“Use of marijuana impairs the mind so as to prevent a person from rational thought.”

If you’re concerned with rational thought, ask yourself this question: what happens to rational thought once government force dictates what you can and cannot put in your body?

What happens to rational thought when I am not allowed to act on my judgment regarding the effects of pot, because people who disagree have imposed their decisions on me by force?

If you care about rational thought, you should care first and foremost about preserving freedom.

Impaird thinking is not caused by smoking cannabis. It is caused by believing false statements made by people with hatered in thier hearts. Cannabis has been used for 6000 years as a medcine. But becuase Mr.Anslinger wanted to promote his position as the first drug czar so he made up lies and you are still repeating his BS. Your a sad person who needs to find out the truth before you write things. read the emperor wears no clothes and find out the lost history of cannabis. The AMA says it is medicine and wants it removed from schedule 1.

“Use of marijuana impairs the mind so as to prevent a person from rational thought. This harm is most significant. Use of this drug, like any other illegal drug, seeks only pleasure over the higher, transcendent goals of humanity, which are all products of reasoned thought.”

What, like alcohol? Like alcohol in f’in Madison?

Wow, alcohol is much, much more dangerous than marijuana in almost every single example that you gave. The ability to think rationally? Marijuana clouds your judgment and thinking abilities, but Alcohol completely destroys them.

“Alcohol, however, remains justifiably legal because it can be used to an extent that does not impair reason.” This maybe the biggest cop-out of an excuse of all time, on so many levels. First, to be considered legally drunk in the state of Wisconsin all you have to do is drink a little more than 2 drinks in an hour, on average. Please go to a bar on Friday night and find ANYONE who is drinking at that pace. Second, you can use any drug in moderation. According to your argument, a little bit of Heroin should be fine for any responsible person to have. The problem is that people are anything BUT responsible, you can not legislate with the hope that people will choose to be upstanding citizens, we are too greedy as a society.

Also, you make a point about escapism, which I wanted to address by itself. First, you should realize that escapism is one of the few core beliefs of the American psyche. Be it a television show, a sporting event, or even just telling stories with friends, our most basic interactions with each other are usually revolving around living outside of ourselves. For this argument, alcohol is again a much more potent example of the escapist tendencies of Americans than marijuana. You drink to lower your inhibitions, to enhance your ability to socialize, your ability to be someone who is capable of having more fun than you normally want to. I see marijuana being used more like an enhancing substance to make mundane activities more fun, not the magic pill that takes all your cares away and turns you into a dirty Commie bastard, or whatever Fox News was yelling at you before you decided to come online and embarrass yourself.

It is amazing how ill informed you are, on both a personal and societal level. I sincerely hope that you refrain from speaking in a public forum ever again.

Haha, this article is going to draw so many comments. Beth Mueller: keep an open mind; one day you will understand why you are wrong.

Marijuana produces the “Oil of Joy” Isaiah 61:3 for those who mourn. YouTube: “Run from the Cure”. As a conservative Republican Christian, I demand my right to pursuit of happiness and wellness; as provided by the “Oil of Joy”. I demand that We the People have the Right to prepair our own medicine. Grow your own medicine when it becomes legal. You can bet that I will, and I am a 71 years old, a Son of God, and a follower of Jesus Christ. Don’t let those money loving Big Pharma guys get control of your rightful medicine. Money is the Root of All Evil! Keep our medicine FREE!

The strongest argument for making marijuana legal is that there is no consensus that it should be illegal. Laws that are not based on a pretty strong consensus are pretty much unenforceable and breed contempt for the law in general.

I’d like to see us get back to the situation as it was was back in the day when the Founding Fathers grew weed in their gardens.

At 58, I’ve been smoking cannabis for 38 years. I’m an accountant, went back to college in ‘91 and graduated Summa Cum Laude. I’m the father of two, watch Cspan & never missed a chance to vote, have never been arrested for a crime, have morals that let me leave something that isn’t mine alone even when nobody is looking and I smoke almost every day.

So let me tell you that at this point in my life, cannabis doesn’t cloud my judgment one iota. The lies the government and special interest groups spread about cannabis make both those groups and the government suspect because I know they are lies.

On days that I work, I wait until I’ve finished seeing clients before I smoke. This is a personal choice I’ve made to give my clients my best moments of linear thinking. Some days even when I can, I don’t smoke simply because I also enjoy being straight. Cannabis makes thinking outside the box inevitable.

There is only one overlying danger from consuming cannabis and that is run ins with the law. And America jails more people for cannabis than any other country. The Govt. will say they don’t, but they fail to say how many people are put in jail for probation violation as a result of a failed urine test.

When the youth try cannabis and find out that they’ve been lied to, that in itself is the gateway to distrust of the govt. & law enforcement.

Good Article, Beth. Way to stick to your principles. It is good to see someone at the BH that has not joined the masses here in Madison. Just because everyone else is doing somethings, it does not mean that you have to do it (yes, i know i sound like someone’s parent). I am glad that you can still think for yourself. We need more of that in Madison.

Beth is irrational. She is in support of the underground, blackmarket and cartel system. Nice people to side with. Legalize and regulate already!

“Use of marijuana impairs the mind so as to prevent a person from rational thought. This harm is most significant”

Here’s a beginning list of other things that can impair the mind so as to prevent a person from rational thought:

-love -grief -anger -fatigue -fear -sleep -pain -hypothermia -hypoglycemia -schizophrenia -OCD

Thus, to appropriately preserve individuals’ rational thinking capacities, it seems reasonable to ban relationships, marriage, death, emotion, being awake, sleeping, being scared, getting hurt, cold weather, diabetes, and mental illness. I cannot wait for Beth Mueller to address these terrible threats to man’s higher reason.

Here’s the point. It is important for us as humans to behave as humans. We have the ability to reason and think in a way that distinguishes us from animals. If we engage in behavior that diminishes our capacity to make decisions that can fully engage our humanity then we are doing an injustice to ourselves.

The fact of the matter is marijuana does effect our brains. Obviously. The chemicals influence pleasure receptors in the brain as well as our memory, thoughts, concentration, sensory and time perception. For this reason, marijuana can cause distorted perceptions as well as difficulty thinking and problem solving. Research has shown that these effects of can last from hours to weeks indicating that overall functioning of a person could be impaired for long after the drug is actually taken.

Marijuana does have an effect on the way we are able to function, diminishing our capacity to make enlightened and engaged choices. I mean you wouldn’t make a major life decision while high. Nor would you take a test while high. The reason we would find it stupid to go into a final after smoking is because we all know it would be counter-productive.

But, as Beth notes, this isn’t even about the effect it has on our brains or our reasoning capacity, although that is an important aspect. She is concerned with out ability to behave as fully human in our lives. Marijuana does something more harmful than messing with our perception - it disengages us with our lives. It makes us less aware and seeks to give us a pleasure outside of the higher pleasures in the world. There are more productive ways to relax like getting a massage which enables the body to function better or reading a book which enhances the mind.

The point on alcohol is insightful. It is a fact that a glass of wine every day helps the heart. Marijuana does not enhance the performance of any organ. In this way, alcohol use is permitted by law because there is a legitimate help from it. However, like marijuana, if it is used in a way that promotes pleasure over the health benefits, it only hinders the person rather than helping them.

On a final note, there was a comment that emotions and mental disorders also impede rational thought. I am not going to argue against that they don’t impede rational thought, however, there is a fundamental difference between something natural and responsive effecting your mind and sucking in a foreign substance. Yes, love makes you a little stupid and it makes it hard to make some logical judgements, but none of that is a choice. You don’t choose to grieve or to feel angry or to love or to have schizophrenia - those are conditions that just happen to you. Many of us if given the option would choose not to feel these things (who wants to be in love with someone who doesn’t love them back). You can choose to not smoke. That doesn’t just happen to you.

“Alcohol, however, remains justifiably legal because it can be used to an extent that does not impair reason.”

That makes no sense. Marijuana can be used to an extent that does not impair reason as well. For a daily user smoking a bowl or a joint will not impair reason, it may even be enhanced.

And yes I can have one beer and have it not impair my reasoning as well. I can also have 12 shots and be gone beyond belief.

Beth, you seem blind to the truth and are just repeating lies you have heard others say. If you had any friends who smoke cannabis it would be easy to see that smoking does not necessarily impair reason.

Now I gotta go spark up before I study for my test tomorrow.

I don’t agree with the point of view presented in this article (and I actually told Beth that myself earlier today) but some of the comments to this article are rather childish, or unintentionally hilarious.

First, the idea that she should “refrain from speaking in a public forum ever again.” Give me a break. She didn’t say anything bigoted, didn’t personally attack anyone, didn’t say anything spiteful or hateful. She simply disagreed with a position that I happen to share with the majority of commenters. Or, “Your a sad person who needs to find out the truth before you write things,” another ad hominem attack.

Second, the idea that she is “irrational. She is in support of the underground, blackmarket and cartel system. Nice people to side with.” No, of course not. She simply believes that the negative consequences of legalizing marijuana, and the resulting effect on the behavior of many individuals, outweighs the negative consequences of the illegal drug trade. I happen to believe this question is at the core of the legalization debate, and I fall on the opposite side. That’s the main reason why I support it.

Finally, the idea that Beth is some sort of right-wing, Fox News loving conservative hack is probably the most unintentionally hilarious thing that I have read today. Anyone who has had the privilege of actually getting to know her would understand that that is not the case, at all. There are plenty of people that I have gotten to know and love despite the fact that whenever they talk about politics, they simply spout right-wing talking points. She is not one of those people, and definitely does not fit into any kind of ideological pigeonhole.

And believe it or not, it is actually possible for people to arrive at “conservative” viewpoints without listening to Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck, etc. In fact, some of us happen to believe that those four men are actually the worst thing to ever happen to thoughtful conservatism.

This woman has never smoked marijuana or engaged in binge drinking. I would also predict that she has never been laid, either.

I suggest you remove your tin foil hat, leave your basement, and enjoy life.

Oh, and alcohol is much more dangerous than marijuana (as everyone has mentioned in their comments). There is not one instance of a direct marijuana-induced death.

“One Love”

-Bob Marley

What we see here is an arbitrary privileging of THC over ETOH, ETOH over THC, both over the endorphin releaser, Percocet.

Don’t privilege THC over the agency of ETOH, or ETOH over THC, or both over the endorphin release (Percocet) or you are no better that the corrupt big pharm/psychpharm that credits Thorazine and Effexor TO THE EXCLUSION OF THC …

These receptors for THC endorphins, serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine map within a hair width of each other. There is a very real set of comparative neurobiological facts, correlative neurobehavioral arguments that explain the self evident fact that all these agents are used, and they are all used for the same reason - to feel and function better.

We (all readers of this newspaper, and everyone else), we are all afflicted, infected, inflammed (neuroinflammation) by far far more agents and causes that are dreamed of in your local docs philosophy (and completely unknown to the editorial dissenter. What the editorial dissenter, although “possibly” well intentioned could fill a brain). We are overwhelmed to such an extent that it is enough to make you sick - INDEED IT DOES.

These agents have receptors in isolated areas of the brain (ROsTal, fROnT, pROw, fROwarD, top of the brainstem/basal hemisphere); and they map with a fraction of a hair with of each other.

We do not know why our rostral brain stems, and basal hemispheric structures are failing or failed in so many . And perhaps in the year 2109, we will know much more than we do know.

But what we know is that failures in these area of the brain result in feeling sick and unwell, (like sht) and such states are not tolerated or tolerable.

If you want to know what these parts of the brain do then Do the following. Hold your breath for 45 seconds.

You will do anything to breath. And people will do anything to mollify dysfunction here.

You cannot draw a line in the legal mud in an area which is robustly an area of pathophysiology, and correlative neuroanatomy.

This is an abysmal dissent. I will not presume to delve into the author’s personal life, but such an astoundingly dumb form of what is obviously conjecture is horrifying from any journalistic standard.

“Alcohol, however, remains justifiably legal because it can be used to an extent that does not impair reason.”

Yeah, but have you ever heard about someone smoking too much weed, then beating their wife for burning dinner?