They probably couldn't fully legalise it altogether because (mainly in my opinion) of the UN. There's nothing like that to stop them from "tolerating" it as in the dutch system, and regulating the market. All it takes is a bit of declassification and a new attitude and it could be grown, sold, used, and any other verb really, without hassle from the cops and robbers alike in any country. 'Legal' is just a word but it has strong connotations. It's not that difficult for someone who's commited rape or murder to talk their way around proper punishment just using the right words in the right context. It's the national or international attitude that matters, the public opinion, and unfortunately weed seems to be at the shitty end of that. It seems like vocabulary and semantics are more important these days than the morality of a thing, which is a travesty.

This got posted in a thread a month or two ago, it's the UN world drug report from 06 and pretty much backs up the argument that says they couldn't entirely legalise it. But the UN does change its mind on some things sometimes too.

http://www.unodc.org/pdf/WDR_2006/wdr2006_volume1.pdf

It'll never be a lost cause to me.

Peace

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i'd rather have a life than a living

http://www.youtube.com/user/DrRonPaul4President

Check out the videos on that video channel, Ron Paul's views on cannabis and drugs is different but sounds effective. The 60 minutes interview is quite interesting.

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R. C. C. (Rollitup CFL Crew)

as long as hemp would threaten all the major industries we already have, it wont be legalized. it would knock too much food out of peoples mouths. Think abut it, if legalized, the tobacco industry would be crippled, along with the fabrics and textiles industry. Hemp is their worst enemy.

It's true that outright legalization probably isn't an option because of the Single Convention treaties, however, that's only as long as cannabis remains a scheduled narcotic. If cannabis were removed from the schedule, then the rules of the treaty would no longer apply.

Also, the treaty does allow for decriminalization of cannabis (like what's been done in Portugal).

Interesting thoughts on this, you all do have (I will stop talking like Yoda now).

I want to add that this is about a LOT more than just us being able to burn a joint, or bowl, or vapo, or even a bukket (that thing is crazy, btw...zero to baked in 1 hit).

For reasons touched upon in this thread already, every step we take toward full-on legalization is a step towards an eventual lessening of a lot of problems facing our society, and also the entire ecosystem of planet earth.

I know that there may be people here who are turned off by that part of that last statement, thinking its "hippe crap" or whatever, but seriously, we are GOING to run out of fossil fuels one day, and for reasons that are way too much to go into here, the cannabis plant moves us towards being able, a lot more easily, to rid our dependence on fossil fuels and also, nuclear energy. (super short example..it's is incredibly easy to grow, and you can make food AND fuel from it {among other things, of course}...if you are growing it for those purposes, its actually an issue that it can overtake your land!)

With that in mind, it becomes even more important for us to keep pushing forward with this.

My personal take, btw, on the best approach, is that we are kind of already taking it.

We may not be able to get Obama to sign off on legalization, BUT.... if we can win enough smaller battles to make it abundantly clear to anyone in power that not only do the people in general support legalization, but that there is already significant legislative momentum, and also, possibly even more importantly, industrial backing for, legalization, he would be a lot more likely to do it. i.e., I don't think DuPont, or Exxon, or IBM for that matter, give a shit if they are deriving their profits from oil based products, petroleum based products, or magic fairy dust based products, so long as they can see a genuine financial opportunity in a given approach.

One thing that could be considered a downside to that, of course, is that if a person is currently making money selling weed, their profits are artificially inflated by the fact that its illegal. If it became legal, their whole game would have to change. But there are millionaires to be made by that, too. That doesn't affect me, though. I have a total of 2 plants right now. And they are both being ravaged by something I have yet to identify. One doesnt even look like weed anymore.

OK... rant done now. If you read this far, thanks for tuning in!

Doesn't sound like hippie crap to me at all. Cannabis is a wonderful plant. So wonderful, in fact, that not so long ago where I live farmers were required to grow it. Not for "marijuana", because nobody had even heard of that made-up shit, but because we used it for freaking everything.

Now, we go drill up the ground and suck out the poisonous gunk that we turn into more poisonous gunk that NEVER GOES AWAY so we've got heaps of broken plastic toys and styrofoam cups and disposable diapers not to mention the toxic byproducts of making all this garbage in the first place leeching into our soil, our drinking water, and our DNA.

I don't know about you guys, but it pisses me off. With legal cannabis, we could all have access to a cheap, easily renewable source of fuel, textiles, food... not to mention the !!!

Hemp could be their best friend, if they let it. When you look at the pros and cons of growing tobacco vs. cannabis or cotton vs. cannabis - cannabis is the logical choice every time. You can grow it with less pesticides (lower impact on the environment and lower cost for the grower), it takes less processing than cotton to turn into fabric (also good for the environment) and yield per acre of cannabis can be 2 to 3 times more than cotton. Plus you can use just about every part of the cannabis plant for something.

I'm not sure how anyone who is even remotely keeping themselves informed on this topic could see Obama as a "resource."

Obama has turned out to be a sell out. He is actually prosecuting pot cases MORE enthusiastically than the Bush administration ever did. Obama had the DEA raid a medical dispensary in the heart of San Francisco that had been open for more than five years! And as far as I know, the feds are still pursuing the case against Ed Rosenthal.

The punk isn't a resource, he's a goddamn liability.

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"There is a general place in your brain, I think, reserved for 'melancholy of relationships past'. It grows and prospers as life progresses, forcing you finally, against your better judgment, to listen to country music".- Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize Winner for Chemistry

I think marijuana will be legal in the US within 10 years, every where I go there is always talk about it.

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I'm thinking of a Master Plan.......

there is a racial descriminis on this site, for those that don't know what that is, read all the forums on this page from top to bottom and you will find out who that person is.