Do I have the right...

[devonrevenge]

LOL modshop, good point.

Growing hemp or weed could kill americas logging industry dead too, you get more paper faster with an acre of hemp than you do forest.

Did you know a scientist was fired from government research post for suggesting ecstacy was more harmless than horse riding, playing on a climbing frame drinking smoking and check this...in 1995 when e was biggest paperclips killed/damaged more people!

Pill heads sure do seem to have crazy mood swings though.

There was some propaganda going around a few years ago, that 100% of people with heroin addiction started off with weed, great so how many people who smoked weed moved onto heroin? 100%?

in 1995 the crime rate in the uk dropped by 50% it was made illeagal the following year, I think a country moving from one substance ie alchohol to another ecstacy could cause too much of a rapid change in society, who knows it could have led to a revolution, remember how scared of hippies powerful institutions became during the social revolution?

lots of derogitary social stereotypes were born from all this, funny story looking backwards actually, that social revolution has been sold back to us without its soul now.

Some drugs that are legal really shouldn't be too, and luc lieber is right, the majority arnt harmless.

[BigBlackSheep]

I think the worst hypocracy that often gets neglected in drug debates are OTC drugs. Most of the shit you can buy at your local pharmacy will kill you faster than a few good hits, and complain once to your doctor about how your headache is killing you and you've got yourself a prescription for some good old T-4. Not to mention the idiots fucking their livers with "harmless" cough medicine so they can trip for a few hours.

[chrisname]

IMO saying a legal drug is more dangerous than an illegal one is not a good argument for legalising the illegal one. Saying more people die of alcohol poisoning (thousands every year) than cannabis toxicity (none ever) is a better argument for making alcohol illegal than for making cannabis legal.

[BigBlackSheep]

I never intended to use it as an argument for legalization, I just think it's just a great example of double standards.

[3qX21hU5]

First off I am all for legalizing weed as long as it is treated like liquor where anyone under 21 is not able to purchase it legally and if they have it while underage they get fined or arrested depending on their priors, also for it to be DWI or DUI if you are high while operating a motor vehicle since it does decrease your reaction time and your ability to think. I think its up to everyone to make their own decision on what they want to do in their free time and obviously the war on drugs here in the US is doing nothing but costing us money.

But with that said there are some major concerns with legalizing weed. One of the main ones is that weed is a gateway drug. I know everyone has a different opinion on this but it can be proven that kids that smoke pot are more likely to experiment with harder drugs. It is a real concern I read a study awhile back and I think they stated highschool kids that smoked weed on a daily basis were 60% more likely to try hard drugs like heroin, pills, meth, coke, ect. Now I'm not sure if that was a legitimate study but it does ring true to my ears. So while I am for legalization of pot (mainly because it is costing us so much money and our country is going broke) I am not in favor of letting anyone under 21 use it legally (other then strict medical uses, not non of this bull crap I have anxiety stuff you see in cali). Adults are not subject to as much peer pressure usually as kids are and they usually can make more mature decision so let them do as they want.

devonrevenge wrote:

There was some propaganda going around a few years ago, that 100% of people with heroin addiction started off with weed, great so how many people who smoked weed moved onto heroin? 100%?

I'm curious can you give a link to that study? Because when you are dealing with human behavior it is almost impossible to get 100% and I doubt any legitimate study would be stupid enough to state something like that.

[chrisname]

@Zereo
How do you go from "people who try drug x are more likely to try hard drugs like y and z" to "trying drug x causes people to try hard drugs like y and z"?

[3qX21hU5]

chrisname wrote:

How do you go from "people who try drug x are more likely to try hard drugs like y and z" to "trying drug x causes people to try hard drugs like y and z"?

Huh? I seriously don't get what you are trying to say.

Anyways for the original question

My question is: Even though my parents have agreed, may I refuse a blood test and force the school to allow me a urine test? (This is all legal speaking, for argument's skae pretend I am in America/UK

Well america and the UK have some different laws on the matter I believe. Most likely they will not use a needle for the drug test since that method costs a lot more then a urine test and they are doing it for the whole school. But if they did require a blood test and you refused most likely they would just tell you if you don't take the test you will be automatically assumed to test positive and you will have to deal with whatever consequences that involves. Also I'm not entirely sure weather you have the right to refuse if you are still a minor, it might be up to the parents. This is all for the US since I don't have much knowledge on the UK.

[chrisname]

Zereo wrote:

Huh? I seriously don't get what you are trying to say.

Here's your argument:
1. People who try weed are more likely to try hard drugs
2. Therefore, weed causes people to try hard drugs
3. Therefore, weed is a "gateway drug"
You can't conclude 2 from 1 without the assumption that correlation proves causation (it does not), so your argument is unsound.

[3qX21hU5]

Wasn't really looking to get into a nitpicking debate about this was just stating my opinion =/. Like I said other people have different opinions on whether weed is a gateway drug.

Also I never said people that "try" weed I said daily users (IE people that are not just experimenting) are more likely to try hard drugs. Which I don't really see anything wrong with that statement. Now in truth I suck at science and can barely follow what your saying, but what I think you are saying is that I can't prove that it was weed that make them try hard drugs? If so why can't I? If one group of subjects that smoke weed and another group that don't both are monitored for a year and the group that does smoke weed has 60% more subjects that test positive for hard drugs wouldn't that be a sound argument to make? Again I am quite new to this kind of thinking so sorry If i'm not follow the correct scientific way.

[3hM2Nwbp]

chrisname wrote:

Here's your argument:
1. People who try weed are more likely to try hard drugs
2. Therefore, weed causes people to try hard drugs
3. Therefore, weed is a "gateway drug"
You can't conclude 2 from 1 without the assumption that correlation proves causation (it does not), so your argument is unsound.

FYI: Pure logic / reasoning does not (and never did) work in the real-world.

A majority of hard drug offenders that used marijuana first says something. There are other factors at play, but one simply can't just ignore a statistic because it is 'logically unsound'...

<political rant>

I wouldn't be opposed to legalizing marijuana unless I was convinced that the fines generated from illegal trafficking and DUI violations weren't just being pissed away on frivolous things.

[chrisname]

Zereo wrote:

Wasn't really looking to get into a nitpicking debate about this was just stating my opinion =/. Like I said other people have different opinions on whether weed is a gateway drug.

It's fine to have opinions, but you should at least be able to justify them, and if they don't stand up to scrutiny then they should be discarded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity

If one group of subjects that smoke weed and another group that don't both are monitored for a year and the group that does smoke weed has 60% more subjects that test positive for hard drugs wouldn't that be a sound argument to make?

That's different, but other studies disagree:

In 1999, a study by the Division of Neuroscience and Behavioral Health at the Institute of Medicine entitled "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base," found no evidence of a link between cannabis use and the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs on the basis of its particular physiological effect

It also doesn't prove that weed is what caused them to try hard drugs. My opinion is that people who go on try hard drugs just try marijuana first because it's cheap and easily attained. If it wasn't, they would probably try hard drugs anyway.

Luc Lieber wrote:

FYI: Pure logic / reasoning does not (and never did) work in the real-world.

That's a really, really stupid thing to say.

one simply can't just ignore a statistic because it is 'logically unsound'...

I didn't say the statistic was unsound (that wouldn't make sense), I said that the argument derived from it was unsound. The statistic alone is not enough to support the idea that smoking weed causes people to try hard drugs because there could be any number of other variables not accounted for. Again, correlation doesn't imply causation. When A and B are correlated, there are four possible explanations:
1. A causes B
2. B causes A
3. A and B are caused by C
4. A and B co-occur purely by coincidence
I think we can safely ignore #2 because people generally don't start with hard drugs and end with drugs like weed, but that leaves 3 other possible explanations for the correlation between A and B. You and Zereo are assuming that the only explanation is #1, which is fallacious. Your statistic means nothing by itself.

[3hM2Nwbp]

chrisname wrote:

That's a really, really stupid thing to say.

I've only been alive for 25 years, but during those 25 years I have consistently seen that:

A) Trying to apply hard logic to human behavior is a waste of time and resources. There are too many factors involved such that all that happens is the logic engine keeps spinning its wheels accomplishing nothing. What usually happens is a common-sense (right or wrong) solution is put in place before any '100% sound logical conclusion' is reached.

B) I really can't stand "the art of debate" -- I follow my own common sense and that's worked out very well for me.

So with that, I'll step out and let the logic war rage on (and on, and on, because it never ends...).

*Forgot to target my quote!

[3qX21hU5]

I don't think I said smoking weed causes other people to try hard drugs If I did I didn't mean to. What I did mean was that people who smoke weed (especially at earlier ages) are more likely to experiment with hard drugs and maybe become drug addicts. There are plenty of studies and statistics to support it. Like below.

My opinion is that people who go on try hard drugs just try marijuana first because it's cheap and easily attained. If it wasn't, they would probably try hard drugs anyway.

That could be true for some, but when people get into smoking weed because it is cheap and easy to get they also start opening up doors and connections to obtain more harder drugs. They start to get into the drug scene.

That's different, but other studies disagree:

Could you link me a study that says use of weed does not increase the risk of use of harder drugs? Here are some that do..

Results Individuals who used cannabis by age 17 years had odds of other drug use, alcohol dependence, and drug abuse/dependence that were 2.1 to 5.2 times higher than those of their co-twin, who did not use cannabis before age 17 years. Controlling for known risk factors (early-onset alcohol or tobacco use, parental conflict/separation, childhood sexual abuse, conduct disorder, major depression, and social anxiety) had only negligible effects on these results. These associations did not differ significantly between monozygotic and dizygotic twins.

Conclusions Associations between early cannabis use and later drug use and abuse/dependence cannot solely be explained by common predisposing genetic or shared environmental factors. The association may arise from the effects of the peer and social context within which cannabis is used and obtained. In particular, early access to and use of cannabis may reduce perceived barriers against the use of other illegal drugs and provide access to these drugs.

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=195839


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-07-18/cannabis-linked-to-use-of-amphetamines/2505708

And here is some more studies

The gateway model was developed to explain a number of statistical sets that showed a correlation between the use of marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco, and the use of so-called “harder” drugs (heroin, cocaine, LSD, etc.) in adolescents (Morral et al., 2002). The marijuana gateway effect refers specifically to marijuana’s contribution to this general gateway effect. These statistics generally fit into three different subsets, all of which are used to support the marijuana gateway effect. The first simply demonstrate that users of marijuana will be at a higher risk to experiment with hard drugs than non-users. This is supported by results from a number of studies in a number of different countries and cultures (Adler & Kandel, 1981; Stenbacka, Allebeck & Romelsjo, 1993; Beenstock & Rahav, 2002). The second statistical set is related to the order in which different classes of drugs are first used. Drug abuse rarely begins with hard drugs and regresses to marijuana. A longitudinal study of 1265 New Zealand adolescents between 15 and 21 years of age revealed only three cases (.237 percent) in which hard drug use was initiated before marijuana use (Fergusson & Horwood, 2000). The third factor used to support the marijuana gateway effect is the strong correlation between the frequency of marijuana use and the rate of hard drug initiation (Morral et al., 2002). A proportional hazards model implied that those using marijuana more than 50 times per year were 140 times more likely to progress to hard drugs than those test subjects using no cannabis (Fergusson & Horwood, 2000). This correlation between number of marijuana usage and progression to harder drugs has been labeled the dose-response effect (Morral et al., 2002). These three relationships between marijuana and hard drug use would suggest that the marijuana gateway effect has a solid foundation in science.

[ModShop]

Zereo wrote:

The association may arise from the effects of the peer and social context within which cannabis is used and obtained. In particular, early access to and use of cannabis may reduce perceived barriers against the use of other illegal drugs and provide access to these drugs.

^this. Weed by itself has really nothing to do with the use of other drugs, but who you interact with to obtain it does. You can't just go to a store and buy it, you have to find a dealer or someone else willing to sell. You'll probably make some "friends" with similar "hobbies" in the process, which could surely influence you to try new things, not just the weed you originally signed up for. And if you've already broken the law to smoke weed, what difference does it make if you do something else? Nothing. So I don't necessarily believe that people smoke weed then get the itch for harder stuff, but rather they get into new social groups in the process of getting their weed and these groups influence them to experiment with harder drugs.

[3qX21hU5]

Exactly so weed itself does not contribute to using hard drugs (Which I think you were trying to say Chris?), but it does introduce you to a new "life" so to speak where it is much more accepted to use hard drugs, and it opens up new opportunities to get the hard drugs that the person wouldn't have known about if they hadn't got the weed in the first place. That is why I think it is a gateway drug.

Thanks ModShop that was almost exactly what I was trying to say in the first place but I think it came out wrong.

[Disch]

So it's not really that weed is a gateway drug... it's just that committing crime is a gateway to committing more serious crime.

I think we'd all agree that if you take the crime and "unfavorable social scene" out of it... weed itself is pretty harmless.


So it really sounds to me like that's all the more reason to legalize it. I mean if it's legal, kids would be able to obtain it through other means, and thus not have to be subjected to the "drug scene" or be exposed to the peer pressure to try harder drugs.

[devonrevenge]

hey look; this

There was some propaganda going around a few years ago, that 100% of people with heroin addiction started off with weed, great so how many people who smoked weed moved onto heroin? 100%?

is this

1. People who try weed are more likely to try hard drugs
2. Therefore, weed causes people to try hard drugs
3. Therefore, weed is a "gateway drug"

but slacker, it still says the same thing, you find the more you code the more you need exact information the harder it is to apply your fuzzy logic to solve things.

Maybe programin isn't good for your entire brain?

[chrisname]

@Luc Lieber
I'm glad you didn't get offended by my comment, I realise now that it was a stupid thing of me to say. Anyway, I hope you see the irony in using logic to argue that logic is useless. As for "common sense", it really is neither common nor sensible, intuition is a bad way to find truth (so sayeth the naturalist unto the Platonist). Arguments don't really find truth either since you can't get more information out of them than you put in, but what they are useful for is giving us good justification for some beliefs. Beliefs that are justified by good arguments are thus rational beliefs, and those that aren't are irrational ones. Good enough arguments will convince a rational person to accept a new belief or change an existing one. That's the purpose of debate; I guess you're one of those people who thinks of debate and argument as being heated shouting matches. As for logic not applying to the real world, I guess you've just never heard a good argument (or paid attention to one). Saying logic doesn't apply to real life is like saying mathematics doesn't apply, which may be true of 2D geometry, but 5^2=4^2+3^2 is unconditionally true
. Logic and arithmetic both apply to the real world.

@Zereo
That's what I was saying, it was your use of the term "gateway drug" that made me think you were talking about diminishing returns of weed leading to hard drug addiction. Other than that I think you're actually right, but like Disch I don't see it as a reason not to legalise it. As for a study that supports there not being a link, I already posted one. The title, year and publisher were in the Wikipedia quote I posted. I'm sure you can find the actual text (probably just the abstract) on Google Scholar.

[Cheraphy]

What's that? Pot not giving you the same bang for your buck? Hmm, well you could try crystal meth... OR you could just go a week or two without toking and hit the bowl hard. T-Brakes are a thing and a good piece of anecdotal (worthless) evidence for why marijuana is NOT a gateway drug.

[3qX21hU5]

Again it all depends on how you define a gateway drug. The way I look at it is you are breaking the law to get the marijuana so you have to go to sometimes shady characters (Or whatever you call them) to get it. Once you start smoking it regularly you start making other friends that do it, and the chances are that one of them does harder drugs. Since you already broke the law to try weed and you experienced the kind of high weed can give you there is a higher chance you would be willing to try a different drug for a number of reason (Peer pressure, you want to experience a different high, it is just available to you, ect). So yes smoking the weed itself does not make you try other drugs, but if you look at the whole picture it can be proven (IE the numerous studies I have posted previously) that there is a higher chance that you will try hard drugs if you smoke weed.

T-Brakes are a thing and a good piece of anecdotal (worthless) evidence for why marijuana is NOT a gateway drug.

I have no clue how that proves it does not have a gateway effect even looking at it from a common sense view and not scientifically.

So it really sounds to me like that's all the more reason to legalize it. I mean if it's legal, kids would be able to obtain it through other means, and thus not have to be subjected to the "drug scene" or be exposed to the peer pressure to try harder drugs.

That is true, but the only way to totally remove the "drug scene" would be to have it legal for everyone even minors. Because if it is not legal for the minors they still have to break the law to smoke it and obtain it (Even though it would be a bit easier). I agree it would be less of a problem then it is now if it was legal but it would still be a problem.