much leads to drunkenness which, although not a sin in itself, drastically increases one’s likelihood to sin.
Smoking too much marijuana leads to getting high which, although not a sin in itself, drastically increases one’s likelihood to sin

One can become addicted to alcohol.
While marijuana is not physically addictive, it can be emotionally addictive.

If one should be legal, the other should be. But you know what? I’m wrong, there IS a difference. Drinki8ng too much alcohol in one go can kill you. Smoking too much marijuana cannot kill you. SO if one should be illegal, it isn’t marijuana.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

**I tend to agree. Sure, marijuana use is probably not healthy, but I seriously doubt it is sufficiently dangerous to justify waging a war against it. **

It is a gateway drug to harder stuff. Make it legal and easy to get, and you will see a boom in the sale of cocaine and heroine, etc. With that you will see it getting to younger and younger kids.

Then, of course, the argument will be, let’s legalize everything so we can tax it. After all, instead of promoting a national campaign to boycott drugs, why shouldn’t the government make as much money as the gangsters destroying lives?

Enough of this libertarian lunacy!

 

[littlebum2002]

It is a gateway drug to harder stuff. Make it legal and easy to get, and you will see a boom in the sale of cocaine and heroine, etc. With that you will see it getting to younger and younger kids.

This is a logical fallacy, called a “slippery slope” fallacy. The legality or morality of something must be made on its own terms, not on the terms of what it may lead to. Just because something good may lead to something bad does not mean the original thing is bad.

Look at the current status of same-sex marriage. It is almost inevitable that the Supreme Court will use the precedent set in legalizing interracial marriage (something most people agree with) to legalize same-sex marriage (something most people do not agree with). So interracial marriage will almost certainly prove to be the slippery slope that led to same-sex marriage. Yet, if that end up being the case, will anyone be suggesting that interracial marriage should not have been legalized because it led to something bad? No.

Marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol may all lead to bad things. But n themselves, they are not bad things. Therefore, they should be legal. Look at the reasons we ended alcohol prohibition: arresting otherwise good people, while alcohol-related violence skyrocketed. Those same things are happening because of marijuana. People all over the world are getting killed because we want to keep people from getting high every now and then. Risk-benefit assessment. Legalizing alcohol cured almost all of the ills caused by prohibition. Legalizing marijuana will save millions of innocent lives from gang violence a year. And yet legalizing marijuana wont’ make it MUCH easier to get (I haven’t smoked marijuana in 10 years, but yet I’d bet I could find some if I had to) ad will cure many ills. It’s a no-brainer.

You talk about gangsters taking lives. How many gangsters take lives over legal drugs like alcohol or tobacco? Answer: not very many. Why? Because they’re legal. Legalize marijuana, end gang violence. Gang’s can;t make money off something you can buy in a drugstore.

And I happen to like Libertarian Lunacy!

 

[puppysocks]

I have a friend who summed up the legalization debate fairly well. He said that he believes there would not be any noticeable ill effects from legalization because we already legalize alcohol. He explained that he had seen scary, violent drunks; people who should never drink because of how they act while intoxicated. He had never seen a violent pothead.

I tend to agree. Sure, marijuana use is probably not healthy, but I seriously doubt it is sufficiently dangerous to justify waging a war against it.

This is basically how I feel.

 

[Zundrah]

I’ve noticed we’ve had a lot of threads here debating whether marijuana is sinful or not with answers that vary between “yes, because it’s illegal and you have to obey the law of the land” to “yes, because it’s intoxicating and wrong.”

But I haven’t seen any threads as to whether or not we think it should be legalized in America.

What do you guys think?

But if a government makes something legal, isn’t he then giving the impression that is it acceptable to do?

But it isn’t acceptable is it? It’s damaging… but then again, so is smoking and consuming alcohol…

People vary so much in their thoughts on these matters.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

littlebum

Legalize marijuana, end gang violence. Gang’s can;t make money off something you can buy in a drugstore.

The government has become gangster ridden. Planned Parenthood and the U.S. Government are so wrapped around each other you can hardly tell them apart. The new health bill that mandates abortion insurance is one example of the slippery slope. The government never used to be in the abortion industry, but now it is telling the Catholic Church and everyone else they have to provide health insurance to cover abortion.

As a Catholic you should be alarmed rather than aping the libertarian lunacy.

You apparently have taken a logic course and think the slippery slope argument is always a fallacy. But I taught logic. Slippery slope is only a fallacy if you cannot show any causal connection or inclination at all. In this case the causal connections are obvious. I know people who went from marijuana to hard drugs. Not everyone will do so, but for many it’s the gateway drug.

abovetheinfluence.com/facts/drugsmarijuana/?utm_campaign=paid-search&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_content=marijuana&gclid=CPaV9uK6qq4CFSrCtgoduhwrSg

 

[cornbread_r2]

Regarding MJ being a gateway drug: If that argument is valid for MJ, it’s certainly also valid for alcohol. Also, one of the consequences of keeping MJ illegal is that it places it on a par with far more dangerous drugs such as heroin, meth and cocaine, thereby reinforcing the dangerous notion that they’re all the same.

IMO, this is becoming a social justice issue. If people really and truly believe that MJ should not be illegal, then I think that carries with it a moral obligation to oppose its continued criminalization.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

cornbread

The argument for legalizing pornography is that people are going to get it anyway. But legalizing pornography induced a flood of pornography that never used to be. And now there are worse forms of pornography than ever. Gateway mild pornography led to hardcore pornography, and hardcore led to child pornography, and today young children have easy access to any kind of pornography, it seems. So the slippery slope argument is alive and well. Introduce bad language into the movies and before long every teenager will have trench-mouth. We’ve seen that happen in one generation. Not enough soap in the world to wash out their mouths.

Yes, alcohol is also a gateway addiction to more serious addictions, and when you have people who have multiple addictions to alcohol and other drugs, you have multiple reasons to engage in more and more suicidal behavior. Whitney Houston, for example, was a frequent user of alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. You would think her death would be used as a great teaching moment. Instead, how she destroyed herself was eclipsed by heaping praise ad nauseam on her singing career.

It’s bad enough that alcohol is something we cannot control. Now the demand is for legal marijuana. Next the demand will be that all drugs be made equal. And how is that going to effect younger people when the smart Alec in his early twenties increasingly is going to have legal access to the hard drugs, and then pass them on to his smart Alec teenage friends?

More libertarian lunacy.

 

[cornbread_r2]

cornbread

The argument for legalizing pornography is that people are going to get it anyway. But legalizing pornography induced a flood of pornography that never used to be. And now there are worse forms of pornography than ever. Gateway mild pornography led to hardcore pornography, and hardcore led to child pornography, and today young children have easy access to any kind of pornography, it seems. So the slippery slope argument is alive and well. Introduce bad language into the movies and before long every teenager will have trench-mouth. We’ve seen that happen in one generation. Not enough soap in the world to wash out their mouths.

As I understand it, until you can demonstrate that the use and/or decriminalization of MJ must logically and inevitably lead to the use and/or decriminalization of other, more dangerous drugs, then your use of the slippery slope argument in regard to MJ is indeed fallacious.

Yes, alcohol is also a gateway addiction to more serious addictions, and when you have people who have multiple addictions to alcohol and other drugs, you have multiple reasons to engage in more and more suicidal behavior. Whitney Houston, for example, was a frequent user of alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. You would think her death would be used as a great teaching moment. Instead, how she destroyed herself was eclipsed by heaping praise ad nauseam on her singing career.

MJ isn’t a physically addictive drug. IMO, it is no more psychologically addictive than pro football or golf for many people. Of all the drugs Ms Houston may have used, MJ was, by far, the least of her problems. (I’m sorry you feel you were deprived of a great teaching moment. Perhaps a less talented figure will tragically die soon so that we can more properly focus on their weaknesses.)

It’s bad enough that alcohol is something we cannot control. Now the demand is for legal marijuana. Next the demand will be that all drugs be made equal. And how is that going to effect younger people when the smart Alec in his early twenties increasingly is going to have legal access to the hard drugs, and then pass them on to his smart Alec teenage friends?

Name one state in the US that does not control the manufacture, sale or use of alcohol (or tobacco). Again, you haven’t demonstrated that any of those imagined outcomes must logically and inevitably result from the decriminalization of MJ.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

corbbread
**
As I understand it, until you can demonstrate that the use and/or decriminalization of MJ must logically and inevitably lead to the use and/or decriminalization of other, more dangerous drugs, then your use of the slippery slope argument in regard to MJ is indeed fallacious.**

Again, I’m afraid you don’t understand the slippery slope argument. It is not always a fallacy, which you seem to think it is.

It is an argument based upon prognosticating the future as a pattern that has already been established in the past. Alcoholism has always been with us. Cigarettes have been with us for a long time. Now Marijuana is upon us. And you seem to be convinced that with the legitimization of each new drug there will not be demand for more and more drugs to be legitimized.

You simply don’t understand human nature … which engages in logical fallacies all the time.

“What, me worry?” is probably the fallacy that most applies right now to your way of thinking.

Obviously, I cannot show you the hard core evidence that additional demands for legal drugs will happen until after the demand for legalized pot has been satisfied. Human beings are fragile and often irrational. They think of “easy” solutions, and don’t realize they are neither easy nor rational.

The history of the movie industry is an obvious example of the slippery slope. In the 1950s there was a code of ethics that was never violated. In the 60s that code was violated occasionally. Now it is violated all the time and the filth our young people are exposed to is simply obscene at every level. That’s the slippery slope argument in a nutshell. It is valid. If you want to refute it in the case of movies, go ahead and try. You can’t. Everybody knows the establishment caved in to the libertarian lunatics, and is still caving in at every opportunity.

 

[LaSainte]

littlebum

Legalize marijuana, end gang violence. Gang’s can;t make money off something you can buy in a drugstore.

The government has become gangster ridden. Planned Parenthood and the U.S. Government are so wrapped around each other you can hardly tell them apart. The new health bill that mandates abortion insurance is one example of the slippery slope. The government never used to be in the abortion industry, but now it is telling the Catholic Church and everyone else they have to provide health insurance to cover abortion.

As a Catholic you should be alarmed rather than aping the libertarian lunacy.

You apparently have taken a logic course and think the slippery slope argument is always a fallacy. But I taught logic. Slippery slope is only a fallacy if you cannot show any causal connection or inclination at all. In this case the causal connections are obvious. I know people who went from marijuana to hard drugs. Not everyone will do so, but for many it’s the gateway drug.

abovetheinfluence.com/facts/drugsmarijuana/?utm_campaign=paid-search&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_content=marijuana&gclid=CPaV9uK6qq4CFSrCtgoduhwrSg

The only reason marijuana is a gateway drug is because you have to go to a drug dealer to buy it. Hence, that person is likely to try and sell you other drugs as well when you purchase the marijuana. You go to buy pot and the guy says,“Hey, I’ve got some E”, and here you go.

If marijuana were made legal, none of these users would even KNOW any drug dealers and therefore would be much less likely to try other drugs.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

LaSainte
**
If marijuana were made legal, none of these users would even KNOW any drug dealers and therefore would be much less likely to try other drugs. **

So if all marijuana was made legal, the marijuana users would be satisfied and all the other drug dealers would just evaporate into thin air?

 

[PumpkinSeed]

Yes, but treated the same as alcohol. Like no driving while high, ect…

& I think you should have to be 18 years old and up to buy it.

 

[SMA_12]

LaSainte
**
If marijuana were made legal, none of these users would even KNOW any drug dealers and therefore would be much less likely to try other drugs. **

So if all marijuana was made legal, the marijuana users would be satisfied and all the other drug dealers would just evaporate into thin air?

Criminals won’t stop being criminals just because the law changes. They will be forced to sell other drugs or illegal items and they will still recruit and reach the same crowds they always have. Maybe this time with more dangerous items.

Whether or not you are for or against it the day is coming quickly where dope will be easily available, but you can’t buy a King size Snickers bar because that is just way too unhealthy…

 

[Tenofovir]

I would have to say that smoking marijuana is morally wrong, because it ALWAYS produces and intoxicating effect, and besides… scripture doesn’t say anything about Jesus ever having spent any of his time “tokin’ on the number and diggin’ on the radio”.

Scripture does, however, address the issue of drunkenness.

Today people most likely associate “drunkenness” , with alcohol assumption. I wonder, however, if at the time “drunkenness” was addressed in the bible, it actually applied to ones state of body, mind and emotion, in a much broader sense.

But smoking dope need not lead to intoxication, the way having a glass of wine need not lead to intoxication. Smoking cigarettes also has a calming effect on people, one which leads to more injury than marijuana.

Did people use marijuana in Biblical times? Possibly. The Bible never actually says so one way or the other. Did they use opium or hashish? Again, that could be a possibility, but once again neither is mentioned in the Bible. Did emotional/mind/mood altering substances (besides wine) exist in Biblical times? I’m fairly certain that they did.

Perhaps Biblical “drunkenness” included all of those things as well.

Back in the day I used marijuana, and “experimented” with any one of a number of different illegal substances, and I have to tell you - I didn’t spend much time thinking about God when I was experiencing the effects of said such substances (I was too preoccupied with trying to find my “Dark Side Of The Moon” album).

I agree but then we should ban alcohol and cigarettes. We should also ban sedatives and anti-depressants.

Today I realize that as a Catholic, I have a responsibility to avoid the “near occasion of sin”. Being under the influence of anything leaves me vulnerable to temptation and sin, which is why I believe that the Biblical “drunkenness” most likely refers to the issue in a much broader sense. Demons can really “work their magic”, when the state of my body, mind and emotion are altered.

Again I agree with you but for consistency and coherency’s sake we should ban all medicines working on the brain as well as alcohol and cigarettes.

The ONLY time I would condone it’s use if it’s for medical purposes only. Even then I have reservations, because I KNOW that there will be people that will take advantage of, and exploit any legalization laws.

There are alternatives to marijuana which are currently legal. But again sedative-hypnotics such as Valium are abused at present yet they’re indispensable as medicines.

If it’s legalized just for the sake of being able to use it?

It’s funny. Americans do seem to have a fascination with making immoral things legal, don’t they?

But we allow alcohol and cigarettes. Don’t tell me those are immoral in low doses, at least booze isn’t. Then so cannabis need not be either. You do know that people sniff glue too? And petrol (gas) fumes? People even smoke anti-HIV drugs to get high.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

I’ve noticed we’ve had a lot of threads here debating whether marijuana is sinful or not with answers that vary between “yes, because it’s illegal and you have to obey the law of the land” to “yes, because it’s intoxicating and wrong.”

But I haven’t seen any threads as to whether or not we think it should be legalized in America.

What do you guys think?

I’ve seen what happens with prohibition and the War on Drugs. I think it should be treated like alcohol. The cannibis plant also has many beneficial medicinal, nutritional, and industrial properties, outside of its use as a recreational intoxicant.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp_oil
naihc.org/hemp_information/hemp_facts.html
ratical.org/renewables/hempseed1.html

 

[Tenofovir]

Whether or not you are for or against it the day is coming quickly where dope will be easily available, but you can’t buy a King size Snickers bar because that is just way too unhealthy…

Laws can be changed. Unjust, evil and stupid laws should be abolished. Just because something is law, does not mean it is immoral.

You can of course buy a 1000 standard sized Snickers bars.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Laws can be changed. Unjust, evil and stupid laws should be abolished. Just because something is law, does not mean it is immoral.

You can of course buy a 1000 standard sized Snickers bars.

You know what you have if you eat 1,000 Snickers?