IMHO I've been sheeding vices since my early twenties and haven't really been gaining any more along the way and am the better for it.
Just because it is no worse than, or even better than whatever, is no arguement, because in all likelyhood it would be in addition too. Just another vice to be added to the list.
Driving too fast, drinking too much, recreational sex, smoking too much, eating too much, etc. ad nauseum. Lets legalize it (sarcasim) and add it to the legal vice list. Or even the marginal vice list. Or even the slightly illegal vice list.
One guy mentioned about nobody ever dieing of Pot. I still have a mental picture of one of my brothers doper friends, stoned to the gills, trying to relight his joint and walking off of a thirty foot cliff. No he didn't die, but pretty darned close. Same guy did a "Gone Postal" number in Arizona (maybe he should have smoked more). Did Pot make him that way, maybe, maybe not, but I doubt it helped much. I doubt it improved his judgement or made him less careless.
I still think some people have a suseptability to become dependant or abuse most anything. And some don't and offering them more opprotunities to find out the hard way, isn't very wise. At the minimum, youngsters should be discouraged from finding out the hard way, before they are mature enough to even think or care about the consequences.
Personnaly, I worked high rise construction for awhile. Told my guys, I'm not gonna even try to dictate your behavior, but if I even think your hung over or have a pot hangover (or worse), there will be consequences. My advice was to stop, whatever they were doing at around 3 AM on Saturday morning and show up to work with there head screwed on straight monday morning. After I tied up the second guy to a girder for the day in the sun, they finally caught on I was serious. Told the union rep, that they had a choice, sit in the sun and sobber up or take a urine test and be fired. Or if he wanted to, he could transfer them to the fourth level basement to work, where they couldn't fall very far. Funny the only fatality we had on the job in three years, was a guy that crushed himself to death, in the fourth level basement.
I remember grabbing and snatching any number of guys from *between* two moving tanks in the military and looking at there eyes. Invariably they would look like two ripe olives floating in a glass of tomato juice.
Your gonna have to find somebody else to sell this Pot is harmless line or better than line, I'm not buying.
We had a tank catch on fire one day with full load of ammo on it, a bunch of guys come running up with five pound CO2 fire extiquishers, put there lives on the line, trying to save an explosion. First one missfired, then the second, then the third. What the heck is going on here. Found out later a bunch of guys were unscrewing the nozzles and using them for hash pipes. All the nozzles were clogged with ashes. If it wasn't so sad it would be hillarious. Good judgement and the possible consequences were way down on there list of priorities, they wanted to get high.
Reality check. We did a urine check on the whole company, not one of the guys that showed up with an extinguisher tested positive. Most of the positives, were from guys just standing around with there mouths open (or giggling) looking stupid, when the fire broke out.
It's hard enough to make good decisions when your straight. Do you really want the guy working next to you, driving the fork lift, to be stoned?
