bawomolo:

rothman's, the best tobacco money can buy . although a highly religious society, companies like Nigerian breweries, Guiness and rothman's are making nice profits in Nigeria. one has to wonder why. marijuana is less toxic than cigarette and should be legalized.

It only tells you there are more pending issues Nigerians are concerned about. I for one wouldn't go marching for a ban on psychoactive substances. It doesn't mean I won't frown on it. Marijuana being less toxic doesn't automatically mean it should be legalized. If at all it should be legalized for reasons like medical utility, then make them prescription drugs where only medical personel are solely entitled to give them out and not as a reason to encourage addiction or abuse, as the poster is implying.

The money wey una go need for d campaign for pass d one wey una for use sort/settle/bribe Police wey catch una dey smoke am. Patapata N200, u don free.

Isokuso wo lenso nibi. Abi e ti fagbo yo ni!!!!

stillwater:

It only tells you there are more pending issues Nigerians are concerned about. I for one wouldn't go marching for a ban on psychoactive substances. It doesn't mean I won't frown on it. Marijuana being less toxic doesn't automatically mean it should be legalized. If at all it should be legalized for reasons like medical utility, then make them prescription drugs where only medical personel are solely entitled to give them out and not as a reason to encourage addiction or abuse, as the poster is implying.

most smokers of marijuana are actually recreational users and not addicted or abusers.  considering alcohol and cigarette cause more deaths than marijuana, it makes no sense that marijuana isn't legalized.  the coffee shop system in the Netherlands works fine with me

Am not a smoker but i know marijuana is not addictive.

I support this move,

I fully support it 100%

u can contact me if there is anyway i can help,

I used to criticize it b4, but now i no more,

Our health needs it more instead of all those chalks and codeines doctors prescribe for us,

with all the problems in nigeria this is what some people want to discuss. . . .

bawomolo:

most smokers of marijuana are actually recreational users and not addicted or abusers.  considering alcohol and cigarette cause more deaths than marijuana, it makes no sense that marijuana isn't legalized.  the coffee shop system in the Netherlands works fine with me

The addicted users probably started out as "recreational users", don't you think so? From what I understand coffeeshop system is not up par as you place it. Between 1984 and 1996, the drug use doubled in the Netherlands. Illicit drug lords have been known to misuse this softer approach to drug control. For more information, click here or read the highlighted.

[url]http://www.drugwatch.org/McCaffrey%20Testimony%20on%20Drug%20Legalization.htm[/url]
A.  “The Dutch Model”

Those who support legalization often hold up the Netherlands as an example that legalization can work.  While the Dutch have adopted a “softer” approach to some drugs, they have not legalized them.  Under the Dutch system possession and small sales of marijuana have been decriminalized.  However, marijuana production and larger scale sales remain criminal.  Drugs such as cocaine and heroin remain illegal.  Most importantly, while the Dutch have not legalized drugs, the softening of Dutch criminal laws against marijuana has led to a normalization of drug use more broadly.  The accompanying change in public attitudes has, arguably, played as critical a role in Dutch drug use patterns as has the shift in the actual law.

If the Dutch experience with drugs is an appropriate model at all, it is because it illustrates the harms that result from increased tolerance of illegal drugs. This conclusion was brought home to all of us from the Office of National Drug Control Policy who traveled to the Netherlands in July of 1998 to gain a better understanding of the Dutch approach.[25]

When the so-called Dutch “coffee shops,” started selling marijuana in small quantities, use of the drug more than doubled between 1984 and 1996 among 18 to 25 year olds.[26]  According to an article, Holland’s Half-Baked Drug Experiment, which appears in the current (May/June 1999) edition of Foreign Affairs: “In 1997, there was a 25 percent increase in the number of registered cannabis addicts receiving treatment, as compared to a mere 3 percent rise in cases of alcohol abuse.”[27]

Moreover, Dutch tolerance of drug use has created a climate that drug manufacturers and traffickers have seized upon to produce and market more addictive and dangerous drugs.   For example, Peter Reijnders, Assistant Chief Constable and Chief of the Dutch National Unit on Synthetic Drugs, recently told the 25th European Meeting of Heads of National Drug Services, that:  “ . . .[T]he Netherlands is a major country as far as it concerns involvement in the production of illicit synthetic drugs.”[28]

Dutch drug manufacturers are also producing a new form of marijuana, Nederwiet, with THC contents as high as 35 percent -- as much as ten times the THC of the cannabis available just a few years ago.  Cannabis seeds can even be ordered over the Internet from an Amsterdam-based dealer.[29]  The well-respected journal Foreign Affairs describes the situation as follows:

. . . [T]he annual Nederwiet harvest is a staggering 100 tons a year, almost all grown illegally.  And it does not stay in the Netherlands.  Perhaps as much as 65 tons of pot is exported -- equally illegally -- to Holland’s neighbors.  Holland now rivals Morocco as the principal source of European marijuana.  By the Dutch Ministry of Justice’s own estimates, the Nederwiet industry now employs 20,000 people.  The overall commercial value of the industry, including not only the growth and sale of the plant itself but the export of high-potency Nederwiet seeds to the rest of Europe and the United States, is 20 billion Dutch guilders, or about $10 billion -- virtually all of it illegal and almost none of it subject to any form of Dutch taxation.  The illegal export of cannabis today brings in far more money than that other traditional Dutch crop, tulips.[30]

The impact of high potency marijuana on Dutch youth has been severe.  In Foreign Affairs, Dr. Ernest Bunning of the Ministry of Health, is quoted as saying: 

There are young people who abuse soft drugs . . . particularly those that have high THC.  The place that cannabis takes in their lives becomes so dominant they don’t have space for other important things in life.  They crawl out of bed in the morning, grab a joint, don’t work, smoke another joint.  They don’t know what to do with their lives.  I don’t want to call it a drug problem because if I do, then we have to get into a discussion that cannabis is dangerous, that sometimes you can’t use it without doing damage to your health or your psyche.  The moment we say, “There are people who have problems with soft drugs,” our critics will jump on us, so it makes it a little bit difficult for us to be objective on this matter.[31]

During this period of tolerance, the Netherlands has also experienced a serious problem with other substances of abuse, in particular heroin and synthetic drugs, which remain illegal.  According to a 1998 report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the number of heroin addicts in Holland has almost tripled since the liberalization of drug policies.[32]   Similarly, the 1998 European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction’s overview report states that drug-related arrests in the Netherlands were up over 40 percent in the last three years, with the main offense being trafficking in so called hard drugs.[33]

Increasingly this problem is spilling over to other nations.[34]  The Netherlands is more and more seen as Europe’s synthetic drug production center by law enforcement agencies.  It is reported that British Customs has determined that virtually all the synthetic drugs seized in the United Kingdom last year were manufactured in the Netherlands or Belgium.[35]  Similar reports suggest that 98 percent of the amphetamines seized in France in 1997 came from Holland, as did 73.6 percent of the ecstasy tablets.[36]  Synthetic drugs manufactured in the Netherlands are also now increasingly turning up in the United States.[37]

  These impacts are not lost upon the Dutch people who increasingly support a more balanced approach to fighting drug use.  A 1995 poll by Telepanel, a polling organization associated with the University of Amsterdam found that nearly three-quarters of the Dutch people want tougher measures against those who deal in and use drugs.[38]  [b]Despite the normalization of marijuana in the Netherlands over half the Dutch people believe “soft drugs” should be criminalized.[[/b]39]  By way of comparison, these numbers are far higher than the support for alternative drug policies in the United States.[40]

Proponents of legalization argue that the Dutch experience provides a model for a “softer approach” to fighting drug use.  Upon close examination the pitfalls of the Dutch experience offer more than ample evidence to dissuade the United States from adopting the drug policies of the Netherlands.[41]  Instead the Dutch example clearly argues in favor of continuing the balanced US. approach, which is producing results.

ahhhhhhhhhhh, so stillwater wants it legalized too?
Since when have you ppl been smokin it?

considering alcohol and cigarette cause more deaths than marijuana, it makes no sense that marijuana isn't legalized.

Considering alcohol and cigarettes are available in much larger quantities than ganja it makes total sense that they would cause more deaths.

Ruby_Pearl:

ahhhhhhhhhhh, so stillwater wants it legalized too?
Since when have you people been smokin it?

When did I say so? I'm not a proposing you legalize marijuana o. Read well!!! Are you sure you're not high?

stillwater:

When did I say so? I'm not a proposing you legalize marijuana o. Read well!!! Are you sure you're not high?

NO, I just thought you and bawomolo were fighting on when and who will legalize it.
No be you say you want it legalized ASAP?

Hmmm, Stillwater, that guitarist in your profile looks like he is no stranger to that Nederweit, and may in fact hold a diploma in the subject.

omg!! my ribs

Ruby_Pearl:

NO, I just thought you and bawomolo were fighting on when and who will legalize it.
No be you say you want it legalized ASAP?

I said since it had medical utility, it could be legalized as prescription drugs where only medical personel are entitled to issue them out.

Jakumo:

Hmmm, Stillwater, that guitarist in your profile looks like he is no stranger to that Nederweit, and may in fact hold a diploma in the subject.

Lmao!!! Wrong guess!!!

H2O2:

Considering alcohol and cigarettes are available in much larger quantities than ganja it makes total sense that they would cause more deaths.

That's right!!

@Stillwarra
Just make sure when you get 'em, dnt sell 'em

Do I look like a drug peddler

Considering alcohol and cigarettes are available in much larger quantities than ganja it makes total sense that they would cause more deaths.

who told you so, do you know the amount of recreational users of marijuana. fact remains cigarette and alcohol are more toxic than marijuana. you can't deny this. here is some interesting info

In the Netherlands 9.7% of young boys consume soft drugs once a month, comparable to the level in Italy (10.9%) and Germany (9.9%) and less than in the UK (15.8%) and Spain (16.4%),[15] but much higher than in, for example, Sweden (3%), Finland or Greece.[3] Dutch rates of drug use are lower than U.S. rates in every category.[16] The monthly prevalence of drugs other than cannabis among young people (15-24) was 4% in 2004, that was above the average (3%) of 15 compared countries in EU. However, seemingly few transcends to becoming problem drug users (0.3%), well below the average (0.52%) of the same compared countries.[3]

The reported number of deaths linked to the use of drugs in the Netherlands, as a proportion of the entire population, is lower than the EU average.[17] The Dutch government is able to support approximately 90% of help seeking addicts with detoxification programs. Treatment demand is rising.[18]

Criminal investigations into more serious forms of organized crime mainly involve drugs (72%). Most of these are investigations of hard drug crime (specifically cocaine and synthetic drugs) although the number of soft drug cases is rising and currently accounts for 41% of criminal investigations.[18]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/693257.stm

Mj is one of the best thing that's happened to mankind...if gov could legalize cigarettes that are one way tickets to cancers ,but ban weed that is even a cure to cancer, then i say the government is even more worse in activities than any tax payer realizes


#LEGALIZEWEED