Alcohol vs. Marijuana - Page 5

"Marijuana and alcohol were both developed at around the same time. Marijuana was first produced as hemp in Thailand and China and was one of the earliest domesticates. It was grown for its fiber uses as well as the cheap source of protein that comes from the seeds. It is also possible that they knew they could get high from it. Alcohol was also produced in an early era. It was produced in the Mayan empire as "corn beer" and was used to pay workers for the construction of buildings. Actually the first theory towards drug use relates towards mushrooms and the cave paintings in France."

You really think a man-made substance predates a plant that grows naturally in many parts of the world?

ChrisD is right. there is no way alcohol came before marijuana. its just not possible. marijuana could have possibly been on earth before humans even existed. i think it is without question that marijuana came first.

Haha yes Marijuana the plant technically came before alcohol in that it is a plant but there is no archaeological evidence to suggest that they actually used it the way we use it today. What I am saying is that domesticated hemp plants came about the same time as corn beer. However, there is no evidence to suggest they produced it to smoke it. There is evidence to suggest that they did in fact use it as a fiber and for protein in the seeds. So yes marijuana came first but there is no evidence to suggest that they smoked it.

Politicians should get high when discussing issues. Maybe then we could have a better world.

i like your thinkin allimar

Man, this has to be the Ninjas Vs Pirates version of the drug family.

Really, it doesn't matter what you do in the privacy of your own home so long as youre not harming other people. I think they both have pros and cons and Ive never understood why these two drugs- out of all the drugs there are- are constantly seen to be in some kind of opposition to each other.

So just for fun, I will throw this out there for all those people who are always saying Mary Jane has no negative side effects.

Have fun

quote:

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Long-term heavy use of marijuana may cause two important brain structures to shrink, Australian researchers have discovered.

Brain scans showed the hippocampus and amygdala were smaller in men who were heavy marijuana users compared to nonusers, the researchers said.

The hippocampus regulates memory and emotion, while the amygdala plays a critical role in fear and aggression.

The study, published in the American Medical Association's journal Archives of General Psychiatry, also found the heavy cannabis users earned lower scores than the nonusers in a verbal learning task - trying to recall a list of 15 words.

The marijuana users were more likely to exhibit mild signs of psychotic disorders, but not enough to be formally diagnosed with any such disorder, the researchers said.

"These findings challenge the widespread perception of cannabis as having limited or no harmful effects on (the) brain and behavior," said Murat Yucel of ORYGEN Research Centre and the University of Melbourne, who led the study.

"Like with most things, some people will experience greater problems associated with cannabis use than others," Yucel said. "Our findings suggest that everyone is vulnerable to potential changes in the brain, some memory problems and psychiatric symptoms if they use heavily enough and for long enough."

Among the marijuana users in the study, the hippocampus volume was 12 percent less and the amygdala volume was 7 percent less than the men who were not marijuana users, the researchers said.

While about half of the marijuana users reported experiencing some form of paranoia and social withdrawal, only one of the nonusers reported such symptoms, Yucel said.

Yucel said the researchers have begun new research on the effects of both short-term and long-term and moderate and heavy use of marijuana

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i used to smoke pot to reach a certain state of mind (a state of mind is a place in mind), that little atemporal garden, where you breath free "as any word of God". It personaly helped me to break some walls within me. I used to be the kind of person always in a hurry to leave places (ideas, relationships, responsibilities etc), thinking that a fleeting glimpse is all it takes to form an understanding of things. Now grass helped me to get over that, needless to say that it makes it easier to swirl down to the bottom of things, so it created a pattern. Now i'm not smoking due to some prior health issues that pot aggraved (nothing drop dead serious though). Now i find pleasure in wining but my outlook on all this is that i got to stop treating those substances as excuses to get where i want to...if that place is in you...theres no need to assume that u will be needing a ticket!

as it come to it being illegal, i think it shouldn't. The country i live in is high in it's production and they come 5th in world ranking ( i don't know if that changed). By making it legal, the public will ask for more, the prices will drop and that will make the pigs sad.

Marijuana is still illegal for many illogical reasons due to government policy. Part of the reason is due to the restrictions that the Congress places on medical marijuana research, which makes rescheduling its Schedule I classification (the most dangerous drugs) difficult. Researchers need to obtain a special license from the Drug Enforcement Administration to perform official clinical trials on marijuana, but this process indirectly calls upon the National Institutes of Drug Abuse to provide marijuana, which is technically illegal. This sort of circular logic (we can’t do tests because it’s illegal, therefore it will never leave the realm of illegalness) has made it difficult for legitimate clinical trials to surface until the past decade.
Another barrier to the marijuana legalization debate lies in the key chemical component of marijuana, THC. Once THC was isolated from marijuana and synthetically manufactured, legalization was thwarted. The DEA and anti-marijuana lobbyists argued that because marijuana can be grown by anyone (not patentable) while THC pills can be patented and marketed by large pharmaceutical companies, there is no reason to reschedule marijuana if a THC pill can be used instead. Furthermore, if the safer synthetic THC pill could have all the benefits of the drug without the perceived weaknesses of the plant, then there would be no need to have marijuana. The whole idea behind this was to assert that marijuana “has no currently accepted medical use” because synthetic THC pills have controlled dosages/lower risk of adverse side effects and are thus the safer method of consumption.
The last reason marijuana is still illegal is due the many different groups lobbying for prohibition. Since marijuana is not patentable, large pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t be able to profit from it if the plant itself were to be legalized. A lot of patients would turn to legally grown cheap marijuana instead of traditional pain relief drugs. Law enforcement also has a stake in prohibition because more arrests equals job security. According to NORML spokesman Allen St. Pierre, 30% of law enforcement is centered on marijuana prohibition, so eliminating that would cut down the work force (Kotler 2011). The last major anti-marijuana lobbyists are the alcohol and tobacco companies, due to competing interests in the recreational drug market. The California Beer & Beverage Distributors recently gave $10,000 to a campaign to defeat Proposition 19 in California. With all the different interest groups lobbying to the federal government, it’s easy to see why the government has been so adamant about accepting legalization.
As for alcohol, it is deeply embedded in our history and culture. Our founding fathers were brewers; George Washington used hard alcohol as an incentive to get people to vote, etc. Even when we tried Temperance and Prohibition, all that happened was increased crime and public outrage and eventually it went back to normal after a decade. The only thing that came in the way of alcohol restriction besides Prohibition was the National Drinking Age Act of 1984.
The differences between the two lie in the government’s attitudes towards each. Whereas we referred to Prohibition of alcohol as the “noble experiment”, we refer to the ongoing prohibition of marijuana as the “war on drugs”. Alcohol’s always been warmly embraced in American culture whereas marijuana has always been putdown. That’s why one is legal and one is not, despite the discrepancies in effects.

The amount of money spent on alcohol related crimes is ridiculous.
80% of damage on public property is put down to alcohol.

I think mj is illegal due to ignorance more than facts.

I wonder for the same question but no answer.

I would guess is that alcohol is legal in the US, because of our very bad experience with prohibition. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, alcohol is illegal, but hashish is not prosecuted. In the US, the law enforcement against cannabis was very drastically increased by President Nixon as he believed that there was a connection between cannabis use and the anti-war movement during the Vietnam war period.

Cannabis is decriminalized in Argentina, Belgium, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, India (Bhang), Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, North Korea (where is it not just decriminalized, but legal [WTF]), Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and Uruguay.

The development of beer, wine and bread were parallel. 4300 BC, Babylonian clay tablets detail recipes for beer.
Beer: crushed barley, water yeast. (Hops were added later for flavor).
Wine: crushed grapes, water, yeast.
Bread: crushed wheat , water, yeast (can include additions, such as rye).

Yeast's consumption of a grain's or fruits' proteins or sugars produces two by products: alcohol and carbon dioxide. In beer and wine, the alcohol produced by converted sugars is retained, and the mash is discarded. Additionally, in beer the carbon dioxide is trapped to produce carbonation. In bread, the alcohol in the yeast starter is discarded, and the carbon dioxide is trapped in the kneaded dough causing it to rise. It is then baked in.

Of course, this means that when you are drinking beer or wine, you are drinking yeast piss. When you are eating bread, you are swallowing yeast farts. I also like mushrooms: a fungus grown in cow dung.

i can speak openly about my drug use over the past decade on this forum and i will tell you something. many of you are much younger than me and so havent experienced how isolated and confused you can become through using illicit drugs. even just a few months back i commented on this forum that i was a smoker and happy to be one. however, there are some dangers associated with the use of narcotics. drugs like marijuana have had a negative effect upon my 'normal' development and for years i have failed to see the effects for myself as i am in fact suffering with a delusion!

i feel under the gun to maintain my position in the world of drugs simply to maintain my relationship with many friends and associates whose support i feel is invaluable to me and i fear their retribution for not continuing to support their own habit. because i can be clear on an intelligent forum (you will not find intelligent drug dealers i can tell you), i have had it with drugs for one lifetime. i'm tired of the alpha male mentality, the conspiracies to maim, murder and thieve from those who are less powerful than them. (as the majority seem to be in positions of power in the uk and ireland). i am not the only one who has seen the lot of it pack up and go home in life, only to come back to pick fights about where the money went to many years later. the problem with drugs isnt the user, no - they are the product of the dealers conspiracy to continue to supply. the problem is with the dealer. and the power the wield over communities like my own. i am not the only one who is pretty fed up over the whole 'marijuana saved my life' school of thought. i have began to think it stinks, and sometimes i wonder if i have been having some sweet dream the whole time!

and for the record, in recent years i have been robbed so many times by dealers who think they can thieve money off me for being late, unwelcome or even just because they have decided that i am paying another no good users drug debt, it offends me.

one more point to make, i have to pay my dealer today, not like i want to but i am afraid of reprisals should i fail to respect his power over me, and the constant threat of being attacked or abducted for not getting with the program. i have had treatment like this in my lifetime and i am often too frightened to stick up for myself as a result.

drug dealers are just thieves, but with a respectable background and fuck all brains in their head. its a shame the government supports their conspiracy. period.