This Is Your Brain
I am not a supporter of the legalization of marijuana, but I have had a few laughs lately reading the standard arguments of pro-weed supporters; arguments that seem logical only if you are smoking some very good weed (or dream of a future in farming, production, sale of same). But, this latest claim making the Internet rounds has to be the most hilarious - weed cures cancer.
Rick Simpson, a Canadian, has made a name for himself, and a following, with the claims that THC cures cancer. Simpson has a free video on the how and wherefore titled Run From the Cure, and a website Phoenix Tears. Simpson claims to have cured himself of skin cancer. In this video, at approximately 1.45 minutes in, Rick gives you the method of making "hemp oil," the miracle cure. "He's a healer, not a dealer" as supporters like to refer to Rick.
Got that? Place good weed, preferably the buds, with a solvent, mix and stir with either pure naphtha or 99% isopropyl alcohol (naphtha is a petroleum product used in lighter fluid, paint stripper, etc.). Mix well, drain the liquid, take to a well-ventilated area, turn on the fan, use rubber gloves, keep away from flame, boil in a crock pot, pour in container, cool. You have just cooked up in your home lab - the cure for cancer.
Folks, this is the best laugh from Internet follies I've had in a while. Rick has basically just made a potent hashish. I need a rolling on the floor laughing emoticon.
6 comments:
I've had three separate melanomas over the years. As a result, I don't put any foreign substance on my skin, for fear of what it might generate. The guy is nuts and should be laughed at.
But I can't say I agree with you on legalization. I don't know what pro-weed arguments you're referring to, but there are valid ones - such as, it's no more dangerous or harmful than alcohol, it's unfair to blot a person's record with a victimless crime, and it's expensive to enforce unnecessary marijuana laws.
"... it's no more dangerous or harmful than alcohol, it's unfair to blot a person's record with a victimless crime, and it's expensive to enforce unnecessary marijuana laws.
Abi
Regarding the above statement, which I hear from legal-pot proponents, it is in my opinion romantic nonsense. Necrophilia is a victimless crime but most cultures don't condone it. Incest, if both parties are consenting adults, is victimless, but we don't condone it. Cannabalism, technically if a person wished you to eat them immediately upon death, is without a victim ... truth is I don't believe in the "victimless crime" meme.
Drug use is not a victimless crime, with a ripple effect on families and communities, no man is an island, etc. If marijuana is legalized, why not cocaine, heroin, opium? After all, if one mind-altering drug is "victimless" aren't they all? I won't mention the eventual health problems we can cover with "free" universal healthcare, paid for by hardworking taxpayers who are not victimized.
As for the alcohol argument - alcohol has been used by most cultures for eons, marijuana has not, and many folks use both simultaneously. Just as alcohol has devastated lives - so will marijuana. I came of age in the '60s and drugs were everywhere, I was busy at the time so didn't get around to trying marijuana until 1978. Tried cocaine in 1988. Cocaine was better. But neither were worth the social, legal, family, or personal risk. Had I tried them when younger I might have felt they were worth it and had the right to put whatever I wanted to in my body, etc. etc.
There's the argument that weed is a gateway drug which pro-legalization proponents don't believe - but every heroin addict, meth head, and crack head here in the hood began with smoking pot. I know the pro-potters have their list of famous productive stoners like Carl Sagan and John Lennon, but then Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez were stoners too.
If you think it's expensive to enforce unnecessary marijuana laws - just wait until it's legalized and produced, harvested, regulated, and sold by BigArgi, BigPharma, FDA, and BigDaddy government all getting their cut and enforcing laws against bootlegged marijuana and infractions of other marijuana regulations.
Would you rather catch your 13 y/o with a pack of ganja or a Marlboro? What will you say when your 12 y/o daughter wants to spend the weekend with her friend who's dad just happens to be stoner and growing a crop in the basement, to sell in the neighborhood?
Marijuana as a legal drug to impart a phony sense of well-being is not what society needs. We're dumbed down enough.
Governments fear nothing more than a society of people with a healthy amount of self-control - we've reached an era where folks are so brainwashed they believe any and all self-indulgent behavior is their basic right and therefore should be legal.
Do folks really believe a government looking out for their best interest is going to say toke 'em if you got 'em?
BTW, if you don't put any foreign substance on your skin, why would you support other folks putting foreign substances in their nose, veins, lungs, etc.?
I knew I you would have a vigorous and well reasoned argument, and I wasn't disappointed. ;-)
But you haven't convinced me. What governments fear most is people who think for themselves to the point where they don't want or need to live in a nanny state. Marijuana laws and laws against gambling are two examples of government interfering much too far into personal lives.
Yes, some people will abuse it if it's legal. But if you try to ban all the things that people abuse - alcohol, driving (irresponsibly), tv watching, eating sweets - there won't be much left to do but drop dimes on each other. ;-)
Barbara Ehrenreich has a great line about gay marriage - if you don't like the idea of gay marriage, don't marry a gay person. The same applies to marijuana. If you don't like it, don't smoke it. But don't tell adult Americans that they can't smoke it.
abi: "Barbara Ehrenreich has a great line about gay marriage - if you don't like the idea of gay marriage, don't marry a gay person. The same applies to marijuana. If you don't like it, don't smoke it. But don't tell adult Americans that they can't smoke it. "
Individualism is fine and dandy but as no man is an island we must make a social contract with one another, in order to live in some amount of order - meaning some things are deemed unhealthy for society as a whole, some things tolerable - which is why we cannot and do not ban everything that can be abused.
The freedom to satisfy personal appetites is not freedom - it's slavery.
abi: "What governments fear most is people who think for themselves to the point where they don't want or need to live in a nanny state."
The nanny state is exactly what we have now, and what many folks want more of - a government controlling our health, welfare, social, and economic life. Most of the same folks who want to drink, drug, gamble, eat, and sex themselves into poor health and economic bottoms also cry for government programs to take care of him/her. If everyone were "adult" and took responsibility for the results of pursuing their hedonism - fine. But they usually do not or cannot.
Only children believe that adulthood is doing what we want when we want because we've reached the designated age of 18 or 21.
Some of this new age "freedom" comes from John Stuart Mill's essays on liberty - but even he said sometimes it's better to be Socrates discontented than a fool satisfied.
I think the line might read "if you don't like the law, don't live by the law" (law defined as social, legal, or moral codes).
Sort of a nation of the criminal-minded living for the moment on irresistible impulses, or excuses, begging please please make my habits/vice legal and socially acceptable - like first graders, everyone wants a smiley face sticker on everything they do.
I think when the moral pendulum swings back to the right, and it will, it will be a real bitch.
Sort of a nation of the criminal-minded living for the moment on irresistible impulses, or excuses, begging please please make my habits/vice legal and socially acceptable - like first graders, everyone wants a smiley face sticker on everything they do.Criminal-minded? First graders? Vices? Stop building straw men. If this is how you characterize everyone who smokes marijuana (or gambles, or indulges in whatever else you don't approve of), you're way off base. You've reduced your argument to name-calling.
It's not whether I approve of them or not - it's that I do not want to pay for the results of those who do not take responsibility for abusing the lifestyle of their choice and unfortunately this seems to be many people in today's culture.
Gambling is nothing more than legalizing the numbers racket. Weed will be just another drug legalized to bring in revenue and keep a large swath of society docile or unmotivated. It's a slippery slope.
Amsterdam, one of the pot hubs held up as an example by pro-pot folks who have never been outside the US, also has a large squalid and violent section of "legal" drug users.
I think the US has enough squalor and violence.
I expect the government will pass drug testing laws for anyone receiving funds from social programs - to appease the folks who do not want tax dollars going to those who cannot pay for food, shelter, or utilities but can buy weed. Then again, maybe not since big business will make the profits and know their main customers will be the lower classes.
Be careful what you wish for ...
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