Why is Marijuana a hot button issue and BigPharma lab experimental drugs are not?

I have zero clue, and would not believe much of anything I read especially anything coming from the "Office of National Drug Policy". These are the same people who think Marijuana is the most dangerous drug in America.

How familiar are you with Cannabis? Is the social cost your hang-up for legalization? I think it will have to played out to find the true cost anything else is pure speculation.
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Yah ... I agree with you there. One only has to listed to the Tele for a few minutes to see some drug commercial - increased sex drive- sleep aid, and so on.

Then near the end of the commercial they give the possible side effects which are just nasty.

Merck was convicted of price fixing some years ago "surprise surprise" . Did no one clue in to the fact that we have the highest health care costs among civilized nations ?? The fox is running the henhouse.

The estimate of excess profits Merck made from price fixing - 5 Billion. The fine they had to pay for price fixing was something like 5 million.

The fox is running the henhouse.

 

Which just proves we still have people producing "illegal" spirits because of the laws prohibiting it. Even when growing pot was a felony there were people growing it. Prohibition laws never work and we know that from history so when are we going to learn from history? To steal a phrase from IRobot, "We have the dumbest smart people."

 

There are all kinds of valid reasons for legalization. Freedom liberty and the pursuit of happiness to name a few.
Some others are the massive cost, creation of crime just like prohibition created, making criminals of people that should not be criminals, proven medical benefits, and so on.

Further, it is no more harmful than Alcohol which makes a joke out our justice system.

To the contrary, there are no valid reasons to not legalize pot.

 

The costs are well documented, but advocates don't address those costs in their arguments.

The argument you cite contains fallacies. Correlation does not imply causation. In addition,the article claims that it's safer than tobacco which is not true:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1525-1497.2004.40081.x/full
http://www.ndsu.edu/alcoholinfo/students/marijuana_myths_facts/

 

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Causes_of_Death#sthash.vo7VAtdm.dpbs

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/4426.php

http://archive.saferchoice.org/content/view/24/53/

What social costs? Even the article you keep quoting does not directly give any firm numbers, it only compares it to tobacco, and infers that there would be. Nothing you have put forth supports you claim of "social costs"

 

The drugs sold by US pharmaceutical companies have been through a long, rigorous, and expensive (too long, too rigorous, and too expensive IMO) approval process. Pot has been approved by Cheech and Chong.

 

How about the simple fact that the US Constitution doesn't authorize the government to prohibit the people from growing a plant or consuming a plant?

 

Yes but lawmakers don't give a (*)(*)(*)(*) about the economy. If anything they are helping to sabotage it.

They care about who's paying the biggest bribes.. Big pharma seems to right up there with the offense contractors, megabanks and food/poison companies like Monsanto and Nestle.

 

There is no way in hell that smoking pot once every week or two weeks is worse for you than smoking one cigarette every day. I am sorry but you do not need to be a Doctor to know that that is a platter serving of bullsh!t. Sure neither is healthy but the whole "16 cigarettes is the equivalent of 1 joint" is very shady and I suspect driven by special interests. How did they test this to confirm it? You can say anything but without the data to back it up you look like a fool to normal people.

The costs are well documented but you didn't address the content of the article. Drug Warriors following the letter of the law led to the murder of a 2 year old. Everyone involved, from the Drug Warriors to CPS should be prosecuted for negligence. In a more just universe they would lose their freedom completely and live in work camps.

 

Or someone should just take their kids from them and make them wards of the state.

 

I do agree. The states can ban the growth/consumption of the plant, though. I'm not a big pot fan, but the issue of legalization should be state to state. I do believe that we would solve some problems in the criminal justice system through this, but I also think we would cause some other unforseen problems.

 

I've linked it several times.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/def.../marijuana_legalization_fact_sheet_3-3-11.pdf

The citations can be found at the bottom.

 

I gave a citation of a study, and another citation that contains more citations to other studies.

I also gave a citation on the fallacy your restating now. Why are you restating it?

 

Hilarious...truly it is. Guess you didn't read the links I posted which completely shatter and debunk your drug czar....shame. The Center for Disease Control reports on average 37,000 deaths from alcohol abuse every year. This statistic does not include moving violational deaths related to the drug. Yet they have no category for marijuana, why? The fact is the social costs would be miniscule compared to alcohol, or tobacco. Your source is crap basically a biased view by a drug czar trying to justify his job. There are no hard numbers there they are completely infered. However the facts about marijuana continue and remain the same. It is safer than alcohol, tobacco, and caffiene, so again, what social costs?

 

Marinol was approved by the FDA, but simple, unprocessed pot is a Schedule 1 drug because it has "no medical use". who wants to sue?

 

Neither of those links provide evidence that "one joint is equal to sixteen cigarettes," and I will restate the fact that this smells like BS cooked up by Big Tobacco. Even the second study you cited shows that marijuana does not cause these respiratory problems as much as tobacco; look at Table 4. Furthermore, it says that 77% of the marijuana smokers sampled also smoke tobacco, which doesn't make anything more conclusive.

 

Marinol, which is a synthetic form of THC, has been known to be toxic and it's use has resulted in death. Natural THC has no toxicity level. If anything should be a Schedule 1 drug it should be Marinol because it's use can result in death.

 

it has no toxicity level or it has no toxicity level that can be reached by a normal human? you can kill yourself with asprin, but if you're going to try it in it's natural form, you're going to be eating a lot of tree bark. anytime you concentrate a chemical, you run the risk of OD simply because it's easier to get it into your system

i've got 50 credits that says if you ate one of the cartridges from an eCig it would make you sicker than smoking the 3 packs it's supposed to equal.

 

because big Pharma oils more palms then crime lords taking advantage of the prohibition... at least here in the usa

 

Not sure if this answers your question, but there has never been a recorded death from Marijuana overdose, you would have to smoke an ungodly amount to do so.

 

that's what i was getting at. that ungodly amount would be a handful in pill form. even broccoli is toxic if you eat enough of it....like a boxcar full.

 

So legalize it, and get rid of the synthetic crap.

 

the odds of another smoking product entering the market is about nil. i could see decriminalizing it, but giving it the government thumbs up isn't going to happen.

 

Fine, you don't like the source I gave you. Here is another one from academics over the legalization of pot in Colorado.
https://webcom.colostate.edu/coloradofutures/files/2013/04/CFC-Amendment-64-Study-final2.pdf

The report underlines what I've been saying.