[andyt]

We already do - illegal to drive impaired, under the influence of any drug that impairs your driving, or just being too tired to drive. I don't think there is a blood test for pot that shows that impairment, no standard as to how much the blood level can be to show current impairment, since pot stays in your system for up to a month.

But the stoners are already driving, if they are, so how will legalization make this situation any different than it is now? You think people smoking illegal marijuana won't drive on it because it's illegal, but once it becomes legalized they'll all be out there crawling along at 4 mph?

Oxycontin is legal - it can really impair your ability to drive. What's the legal limit for oxycontin and driving?

[Curtman]

stratos stratos:

Okay let’s say we make pot legal like we have with alcohol. Will we also impose the same penelties and fines for those caught operating a vehicle while under the influence of pot like we do for those who drink and drive?

Don't make it legal like alcohol, that's a recipe for disaster. 80% of Canadians drink it, and:

$1:

Alcohol accounted for 8 per cent of all deaths (under 70 years old) and 7 per cent of all hospital stays in 2002, and between 1996 and 2010, total consumption increased by 13 per cent.

He estimates this translates to a burden of $14.6 billion on health care and law enforcement services, when coupled with costs associated with a loss of productivity in the workforce.

The regulations on alcohol are designed to generate tax revenue. The regulations on pot should focus on reducing recreational use and limiting access to it by minors.

[Curtman]

andyt andyt:

Oxycontin is legal - it can really impair your ability to drive. What's the legal limit for oxycontin and driving?

Oxycontin isn't legal anymore:

$1:

http://globalnews.ca/news/406186/oxycontins-gone-but-canadas-pill-popping-problem-is-worse-than-ever/
OxyContin’s off the market, its tamper-resistant replacement tougher to get. But Canadians are popping more pills than ever: In 2010, for the first time, Canada edged past the United States to become the highest opioid-consuming country, per capita, in the world.

And more Canadians are dying from it: In 2011, twice as many Ontarians were killed by opioid overdoses as drivers killed in car accidents, according to coroner’s statistics given to Global News. That toll has more than tripled since 2002.

In the meantime, publicly funded addiction treatment programs are overflowing with people addicted to publicly funded drugs.

The Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse is poised to release a slew of recommendations on how to tackle Canada’s pill problem. They’ll likely suggest making these drugs harder to crush, snort and inject, and putting an extra layer of scrutiny in place when physicians prescribe high doses of high-potency opioids.

There's plenty of other opiods that doctors are more than happy to prescribe though.

[Curtman]

This is interesting... Even if it is a blog.

$1:

On marijuana, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals fight back

Remember those Conservative radio ads targeting Justin Trudeau and the Liberals on marijuana legalization? No? Not surprising: They haven’t received much coverage except for this piece I wrote a month ago. The Conservative ads ran for weeks on end, although they seem (I say tentatively) to have stopped. It was an aggressive buy, it ran in Punjabi and probably in Mandarin and Cantonese, and it sought to make parents worry that Liberal drug policy would harm children.

Now the Liberals are running ads of their own on the same issue. (AUDIO LINKS IN ARTICLE)

Here’s the script for the ads in English:

$1:

In the past seven years of Stephen Harper and his Conservative government, our community has been flooded with marijuana. Justin Trudeau wants to tightly regulate marijuana, to keep it out of the hands of our kids and striking back at the criminals and gangs who distribute it. Stephen Harper’s approach has failed. We need a leader who is willing to tackle problems with solutions that actually work. Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are looking out for themselves. Justin Trudeau is looking out for us. He’ll be a Prime Minister with real priorities. Authorized by the Liberal Party of Canada.

I’d be awfully curious to know how extensive the ad buy for these spots is. I’m told they’re running mostly, but not exclusively, in suburban Vancouver and in the Greater Toronto Area. Readers who’ve heard them in paid commercial time should feel free to say so in the comments or on Twitter using #SawAnAd.

What’s significant is that the Liberals are riposting to the Conservative campaign; that they are doing so with a description of Trudeau’s policy (and the effects of Harper’s!) that many Conservatives would find surprising; and that they sound for all the world like the sort of critical “contrast” ads Trudeau had seemed to foreswear.

Readers who haven’t been following this barely-below-the-surface ad campaign on drug policy may be surprised to learn that so much of it is being played out in immigrant communities in non-official languages. They shouldn’t be. As I’ve written, there’s a lot of sensitivity in these communities around drug use, although of course opinion is diverse there as it is anywhere.

For an indication of just how sensitive, read this blog post by Justin McElroy, a Vancouver journalist. He crunches numbers from a recent failed petition drive to force a referendum on pot decriminalization in B.C. The drive’s organizers released a lot of riding-specific data on the extent to which their campaign succeeded or fell short; McElroy finds that in ridings with substantial populations whose mother tongue is neither French nor English, the petition drive failed spectacularly. Check out his last graph and the surrounding discussion for more.

In recent campaign-style videos aimed at the Liberal donor base, Trudeau staffers are asserting that the 2015 general-election campaign is underway. To a greater extent than I would have imagined, and a far greater extent than has so far been covered elsewhere, that campaign has begun by focusing on differences over drug policy.

[Curtman]

Marijuana legal in Uruguay as President Mujica signs law

$1:

Uruguay's President Jose Mujica has quietly signed into law the government's plan to create a regulated, legal market for marijuana, his spokesman says.

Presidential secretary Diego Canepa told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Mujica signed the legislation Monday night. That was the last formal step for the law to take effect.

Bureaucrats now have until April 9 to write the fine print for regulating every aspect of the marijuana market, from growing to selling in a network of pharmacies.

They hope to have the whole system in place by the middle of next year. But as of Tuesday, growing pot at home is legal in Uruguay, up to six plants per family and an annual harvest of 480 grams.

[Curtman]

$1:

'I like weed, and I'm a good person': Pot smokers fight stereotypes

(CNN) -- Lighting up a freshly packed pipe is just the kind of afternoon delight iReporter robcat20 likes after dealing with a stressful day at work as an insurance agent. Usually he'll put on a movie from Netflix while enjoying a good smoke from Stella, his pipe.

There's just one problem: Smoking marijuana is illegal in his state of Ohio.

Robcat20, who asked not to be identified by name because he fears being "labeled as a bad person" in his small town, says it's time that changed.

"I like weed, and I'm a good person," he wrote on CNN iReport. "I am a successful businessman, a loving father, devoted husband, registered Republican, active in my community with charities, church and I give piano lessons in the evenings to children with disabilities."

The 33-year-old is not the only one who wants pot prohibition laws amended. A recent CNN/ORC International survey indicated a growing appetite for cannabis, with more than 55% of people across the United States saying marijuana should be legalized. More than half the respondents said they have tried it themselves.

Ever since Colorado started selling pot legally at the start of this year, the lines to marijuana dispensaries haven't slowed down. Pot sales are blooming in Colorado now. Soon the state of Washington will be following suit, selling retail marijuana for recreational use. And on Wednesday, the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a preliminary vote to legalize up to one ounce of marijuana for recreational use by anyone 21 or older.

10 things to know about Colorado's marijuana shops

CNN iReport asked readers if they would consider buying retail pot if it were available in their area. Setting aside arguments around the medical efficacy of marijuana, these iReporters shared their opinions on the recreational benefits of the herb -- some citing increased relaxation, creativity and a viable alternative to alcohol. No current marijuana users wanted their names used; recreational weed is still illegal in most of the country at the state and federal levels.


From college students to seasoned computer engineers, meet some of the people who want their cannabis hobby legalized:
People are 'missing out'

Twenty-year-old iReporter carcar1 started smoking pot to help her fall asleep at night. But marijuana is more than just a sleep remedy for her nowadays. The university student from Allentown, Pennsylvania, works as a security dispatcher at her school and uses marijuana recreationally.

To say she enjoys smoking marijuana is an understatement. "I LOVE POT!" she enthusiastically wrote in an e-mail to CNN. "I like to smoke with a couple people after all my work is done and the day is over to unwind and relax. I recommend everyone does that."
Since she started smoking regularly in college, she said she feels well rested. "It definitely does not affect my grades," she said. "This semester I got straight As and I am also on the Dean's List." Even her parents and grandmother know she smokes pot, and they don't mind it. But she says they do worry about her getting caught.

She can't understand why other states are not going toward legalization. "I am very pro pot," she said. "Many people have no idea what they are missing out on."

Marijuana 'makes me a better person'

Computer engineer farmer808 has been smoking since middle school, when he says he saw his parents doing it. Now he's in his forties and still turns to marijuana after work to relax. Toking up is a family activity -- his wife and college-age children partake in it, too.

"My day gets better and my emotional health improves the moment I spark up. For me, it is a beautiful thing that allows me to be more of a positive person," he said. "I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, marijuana is a boon to my life and helps me treat my fellow humans with the patience and kindness they deserve."

Regular marijuana use on the rise

He'd like to see his state of Hawaii take the next steps toward legalizing retail sales of marijuana. He asked not to be identified because "there are many people who still despise marijuana users" and he worried about it affecting his career at a multinational company.

"I am a high performing, innovative, overachiever who uses marijuana to relax after a hard day's work," he said. "I have two college degrees and over a dozen patents in computer science. Like any habit, abuse leads to problems, but properly used in moderation I feel that marijuana is a boon to society."

Just want to enjoy the 'blessed herb'

CELESTIAL96 says he grew up in the "Flower Child Revolution." The magazine writer, author and journalist first started smoking marijuana recreationally in the 1970s while living in Los Angeles.

"It made a person feel mellow and creative, it gave you a high without a hangover, and it even had a spiritual touch to it," he wrote in his iReport.

But it wasn't until he relocated to the Caribbean to become an editor at a weekly paper that he started smoking marijuana regularly, about once a month. "I cut down on my drinking and my quality of life as well as my creativity as a writer took off," he said. "It just gives a very warm, mellow creative high that can't be explained. It has to be experienced.

"My relationship to the 'blessed herb,' as the islanders call it, is one of respect and awe," he said.

He says ganja, another Caribbean colloquialism for marijuana, awakens his mind and spirit when it is smoked properly. "I have never had a bad experience with cannabis," he said.

Now in his seventies and back in the states, he wants to be able to enjoy smoking recreationally again. "I think marijuana should be decriminalized and made legal in every state," he said. "I divide my time between Pennsylvania and Missouri, and wish both states would change the law on recreational use of marijuana."

Pot lets me 'be a productive citizen'

If recreational marijuana were legal, security guard and father Tokahontas (yes, we chuckled at the username too) says he would never drink alcohol again.

It's a bold statement, but he's been a firm Mary Jane fan for the past 30 years, smoking occasionally whenever he can get his hands on marijuana. He says it allows him "to get up the next day, hangover free, and be a productive citizen."

It sounds like his wife prefers him that way, too.

"She says that when my friends and I get together and drink alcohol ... we act childish and stupid and sometimes even furniture gets broken. Plus she usually has to fight with one of us not to get behind the wheel," he wrote in his iReport. "But when we gather to smoke a little bit, she says we are all easygoing and hassle free. Our biggest concern on pot night is whether or not we gave the Domino's guy the right address."

Even Lady Gaga knows pot isn't harmless

If pot were legalized in North Carolina, the "sweet leaf" would be "my wine at the end of the day," he said. "If pot is the gateway drug, the only drug it has led me to is more pot."

Benefits 'far outweigh' the downsides

David Harper, 65, says if pot sales were legalized where he lives he would absolutely buy -- although he's skeptical it will ever happen in his home state of Texas. The veteran and retired electrical engineer took his first hit when he was 24.

"Back in the early '70s you took what you could get," he said. Whether the marijuana was called "Mexican" or "Jamaican" or "Maui Wowi" he tried it. His college was lax about marijuana use, so he and his roommates smoked whenever they wanted in school.
"For me, the best part was the relaxation of both mind and body," he said. The former engineering major used to use it as a study aid because his mind would wander while reading his textbooks at night. "After taking a couple of tokes -- enough to get a nice buzz -- I found that it was much easier to concentrate."

He smoked pot throughout college, but stopped after graduating out of fear he'd get arrested. "This was unfortunate as, looking back, I would definitely say that some of my best [electrical] work was done during the early years of my career when I was using pot," he said.

Although he no longer uses marijuana, he is thrilled to see that states like Colorado and Washington are taking progressive steps toward legalizing the retail sale of marijuana.

"The benefits far outweigh any potential downsides," he said.

[pineywoodslim]

I think it's only a matter of sooner rather than later when marijuana will either be decriminalized or outright legalized with sales through shops in virtually all of North America.

It will mostly be a way of figuring out who wil be allowed to make money off of it among competing interests--like anything else.

It should be noted that much of the funding for opposition to legalization in California was from the beer industry and the pharma industry.

Hard day at work? Drink a beer or pop a xanax, but no pot for you!

[BartSimpson]

I'm personally just fine with people smoking all the pot they want. The few studies done on the topic indicate that lung cancer occurs with people who smoke pot and that the incidence of cancer increases exponentially if the person also smokes tobacco. With full legalization we'll soon enough see complete studies on the topic, I'm sure.

Given that the majority of the people who recreationally smoke pot tend to be people I don't much care for then I won't miss them. So, yeah, go ahead and smoke pot. I don't care.

[Curtman]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

I'm personally just fine with people smoking all the pot they want. The few studies done on the topic indicate that lung cancer occurs with people who smoke pot and that the incidence of cancer increases exponentially if the person also smokes tobacco. With full legalization we'll soon enough see complete studies on the topic, I'm sure.

Given that the majority of the people who recreationally smoke pot tend to be people I don't much care for then I won't miss them. So, yeah, go ahead and smoke pot. I don't care.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/1 ... 90836.html

$1:

Alcohol consumption is directly responsible for nearly 80,000 deaths every year in North and Latin America, with most deaths being caused by liver disease, according to a new study.
...
Analyzing age, researchers found that people between ages 50 and 69 had the highest death rates wholly attributed to alcohol in the U.S.A., Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba and Argentina. Meanwhile, in Mexico, risk of alcohol-caused death was at its highest after age 70 (though risk of death increased with age up until age 70).

We won't miss you either.

[pineywoodslim]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Given that the majority of the people who recreationally smoke pot tend to be people I don't much care for then I won't miss them. So, yeah, go ahead and smoke pot. I don't care.

I suspect you know many people who smoke pot. You just don't know they smoke pot.

[Regina]

Woooooooooh. Argument by proxy.

[Curtman]

$1:

Proponents: Government stifling medical marijuana research

Neither state legislatures nor ballot initiatives are the proper place to approve marijuana for medical use, critics of legalization say.

The Minnesota Law Enforcement Coalition quotes an advisory issued by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006. “These measures are inconsistent with efforts to ensure that medications undergo the rigorous scientific scrutiny of the FDA approval process and are proven safe and effective,” the advisory said.

The FDA has approved two drugs, Marinol and Cesamet, that “contain active ingredients that are present in botanical marijuana,” spokeswoman Morgan Liscinsky said.

FDA supports marijuana research in line with its drug-approval process, Liscinsky said. But the fact that it’s a Schedule I substance — meaning it’s regarded as having a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use — means the research is subject to stringent restrictions.

Among other things, she said, the research protocol has to be registered with the Drug Enforcement Agency, and each study requires a Schedule I license from the DEA.

There’s the rub, say legalization supporters, who accuse the DEA of squelching research.

“Research has been completely stifled by the federal government,” said Heather Azzi, political director of the pro-legalization group Minnesotans for Compassionate Care. States started to take the lead because of that, she said.

One of the issues is the Schedule I label, used to indicate a drug has “no currently accepted medical use” and a “high potential for abuse” in FDA’s hierarchy.

“Now the FDA a number of times has requested from the DEA to allow them to do research on medical marijuana,” said state Rep. Carly Melin, DFL-Hibbing. “They’ve asked them to reschedule it and no longer have it as a Schedule I drug and to allow them to conduct medical research, and the DEA has not permitted the FDA to do that.”

But Liscinsky said marijuana has been the subject of several rescheduling petitions since 1972 and that the FDA made its own call on the subject.

“FDA evaluated marijuana based on the scientific data available,” she said, and recommended to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that it remain a Schedule I substance.

Azzi said the DEA controls the legal supply of marijuana, which is grown in Mississippi. The DEA refuses to release marijuana for medical research that otherwise meets FDA criteria, she said.

DEA spokesman Joseph Moses denied that claim.

The agency doesn’t control the supply of marijuana, he said, although it does have a role in approving the research. The DEA denies proposals that fail to meet required safeguards, he said, but it has registered about 300 researchers to study marijuana or its derivatives.

He was uncertain what percentage of proposals the DEA rejects.

A search under “marijuana” in the U.S. National Institutes of Health website ClinicalTrials.gov reveals 374 studies in various stages. The majority appear to involve treatment for marijuana dependence or withdrawal, or a look at the drug’s ill effects.

But some look at the possible medical uses of marijuana. One, in the recruiting stage, will look at the effect of vaporized cannabis on spinal cord injury pain. Another, marked as “completed” but not “has results,” sought “to determine if smoking marijuana will reduce neuropathic pain without causing too much drowsiness or feeling ‘too dopey.’ ”

[Curtman]

$1:

Obama: Marijuana No More Dangerous Than Alcohol
With a majority of Americans now in favor marijuana legalization, President Barack Obama is now saying weed is no more dangerous to individuals' health than alcohol.

In an interview with the New Yorker's David Remnick published Sunday, Obama said while he believes marijuana is "not very healthy," the drug isn't as harmful as some insist.

“As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol," Obama told Remnick.

When asked if he believes marijuana is less harmful than alcohol, Obama said it is less damaging "in terms of its impact on the individual consumer."

"It’s not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy," he added.

Marijuana is currently classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Schedule 1 substance, which the DEA considers "the most dangerous class of drugs with a high potential for abuse and potentially severe psychological and/or physical dependence." Other Schedule 1 drugs include heroin, ecstasy and LSD.

Obama said his focus on reforming laws that punish drug users, noting the racial disparity in drug arrests.

"We should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing," he said.

In August, the Obama administration announced it would not stop Washington and Colorado from legalizing recreational marijuana use, marking a major step away from the administration's war on drugs.

In the New Yorker interview, Obama said he believes these new laws are "important."

“It's important for it to go forward because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished," he said.

[andyt]

Curtman Curtman:

When asked if he believes marijuana is less harmful than alcohol, Obama said it is less damaging "in terms of its impact on the individual consumer."

He's kinda got it backwards there - what the dangers are for individuals needs more study, ie lung cancer, psychosis, etc. But as for impact on society, legal pot would be way less than booze - way less violence, far fewer horrific car crashes, less cancer (except maybe lung) etc. Of course those also impact the individual consumer.

[Curtman]

andyt andyt:

Curtman Curtman:

When asked if he believes marijuana is less harmful than alcohol, Obama said it is less damaging "in terms of its impact on the individual consumer."

He's kinda got it backwards there - what the dangers are for individuals needs more study, ie lung cancer, psychosis, etc. But as for impact on society, legal pot would be way less than booze - way less violence, far fewer horrific car crashes, less cancer (except maybe lung) etc. Of course those also impact the individual consumer.

I don't know about that. Alcohol kills directly and indirectly.

There's no evidence anywhere for marijuana actually causing psychosis. With alcohol, that's kind of the point of the thing.

$1:

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/289848-overview

Alcohol-related psychosis is a secondary psychosis that manifests as prominent hallucinations and delusions occurring in a variety of alcohol-related conditions. For patients with alcohol use disorder, previously known as alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence, psychosis can occur during phases of acute intoxication or withdrawal, with or without delirium tremens. In addition, alcohol hallucinosis and alcoholic paranoia are 2 uncommon alcohol-induced psychotic disorders, which are seen only in chronic alcoholics who have years of severe and heavy drinking.[1] Lastly, psychosis can also occur during alcohol intoxication, also known as pathologic intoxication, an uncommon condition the diagnosis of which is considered controversial.[2, 3]

In chronic alcoholic patients, lack of thiamine is a common condition. Thiamine deficiency is known to lead to Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, which is characterized by neurological findings on examination and a confusional-apathetic state. Korsakoff psychosis (or Korsakoff amnesic- or amnesic-confabulatory state) refers to a state that memory and learning are affected out of proportion to other cognitive functions in an otherwise alert and responsive patient.[4]

Alcohol is a neurotoxin that damages the brain in a complex manner through prolonged exposure and repeated withdrawal, resulting in significant morbidity and mortality. Alcohol-related psychosis is often an indication of chronic alcoholism; thus, it is associated with medical, neurological, and psychosocial complications.

Alcohol-related psychosis spontaneously clears with discontinuation of alcohol use and may resume during repeated alcohol exposure. Distinguishing alcohol-related psychosis from schizophrenia or other primary psychotic disorders through clinical presentation often is difficult. It is generally accepted that alcohol-related psychosis remits with abstinence, unlike schizophrenia. If persistent psychosis develops, diagnostic confusion can result. Comorbid psychotic disorders (eg, schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders) and severe mood disorder with psychosis may exist, resulting in the psychosis being attributed to the wrong etiology.

Some characteristics that may help differentiate alcohol-induced psychosis from schizophrenia are that alcohol-induced psychosis shows later onset of psychosis, higher levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms, fewer negative and disorganized symptoms, better insight and judgment, and less functional impairment.[5]

Alcohol idiosyncratic intoxication is an unusual condition that occurs when a small amount of alcohol produces intoxication that results in aggression, impaired consciousness, prolonged sleep, transient hallucinations, illusions, and delusions. These episodes occur rapidly, can last from only a few minutes to hours, and are followed by amnesia. Alcohol idiosyncratic intoxication often occurs in elderly persons and those with impaired impulse control.

Unlike alcoholism, alcohol-related psychosis lacks the in-depth research needed to understand its pathophysiology, demographics, characteristics, and treatment. This article attempts to provide as much possible information for adequate knowledge of alcohol-related psychosis and the most up-to-date treatment.

$1:

http://petition.liberal.ca/end-prohibition/
Marijuana prohibition is costly and unsafe. That’s why the Liberal Party supports legalizing and regulating marijuana.

Stephen Harper keeps fighting a failed war on drugs that has resulted in more than 475,000 Canadians being arrested on marijuana-related charges.

And while gangsters and thugs get rich dealing marijuana, prohibition has cost Canadian taxpayers more than $500 million (est.) since 2006.

Liberals believe in a smart on crime approach, targeting real criminals instead of ordinary Canadians.