Marijuana legalization

"Also, you keep talking about using marijuana in moderate amounts. Just because you would take it in small amounts does not mean everyone else will. The longer you hold marijuana in, the more high you get. You experience what marijuana users call burnout." It is impossible to overdose on THC, to achieve that you would need to smoke a couple hundred pounds of weed in around 15 minutes. When you smoke enough you reach your limit. This is when you get as high as your going to get. Most people smoke enough to reach this max and what you smoke after that won't do much. Since marijuana is only physiologically addicting, it's a want not a need. The only result that comes out of taking large amount of marijuana is the harmful effect smoke has on the lungs. If everyone else doesn't take it is moderate amounts the damage will be towards their lungs and that is all. To avoid this, use a vaporizer, if you can control your usage just smoke it. In the movie "super high me" a guy smoked weed everyday all the time for a month and only lost 3% lung capacity which wasn't even proven to be permanent. Besides have a great time for that month, no damage or harmful effects were produced whatsoever. Burnout is a temporary effect that you will feels after your high wears off. Just as a hangover, burnout will last for a little while and then eventually dissipate. ---------- Myth: Marijuana Causes an Amotivational Syndrome. Marijuana makes users passive, apathetic, and uninterested in the future. Students who use marijuana become underachievers and workers who use marijuana become unproductive. Fact: For twenty-five years, researchers have searched for a marijuana-induced amotivational syndrome and have failed to find it. People who are intoxicated constantly, regardless of the drug, are unlikely to be productive members of society. There is nothing about marijuana specifically that causes people to lose their drive and ambition. In laboratory studies, subjects given high doses of marijuana for several days or even several weeks exhibit no decrease in work motivation or productivity. Among working adults, marijuana users tend to earn higher wages than non-users. College students who use marijuana have the same grades as nonusers. Among high school students, heavy use is associated with school failure, but school failure usually comes first. Sources: Himmelstein, J.L. The Strange Career of Marihuana: Politics and Ideology of Drug Control in America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983. Mellinger, G.D. et al. "Drug Use, Academic Performance, and Career Indecision: Longitudinal Data in Search of a Model." Longitudinal Research on Drug Use: Empirical Findings and Methodological Issues. Ed. D.B. Kandel. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1978. 157-177. Pope, H.G. et al., "Drug Use and Life Style Among College Undergraduates in 1989: A Comparison With 1969 and 1978," American Journal of Psychiatry 147 (1990): 998-1001. ---------- Myth: Marijuana Causes Crime. Marijuana users commit more property offenses than nonusers. Under the influence of marijuana, people become irrational, aggressive, and violent. Fact: Every serious scholar and government commission examining the relationship between marijuana use and crime has reached the same conclusion: marijuana does not cause crime. The vast majority of marijuana users do not commit crimes other than the crime of possessing marijuana. Among marijuana users who do commit crimes, marijuana plays no causal role. Almost all human and animal studies show that marijuana decreases rather than increases aggression. Sources: Fagan, J., et al. "Delinquency and Substance Use Among Inner-City Students." Journal of Drug Issues 20 (1990): 351-402. Johnson, L.D., et al. "Drugs and Delinquency: A Search for Causal Connections." Ed. D.B. Kandel. Longitudinal Research on Drug Use: Empirical Findings and Methodological Issues. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978. 137-156. Goode, E. "Marijuana and Crime." Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding, Appendix I. National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972. 447-453. Abram, K.M. and L.A. Teplin. "Drug Disorder, Mental Illness, and Violence." Drugs and Violence: Causes, Correlates, and Consequences. Rockville: National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1990. 222-238. Cherek, D.R., et al. "Acute Effects of Marijuana Smoking on Aggressive, Escape and Point-Maintained Responding of Male Drug Users." Psychopharmacology 111 (1993): 163-168. Tinklenberg, J.R., et al. "Drugs and criminal assaults by adolescents: A Replication Study." Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 13 (1981): 277-287. --------- Myth: Marijuana Impairs Memory and Cognition. Under the influence of marijuana, people are unable to think rationally and intelligently. Chronic marijuana use causes permanent mental impairment. Fact: Marijuana produces immediate, temporary changes in thoughts, perceptions, and information processing. The cognitive process most clearly affected by marijuana is short-term memory. In laboratory studies, subjects under the influence of marijuana have no trouble remembering things they learned previously. However, they display diminished capacity to learn and recall new information. This diminishment only lasts for the duration of the intoxication. There is no convincing evidence that heavy long-term marijuana use permanently impairs memory or other cognitive functions. Sources: Wetzel, C.D. et al., "Remote Memory During Marijuana Intoxication," Psychopharmacology 76 (1982): 278-81. Deadwyler, S.A. et al., "The Effects of Delta-9-THC on Mechanisms of Learning and Memory." Neurobiology of Drug Abuse: Learning and Memory. Ed. L. Erinoff. Rockville, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse 1990. 79-83. Block, R.I. et al., "Acute Effects of Marijuana on Cognition: Relationships to Chronic Effects and Smoking Techniques." Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior 43 (1992): 907-917. After showing you these common misconceptions disproved, it is clear that marijuana doesn't cause crime, doesn't impair memory or cognition, and most importantly doesn't promote a lazy attitude. These claims are backed up with legitimate sources too. The largest study of the health effects of marijuana to date was done by Kaiser Permanente. They studied the health records of 65,000 patients over a number of years. They found no significant differences between the health histories of those who smoked pot versus those who did not smoke marijuana. Marijuana and Mortality http://www.druglibrary.org... Every major government commission report on marijuana from around the world over the last 100 years has concluded that marijuana prohibition was based on racism, ignorance, and nonsense. They all said the marijuana laws should have been repealed long ago because they do more harm than good. They all said that marijuana is not a significant threat to health, even when used regularly for decades. Major Studies of Drugs and Drug Policy - http://druglibrary.org... Heart attack risk??? "Despite the high percentage of people younger than 50 years old who report they use the drug – 12.5 percent – Mittleman doesn't foresee an epidemic of pot-triggered heart attacks. For a 50-year-old baby boomer without other risk factors, like high blood pressure or high cholesterol, the absolute risk of having a heart attack in the crucial first hour after smoking marijuana is one in 100,000, he says. These findings come from a study of 3,882 people who survived heart attacks. It was conducted at a number of centers around the country, including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where Mittleman works. In the study, 124 people reported using marijuana regularly. Of these, 37 people said they used it within 24 hours of their heart attacks. Nine said they smoked it within an hour of their attacks."