Cannabis

SeanW

I believe cannibis should be legalised, sold openly in shops subject to a heavy tax and a strict over-18s, maybe 21 law rigidly enforced.

I would never touch the stuff, or maybe once in a very long while, but as a person on whose behalf some of the stupid Nanny State laws exist, I don't feel it's any of my business to tell anyone not to smoke it.

As for drug driving, that should be very clear in legislation if it isn't already. Anyone driving high should be put off the road ASAP regardless of whether or not the drug is legal.

dragonkin

I agree it should be legalised in fact I think most drugs should be made available to people that genuinely want them provided they are given full details about the implications and dangers of the drug along with optional and free counselling.

It would reduce our prison population, free up Garda time and remove a main source of income for most gangs. I've been exposed to pretty much all the major drugs at some stage or another without looking for them as I don't do that stuff, so I feel prohibition has failed pretty comprehensively here.

Unfortunately this would have to be done across Europe as I don't think Ireland could go it alone over something like this.

Tigger

bonkey wrote:

AS far as I know, the most accurate tests for "driving under the influence" will register a positive for up to 24 hours.

Would you be willing to accept that as a cost of legalisation - that if you smoked some evening during the week, you could lose your license for testing positive whilst driving home after work, the following day, 18 or more hours later.

If not, then how do you propose that you balance legalisation with such issues as "stoned driving"???

that should be a non-issue

people can and should be tested for "stoned driving"

why making dope legal would make this more nessiciary is beyond me

i ,think all drugs should be legalised as its ones own body but i also believe that acces to drugs should be based on being a productive member of soceity

in other words i dissaprove of benifitsa being spent on plasm tvs and drink and ciggys

so i would dissagree more with benifits being used on drugs

i'm sure many posters know people who went on the dole to sleep all day and smoke dope

sovtek

rbd wrote:

i'm sure many posters know people who went on the dole to sleep all day and smoke dope

I think pot makes you realize how stupid mean and un natural it is to work for someone else just to make them a hell of a lot richer.

Time Magazine

sovtek wrote:

I think pot makes you realize how stupid mean and un natural it is to work for someone else just to make them a hell of a lot richer.

Roffles. Post of the Month.

sam34

layke wrote:

Still waiting to meet all these psycho's the scientests say cannabis creates.

instead of going to parties maybe you should call in to your local friendly acute psychiatric unit and then you'd get to meet sone people with a cannabis induced psychosis.
google robin murray and you'll come across his research on the topic

dragonkin

Does anyone have a link to what the current legislation regarding cannabis is?

I know that it is covered in the misuse of drugs act from 1984 but I think there have been a few amendments along the way in particular this site mentions that cannabis was legislated separately from other drugs in 2006 I've had a look for statutory instruments from 2006 mentioning this but they seem to be a couple of years behind publishing these online and the latest online ones are from 2005 so I've no idea if this was changed or not...

Anyone have any idea?

Dr Galen

i'm a bit torn on this one, but i do know that I see a hell of a lot more people in the hospital with medical condition relating to excessive or long term alcohol abuse/drinking than drug related.

alcohol really f**cks people up inside, and again I've seen a lot more people in the psych unit with drink issues over cannabis.

personally, its not my thing, but i think legalising it, could give some control to it and there is the obvious benefit of increased tax take on the sales. to out a special "hash tax" would be wrong though, as all this would do is create a black market for it, a la cigarettes.

hopefully legalisation would stem the flow of money to the gangs alright, but my fear would be that legally supplying cannabis to retailers would just become a front operation for the crims. a way of providing legal income to cover for the less than perfect operations

stovelid

I agree with the OP. It sounds obvious to the point of platitude but people are going to use particular drugs whether or not they are proscribed. May as well take it out of criminal control, tax it and free up police and court manpower if this is the case.

Jackz

Imagine every nasty aggressive alcoholic being stoned instead of drunk.

QED.

2 r bine

Can any one verify if the following is an urban legend or fact?
A test in the U.S., where else, showed that after consuming equal amounts of alcohol, and cannabis, (how this was established I don’t know),
It was suggest that the drivers who smoked cannabis were aware of there impairment and drove slower and sometime refused to drive, whereas the group of drivers under the influence of alcohol believed they were in control and sometimes professed to be better drivers after drinking.
If this is true or not it seems to be typical of the way people react in my experience.
If you were to make a comparison, a bottle of whisky or a joint, we all know if you drink down a pint of whisky in half an hour what the result would be, and if you ate a 500g bar of hash would be. So lets get real on this, outlawing hash and grass it’s about tax,control and pandering to the neo conservatives.

Nick_oliveri

Simple confidence and paranoia in the driving case.

Edit: I was still stoned this morning like many mornings from the night before. I think it lasts a bit longer than four hours (depending on the amount inhaled or ingested)

sudzs

Nick_oliveri wrote:

Simple confidence and paranoia in the driving case.

Edit: I was still stoned this morning like many mornings from the night before. I think it lasts a bit longer than four hours (depending on the amount inhaled or ingested)

Suggest you get a little more sleep!

Nick_oliveri

sudzs wrote:

Suggest you get a little more sleep!

Good point, usually staying up till daylight, not good. I blame dunnes, with the ****ty hours they have me on.

shreka

Cannabis is relatively safe compared to many other drugs, including alcohol. It's really the SMOKING of cannabis that makes it somewhat damaging.

While there are people out there who may have a pre-disposition to psychosis or schizophrenia, and might have a bad experience after smoking cannabis, I do not believe that cannabis alone causes psychosis or schizophrenia. As far as I know, there isn't any UNBIASED research that concludes there is a direct link between the two, (without a pre-disposition to a mental illness that is).

Cannabis has been used for thousands of years for medical, spiritual and recreational use. It was only in the last hundred years, probably due to greed and racism, that this hysteria about cannabis turning people into"drug addicts" has come to be.

Perhaps some people cannot tolerate cannabis; indeed I hardly ever have a drink because I feel out of sorts, depressed, the next day.

Cannabis should indeed be legal - for every person that has been negatively affected by it, my guess is that there are millions that have enjoyed positive ones.

Free the weed!!:)

axer

Is there any stats out there as to how cannabis is consumed? i.e. what percentage smoke rather than eat etc?

Tzetze

If dope becomes legalised, the nation will cease to be productive little lab rats. Keep them on nicotine and caffeine!

JC 2K3

shreka wrote:

It's really the SMOKING of cannabis that makes it somewhat damaging.

Source?

Inhaling any type of smoke isn't inherently bad for you, it's the actual toxins in the smoke that do you damage, hence studies showing that weed smoke is much less harmful than tobacco smoke.

If you smoke it with tobacco it's rather harmful, however.

Nick_oliveri

JC 2K3 wrote:

If you smoke it with tobacco it's rather harmful, however.

Indeed, problem is though, if you smoke it without tobacco, you are probably going to get a little more stoned than you wanted and take a whitey.

Herbal tobbaco ftw, the manky taste of it ftl.

Tzetze

JC 2K3 wrote:

Source?

Inhaling any type of smoke isn't inherently bad for you, it's the actual toxins in the smoke that do you damage, hence studies showing that weed smoke is much less harmful than tobacco smoke.

If you smoke it with tobacco it's rather harmful, however.

Link to source

Like tobacco, marijuana smoke contains toxins that are known to be hazardous to the respiratory system. Among them are the highly carcinogenic polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, a prime suspect in cigarette-related cancers...Although there is no proof that marijuana smoking causes cancer, chronic pot smokers have been shown to suffer an elevated risk of bronchitis and respiratory infections.

Users who are concerned about the respiratory hazards of smoking are strongly advised to use vaporizers.

Tchocky

At least one page of this thread is about how awful drink is, and shouldn't pot be kind of...nicer?

I don't see it as an important issue, and drink being bad for you is hardly grounds for legalisation. Alcohol is only legal because of the horrible costs and general awkwardness of criminalising it. Like guns in the States. Not much reason to have them, but they aint going away.

JC 2K3

Not much reason to have alcohol?

MooseJam

All drugs should be legal tbh, adults should be able to ingest whatever they like, crime would plumit as drugs became cheaper and cheaper

Tchocky

If we're legalising everything, then I'm not paying taxes for hospitals anymore.

Dar

If we're legalising everything, then I'm not paying taxes for hospitals anymore.

Excise on tabacco and alchohol products brought in around €2 billion in 2006. €12 billion was spent on health in the last budget. So us smokers and drinkers contribute 1/6th of Irish Health expenditure.

It would be reasonable to assume that any drugs legalised would have similar duty rates applied to them.

Sorry to knock you off your high horse, but we're subisidising YOUR healthcare, not the other way around.

Rock Climber

Dar wrote:

Sorry to knock you off your high horse, but we're subisidising YOUR healthcare, not the other way around.

I see so no smoker ever gets cancer ? A good proportion of chronic illness and cancer isn't as a result of excessive smoking and drinking?
What a ridiculous argument.

Dar

see so no smoker ever gets cancer ? A good proportion of chronic illness and cancer isn't as a result of excessive smoking and drinking?
What a ridiculous argument.

That's not what I said. The simple fact is that while smoking/drinking do in fact cause a large portion of chronic illnesses, smokers and drinkrtd also contribute a disproportionate amount of the tax which pays for the health system.

Rock Climber

yeah but if no one smoked or if they were more carefull with the drink, there'd be a much smaller budget needed.

Theres no water in that bucket.

Anyway this is a tad off topic too.

Dar

Rock Climber wrote:

yeah but if no one smoked or if they were more carefull with the drink, there'd be a much smaller budget needed.
Theres no water in that bucket.

I would find it very difficult to believe that health expenses on tabacco and alcohol related illness constitutes a full sixth of the department of health's budget.

Anyway this is a tad off topic too.

I brought up the point to counter the 'all these new canncabis users will be using hospitals paid for with my tax' fallacy. If cannabis is legalised (lol), excise will be charged on it. The gains in revenue exceed the increased costs.

JC 2K3

Rock Climber wrote:

yeah but if no one smoked or if they were more carefull with the drink, there'd be a much smaller budget needed.

Or maybe if they chose to use different substances at different times rather than drinking alcohol at every social occasion there wouldn't be as much damage done to their health due to not overloading their systems with only one drug.

And anyway, alcohol and tobacco are near the top of any "most dangerous recreational substances" list. If you wanted to reduce the amount of people in hospital due to legal drug abuse, it'd make more sense to illegalise tobacco and alcohol and legalise weed and MDMA.