Drug decriminalisation in Portugal

[Madness]

This was my wake up call, I suggest you learn some thing from it.

Don't hang out with fudge-packing junkies? Go to the toilet before hanging yourself?

Fact: Cannabis didn't kill your friend.

[Fergus]

Arguing over anecdotal evidence =

[mashman]

Smoking ANYTHING is setting yourself up for lung disease. Lung disease is pretty terminal.

What about the people who don't and contract lung disease?

You have quoted one sentance from a paragraph.

My junkie mate who killed himself hung himself in the garage of my flat, I found him and cut him down. It is a very undignified way to go, you do shit and piss yourself, after 30 years I still carry a pocket knife as I never want to hold anybody up and not have a knife at hand again.

This was my wake up call, I suggest you learn some thing from it.

What about people who don't take drugs and hang themselves?

[SMOKEU]

You have quoted one sentance from a paragraph.

My junkie mate who killed himself hung himself in the garage of my flat, I found him and cut him down. It is a very undignified way to go, you do shit and piss yourself, after 30 years I still carry a pocket knife as I never want to hold anybody up and not have a knife at hand again.

This was my wake up call, I suggest you learn some thing from it.

While it is a tragedy that your friend committed suicide, cannabis has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I'm not trying to say that smoking copious amounts of pot is healthy, but alcohol and tobacco do significantly more harm. Ask any medical doctor about the effects of the above mentioned substances, not some muppet regurgitating more heresay and speculation about a subject they know almost nothing about.

Apart from the obvious bodily damage that excessive alcohol consumption causes, users also have a tendancy to do things they would not normally do when sober, such as engaging in high risk taking behaviour such as operating a motor vehicle in a dangerous manner, engaging in unprotected sex with new partners, starting fights etc. A person who is stoned off pot is highly unlikely to do any of that.

Have you ever been to a J day before? I suggest you do. From my observations, everyone is so chilled out from a sesh that no one starts causing any trouble. It's a big contrast to being in a pub on a Friday night with a whole lot of boozed up young people who feel like they can take on the world with no consequences.

Oh, and I hope you don't carry your pocket knife in public, as that could get you arrested for possession of an offensive weapon.

[Fergus]

What about the people who don't and contract lung disease?



What about people who don't take drugs and hang themselves?

Have you learnt nothing from this thread? Those people only come into existence when you personally met one.

[Akzle]

I have burried 3 of my mates over the years from drug related problems. One was a OD, one from aids and one took his own life. They were all week willed junkie fools, they all started off smoking dope, hung out with the "wrong" people, experimented with heavier shit then it all went down hill. The moment you start smoking dope then you start dealing with pushers, drug dealers and junkies from there it is all too easy to start down a very slipery slope.

I have lost a few good mates from motorcycle accidents also.

i've done all of the above. except hanging myself.
i don't have any dealings with pushers or junkies any more, just drug users and suppliers.

and as for my motorcycle use. well. lets not go there.

Oh, and I hope you don't carry your pocket knife in public, as that could get you arrested for possession of an offensive weapon.

no, it's a tool for a job. it's only offensive or a weapon if that's the job at hand.
i've carried a knife since i was about 13. current one is a 4" gerber folder. it's bad ass and is used for opening cans and slicing fruit more often than stabbing niggers.

[mashman]

Have you learnt nothing from this thread? Those people only come into existence when you personally met one.

I met a smoker that didn't die once.

[James Deuce]

What about the people who don't and contract lung disease?

That's an irrational dodge with no critical thinking behind it. You increase your chances of lung cancer, emphysema and other lung infections if you regularly inhale smoke-borne particulates into your lungs. The people who don't develop these conditions are not proof that you do not increase your chances of lung disease, and the carcinogenic compounds in tobacco and marijuana have been identified and an increase in the incidence of lung cancer in the smoking population has long been known fact. Smoked fish has been found to actively cause GI tract cancers and many of the carcinogens are the same as those that created in the act of burning anything. I'm sure that if you inhaled smoked fish, and assuming you survived the aspiration pneumonia, you would see people develop the same sorts of lung disease as smokers, given that smokers develop the same types of upper GI tract cancers in greater than normal numbers than people who don't eat smoked fish.

I'm not suggesting that anyone stop. Riding a motorcycle increases your chances of serious injury or death in a MVA. I don't advocate that as a reason for giving up riding, nor do I expect smokers to give up because of an increased chance of cancer, however if you don't acknowledge that science has identified risk factors that can foreshorten your life expectancy and reduce your quality of living then I'm not going to bother discussing the issue with the willfully ignorant.

I'd love to see Marijuana decriminalised and marketed, just so we can collect some decent stats on the benefits and drawbacks of long term THC consumption via a filtered and unfiltered gaseous medium. At the moment the veil of illegality prevents most countries from undertaking long term studies.

[scumdog]

I'm not trying to say that smoking copious amounts of pot is healthy, but alcohol and tobacco do significantly more harm. Ask any medical doctor about the effects of the above mentioned substances, not some muppet regurgitating more heresay and speculation about a subject they know almost nothing about.

Apart from the obvious bodily damage that excessive alcohol consumption causes, users also have a tendancy to do things they would not normally do when sober, such as engaging in high risk taking behaviour such as operating a motor vehicle in a dangerous manner, engaging in unprotected sex with new partners, starting fights etc. A person who is stoned off pot is highly unlikely to do any of that.

.

Why the need for the comparison grass v booze & smokes?

Trying to support an argument that grass ain't so bad - so you select things that are allegedly worse??

Why have you not balance the comparison by comparing grass with something benign?


(BTW, I agree, booze is bad - or rather the over-use of it is bad, sorta like somne drugs..)

[Madness]

I agree, booze is bad - or rather the over-use of it is bad, sorta like somne drugs..

Was the owner of this Cannabis over-using it?

[scissorhands]

If your going to do anything in excess
smoke weed
Its the least harmful out of all of them
socially and personally

Eventually 99% of people will come out of their addictive flare up

Cannabis will leave you the least worst off, and even at 2-3 joints a day, the smoke related harm is maybe comparable to 5-7 ciggies, I believe the smoke related harm to be even less, by my own precise reckoning.

Many top sportsmen and woman chuff weed daily with minimal health affects, often faster times and better performances in riding sports, better focus in pool, archery etc. I've enjoyed a few games to rugby and made the auckland 3rd grade trials whilst such goings on around me....

I met a real rasta on the weekend. No grog, no tobacco, no easy women.

This guy from Ghana was a stoned out holy man, and much better than you or I in many respects....

[mashman]

That's an irrational dodge with no critical thinking behind it. You increase your chances of lung cancer, emphysema and other lung infections if you regularly inhale smoke-borne particulates into your lungs. The people who don't develop these conditions are not proof that you do not increase your chances of lung disease, and the carcinogenic compounds in tobacco and marijuana have been identified and an increase in the incidence of lung cancer in the smoking population has long been known fact. Smoked fish has been found to actively cause GI tract cancers and many of the carcinogens are the same as those that created in the act of burning anything. I'm sure that if you inhaled smoked fish, and assuming you survived the aspiration pneumonia, you would see people develop the same sorts of lung disease as smokers, given that smokers develop the same types of upper GI tract cancers in greater than normal numbers than people who don't eat smoked fish.

I'm not suggesting that anyone stop. Riding a motorcycle increases your chances of serious injury or death in a MVA. I don't advocate that as a reason for giving up riding, nor do I expect smokers to give up because of an increased chance of cancer, however if you don't acknowledge that science has identified risk factors that can foreshorten your life expectancy and reduce your quality of living then I'm not going to bother discussing the issue with the willfully ignorant.

I'd love to see Marijuana decriminalised and marketed, just so we can collect some decent stats on the benefits and drawbacks of long term THC consumption via a filtered and unfiltered gaseous medium. At the moment the veil of illegality prevents most countries from undertaking long term studies.

I agree in regards to smoking adding an extra risk factor to smokers being more prone to lung disease, amongst other things. However I fail to see how my question was an irrational dodge devoid of critical thought, as it was merely a question that has a large relevance to the "argument". As you say there are known carcinogens and that list is constantly growing with everything from household sprays to my personal fave, engine exhaust, being up on that list. Which one of those is unavoidable? I always giggle when told that I shouldn't be having a cig where I am as it's right next to the loading bay which bellows the stuff out. Now if engine exhaust is a known carcinogen and can bring on respiratory problems and smokers can live well into old age. Isn't it possible that a number of smoking deaths could actually be related to being outside next to loading bays for instance? No doubt such an "argument" would be viewed as silly or indeed nothing more than a clutch at straws to avoid believing that smoking is self-harming... but it could certainly explain why non-smokers also develop lung disease. Heaven help the poor smoking smoke fishery delivery guy.

[007XX]

1) drugs are easily available, you're not going to change that. decades of prohibition by a militant army of thugs hasn't.
what are you going to tell them? drugs are bad? and when, as mashy says, they have a toke and don't die? then where will your advice lie with them? ("well, she lied about that, so...")

personally, from a young age, i got right into my drugs. self medication, world denial, whatever the cause, i had a lot of fun, and very few bad trips. maybe that speaks to how happy and well adjusted i am at a subliminal level

my mum was a toker, now a drinker, the old man was anti- everything, except alcoholism, which i think his new missus and a healthy dose of diabetes has nearly cured him of.

i think, as with everything else, if children are exposed to it in a safe and sensible manner (cars and guns, come to mind), and you've doe your job raising em right, they will be able to make decisions for themselves.
my daughter (7) likes, or pretends to like, beer, that's fine, i give her some every now and then, she's been drunk to the point of uncoordination at least once. (i can hear mothers everywhere sharpening their pitchforks)
and i last year took them to a young fullas 21st (why am i the only cunt alive with a glass yard glass?) he's not a heavy drinker normally, and a meter of cold steinys saw him projectile on the lawn. my kids saw all this.
i'm contemplating taking them into auckland town one night, so they can see how fun drunk fuckwittery really is.
mine help me bottle my homebrew, they see me drink, they help me in the garden, they see me smoke. i haven't had anything better for a while, mainly because i need a horses dose to do the trick and i can't afford that shit.


so yess.. i'd love to change your mind, but if you've genuinely thought about it and feel that's the best course of action, who am i to tell you how to raise your kids.


i believe, as a species, we can self medicate, which is as simple as eating good food. your body knows what it needs, when you have a craving for X, Y or Z, you could probably get a blood test to tell you your X, Y, Z vitamins are down. you'd be surprised how often this works. you have a million different sub-species, mainly bacteria, living in your body and they've developed a fairly symbiotic relationship, including signaling their host to tell you when your body is out of whack.
people really, really need to get in tune with their nature, mann!
to extend that, self medication also includes use of recreational substances, and activities that promote your body to produce it's own drugs (sex, riding motorbikes, jumping off cliffs, hard exercise etc)

Sent from between my second cup of espresso and fifth ciggy.[/COLOR]

I have nothing againt my kids having a toke. Hell, I'll have it with them if it comes to that.
But I do have issues with them being in an environment where HARD DRUGS would be common place enough for them to be suggested to it before they are old/ strong / educated enough to know better than to try that shit.

An interesting angle: my 15 year old son got me to stop smoking 5 years ago. He is a staunch anti smoker because he has been able to see his father wheezing and coughing from it.
He is allowed a beer when the men get together, but often turns it down as he doesn't feel compelled to "fit in", and hates having seen his father loose control under the influence of alcohol.
He has been subjected to people smoking at school, and still hasn't caved in, and neither has he been given a hard time by his mates for it, cos they all like him and respect him for who he is.

I have tried my darndest to teach him to think for himself, know what he likes, doesn't like and stick to his guns. I have educated him as to the consequences of drugs, and to choose his mates wisely.

I'm not saying it's perfect or that I'm the best parent in the world. But I'll be damned if I'll let my kids out into this world thinking that it's ok to just try everything and that there won't be consequences. Knowledge is power and they have the choice. I guess it's a little narcissistic of me, but yes, I do want them to be strong willed, independant free thinkers with a healthy sense of what life is about. Hard drugs have no need to feature in that.

I totally agree with that paragraph on self medicating though. We rarely need to consult doctors in our house, mostly because we try to be in tune with what our bodies are telling us. I'm also pro making everything from scratch rather than buying all pre made crap, as well as growing my own food as discussed in another thread.

I'm game... it'll be the second time today (although we have chocolate), but WTF in for a penny etc... Are you going to vet your kids friends? I had a mate at school who used to scough and turn hi nose up at us "druggies". We respected his choice, he wasn't singled out and once he had left school and went to Uni he turned into a bigger druggy than any of us. To excess one could argue. 18 in bloke years that means we're about to turn 14/15.

The difference between our 2 upbringings were huge. His father was quite repressive in ways and I took the blame as the wayward one leading his son astray. He needed no encouragement. My father was the opposite. I had my first spliff with him and his friends whilst sitting at the kitchen table. One of his friends handed me a joint, I looked at dad for approval and he nodded. As you might think, the door was open. It wasn't a bad experience given the "just say no" that was being pumped at the youth in those days. I experimented a little further with a few things, albeit stayed away from Heroin. For the most part it was social. Every now and then there were binges. Either way, I had been armed with the experience and it then became my choice to fuck up or not. I guess the biggest positive was in knowing that my parents had been there, done that, had had the bad experiences, had explained the potential consequences and then left me to my own devices.

To that end. Tis noble that you want to shelter your kids from drugs etc... but they are going to find out. I'm not going to hide my drug use, not that I do any these days, from my kids. I'm going to treat it like alcohol. My 9 yr old knows I've taken drugs, she asked me, and she knows what drugs I've taken. She stared at me like I was a mad man and was glad that I am still alive. If she's getting this aged 9 and she starts meeting people who have taken drugs and survived, she's going to wonder what the hype is all about. I hope I'm there the day she gets properly curious as I can offer her my experiences as a bench mark, give her a few simple "rules" to ignore should she wish and then I'm gonna let what happens happen. I don't see that as me being a bad parent, more proactive.

Good luck with your quest.

Not shelter mate. Educate and empower to strengthen against. Hard drugs have no place in a healthy young individual's life, end of story.

When it comes to your referring to your friend's upbringing and yours. You forget a very important factor: personality.
Yes, upbringing has an impact but drug consumption is something that will either become attractive or not and that will more likely be due to peer pressure and the person's personality.

In the same way that smoking a joint does not lead automatically to using harder drugs, you cannot determine whether someone will try heroin just because they were forbidden it as a teen, sorry.

So in my case, my teaching technique has been working so far for my boy. My daughter on the other hand is exactly like me...

So I'm gonna have to approach things in a very different manner with her. As she grows older, how will become more evident.

[mashman]

Not shelter mate. Educate and empower to strengthen against. Hard drugs have no place in a healthy young individual's life, end of story.

When it comes to your referring to your friend's upbringing and yours. You forget a very important factor: personality.
Yes, upbringing has an impact but drug consumption is something that will either become attractive or not and that will more likely be due to peer pressure and the person's personality.

In the same way that smoking a joint does not lead automatically to using harder drugs, you cannot determine whether someone will try heroin just because they were forbidden it as a teen, sorry.

So in my case, my teaching technique has been working so far for my boy. My daughter on the other hand is exactly like me...

So I'm gonna have to approach things in a very different manner with her. As she grows older, how will become more evident.

Sure sure ... I agree in regards to trying to keep hardstuff, and softstuff to a degree, away from younguns.

I was just trying to highlight that irrespective of him having been surrounded by us drug nutfuckles, he didn't want a bar of it... then he went to Uni and changed his mind. Why the sudden change of mind? Peer Pressure? Or just a change of mind?

I don't recall saying that one leads on to another? May as well blame breathing if I was going down that road.

a chip off the old block eh. I've got 5, 7 ,9 girls lining up to torture me in a few years... strong willed already and an answer for everything. Must take after their mother .

As I said earlier, good luck to ya ... and that goes to all parents that are about to face "yourselves" 20 years ago. Praps we need local responsible parents holding get fucked up with your kids evenings... after school on a friday would suit

[Mushu]

Why the need for the comparison grass v booze & smokes?

Trying to support an argument that grass ain't so bad - so you select things that are allegedly worse??

Why have you not balance the comparison by comparing grass with something benign?


(BTW, I agree, booze is bad - or rather the over-use of it is bad, sorta like somne drugs..)

The opinion of one of our resident pigs, by that logic we should all be vegans or at least vegetarians cos everything else will kill you eventually (in excess) kinda sounds like we can't have weed "because I said so."
Tell me, scumdog, on Friday or Saturday night how many stoners do you pick up for violent crimes as opposed to drunks fighting at bars or beating their wives, and if I asked an ambulance driver a similar question what would he say?

007xx, proper education its the way to go, and allowing kids to make the correct choices, you can't protect your kids from everything, I was allowed alcohol all my life (less and less regulated amounts as I got older) but as an autodidact I educated myself and am now the only one in my family without a history of alcohol problems (from insane binge drinking to full blown alcoholism). But I refer back to my previous post in saying that by making all these substances illegal you create criminals, you fund criminal behavior and you make these substances more available to minors - ask your son if he thinks he can get weed or p, at the very least he would know a kid or 2 that knows where to get these things (I started buying weed from my class mates at a well respected high school when I was 13) also when I was about that age my Mum had a similar opinion of me to your opinion of your boy, are you sure you'd know if he was having a puff of the herb every now and then.

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