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#102 Feb 11 2011 at 10:49 AM Rating: Excellent
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Guenny wrote:
You can't patent a naturally occurring weed, so there's little money to be made off of it by conglomerations, and much money to be taken away from companies that create marijuana/hemp substitutes.

You can, however, patent genetically modified variants that produce much more fruit or chemicals or wood or whatever you're looking for out of the plant. Let me introduce you to a little company called Monsanto.

If pot was legalized, the big agribusinesses would be laughing at your amateur hour plants as they manipulated the DNA in marijuana to produce fields of megaplants and sold them in packs of 20 at the gas station for $5.75.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#103 Feb 11 2011 at 11:11 AM Rating: Good
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What Joph said. And really, patents aside, there's a huge difference in scale. Mom & pop pot operations are no bigger threat to a corporate marijuana entity than home or micro brewing is to Budweiser. Would it cut into their earnings? Sure. But since we're talking about potential revenue, it's a bit silly to argue that said companies would oppose legalization for fear of losing some of that money. And since it'd be a new industry, they could plan around not having that share of the market. They'd still hypothetically be in the green. *Teehee*

Edited, Feb 11th 2011 12:15pm by Eske

Edited, Feb 11th 2011 12:17pm by Eske
#104 Feb 11 2011 at 11:29 AM Rating: Good
Guenny wrote:
[Pot] should be legal because it's [...] just plain wonderful. [...] Marijuana is basically a miracle drug and it's a crime against humanity that it's not readily available to people who could benefit from its use.

You're so cute when you try to act smart.
#105 Feb 11 2011 at 11:30 AM Rating: Excellent
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That's the crux of it. Name any industry hemp would supposedly impact and that industry can already do it better than any home operation. Clothing? The massive cotton co-ops would just knock some field size over to hemp. If it's faster, cheaper, etc than cotton then they'll just grow hemp when appropriate and cotton when that's what they need. They already have millions of acres they can dedicate to the plant plus machinery, fertilizer, labor, capital, etc. Recreational use? If you told me that the major tobacco concerns already had variants of marijuana ready to patent and plant the day after it's legalized, I wouldn't blink an eye. Again, they already have the agricultural infrastructure plus distribution, store space, packaging, etc to flood the market with the stuff in no time. Pharmaceuticals? GlaxoSmithKline will be pushing commercials of smiling early-middle aged white women standing by picket fences talking about how her doctor prescribed Hempica. People who think the industries live in fear of hemp being legalized have little notion of what these companies are about.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#106 Feb 11 2011 at 11:43 AM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
Guenny wrote:
You can't patent a naturally occurring weed, so there's little money to be made off of it by conglomerations, and much money to be taken away from companies that create marijuana/hemp substitutes.

You can, however, patent genetically modified variants that produce much more fruit or chemicals or wood or whatever you're looking for out of the plant. Let me introduce you to a little company called Monsanto.

If pot was legalized, the big agribusinesses would be laughing at your amateur hour plants as they manipulated the DNA in marijuana to produce fields of megaplants and sold them in packs of 20 at the gas station for $5.75.


You know, there's one guy left in Iowa who got grandfathered in to a short-lived government medicinal marijuana program, and the feds send him 300 free government grade marijuana joints a month. Now, even I think that 10 joints a day is a bit excessive, yet ridiculously awesome. While the pipe dream you reference about marijuana for recreational use may be wonderful, but it's still a decade or two off at least. I'm not talking about producing marijuana to rival the scales of alcohol and tobacco, I'm talking about medicinal and industrial uses. Specifically, as a safe and therapeutic drug for many people, and an eco-friendly alternative.

As far as genetics go, while groups like Monsanto may have the technology to create Frankenpot, people have been cross breeding strains to optimize efficacy for many years. Heck, in Tibet, they have strains of marijuana that are 5,000 years old. Good marijuana clubs have hundreds of different strains and intakes of marijuana, because different things work for different people. Smoking isn't the only way to get cannabis. And the fact of the matter is, that's the one problem with trying to produce synthetic pot: naturally, pot has nearly 100 different types of cannabinoids, and other chemicals beside, and different strains produce different blends. While someone taking Marinol may initially have relief, they quickly build up resistance to the one synthetic cannabinoid present.
#107 Feb 11 2011 at 11:43 AM Rating: Good
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Default position is we're free as birds and allowed to do whatever we want.

Now, when my freedoms impact others or society in general then it goes under the chopping block.

Negatives vs positives
Freedom vs security
Equality vs efficiency

At one point the law-makers of this country must have been convinced that allowing people to smoke pot would have too much of a negative impact on our country as a whole to allow it's use to continue. Measured against current regulation and understanding of the product a complete ban on the stuff just doesn't hold water.

Unless something is REALLY dangerous (nuclear bombs, heroin, siberian tigers), it's mostly just regulated and it's use restricted (guns, booze, cigs, drugs, etc).

Hemp is supposedly very fibrous, grows big fast and would be an excellent plant for making ethanol.

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#108 Feb 11 2011 at 11:50 AM Rating: Good
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MoebiusLord wrote:
Guenny wrote:
[Pot] should be legal because it's [...] just plain wonderful. [...] Marijuana is basically a miracle drug and it's a crime against humanity that it's not readily available to people who could benefit from its use.

You're so cute when you try to act smart.


Heh, you obviously completely misunderstood my intent.
#109 Feb 11 2011 at 11:53 AM Rating: Good
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Guenny wrote:
MoebiusLord wrote:
Guenny wrote:
[Pot] should be legal because it's [...] just plain wonderful. [...] Marijuana is basically a miracle drug and it's a crime against humanity that it's not readily available to people who could benefit from its use.

You're so cute when you try to act smart.


Heh, you obviously completely misunderstood my intent.
I'm seeing a pattern emerge with Moe's misunderstanding of womanish intent.
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#110 Feb 11 2011 at 12:10 PM Rating: Excellent
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Guenny wrote:
You know, there's one guy left in Iowa who got grandfathered in to a short-lived government medicinal marijuana program, and the feds send him 300 free government grade marijuana joints a month. Now, even I think that 10 joints a day is a bit excessive, yet ridiculously awesome. While the pipe dream you reference about marijuana for recreational use may be wonderful, but it's still a decade or two off at least. I'm not talking about producing marijuana to rival the scales of alcohol and tobacco, I'm talking about medicinal and industrial uses. Specifically, as a safe and therapeutic drug for many people, and an eco-friendly alternative.

As far as genetics go, while groups like Monsanto may have the technology to create Frankenpot, people have been cross breeding strains to optimize efficacy for many years. Heck, in Tibet, they have strains of marijuana that are 5,000 years old. Good marijuana clubs have hundreds of different strains and intakes of marijuana, because different things work for different people. Smoking isn't the only way to get cannabis. And the fact of the matter is, that's the one problem with trying to produce synthetic pot: naturally, pot has nearly 100 different types of cannabinoids, and other chemicals beside, and different strains produce different blends. While someone taking Marinol may initially have relief, they quickly build up resistance to the one synthetic cannabinoid present.

I have no idea what you're trying to argue. If there's a market for hemp/marijuana large enough to financially impact the assorted big businesses, the big businesses will take it and do it larger, cheaper and faster. If it's a niche market too small to significantly impact them, they won't care. They simply have more money, more land and more resources. For every enterprising back barn pot grower, there's ten thousand college students whose idea of "work" is walking to the 7/11 and buying whatever is behind the counter and sold by Phillip Morris. You want 100 different cannabinoids in your Marinol and you think AstraZeneca can't pull this off? This is what these companies do to make billions of dollars a year. Or, if it's easier to just grind up some "organic" weed, press it into a pill with some sawdust, and sell it that way then that's what they'll do. First they'll take your 5,000 year old Tibetan strain, tweak one of the genes and slap a patent on that before marketing it as the best possible 5,000 year old Tibetan weed on the market, bar none.

My point is merely that there's nothing in the legalization of pot that has big businesses terrified. That's like these people who say "Yeah, there's this type of gas where you can get, like, a thousand miles to the gallon but, like, the big oil companies won't let them make it..." when, in reality, any oil company would drive over a sack of babies with a dump truck to get that formula first because they'd be bajillionaires who could literally purchase the continent of Africa with the money they'd make. The barriers to marijuana being legalized or hemp produced commercially are social ones.

Edited, Feb 11th 2011 12:14pm by Jophiel
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#111 Feb 11 2011 at 12:27 PM Rating: Good
Elinda wrote:
Guenny wrote:
MoebiusLord wrote:
Guenny wrote:
[Pot] should be legal because it's [...] just plain wonderful. [...] Marijuana is basically a miracle drug and it's a crime against humanity that it's not readily available to people who could benefit from its use.

You're so cute when you try to act smart.


Heh, you obviously completely misunderstood my intent.
I'm seeing a pattern emerge with Moe's misunderstanding of womanish intent.

Thank Bob I'm married. Now gbaji-ing is sanctioned.
#112 Feb 11 2011 at 1:10 PM Rating: Good
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Hemp is supposedly very fibrous, grows big fast and would be an excellent plant for making ethanol.


And still orders or magnitude less productive than algal biofuels.
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#113 Feb 11 2011 at 3:15 PM Rating: Decent
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The barriers to marijuana being legalized or hemp produced commercially are social ones.


This. The conspiracy theories spun by the pro-legalization theories about how the industry is out to stop pot legalization are ultimately doing more harm than good to bring pot into mainstream social acceptance.

Remember that vote recently to legalize pot in California? How did that go? Did you see any anti-pot ads on TV from industry lobbyists? No, you saw the proposition fail on the basis of the people's vote, because the people still stigmatize it as a bad drug.

What people need to understand if we're to legalize it, is the actual relative harm the drug presents (negligible as compared to alcohol and tobacco), and the societal harm it does by criminalization of it (costs of incarceration and enforcement; providing a booming industry to the underworld), and the potential benefits of legalization (like a taxable industry). What people don't need are conspiracy theories about pot being the wonder-plant being kept down by like, the man, or something.
#114 Feb 12 2011 at 1:01 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
Guenny wrote:
You can't patent a naturally occurring weed, so there's little money to be made off of it by conglomerations, and much money to be taken away from companies that create marijuana/hemp substitutes.

You can, however, patent genetically modified variants that produce much more fruit or chemicals or wood or whatever you're looking for out of the plant. Let me introduce you to a little company called Monsanto.

If pot was legalized, the big agribusinesses would be laughing at your amateur hour plants as they manipulated the DNA in marijuana to produce fields of megaplants and sold them in packs of 20 at the gas station for $5.75.

What's the problem with this, again?
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#115 Feb 12 2011 at 4:24 PM Rating: Excellent
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I personally don't care if they ever legalize it or not. I smoked it in college when it was easy to get and stopped after I got out of school purely because Mary-Louise Parker doesn't live next door and I wasn't vested enough in smoking weed to go out and try to find a source for it. At this point, I don't care enough to fight it and don't care enough to sign a petition supporting it. But I don't believe that the reason why it's not legalized has to do with fear from major industries.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#116 Feb 12 2011 at 6:02 PM Rating: Decent
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I tried it once, and it was awful. Won't smoke it either. I prefer to fill my lungs with air.
#117 Feb 15 2011 at 7:23 AM Rating: Excellent
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Remember that vote recently to legalize pot in California? How did that go? Did you see any anti-pot ads on TV from industry lobbyists? No, you saw the proposition fail on the basis of the people's vote, because the people still stigmatize it as a bad drug.


So you know who spent the money for all the hysterical ads, then?
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#118 Feb 15 2011 at 10:34 AM Rating: Excellent
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The California Chamber of Commerce spent $250,000 on anti-pot ads but their primary concern seemed to be language in the legislation barring employers from firing employees who fail marijuana drug tests unless they can prove the employee's work was impaired. Given that (A) marijuana would still be illegal under federal law and (B) select companies currently have policies far more draconian than that (i.e. "no smoking in your personal vehicle"), the Chamber of Commerce had motivations other than fear of the marijuana industry invading their turf.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#119 Feb 15 2011 at 2:27 PM Rating: Decent
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So you know who spent the money for all the hysterical ads, then?


My mistake. You're right, there were a lot of ads, but they were, as you said, hysterical. I should know better than to assume people won't just laugh them off for being complete non sequiturs, but instead believe that if the TV box says its bad, it must be bad.

Anyway, my point was that the ads weren't from industries trying to keep pot illegal as some big conspiracy, but rather the anti-legalization movement is from yokels that can't get past marijuana's stigma as a life-ruining gateway drug.
#120 Feb 15 2011 at 10:02 PM Rating: Excellent
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Anyway, my point was that the ads weren't from industries trying to keep pot illegal as some big conspiracy, but rather the anti-legalization movement is from yokels that can't get past marijuana's stigma as a life-ruining gateway drug.


You're flipping agent and effect. The yokels were told what to think, and they dutifully thought it.

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#121 Feb 16 2011 at 4:53 AM Rating: Decent
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Samira wrote:
Timelordwho wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Samira wrote:
As it is, it's just kinda sad.

What sort of void do you need to have in your life before you start thinking "inhaling bath salts sounds like a good idea"?


Well, when those Balt salts are made of a more volatile form of cocaine...



I keep imagining some poor ignorant person going totally numb in the bath.



Now I can't not imagine this.
#122 Feb 16 2011 at 2:48 PM Rating: Decent
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You're flipping agent and effect. The yokels were told what to think, and they dutifully thought it.


No, we're just quibbling over the source of the ads, but otherwise in agreement. Who told the yokels what to think? Was it the big anti-marijuana-industry industry? Or was it other yokels who are afeared of the Mary Jane like their mammy taught's em? I think more the latter. Yokels have money, power and opinions, too.
#123 Feb 16 2011 at 8:59 PM Rating: Decent
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Kachi wrote:
Quote:
You're flipping agent and effect. The yokels were told what to think, and they dutifully thought it.


No, we're just quibbling over the source of the ads, but otherwise in agreement. Who told the yokels what to think? Was it the big anti-marijuana-industry industry? Or was it other yokels who are afeared of the Mary Jane like their mammy taught's em? I think more the latter. Yokels have money, power and opinions, too.


Like Joph said, the biggest objection to the law wasn't the concept of legalization, but the problems it would cause for any business which received federal money in any way. It could potentially create a situation where it would be simultaneously both illegal to conduct a drug test on an employee and illegal to not conduct a drug test on the same employee if the company (or school, or government agency) received federal funding which required compliance with federal drug guidelines.

And for the record, while I use a DVR and thus miss a lot of commercials and whatnot, I don't recall seeing a single "hysterical" ad about the proposition to legalize marijuana last year. I'm sure there were some, and I'm sure they talked about marijuana being a gateway drug and whatever, but I must have missed them all. The only mentions about it were some of the local talk radio folks and despite assumptions to the contrary, the overwhelming majority of even the conservative locals were that it was silly to keep marijuana illegal, but that the law was badly written and had significant problems. I think I might have seen some segment or two on local broadcast News basically saying the same thing.


I sometimes honestly wonder if the pro-legalization folks want a victimization status so much that they invent opposition where none really exists. It just seems like they can't just table a reasonable path to legalization, but must include some poison pill that they know will kill the bill. Either they try to go too far (as the law in California did) and make it illegal for an employer to drug test if required by federal law, or they try to add in some wording to make it impossible for any big companies to market and distribute any products based on it. The latter is kinda funny since the claim is always made that it's the big companies that don't want it legalized because it'll somehow hurt their business, but it seems like the "grow pot in your closet and sell it to your friends legally" advocates are the ones who don't want to have to potentially compete with RJ Reynolds and Phillip Morris.


And as an amusing aside. I do recall speaking with a guy who worked for RJ Reynolds way back in the day on marketing. He swore up and down that not only did they already have a formula for marijuana cigarettes, but they had a name (he told me but darned if I can remember it), packaging, and an advertising plan already in place. They were, in fact, ready to go to market the instant it might become legal to sell marijuana as a product over the counter like alcohol and cigarettes.
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#124 Feb 16 2011 at 9:13 PM Rating: Excellent
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I'm sure there were some, and I'm sure they talked about marijuana being a gateway drug and whatever, but I must have missed them all.


Yeah, pretty much all they said. Gateway, gateway, gateway, OMG gateway, adolescent schizophrenia, gateway.

Not that there's zero room for discussion on either issue, but the ads I heard were not invitations to discussion, of course, as is the nature of political ads.

Well, actually, I'd take issue with the "gateway" assertion, since I know more than a few people who went straight to meth, bypassing pot. If you want to get high, what you're likely to try really just depends on what's available to you. More and more often that's prescription drugs out of the family medicine chest and, to a lesser extent, locally manufactured meth.



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#125 Feb 16 2011 at 9:26 PM Rating: Good
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From what I experienced in college, Alcohol was the bigger "gateway" to other things than pot was. Pretty sure every time we ever tried anything, it was because we were drunk at the time.

(I was a good kid, I didn't try anything really bad. Some of my friends though...)
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#126 Feb 16 2011 at 9:50 PM Rating: Decent
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TirithRR the Eccentric wrote:
From what I experienced in college, Alcohol was the bigger "gateway" to other things than pot was. Pretty sure every time we ever tried anything, it was because we were drunk at the time.


This is true if you're starting in college. Most people start using some form of controlled substance in High School. And at that age, it's often much much easier to score some weed than to get alcohol. The guy selling alcohol in the corner store faces dramatically different legal penalties for selling to someone under 21 versus someone over 21, while the guy selling pot out in front of that store doesn't.

What's bizarre is that if you legalized pot and controlled it the same way as alcohol, it would almost certainly become *harder* for most pre-college kids to get a hold of. Not that there aren't size vs effect differences that affect things as well, but everything else being equal you'll find a lot fewer people willing to risk jail selling something to a teenager that they can sell legally to someone who's older. And if you do see name brands appearing on liquor shore shelves, and assuming you'd still need some kind of license to sell marijuana, you wont see very many people other than those stores selling them either. Same deal. You'll be able to get some if you know someone older who will buy it for you, but you'll be unlikely to ever buy it directly yourself.

Just like alcohol.
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