Quote Originally Posted by larvidchr View Post
Pot is a gateway drug, and the damages and social effects is huge, not in the way Alcohol stands out, but then Pot was also illegal so less openly abused.
That's such a load of bollocks, akin to an old wives tale. You only have to look at Holland, where less young people gravitate to hard drugs than countries where weed is illegal.

Scientists long ago abandoned the idea that marijuana causes users to try other drugs: as far back as 1999, in a report commissioned by Congress to look at the possible dangers of medical marijuana, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences wrote:

Patterns in progression of drug use from adolescence to adulthood are strikingly regular. Because it is the most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is predictably the first illicit drug most people encounter. Not surprisingly, most users of other illicit drugs have used marijuana first. In fact, most drug users begin with alcohol and nicotine before marijuana — usually before they are of legal age.
In the sense that marijuana use typically precedes rather than follows initiation of other illicit drug use, it is indeed a “gateway” drug. But because underage smoking and alcohol use typically precede marijuana use, marijuana is not the most common, and is rarely the first, “gateway” to illicit drug use. There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.
Since then, numerous other studies have failed to support the gateway idea. Every year, the federal government funds two huge surveys on drug use in the population. Over and over they find that the number of people who try marijuana dwarfs that for cocaine or heroin. For example, in 2009, 2.3 million people reported trying pot — compared with 617,000 who tried cocaine and 180,000 who tried heroin.
With legalisation will come a host of problems they haven't prepared for, like a lot more DUI cases, that is if they do what they are supposed to, namely start looking for it on the same level as DUI alcohol since it now is legal and thus needs regulating in the exact same way.
You've been in Thailand too long Lardarse. Most countries now realise they can't stem the flow of all sorts of drugs, and have long since incorporated Driving Under the Influence to include either Alcohol or Narcotics. You can even be done for being impaired by prescription drugs.

Again same for work places, company's will need to up the drug testing, not that they want to, but because they risk huge lawsuits from injured employees if it turns out the offender was high, and the company policy/control lax, in the crazy US lawsuit system, you can bet this will become an issue.

We do not need more legalised drugs, alcohol is plenty bad enough as most of the pro free pot crowd constantly drone, so why would adding one more legal mindfvuck-drug be any better if not twice as bad.
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Drugs are already incorporated into most OHS legislation, you are living in the past you silly old fart.

Light yourself a spliff and stop getting so worked up about nothing.