Cannabis Legalisation Ireland

Gretas Gonna Get Ya! wrote: »

So cool - but yet obviously needing mind altering drugs as a crutch to get through life!

I have met quite a number of people who seem entirely unable to function in the morning - or the whole day in fact - unless they get their hands on their particular brand of mind altering substance. In nearly all cases this substance is coffee.

But even without drugs most people I have seen tend to have _some_ "crutch" they use to get through life. Sometimes it is some routine or structure. Sometimes it is religion. Sometimes it is a substance. Some times it is the unending support of others. Sometimes it is government hand outs.

So deriding something with the word "crutch" is pretty vacuous and lame and I wonder if you are therefore flinging words like "Mindless" in the exact wrong direction when it comes to describing the investment of thought into the issue itself. The word "crutch" seems to be nothing but a diminutive to describe other peoples life paths while ignoring ones own.

Gretas Gonna Get Ya! wrote: »

Also, anyone who thinks cannabis is completely harmless and has no negative health effects or negative effects on society, is also quite clueless and probably hasn't been smoking the stuff for long enough.

I have heard Peter Hitchens trot out - and completely misrepresent - the alleged "harms" too often to take your saying it at face value to be honest. Citations needed. The first step in ascertaining the harms - if any - would be to be sure what substance and in what form you are actually talking about. Because there is worlds of difference between blank market "skunk" and the stuff you would get in legitimate licensed shops. And people like Hitchens - for one - cite only the former and then conflate it with the whole.

So tell us all about the harms if you can. Preferably at a level more informative than "Well this is what happened to me and my brain was mush".

Gretas Gonna Get Ya! wrote: »

I smoked for years through school and most of college btw - so I know very well what I'm talking about - cannabis has plenty of negative effects, just like any other mind altering addictive substance

Well no - personal experience with a drug gives you zero actual usable insight into it I am afraid. Firstly you only know the negatives effects on _you_. No one else. Further you do not / can not even be 100% sure the negative effects were on the drug unless we fully document and normalise for every other thing going on in your life at the time. There could have been something negative going on with _you_ at the time and your drug taking was temporally coincidental with it.

This is why we have drug trials and epidemiology techniques. Precisely _because_ single user testimony is less than worthless.

However even if the drug had a profoundly negative effect on _you_ that still tells us nothing. There is no drug I am aware of that does not have negative effects on someone. Hell some people can not eat peanuts without dying and allergies to water - yes water - is a thing. Every substance out there has negative effects. It is through trials and reason - not emotion and knee jerk reaction - that we ascertain if this is the norm or the exception - and whether any negatives are balanced by positives and benefits.

It is definitely a known that some drugs - including this one - exacerbate already existing underlying physical and mental conditions. And without going back in time it is difficult to ascertain which of these might have been in play in your case. Though I am sure some people would extrapolate from your posting history and style here. It would seem it was the wrong drug for you to take and you might have been better off never having taken it. But that justified animosity towards what the drug did to you should not be projected onto a younger generation as a "crutch" to allow you to shout condescending derision at them from your porch while waving your walking stick over your head.

Gretas Gonna Get Ya! wrote: »

Governments have much more important things to be legislating for, rather than focusing their time

This is and always has been a non argument. Usually from people who have no actual argument. Legislating issues is not mutually exclusive. Governments should be investing their time in _all_ the issues relevant to and important to the people they govern. Legislating for one group of issues is not and should never be an excuse not to work on the others.

Further the argument is self defeating. Making a drug illegal or legal does not lead to equal investment of time _after_ the fact. Because they then have to legislate for the actual laws the punishments and then ensure they are enforced. The police have to invest time and resources in a (losing it seems) battle against the drug. Then the courts and tax payer money have to be invested in prosecuting those cases. Then the prison system has to deal with the fall out.

So a concern for resources is precisely the _opposite_ argument to your case. It is an argument for questioning the utility of legislating for a victimless crime and a relatively harmless drug.

The entire diatribe you just posted in fact comes across less as being actually interested in the topic at hand and more as a "young people today" rant. And while you lambaste the younger generation as always having such and such a type of person - one could easily also point out the ubiquity of little oul ones in every older generation waving their cane at the yung-uns and shouting their woes. What you are probably experiencing is something called "Juvenoia" or "An exaggerated fear of social change in young people". And it seems every generation we know of has had it. So you're nothing new yourself.

So with the arguments you (do not) post here I can not see you winning either any drug debates or any inter-generational we are better than you debates either.

Gretas Gonna Get Ya! wrote: »

being a pothead doesn't give you special powers of perception or illuminated thoughts!

You are relying on extremes to make your point it seems - which just belies your desperation. The word "pothead" to me is just like the word "alcoholic". It is a label for the relative minority of people who abuse the drug in question with addiction and over use. And sure - being a "pothead" or "alcoholic" tends not to be useful. Though there are some rare exceptions to this too.

Occasional and mature and controlled use of drugs can in fact give you insights you might not otherwise have had. Or it might not. It depends on numerous factors. And that is how most people do use such substances. But the anti-drughead tends to only highlight the extremes.

But the question for me is - who ever actually suggested it has to do this? Going down for a pint in the pub does not often give people "special powers of perception or illuminated thoughts" either. Though sometimes it does. But generally that is not the goal of drinking one either. Some people do it for the taste. Some to relax. Some to socialise. Some just because they damn well want to.

What of it? You are erecting a straw man of lofty goals that are not even required by us in the first place. If we were to control what people in our society have access to by these ridiculous agendas you portray - what would we have left? Most television and cinema would probably have to go for a start.

With any given substance there will be people who can find any number of benefits from it. Smoking this drug is a pain remedy for many people for example and replaces a reliance on more damaging and addictive pain medication. Who are you/we to decide who's goals for it's use are lofty enough for our tastes? Do you go into pubs and interview people as to why they have their pint in their hand - and then shout impunities at those who's reasoning does not reach your own high pedestal standards?

Gretas Gonna Get Ya! wrote: »

You seem so cool and open minded... how can I be more like YOU?

And yet despite the snide condescension of a straw man only you have created based on nothing the other user actually said - you seem to be the only one portraying themselves as more right or more with it or more enlightened or informed than anyone else on the matter. Right up to and including the suggestive remark that you are some how more "evolved" than the rest.

Gretas Gonna Get Ya! wrote: »

But that's what many people do when they use the drug... so why would that not be a great way to portray the drug to the masses?

Unless you would prefer to present a more dishonest picture, so as to give a more respectable image of the drug?

It's a hallucinogenic drug... so why wouldn't people who want to push it's legalization, be hallucinating while promoting it? Perfect advertisement!

Not really... most stoners will smoke at home or in a more secluded area. Dealing with loads of strangers isn't the most attractive thing. And I don't think I've ever hallucinated while stoned. You must be mixing.

In any case, public displays of it's effects only reinforce the stereotypes, and detract from any non-stoners supporting the movement. Showing that it's something that people can partake of responsibly, would be the best way to show it off.

Legalise it.