I have watched and buried my father and my brother after a lifetime of their thinking that smoking was just a bad habit! My brother stopped smoking only after he reached the place where I called 911. My brother said again and again, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe. He had smoked from the age of 16 and died at 72.. From that point to the end of his life was about two years of a dresser covered with various pills and inhalers to keep his lungs working. He had not only COPD but a metastized cancer of the eosphagus. He was on air tank to go with the medications. His weight dropped to about 90 pounds. and then he quietly died sitting in his chair. At that moment - his skin went from pink to almost a yellow. I called the funeral home and they came. THINK ABOUT IT! Still grieving

Sorry to hear about your loss, Sally. Cigarettes are dangerous, and have struck down so many, including my grandfather. As my father once told me, though, "Cigarettes will kill you. Alcohol will just ruin your life."

Thank you James.
The alcohol question means three men, a cousin who seeming drank because his wife didn't have the first idea of how NOT to spend money. The fights between them were out of my hearing, but devastating to their two sons, who became just plain drunks many years later. I loved all three of them as a small child. I was angry at the older of the two brothers and afraid of the younger. Alcohol! By whatever name, rum, gin, rye, scotch, bourbon. Evidently all had various strengths and all caused problems which in the end caused my cousin's deaths. The older son was in the Army during WWII. His brother joined the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor, serving to the end. Made a mess of his life after the war as a civilian. Their father died of cancer caused by the stricture of his throat caused by cancer. Since this was 1944 - not much was known about cancer and vry little about curing it either by surgery or medication. OH NUTS to all the above "things" - they are all killers. Cancer, in whatever manifestation IS A KILLER!

Well like anyone else living today I have seen the effects of all. And pot doesn't come close to causing the destruction that alcohol does. Alcohol isn't called a tool of the devil for nothing. So many abusive homes and abused children and spouses. Cigarettes on the other hand are a silent killer. My father got an abdomonal anyerism and copd from those things. I watched in his last days struggling to get a breath, the best disciption that I can explain is like watching a fish on dry land. It was horrible having to watch, I couldn't imagine the fear he felt. TERRIBLE!. Now my experience with pot. My husband is an aggressive person (an alcoholic) and he was screaming and yelling about whatever one day, and I went and got my hands on some pot, went up to our room and lit up. of course my husband folloed yelling and screamng at me. I hand over the jjoint (pot) to him and it only took 2 maybe 3 hits he calmed down. I never pointed that out to him for obvious reasons, but I was sold , POT SHOULD BE LEGAL. i'm not a user at all, but I am an advocate

Yes, I know an advocate - and for a time, until arrested and prisoner in a roving prison system which never left the prisoner in one compound, but moved prisoners from one county to another, He opened his mouth and was injured by a guard. The end of that was that he is still having to see his parole officer, from the outside. I think he is more aware of what the LAW is, he just keeps his mouth shut. Not the way to live, I'd say. Whether he is still a user? Shrug. I don't ask.

Smoking? Alcohol? Killers, both of them. But then so is pot! Casual pot use? maybe not. The way to get a dedicated pot user off the stuff is cold turkey. Andrea - that is what you should see happen! Ask a person who has been through it. And dedicated pot use is a killer. It just isn't seen that often. Yes, Holland allows pot iuse n certain places, much like a tobacco bar. Gather around and enjoy your friends while enjoying "the weed"

Sally I'm about the straightest person you will meet, I've never felt the need to alter my brain , but if I had to chooses what vises I think is the least harmful it would be pot

During the height of the pot issue - young people were getting high and staying high until they scrambled their brains and couldn't do anything useful to their lives. I watched that happen to a nice young man who bolstered his personal feelings/emotions and abilities with staying high. Then he found the job he wanted in the fairly new computer world. Then he found that he couldn't do the work he wanted to do and the job and many others went south as his bosses found he was a pot head. Took not so many months to sink to that. Not dangerous? Yes it is. There is a difference between the casual user and the daily/all day/night user. Yes, Holland has places where the people can go to get a "lift" and sit and talk to like users. When they want to they get up and leave. If they over use - the police will do something. At that point it becomes a non-casual drug with all that drug use becomes a crime.

Well said Dick.
Sally you keep talking about people who abuse, abuse and abuse their sustance they use. Most marijuana smokers use it for medical uses or are casual users. And marijuana unlike tabacco, alcohol and other drugs is nonaddictive.

Andrea - Dick - Ever try to give a pot smoker help from being high on his latest binge? Ever see a pot smoker shaking and half off his/her head from a Pot high?
As a mother I have, my son! Then he went back and did it again. Took those two trips to make him understand that POT is a problem,! The dedicated pot user looses part of his ability to reason. Tobacco - my brother smoked three packs a day from the time he was 16 until his death at 72! He wouldn't stop smoking until he could no longer breathe and went to the hospital breathing oxygen. Then he stopped. Then it was more than too late. He was on an air tank from then until his death, not mention pain killers for his cancer of the esophagus at either end of the esophagus as well the COPD "Congestive Obstructive Pulmonary Congestion" His death was within 8 months after being diagnosed. His last words, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe."! He was on his air tank, his skin color went from the normal pink (with a gray tone) to a yellow tone. Then he was dead! A terrible thing to watch - someone dying right in front of you and there is nothing you can do!
You are kidding yourselves. Alcohol whether beer or whiskey is a killer also. It will also drive you to insanity. My husband died of "Lou Garige's Disease. That goes from being just drunk to the point your lungs don't work and you can't breathe. Then? death! Believe it!

3 sites on our subject:alcohol:wikipedia.org/wiki/alcoholismism National Institute on Alcohol abuse & alcoholism www.niaaa.nih.gov
Marijuana|National Institute on Drug Abuse www.drugabuse.gov.drugabuse/marijuana
National Institute on Drug Abuse www.drugabuse.gov/drugabuse/marijuana
three from the horses mouth. and many more to look up. Sally

Sally I think your son was smoking pot spiked with something, people can, and do that to get higher and as you have winessed they lose their minds. No law saying soething is legal or illegal will make any more or less users that YOU see, but it will make it easier for the people who need it for medical use to get it. And like it or not it's a plant, and as far as I'm concerned from GOD, and not man made like their other choices for medical relief that have many side effects and many of them harmful. Yes if abused anything has its dangers, but the debate is which is less dangerous. IF it is not altered by another substance its hands down, marijuana is the safest product

Considering the hell he put me through, it was pot, whether pure or adulterated - it was poison in his system. If the patient was on a dose of medical provided pot - ?
is it done in an office visit to the doctor who perscribed it - or go get it with a perscription and used at home? Let us hope the patent used it only as stated and not something he dreamed up for a dose. It is still dangerous when misused.
Any drug misused is dangerous! There are patients who decide that their meds can be doubled or maybe not taken at all as perscribed. Some of those meds should be taken ONLY as perscribed.

I think the main point being raised here is that since marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco (two admittedly dangerous substances that we agree as a society can be used in a regulated way by adults), pot should also be regulated by the government in the same fashion. Our government doesn't regulate these substances for the smaller percentage of people who misuse them (see: individual liberty in US policy), it regulates them for the vast majority who use them responsibly. The same policy should apply to marijuana. I think a more interesting question might be why this hasn't already occurred. I have always thought it was because there wasn't as much money to be made off of marijuana (essentially a trash plant that will grow anywhere). Maybe we need a powerful, corporate marijuana lobby, instead of the more grass-roots folks who have been promoting its decriminalization for years.

Is Marijuana safest then the use of Alcohol and pot ?

I meant tabacco then "pot"