Friday, February 24, 2012

Marijuana: A Rebuttal to Chronic Documentary

After watching the History Channel's documentary The Chronic, last night, I was frustrated because they only included political, celebrity & non-science people giving opinions for the rebuttal of the so-called authorities & politicians against medical marijuana on flimsy or outright falsified data & subjective dislike of those who use MM (medical marijuana). 





For instance, the police claimed that legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana would NOT stop the drug cartels & violence, and used ONE example of a MM dispensary being robbed with two employees being killed. What they did NOT disclose was how many NON-MM-dispensary type businesses had been robbed with deaths during same period? Out of the 700 dispensaries, ONLY ONE was robbed, and this was the California Police Chief's "evidence" that drug cartels won't go away??? The only reason these cartels do exist is to sell a product that is in great demand & has been made illegal for political, NOT medical, reasons. Just as Prohibition of alcohol created organized crime, so does the prohibition of marijuana. Remove the profit to drug cartels, and they will need to focus their activities elsewhere, period. Drug cartels aren't going to risk their lives & freedom for a legal readily available product they can no longer make a profit from. 


East Coast Medical Marijuana Distributors use these labels & containers



Also, the California Police Chiefs claimed that dealers of illegal marijuana will go to any violent lengths to sell their product, even killing. How is that any different than what the police are doing to people innocent of any violent crime? Police are killing people for using a plant recreationally who are not committing any harmful crimes against anyone. Then there are all the drug raids & people killed because the police went to the wrong house of truly innocent people and killed them too, as they kill, beat & harm the users of marijuana as if they were rapists & murderers! Which brings up another point: our prisons are full of non-violent offenders to the point that murderers, rapists & thieves are being released years & sometimes decades too soon in order to provide more room for drug offenders! How many citizens would rather have a drug user released than a rapist or serial killer??? Why is the voice of the people and the common sense involved not being given ANY importance? 





Another outrageous claim that was NOT addressed by science, evidence or anything but opinions in rebuttal, is that smoking marijuana is as dangerous as tobacco & had 33 known carcinogens. First, marijuana is impossible to smoke at the level tobacco is smoked, no one could smoke an entire pack of joints in a day as they do cigarettes! Second, tobacco has HUNDREDS of carcinogens, marijuana has less carcinogens than the air we breath, the water we drink, the food & "legal" drugs the FDA approves for us to consume! Even alcohol has more danger in health terms than a heavy user of marijuana will ever face. Third, marijuana does NOT have to be smoked & is in fact more effective & longer lasting if eaten prepared in foods such as the documentary showed a chef creating: chocolate bars, peanut butter, cookies, cupcakes, brownies, butter, countless products the chef was making using marijuana as an ingredient, the arguments against marijuana due to carcinogens falls apart at these evidenciary facts. 





One of the claims made by the Feds is that marijuana has NO medical use. An outright bald lie considering how much evidence is available to prove the opposite, that marijuana has MORE medical uses than probably ANY other drug and is safer than OTC & prescribed medications approved for us by the FDA! In fact, synthetic THC is already approved by the FDA in a drug called Marinol, for use to treat nausea & other medical problems associated with cancer, HIV & other diseases. If as the feds claim, marijuana had NO medical uses, why then is the main component of marijuana available as a drug regulated by the FDA??? There are countless studies proving the efficacy of medical marijuana, as well as the safety of using marijuana as a replacement for alcohol or tobacco or any other commonly used aid for stress relief and relaxation, including the fact that marijuana is NOT addictive, does not impair ability to drive or function, and is not implicated in violent crimes against people (other than the violence involved in obtaining the drug illegally), and in fact is a deterrent to crime because of the recognized effects of the drug itself. 





Many do not know that marijuana is classified as a more dangerous drug than cocaine, meth/amphetamines & morphine. Our govt. classification system is in fact saying using cocaine is safer than using marijuana! Drugs that can never have any medicinal value due to their dangers are called Class One drugs & include heroin, LSD & marijuana. Class 2 includes cocaine, amphetamines & morphine. The higher the classification number, the safer the drug is considered by the feds. Marijuana is considered a gateway drug, that using it leads to other drug addictions, but all the drugs marijuana supposedly leads to using are classified as LESS dangerous than marijuana itself, so this argument falls apart and makes those claiming such appear to be idiots, yet these are the very people in charge of deciding what is and is not safe for us to use! Not a single death or overdose has been attributed to marijuana substance use. Nor is there physical withdrawal from ceasing use. Aspirin is available over the counter to anyone and kills a large number of people. 






The arguments that legalizing marijuana would cause drug use to increase, would make addicts of our children, would create a drug culture, and lead to more crime, are all false. Other countries that have decriminalized marijuana in fact found the use DECREASED, the associated crimes dropped significantly, under age use was lowered, and those countries are instead gaining taxes & income from the sale & use of marijuana. These facts were covered in the documentary, stating that nowhere is marijuana actually legal, instead it has been decriminalized, which means it is not prosecuted though it remains illegal. This has worked so well that decades have gone by under the same policy successfully. 


Minorities are arrested for marijuana use at a rate of 9 out of 10 arrests being non-whites. Yet whites use marijuana at incredibly higher levels than do minorities, especially blacks, according to this documentary & the evidence. Police corruption & racial discrimination in the apprehension of marijuana users is evident in these numbers most strongly in NYC, but the trend is a national stain on our society. How else to explain that 90% of marijuana users are white, yet 90% of the imprisoned marijuana users are non-whites?


Marijuana is in fact not legal in any country according to this documentary. Often we believe Jamaica is a haven of ganja smoking Rastafarians when in fact, marijuana is as illegal there as anywhere else & is strongly enforced. Marijuana is only decriminalized, meaning the laws are NOT enforced but do still remain on the books. Countries we often wrongly think have legalized marijuana have only decriminalized it, such as Amsterdam in Holland, where tourists & locals alike use marijuana in public coffee shops, and can purchase up to 5 grams legally, to use in the shop or take home. This is one of the largest and longest examples of the effects of decriminalizing marijuana use, in which crime, drug use & related negatives actually decreased. 


A claim was made that the money to be made in taxing marijuana if legalized, would not cover the costs of the health problems using marijuana legally would cause. Huh??? What health problems are proven to be caused by marijuana use??? As they often claim billions of dollars in health care costs for tobacco smokers yet have not proven that any one who smokes gets cancer or any other disorder they try to claim a societal expense for, marijuana is much safer than most over the counter drugs, and proven safer than tobacco, alcohol & other legal substance uses combined! In fact, when one researches the facts behind these false claims, it's readily apparent the numbers are made up completely. I suspect that marijuana health problems are being attributed to any one who ever in their life smoked a joint or even KNEW SOME ONE who smoked a joint, whether their health problem has anything to do with the drug, since they need to create the numbers & health "crisis" claims for which such data does NOT exist. 





One fact many do not know is that the US forced 180 other countries to sign a pact to criminalize marijuana, and the US puts pressure on these countries to cooperate with the US in it's drug war & other efforts to stop drug use, which have all failed & cost we taxpayers enormously in money, death, crime, violence, corruption, loss of freedom & constitutional rights, a police state form of government and in the loss of so many citizens to prison, where instead of being "rehabilitated" they learn how to become true criminals, these non-violent inmates are released knowing much more about how to commit crimes & successfully, than they ever knew going into the prisons as a simple drug user, or grower, or even distributor. These are costs we unwillingly pay, as a majority of citizens have made clear to the powers that be that we want marijuana decriminalized at the LEAST & legalized for general use, and for medical use immediately, yet the feds are still prosecuting marijuana using patients in states where using medical marijuana has been voted in by its people as legal. Our taxes pay for every bit of these losses & costs to society as a whole.


Links for further reading:

  • Marijuana's Impact on the brain minimal: 

http://wussuphater.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/good-news-marijuana%E2%80%99s-impact-on-brain-function-%E2%80%9Cminimal%E2%80%9D/

  • Marijuana Causes New Cell Growth In Rat Brains

  • Marijuana: Cannabis sativa:

2 comments:

  1. nice article but it contains at least 1 mayor error, cannabis does affect driving abilities as it slows reaction times!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You are absolutely correct, it does affect reaction times. I didn't make the documentary, I only posted it along with the blog article itself. Obviously if marijuana makes one feel relaxed and somewhat sleepy in some cases, then it is as logical it will slow reaction times as well. However it would depend on the amount consumed, and in no way can compare to driving under the influence of alcohol or other drugs since in most cases people actually drive slower, less hurried, but if any are irresponsible drivers, such as teens without the experience to deal with surprises, driving while high can be fatal.

    ReplyDelete