[quote=DocHorton]Here are some of the wonderful benefits of legalization....according to Colorado....

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6913861/

Section I: Traffic Fatalities & Impaired Driving
Since recreational marijuana was legalized, traffic deaths in which drivers tested positive for marijuana increased 109 percent while all Colorado traffic deaths increased 31 percent.
Since recreational marijuana was legalized, traffic deaths involving drivers who tested positive for marijuana more than doubled from 55 in 2013 to 115 people killed in 2018.
This equates to one person killed every 3 days in 2018 compared to one person killed every 6½ days in 2013.
Since recreational marijuana was legalized, the percentage of all Colorado traffic deaths that were marijuana-related increased from 15 percent in 2013 to 23 percent in 2018.

Section II: Marijuana Use
Since recreational marijuana was legalized:

Past month marijuana use for ages 12 and older increased 58 percent and is 78 percent higher than the national average, currently ranked 4th in the nation.
Adult marijuana use increased 94 percent and is 96 percent higher than the national average, currently ranked 4th in the nation.
College age marijuana use increased 18 percent and is 48 percent higher than the national average, currently ranked 6th in the nation.
Youth marijuana use decreased 14 percent and is 40 percent higher than the national average, currently ranked 6th in the nation.

Section III: Public Health
The yearly number of emergency department visits related to marijuana increased 54 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017).
The yearly number of marijuana-related hospitalizations increased 101 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017).
Marijuana-only exposures more than quadrupled in the six-year average (2013–2018) since recreational marijuana was legalized compared to the six-year average (2007–2012) prior to legalization.
The percent of suicide incidents in which toxicology results were positive for marijuana has increased from 14 percent in 2013 to 23 percent in 2017.

Section IV: Black Market
RMHIDTA Colorado Drug Task Forces (10) conducted 257 investigations of black market marijuana in Colorado resulting in:
○ 192 felony arrests
○ 6.08 tons of marijuana seized
○ 60,091 marijuana plants seized
○ 25 different states the marijuana was destined
Seizures of Colorado marijuana in the U.S. mail system has increased 1,042 percent from an average of 52 parcels (2009–2012) to an average of 594 parcels (2013–2017) during the time recreational marijuana has been legal.

Section V: Societal Impact
Marijuana tax revenue represent approximately nine-tenths of one percent of Colorado’s FY 2018 budget.[/


Sounds like Sodom and Gomorrah.

"I do not believe that grown men or women having sex with children is appropriate." No one arguing that. The reference is that this is not a good thing and therefore illegal, although some out there may want to exercise their rights and engage in it.

"I could care less what other people do." You limiting this only to someone else's usage of medical marijuana or how far would you apply this statement?

Your assertions over cost and people's rights are akin to someone during a flood indicating they only need more water. go up and turn Oregon around and then come back. Those people know what they are doing, but something has gone awry. They could use some help. You know what they say about "like minds".

blkt2 must have a heck of a post count by now.

Pretty darn far. If you're not harming another person or taking their stuff I pretty much don't care about anything that someone else does if it's not connected to me.

Please explain to me exactly what the War on Drugs has accomplished? Have drugs gone away? Is cocaine not for sale in all 50 states and us territories? How about heroin? How about meth? How about marijuana? How about ecstasy? After 50 years of warfare and a few hundred billion dollars spent fighting that war you would think that at least a difference had been made but if it has I sure can't tell because drugs are everywhere, crime is rampant because of it, and the police arrest people every single day for drugs and it seems to have no effect.

I was just being facetious with those examples. Obviously I don't think any of those things should be legal, even though they could be considered an intrusion on a person's "liberties". Some laws, even though restrictive on individual choice, are for the greater good of our country and mankind.

I can't believe Hud, DnB, and myself are all on the same side of an argument....let me look outside for pigs flying.

I remember in a bunch of States small businesses being forced to close while large corporations were allowed to keep their stores open, for the greater good. Once you start to determine or let politicians determine what restrictions can be placed on people for the greater good than there is no limit to what they can force you to do or not to do because after all it's for the greater good. There are certain restrictions that we can all agree on such as not banging children, stealing other people's stuff, not assaulting other people or murdering them, things of that nature. But once it becomes an opinion that one person holds and another person may not hold and the only reason the act or the substance is bad is simply because you feel that it is bad then those laws need to go away. The same urge that makes people want to ban a gas stove because it's for the greater good is the same urge that people on the political right use to justify the War on Drugs. The left uses the same argument trying to outlaw firearms or countless other things. As founded our nation was never intended to have an omnipotent government that's had its tentacles into every single aspect of our daily lives. I challenge you to look around the room that you are sitting in and pick up a single object that doesn't have page after page after page of regulations written about it. It's not supposed to be this way.

Edit: I have pointed this out previously but no one seems to understand why I pointed it out. When this country was founded there were only nine things that were felonies. That's it. Now there are so many felonies that no one even knows what all of them are. It's even worse than the federal tax code.

Just like whiskey though that is an exaggeration as I have never seen anyone high on pot act as screwed up as I have seen drunk people get. The just like whiskey comment means you can drink responsibly or smoke responsibly.

Your edit is wildly out of touch. There is tons of proof that substances found in the pot plant are both safe and useful for many ailments.

I've got a buddy out in West Texas who's in his early 80s and has been a career prosecutor since he graduated law school. He is still working and will probably work until he drops dead in the courtroom. He told me all the crazy violence that he sees today from meth is the same stuff he saw 50 years ago from people drinking. Bad people are always going to be bad. Bad people are always going to harm other people. Trash is always going to be trash. It doesn't really matter what their drug of choice is that day but I believe that long run alcohol abuse probably isn't as harmful as fast as meth very obviously is.

The Chinese are in it with the cartels and they want us dead.

Id really like 2 things happen, legalize weed and be able to purchase a suppressor and walk out with it same day

I don't think that is asking too much

In my opinion meth/speed or whatever it is nowadays is the most societal destructive substance introduced into our society. When they outlawed diet pills it was just like alcohol prohibition, the black market stepped in and made things worse. I agree alcohol is minor league compared to Opiates, fentanyl and meth. I never knew anyone who had a problem with cocaine or that I noticed anyway. Crack never crossed my path either.

I concur.

It would be funny to watch a doper using the silencer as a pipe

^^^^^ Dear god, you are killing me. Funniest thing I've seen all day but today was a crappy day anyway.

Fully agree.

So let me get this straight - provide for societal acceptance and everything will be better? Is that it?

Was in Colorado last summer, took the fam to a Renaissance festival outside Co springs. Upon entering there was a celtic group playing inside the entrance. We stopped to watch, the guy standing next to us was smoking a joint bigger than my thumb. Nobody cared,nobody got hurt, my kids were not traumatized.

I would have moved my kids away from that individual.

Cool

I's just that if a parent doesn't move them away from it, then the kiddoes won't move themselves away from it later when the parents aren't there. Just a thought.

I watched way too many of my friends smoke that weed, seems to take your drive away from life and dull your intelligence

For me I can't stand the stuff, and the skunk weed smell upsets my stomach, one reason I hate Las Vegas the smell is everywhere there outside

That's called desensitization.

Seems that could be called relaxation.

Odd really used to be Nevada had very strict drug laws. I have done a lot of trapping and the smell of skunk isn't a big deal to me.

I've always likened marijuana use to a hold button for your life. With rare exceptions whatever you were doing when you began smoking weed is pretty much what you're going to be doing years down the road if you're still smoking it.

There was a line in a movie where a man was complaining to his girlfriend about her smoking weed at 10 in the morning and said that it will steal her ambition. She looked at him and said not if you're ambition is to get high and watch TV.