 |
Image by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid  some rights reserved |
Now, to be honest, I can't get wound up about recreational use one way or the other. I like a glass of wine with dinner and I don't see why someone who prefers a puff shouldn't do that instead. (I can't stand any sort of smoking myself but that doesn't mean I want to stop everyone else doing it.) On the other hand, if wine were banned I'd still cope so not having your recreational drug of choice available doesn't seem appalling to me.
What I do feel strongly about is the people I know who are ill and who would get better pain relief from cannabis than they can from traditional medicine. I have a friend with fibromyalgia who'd be up and around if she could legally smoke. My Mum would probably have got relief from her arthritis - but how was a housebound old lady to get hold of an illegal drug?
Of course the other advantage to legalising cannabis is ending the drug trafficking in it and getting clean drugs to people.
My mind always wanders onto the sci fi implications of the news. I wonder what drugs they might use in other worlds.
9 COMMENTS:
There's definitely ample cause for cannabis to be legalised especially under medical licence. I think criminalising this drug has far negative effects - there should really be an open, honest and factual debate about the uses and potential use of cannabis.
My recreational drugs of choice are alcohol and chocolate. And the advent of chocolate beer was just the best!
Thanks for the link!
Take care
x
Mmmmm. Chocolate. Mmmmm.
They legalized pot here for medical use, but only in the state. Still illegal federally. So the feds came in and busted some growers and sellers under federal law. Like they don't have enough to do going after the ones who are growing and selling illegally?
There are people who want it legalized period. Opposing that are some of the illegal growers.
There's a backlash these days with the legal stores being closed because there are "too many".
My wife's eligible for a medical marijuana card. The way things are going, she might need to get one. She's allergic to most alcohols now, but has found vodka is okay and it does the trick. Hm. Makes her sound like an alky. ;-)
Kitty, alcohol and chocolate for me too! I've never heard of chocolate beer but Baileys nicely combines the two.
Sarah, alcohol isn't always as good as cannabis for pain relief but it's better than nothing. The situation with the feds is ridiculous. I wish we could be like Holland.
I'm not sure what the situation here is now, but when they first made it legal to own marijuana for medicinal use, it was still illegal to buy the drug.
So sick people had permission to have their medicine but no way to get it.
That said, the police seemed to be making a point of turning a blind eye to people who genuinely were buying marijuana for medical purposes.
Sidenote 1: My province is the pot capital of Canada! They estimate marijuana is our biggest export (Mostly to California--hey, Sarah!)
Sidenote 2: My brother-in-law has fibromyalgia, and he says cannabis made it worse. I guess it differs from person to person?
jj, when the laws don't make sense, you'd think they'd do something to sort it out. But no.
The police turned a bit of a blind eye here before the government reclassified marijuana as a more dangerous drug - against medical advice.
I'm not surprised it doesn't work for everyone but would be nice if people who might benefit could at least try it.
I too hate smoking of any kind, but I think keeping it illegal has consequences that far outweigh those we would experience if it was legalized and properly regulated. But "properly" is the key word there. No guarantee some corporation wouldn't manipulate the laws and do just as much, or more, damage.
stacy, I don't see why it couldn't be regulated like alcohol or tobacco - they're both drugs too and pretty much as dangerous as cannabis, I'd have thought.
Yeah, but I don't think tobacco was effectively regulated until the government hiked the tax (here in the United States, that is). Judging from my admittedly limited exposure to tobacco, it cut down on the number of poor people who smoke. I'm for legalizing cannabis, though. It wouldn't stop drug dealing for the harder stuff, but it could really cut down on it, and I think it would free up prison space so there's more room for the real criminals.
stacy, I suppose that higher taxes do help to cut down on smoking. We also have a major NHS campaign offering help with giving up and health warning on all tobacco products. I don't know how much good it does.
It's a good point about leaving space for real criminals!
Post a Comment
The comments are the best part of this blog, so please do join in.