Soldier killed after psychotic reaction to cannabis
A soldier who killed the father of a life-long friend in a frenzied attack after suffering a psychotic reaction to home grown cannabis has been jailed for 10 years.
Paratrooper Laurie Draper, 31, bludgeoned 53-year-old schoolteacher Paul Butterworth with a pair of garden shears after smoking the drug at his victim's home on March 7 this year.
Draper was jailed at St Alban's Crown Court today after admitting manslaughter on the grounds that his mental state had been affected by Mr Butterworth's home grown, high strength drug.
The court heard that the Iraq War veteran, originally from Leicester but based at the Colchester Garrison was suffering from a cannabis-induced psychotic mental state when he smashed the three foot tree loppers into Mr Butterworth's head and body.
27. While I am favorably disposed to pot in general, I would
say that its pscyo-pharmacoepic properties are not particularly well understood. I'm thinking that in someone with manic-depression, THC might actually exacerbate dopamine receptor problems (the organic manifestation of manic depression). That said, I know from personal experience that pot's therapeutic benefits tend to greatly exceed its stherapeutic dangers.
63. I'm not buying it. As a LONG TIME daily smoker...
in the company of MANY other long term smokers (some over twenty years), I've NEVER seen pot do anything but contribute to weight gain and excessive sleepiness! On the other hand, there is one drug that I've seen turn mild mannered people into angry, belligerent assholes. That drug is alchohol.
and experiencing first hand the paranoia that strong bud can induce, and the affectation of the paranoia can sometimes, in contexts which are hostile, produce psychotic episodes in people who are prone to depression or moodiness. Spiraling Thanatos. The downward spiral. Of course it is often difficult to trace the real origin or source of some procured pot, and therefore it is possible to assume that other chemicals are at work, it is also possible to attribute the purity of the pot to a heightened effect.
IMHO, (and I'm kinda theorizing out of my ass here) pot induces heightened humor/Eros, and horror/Thanatos experiences based on mood and psychological factors. The laughies are caused by pot's affect on our reasoning, making things funny because we can interpret more wildly the experiences we have under the effect of the drug. The metomymic and symbolic take over. Paranoia is the same effect as the laughies but where our interpretations of the empirical world are darker and more horrific or the "fancy" of our thoughts interpret horrible reasonable outcomes to the circumstances around us. For me it is easy to believe that a soldier who had experienced the horrors of the battlefield, would be more likely to have a "bad trip" and experience the downward spiral... Most pot smokers I know who have a bad trip wander off and sit in a corner for a while... friends consoling them, but in surroundings that are not friendly or loving, I most certainly can imagine psychotic episodes with dark consequences like the ones these folks experienced.
And as for those who don't believe pot has a hand in this? Well, you are probably the best people to smoke with, because you are of the mood and social adjustment that assures a good trip every time. I've experienced both, and frankly the illegality of drugs produces another possibility for paranoic factors in those who fear retribution and
121. I tend to agree with you, speaking for myself personally. But
neuro-science and physiology are scientific disciplines that are in relative infancy. The only point I would try to make is that pot's active ingredient, THC, may have unforeseen effects on dopamine-receptor activity in the brain, a part of neurology closely related to psychological disorders. But I'm no expert on the field.
80. Its properties are actually, as I understand it, VERY well understood
Edited on Mon Oct-09-06 11:57 PM by kgfnally
And something ELSE that's well understood is PTSD. I would wonder what others here have wondered: was it laced?
If it was, well, laced with what is the question, but probably coke, crack, or meth. One wonders what those in combination might do.
I'f I'm clinically depressed, drink several beers, and smoke out of a bong, well... I'd think I would simply be predisposed to passing out and sleeping for about nine or ten hours.
This story really doesn't seem complete. There's more to it; there has to be. Marijuana alone does not cause a reaction like this.
I suffer from the mentioned condition, and at least for me cannabis helps with anxiety and to some degree, depression. On the manic side, its not so usefull since it tends to increase the "drive" even further.
An individual's response to a drug is due in large part to the set and setting within which the dose is administered. The setting refers to the location, ambience, etc., while the set refers to the individual's emotional state and expectation of what will happen when taking the drug. If someone consumes a drug unwittingly, or if they consume a drug whose effects they don't know, there is a higher-than-normal chance that a psychotic reaction will occur, due to the absence of a set associated with the drug. Whenver new drugs have been introduced to a population, there are above-average rates of psychotic reaction, because there is no established set associated with the drug. Once a population develops a set of expectations for the drug, the experiences of individuals using it will become more uniform and there will be fewer psychotic reactions. There were psychotic reactions to marijuana when it was introduced to the American population, just as there were above-average rates of psychotic reaction when cocaine, heroin, LSD and other substances were introduced.
Note that if two populations have different sets associated with a given drug, their experiences with that drug will be very different. A lot of people don't realize that marijuana and alcohol affect the brain in the same way (save for the toxic effect of alcohol on brain cells, but that doesn't affect behavior). They are both sedative-hypnotics. The only reason their effects are thought to differ is because of the cultural attitudes toward them. If people believed that alcohol made you mellow and marijuana made you rowdy and aggressive, that's what would happen.
"Note that if two populations have different sets associated with a given drug, their experiences with that drug will be very different."
Possibly.
"A lot of people don't realize that marijuana and alcohol affect the brain in the same way.
False
Alcohol affects muscular coordination and judgment differently then marijuana. When was the last time you heard "I'm so high I can barely walk." or "Man I gotta quit getting high, I think I had sex with Godzilla." from a slurred and stumbling person who wasn't drunk or on something else? You haven't because marijuana doesn't effect coordination or judgment the same way alcohol does. As anyone who has tried both (or even just observed people under the influence of both) could tell you.
"The only reason their effects are thought to differ is because of the cultural attitudes toward them. If people believed that alcohol made you mellow and marijuana made you rowdy and aggressive, that's what would happen."
Drunks only lose coordination and judgment because "society makes them THINK they lose coordination and judgement"? That's rediculous.
Have been mentioning that being extremely high can make it hard to stand and walk, and my experience with the drug bears that out. And "impaired judgment" is a byproduct of the social role that alcohol plays. In most cultures, alcohol is associated with partying and rowdy recreation. Marijuana is associated with more passive activities. The fact that marijuana is smoked lends itself to a less rowdy, sit-around-and-pass-the-pipe pattern of activity, but that doesn't change the fact that the neurochemical effects of marijuana are the same as the neurochemical effects of alcohol. Neither chemical will impair your judgment unless you're already in a reckless state of mind, and people associate that state of mind with alcohol more than they do with marijuana.
A good beginner text on this topic is "How Drugs Influence Behavior" by Jaime Diaz. Do you have any source texts, or are you just repeating "common knowledge?" There are many myths surrounding drugs, circulated by drug users and drug warriors alike.
Another difference between the drugs is that the metabolism of alcohol has toxic byproducts that kill brain cells, but in terms of behavioral effects, both drugs are sedative-hypnotics. The slowed-down feeling and disconnected trains of thought occur with both, and cultural attitudes extrapolate these effects to "recklessness and impaired judgment" in one case and "relaxation and laziness" in the other. Here's a paper that explains the pharmacological similarities between the drugs:
If you can cite a paper that claims a fundamental behavioral difference between marijuana and alcohol (and isn't written by sold-out drug warriors, like George Ricaurte's MDMA study) I'd be interested to see it.
Cannabinoid receptors are activated by a neurotransmitter called anandamide. Anandamide belongs to a group of chemicals called cannabinoids. THC is also a cannabinoid chemical. THC mimics the actions of anandamide, meaning that THC binds with cannabinoid receptors and activates neurons, which causes adverse effects on the mind and body.
I wouldn't call euphoria adverse, myself.
In contrast, alcohol affects a number of different receptors, none of which are noted as cannabinoid receptors.
Alcohol affects the brain’s neurons in several ways. It alters their membranes as well as their ion channels, enzymes, and receptors. Alcohol also binds directly to the receptors for acetylcholine, serotonin, GABA, and the NMDA receptors for glutamate.
The perceived differences are due in large part to the different delivery systems (smoking vs. drinking). The paper discusses this and much more. If you want additional information, read the book by Jaime Diaz that I posted earlier. Can you cite any articles that contradict the one above? Propaganda written by drug warriors who are trying to demonize marijuana, claiming it's a "hallucinogen" and that "one toke equals 50 cigarettes" don't count.
I don't support prohibition in the slightest; legalization and regulation is the only rational solution. I was just trying to dispel one of the countless drug myths that float around unchallenged. Marijuana, alcohol and benzidiazepines are all sedative-hypnotics, and while their set, setting and route of administration are very different, the fundamental effects are similar. The culture surrounding a drug and the environment in which it is typically used have a tremendous impact on users' experiences, which accounts for a lot of things that people assume are inherent to the drugs themselves.
PCP, for example, is no more dangerous than LSD or psilocybin in and of itself, but a negative set associated with its use helped to produce the berserker-frenzy incidents the drug became known for several years back. Methamphetamine is prescribed in pill form all the time and was widely used several decades ago, so it's not because of the drug's inherent nature that so much horror is associated with its recreational use. Pointing out the similarity of marijuana to alcohol is contrary to the interests of drug warriors, since they want people to think it shaves off 20 IQ points and makes you hallucinate and microwave infants.
106. For lack of a purely scientific response to this
Edited on Tue Oct-10-06 12:45 PM by heliarc
I present the sociological response, which notes pot's power to enhance metonymic experience. If your metonymic vocabulary (if you will) is light, happy, and humorous, you will generally experience positive interpretations and associations. Sometimes this triggers "laughies" since the world around you is absurd and dissociated...
But, if your metonymic vocabulary of signs and symbols is dark, sad, or scary, you will generally experience negative interpretations and associations. Sometimes this triggers paranoia since the world around you is absurd and dissociated...
in both conditions your nervous system is responding to the same set of conditions and experiences but associating signs and symbology, metonyme and metaphor differently to create a different psychological result.
Pot has a peculiar way of triggering these humor/horror reactions in people, and it does so, by emphasizing the dissociation of metonymic symbology with real empirical stimuli... Whether it is humor or horror, the effect is the same. Dissociative reasoning, (may even be similar to what Weber called the zweck rational)...
The anxiety is heightened by pot, and so are absurd dissociated "humorous" reactions to things... I would posit to the detriment of analysis and meaning... because things are decontextualized. Comedy and Horror are the same.
Have a look about midway through on page three. You're right in that a lot of the anxiety experienced by inexperienced marijuana users is secondary to the feeling of losing control (of their mind). But that's not an unreasonable reaction to the effects.
Secondly, you can also see at the bottom of that page that marijuana causes "schizophrenic reactions." It can cause psychotic symptoms- delusions, hallucinations, etc., even long-term. The reports tend to go back and forth as to the extent of these symptoms and the similarity to actual schizophrenia, and even as to whether the correlation is even causal. But, the fact is clear that marijuana is a potent psychotropic drug. It distorts a person's thought process.
I've never seen someone who was stoned out of their mind act violently when alcohol wasn't involved. I *have* seen habitual potsmokers act violently when they weren't stoned, though.
As far as what caused this person's violence in this case, I would probably attribute it much more to his military experience. But if he already has PTSD and then uses pot- that could be a really bad combination.
I realize that pot is the least of our problems in the drug world, and that, the vast majority of the time, it's pretty harmless. But we can't be so dismissive of it as to say that it has no effect at all on a person's behavior, or even that it isn't related to violence.
128. Upon examining, I say again: correlation IS NOT causation.
Edited on Tue Oct-10-06 04:57 PM by Zhade
All of this ignores the fact that even if pot did what some claim (it doesn't), it's STILL better than alcohol, and prohibition is STILL a violation of our civil liberties/rights.
It affects the brain's chemistry, and that does cause psychotic reactions in some. I've been attacked by a close relative on nothing but pot, and he definitely was trying to kill me. He snapped out of it after the first attack. But it does not affect everyone the same.
experienced a psychotic episode myself years ago, when I was really baked- It scared the shit out of me, and should have been a 'tip-off' of what was brewing in my future- which really didn't have anything to do with the weed I was smoking- but everything to do with my past.
I don't think it had to be laced with anything- I think the guy was just ready to blow-
NORML Foundation Executive Director Allen St. Pierre noted that pot's potential, though marginal, risk in patient populations already predisposed to certain psychiatric disorders should in no way justify arresting and jailing responsible adult marijuana smokers, or deny doctor's from prescribing it to other types of seriously ill patients. "Any risk presented by marijuana smoking falls within the ambit of choice we permit the individual in a free society," he said. "We do not suggest that marijuana is totally harmless. No drugs are, including those that are legal. Clearly, however, marijuana's relative risk to the user and society in no way supports criminal prohibition or the continued arrest of more than 700,000 Americans on marijuana charges every year."
141. Marijuana laced with PCP (angel dust) can definitely create this reaction
What about formaldehyde? I think it, also, can be placed on MJ. Not sure what reaction that would cause.
I saw with my own eyes the results of PCP-laced marijuana: homicide photos. Not just one case. Perps were sometimes people with no prior criminal record.
Sounds a little more like the stuff was pure bud to me. I'm guessing he was PTSD, and had never tried pure bud. Got paranoid and lost it. Downward spiral.
But you were garden-pathed. Usage frequencies are against reaching the proper reading, even if we hadn't been primed so often recently with phrases like 'soldier killed in Iraq'.
15. one can get so paranoid one can hide under a bed....
even when noone else is home, but to become aggressive? no way....(i recall hearing a police chief saying in over 30 years experience, whenever pot was involved, the suspects were always completely passive - unlike booze!)
71. I think that I got severe anxiety and scary hallucinations
Because I am a control freak and being really high feels out of control, and therefore scary, to me. The thing that I have noticed about pot, for me, and others (although I cannot truly speak for their experience) is that it works with what is already there (in one's mind) rather than being predicatable like harder, including prescription, drugs.
...considering how scared, angry, immature, and lacking in self-esteem as I was - with a history of insanity in my family (grandmother's schizophrenic with religious delusions).
Yet, after 5 years of smoking, not only did I save my eyes from glaucoma, I'm none of the things I just listed anymore.
Psychotic violence is something viral trained by the man.
I've had experiences like this, where people attacked me after taking their drug, and ALWAYS with alcohol...
Psychotic reactions to cannabis, well, its a sacred toke, and whatever you hold in your mind, you magnify and the vibrations of unnatural sickness like bush and the republican vibe will drive someone to dissonance, as isn't the very defniition of psychosis that a person experiences fundamental dissonance with reality, like believing that iraq still has Wmd's, believing that sodomizing children is worthy of a coverup in the congress?..
20. I'm calling BS. Pot would have made him too lazy to get up
and find and then use a weapon to hurt somebody.
It's the great demotivator.
Maybe he got the MUNCHIES real bad and the victim tried to take his bag of potato chips away from him??????? That's the ONLY scenario I can think of, and THAT just doesn't work either.
50. "It's the great demotivator." Actually, not accurate.
There are two types, indica and sativa. The latter is a mind high that motivates, usually creatively. The former affects the body, and is the type that will cause a person to be lazy if so inclined.
The pot had as much to do with the attack as the color of his underwear or the color of his skin.
This man was part of an institution that teaches someone to kill. Seems a more likely cause, no?
He was psychotic. Stress aggrevates that. If he were engaged in combat while in Iraq, all the worse.
The pot probably kept him calm. Just wasn't strong enough for this moment, sadly.
Really good pot makes you unable to do anything but eat sweet and/or crunchy things. Killing someone would be WAAAAAAY too much effort, and hey man, its all good anyway, right brotha?
24. I've seen people freak out from smoking pot before...
I had a girlfriend once who was very small, and she was very sensetive to chemicals of all kinds, including alcohol and caffeine. One time we smoked some pot, and within minutes she had turned into the girl from The Exorcist. She started screaming at me that I was the devil, and was truly terrified of me. She was hallucinating so badly that I basically had to throw her over my shoulder and carry her home, with her screaming bloody murder the whole way. A lot of other people, including myself, had smoked the same weed, but she reacted very differently to it than everyone else. I got her home, and she slept it off, and woke up just fine.
Man, what a buzzkill!
Also, the last time my wife smoke pot she had a similar reaction. Her friend tried to tickle her with a feather, and she hallucinated that her friend was poking her with a dead rat! She decided after that incident that she shouldn't smoke anymore.
Maybe it's just the killer Oregon weed, or maybe I'm just attracted to women who can't handle their drugs.
Anyway, I can totally see this happening to someone who doesn't indulge often and smokes a bunch of super strong weed.
25. To test the effects of cannabis on the rats' brains...
the researchers removed the brains from the rats. They then soaked the brains in sulfuric acid for 24 hours. Then they boiled the brains in a solution of nitric acid for two hours. After that, they put the brains through a meat grinder. Finally they wafted cannabis smoke over the brains and re-installed them in the original rats. The rats showed signifcant declines in motor coordination and in short term memory. From this, we conclude that cannabis is killer weed.
32. how much stronger could it have been? BC Bud is potent
Maui Wowie another potent pot. Panamanian Red another potent pot.. If that was truly the case being their is millions of pot smoker's around the world we'd hear more of sick psycho murders.
Blatant bullshit story. or the ex-soldier is looking for an excuse to plead insanity. PTSD is more likely and believable.
Jack Daniels has killed far more innocent people than any weed I ever knew. weed doesn't kill but you sure can die from over eating do the "munchies" ring a bell.
98. I smoked about an ounce of BC Bud in under two weeks...
Edited on Tue Oct-10-06 11:58 AM by Zhade
...while on vacation recently.
Wow.
But, not crazy-making. Despite some DUers' WRONG assertions, it doesn't do that - and the science bears this out; correlation is not causation.
See, things like this piss me off a great deal. Marijuana has done a lot of good for me, and I hate hearing propaganda and bullshit even from LIBERALS! about it.
36. Did William Randolph Hearst rise from the grave to write this bullshit?
Or Harry J. Anslinger?
"Cannabis-induced psychosis" huh, is that an official medical term? Let's see the reference. It's kind of like like saying "Aspirin-induced ingrown toenail", it means nothing.
"He (Draper) had not used cannabis for years. A source close to the case said: 'Draper had been displaying bizarre behaviour for a couple of months - but clearly cannabis tipped the scales and he went completely beserk on this occasion."
Bizarre behavior for months without cannabis. Blaming cannabis got his sentence reduced. Convenient for the UK drug warriors who are upset with the 2004 decision to decriminalize.
What else was in his blood? Where's the toxicology report? And why was acting bizarrely for months?
You could drive a truck through the holes in this story.
Population Statistics for Laurie Laurie is mostly a girls' name, but it is used for boys 0.04 percent of the time. Total* Population in Top 1000: 163138 (0.04% male, 99.96% female) Popularity of the name Laurie for Boys First Year in the Top 1000: 1886 Last Year in the Top 1000: 1934 Average Age: 86.94 Highest Percentage: 0.008% in 1893 Best Rank: #739 (in 1893) Represented in the Top 1000 names in: 4 of 126 years (3.17%) Total* Male Population in Top 1000: 69 Popularity of the name Laurie for Girls First Year in the Top 1000: 1882 Last Year in the Top 1000: 1994 Average Age: 42.56 Highest Percentage: 0.580% in 1962 Best Rank: #37 (in 1960) Represented in the Top 1000 names in: 73 of 126 years (57.94%) Total* Female Population in Top 1000: 163069 Percentage Of Babies Named Laurie Note: Only names in the Top 1000 for each year are represented. Values are normalized for boys and girls to compare trends (vertical scales differ for boys and girls
53. Let's suppose for a minute that pot does cause bad reactions
Edited on Mon Oct-09-06 06:41 PM by hedgehog
in some people. Based on overwhelming hearsay, I'd have to guess that the number so affected is well under 1%. Contrast that with the amount of violence associated with alcohol use and tell me again why pot has to be criminalize.
I have to make my judgment based on hearsay because no one has wanted to do a decent study of pot for 50 years as far as I can tell. I guess too many people are afraid that a careful study will confirm pot's relative harmlessness.
55. I once got hallucinations and several times got severe anxiety on pot
If he already was having mental problems smoking some strong pot could have triggered flashbacks or some other scary hallucinations. I never attacked anyone while having pot induced hallucinations or severe anxiety, but I was never at war either and don't even get into fights. I hope this man gets the psychological/medical help that he needs though because he probably does have PSTD and maybe something worse.
83. But Check out what the Judge said about his excuse:
The judge added: "This was an appalling attack of extreme and persistent violence. And I have no doubt it would not have happened if you had not consumed cannabis.
"Anyone who unlawfully takes a dangerous mind-altering controlled drug and who then finds that his mind is altered in unexpected and undesired ways must take responsibility for his subsequent actions."
It's like Foley's excuse about abusing alcohol and he had to have sex with underaged children.....
My big question is, Were they also consuming alcohol?
There is no clinical evidence that pot CAUSES psychosis. Correlation does not equal causation.
I do agree that people should be prepared for a different mental outlook after using pot, and can't blame away their actions if they willingly took the herb.
Usually I tend to think of clever ways of viewing different perspectives of current events.
Sometimes it enhances my ability to seek out the muse of creativity. But never has it caused me to lose control of my thinking processes. The difference between Right and Wrong.
I saw 60 Minutes a few weeks ago, they did a story on the homeless beatings that has been taking the country by storm. They interviewed a kid who killed a man, the kid mentioned smoking pot and being bored so he and his friends decided it would be "FUN" to beat a defenseless man.
I never thought I would hear the day where people would claim pot makes them want to kill people. It is Totally Bullshit. People have lost the ability to use their BRAINS.....
A 1st Cav infantryman was evaced by helicopter from the field to the division HQ hospital psych unit. The infantryman was in an acute paranoid state, lashed between two stretchers, manicky and delusional. The psych tech who did the intake called it a paranoid psychosis and thought it resembled paranoid schizophrenia. The psychiatrist agreed & the troop was sent further back, to a hospital at Cam Ranh Bay. A week later the troop was shipped back to the 1st Cav with no psychotic symptoms.
Turns out the guy had been doing some really heavy pot (& who knows? maybe something else--but this was in the days before very kind of drug was everywhere over there; mostly only pot was available) and, under the stresses of combat, became very paranoid. Once he was in the hospital and away from the cannabis for a few days, his psychotic symptoms cleared.
I'm no psych tech, but I've done a fair amount of "study" on psychoactive drugs. I've never seen the extreme state you describe as a result of potsmoking, but LSD is famous for eliciting such responses. Sending LSD to troops in the field was as simple as putting a drop of it on the back of a stamp or on heavy-stock paper. Most "bad trip" victims straighten out after a few days, more or less as you describe. Once I saw this big-ass dude walking around with his little raving friend literally strapped to his back like a sack of temporarily insane potatoes.
Do you recall, was the subject's pupils dilated? Was his jaw tightly clenched? Did he complain of stomach pains?
112. Well, none of the people you've seen on pot were experiencing
the emotional extremes of combat. And certainly this din't happen to everyone who smoked pot in desperate circumstances. Before getting the psych tech gig, I spent 8 months in the field as a grunt myself, and did my share of the weed. I think it may have been a very unusual idiopathic reaction of some sort. Yes, I know about how easy it would have been to send acd, but there really wasn't uch of it there in that place & time. Later in the war, yes. The guy in question was a southern, low SES black, perhaps among the least likely of troops to have an LSD supplier, since acid was pretty much a northern college drug in those days.
I guess I'm wrong about the LSD. I have another question, though: did you know anyone who was actually smoking weed in combat? Like on patrols? Just a question out of curiosity.
102. Yeah, once he was away from the explosions and death.
I respect you, but this is not evidence that the marijuana caused the episode. At best, it's evidence that either pot or PTSD or a combination of the two MAY have caused the episode.
I'd bet on the horrors of combat, myself, but there's no way to know either way at this point.
140. Some fundamental misunderstandings in this thread
Whenever this debate rears its head, we see a lot of claims by anti-cannabis folk that run contrary to the self-reported experiences of the majority of the world's cannabis users. In South Africa, for instance, the largest drug counseling body in the country estimates that fully 80% of the population uses or has used pot. This bears out my experience, as most of the people I know have used pot at some point in their lives. The worst symptom I've ever heard reported was paranioa, invariably either induced by being in a hostile social environment or having to deal with authority figures.
So why does there appear to be a discrepency between (some) medical studies and these self reported experiences? Well, there isn't really. There is just gross misrepresentation of the studies in most case. The first problem is that the mere existence of certain symptoms is unjustifiably translated as implying that those symptoms are common. Cannabis-induced psychosis is extremely rare. What's more, the studies I've seen imply that it occurs in individuals who have a predisposition towards mental illness. One Dutch study I saw examined the previous medical history of people who had extreme reactions to pot and discovered a disproportionately high number had a history of mental illness.
In this light, saying "Cannabis induces psychosis" is like saying "Brazil nuts induce an allergic reaction in people who are allergic to brazil nuts". Its self-evidently true, but not the basis for, say, any reasonable argument for criminalisation of pot or other extreme measures.
For those that contend that the effects of pot and alcohol are not that different. You don't have a clue what you're talking about. There are a wealth of studies that firmly establish that there are major differences, especially in the area of judgement. An study sponsored by the UK Automobile Association revealed that pot smokers demonstrate substantially better judgement when driving than those under the influence of alcohol. Several studies since have confirmed this. Even more interesting is the fact that there is little variance in driving ability based on dosage with pot, whereas an variance in dosage has a huge effect with alcohol drinkers who drive.
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