Marijuana is a wonderful drug whether for medical treatments or recreational intoxication. But legalizing it in a smokable form is beyond ludicrous.

1st, take everything we know about harming the lungs by putting smoke in them from any source and ignore it all. If we want to ingest something it goes into the gut, not the lungs. The lungs are for external respiration, the expulsion of our waste carbon dioxide and the replenishment of adequate oxygen levels. The lungs are designed for and intended for nothing else.

2nd, if they think that tax will be generated with smokable pot they are wrong. The stuff is literally a weed. It grows anywhere and it grows vigorously in all 50 states. Why buy it and pay taxes when you can legally grow it in your own back yard?

3rd, if society expects pot to be used for recreational intoxication then that degree of intoxication must have some degree of consistency. Drink wine and you get an expected amount of alcohol. The same with whisky, or beer or any such drink. You will have some idea of how inebriated you will get with what source of alcohol you choose to imbibe. It is predictable. Not so with homegrown pot. Pot looks like pot but not all pot is equally as intoxicating. Some pot is very, very strong. Go to a party and have a toke expecting a buzz and you might end up half way to mars. Users must be able to have consistency in what they can expect from any drug use.

4th, as of right now there is no way to test for degrees of being stoned. Current tests for marijuana only test for the presence of the stuff. You can test positive and be blitzed or you can test positive and not have used the stuff in days or even weeks. Regardless of how pot becomes legalized this needs to be addressed. We will need a calibrated stoner assessment test in order to evaluate degrees of impairment.

What this company has done is excellent. For the purposes of medicinal applications it has provided a calibrated dosage for a predictable response with an administration method that is not harmful. Transfer that to the recreational usage. Give us drinks. (If they give us herbs some people will only smoke them.) They will be taxable. They will be predictable. They will be consistent. Sorry, the intoxication time will not be as immediate as smoking. But, if you want it to become legal be smart about it.

Scooter,

Of course your answer presupposes that criminalizing marijuana was a good idea in the first place. As to your assertion that we can't regulate levels of THC in weed, I'd point out that no one has ever OD'd on THC-it simply hasn't happened. The amounts it would take would be staggering.

Also, I think I'LL decide what my lungs are used for, thank you very much-you opinion on the matter is just that-your opinion-and if it is legal fact, why is tobacco legal?

Furthermore, tomatos, potatos and corn will all EASILY grow in my back yard, and yet I buy them at the store. Why? Because it is easier.

As for testing, I'm sure if we tried, we could certainly develop tests that indicate that a person is currently stoned, but given the problems with breathalyzers that've cropped up in the last week, (bad code=bad results) I'm not sure anything beyond a field sobriety test would really be necessary.

Your arguments are poor, and quite frankly I'm sick and tired of people selling my rights down the river. If you don't like it, don't buy it, but stop telling everyone else what is good for them. I already have parents.

I used to smoke cigarettes. Inhaling smoke is bad for your lungs. I don't happen to think anyone has a "right" to expect that the rest of us should pay for your lung cancer treatment, just as I don't think morbidly obese people should expect us to pay for their fourth heart attack.

Didn't you hear? Nowhere is it written that life should be fair. Nowhere. You don't get what you want just because you whine loud enough.

For now, pot is illegal. You don't have to like it. You DO have to have the balls to go to jail for your habit if you get caught. Suck it up, kid.

Manimal... Your illogic is the very reason why marijuana has not been legalized.

Growing a vegetable garden for sustenance produce is far more complex than growing pot for personal consumption. A few well grown pot plants would last a person for quite some time. The plants get huge with very little or no oversight. One sizable plant can render over a pound of useable weed. Bugs do not attack marijuana like they do produce gardens. I am certain that you know these things.

I agree with you that science will devise a practical tool to assess THC intoxication.

You do not even mention the health consequences of smoking the stuff. Maybe you were stoned and forgot that part.

The problem you have Manimal is that you do not want legalized marijuana. You want your street drug marijuana to be made legal. You refuse to consider practical ways to legalize the drug. You use the argument of taxation to support you position but I would bet my life that you personally have no intention of every buying the stuff. Why should you when a grow light and a closet will deliver enough and better marijuana for little investment and effort. Why would anybody buy the stuff?

Here I am advocating the legalization of marijuana in a safe, predictable and tax producing format and that is not good enough for you. Think about that.

1st, good point. in fact, exposure to pollution for short periods was shown to cause a rise in cancer rates.

2nd, you can easily make alchohol in your house too. I have several friends who have made beer and wine. Or you can buy it for $15 a bottle. Personally, I buy it. If pot were legal, I'd buy it- I have diabetes and alchohol is bad for me.

3rd, This is mostly not true. Even a sip of everclear won't make you drunk (tho it will leave your mouth feeling drier afterwards). There are *many* alchoholic drinks that are extremely potent that taste like candy. A well made long island ice tea will knock you on your ass and yet not taste alchoholic. A puff of pot isn't going to get you high. People who are high on pot do not act like people who are drunk on alchohol.

4th, this is a good point. Once the eyes are not red and you don't smell like pot, it is hard to tell. However, they used to test urine because it gave a much shorter term test-- they went to hair and other things not to see how stoned you are but to see if you use it at all.

as for the rest-- no give us pot and other intoxicants besides alcohol. making pot illegal has absolutely destroyed the judiciary and corrupted untold numbers of police officers. pot prohibition is doing enormous damage to our society. it creates disrespect for the law. huge numbers of people smoke it anyway and the growing problem is so bad in california that the DEA is willing to say on CNBC that they do not even pursue people who grow $100k of pot a year.

You can get intoxicated in under 5 minutes with alcohol. I'm a big guy and I have a swig of port and everclear before I go into the bar to hang out with my tinier friends. By the time i hit the door from the parking lot I have a buzz that I can then maintain with bar drinks.

And finally- if I want to put hot dry smoke into my lungs- that's my right. No different than cigarettes.

I tried them when I was 16 and have had a total of two puffs in the three decades since then. Each involved hanging out with a crowd with pretty girls. Their reaction was priceless. They almost jumped me bodily to stop me from taking puffs. Clearly their cigarette addiction bothers them.

left out a few words...

making pot illegal has absolutely destroyed the judiciary and corrupted untold numbers of police officers [in south america and mexico]. It has done a lot of damage to american drug enforcement and police officers.

As far as I can tell, drug corruption hasn't hit our judiciary hard yet. The corruption they display is mostly political or corporate.

There are such things as pot brownies, you know. You don't have to smoke it.

Maxo,

Alcoholic beverages are gauged in strength so that people can define their own intake limitations in order can remain safe and in control. What gets you drunk may not get another person drunk. In actuality drinking becomes dose dependent. The more you drink the more you will need to drink to get drunk. This is also why alcohol can be addictive. It is dose dependent and it does have withdrawals. Regardless of the status of the individual on any given day, they know what they are getting and how they will react when they take a shot fo whisky or just a glass of wine. Even home based brew systems produce alcohol concentrations similar to their commercial counterparts. If you drink homemade beer it won't taste right if it is too alcoholic and white lightening is just completely un-aged
and unflavored hard liquor.

THC concentrations in marijuana can vary greatly and you cannot tell by looking at the material which will be more or less intoxicating. I do understand bud material versus leaf material. Still one bud can be far stronger than the next bud.

If you choose to kill yourself by doing something you know will harm you be certain and choose a quick acting method. Lung disease is not quick acting. The quickest killing lung disease is lung cancer. But most other lung disease are termed as 'chronic' and they are very debilitating. They are costly and they last for years. This country is headed for socialized medicine and that means that I will have to pay for your bad health habits. If people can get stoned by safely drinking the stuff why not do that instead of knowingly ruining their lungs and costing us all billions in unnecessary expenditures?

Your argument of vegetable gardens vs. pot gardens is fatuous at best. The pot growers I've known spent thousands of dollars on cultivation and grow lights, watering systems and fertilizer. You know, like farmers. You are talking about wild grown weed, which isn't particularly powerful, and certainly has to be cultivated and pruned to prevent it from pollinating, and therefore, not producing the buds that make you high. You are either talking out of your ass, or deliberately misstating the facts.

As to the costs of smoking being foisted upon the public, well, join the long line of people paying for other's problems in this country. When people drink themselves to death, you pay for that, too. When they drive recklessly? When we pay 600 billion on weapon systems, you pay for that. Guess what-you pay for the "war on drugs" too. Bet paying for my medical treatment would be far far cheaper, but, since I am gainfully employed and pay my own insurance premiums YOU WON'T HAVE TO.

I didn't even bring up the costs of incarceration, appeals, trials and basic level enforcement, etc. That argument has already been made far more effectively in other places.

And since you don't know me, don't presume that I want "street-level" drug dealing and culture to be legalized. What I want is to be able to buy, legally, a far less dangerous and addictive drug than alcohol. Thanks.

It's easy to pick on pot smokers because hey, its already illegal, and "they're just stoned." Right?

You don't even mention Tobacco, a plant that grows wild, is processed and sold to be smoked. Sure, we all know the health problems, but its a choice, no?

MessyONE-Maybe you should smoke some weed and calm down, I never claimed that life was fair, nor would I, but I did claim that logic should apply to our domestic policies. Sorry if you take offence.

Manimal... The pot growers you cite are people growing the stuff to sell, not for personal use. Certainly, I understand and agree that a well groomed pot plant will make nicer and more prolific bud crops. Still keeping a few plants so sustained is nothing compared to growing veges, at home, for your own consumption. A few pot plants should keep a person going for quite some time. That will not take $1000.00's or even $100.00's. Some seeds, good soil, H20 and the attention warranted to any hobby and you're in like Flint.

Regarding public expenses there are clearly some that exist with which I do not agree. Chief among those are those associated with tobacco and alcohol. That these exist is certainly no excuse to add another one to the mess if it can be avoided.

Making drinkable marijuana legal should decrease the legal consequences associated with its illegality now.

I do apologize for the cheap stoner shot. But, I find it frustrating that you propose a very workable and good solution to a controversial problem that some people feel the need to punch holes into. There are 2 problems associated with my idea. The high does not come on as quickly and it will be more costly. Those are the main reasons people do not like the idea. Well, if we're going to legalize the stuff to raise tax revenues then we had better do it so we raise taxes. If we're going to introduce a new legal intoxicant we had better do it as smartly and safely as we can. Because once done it won't get undone.

Lung disease is more than just an expense. It is one of the leading causes of death and tobacco usage is the most preventable cause of death in the world. Many lament the 5000+ combat deaths that resulted from the Iraq war. 1,300 Americans will die this week from tobacco and in ways quite miserable. Pick up your phone book and look up medical oxygen. There you will find many vendors vying for that business. Anyone, in any town, in any state in this country will find the same thing. That is how pervasive lung disease is and it is mostly due to smoking. And you would choose to compound this by legalizing another smoke driven habit. That is just not a smart idea.

Actually, there was a recently published article from Harvard Medical researchers that people who smoked marijuana, and only marijuana not cigarettes, had less instances of lung cancer. It actually lowered their risk. Look it up, it's true.

Your points are good ones-and yes, I did see that you were pro-legalization as well.

I suppose where we diverge is my thought that I simply don't want the gov't telling me what is and isn't "morally acceptable" in terms of intoxicants. I believe in drug legalization for many, many reasons, and my own enjoyment of pot is not the primary one.

The health concerns you cite are absolutely true, and cannot be denied, and I am all for developing better ways to injest the medicinal properties of marijuana-but I cannot stand the idea of Big Pharma getting some sort of exclusive monopoly on marketing THC "because it is safer."

Smoking does cause death, that is undeniable, but people are allowed to smoke-and drive fast, and eat fatty, rich food, and play with guns, etc, etc. I generally feel that "harm reduction" is a pretty poor argument, because so many things can be harmful, and that harm would be reduced if we simply criminalized those behaviors, but we don't because it would be innefficient.

Your points are well taken, however, and I will have to consider them carefully.

Also, I am a piss poor farmer, and would probably buy weed at the corner store if it were available. But, that is just me.

@Nightprowler67

I've read about that study, but won't believe it for awhile. It's too good to be true, as if finding out that Santa Claus is actually real.

Ok, well how about this. How come people will say they are against weed because it is harmful, yet more people die each year from prescribed "medically tested and approved" medications each year than heroine, cocaine, and gun crimes combined. Meanwhile, as you said earlier, no one has ever, ever OD'd on weed. People have drank themselves to death, yet that is still legal, but no one has ever smoked themselves to death on marijuana. And the statistics on prescription drug induced death are really not representative of the full spectrum because usually doctors won't admit when someone get liver disies from their colesterol medicine, or blood clots from birth control pills. I mean that new Guardasil HPV vaccine has caused paralysis in some patiensts who were innoculated with it, and yet weed isn't safe? That is the true fallacy in the debate over the legalization of cannibus sativa.

1st, take everything we know about harming the lungs by putting smoke in them from any source and ignore it all. If we want to ingest something it goes into the gut, not the lungs. The lungs are for external respiration, the expulsion of our waste carbon dioxide and the replenishment of adequate oxygen levels. The lungs are designed for and intended for nothing else.

And for patients who are taking marijuana to treat nausea? Taking a pill isn't so helpful if you can't keep it down. Plus, its HARDER to control dosage with pills such as marinol since it takes so long for the drug to enter your system. Your lungs are a very efficient way of delivering drugs to your system and so the effects kick in more quickly. Take a hit or two, wait five minutes, and then smoke more if you need it. As opposed to consuming marijuana orally, where the effects can take over an hour to set in.

Someone who's fighting cancer, AIDS or MS is not going to be too concerned with the dangers of marijuana when those dangers are negligible compared to the diseases they already have. If they are, they have the option of using the less efficient oral methods, or using a vaporizer.

The long term effects of marijuana are negligible. Even LONG TERM HEAVY pot smokers don't show an increase in cancer rates. COPD is more of an issue, but the fact is that marijuana users don't smoke that much material.

2nd, if they think that tax will be generated with smokable pot they are wrong. The stuff is literally a weed. It grows anywhere and it grows vigorously in all 50 states. Why buy it and pay taxes when you can legally grow it in your own back yard?

Growing good marijuana is not so easy and takes a lot of work. Most people will prefer to buy it, especially since prices will come down once it's legal.

3rd, if society expects pot to be used for recreational intoxication then that degree of intoxication must have some degree of consistency. Drink wine and you get an expected amount of alcohol. The same with whisky, or beer or any such drink. You will have some idea of how inebriated you will get with what source of alcohol you choose to imbibe. It is predictable. Not so with homegrown pot. Pot looks like pot but not all pot is equally as intoxicating. Some pot is very, very strong. Go to a party and have a toke expecting a buzz and you might end up half way to mars. Users must be able to have consistency in what they can expect from any drug use.

Its not so hard to control your dose with marijuana. Take one hit, wait a bit, take another if you need/want more. Even before you smoke it, you can judge marijuana by its bouquet and by touching it. If not, after you've taken a couple of hits you have a pretty good idea of the potency of your stash. Plus, if marijuana is legal people would have a better idea as potency could be printed on the package, or if they grew their own or relied on a friend who grew, they would have a constant source with a known quality.

4th, as of right now there is no way to test for degrees of being stoned. Current tests for marijuana only test for the presence of the stuff. You can test positive and be blitzed or you can test positive and not have used the stuff in days or even weeks. Regardless of how pot becomes legalized this needs to be addressed. We will need a calibrated stoner assessment test in order to evaluate degrees of impairment.

I have no argument here. Don't really care. I'm sure we'll come up with something.