Diet Pills and Dank.

As I go through news articles and entries on websites all over the web, I find all sorts of information.  I look at what's happening for people who think like me, and the opposition they are coming up against.  I then ponder these situations all damn day, and night, and day, and night, until I come to a logical basis to oppose those...opposing...arguments.  Let me clarify a little.  For the pro-legalization folks, we have what you could look at as a central database of anti-marijuana slogans and sayings to choose from when discussing this topic, and it has been very helpful for me to gain experience responding to the hypocrisies and fallacies, even if up to this point it has only been in my own head.  Well, I was thinking again today about something I read that stuck in my mind and i believe i have an easy solution to this whole legalization battle.


When you go up against these opposers, the "antis", you get the same old thing time after time.  They have mostly moved past marijuana killing brain cells, but there is a laundry list of bullshitizms they throw our way that we knock outta the ball field every time, and this one is no different.  I've heard multiple retorts to this complaint.  Paul Armentano, Deputy Director at Norml, actually touched on this last year at the 2010 NormlCon, and of course his response was impeccable, but i have a point of view that is a lot simpler, but still does the trick.  The argument I'm referring to is one that they fall back on every time, after everything else has been dispelled: Marijuana and its constituents don't have haven't been approved by the FDA as a medicament, and as such, don't hold any therapeutic value.

Well, this is just obvious horseshit.  I'm going to change the words around a little, but still say the same thing when i say that what they are telling us is that even though marijuana doesn't cause detrimental effects like those seen with prescription drugs and alcohol, there is no science accepted by the FDA saying that Marijuana is actually safe OR efficacious for human consumption.  Despite the tens of thousands of people claiming to get relief, despite the multiple countries with medical cannabis systems in place, despite the THOUSANDS of studies done on marijuana showing both its safety and efficacy, as well as thousands of years of human consumption with no obvious harm to society.  Despite all that evidence, the feds will still retort by saying that the FDA has no science to prove that it is safe or efficacious, so therefore we cannot allow it to be sold to the public, for medicine or otherwise.  Really?

Okay, well with all that in mind, i would like to direct your attention to a few items available at every walmart, GNC, Vitamin store and even gas station.  Of course I'm talking about diet pills.  I don't think it is as big of a craze as it used to be, but companies that make diet pills are still making a lot of money off of people.  These people have no real clue what they are putting in their bodies or how it will affect them.  I seem to remember a therapist i once talked to that told me a story about a Japanese made energy/diet pill that came on the market a while ago (This was about 7 years ago that i heard the story so it could have been a couple decades ago).  This pill ended up inflicting serious damage on a large group of people, I'm not sure exactly what disease it gave them, but it was something serious that you couldn't just stop taking the pill to cure.

Now obviously they pulled this drug from the shelves, but thousands more are still being sold and pushed on an unsuspecting public. And whats in these pills?  Herbs and plants with therapeutic compounds.  Just like marijuana, the only difference is we have thousands of years of catalogued information regarding marijuana, its use, and its impact on society as well as decades of research on the safety and efficacy of its compounds.  But forget about all that, those studies don't matter.  Marijuana is not FDA approved so there is no WAY we could allow that close to the general population, who knows the damage it could do?  Well it seems to me that there are plenty of drugs and pills out there that aren't recognized by the FDA as being safe or efficacious, yet people have experience taking them and rely on that experience to keep themselves safe.  The only requirement is that the bottle says "Not approved by the FDA to treat, cure, or prevent and disease."  So why cant Marijuana get the same treatment?