Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for November 16, 2017

Pretty much no drug out there as bad as alcohol, but we saw one way to make it even worse: criminalize it. Drives the entire trade into the hands of the criminal underworld and gives it a certain “forbidden fruit” glamor.

Repeal Prohibition! Again! For all the same reasons.

The moral of the story is: drugs (any drugs) screw you up. Maybe in different ways, but still.

legalize it all…in any case the war of drugs hasn’t worked! So if someone wants to buy crack or whatever… let him buy it freely off the shelf. Restrictions aren’t stopping him anyway, are they? No restrictions = No incentive for drug smugglers, No paybacks for crooked cops, No funds for fatuous ‘Save the children’ campaigns….

Anyone else remember that Onion headline: “DRUGS WIN DRUG WAR”…

Tobacco and alcohol were my “gateway drugs” !

Do you believe that keeping marijuana illegal prevents people from becoming drug addicts?

Do you, then, also believe that by making beer illegal we could prevent people from becoming alcoholics?

Marijuana, alcohol, opioids, and caffein, all have certain beneficial effects at the proper levels. Tobacco has no beneficial effects at any level.

It suppresses appetite, and for many calms “jittery” nerves.

I know a physician who tried to quit smoking several times, gained 10 pounds each time, and decided it was less unhealthy to stop trying to quit than to risk piling on more pounds.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone say “X has no beneficial effects at any level” and be right.

(See what I did there?)

Wow. It reminds me a little of how bacon and eggs became an American breakfast: marketers for bacon asked Doctors which was a better breakfast, toast, or bacon and eggs. That became a marketing campaign “Doctors recommend bacon and eggs for breakfast.”

Of course, “cereal is part of this nutritious breakfast” isn’t any better (cereal is the worst part of that breakfast).

If you think it’s stronger now you didn’t have my connections in the ’70s.

When I decided to quit smoking pot many years ago, that was it, no problems staying quit. It took 30 years and many many tries to quit smoking cigs.

Marijuana in of itself is not a “Gateway Drug”. The people who deal it have other drugs they wish you to try. Thus the “Gateway” was created by politicians who think Mexicans have always been bad people. http://www.drugpolicy.org/blog/how-did-marijuana-become-illegal-first-place Personally I have always felt that is was strongly aligned with Jim Crow laws. But maybe that’s just my “Reefer Madness”. ;-)

There was a connexion between malt liquors and cocaine. One lead to another etc. Though each type of drug had different effects.

I remember pot from the late 80’s – and it’s another order of magnitude (~10X) stronger NOW than it was THEN!

My “gateway drug” (the first one I ever used) was white sugar. And I’m still an addict!

As if I didn’t have enough reasons to prefer hot chocolate…

Wow… Butts really blew his stack, didn’t he?