Perseus...eh, forget it. I was gonna say ‘live and let live’ or, you know, ‘judge not’, or whatever, but it doesn’t seem like reason and logic seems to get much attention here. Go on, blame all of societies ill’s on a substance that’s been proven countless times to be relatively harmless. Go on, there’s your punching bag. Go on, we’re all lazy slow giggling idiots prone to psychotic episodes. Yes, we fund terrorism. Yes, get in cars and drive like fools. Yes, we’re all jobless sponges on society.

You know, just like Rastafarians? You know, they’re the ones who smoke it as part of their religion. Look at the damage it’s done to them! They’re all so messed up, what with the peaceful down to earth culture…urgh, who could ever want that.

…………

‘Boy, I can’t wait until we win this war on terrorism, and there’ll be no terrorism anymore! It’ll be just like when they declared a war on drugs, and now there’s no drugs anymore. Remember that? It’ll be just like that!’

Bill Hicks again:

“Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally all over the planet, serves a thousand different uses, all of them positive. Doesn’t the idea of making NATURE against the law strike you as a little paranoid? It’s almost like saying God made a mistake.”

“They lie about marijuana, they say it makes you unmotivated..LIE. When you’re high, you can do everything you could normally do, you just realise it’s not worth the f-kn effort.”

Is this conversation worth the effort?

"Cannabis and alcohol use are not mutually exclusive". No doubt sex and rocknroll can't exist without drugs either...

Re the previously posted stats: I love how people throw in all these numbers and everyone goes oooh aaah that must mean something and in fact you can manipulate any statistic so that it "indicates" any angle you want. Read the above stats carefully: none of them prove moderate use of cannabis as being the cause of the emergencies. The numbers have either been represented by the poster incorrectly, or they've been represented incorrectly by the publisher. It's called propaganda.

Thank you Spendocrat and Lisamaree, for you additional examples of distorted thinking. Spendocrat has run off on irrelevant tangents, ascribing views to me that I have not expressed, or hold, and has then attempted to use the improbability of the tangential outcome as evidence in support of the original unsubstantiated claim. Like some sort of truth by association.
And Lisamaree has simply left the field in frustration. Suggesting that if all numbers can be manipulated then all numbers are being manipulated. I rest my case.

I went off on tangents mainly cause I was bored. If you're using that as a reason was to why your case is rested, thats...well, that's pretty lame.

(Why does everyone say 'I rest my case' on here? It sounds so arrogant and childish.)

The reason why I'm bored with this topic is because no one will ever change their mind, so what's the point? It doesn't matter how much reason or logic or facts or whatever I express, the same people will just repeat 'ehrehrerher unsubstaintiated! I rest my case! ehrher' again and again like a retarted robot politician machine with no off button.

Smoking marijuana does not make me a criminal! End of story.

I am not a crook!

Ok Perseus, if you want to use stats to prove your point, let's look at them: a 24% increase in the amount of times of marijuana was *mentioned* during a visit to emergency departments in the US. OK, 24% seems significant, but it's not 24% of the population, nor is it 24% of the emergency cases in the US. What is does say is that approx. 23,000 more people (in the US) smoked cannabis in 2002 than in 2001. Out of around 297 million population in US, that represents less than 0.008% of US population. Not sure of US population growth, but it would safe to assume (dare I?) that it's greater than this.

Then: "In approximately 45,000 of the cases in which marijuana was mentioned in 2002, the patient reported going to the Emergency Dep't because of an unexpected reaction to the drug." What does that mean? Was it too much pot? was it mixed with other drugs? were they suffering from any other ailments? were they on medication? All I'm saying is that it needs context and reference points and I won't say "I rest my case" but it's just about friday night and I have more interesting things to think about so have a nice weekend.

lisamaree - you are my new personal hero.