Where to get our knowledge
or - who to trust? The US government in the 1930s put out posters saying that weed made people insane, and kill each other or theirselves. And yet the same government created and made other drugs available for the public, and did things like distribute cocaine to inner city people and in the ghetto. They actually and truthfully did this, introduced it to the inner city, and are directly responsible for an uncountable number of deaths and addictions. I'm not a conspiricist, and I don't spend much time thinking about the innumerable evils going on in the world, but I don't close my eyes to it and I am aware of some of them.
There are also two main issues involved here. One is the legalization of all drugs. The other is the legalization of certain drugs, primarily marijuana. The second should come before any legalization of all drugs.
The main thing is to get a wide variety of information. There's been an increasing number of commercials and television shows about marijuana for a long time now. But it is also a drug which has highly varied effects depending on the indidvidual.
However scientifically the effects are well known. It is interesting that marijuana is classified as a soft drug. It is not an intoxicant, but a hallucinogenic. The main reaction which goes on when anyone smokes, or drinks alcohol, is an increase of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is the main way we feel pleasure, we feel it when we eat chocolate (a minute amount), we feel it when we are happy, laugh, and when one smokes marijuana the dopamine centers are triggered, and a lot is released.
This doesn't result in loss of brain cells. There are many varied types of experiences depending on intensity, duration, and many other factors. It usually lasts for at least a couple of hours. As time goes by the high changes. The first two or three times will be a different category of experience than the next few times, the first few months will be a different category and the whole first year is a category itself - in other words, during the first year it is decidedly different than years after. That's when a slight, long-term tolerance begins.
The dopamine does not actually kill brain cells, contrary to popular thought. It can injure mental activity in the following way - if it is over used. If marijuana, just like anything else, is over-used, it can have harmful effects. In fact if one smokes every day for a long enough time, it will have harmful effects on intelligence. If it's used more than this, which is already excessive, then serious damage can occur. The results of this are generally a slowing down and actually retardation can occur.
But actually smoking even more than once a month is excessive. Once a week is too much. Once a day for a while will not have a great detrimental effect. But if that is continued, then development is seriously hurt. A little bit of experience with drugs can help development, but not always, sometimes it hurts. And anytime some behavior like smoking marijuana - drinking alcohol is included in this, and much worse - continues on, into adulthood, then the person doing it is going to miss out on some development. Challenges are necessary for development, and a sober mind can learn, but a drunk cannot learn anything. So, just like alcohol, marijuana has its place in life. If it takes a prominent role, then it can be ruinous.
But not as ruinous as alcohol. Marijuana is not physically addictive. I do not have the exact numbers, but the numbers of magnitude of difference between deaths in cars due to alcohol in relation to those caused by marijuana, I am sure it would be astounding.
My grandfather on my father's side, and the mother of my mother both died of alcoholism. My grandmother when she was 54, and my grandfather when he was 74 (I think). They each died in a completely undignified, truly miserable state of suffering. Alcohol absolutely destroys the body and mind - when used like this. Once, on a route to feed homeless, I met someone named "Whisky," living under a bridge, with no food, but some bottles of whiskey or vodka, he didn't eat very much, and he drank still.
Alcohol destroyed the body and mind of my grandfather, who was a very intelligent man, who played chess well and piano very well.
So marijuana should be legalized. Since it is illegal, it is unethical to use it now - because there is no telling what crimes the money buying it is fueling. It should be legal to grow it yourself though. Why should it not, why do we not have that right? Tax law is said to be so big it could fill a small to medium sized library. We have all this law but the fundamentals behind it are often wrong, and it isn't changed. We can grow tobacco, we should also be able to grow marijuana. That's our right as human beings.
We should also be able to grow mushrooms, peyote, anything like this that grows naturally, we should be free to grow and use - responsibly. This is a delicate issue, and when I've come across people who are fanatical about the opposing side, they are quite fanatical. You can't discuss with them. But they don't know how wrong they are - about shrooms, mescaline, acid, and so on. People do not know anything about those drugs, and misinformation religiously, fanatically, it is the common knowledge but also worth dying over, by some people. My psychology teacher said that LSD was more addictive than cocaine, and it killed you and made you insane. He knows absolutely nothing, and you could not be more wrong about anything in the world. But it's such a hot-button topic I avoid it. But about any drugs, you have to actually do research, take in all the information, opinions, research. Read the research of the doctors who were first testing those drugs, and read the research of philosophers who took them and used them as experience in their philosophy. It's quite amazing.
