the evils of marijuana

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Advocate
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the evils of marijuana

Post by Advocate »

It's common knowledge that marijuana is less dangerous than legal drugs but the government applies their tyranny against it. The government is the evil, not the drug.
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bahman
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Re: the evils of marijuana

Post by bahman »

Advocate wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 5:00 pm It's common knowledge that marijuana is less dangerous than legal drugs but the government applies their tyranny against it. The government is the evil, not the drug.
Very true. I read a study that liquor is more dangerous than other drugs even heroin after you consider all factors.
simplicity
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Re: the evils of marijuana

Post by simplicity »

Advocate wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 5:00 pm It's common knowledge that marijuana is less dangerous than legal drugs but the government applies their tyranny against it. The government is the evil, not the drug.
There is well known story in Zen lore about the beloved sixth patriarch, Hui Neng, a very poor and uneducated Chinese peasant who would become one of Zen's greatest masters [in Tang dynasty China, approx 618 - 900 AD].

After being in seclusion for fifteen years, Hui Neng returned to the southern area of China where he was born. Enduring months of walking, he approached a large Zen monastery where two young monks were engaged in debate. As it was quite windy that particular morning and the flags that surrounded the monastery were snapping in the breeze, Hui Neng overheard the first monk say, "It is the flags you see moving." The second monk replied, "No, it is the wind you see moving the flags." Hui Neng then approached the two monks and said, "It is neither the flags nor the wind, instead it is your mind that moves."

Well, as the story goes, the two monks realized who this man was by his insight [he was very famous in absentia], bowed at his feet and he become the abbot of the monastery for the next several decades [and still there are those that tell his story fifteen centuries later].

It seems that we cast all kinds of blame on all kinds of things that lie at the feet of individual choice. Nothing in and of itself is evil. Marijuana actually has some very important medicinal uses. And after all, you can abuse any substance, even water or air...
Advocate
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Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2017 9:27 am
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Re: the evils of marijuana

Post by Advocate »

[quote=simplicity post_id=511908 time=1621876843 user_id=21803]
[quote=Advocate post_id=511387 time=1621440019 user_id=15238]
It's common knowledge that marijuana is less dangerous than legal drugs but the government applies their tyranny against it. The government is the evil, not the drug.
[/quote]

There is well known story in Zen lore about the beloved sixth patriarch, Hui Neng, a very poor and uneducated Chinese peasant who would become one of Zen's greatest masters [in Tang dynasty China, approx 618 - 900 AD].

After being in seclusion for fifteen years, Hui Neng returned to the southern area of China where he was born. Enduring months of walking, he approached a large Zen monastery where two young monks were engaged in debate. As it was quite windy that particular morning and the flags that surrounded the monastery were snapping in the breeze, Hui Neng overheard the first monk say, "It is the flags you see moving." The second monk replied, "No, it is the wind you see moving the flags." Hui Neng then approached the two monks and said, "It is neither the flags nor the wind, instead it is your mind that moves."

Well, as the story goes, the two monks realized who this man was by his insight [he was very famous [i]in absentia[/i]], bowed at his feet and he become the abbot of the monastery for the next several decades [and still there are those that tell his story fifteen centuries later].

It seems that we cast all kinds of blame on all kinds of things that lie at the feet of individual choice. Nothing in and of itself is evil. Marijuana actually has some very important medicinal uses. And after all, you can abuse any substance, even water or air...
[/quote]

It's true! I've become addicted to both!
FrankGSterleJr
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Re: the evils of marijuana

Post by FrankGSterleJr »

Cannabis products are known to be a healthier alternative to tranquilizer use/abuse and therefor a potential threat to pharmaceutical profit margins.

As a U.S. example, I recall a then-president Bill Clinton deciding against fully legalizing (i.e. on a federal level) both medicinal and recreational cannabis consumption after having championed it (or, at the very least, its decriminalization) prior to his election. Much worse, as president he greatly ramped up the war on drugs — including against personal users, which needlessly unjustly destroyed lives — at the same time as he made it easier for bankers to become richer.

Other than to pander to the bloated-profit interests of the pharmaceutical industry — which loves the long-maintained pot-consumption legal obstacles just fine — there was/is no good reason (morally, ethically or national interest) to keep pot consumption criminal. On the contrary, there’s all the reason to legalize it.
FrankGSterleJr
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Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2011 6:41 pm

Re: the evils of marijuana

Post by FrankGSterleJr »

Advocate wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 5:00 pm It's common knowledge that marijuana is less dangerous than legal drugs but the government applies their tyranny against it. The government is the evil, not the drug.
Big Pharma is really the evil one. The industry has become morally and ethically corrupt. (Yes, morally; for one thing, the corporate decision-makers would hardly deliberately push their very addictive opioids onto their own children and grandchildren.)

Also unethical/immoral: whenever a Canadian federal government promises universal medication coverage (the last such promise was made following the last election, October 2019) the pharmaceutical industry reacts with threats of abandoning their Canada-based research and development (R&D), etcetera, if the government goes ahead with its ‘pharmacare’ plan. Why? Because the universal medication coverage would negatively affect the industry’s plentiful profits. Of course profits would still be great, just not as great, which apparently bothers the industry greatly.

Once again promised universal medication coverage was conspicuously yet quietly missing from the federal budget, released a couple weeks ago. We continue being the world’s sole nation that has universal healthcare but no similar coverage of prescribed medication, however necessary. Recouping R&D costs is typically cited by the powerful industry to justify its exorbitant prices and stiff resistance to universal medication coverage public plans, the latter which it's doing in Canada. However, according to a Huffington Post story (“Pharmaceutical Companies Spent 19 Times More On Self-Promotion Than Basic Research: Report,” updated May 8, 2013), a study conducted by the British Medical Journal found that for every $19 dollars the pharmaceutical industry spent on promoting and marketing new drugs, it put only $1 into its R&D.

A late-2019 Angus Reid study found that about 90 percent of Canadians — including three quarters of Conservative Party supporters specifically — champion universal medication coverage. Another 77 percent believed this should be a high-priority matter for the federal government. The study also found that, over the previous year, due to medication unaffordability, almost a quarter of Canadians decided against filling a prescription or having one renewed. Not only is medication less affordable, but other research has revealed that many low-income outpatients who cannot afford to fill their prescriptions end up back in the hospital system as a result, therefore costing far more for provincial and federal government health ministries than if the medication had been covered.

So, in order for the industry to continue raking in huge profits, Canadians, as both individual consumers and a taxpaying collective, must lose out huge. And our elected representatives, be they federal Liberals or Conservatives, seem to shrug their figurative shoulders in favor of the pharmaceutical industry — time and again. Considering it is such a serious health affair for so many people, impressed upon me is the industry lobbyists’ potent influence on our top-level elected officials — manipulation that our mainstream news-media apparently fail to even try to fully expose, let alone condemn — for the sake of large profit-margin interests.
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