Hunck,
..Why not get a revenue stream out of it?..
Says it all, doesn't it .
So, let's look at all the happy little souls. Toking on their spliffs.
How COOL.
No, actually, how sad.
Let us ignore all the people who can't get through the day without their smoke.
Who's whole being depends upon it. The ones we see standing on street corners 'waiting for their Man'.
Because weed does have a very negative effect on the people who use it. And I do know the users will vehemently deny this.
Well they would, wouldn't they ?
And let us ignore all the crime and corruption going on in the supply chain. All the gangs who make lots of money out of supplying it and are quite happy to beat up or even kill anyone queering their pitch.
The creepy shits with no obvious employment driving around in £50,000 cars.
It's a vile industry. And making it legal will not fix the problem, it will just move it around.
I imagine that more than a few here use it. And I have no wish to fall out with you. It's your problem.
But it is also mine. And a problem for all the folks who have to live on areas crawling with junkies and their dealers.
And, of course, for the discerning addict there is always some new recreational chemical coming out next week.
But as Hunk suggests,
Why not make some money out of it ?
Plenty of mugs wanting their next hit.
Maybe y'all should have a listen to 'Waiting for my Man'. (Velvet Underground).
The truth is indeed out there.
INT21
Who has all too many family member wrecked by drugs; and they all started on weed.
Yes, these are indeed, conversely, the main arguments for legalisation: make the er, 'erb' available from the newsagents and the criminals will shut up shop and train to be social workers.
But they won't, will they? The bigger problem currently seems to be these horrible synthetic cannabinoid pot-pourris such as Spice - which are allegedly yielding far greater profits than Heroin now they've been outlawed, but which caused just as much damage when they were legal, being composed of unskillfully mixed research chemicals.
I don't mind admitting that I smoked grass and hashish for years but gave it up as having, dare I say, grown up a bit I could no longer ignore the involvement of some very nasty individuals further up the chain: buying a bit of puff from some friendly spliffhead who lives up the road all seems quite harmless but that's a difficult illusion to maintain once you've started thinking about the situation at all realistically. Not only that, having to make furtive phone calls and texts and meet in car parks to obtain one's drug of choice is a MASSIVE pain in the arse.
Not only that, I seem to remember noticing some hash I'd bought appeared to have bits of clingfilm embedded in it, causing me to seriously consider what the hell kind of toxic rubbish I was welcoming into my respiratory system. Again, so the argument goes, if the stuff were produced under strict regulation it wouldn't be
literally poisonous, apart from the horrific amounts of tars etc...yet it would still be easy to produce and sell at lower prices than the highly taxed govt. approved versions - people still queue up to buy smuggled duty-free booze and fags although both can be purchased legally. An off-license near me got into considerable trouble for selling some very cheap 'fake' alcoholic drinks of dubious provenance which as far as anyone knows could've been based on antifreeze or God alone knows what.
The last chap I used to buy cannabis from was a nice guy and I'd known him already. If he'd sold you something substandard or (in the aforementioned case riddled with plastic) he'd contact customers and apologise and give them their money back. He genuinely was a salt-of-the-Earth older stoner who thought he was doing his mates a favour by 'turning them on' - weed products being quite hard to get in my town for a long time. While I don't doubt he harboured no evil intentions and made bugger all money out of it he clearly hadn't the imagination (or chose not) to picture the pyramid of criminality which he was supporting in his small way.
What infuriates me are those people who will tear a strip off anyone with a Nestle product in their larder but think it's very edgy and cool of them to buy some coke off a geezer up an alleyway in Camden or wherever. Again, these are mainly well-meaning people who've failed to consider the wider consequences of their actions...or are perhaps too self-focused to see beyond their recreational habits.
I would say though (and I'm not arguing that cannabis can't be dangerous - not least to the lungs - nor hinting at my superhuman mental resilience) that I used to smoke the stuff A LOT and although I'd miss it when without I didn't feel addicted - and I am extremely prone to become addicted to things - and absolutely did not suffer from the famous 'anti-motivational syndrome'. I'd stay up working for hours on the stuff without my work suffering and if anything was able to concentrate better on many tasks, and enjoyed entire holidays being stoned pretty much all the time with no desire to behave in anything other than a civillised fashion. No sitting in my underpants eating junk food for me!
I did suffer from the odd bit of paranoia sometimes through overindulging, which wasn't fun, but had no trouble quitting at all. But I do feel now that the whole culture of consuming cannabis has changed since my younger days and now seems a much more unpleasant 'scene'.
Of course I'm probably just getting old and not hep to the latest with-it groove, Daddy-o.
