Cannabis As A Legal Intoxicant

I'd like to clear something up about Cannabis, pot, weed, ganja, or whatever you like to call it.

I may come across as a die hard activist about it, but actually I don't think anyone should do drugs if they can avoid them. Meds, obviously are another issue. The concept of using medical pot for recreation has always been a bastardization of it, something our government should hang their heads in shame over the need for that to have come about. That has nothing to do with the actual need for medical pot. I'm talking only recreational use.

I just don't think people should be abused as we have, through prohibition (and alcohol in my view is as bad as cocaine and just or nearly, as dangerous). Unlike most of those against all this, I learned to have my opinion through research and experience, not just having a jaded opinion as many who are against it.

There has also been more interest by the public in drugs after our government has lied to use for so many decades about them. There are now doctors, scientists and journalists talking about drugs and the real information about them. Therefore there is also more interest in hallucinogens.

People like Michael Pollan with his book, How to Change your Mind - What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence,.discusses this. At the writing of this here, I'm still waiting for the audiobook to hit retail.

I go in depth about this myself in my latest audiobook, On Psychology. It should be available any day now on Amazon, iTunes and Audible.com. See the addendum at the end of that article about the history and systems of psychology and study of synesthesia and schizophrenia. It's a fascinating article. Even if I do say so myself. And I explain in it what that is so and how I know that to be true.

I don't say this in my psychology article but I'll mention it here. I do mention drugs like LSD in the article and audiobook, however. Years ago I was in a job I couldn't quit, couldn't get away from and had it for several years. It was stressful and difficult to go back day after day until finally I had ran out my condition of employment. It allowed me to get my degree eventually in psychology from a university, so in the end, that was good. But it was a stressful few years.

I would use LSD over a weekend sometimes when I really needed to escape but couldn't. So that come that next Monday, I felt refreshed and recharged, like I had been on vacation for an entire week. I would also use it at times to kill off a bad habit, or one I wanted to change but kept failing to. I was drop (take) the acid (LSD) alone, concentrate on what I wanted through the experience and find that afterword, There is talk nowadays about microdosing LSD. Taking low doses on a daily basis. The word is out on that for now but they are beginning to research it.

And I Found that I had indeed changed that habit after a single acid trip. Now I'm not advocating this method for people, just saying that it worked for me. And I admit, I was unusual in my understanding of drugs and psychology, even before I got a degree in it. Yet, I didn't go crazy, didn't lose my job, didn't need medical attention, didn't harm anyone, not even myself, and it seemed to me to only be a benefit to me. And to be sure, in the 1950s it was actually used in therapeutic ways. But our government, out of fear and ignorance, as usual, had made it illegal because of the 1960s counterculture.

Weed in comparison to those other drugs is pretty harmless, in that it doesn't kill like the other drugs can that it's been inappropriately grouped with. Grouping pot with heroin and meth, is ridiculous and always has been. Cocaine and cannabis are not physically addictive. The issue there comes not in physical but emotional. They are not the same thing. But cocaine is vastly more dangerous that cannabis.

Yet there are dangers related to legalizing cannabis, now. And oddly enough, they have little to do with the substance itself.

The dangers come not in the substance but in big money as usual and through corporate mismanagement (also as usual), in trying to push a product on us more than is good for us. They will seek to sell us pot soda pop, pot everything, now. Anyway they can make a buck and addict us just as in tobacco.

Except, as stated above, weed isn't addictive in the same sense as heroin or alcohol.

But does that mean it should be illegal? No. We will go through a honeymoon period for a while and then slack off some as it becomes culturally normal and we acclimate to how to use and not abuse it. As we mature into it's national use as we did alcohol after prohibition, or as a human maturing into adulthood and make decisions of use or abuse.

Also, in over enhancing the weed itself to powerful medical levels, something that came from the underhanded way that decriminalizing it had to go, we have it more and more in a far more powerful than necessary form.

All because our government lied to us ever since the Nixon commission said it was safe and he  as president ignored that because of his own personal bias. Just as we're seeing now with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom even the man who appointed him as said, was a bad idea. This had led since Nixon to a war on (citizens, not) drugs (as it failed in waring on drugs), where we found ourselves eventually with a very powerful form of pot that never appeared in nature.

I would suggest to anyone wanting to use pot, to seek the weaker forms, to learn they don't need to consume as much now a days to get reasonably high, to imbibe with reason as you would (or should) alcohol.

The less often you use it, the less it can become normalized in your system. Use at little as possible to enhance life, to "take the edge off" and not make it a life in and of itself. In that form, it can be very useful as an adjunct to life and not an end all, be all. Rather than use it and do nothing, use it and do something, safely, and legally.

We simply need to act like responsible adults. The ability now to eat THC (or CBD) is healthier than smoking it. Using a bong or water pipe (even better as it doesn't burn the substance just as a vape does not), is healthier. Vaping the oil or other such substance is better too than smoking it due to the heated smoke, the particulates hitting the lung's alveoli.

Let's face it, drugs aren't for kids. But if my own pre adult kids (or as adults) were to use a drug, I'd far more prefer it be cannabis, than literally any of our other of the scarier prospects out there, including alcohol. Deaths to cannabis are nearly if not completely non existent. Death due to alcohol, domestic violence, drunk driving, weapons charges on booze, etc., are astounding. The more we can get people to replace alcohol use with cannabis, the better we'll all be.

And then, there is the tax situation. Robbing drug cartels of their mainstay, removing crime from cannabis use. This isn't rocket science and states with legal cannabis are proving this to extraordinary degree. Including my own state of Washington. Where we are also leading the way on serious drugs like heroin use in needle exchanges and safe injection and use locations.

This is America and I've always been stunned at how our government continues to try to make decisions for us, that we should be making ourselves...if America is such a great and free nation.

Let us see it. Let us decide. And stop abusing us for mere political gain.

Finally, the War on the War on Drugs is Here

We are beginning to see the war on the War on Drugs.

That is to say, a war against the war on American citizens which has been going on even decades before the so called "War on Drugs" was officially begun in 1971, but goes back to an effort from as far back as 1914. Our more modern war on drugs is based in some very old and unfounded scientifically, beliefs.

Before I get into this, how does what I'm going to say benefit you, what does it do for you?

Here's the thing, no matter where you are living, you have to see what is best for yourself, your country and the world. Conservatives seem to see what is best for them, then justify what is best for everyone else through that filter. But what is best for all is best for the one because the one, needs to live  in that world of the all. Kind of counter-intuitive (not really) which is why many conservatives have issue with it.

We need to push for what is best and not just what our governments and people have been misled toward believing is best for them, when in reality it is best for a few and a few who control things, who have power, money and influence. The masses however are the people, not the few people. It's not just quantity over quality but it's quality overall of the quantity.

So don't let people put you down, speak out, say what needs to be said. Vote accordingly and think forward. Be proactive when possible or at least, reasonable. Progressiveness should be about progressing and we have as a world been regressing now for far too long. Look at all the wondrous things going on around us, breakthroughs in science and in advances in society.

Legalizing cannabis (pot), legalizing gay marriage, cracking down on money in elections, squarely facing the responsibility humans have for advancing climate change, on and on down the line. People are starting to wake up and realize they are suffering only to prop up corporations and government, rather than government and corporations propping up human beings.

But for now I'm only focusing on the end of the nightmare that has been, the war on drugs.

I won't go into a history lesson on this, but when Nixon called for a commission on drugs and they returned to him a recommendation that we legalize them, he lost control, ignored the recommendation and took his current paranoia at the time which we all know about now, which eventually led to "Watergate" and the bled over and into the eventual and official War on Drugs.

Whenever a government starts to see its own citizens as the enemy, it has to be seen that something has gone very wrong right from right and at the top as well in this case, deep in the past.

I've been pushing for the legalization of pot for decades. Literally since I was a kid, since I was in my mid teens, anyway. We've spent over a trillion dollars on the war on drugs in this country, something that should never have been instituted. But okay, it was.

What have we learned? We have incarcerated over 37 million people and it's not yet gotten a handle on the issue while in other countries, they have. They have in ways we would never before have considered, considering.

"We've been walking into the future, backwards for too long." Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Real Time With Bill Maher..

If we have a troubled child and punish them but they don't get it together, they don't figure things out through their being mistreated, then what do we usually do? We punish harder. Where does that stop, though? When do WE wake up and realize that what we are doing is only adding to the problem? We are then at some point making things worse.

We do become the bad guy at some point.

We have to wake up to see if maybe our charge, our child, needs something we aren't offering them. Maybe it is our lifestyle that is abusing that child. Maybe it is us who needs to change.

On a side note, this is especially true of ADD and ADHD kids who go through hell because their school and family wants them to adhere to what is considered normal.

Offering borders on behavior is good, but punishment at an early stage tends to be counter-productive because it is a counter-intuitive situation. Much like our war on drugs which requires those in charge to have intelligence, to observe and update their own behaviors. Not to keep saying we have to hit them harder. Because as some point, they have become the abusers. They, have become the addicts. Social addicts, addicted to a social behavior that is failing.

Regarding the arguments about children and pot, that really isn't the argument, so stop diluting the topic.

Adults are who we are talking about using pot.

As for kids they can get it now with no legal issues stopping them, as they are going to underground dealers. If we take the market from them, well? Just as today, where it's illegal for children to buy alcohol, they will still be able to get pot, just as they can now get alcohol. But we require alcohol to be regulated and it is legal. Why would we treat pot any different? Especially when it is an entirely different animal that is far less harmful that alcohol and actually has some benefits.

To alcohol if nothing else and there isn't nothing else. It is being shown time and again that there are benefits to pot. That being said, no, of course children shouldn't be using pot and it would be best as I've read, not to use it until around twenty-five years of age. Same as with alcohol. But that's just not going to happen. So let's make the best of the situation and consider the whole and not just the most delicate of our species.

But that has absolutely nothing to do with legalizing it for adults state by state as is not happening now, or nationwide as is surely soon to come once we hit that tipping point. Hopefully our leaders and legislators won't sadly wait till all states have legalized it before they pass national legalization.

With all the new forms of pot available we need to hold adults who have it legally, to be held legally responsible for it's access, in the case of children accessing it. If you have a lollipop pot confection, you have to know to lock it up.

Only an idiot leaves it around for a kid to use it. People need to be educated. Just as if alcohol were dropped into a society when they were ignorant of it before. As humanity has done to isolated communities all through history in missionaries and sailors having discovered island societies and suddenly brought them up to the world's most modern times and technologies.

If the recriminations are made well known for children accidentally taking pot, it will get around and it will settle down. How many people do you know now who don't lock up their alcohol? Except they don't leave around a mixed sweet drink that would entice a child. It's an educational situation and we will work it out. It takes being proactive, something Americans as a nation seem to be allergic to.

That doesn't mean we should continue a war on American citizens.

It means, we need to grow up and wake up and move forward into the future. Because as we're seeing in so many other things, as in the middle east, oil and gas drilling and fraking, climate change and so on, the future is rapidly passing us by.

We can either get on the train and deal with the ride, or stand before the train and be run over.

Choose your path. Choose it now, before it's too late. Because the rest of us, are going to move on without you, if you don't.