Hooked

Cidu Bill on Mar 5th 2012

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Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Pardon My Planet, Vic Lee, comic strips, comics, humor | 17 responses so far

17 Responses to “Hooked”

  1. MollyJ Mar 4th 2012 at 11:12 pm 1

    Because people hooked on pot are never, ever hooked on tobacco or alcohol as well.

  2. Charlene Mar 4th 2012 at 11:37 pm 2

    Because pot is this miraculous thing that is never, ever bad, and anyone who says a word against it is some brainwashed stooge of the eeeeeebil guvvmint.

  3. PeterW Mar 4th 2012 at 11:48 pm 3

    Because alcohol and tobacco are legitimate businesses that bring in tax revenue and stimulate the economy.

  4. Kilby Mar 5th 2012 at 12:02 am 4

    The moral hypocrisy is automatically grouping marijuana with drugs that are physiologically much more dangerous. As tobacco and alcohol prove, there is an inexhaustable supply of potential addicts. Criminalizing marijuana artificially increases the price, which serves to subsidize the entire supply chain. Make it legal, and the price will fall through the floor, making it much less profitable, and therefore less alluring to dealers. And no, I am not suggesting that this argument should be applied to cocain or heroin.

  5. The Vicar Mar 5th 2012 at 01:07 am 5

    @Kilby, #4: Strictly speaking, marijuana is less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol. The studies which “proved” that marijuana was worse for your lungs than tobacco were… well, one of the tactics used was to force monkeys to breathe marijuana smoke at something like 20 or 30 times the maximum concentration anyone would ever get, while leaving the tobacco smoke at normal concentrations. Similarly for studies “proving” that marijuana is a worse intoxicant than alcohol. The number of deaths associated with marijuana is vastly smaller than the same figure for either tobacco or alcohol, even after adjusting for the number of people known to use each.

    (And before the sneers and insinuations start: no, I don’t smoke marijuana. I don’t smoke tobacco, either. I’m just in favor of good science and sane policy, that’s all.)

  6. Jeff S Mar 5th 2012 at 01:18 am 6

    Well, I’ll be danged… High Times STILL has readership!

  7. James Pollock Mar 5th 2012 at 01:26 am 7

    Alcohol and tobacco provide tax resources to help deal with the problems they create. Marijuana produces no tax revenue to help deal with the problems it creates.*

    Historically, we tried prohibition on alcohol, and discovered that the problems created by prohibition were greater than the problems caused by legal use. We tried a different approach… social shunning… to limit tobacco use, with some effective results. Eventually, we’ll probably go back to legal use for cocaine alkaloids and artificial opiates, for the same reason we went back to legal use for alcohol… yes, it destroys lives (sometimes innocent ones) but the net social harm in allowing people who want to drink to drink was less than the net social harm of trying to prohibit it. I give 50/50 odds on the sporting world eventually giving up on banning (most) performance-enhancing drugs.

    * A gross oversimplification that does not take civil forfeiture into account.

  8. Proginoskes Mar 5th 2012 at 01:30 am 8

    The two biggest “gateway drugs” are tobacco and alcohol … Nearly every junkie began his addiction by smoking or drinking.

  9. Kilby Mar 5th 2012 at 01:52 am 9

    Alcohol and tobacco provide tax resources … Marijuana produces no tax revenue…

    An excellent suggestion. Make it legal, and then tax the hell out of it, so that society profits from the addicts, instead of letting the dealers take the whole swag.

    P.S. The manufacturing cost for pure cocaine is just a few cents per gram, whereas the street value is 50 or 100 times as much. It is unlikely that it ever would become morally or politically expedient to make cocaine legal, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the drug cartels will do everything in their power to keep cocaine illegal and profitable. Even though the sources are foreign, there are plenty of Americans who are making a hefty profit from the drug trade.

    P.P.S. It’s entirely possible that sport doping makes even more money being illegal than it would if it were legal. Illegal doping makes money for doctors and drug companies, money from legal doping would be pocketed by the athletes (at the expense of the sport, of course).

  10. DrScott Mar 5th 2012 at 02:12 am 10

    Back in the late 70’s, I did a 100 page paper on marijuana for a biology class in college (and no, I wasn’t taking the “lab course”). I read hundreds of research papers in the state library plus my own college’s library. All I can say is that nearly every paper I read was flawed in terms of hypothesis, methods and/or conclusion from the data. Most of them had an introduction to the paper that showed a bias towards one conclusion — many sounded like an episode of Dragnet. Keep in mind that I was still a college student then and didn’t have my Ph.D. yet, so if even I could find the papers seriously flawed, they were pretty bad!

    Recent biological studies in the more highly-respected journals are more solid, and they show less detrimental effects on brain physiology for marijuana except in serious overusers or very young teens (but alcohol too has greater effect for young teens than older teens). There is some cancer risk if smoked, but is it grater than for tobacco? I doubt it. I don’t know how anybody could smoke three packs of joints a day and be able to walk and chew gum simultaneously.

    I think that The Vicar’s, James’ and Proginoskes’ statements are all quite correct. True physiological marijuana addiction is actually fairly rare throughout the world, in contrast to physiological tobacco and alcohol addiction. Psychological addiction is, of course, more common, but no more than internet addiction or video game addiction. Should we prohibit the internet or games?

    If marijuana is illegal despite being less harmful and addicting than tobacco or alcohol (as stated by modern biological research, crime statistics and fatalities), shouldn’t tobacco and alcohol be grouped with cocaine and heroin instead and be illegal? The reasons tobacco and alcohol aren’t illegal are politics, tax income and strong lobbies.

  11. Jim Moore Mar 5th 2012 at 05:33 am 11

    Okay…but…the comic. What about the comic?

  12. George P Mar 5th 2012 at 06:37 am 12

    I think it comic is more about why alcohol and tobacco are legal and marijuana is not: people are making a lot of money.

    The only good “just say no” type PSA I’ve seen (and I can’t find it on youtube) featured two young men noting that smoking pot had not affected them, and that they were the same as they had been when they started. Then the mother of one of them called them from downstairs.

    This probably wouldn’t be as effective now, since a lot of men and women in their twenties are still living with their parents, drugs or no.

  13. heather Mar 5th 2012 at 09:38 am 13

    The comic - yeah it’s saying that marijuana is ‘dangerous’ because it might take users away from alcohol and tobacco, which are taxed and profitable legal businesses. Which is probably at least in part true. It’s the same reason why there’s no subsidizing and true support for developing ‘green’ energies — it would take profit away from the Big Oil companies that more or less run the world these days.

    The flaw in the argument is the assumption that if someone is ‘hooked’ on one thing, then they can’t get hooked on either of the other two. Of course there are people that are ‘hooked’ on booze and cigs, so there could equally well be people hooked on weed and cigs, or weed and booze, or all three.

    (… lizard spock…)

    That’s of course not even getting into the discussion of whether pot is addictive in the same way as booze and nicotine. Either way, the internal logic of the comic doesn’t work. I mean, I get what they were going for, but it doesn’t hold up.

  14. Mark H. Mar 5th 2012 at 03:55 pm 14

    My question about legalizing marijuana is simply this: Does smoking marijuana impair judgment? If so, then we need a test like a breathalyzer that can determine degree of (potential) impairment. As far as I know, all the existing tests for marijuana have a threshold that can only determine whether it’s been used in the last several days. Perhaps because it’s illegal?

  15. Alex Mar 5th 2012 at 06:27 pm 15

    Jim #11 is right, everyone is writing pro & con on weather marijuana is good or bad, or should be legalized. What about the comic?
    I think it’s just a dad telling his son marijuana is bad and his more cynical mom saying because alcohol and tobacco companies would lose money.

  16. Tim Mar 5th 2012 at 08:22 pm 16

    You know, murder has been illegal for a long time, and people kill other people anyway. Instead of trying to “legislate morality,” maybe we should just make money off of it, and let the government sell “human hunting licenses.”

  17. Proginoskes Mar 6th 2012 at 02:25 am 17

    @ DrScott (10): Don’t forget religion; there are Godaholics out there. (George W. Bush and Rick Santorum immediately spring to mind.)

    @ Tim (14): Murder is illegal because you’re infringing on other people’s rights. If you put something into your body and stay at home, you’re not bothering anyone else.

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