From my personal research, smoking marijuana actually lets ideas flow freely. It's not necessarily a heightened perspective, since that's all relative - but you definately percieve things in a different way. Ideas (radical ones included) flow freely... from the inside. The reason why trying to produce them verbally may come off as stupor, is because they're generally so convoluted and involved, that constructing them can sometimes be difficult and frustrating. That's what writing is good for.

Anyway, I detest the opinion that pot smokers are 'dumbed down'. That's the most naive and generalized statement you could make on the subject and just reeks of uninspired and incompetant 'research'.

If I were an English teacher grading this paper, I'd give it a D at best. He states that marijuana stupifies, but nowhere does he offer any evidence to prove his point. He doesn't know what he's taking about, that's obvious; but since he is a professor of economics, this is not unexpected.

From a paper refuting a study which attempts to justify tobacco regulation:

"The Impact Study's argumentation to justify more tobacco
regulation bypasses the economic methodology. It does not demonstrate the existence of external costs (i.e., of effects on third parties) nor does it show that there are transfers between smokers and non-smokers that would need to be corrected. The study omits theoretical and empirical research published on smoking in the economic literature. Its general assumption of addiction can hardly stand up to any thorough analysis, and amounts to an argument for government paternalism."

I was so puzzled by Mr. Palda's seemingly benign opinion of alcohol and tobacco, that I did a little research. The text below is from a public policy paper he wrote last year. Can *you* find the hypocrisy? This is easier than "Where's Waldo?"

Filip Palda, The History of Tobacco Regulation: Forward to the Past, Public Policy Sources No. 40, July 26, 2000, Fraser Institute

> Marijuana is not legal because for most users it is a drug with one function: Marijuana stupefies its user so that the man who once shone in conversation becomes under its influence a dullard who unsettles family and friends with inanities and disconnected thoughts

This sounds more like a description of a Drug Warrior on alcohol. I don't know how many drunk people I've seen spewing inanities and being jerks. Pot, on the other hand, encourages introspection and some of the most interesting conversations I've heard have taken place where pot was present.

I was incredulous to read Filip Palda's "Toke Up, Dumb Down" in the National Post. Mr. Palda claims smoking cannabis makes you stupid. I disagree.

In fact, I disagree with just about everything Mr. Palda wrote in his editorial, mainly because nothing he said about cannabis is true.

Smoking cannabis has no effect on your mental ability. It has been used for 5000 years as medicine and for recreation.

What was most appalling about Mr. Palda's editorial was his praise for tobacco and alcohol in lieu of marijuana. I will remind Mr. Palda, and the Post's readers, that tobacco is addictive and deadly. Alcohol can kill you in one sitting. As for cannabis, it is non-addictive and has no lethal
dose. No one has ever died smoking marijuana. Tobacco and alcohol have killed millions.

Repealing cannabis prohibition is long overdue. The laws were enacted by racist men with small minds and selfish goals.

No one should go to prison for using a plant to feel better. It is absurd. We must get rid of these archaic laws, and, if necessary, the foolish politicians who enact them.

Actually, Offspring, I have a highly technical job coordinating the compilation of commercial software from C++ code, and let me tell you, occasionally it is very useful to be stoned at work. Some days it's hard to get excited about a ten-hour day, so I smoke an early morning bowl in the style of the Rastafarians. It instantly wakes me up and gets the serotonin flowing, much like coffee works for some people (it doesn't for me). And while it undoubtedly promotes creative thinking, I do not have difficulty "tackling a challenging problem which [is] broken down into manageable steps". In fact, I tend to make mistakes when I'm bleary-eyed and sleepy, not when I'm stoned awake and focused. Even Benadryl sabotages my concentration, but not cannabis.

Like many tech firms, my company has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on this sort of thing. And we have flourished in a shrinking industry. If we adopted mandatory drug tests, this company and the livelihood of all of its employees -- not to mention customers -- would be devastated overnight.

Robbie provided a concise, point-by-point refutation. Kaptinemo fired up his electric turkey knife and laid open M. Palda's disingenuous definition of "creativity". Dr. Russo lent his professional imprimatur. And observer, as always, provides the muscle behind the rhetoric with his excellent collection of links.

Is there a giblet left for me? How about the economic angle?

Politicians will board almost any profitable enterprise, cutlass in hand, to hack their way to private treasure chests. What stops the Captain Hooks of government from plundering the marijuana trade?

Hear, hear! Could be a Libertarian Party press release so far. But then the article veers into, well, mental "chaos".

Marijuana is not legal because for most users it is a drug with one function: Marijuana stupefies its user [...]

So cannabis is so harmful that even the bloodthirsty pirates in government will not stoop to legalize and tax it!

Of course, as anybody who has read this far already knows, nothing is stopping the Captain Hooks of government from plundering the marijuana trade. This is just the way they like it. Cannabis accounts for the majority of drug arrests, and the booty from countless seizures has helped create the Drug War establishment as we know it. It is much easier for government to plunder an illegal industry than settle for a small tax on a legal industry that can organize and lobby in its own defense.

An economics professor should spot this right away. But an economics professor at a school for government bureaucrats (École nationale d'administration publique) knows who butters his bread.

Marijuana inhibits flow by robbing its users of the ability and desire to concentrate. Nothing productive or uplifting comes from its recreational use.

see:

We know that people smoke marijuana not because they are driven by uncontrollable "Reefer Madness" craving, as some propaganda would lead us to believe, but because they have learned its value from experience. . . .

The rest are sometimes grouped under the general heading of "recreational", but that is hardly an adequate description of, say, marijuana's capacity to catalyze ideas and insights, heighten the appreciation of music and art, or deepen emotional and sexual intimacy.

These kinds of marijuana experiences, which I like to call "enhancement", are often misunderstood and under-appreciated -- not only by non-users, but even by some users, especially young people who are interested mainly in promoting sociability and fun. . . .

Lester Grinspoon, M.D.
http://marijuana-uses.com/

Listing of user experiences, here:
http://marijuana-uses.com/examples/default.htm

see especially the account by Carl Sagan:

[The] account was written in 1969 for publication in Marihuana Reconsidered (1971). Sagan was in his mid-thirties at that time. He continued to use cannabis for the rest of his life.

http://marijuana-uses.com/examples/Mr_X.htm

Marijuana is not legal because for most users it is a drug with one function: Marijuana stupefies its user so that the man who once shone in conversation becomes under its influence a dullard who unsettles family and friends with inanities and disconnected thoughts.

The author of this piece in a Canadian paper would do wll to learn Canadian history.

see:

Canada: The Real Janey Canuck
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n510/a08.html

The Anti-Marijuana Writings Of An Edmonton Woman In The 1920s Were So Influential That Many Of Her Opinions Helped Shape Legislation That Lasted Decades . . . But to whom does Canada owe its antiquated drug laws? One of their earliest and most influential promoters was an Edmonton woman who in 1920 wrote exposes for Maclean's about the illicit drug trade. She called herself Janey Canuck, and it was good old Janey who first warned Canadians about "marahuana." Seven years later, Canada outlawed its use. . . .

Canada: The Real Janey Canuck
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n510/a08.html

also

The Mother of Murphy's Law
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v97/n306/a02.html

etc.

Moreover, the whole piece is an extended example of the prohibitionist theme of associating illness and harm with the drug targeted for prohibition.

''Thus alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine (coffee) began to become increasingly integrated into the very fabric of American life, whereas cocaine, opium, heroin, and subsequently marihuana and the hallucinogens continued to be defined as evil - physically, emotionally, and morally devastating to the individual and unquestionably destructive to the culture. . . .''

NIDA: Themes in Chemical Prohibition, William L. White, 1979
http://drugwarpropaganda.selfhost.com/t.cgi?2

This made me think of a wonderful cartoon from 1970:

Two characters are inside a featureless white box that represents the universe as they know it. One threatens to escape while the other advises against it. The one, finally can take it no longer, so be jumps out into a landscape of beauty and diversity, says, "Oh, wow!" and takes off to a new life. The final frame depicts his erstwhile partner, still inside the box, saying, "He's deluding himself."

Drug Prohibition must be exposed as the flimsy racist system of oppression that it is. A great light of truth must be shone on the original architects of this system, as well as those that have nurtured and maintained it through the years.

As for this article, utter unsubstantiated opinion. Consider this broad generalization:
"Put differently, marijuana is a uniphasic drug whose effect is to scramble the mind."

Is that right? Huh, I guess all those millions of individuals who feel that cannabis has the potential to positively augment thier lifestyle are just too mentally "scrambled" to realize they really are headed down a path to sin, degradation, vice, and ... insanity!

Shockingly, he makes the unspeakable - for a Professor, no less! - intellectual gaffe of making sweeping generalizations.

"Marijuana stupefies its user...a drug whose central function is to increase chaos in the mind...Marijuana inhibits flow by robbing its users of the ability and desire to concentrate. Nothing productive or uplifting comes from its recreational use..."

Arrete, m'seur! C'est non vraiment!

The Professor heaps scorn upon pot because he says it detracts from the creative process. He likens the creative process to the regimentation described in Csikszentmihaly's study of 'flow'. There's one problem with that; creativity is usually not a byproduct of such regimentation, but an escape from it. One man's abhorred 'chaos' is another man's fertile breeding ground for world-shaking ideas.
For example: If marijuana 'stupefies' it's users, rendering them into incoherent lumps of protoplasm, then how do you explain such luminaries as Carl Sagan? Easily, one of the most prolific, well-read and beloved scientists of our time, Dr. Sagan specifically credited cannabis with the unleashing of creative juices which led to the creation of still yet-to-be-refuted hypotheses concerning the nature of the Universe.

All while getting happily toasted with his equally brilliant wife.

A fluke, Professor? Not bloody likely.

And as to this 'mental chaos' theory; examine the speech patterns of the truly toxically drunk, and you'll find they have much in common with infants. Incoherent and inchoate at the same time. Not so with cannabis; at the risk of sounding boasting, I've had some royally good stuff, the sort where lying down is not an option but a necessity. But I never suffered from an inability to communicate...just a lack of desire to sully anything so profound with lackluster words.

Pity drunks don't share that conviction.

But the creativity factor was definetly enhanced, which is why I keep pen and paper handy. Never know what ideas might come bubbling up.

However, that begs the real question. Even if we accept his statement that pot makes one a temporary dullard, who gives a damn? How does it harm society if I render myself stupid in the privacy of my own home, and don't bother anyone?

Is the writer worried that all will become lotus eaters? "Oh woe is us...everyone will eat the lotus and the progress of the world will come to a grinding halt." I'd rather we all turn into animalia skulking around the bush for some grub rather than progress forward as a race without any soul.

Marijuana inhibits flow by robbing its users of the ability and desire to concentrate.

Does Filip really believe that alcohol does not? If he wants to ban everything that mitigates concentration, no more alcohol, pot, or sex. Orwell's proletariat masses will we become.

What stops the Captain Hooks of government from plundering the marijuana trade?

You're the economics professor...why ask the reader? Besides, since you study economics, you probably champion capitalism. That's what allows those Hookers the ability to talk out of both sides of their mouths.

Nothing productive or uplifting comes from its [cannabis]recreational use.

And alcohol does? Tobacco? Examples?

Marijuana is neither a demon drug nor a major threat to society, but it remains shady among those who value productive individuals with whom it is a joy to work and live.

Oh, I see...so if someone uses marijuana recreationally, it guarantees that they'll show up to work either stoned or stupid?

We must now ask government to censor conduct that stable communities once contained with the wag of a few fingers.

Uhh, I believe you want the old Soviet Union, Sparky. Democracy means never having to say you're sorry for "conduct unbecoming my own narrow viewpoint."

"Alcohol and tobacco are deadlier drugs than marijuana"

I dunno, maybe my scrambled mind is incapable of seeing the chaos for what it really is...