uhprentis
Active Member
I confess, I always get a chuckle out of any variation of the following statement (which I happened to see again earlier today), as I have an almost innumerable number of times before:
"...I HAVE NEVER MET A HEROIN/COCAINE USER THAT DIDNT START WITH POT."
It’s always some variation on a theme mostly used as the last resort for those who, apparently reeling in the death throes of their more direct (as well as outdated, non-factual, propaganda FUDspeak which is invariably disproven or cast as highly suspect in short order without so much as breaking a sweat) arguments that even if Marijuana isn’t that bad ‘after all’ it’s a potential ‘gateway’ to other bad things (specifically, the contention here is that Marijuana use can lead to the use of other illicit drugs in which the details about the substance and it's effects are less obfuscated or influenced by myths, legends, or otherwise by Big money lobbyists bent on preserving corporate interst at any costs, especially and preferably, with all or most of the 'costs' offset (be they monetary, or otherwise) to the Amreican people.
The first time I directly encountered it myself was about 20 years ago, from my parents actually, during a ‘technical discussion’ on the validity of the myriad of ‘perceived’ health concerns stemming from either short or long term use of marijuana. This, as you might guess, was prompted in no small part by my being ‘discovered’ as a user around this time by said parent, and as might also be expected they weren’t pleased. The conversation primarily consisted of my parents doing the ‘This is why Marijuana is bad for you (by the numbers)’ approach that didn’t quite work out as they had expected. I was ‘entirely’ prepared, albeit by accident in that because I simply felt better to such a degree while using that I became keenly interested in how it actually produces the effects on individuals while using, so much so that I’d invested significant time researching all I could obtain (keep in mind, this was well before the internet was publically available in any practical sense so this involved many visits to a several university libraries, the card catalog, dewey decimal system, the whole damn shebang….old school style) on what specifically was involved ‘under the cover’ as best we knew at that time. Additionally, as I preferred to continue my personal use I wanted to additionally confirm that all the ‘bad things’ about marijuana I’d been told growing up were true, and what those bad things (if any) meant in real world terms for a user. Of course, that proved to be a ‘happy’ surprise for me in that, even 20 years back now, it was widely held that these concerning marijuana ‘facts’ obtained during nearly all of the studies I’d ever recollected being quoted previously (and often are still quoted, even today) were improperly done, or worse still had conclusions reached that the data (which was again often already flawed in the collection methodology and was considered suspect) did not support in even an ‘implied’ sense.
What ended up happening was that I effectively ‘burst my parents’ bubble. They were, I’m sure, initially charged up and ready to do battle with the demon ‘Marihuanna” (1950’s propaganda spelling for effect), expecting an easy victory in their 17 year old son and likely felt comfortable in the belief that they had it straight, and I did not. They were about to sling every known concern that anyone had ever concocted (From the earliest days of yore when DuPont started it’s “reasons I hate Marijuana’ list) on the subject but alas, instead, in defiance (surprise, surprise…., surprise, you guessed it) I completely shot down every single argument that was held as Marijuana ‘bible’ (and, much to our collective perplexity, still in many circles those beliefs remain so) to both my parents and the general public in those days that it was bad and users were drug addicts. End of story..
The discussion went well from my point of view until…..
Me: So I hope you see from the details I'm educated on, that I’ve been seriously considering the potential 'bad' to marijuana and I didn't take this as lightly as you might have thought. It's just those 'bad' things don't appear to be as factual as had been previously indicated to me by teachers, TV commercials, etc etc, while growing up. It's the opposite, it seems.
Mom & Dad: Well, that’s fine, but the fact is that it is illegal and since none of us present here can reasonably expect to affect a chage to that fact, we cannot approve while you live in our house. Besides, even if it was completely legal, and as healthy as anything could be, it is still a 'gateway' drug and that worries us even more.
Me: Huh, gateway?
Mom & Dad: It’s a ‘gateway’ that can lead to other drugs. It’s commonll known that Cocaine addicts almost always started using Marijuana….
Me: Huuuuuh?
Hence the idea of protecting americans from (lets be PC about this and we’ll call it…
a much less defensible vice (for example 'ANY other illicit drug' would apply, but it has evolved since it's inception and over time has been applied to dangers regarding lifestyle choices or even an individuals behavioral choices) via eliminating a completely separate and much more defensible vice, marijuana usesingle factor that is simply perceived to be involved indirectly in the sense it acts as a 'gateway' to the aforementioned (and absolute less defensible, and in some cases, I’d even say ‘almost’ entirely indefensible) behaviors.
The first big problem that one finds with discussion to make determinations whether it is legitimately related (even indirectly) is that because it is such an abstract relationship (if it even exists at all) the onus is put on us as marijuana advocates to ‘disprove a negative’ which is simply never practical and in many case nearly or completely impossible. “Prove to us how Marijuana does not have a causal relationship is in effect what they do, when in the pure sense this is THEIR JOB to prove it exists, not for anyone to prove that it does not exist. It would be akin to arresting and charging an innocent man for a crime without not one single shred of hard evidence and only a ‘circumstantial theory’, and with no explicitly corroborating evidence to support the contention that he committed any crime at all. Better still, imagine you are an Atheist and thus you would likely hold the belief that;
“God does not exist, and that Jesus guy was just some dude born 2000 years ago who liked wine.”
Now, if we were to apply the same methodology from above to the Atheist’s contention that God does not exist (and, one would assume, we were also of the opposing view, perhaps we are Christian, for example - which I am proud to say ‘I AM!’ J), we would leverage our uniquely unfair advantage and explain to the Atheist that;
“As far as the law is concerned, God is real because you have not supplied adequate evidence to counter our contention that he 'does exist', and plus we got there first so we got 'dibs'"
Try to suppress any laughs for a moment, because it actually a near absolute that simply being first to the table to present arguments / theory revolving around any contested issue, will impart an initial 'buy in' of that theory that will not recur on subsequent and competing theories solely on the basis that anything else is is new, and typically the resistance to change once comfortable with the status quo can be considerable. Sometimes, the resistance is so compelling that nothing short of amnesia is going to alter how a person feels about things. This is especially acute when there is some kind of emotional tie in to a belief that creates stress when confronting the possibility that "Hey, have I been wrong about X all this time?" and certainly the open discussion of illicit drug use that could perhaps challenge a persons previously long held belief system (In this case, the basic idea is that someone was told from a young age that Illicit Drugs are bad, and they know that Marijuana is an illicit drug, therefore they interpolate that Marijuana must therefore be bad. These people have become numbingly comfortable with their belief system. One problem is that 'Drug use' for the sole purpose of feeling high (or even simply different than normal) is an alien concept especially to many older Americans who grew up in an era where propaganda films on marijuana, distributed by big name film studios, were released exactly as if there were o different than any other movie. We've seen the films and laughed, we all know the classic 'refer madness'. Well, if you grew up then, it was a real threat that had successfully gotten people genuinely concerned. It's not their fault they lived in the time they did, being fed the FUD Popsicle every time they accessed about any type of media available. There are still multitudes of people out there stuck in this mental quicksand put in place over time. They now have an unconscious aversion to anything that contrasts those beliefs; in fact, sometimes it is quite literally seeping into the conscious portion. You might for example have had the displeasure (most of us have, even if we didn't realize it then) of being witness to someone’s 'aversion', perhaps the person becomes suddenly irate, sometimes unreasonably so, while discussing what appeared to you to be a minor point of contention. The other party may even start reacting in a manner that is so wildly obtuse to what you are discussing (though that is really rare to get quite that bad but I’ve seen it, and BTW, on these special occasions I like to make a mental note about exactly how often I can manage to plan out my day to be as far as possible from where ever they are going to be.
The response being though so prevalent close enough to conscious aversion don't realize that they proving the contrary often to the point where is considerable This 'Well it's looks like we got our point of view communicated before yours, so I guess you won got the 'second fiddle' position' method has real merit in that there is always going to be at least some base return on the 'early bird' investment in that having a perception as the 'original' theory, and taking into account the resistance to change that we all have to one degree or another when we are comfortable with an idea, while investment would measurable returns involved , though none of it is of any benefit to 'widely help and accepted' so therefore, even though you don’t agree, you must either supply incontrovertible proof that he doesn’t exist…otherwise, the final decision will be that;
“God ‘legally’ exists,…..”
“You lose….good day sir!”
Now that wasn’t exactly fair to the atheist was it?
No, it certainly wasn’t, and it’s simply that:
‘It’s neigh impossible to 'disprove that something doesn’t exist' in practice’,
and in some cases such as the above atheist example, it is absolutely not possible in any ‘earthly’ sense whatsoever.
Now, let’s go beyond the above ‘unfair playing field’ issue arising from apparent inequity regarding burden of proof that either side is responsible for. Aside from that, everything might seem all well and good, except there is a new contention arises that I’m certain many “red-blooded-Americans” take a great offense to. That is, a patriarchal approach on behalf of our nations Government towards the American people is NOT what the founding fathers intended from my perspective, or for that matter from the perspective of any other American that I know well enough to call a friend (ok, so it’s not really that big a number of friends….but this is a quality vs. quantity conundrum and I’m sure all of us here today have an especially keen appreciation of the idea behind that.).
The only plausible motivation behind their making a case for marijuana as a ‘gateway’ to other drugs (Over the past 15 years, I’ve noted that the ‘gateway’ theory has been rewritten liberally in an apparent attempt to align it with a more general ‘one size fits all’ view, rather than associating it solely with increased risk of using other illicit drugs. Instead, Marijuana is now associated with a failure (while using) and complete lapse of rational decision-making ability. We all probably remember the some of the Anti-Marijuana commercials created in the early nineties? For example there is the one with a teenage girl lamenting about how ‘I smoked pot and got pregnant because I couldn’t stop myself after being high”. Oh my, oh my, it’s like ‘Total Drama Island” over here (my kid loves the cartoon show of the same name and I couldn’t resist a plug J).
Basically it amounts to this sentence as a summary:
‘When you smoke Marijuana, you increase the risk to act and make choices foolishly, therefore Marijuana is not only a gateway to other illicit Drugs, but instead, is a gateway to “questionable behavior” overall.”
Furthermore, taking action to directly reduce a perceived indirect risk to the citizenry at large purely on the basis that there is some ‘perceived’ link between the use of Marijuana and use of other illicit substances or otherwise as an indirect factor relating to increased risk regarding reckless behavior and poor decision making which by themselves are potentially aloneknown to be detrimental, (which in ‘all’ examples of other illicit substances, would generate concerns certainly beyond any posed solely by the use of Marijuana by itself, and would in fact typically involve a level of concern that transcends concerns with Marijuana by several orders of magnitude. This is an absolute in every example, even when comparing any other illicit drug to the most extreme and / or most damning discussion involving the various ‘De Facto’ contentions about Marijuana being simply ‘bad’ for us, MJ always looks a lot less ‘scary’ to an informed individual. Taking action specific to marijuana on the basis of the perceived increased risk and in the absolute worst case, it’s still only a potential and at best, can only be considered a factor in the most indirect sense.
In short, they altered the message to generate more ‘FUD’ impact, which in turn directly correlates to their support, in every sense of that word.. Oh yes, good old FUD…“Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt”. That bad boy has NEVER let those in power down and it doesn’t look like that will change in either mine or probably even in my son’s lifetime.
(Side note: Although the changes required to provide us with the ammunition we need to successfully wage a winning battle against FUD practices such as these are already here for us to put into practice right now, they are still grossly immature relative to what they can become, and most certainly will become, in the future. )
(If you didn’t realize it already, our ammunition is communication, in other words, in its current iteration; it’s ‘the Internet’.
Furthermore, these slightly modified warnings often appear so confusing that they are assumed to be entirely something different, even after having seen it several times. In the above teen girl example, I swore I was watching a Planned Parenthood commercial for the first time. The attempts to connect the dots like this from separate ‘bad choices’ to an initial starting point of marijuana is confusing, and the once again any ‘perceived’ increase in the risks associated with making a poor decision because you are using marijuana and thus might make more wrong choices has only served to re-validate the fact that it’s simply apples and oranges. Using marijuana has NOTHING more to do with Teen pregnancy that drinking a glass of water would.. If we know Jennifer smokes marijuana, and she gets pregnant while high, does that indicate causality….absolutely not at all? There could still be some causality there, but form the description, there is no explicit indicator of causality as absolute proof. If this logic were taken to its conclusion, one could also apply the methodology to something that of course everyone knows to be harmless, simple water or H2O. Now, just as in the previous example, Jennifer gets pregnant. She has noted that she drank water that morning and on the way to her boyfriend’s house. “Oh my, oh my, quickly call the surgeon General, teen girls are experiencing a perceived increased in pregnancy rates, so far all we know is they all had recently drank water beforehand.” So, what do you think as surgeon General the next step would be to enact sweeping legislation to classify H2O with Schedule one classifcations. No, obviously not. In point of fact, what we’ve been discussing in relation to marijuana is the SAME THING . There is no reason to consider Marijuana to cause anything we’ve discussed so far, not even on of them. Instead, they appeal to your common sense by trying to convince you to apply common sense to something that should really be a scientific method application, not a “If it sounds like it would fit there than it does”method.
You might think inwardly that:
“hey, that teen girl was obviously high on ‘the pot’ beforehand, it’s no wonder she got pregnant”
Or
“
The Anti-Marijuana movements focus today still pretty much remains the same as described above. It is still ‘status quo’ as it appears they still maintain the same direction today.
The Internet, in the purest sense, provides so many unbiased opportunities to become aware (via direct self education, or research, what have you) of the world around us which in turn generate something not really possible for even the most powerful world leader some 20 years hence. I’m talking about a bird’s eye view, ‘holistic’, or ‘big-picture’ perspective. It’s been happening for a while, and it’s happening now, and will still be happening some time from now (it may never explicitly ‘end’ so to speak) but even right now I’d wager comfortably that you could pick almost any average person today, and do the same thing fifteen (or ten) years ago, and assuming we get lucky with the law of averages and they both happen to function with about the same mental capacity then I suggest that the pick chosen today would be much more ‘worldly’ in terms of feeling connected enough to the rest of the world that there is at least a basic sense of the world at large that is not static and instead is dynamic (as it should be) because proliferation of information is inevitable. It’s 3G today, when yesterday it was telegraph. It’s Digital Convergence today, when yesterday it was transistor radios. It’s, well, you get the picture. It's new, it was old and there will always be more new coming down the 'pipes'. I guess what I am trying to say here is that we have hope, believe it or not, that hope is the Internet and all the things that the internet will become. In the pure sense, it's always going to involve communication, of course. That being said, how it will look, how it will function, how we will interface with it, and most importantly what it (whatever 'it' will be) can and will do to better the way we fit into our world, and conversely, how our new and improved 'big picture' of the world fits into our personal lives...these will all be things that although I certainly cannot envision specifics, I will say this, I am wholly confident there will be within the next 15-20 years, what will amount to an 'information age' renaissance era. This is not a prediction, but rather an educated guess.
Furthermore, I am equally convinced that the current focus / state of our Countries (and the world in general, too) marijuana legislation will NOT BE ABLE TO SUSTAIN ITSELF FOR ANY APPRECIABLE TIME BEYOND that 15-20 year period I outlined above. Though, this is in effect just an educated guess relating to the ever developing state of Communication Technology as well as the straight facts we known for what seems like (and in some cases has already been) a lifetime now. We’ve directly experienced the truth for ourselves, and we known what the real myths about marijuana are (basically everything you every heard as a kid about Marijuana in health class, write the opposite and you have a reasonably accurate textbook that one could use to obtain the facts.
Accounting for the communication explosion that isn’t expected to slow then factor in continued development of the communications - hardware, technology design, standards and protocols, software development methodologies, etc and I would be totally surprised if our intellectual maturity could get us to where I theorize we will be in 15-20 years.
The best thing I expect (and I really do expect it) is the end of Marijuana legislation PERIOD (except of course for tax on it, I hereby do make the obvious prediction that when it does go down, it will at it's inception, be the largest tax crop the federal government has, save for Income Tax itself. predict there will be because MJ is not the 'bad' thing it was made out to be, and we are all very much aware of that. In fact, if we could vote today as a nation, bam....Marijuana would be legal. in terms of a new information age 'renaissance'
is strong to our own lives better the world and will always find compared a much clearer high level view far more of the world around than any human on earth would probably even have imagined just a short few years ago.
All the above said, it’s still a matter of fact that today’s average ‘John Q Public’, regardless of whether or not he has the aforementioned improved big picture, will almost invariably rule in favor of what allows them a (albeit false) comfort level that makes them ‘feel safer or feel better’ according to the flavor of FUD they have most recently been spoon fed and are presently ruminating over.
(Side note: I certainly do not contend that this is in any way limited to the American People alone, because it is obviously a ‘human’ nature issue, not a ‘Red, White, and Blue’ (or even a weak willpower) issue as it’s certainly not limited to just us hamburger eating Americans.)
It’s evident when one takes into account the obvious Patriarchal motivation implicit to the above alongside the fact that governmental direct action (derived from Anti-Marijuana Legislation and / or ‘initiatives’, etc.) was motivated, at least partially, by the desire to avoid a something entirely separate from Marijuana itself (avoiding the risk of becoming involved with other illicit drugs and behavior) without any proof of explicit causality should indicate clearly that today in the United States of America, we, the people, are no longer in control of our own choices, including those that could not be considered harmful in any direct sense to any individual (other than perhaps ourselves, at worst) or to our native country at large. As I have explained, I DO SEE THING GETTING BETTER, WAY BETTER, in the long term.
Personally, though you may not believe me after this crazy technical discussion, but when it does eventually go down, I am not going to miss all this arguing about Marijuana in the least.
-Uhprentis-
ME:
I am a patriot, I am a Christian, I am an engineer, and I am an architect.
Oh, and I almost forgot…
I SMOKE MAD WEED YO………!!!!!
No….but seriously, I do smoke quite a bit actually.
You,….ehhh….got some kind of a problem with that?
Wanna step, Cuz?.
"...I HAVE NEVER MET A HEROIN/COCAINE USER THAT DIDNT START WITH POT."
It’s always some variation on a theme mostly used as the last resort for those who, apparently reeling in the death throes of their more direct (as well as outdated, non-factual, propaganda FUDspeak which is invariably disproven or cast as highly suspect in short order without so much as breaking a sweat) arguments that even if Marijuana isn’t that bad ‘after all’ it’s a potential ‘gateway’ to other bad things (specifically, the contention here is that Marijuana use can lead to the use of other illicit drugs in which the details about the substance and it's effects are less obfuscated or influenced by myths, legends, or otherwise by Big money lobbyists bent on preserving corporate interst at any costs, especially and preferably, with all or most of the 'costs' offset (be they monetary, or otherwise) to the Amreican people.
The first time I directly encountered it myself was about 20 years ago, from my parents actually, during a ‘technical discussion’ on the validity of the myriad of ‘perceived’ health concerns stemming from either short or long term use of marijuana. This, as you might guess, was prompted in no small part by my being ‘discovered’ as a user around this time by said parent, and as might also be expected they weren’t pleased. The conversation primarily consisted of my parents doing the ‘This is why Marijuana is bad for you (by the numbers)’ approach that didn’t quite work out as they had expected. I was ‘entirely’ prepared, albeit by accident in that because I simply felt better to such a degree while using that I became keenly interested in how it actually produces the effects on individuals while using, so much so that I’d invested significant time researching all I could obtain (keep in mind, this was well before the internet was publically available in any practical sense so this involved many visits to a several university libraries, the card catalog, dewey decimal system, the whole damn shebang….old school style) on what specifically was involved ‘under the cover’ as best we knew at that time. Additionally, as I preferred to continue my personal use I wanted to additionally confirm that all the ‘bad things’ about marijuana I’d been told growing up were true, and what those bad things (if any) meant in real world terms for a user. Of course, that proved to be a ‘happy’ surprise for me in that, even 20 years back now, it was widely held that these concerning marijuana ‘facts’ obtained during nearly all of the studies I’d ever recollected being quoted previously (and often are still quoted, even today) were improperly done, or worse still had conclusions reached that the data (which was again often already flawed in the collection methodology and was considered suspect) did not support in even an ‘implied’ sense.
What ended up happening was that I effectively ‘burst my parents’ bubble. They were, I’m sure, initially charged up and ready to do battle with the demon ‘Marihuanna” (1950’s propaganda spelling for effect), expecting an easy victory in their 17 year old son and likely felt comfortable in the belief that they had it straight, and I did not. They were about to sling every known concern that anyone had ever concocted (From the earliest days of yore when DuPont started it’s “reasons I hate Marijuana’ list) on the subject but alas, instead, in defiance (surprise, surprise…., surprise, you guessed it) I completely shot down every single argument that was held as Marijuana ‘bible’ (and, much to our collective perplexity, still in many circles those beliefs remain so) to both my parents and the general public in those days that it was bad and users were drug addicts. End of story..
The discussion went well from my point of view until…..
Me: So I hope you see from the details I'm educated on, that I’ve been seriously considering the potential 'bad' to marijuana and I didn't take this as lightly as you might have thought. It's just those 'bad' things don't appear to be as factual as had been previously indicated to me by teachers, TV commercials, etc etc, while growing up. It's the opposite, it seems.
Mom & Dad: Well, that’s fine, but the fact is that it is illegal and since none of us present here can reasonably expect to affect a chage to that fact, we cannot approve while you live in our house. Besides, even if it was completely legal, and as healthy as anything could be, it is still a 'gateway' drug and that worries us even more.
Me: Huh, gateway?
Mom & Dad: It’s a ‘gateway’ that can lead to other drugs. It’s commonll known that Cocaine addicts almost always started using Marijuana….
Me: Huuuuuh?
Hence the idea of protecting americans from (lets be PC about this and we’ll call it…
a much less defensible vice (for example 'ANY other illicit drug' would apply, but it has evolved since it's inception and over time has been applied to dangers regarding lifestyle choices or even an individuals behavioral choices) via eliminating a completely separate and much more defensible vice, marijuana usesingle factor that is simply perceived to be involved indirectly in the sense it acts as a 'gateway' to the aforementioned (and absolute less defensible, and in some cases, I’d even say ‘almost’ entirely indefensible) behaviors. The first big problem that one finds with discussion to make determinations whether it is legitimately related (even indirectly) is that because it is such an abstract relationship (if it even exists at all) the onus is put on us as marijuana advocates to ‘disprove a negative’ which is simply never practical and in many case nearly or completely impossible. “Prove to us how Marijuana does not have a causal relationship is in effect what they do, when in the pure sense this is THEIR JOB to prove it exists, not for anyone to prove that it does not exist. It would be akin to arresting and charging an innocent man for a crime without not one single shred of hard evidence and only a ‘circumstantial theory’, and with no explicitly corroborating evidence to support the contention that he committed any crime at all. Better still, imagine you are an Atheist and thus you would likely hold the belief that;
“God does not exist, and that Jesus guy was just some dude born 2000 years ago who liked wine.”
Now, if we were to apply the same methodology from above to the Atheist’s contention that God does not exist (and, one would assume, we were also of the opposing view, perhaps we are Christian, for example - which I am proud to say ‘I AM!’ J), we would leverage our uniquely unfair advantage and explain to the Atheist that;
“As far as the law is concerned, God is real because you have not supplied adequate evidence to counter our contention that he 'does exist', and plus we got there first so we got 'dibs'"
Try to suppress any laughs for a moment, because it actually a near absolute that simply being first to the table to present arguments / theory revolving around any contested issue, will impart an initial 'buy in' of that theory that will not recur on subsequent and competing theories solely on the basis that anything else is is new, and typically the resistance to change once comfortable with the status quo can be considerable. Sometimes, the resistance is so compelling that nothing short of amnesia is going to alter how a person feels about things. This is especially acute when there is some kind of emotional tie in to a belief that creates stress when confronting the possibility that "Hey, have I been wrong about X all this time?" and certainly the open discussion of illicit drug use that could perhaps challenge a persons previously long held belief system (In this case, the basic idea is that someone was told from a young age that Illicit Drugs are bad, and they know that Marijuana is an illicit drug, therefore they interpolate that Marijuana must therefore be bad. These people have become numbingly comfortable with their belief system. One problem is that 'Drug use' for the sole purpose of feeling high (or even simply different than normal) is an alien concept especially to many older Americans who grew up in an era where propaganda films on marijuana, distributed by big name film studios, were released exactly as if there were o different than any other movie. We've seen the films and laughed, we all know the classic 'refer madness'. Well, if you grew up then, it was a real threat that had successfully gotten people genuinely concerned. It's not their fault they lived in the time they did, being fed the FUD Popsicle every time they accessed about any type of media available. There are still multitudes of people out there stuck in this mental quicksand put in place over time. They now have an unconscious aversion to anything that contrasts those beliefs; in fact, sometimes it is quite literally seeping into the conscious portion. You might for example have had the displeasure (most of us have, even if we didn't realize it then) of being witness to someone’s 'aversion', perhaps the person becomes suddenly irate, sometimes unreasonably so, while discussing what appeared to you to be a minor point of contention. The other party may even start reacting in a manner that is so wildly obtuse to what you are discussing (though that is really rare to get quite that bad but I’ve seen it, and BTW, on these special occasions I like to make a mental note about exactly how often I can manage to plan out my day to be as far as possible from where ever they are going to be.
The response being though so prevalent close enough to conscious aversion don't realize that they proving the contrary often to the point where is considerable This 'Well it's looks like we got our point of view communicated before yours, so I guess you won got the 'second fiddle' position' method has real merit in that there is always going to be at least some base return on the 'early bird' investment in that having a perception as the 'original' theory, and taking into account the resistance to change that we all have to one degree or another when we are comfortable with an idea, while investment would measurable returns involved , though none of it is of any benefit to 'widely help and accepted' so therefore, even though you don’t agree, you must either supply incontrovertible proof that he doesn’t exist…otherwise, the final decision will be that;
“God ‘legally’ exists,…..”
“You lose….good day sir!”
Now that wasn’t exactly fair to the atheist was it?
No, it certainly wasn’t, and it’s simply that:
‘It’s neigh impossible to 'disprove that something doesn’t exist' in practice’,
and in some cases such as the above atheist example, it is absolutely not possible in any ‘earthly’ sense whatsoever.
Now, let’s go beyond the above ‘unfair playing field’ issue arising from apparent inequity regarding burden of proof that either side is responsible for. Aside from that, everything might seem all well and good, except there is a new contention arises that I’m certain many “red-blooded-Americans” take a great offense to. That is, a patriarchal approach on behalf of our nations Government towards the American people is NOT what the founding fathers intended from my perspective, or for that matter from the perspective of any other American that I know well enough to call a friend (ok, so it’s not really that big a number of friends….but this is a quality vs. quantity conundrum and I’m sure all of us here today have an especially keen appreciation of the idea behind that.).
The only plausible motivation behind their making a case for marijuana as a ‘gateway’ to other drugs (Over the past 15 years, I’ve noted that the ‘gateway’ theory has been rewritten liberally in an apparent attempt to align it with a more general ‘one size fits all’ view, rather than associating it solely with increased risk of using other illicit drugs. Instead, Marijuana is now associated with a failure (while using) and complete lapse of rational decision-making ability. We all probably remember the some of the Anti-Marijuana commercials created in the early nineties? For example there is the one with a teenage girl lamenting about how ‘I smoked pot and got pregnant because I couldn’t stop myself after being high”. Oh my, oh my, it’s like ‘Total Drama Island” over here (my kid loves the cartoon show of the same name and I couldn’t resist a plug J).
Basically it amounts to this sentence as a summary:
‘When you smoke Marijuana, you increase the risk to act and make choices foolishly, therefore Marijuana is not only a gateway to other illicit Drugs, but instead, is a gateway to “questionable behavior” overall.”
Furthermore, taking action to directly reduce a perceived indirect risk to the citizenry at large purely on the basis that there is some ‘perceived’ link between the use of Marijuana and use of other illicit substances or otherwise as an indirect factor relating to increased risk regarding reckless behavior and poor decision making which by themselves are potentially aloneknown to be detrimental, (which in ‘all’ examples of other illicit substances, would generate concerns certainly beyond any posed solely by the use of Marijuana by itself, and would in fact typically involve a level of concern that transcends concerns with Marijuana by several orders of magnitude. This is an absolute in every example, even when comparing any other illicit drug to the most extreme and / or most damning discussion involving the various ‘De Facto’ contentions about Marijuana being simply ‘bad’ for us, MJ always looks a lot less ‘scary’ to an informed individual. Taking action specific to marijuana on the basis of the perceived increased risk and in the absolute worst case, it’s still only a potential and at best, can only be considered a factor in the most indirect sense.
In short, they altered the message to generate more ‘FUD’ impact, which in turn directly correlates to their support, in every sense of that word.. Oh yes, good old FUD…“Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt”. That bad boy has NEVER let those in power down and it doesn’t look like that will change in either mine or probably even in my son’s lifetime.
(Side note: Although the changes required to provide us with the ammunition we need to successfully wage a winning battle against FUD practices such as these are already here for us to put into practice right now, they are still grossly immature relative to what they can become, and most certainly will become, in the future. )
(If you didn’t realize it already, our ammunition is communication, in other words, in its current iteration; it’s ‘the Internet’
.Furthermore, these slightly modified warnings often appear so confusing that they are assumed to be entirely something different, even after having seen it several times. In the above teen girl example, I swore I was watching a Planned Parenthood commercial for the first time. The attempts to connect the dots like this from separate ‘bad choices’ to an initial starting point of marijuana is confusing, and the once again any ‘perceived’ increase in the risks associated with making a poor decision because you are using marijuana and thus might make more wrong choices has only served to re-validate the fact that it’s simply apples and oranges. Using marijuana has NOTHING more to do with Teen pregnancy that drinking a glass of water would.. If we know Jennifer smokes marijuana, and she gets pregnant while high, does that indicate causality….absolutely not at all? There could still be some causality there, but form the description, there is no explicit indicator of causality as absolute proof. If this logic were taken to its conclusion, one could also apply the methodology to something that of course everyone knows to be harmless, simple water or H2O. Now, just as in the previous example, Jennifer gets pregnant. She has noted that she drank water that morning and on the way to her boyfriend’s house. “Oh my, oh my, quickly call the surgeon General, teen girls are experiencing a perceived increased in pregnancy rates, so far all we know is they all had recently drank water beforehand.” So, what do you think as surgeon General the next step would be to enact sweeping legislation to classify H2O with Schedule one classifcations. No, obviously not. In point of fact, what we’ve been discussing in relation to marijuana is the SAME THING . There is no reason to consider Marijuana to cause anything we’ve discussed so far, not even on of them. Instead, they appeal to your common sense by trying to convince you to apply common sense to something that should really be a scientific method application, not a “If it sounds like it would fit there than it does”method.
You might think inwardly that:
“hey, that teen girl was obviously high on ‘the pot’ beforehand, it’s no wonder she got pregnant”
Or
“
The Anti-Marijuana movements focus today still pretty much remains the same as described above. It is still ‘status quo’ as it appears they still maintain the same direction today.
The Internet, in the purest sense, provides so many unbiased opportunities to become aware (via direct self education, or research, what have you) of the world around us which in turn generate something not really possible for even the most powerful world leader some 20 years hence. I’m talking about a bird’s eye view, ‘holistic’, or ‘big-picture’ perspective. It’s been happening for a while, and it’s happening now, and will still be happening some time from now (it may never explicitly ‘end’ so to speak) but even right now I’d wager comfortably that you could pick almost any average person today, and do the same thing fifteen (or ten) years ago, and assuming we get lucky with the law of averages and they both happen to function with about the same mental capacity then I suggest that the pick chosen today would be much more ‘worldly’ in terms of feeling connected enough to the rest of the world that there is at least a basic sense of the world at large that is not static and instead is dynamic (as it should be) because proliferation of information is inevitable. It’s 3G today, when yesterday it was telegraph. It’s Digital Convergence today, when yesterday it was transistor radios. It’s, well, you get the picture. It's new, it was old and there will always be more new coming down the 'pipes'. I guess what I am trying to say here is that we have hope, believe it or not, that hope is the Internet and all the things that the internet will become. In the pure sense, it's always going to involve communication, of course. That being said, how it will look, how it will function, how we will interface with it, and most importantly what it (whatever 'it' will be) can and will do to better the way we fit into our world, and conversely, how our new and improved 'big picture' of the world fits into our personal lives...these will all be things that although I certainly cannot envision specifics, I will say this, I am wholly confident there will be within the next 15-20 years, what will amount to an 'information age' renaissance era. This is not a prediction, but rather an educated guess.
Furthermore, I am equally convinced that the current focus / state of our Countries (and the world in general, too) marijuana legislation will NOT BE ABLE TO SUSTAIN ITSELF FOR ANY APPRECIABLE TIME BEYOND that 15-20 year period I outlined above. Though, this is in effect just an educated guess relating to the ever developing state of Communication Technology as well as the straight facts we known for what seems like (and in some cases has already been) a lifetime now. We’ve directly experienced the truth for ourselves, and we known what the real myths about marijuana are (basically everything you every heard as a kid about Marijuana in health class, write the opposite and you have a reasonably accurate textbook that one could use to obtain the facts.
Accounting for the communication explosion that isn’t expected to slow then factor in continued development of the communications - hardware, technology design, standards and protocols, software development methodologies, etc and I would be totally surprised if our intellectual maturity could get us to where I theorize we will be in 15-20 years.
The best thing I expect (and I really do expect it) is the end of Marijuana legislation PERIOD (except of course for tax on it, I hereby do make the obvious prediction that when it does go down, it will at it's inception, be the largest tax crop the federal government has, save for Income Tax itself. predict there will be because MJ is not the 'bad' thing it was made out to be, and we are all very much aware of that. In fact, if we could vote today as a nation, bam....Marijuana would be legal. in terms of a new information age 'renaissance'
is strong to our own lives better the world and will always find compared a much clearer high level view far more of the world around than any human on earth would probably even have imagined just a short few years ago.
All the above said, it’s still a matter of fact that today’s average ‘John Q Public’, regardless of whether or not he has the aforementioned improved big picture, will almost invariably rule in favor of what allows them a (albeit false) comfort level that makes them ‘feel safer or feel better’ according to the flavor of FUD they have most recently been spoon fed and are presently ruminating over.
(Side note: I certainly do not contend that this is in any way limited to the American People alone, because it is obviously a ‘human’ nature issue, not a ‘Red, White, and Blue’ (or even a weak willpower) issue as it’s certainly not limited to just us hamburger eating Americans.)
It’s evident when one takes into account the obvious Patriarchal motivation implicit to the above alongside the fact that governmental direct action (derived from Anti-Marijuana Legislation and / or ‘initiatives’, etc.) was motivated, at least partially, by the desire to avoid a something entirely separate from Marijuana itself (avoiding the risk of becoming involved with other illicit drugs and behavior) without any proof of explicit causality should indicate clearly that today in the United States of America, we, the people, are no longer in control of our own choices, including those that could not be considered harmful in any direct sense to any individual (other than perhaps ourselves, at worst) or to our native country at large. As I have explained, I DO SEE THING GETTING BETTER, WAY BETTER, in the long term.
Personally, though you may not believe me after this crazy technical discussion, but when it does eventually go down, I am not going to miss all this arguing about Marijuana in the least.
-Uhprentis-
ME:
I am a patriot, I am a Christian, I am an engineer, and I am an architect.
Oh, and I almost forgot…
I SMOKE MAD WEED YO………!!!!!
No….but seriously, I do smoke quite a bit actually.
You,….ehhh….got some kind of a problem with that?
Wanna step, Cuz?.
