Massachusetts decriminalizes cannabis

[A_man_about_a_dog]

Ultimtely it amounts the same thing, only decriminalisation is the cop out version.

Personally I don't believe that it amounts to the same thing. Decriminalisation would be seen by most as the state acknowledging the fact that your average cannabis user is no more of a criminal than your average Joe Blogs down the local pub having a pint. Legalisation, on the other hand, would be seen as the state actively giving its approval to cannabis use.

Like yourself, I don't believe that cannabis will ever be fully legalized, I just don't think that any good comes from the criminalizing of your average cannabis user. The time and effort spent dealing with people who only have small quantities would be much better spent trying to catch the people involved in the sale of harder drugs which cause far greater damage to both society and people's health.

[dissident]

THIS IS JUST SOME OF THE STUFF FOR SALE IN IRELAND SINCE LATE 2006. IT IS LETHAL AND THE GOVERNMENT REFUSES TO ALERT THE PUBLIC OR NEGOTIATE WITH ACTIVISTS AND PATIENTS. EVEN WITH CANNABIS USE ON THE INCREASE, AND THE AVERAGE AGE DROPPING (ITS NOW 14)! THEY'D RATHER ARREST US AND CALL US CRIMINALS!

[CelticAtheist]

Bongs only would be my opinion...

It would get around the ban on tobacco in bars as well....

[Boggle]

I am sick of the pro drugs lobby constantly holding up Holland as some kind paradise on Earth just because they are about the only ones on who have legalised this stuff.

I dont get it. Holland is an example of a country which has decriminalised the stuff - and in discussing the issue you dont want to talk about it???
You obviously have your mind made up with obviously no knowledge of the subject and wish to hold your hand over your ears and scream NA-NA-NANAA-NA when people start pointing this out...

A bit of extra policing would be needed. I have already mentioned some suggestions on how policing could be improved. Yes I would tolerate it and support it and profiteer from it.

To borrow the tone from our great leader - these things would be great but how would you pay for it?? Anyway, I'd rather extra policing went to tackling violent and gang crime than wasting their lives chasing a few lads for the crime of having a splif in the evening.

Some suggestions to improve drug enforcement include, allowing for random police searches without warrants. Creations of a rewarding snitch culture. Individuals would be paid sums of money by the government for informing on friends and neighbours dealing, growing or using Cannabis or other drugs. And of course longer prison sentences for drughandlers.

Welcome to the police state. Try getting public suppport for unwarranted police searches of perople and property.

[The OD]

Cannabis is freely available already. Are there really that many people who would use cannabis, but don't, because it's illegal?

Actually, I like cannabis but I really dont fancy a charge of being a drug user so I have avoided it for many years bar the odd stag night in Amsterdam?

I wouldnt have been a prolific user, unlike many people, I am well aware of the negative aspects of it (I found in college that more than a few spliffs a week had a serious impact on my course work for a start), but seeing as I dont drink a huge amount either (although I technically 'binge drink' when I do) I'm not sure I am 'typical' in that regard?

As pointed out above, it cant be good for mental health, but thats if you are talking about the type of useds I used to know, people who smoke every single night. If you did that with alcohol you would pretty quickly end up in an AA meeting. It may not be physically addicitive, but then gambling isnt technically physically addictive either (although the effect of the rush on the brain can be) and as such its still possible to be psychologically dependant on it. I'm phychologically depend on spearmint chewing gum, panic if I dont have a pack to hand. I'm physically addicted to cigarettes. Never leave home without either.

I still think that it should be legalised. If it was, I still cant see me running down the local spliffonists to buy a pack of doobies though.

I might have a puff or two now and again though?

Until then, unless someone else gets married, I guess I wont be partaking of it anytime soon again?

[JCSkinner]

Cannabis should be a legal, taxable product permitted for licensed sale to adults and subject to the same legal caveats that circumvent alcohol usage, such as no driving, operating heavy machinery, etc.
In this booze-sozzled country we are currently in a preposterous position whereby we suffer major social ills from the legal availability of one intoxicant, yet a clearly cleaner, less damaging intoxicant is currently illegal and criminalising to the user.
This is a direct result, to my mind, of the ongoing and never-ending lobbying of politicians by their good friends the publicans.
If people are concerned about cannabis being a gateway to substances like cocaine and heroin, then let us legalise cannabis and take it out of the hard drugs milieu.
If people are concerned about mental health provision in Ireland, let them campaign to hold Mary Harney to account for the psychiatric services she repeatedly promised and failed to deliver.
It's time people woke up from their 'Drugs are baaaaaad, mmkay?' haze and realised the realities of the substances under discussion. Cannabis is an inordinately useful plant, which in addition to providing a safer, less aggressive form of intoxication to alcohol, can also provide many useful by-products as well as functioning as a treatment for a number of long-term illnesses.
I suspect that in twenty years time, this debate will be defunct. Police forces the world over are much more concerned about intercepting cocaine cargos such as was found in Castletownbere last week than they are in busting people for a bag of weed in their pocket.
Increasingly, US states and European ones too are moving towards varying degrees of decriminalisation and tolerance towards cannabis use.
I believe in a decade or two, cannabis will be legally for sale, taxed and a useful source of revenue to the state, all throughout the Western world.

[jcdf]

Cannabis should remain illegal.

A recent book by neuroscientist and psychiatrist Daniel G. Amen shows the damage caused by Cannabis to the human brain. Professor Amen has been taking SPECT scans of various peoples brains in order to study behaviour such as anxiety, anger or impulsiveness and how such characteristics are linked to specific parts of the brain. He has found that some psychological problems are in fact biological.
Like other recreational drugs, cannabis squeezes down blood flow, leading to brain cell damage and death. Dr Amen's research has found that it particularly affects the temporal lobes. This area is responsible for memory, he believes this could be a reason for the poor memory and lack of motivation that chronic users often report?