41 comments

• Comment Link Monday, 29 April 2013 04:27 posted by Dana

  1. The pro side stated people quit smoking cigarettes because of health reasons. However, we know that 30% of all cancer in the US is related to smoking cigarettes. As a health care professional in the oncology setting, I can't tell you how many times I have cared for people who have lung cancer related to smoking; yet while receiving treatment, they continue to smoke.
  2. Regarding the arguments for cannabis legalization. From a medical stand point, it does help decrease pain for some people and it can help decrease nausea symptoms. It has not been found to improve appetite. What is often not talked about is the very real risk of aspergillus fungal lung infection when smoked. When people have a low white blood cell count, it is almost always fatal. Cannabis can also cause people to be over agreeable and have difficulty maintaining conversations with loved ones that they will remember.
  My stance is to legalize it as a tightly controlled substance, like oxycodone, for use when prescribed by a provider. If we open a pandora's box of legalization, we might have a terrible time closing it. Like with cigarettes; I wish they had never been legal. One in five deaths are related to tobacco and our country spends billions on health issues directly related to smoking cigarettes: cancer, coronary artery disease, heart disease, COPD, etc. http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/effects_cig_smoking/

• Comment Link Sunday, 21 April 2013 17:26 posted by Sue Hudson

  The two guys representing legalizing drugs were far more knowledgable and dealt with the situation in total reality. Those against were at their best stating personal theories. Being a retired educator of over 40 years, I see no positive outcomes by criminalizing all these young people. Why is it that many people seem to find what others do so much worse than their own personal addictions to what ever it might be? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone! Does that sound familiar to anyone?

• Comment Link Sunday, 21 April 2013 15:48 posted by Jim

  Wishing the panel would address the fact that the concept behind this debate is marred in the same way it would have been had it occurred during Prohibition as a debate on being for or against all alcohol.
  
  We eventually said SOME alcohol was unwise and it was outlawed. We need to do the same here....debate marijuana separately from other drugs.

• Comment Link Thursday, 11 April 2013 16:57 posted by Stephen

  Let Theodore Dalrymple talk! You can tell he's being shoved away.

• Comment Link Monday, 08 April 2013 10:46 posted by Timothy Clark Wilson

  NO!
  Proverbs 14:34 ​Righteousness exalts a nation,
  ​​But sin is a reproach to any people.

• Comment Link Thursday, 04 April 2013 20:09 posted by ml

  if we're going to have one legal drug we should have at least two to give people a choice. not everyone can or wants to drink alcohol. marijuana is much more benign. ask anyone with an alcoholic parent. in a nation of choices, give us a choice.
  it was the patent medicines and the pursuit of profits off addictive drugs in the 1800s with the inclusion of cocaine (remember the real coca cola?), opium, alcohol, and even radium, that gave us the FDA

• Comment Link Wednesday, 03 April 2013 09:41 posted by Frank Sattar

  My concern in public safety, bad enough the roads are full of drunk drivers. Should the public be concerned with drugged drivers too.

• Comment Link Sunday, 31 March 2013 15:03 posted by Jeffrey A. Coleman

  Ignored in the debate is the irrefutable phenomenon of how the prohibition of substances which some in society deem undesirable has created a black market that has shown nothing but the most phenomenal growth rate in the circumvention of these bans and has created more incentive to smuggle or produce banned substances.

• Comment Link Sunday, 24 March 2013 12:04 posted by Peter F.

  I agree that marijuana should be legalized for medicinal purposes and therefore regulated and taxed. However, legalizing all drugs will not change social belief along racial bigotry lines nor the bigotry between social classes. Prohibition failed more due to corruption among the ranks of enforcers than because of social beliefs or standards. Legalizing drugs will save money to some degree but at the cost of to many lives of citizens. Any place where drugs have been allowed through the course of time has experienced more violent crimes. Not that addiction creates violent offenders but that the use of narcotics does create people who don't think before they act. Our society is filled with people who don't consider the effects of their choices and actions on others in society and the legalization of illicit drugs will not change that or any other social standard. Unfortunately, morality can not be mandated and legalizing drugs won't effect noticeable change other than more deaths and destruction to our society's morality.

• Comment Link Wednesday, 13 March 2013 09:35 posted by Michael

  I was rather disappointed with this debate. I felt that both sides were debating different concepts. The side "for" the legalization of drugs focused solely on marijuana. The side "against" focused on meth. It seemed that they were debating past each other, not against. The side against the motion, as many commenters pointed out, didn't discuss the "harmlessness" of marijuana, while the side "for" the motion didn't talk about the more "harmful" drugs like Heroin only to say that "use is statistically insignificant." I think that most people are now willing to concede that the war on weed is pretty much a loss. But to legalize all drugs in the hopes that it will put drug dealers, etc. "out of business" is non-sense. Like they are just going to throw up their hands and say "well, I guess I better get a real job now." They'll find new ways to make money.
  My overall point is this I guess: both sides came prepared for a different debate, and our romanticized view of weed won, without the overall question being debated.