Should cannabis be legalised? (Should cannabis be legalised?)

Name: tomdavis82

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Product:	Should cannabis be legalised?
Date:	23.10.06 (659 review reads)
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Advantages: It makes you high.

Disadvantages: It makes you high.

So we all know that cannabis (marijuana, skunk, pot, weed etc) is a drug. Let's just have a look at that thought for a while.
A drug is defined as a chemical compound/substance that can physically or psychologically alter the structure and function of the body. Cannabis, in all its hazy glory, contains the main ingredient THC (that's delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol for you techies out there) which gives it its main psychoactive properties, which in turn results in some of the widely known effects we all know cannabis delivers.

Now I sit on the fence a little when it comes to side effects because at the end of the day cannabis is the most popular recreational drug of them all, beaten only by tobacco and alcohol, but I believe better in the 'high' it gives you - no hangovers, no sore throat and leaves change in your pocket. However, studies indicate that cannabis may, in many strains of the drug, affect the brain and has been linked with long-term mental health diseases, so there's good and bad as with many food/drink substances out there.

To be frank I do not think there is enough evidence to prove whether or not cannabis is dangerous. I think we want to, because when you see some of the drop-outs of society sitting on park-benches giggling and chatting rubbish it appears to be linked only to a singular drug. But then we cannot take this view, because equally you see the hot-heads about town kicking 9 bells of crap out of a phone box/tom because someone got a dodgy look after 12 pints - and of course that’s been legalised.

I'd probably argue that a lower crime-to-drug-use ratio occurs when the user is has been smoking cannabis as opposed to drinking heavily, but that doesn't make it right. And what I'm getting at here is that although cannabis may well not be 'that' dangerous after all, it does contain psychoactive chemicals that affect the way the user thinks.

People may argue that tobacco in itself affects the way the user thinks in some regard (not chemically, but socially perhaps?), but I'd prefer to stick to alcohol for now, which does affect judgement and the way the user thinks. Bearing this in mind, do we need another substance on the market that affects our reasoning and intelligence? We already have enough social problems in this day and age. Legalising cannabis only makes it easier to waste away in a nice happy medium of security and enjoyment instead of making your own fun in this world.
I've seen enough people around me who smoke cannabis on a regular basis to suggest that medium-long term users don't suffer with cancer, liver sclerosis or brain damage, but instead just waste away in the warmth of a high instead of being pro-active intellectual beings, with a strong personality and vibrancy to their character. I know there are people who do not fall into this character, but so many do. And if we're looking to degrade society further into a puerile state, we're going the right way about it.

And onto solving the problem?
Well, if there are medicinal properties within strains of the plant extract them and use them in a solution of some form that is extremely difficult to inject without a secondary substance. Kind of like a lock and key scenario. With the remaining plants in circulation, crack down on the drug. Put it back up to a class A/B, make drug possession/trafficking punishments tougher and move forward. We don't need tobacco and we don't need cannabis. We need decent medicines and a decent society.

Summary: The argument continues... on cannabis sativa.