Maybe they were stolen from Arnold S.

Growing a pair is the last thing americans expect Berkly to do. With your degenerate behavior and liberal ideals you stand as a perfect example of what the rest of the nation would be like if dems were in charge everywhere. It looks like the marines need to send more than just recruiters to berkly.

Enough said.

But they've definitely got a pair and they know their facts. you probably don't even realize, that in a historical sense, by supporting today's republican's you are actually a socialist, warmongering, authoritarian, fascist. In stark contrast to the ideals the republican party was founded.
You need to stop thinking in terms of democrat and republican and figure out what the town of Berkely is really trying to say. Look at the facts jack.

I'm good to go with your post, Mr. Giordano, although I'll take at least marginal issue with your statement suggesting that the sun will continue to rise and set regardless of whether a pot-head or a law-abiding citizen rules a given American municipality. Forty years ago a small number of my high school mates fell for the idiotic concept of marijuana as a healthful drug, and today they're dead as a doornail--wholly unaware of the rising or setting of the sun--victims first to marijuana abuse, then hashish, then cocaine, and then acid. I miss them dearly, though I today occasionally experience a peculiar sense of elation knowing that I didn't follow their wayward emotional path, become strung out on drugs, and die a senseless, all-too-premature death simply because a handful of leftist agitator/knuckleheads--Jerry Rubin, Tim Leary, et al--thoughtlessly deigned pot somehow 'healthful.' When you're soon dead, Mr. Giordano, doubtless a conscientious, healthy-minded citizen will quickly fill in for you in your sudden absence, and you'll speedily be forgotten by all except God. And so it continues to go for those who inexplicably live for the mind-numbing spell of hemp. It's your choice, if indeed an early demise is your thing.

You fail to mention how your classmates actually died.  Since marijuana and hash have never killed anyone, and cocaine is the only real killer in your list, does that mean they OD’d on coke?  Millions of other people get through their drug experiences and live long lives to tell about it—probably about 100 million people to date.  So why were your friends different?

There are other problems.  Forty years ago, few people if anyone deigned pot “healthful”.  The medical marijuana movement had barely begun.  Glaucoma was about the only disorder whose symptoms marijuana was found to alleviate, and I think that realization came about in the early 70s.  Neither Rubin nor Leary said anything in the 60s about marijuana’s healthful benefits.  Rubin was more anti-establishment in his political focus, revolution for the hell of it, etc., and he didn’t really focus on marijuana.  Also, you can’t get stoned on hemp.  Hemp is a fiber producing cousin of the marijuana plant that has too little active ingredients in it to get a person high.  Maybe your friends had glaucoma?

Overall, I think some of the comments above and in the other postings on this page point to some of the real problems in the discourse on the drug war.  The effect of stark raving fear of non-conformity and dissent, occurring in the midst of a social conflict that’s seen as a threat to the status quo, is well understood by behavioral scientists who have explained the moral and political intolerance this kind of fear creates.  Political psychologists such as Karen Stenner at Princeton, and Bob Altemeyer at the University of Manitoba, have done an excellent job in dissecting these personality types.

Giordano

Care to cite your source for your "one-million people" statement, Giordano?

"Hemp" is a commonly-used term when describing marijuana, as I'm sure you're aware. If you're therefore in need of hair-splitting in your attempt to justify a drug that has played a key role in the historic degeneration of our general society over the course of the past forty years, then you're fighting a losing battle. You'll do better to stick to the subject and try to make a case for the supposed 'healing properties' of pot. At any rate, no one in possession of common sense bothers to argue these days that marijuana offers more postive than negative benefits. The case isn't even close.

I doubt that many give much credence to your loosely-reasoned polemic on non-conformity and dissent, and it's likewise that anyone outside a coterie of your closest friends agrees with your tie-in with marijuana and the former. Smoke all the dope you wish, my friend, though please don't foolishly attempt to justify legalization of a drug that serves little more than to encourage intellectual incoherency and ruin human lives. My sister was a prolific pot-smoker until she nearly died of emphysema in '86. My brother and a sizeable number of his friends--many of them now in their sixties--still smoke the stuff, and all suffer from dangerous lung ailments. Truth be known, my brother--once an astonishingly intelligent and keenly perceptive lad--is today little more than a hollowed shell of a man, his brain as dull and lifeless as that of an individual who has undergone a lobotomy.

"Stark raving fear of non-conformity and dissent," you say? Shades of 1968, Giordano! I'd long thought that people like you went the way of the dinosaurs.

Why doesn't somebody do a study? Oh, I forgot. Those people in the study would have to admit to illegal drug use. Too many, in the middle and upper class, are not willing to do that! Even though, they have lived normal lives for years, while using the drug, like others use alcohol. How many of your brothers friends smoke cigarettes, too? Studies show many smokers abuse other drugs. You, are obviously , not a scientifically minded person. You work on emotion and biased misleading statements. Evangelist, maybe?!

Your family’s health problems are truly unfortunate.  If you could encourage your brother to use a smoking device called a vaporizer, his lung problems would be greatly reduced, but it doesn’t sound as if he cares.  Since recent research shows that marijuana has little or no effect on cognitive abilities, your brother’s condition appears to be due to something else, perhaps clinical depression, which can make a person seem much less intelligent than they are.  Depressed people will sometimes self-medicate with marijuana, which offers a minor, temporary relief.

One-hundred-million, that’s the approximate number of people living today in the United States whom the government estimates have smoked marijuana.  Medical benefits for marijuana can be found in recent scientific research.  A summary of the research can be found at this site.

In American society, marijuana is viewed in a vastly different social light from status quo drugs such as nicotine and alcohol.  Marijuana has long been a symbol of non-conformity and dissent, making pot, its users and proponents, prime targets for authoritarians. One can glean from Stenner’s findings that intolerance to marijuana use is likely manifested through authoritarianism within variance boundaries of 12-to-32 percent, although the actual value may be greater given the terrifying specter that marijuana seems to pose to the ultra-right.

BTW, statements such as “degeneration of our general society” are the sort of thing an authoritarian would say.

Giordano

So, the war on drugs failed your friends, did it not? They were illegal at the time, were they not? That is the problem. Blame the drugs for the personal problems, and then, act like the people are not responsible. How many of your friends are dying from alcohol abuse? Letting the illegal part of society (drug dealers) control the flow of drugs, will continue to kill those unfortunates who cannot avoid addiction! And it will include plenty of the "kids" that the drug warriors are so eager to protect! Its is easier for kids to get drugs than it is alcohol or cigatrettes!

And those addicted are fearful, to even ask for help, because they will be thrown in jail, instead! The system actually helps kill people like your "friends". There are different ways to visualize it. That is for sure!

Why don't you let the FDA determine if medical marijuana is safe to use. I mean, if it becomes legal it will be produced in mass quantities and controlled by by big pharmaceutical corporations. If Marijuana should be used as a drug let it undergo the same barrage of tests that other prescription drugs undergo. You should do the same studies short and long term studies...(i.e effects on birth defects, women vs men, crime, tendency to try other drugs, auto accidents, etc..)

So if some drugs are not approved by the FDA after carefull scrutiny then the marijuana community should accept it if the FDA disapproves marijuana if it does so

If we can't take away your right to dispense marijuana as medicine, we'll take away your money to create AIDS medicine. As long as people are denied access to life, we're good.

Semper Fi

When you overturn Roe v. Wade, my boy, and do something to prevent the wanton murder of millions of unborns in the country, we'll listen more closely to your pleas for additional AIDS funding and research. Until then you're fruitlessly leaping for sour grapes.

Moreover, if you're dying of AIDS, there likely are many millions of Americans who'll argue that you've earned your affliction. It's seem very fair, and it seems like a very tough and unyielding viewpoint, I realize, though there's a great deal of logic and validity there, no?

The only one denying you access to life, should you find yourself dying from the syndrome, is you. After all, to freely engage in activity that might induce AIDS, is to commit hara-kiri, rhetorically speaking.

Everyone knows what medicines are for - drugs like viagra cialis levitra are taken to make you feel better when you are flat.

Tobacco, alcohol anyone?

For sure! And cigarette smoking releases 'toxic fumes". The comparisons have been made and the harm from pot has been lacking in the studies.

My younger sister, now 56, nearly died from emphysema some 22 years ago. A non-smoker of tobacco, she was an avid pot-devotee until she wised up while on a respirator. Care to tell me again that pot's "healthy," lang?

Still another anectdotal tale of terrible disease caused by smoking pot. There are other conditions, including genetic abnormalities, that can cause emphysema. Your ignorance, of science, is showing. The likelihood of pot smoking causing a 34 year old to have COPD is not reasonable or scientific. Emotions, once again!

To h-ll with the doctors. What do they know about drugs!! (sarcasm, of course!)