

Marijuana Majority Website Highlights Celebs And Tech Leaders Who Support Pot - leeskye
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/22/marijuana-majority/?icid=trending7&grcc2=f734c88c056142a7be254f0c33e64f01~1350947329375~fca4fa8af1286d8a77f26033fdeed202~93b0d23eb4b7d686953a708194c12196~1350947329374~98~0~0~0~1~0~0~0~9~6~6~14~-1~5593392943429573887~~

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tzs
I saw on the news in Seattle some interviews with people on both sides of
Washington's marijuana initiative, which is basically a full legalization
initiative.

There was strong opposition from a group I had not expected to be against it:
medical marijuana advocates. They had two interesting arguments against full
legalization.

1\. They believe that it is going to raise prices compared to current medical
marijuana prices, and

2\. They are worried that the limit it sets for blood THC levels for DUI is
below the level found in the blood of medical marijuana users. Many medical
users would basically be unable to legally drive. (I've read that when one is
using marijuana medically, the intoxicating effects of a given dose or much
lower than when it is used by a healthy person, and so medical users driving
while on medical marijuana are not actually driving intoxicated, but the
proposed law does not recognize the distinction).

~~~
aes256
Regarding the second point, although the proposed level may not be ideal,
there should definitely be a limit of some kind. I'm all for legalization,
even for recreational use, but there is nothing funny about impaired driving.

~~~
Alex3917
Most studies find that marijuana use doesn't actually significantly impair
driving ability. The increased risk is somewhere between 1.0 - 1.3x. In
comparison, there are several other drugs with up to a 4x increased risk that
are completely legal with no limits.

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22785089>

[http://norml.org/library/item/cannabis-and-driving-a-
scienti...](http://norml.org/library/item/cannabis-and-driving-a-scientific-
and-rational-review)

[http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/10/04/ep...](http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/10/04/epirev.mxr017.abstract)

<http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/40>

It's a little bit counterintuitive since clearly you can be so intoxicated
that you are whited out, but the results are very consistent across numerous
different types of studies. I certainly wouldn't recommend driving after
smoking, but epidemiologically speaking there is little to no increased risk
when averaged out across the entire population.

~~~
Aloisius
_Most studies find that marijuana use doesn't actually significantly impair
driving ability. The increased risk is somewhere between 1.0 - 1.3x_

Uh that meta-analysis of 9 studies you posted disagrees:

 _Specifically, drivers who test positive for marijuana or self-report using
marijuana are more than twice as likely as other drivers to be involved in
motor vehicle crashes. The increased risk of crash involvement associated with
marijuana use is generally consistent across studies that were conducted in
different geographic regions and driver populations, used different research
design approaches, and were based on different methods for measuring marijuana
use._

Further, one of those studies showed a 3.3x increase in crashes for high
levels of THC-COOH in urine.

And as anyone who has been sufficiently stoned will tell you, there is no way
in hell you should let them behind a wheel (or frankly, anyone who is mentally
incapacitated). There is an upper limit just as there is for any number of
prescription drugs that affect mental performance.

~~~
Alex3917
"Further, one of those studies showed a 3.3x increase in crashes for high
levels of THC-COOH in urine."

That is the equivalent of something like half a beer, maybe one full beer at
the most. And even the authors say that this is probably an overestimate, and
most likely a substantial one.

If you look at the actual double blind studies, many of them can't even tell
the placebo arm from the trial arm in terms of total accident risk.

------
ari_elle
I looked through the comments and was surprised that mostly there seems to be
a discussion on if we should legalize it or not...

I was mostly intrigued by the principle and the layout of the site.

In todays time it seems like an awesome principle to just make a collection of
noteworthy people and get people to twitter (generally: contact) them to get
their point of view in order to use this quote for your cause.

Combined with a nice layout, catchy URL and clever use of social media, seems
like things like this could be done with more causes than just this one.

While i know that most of you will think _"Well, not really a revolution, it
has been done before. Where have you lived the last few years of your life to
be intrigued by something like that"_ I personally never saw it in such a well
executed form and manner.

How about doing the same with gay marriage.

FEEDBACK:

-) group feature is awesome

-> how about additionally making groups for the parties (e.g. "Republican Party Member"), guess that would be nice feature

-) how about a search function for looking up specific persons

~~~
MartinCron
_how about a search function for looking up specific persons_

CTRL-F works, it's all one giant page, after all :)

------
dutchbrit
People that want to smoke pot, can easily get it, legally, or illegally. But
it's much better to offer a controlled environment for the users, instead of
'making' people go to dealers. This part is the biggest reason why Mary Jane
is a gateway drug, which lots of people use as an argument why pot shouldn't
be made illegal.. Think of how much money could be going to tax instead of
'criminals' abroad.

In the Netherlands, they have started requiring users to register for a weed
card, which has been enforced in multiple provinces. Foreigners are no longer
able to use coffeeshops. Just Dutch nationals that choose to be registered at
a shop. The effects? More dealing on the street. People don't like being
registered. Slowly but surely more and more people are registering, and the
rest are getting it through their friends, or illegal dealers which is the
worst situation.

Open it up as much as possible. No registrations, just show your ID, if asked,
when buying at 'coffee shops'. Governments will be able to educate the users
more. Grow it as a government, allow 'farmers' to grow too. Tax it.

------
tokenadult
I'll let onlookers decide whether this is a discussion of politics on Hacker
News (disfavored by many of the users who have been here longer than I have)
or a discussion of something else. On my part, I'm curious about one empirical
question: Richard Branson claimed in his blog post on the current law in
Portugal (which "decriminalizes" marijuana but still treats marijuana
possession and use as an administrative offense)

[http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana-m...](http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana-
myths-and-facts-20120822/myth-holland-and-portugal-have-legalized-
marijuana-19691231)

that marijuana used had declined since Portugal changed its law. That's an
interesting claim. Do we have strong evidence from before-and-after policy
comparisons in other countries that use of marijuana declines if use of
marijuana is responded to by administrative sanctions rather than criminal
penalties? If so, that would be food for thought for people like me (a
generation older than most HN participants) who have seen a lot of promising
young people in two generations "burn out" from marijuana use. Criminal
approaches to social problems are harsh and expensive. If they are also less
effective in dealing with reducing marijuana use than administrative
approaches, and voters can be convinced of that, perhaps there is a path
forward toward reforming marijuana laws on the basis that marijuana should be
neither casually used nor a ground for imprisonment. (I think the actual
enforcement practice in my state, Minnesota, largely is of the form of
diverting users of marijuana to drug treatment programs.)

~~~
sethrin
Rates of alcoholism, arrests for public intoxication and deaths related to
alcoholism under Prohibition in the United States were several times higher
than either before or after.

One factor in this, however, was the quality of alcohol being consumed. The
drinks in a speakeasy frequently contained various poisons ranging from methyl
alcohol to organophosphates to carbolic acid. Thankfully the US Government has
largely seen the wisdom of not poisoning its citizens.

My understanding of drug treatment programs is that you may pay for them or
face worse consequences. I was not raised to believe that justice should be so
purchased.

On the subject of young people: pot dealers do not check IDs. Medical science
indicates that marijuana interferes with pre-adult brain development. No one
is proposing that marijuana be made more available to young people, or more
generally that making it more widely available carries much innate benefit.
The push for reform is simply an observance that, as with our other
Prohibition, the cure is worse than the disease.

EDIT: Just to point out, possession of marijuana has been legal in Alaska for
decades. For the most part, nobody cares. Some people smoke, some don't,
nobody does it in public.

~~~
tokenadult
_Rates of alcoholism, arrests for public intoxication and deaths related to
alcoholism under Prohibition in the United States were several times higher
than either before or after._

Evidence for this? I've seen contrary statements from a very eminent
criminologist on the deaths from alchohol, at least. What is the best source
for statistics on such issues?

~~~
sethrin
My source was _The Poisoner's Handbook_ , which suggests that deaths were not
tracked well or at all in most of the US. The book gives statistics for New
York City but a cursory examination of its sources does not seem to list where
those statistics were obtained from. The best source for statistics likely
doesn't exist, but likely bets would include hospital records and any
statistics published by whatever coroner/medical examiner's offices you can
find.

One source [0] seems to suggest that deaths were lower but rising. Deaths from
poisoned alcohol tripled between 1920 and 1925.[1] The author of the latter
paper (Mark Thorton) has written extensively on the subject, his book _The
Economics of Prohibition_ may be informative.

[0] <http://druglibrary.org/prohibitionresults1.htm> [1]
<https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html>

------
ggchappell
The difference between the TechCrunch article headline and the HN headline is
curious (the word "legalization" is left off of the HN headline, at least in
its current form). I wonder whether this was deliberate, or just random
chopping to some arbitrary character limit.

Regardless, the change is important. There is a big difference between
"supporting pot legalization" and "supporting pot". I often wonder whether
efforts toward the former are hampered by the fact that all sides in the
debate tend to think of it in terms of the latter.

------
rickdale
Where I live in Mi there are billboards that say, "WE GROW THE BST OG!" All
over the radio are ads to get your marijuana scripts. The biggest problem we
are having here is the law left the question of dispensing medicine to each
individual charter. So most around the state have passed 'moratoriums' waiting
for a bigger rule to follow behind. But there are plenty of places dispensing
medicine. Its amazing to me that a few states can legalize gay marriage and
the democrats will put it on the ticket, but 17 states and the district of
Colombia go medical and there is no discussion about it.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
> Its amazing to me that a few states can legalize gay marriage and the
> democrats will put it on the ticket, but 17 states and the district of
> Colombia go medical and there is no discussion about it.

What are you trying to say?

~~~
sbierwagen
The big problem with state-level marijuana-legalization is that the _state_
can make it legal, but the _federal_ DEA still aggressively prosecutes
marijuana distributors.

[http://www.westseattleherald.com/2012/08/27/news/dea-
orders-...](http://www.westseattleherald.com/2012/08/27/news/dea-orders-west-
seattle-medical-cannabis-shop-clo)

Full legalization can only be done at the national level.

~~~
mturmon
(I live in CA, and I have 3 MJ dispensaries in a 10-minute walk from my house;
7 more if I want to drive five minutes.)

You have raised an important point. This has turned out to be a problem in CA.

Pharmacies don't want to touch MJ because it's illegal under federal law. The
regulatory arm of the state of California doesn't want to touch it for the
same reason. Some cities attempt to regulate it, some don't.

Because the dispensaries produce a lot of cash profit (in violation of prop
215, but whatever), they have been able to fund lawyers to sue cities and
invalidate all regulations. It turns out it's really hard to craft a
regulation, even a simple one for licensing, that holds up to court challenge.
The city of LA has given up and explicitly called in the Feds to raid the MJ
shops. (The feds get them for tax evasion -- kind of a catch 22 because it's
hard to report this income on your federal return; as mentioned, they're not
supposed to profit but there's no way to check.)

I voted for Prop 215, but I really had no idea how quickly it was going to
turn to shit. Pothead idealism meets serious potential for quick profit.

------
dmix
Shame half of the list is obscured on my 13" thanks to a massive fixed header.

~~~
untog
One weird screen resolution you're set to if a ~30px header takes up half your
13" screen.

~~~
aes256
I assume by header they mean the semi-transparent section with the over-sized
logo and highlighted quote, which remains static as you scroll through the
list of people.

It really is a pain to use.

~~~
micahdaigle
Thanks for the feedback - we'll add a button to hide the featured quote!

~~~
stiletto
Does Paul McCartney really need a label? :-)

------
mwcremer
For those who would like to explore potential ramifications of legalization,
consider <http://the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1316>

------
the_cat_kittles
"We need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts, and if somebody's gonna
smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else any harm, then perhaps
there are other things that our cops should be looking at to engage in and try
to clean up some of the other problems that we have in society that are
appropriate for law enforcement to do."

Guess which (former) political figure summoned this wonderful word storm :)

------
davidcollantes
The website on topic is <http://marijuanamajority.com/>

------
spaznode
The website is marijuanamajority.com.

Do we really need techcrunch to interpret for us? Who's idea was that?

------
mikegirouard
On a somewhat related note, my `fortune` for today was

    
    
        Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students 
        who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize 
        it in order to protect themselves.
        -- Lenny Bruce

------
ck2
I don't care if people smoke in their homes, but tell me how you are going to
stop people from driving stoned and killing me.

Because people are arrogant about it and think they are perfectly fine and
that it's not like alcohol - right now the fear of being caught with it in the
car slows down that arrogance, once it's legal it's going to happen all the
time.

Also there has to be some severe penalty for public smoking because I don't
want you smoking it next to the playground just because you are now allowed
to.

~~~
Alex3917
"I don't care if people smoke in their homes, but tell me how you are going to
stop people from driving stoned and killing me."

In addition to the fact that marijuana doesn't actually significantly increase
driving risk, the overall driving fatalities may actually decrease if people
switch to smoking instead of drinking or using benzos. Driving fatalities have
actually fallen more in medical marijuana states than across the rest of the
country:

<http://ftp.iza.org/dp6112.pdf>

That being said there is some uncertainty because driving after mixing alcohol
with marijuana is significantly more dangerous than driving after consuming
either alone, but so far all the data seems to suggest that if anything
legalizing marijuana will actually save thousands of lives per year.

~~~
grogenaut
Just go with "You'll get an effing DUI if you do" and you'll pay the normal
alcohol tax on being an asshole and lose your license and if you hurt someone
you'll be in mega bonus lawsuit land. Stop with this BS "MJ is safer than
alkehol", who cares, if you're disabled, you're disabled, DONT....DRIVE. Also,
drive stoned for me and prove it doesn't do anything. My friends couldn't pull
it off with college aged reactions, you must be superman if you can.

------
benologist
So we have pro-piracy and pro-marijuana on the front page... all we're missing
now is MrBabyMan.

------
davidw
How about a web site that shows celebs and tech leaders who support a woman's
right to choose? Who are against it? For gun control laws? How about a web
site against Italy's "articolo 18", which is much more relevant to startups
than pot is?

Please, take the politics elsewhere. There are tons of sites for discussing
politics. This is one of the few really good places for hacking and startups,
so please let's keep it free of flame-bait.

It's in the guidelines, too, for what it's worth:

" Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic. "

