The dark side of legalization of recreational marijuana

[Michie]

Marijuana | Unsplash/CRYSTALWEED cannabis

Twenty-four states have already legalized recreational marijuana (pot) and four states, Florida, Idaho, Nebraska and South Dakota, have ballot initiatives in the 2024 election to do the same. Big money is being spent to push these ballot initiatives because even more big money will be made. Whatever you have heard about the benefits of legal recreational pot, there is a destructive dark underside being covered up.

The following consequences will occur when recreational pot is legalized:

1. Increased highway accidents causing death and injury by drivers high on pot.[1]

2. Increased ER visits from drug overdoses in children, students and adults.[2]

3. Increases in serious crime as more drug lords move in to undercut the expensive legal product.[3]

4. Brain damage to developing minds.[4]

5. Farmland gobbled up to grow pot instead of food crops.

6. Increased tax revenue will mainly grow new government programs dealing with addiction, health and safety. [5]

7. Black market sales of more dangerous drugs will increase because of the gateway nature of Marijuana. [6]

To be clear, most states have legalized "medical" marijuana for the sick. This editorial is about recreational marijuana.

"Recreational" marijuana’s sole purpose is to get high not to treat a medical condition. Also, please do not compare recreational marijuana use with alcohol. People do not necessarily drink to get drunk, whereas recreational pot users’ main goal is to get high.

Continued below.

The dark side of legalization of recreational marijuana

Whatever you have heard about the benefits of legal recreational pot, there is a destructive dark underside being covered up

www.christianpost.com

 

[eleos1954]

Marijuana | Unsplash/CRYSTALWEED cannabis

Twenty-four states have already legalized recreational marijuana (pot) and four states, Florida, Idaho, Nebraska and South Dakota, have ballot initiatives in the 2024 election to do the same. Big money is being spent to push these ballot initiatives because even more big money will be made. Whatever you have heard about the benefits of legal recreational pot, there is a destructive dark underside being covered up.

The following consequences will occur when recreational pot is legalized:

1. Increased highway accidents causing death and injury by drivers high on pot.[1]

2. Increased ER visits from drug overdoses in children, students and adults.[2]

3. Increases in serious crime as more drug lords move in to undercut the expensive legal product.[3]

4. Brain damage to developing minds.[4]

5. Farmland gobbled up to grow pot instead of food crops.

6. Increased tax revenue will mainly grow new government programs dealing with addiction, health and safety. [5]

7. Black market sales of more dangerous drugs will increase because of the gateway nature of Marijuana. [6]

To be clear, most states have legalized "medical" marijuana for the sick. This editorial is about recreational marijuana.

"Recreational" marijuana’s sole purpose is to get high not to treat a medical condition. Also, please do not compare recreational marijuana use with alcohol. People do not necessarily drink to get drunk, whereas recreational pot users’ main goal is to get high.

Continued below.

The dark side of legalization of recreational marijuana

Whatever you have heard about the benefits of legal recreational pot, there is a destructive dark underside being covered up

www.christianpost.com

Both pot and alcohol effect the mind. Neither are good for us. Your term "recreational" can apply to both alcohol and/or pot ... or any other drug for that matter. I know some people that exclusively use pot to help them sleep at night just as some people might have a drink of alcohol to do the same.

The problem with alcohol and/or drugs is not the substances themselves ... it is the frequency of use of them ... it is the abuse of them and the danger of becoming addicted.

We can not control the abuse ... that is a individual thing and unfortunately some do in deed become addicted.

I think using drugs and/or alcohol should be legal and not a crime within itself ... however ... if a crime is committed during their use then it does not excused the crime committed.

We crossed the line when alcohol became legal ... alcohol is a drug.

The question is ... How far do we go in controlling people's lives as far as what they choose to do?

 

[Richard T]

8. When getting high is your idol, your life and those around you will suffer. This does not apply to all users but thee are plenty of people that basically live to get high.
I had a Christian friend that used to smoke weed fairly often. One time after getting high, he asked God to show him if pot was wrong. He went to church stoned and part of the sermon was on Achan in the bible. Because my friend's name was quite similar to Achan, he really did give up pot. Democrats like it on the ballot because it attracts more liberal voters to the polls. South Dakota defeated this in 2022. by 53%. Given higher turnout I imagine it will be defeated again there.

 

[FireDragon76]

Alot of those assertions have proven to be untrue or unfounded. Cannabis doesn't use up much farmland. The addictive potential of marijuana is lower than many other legal substances. And crime usually has gone down in states that have liberalized their marijuana laws.

Though I don't personally use marijuana (or alcohol for that matter), I live in a state (Florida), where recreational use in adults isn't that rare and it's not hard to obtain (especially for medical reasons). I certainly see less social problems from marijuana use than from alcohol. Everything I've read has said that legalization of marijuana is a net positive, where the benefits outweigh the harms. Therefore, decriminalization seems to be a good harm-reduction strategy.

 

[xser88]

Marijuana | Unsplash/CRYSTALWEED cannabis

Twenty-four states have already legalized recreational marijuana (pot) and four states, Florida, Idaho, Nebraska and South Dakota, have ballot initiatives in the 2024 election to do the same. Big money is being spent to push these ballot initiatives because even more big money will be made. Whatever you have heard about the benefits of legal recreational pot, there is a destructive dark underside being covered up.

The following consequences will occur when recreational pot is legalized:

1. Increased highway accidents causing death and injury by drivers high on pot.[1]

2. Increased ER visits from drug overdoses in children, students and adults.[2]

3. Increases in serious crime as more drug lords move in to undercut the expensive legal product.[3]

4. Brain damage to developing minds.[4]

5. Farmland gobbled up to grow pot instead of food crops.

6. Increased tax revenue will mainly grow new government programs dealing with addiction, health and safety. [5]

7. Black market sales of more dangerous drugs will increase because of the gateway nature of Marijuana. [6]

To be clear, most states have legalized "medical" marijuana for the sick. This editorial is about recreational marijuana.

"Recreational" marijuana’s sole purpose is to get high not to treat a medical condition. Also, please do not compare recreational marijuana use with alcohol. People do not necessarily drink to get drunk, whereas recreational pot users’ main goal is to get high.

Continued below.

The dark side of legalization of recreational marijuana

Whatever you have heard about the benefits of legal recreational pot, there is a destructive dark underside being covered up

www.christianpost.com

Is there data to support these claims, or are you saying these are the potential dangers? California first legalized medical cannabis in 1996, and in 2012, Colorado and Washington legalized cannabis for recreational use. States considering decriminalizing the weeds have been monitoring the states that have legalized it for economic, criminal, social, and other effects. Now we know from Nixon's domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman that in 1968 President Nixon war on drugs was created as a political tool to fight blacks and hippies. He said, "the Nixon White House had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,”

“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

President Nixon instituted the federal government’s drug classification system, and he knowingly wrongfully designated marijuana in Schedule I, among the substances like heroin believed to be most abused and deemed as having no proven medical value. The government was doing this to demonize and destroy the lives of blacks, and tree-hugging make love, not war white liberals. Nixon’s tactics also hampered progress in research on the therapeutic potential of marijuana over the last five decades. With this better understanding of cannabis, the Department of Justice said that the attorney general was circulating a “proposal to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III.”

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