If Marijuana Were Legal Would You Consider It A Sin To Use It ?

[dairygirl4u2c]

i always found it interesting... short term and chronic effects of pot are bad for the mind. but, pot's effect is only from hormone release.

booze's effect though, by definition is your brain cells dying. you feel an effect, it's cause your brain cells are dying. yet you don't hear much about it making you dumb at any points. you'd think you would, given that it causes brain cells to die while pot does not.
just an interesting point ,as per hypocritical concerns.
both would require moderation at any rate.

then sociologically... you have stoners who are dumb, and stoners who are smart. i'm not sure the stereotypes mean anything. the dumb were probably dumb to begin with, for a large amount of them (except for the chronic uses who might be dumb bc of chronic use,,, stoner doesn't mean chronic to me here)

and then people die from drinking too much... no one dies from smoking pot too much.
Alcohol is deadly; marijuana is not. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 20,000 Americans die every year as the direct result of alcohol consumption. The number for marijuana is zero. In addition, alcohol overdose deaths are not just possible, but an all-too-frequent occurrence…

and then you have that tobacco is phsycially addicting, while pot is not. at best, and very rarely, mentally addicting, but what doesn't have the potential to be merely mental? really, not addictive.

eg... they talk about brain damage by booze, by problem solving loss by pot.
does the brain damage not cause problem solving loss... what are the effects, are they emaningful? etc
[quote]Marijuana:

Memory Loss
Distorted Perception
Trouble with Thinking and Problem Solving
Decrease in Muscle Strenght
Increased Heart Rate
5 Joints/Week = full pack of cigs everyday
4x more tar than tobacco cigarette
12.5 % - accidents by alcohol and marijuana

Alcohol:

Addictive
Dizziness
Talkativeness
Slurred Speech
Disturbed Sleep
Nausea
Vomiting
Impairs Judgement
increase incidence of aggressive acts
hangover
permenant damage of liver, brain[/quote]

Edited July 24, 2008 by dairygirl4u2c

[Madame Vengier]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1607373' date='Jul 24 2008, 10:57 AM']i second all the pro pot moderation folk.

some people claim, or at least caution, that pot is inherently wrong cause the effects of it are inherently psychodelic ish in altering one's mind. not like acid etc. whereas, alchol while inebrating at the moderate level isn't pscyhodelic.[/quote]

Yeah, except so does stuff like booze and pain killers. I've smoked weed. I can assure you there are no psychedelic effects. The only way that could happen is if the weed is laced with something else. And there are people who do that. Very dangerous and stupid. But pure Mary Jane just makes you calm and you do think about things very deeply and have thoughts you wouldn't before. Nothing bad. Just more sort of intense ways of thinking about things. I have, in the past, had very good conversations about religion and the Church when smoking marijuana. Also, another thing about pot is that it does somewhat alter your perception of time. Nothing mind-bending or psychedelic. It's just that everything slows down a bit. Overall, the total sensation is mellow, calm, and more introspective than usual. It's very good for use in psycho-therapy with patients who have a very difficult time expressing themselves, who are worked-up and anxious. Talking is very, very important in mental health counseling, and people with deep-seated wounds or trauma are sometimes almost "locked" inside themselves. Being able to talk and express themselves leads to a lot of healing. Marijuana can help them a lot.

[Madame Vengier]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1607376' date='Jul 24 2008, 11:02 AM']i always found it interesting... short term and chronic effects of pot are bad for the mind. but, pot's effect is only from hormone release.

booze's effect though, by definition is your brain cells dying. you feel an effect, it's cause your brain cells are dying. yet you don't hear much about it making you dumb at any points. you'd think you would, given that it causes brain cells to die while pot does not.
just an interesting point ,as per hypocritical concerns.
both would require moderation at any rate.[/quote]

Yeah, and booze is bad news in a LOT of ways. It effects the liver and kidneys, the skin, the blood pressure, the heart rate. It also makes a person possibly do things they would never because of the loss of self-control it causes. Of course this is not always just being plastered and waking up next to a stranger. Even with a mild inebriation you may say things you wouldn't normally say, which could be embarassing or hurtful. So I don't even mean doing BAD things.

[dairygirl4u2c]

i'm very sensitive to pot, and i tend to smoke too much just by smoking any, so it's hard for me to say.

[dominicansoul]

I would definitely smoke it. I think I wrote about this in another thread, that if it were legal, we'd probably grow it in our convent garden and call it "holy smokes!"

[dairygirl4u2c]

is it just me... or is phatmass becoming more openminded about these things? the reactions seem a lot more so, maybe it's just a fluke and not indicative of the norm.

but that people other than "i don't rep the church" speaking in favor of it, is causing others to do so.

Edited July 24, 2008 by dairygirl4u2c

[CatherineM]

I guess I'm going to again sound like an old fuddy, but I lost one of my best childhood friends to pot. Smashed his car while high. My nephew that died on the streets as a drug addicted prostitute started with pot and alcohol.

The stuff we had when I was a teenager was like tobacco in comparison to the stuff they are growing today. It is causes more damage to the lungs than tobacco -- [url="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/94896.php"]LINK[/url]

Finally, I live with a man with schizophrenia. He's stable on his medication, but still leads a very difficult life trying to control the symptoms. Many of his friends have even more difficult lives, and marijuana significantly increases the risk of developing schizophrenia -- [url="http://www.schizophrenia.com/prevention/streetdrugs.html"]Link[/url]

The Lord has given us magnificent bodies, why would we want to do anything to them that could cause harm. I struggle daily with the damage done to my body in my teens and twenties. I wish I could go back and make better decisions. I wouldn't be able to change everything that happened to me, but I could have been a much better steward of the gift given to me.

[dairygirl4u2c]

[quote]My nephew that died on the streets as a drug addicted prostitute[/quote]

not trying to detract from the seriousness of what you say.
do you mean your neice? interesting if there are male prostitutes.
just curious.

[Aloysius]

smashed his car while high... smashed his car while drunk... they don't affect the discussion of drinking without getting drunk and without driving or smoking without getting baked and without driving. it's a terrible thing, as is drunk driving.

pot as a gateway drug is certainly a concern; and that happens as a result of the drug culture mostly because it is in the same category as other illegal drugs. that's a bad thing, of course.

skitzophrenia is definitely a problem... as I understand it the risk of skitzophrenia would increase mostly with people who do use marijuana excessively.

[CatherineM]

Dairygirl-No, I meant my nephew. I had custody of him from age 15 to 19. His father had put him out of the house because he had remarried a woman with two small daughters, and he had been doing inappropriate things in front of them. When I took him in, he was already an alcoholic. He was in and out of rehab and jail. I finally had to ask him to leave at 19 for my own safety because of the people he was associating with. He ran through all of the rest of his uncles and grandmothers, and finally ended up on the street. He was stabbed to death in Tulsa, Halloween night 1994 by a john, just before his 25th birthday. The man wasn't prosecuted because as the cops would say NHI, no human involved. I tried so hard with him, made so many mistakes, I was only 7 1/2 years older than he was. I saw him completely unable to crawl away from the drugs. He was an addict from the first puff, and an alcoholic from the first drink. I guess it was in his genes.

My point is that it is a form of Russian Roulette.

[Madame Vengier]

[quote name='dominicansoul' post='1607397' date='Jul 24 2008, 11:34 AM']I would definitely smoke it. I think I wrote about this in another thread, that if it were legal, we'd probably grow it in our convent garden and call it "holy smokes!"
[/quote]


Sweet.

I would definitely smoke it. I would still be smoking it except that I did start to feel bad about breaking the law. Even though I was not hurting myself or anyone else, the Catechism does say not to break civic laws.

[CatherineM]

I watched a show on HGTV where a woman had to rehab a rental house she owned that the renters had turned into a grow op. They said it costs around $100,000 to repair the damage to the electrical, plumbing, and take care of all the mold damage. She was being sued for $50,000 for the stolen electrical, and had non-habitation notices from just about every level of government. Even after fixing everything, she couldn't sell the house. She would have had to inform any potential buyers that it had been a grow op. She ended up selling her home and moving into the rental. Plus, her insurance wouldn't pay a dime to cover the damage.

So to say it doesn't hurt anyone else is a fallacy that I think this woman would contest. As would the 40-50 other owners of houses in that jurisdiction that had been busted that quarter.

[Lil Red]

[quote name='abercius24' post='1607208' date='Jul 24 2008, 01:18 AM']I once asked an apologist friend of mine why the Church teaches so strongly against the use of such "recreational drugs". He explained to me that men and women have been elevated by God to a stature greater than animals -- essentially created in His image. Our elevated stature manifests itself in our ability to reason and make moral, rationale decisions via our freewill. This is essentially what separates us from behaving like the animals. Such drugs, though, have a specific purpose to lessen our ability to reason and control ourselves. They in fact degrade a human being to a lesser statue, and in some cases make them behave just like an animal. This is unacceptable given all that God has invested in creating us in His image![/quote]
+J.M.J.+
wow! thank you for this.

i wouldn't use it - because for me, it's about loss of self-control. same for alcohol. i enjoy a nice glass of wine now and then, but i don't think i've had over 2 glasses of wine (in one sitting) for over 2 years. not been "smashed" in probably over 5.

[Kitty]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1607376' date='Jul 24 2008, 12:02 PM']and then you have that tobacco is phsycially addicting, while pot is not. at best, and very rarely, mentally addicting, but what doesn't have the potential to be merely mental? really, not addictive.[/quote]

Pot is not physically addicting but it is mentally addicting. Most of my friends smoke pot, and until they get their daily hits that is ALL they talk about. If you mention "bowl", "pipe", "grass", or anything else related to marijuana they perk up. They talk about other times they got high, the next time they want to get high, or they ask if they're allowed to smoke inside. They constantly make drug-related jokes and it gets really obnoxious. To say that pot is not addictive (or "rarely addictive") is simply not true.

I have never smoked it myself (the smell makes me feel naseous). In all honesty, though, I do think it should be legalized and moderation laws put into place, like with alcohol (being drunk in public, ect.)

[cmotherofpirl]

Using a chemical that destroys your lungs, leaves you open to a virus that causes cancer, is connected to increased risk of stroke, increases risk of HepC liver damage, increases your risk of psychosis, effects your unborn children, increases depression, and makes you even more stupid than the day your were born, yeah I qualify it as a sin.