Phelps, guns, marijuana and beer

[molendijk]

Michael Phelps, winner of eight gold medals at 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, got a three-month suspension from the American Swimming Federation to participate in any official competition after the publication of some pictures of him smoking marijuana.
Comment:
In all American states, you can buy a gun (although, generally speaking, you have to meet certain requirements). In certain American states, the sole requirement for buying a gun is that you be able to stand on your hind legs. So any Swimming Federation having the moral right to punish Phelps is a non-American Federation. By the way, what would have happened if there had been a picture of Phelps drinking lots of beer?
===
Arie

[magicyte]

i bet it's a fake ('course, you probably already knew that...)

[molendijk]

i bet it's a fake

You're sure? He made his apologies.
===
Arie.

[magicyte]

wow. uh, on second thought....

[magicyte]

Saw this: http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.js...81474977586350

changed my mind...

[Schmoopy]

It's ridiculous how people get so pent up about recreational drugs, like with Prince Harry when he smoked cannabis, why is it considered so bad? All evidence and experimentation suggests that weed has more advantages than disadvantages, the fact it's still not legal is just ridiculous. The media just focus on bad reports about people going crazy after they smoke it and becoming schizophrenic, what they don't mention is that people who develop mental illness actually have a disposition to it anyway, it's in their genes, and it's also very uncommon although the media makes it look like a regular occurence.

Then you look at alcohol, then you compare it to weed and it's just like, what the hell?! Weed -> Relaxes, makes people mellow out. Alcohol -> Can encourage anger, and makes people more confrontational, although they also lose inhibitions, which has good and bad points.

This story should just be reported on a back page, saying "Phelps, smokes..." : Yea he smokes, now you know. The end.

Not make a big thing about it, god damn I hate the Daily Mail >.<

[mburt]

Schmoopy has a very convincing argument.

[molendijk]

Schmoopy, I couldn't agree more.
===
Arie.

[Medyman]

I don't buy Schmoopy's argument. Maybe the "media" overreacts to cases of marijuana usage. But people who tout it's benefit use the same reactionary language. Just because it has limited therapeutic usage does not mean that it's beneficial.

The points about alcohol are also one-sided. Alcohol can cause some to become belligerent and angry. But it just as often (I don't know the exact relative stats) can have the complete opposite effects.

[Schmoopy]

The fact that is has some therapeutic usage at all is incredible in itself, it helps people with certain illnesses, like anorexia. There are others but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Then we come to alcohol, oh, no benefits at all (relative to effects that cannabis has).

I mean you look at Amsterdam, where it's legal, there's no problems there - just a lot of scaremongering before hand but then when it was legalised nothing changed, it had no bad effects on society, if anything it improved it. No more illegal drug activity for smuggling weed into Amsterdam was necessary, sure there're other drugs that they'll smuggle in instead, but it cuts down any dealers that were present before. It can be taxed, the government can earn more money selling it and the public can be assured of sanitized weed that won't have foreign parts in it (plastic to fill it out).

In my mind, it's just banned because it's banned, so things carry on how they are, the government in the UK is too afraid to legalise it, and with the Daily Mail bashing it nearly every day they've brought about a stereotype for cannabis, meaning people will just dismiss is as a harmful drug because they see it every day as "Cannabis, how it ruined my life..." without stopping for a second to compare it to legal drugs such as alcohol and then realise it's really not all that bad.