So focused on the short-sided near-term position... I'm only being as irrational as the "victimless crime" argument. Below is one of the issues I have for why I don't see legalizing the substance as a "victimless" issue. Kids are going to get their hands on it. BTW, I'm still waiting for AUChizzad's reference to support his claim that pot is more attainable to kids than alcohol, but kids will get their hands on anything. They're just able to get their hands on things that are legal or regulated to some degree. You guys claim "victimless"... Call it a doomsday scenario or whatever to float your boat, but I've seen it and lived through it. AND, I don't want to pay for it.
I support the claim by the fact that I was in high school this century, and I knew 100 people I could get weed from, but the only way I could get alcohol was to have the balls to go up to the liquor store clerk with a fake ID.
But since you have to have a link for everything (to later ignore)...
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2005_3896377More Teens Say Drugs Are Available In Their Schools
Rebecca Carroll | Houston Chronicle | 08/19/2005
WASHINGTON - More teens are saying there are drugs in their schools, and those who have access to them are more likely to try them, said a Columbia University survey released Thursday.
Twenty-eight percent of respondents reported that drugs are used, kept or sold at their middle schools, a 47 percent jump since 2002, according to the 10th annual teen survey by Columbia's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.
The number of high schoolers saying drugs are at their schools rose 41 percent in the past three years, to 62 percent, the survey said.
Twelve- to 17-year-olds who report that there are drugs in their schools are three times likelier to try marijuana and twice as likely to drink alcohol than teens who say their schools are drug-free, the survey showed.
"Availability is the mother of use," said Joseph Califano Jr., the center's president. "We really are putting an enormous number of 12- to 17-year-olds at great risk."
Most of the teens surveyed — 58 percent — said the legality of cigarettes has no effect on their decision to smoke or abstain, and 48 percent said the fact that marijuana is illegal doesn't affect whether they use it.
Forty-two percent of the youths said they can buy marijuana within a day, and 21 percent can buy it in an hour.
The past year saw an 86 percent increase in the percentage of teens who know a friend or classmate who has abused prescription drugs, from 14 percent to 26 percent of teens surveyed.
Meanwhile, the survey found teens who viewed drugs as morally wrong were significantly less likely to try them, as were those who felt their parents would be "extremely upset" to discover drug use.
The report found that teens who confided in their parents were at much lower risk of drug abuse than teens who turn first to another adult.
"If this survey does anything, it really shouts to parents: You cannot outsource your responsibility to law enforcement or the schools," Califano said. "I think when parents feel as strongly about drugs in the schools as they do about asbestos in the schools, we'll start getting the drugs out of the schools."
The survey was conducted by phone and involved 1,000 randomly selected youths ages 12 to 17 and 829 parents.
Twenty-six percent of the teens said someone nearby could hear their answers. The margin of sampling error is 3.1 percentage points for teens and 3.4 percentage points for parents.
Now post your source that states the opposite is true. I'll wait...
And I thought we're not supposed to compare it to alcohol?
That's only because of the glaring
facts that are COMMON KNOWLEDGE that alcohol is more harmful than marijuana. Here's the litmus test on common knowledge. Without bias, type in the two words "marijuana alcohol" without quotes. I'll wait...
Yeah,
EVERY link that compares the two concludes this. Just from the front page...
(I'll only post a line or two since COMMON KNOWLEDGE such as this shouldn't have to saturate this post. But I encourage you to read each of these articles from top to bottom so that you can be sure I'm not using your tactic of wildly taking quotes out of context)
http://www.physorg.com/news157280425.htmlDeveloping Brains: Alcohol Worse than Marijuana (PhysOrg.com) -- It appears that when it comes to teen brain development, parents should be more worried about alcohol abuse than marijuana abuse. Two recent studies have been published showing that alcohol -- a legal substance (though not legal for teens in the U.S.) -- is considered more dangerous than marijuana, which is illegal in many countries.
http://www.progress.org/2005/drc68.htmMedical Fact: Marijuana is Safer Than Alcohol
Ten states have passed "medical marijuana" laws. Now an even more embarrassing issue has arisen that makes governments look stupid -- rules and laws are badly inconsistent when it comes to penalties for marijuana compared to alcohol, even though alcohol is known to be less safe.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19278130Abnormalities have been seen in brain structure volume, white matter quality, and activation to cognitive tasks, even in youth with as little as 1-2 years of heavy drinking and consumption levels of 20 drinks per month, especially if > 4-5 drinks are consumed on a single occasion. Heavy marijuana users show some subtle anomalies too, but generally not the same degree of divergence from demographically similar non-using adolescents.
http://www.physorg.com/news84468374.htmlNo 'smoking' gun -- Research indicates teen marijuana use does not predict drug, alcohol abuse
December 4th, 2006
Marijuana is not a "gateway" drug that predicts or eventually leads to substance abuse, suggests a 12-year University of Pittsburgh study. The study, which found that young men who chose to initiate their drug use with marijuana were no more likely to go on to abuse drugs or alcohol than those who smoked or drank first, calls into question the long-held belief that has shaped prevention efforts and governmental policy for six decades.
I would go on, but you'll just continue to poo poo away every
fact I waste a whole 10 seconds looking up as some biased crap...you know, the Houston Chronicle, that physorg.com (the standard online hard science news source) and that pesky National Center for Biotechnology Information's .gov site are just full of dope smoking hippie propaganda lies...
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