Are you refering to Amsterdam ? My friend was there last year. He said some of the shops you can smoke pot in the main room and they have a smaller designated room for cigs haha. But there are still rules and regulations. You can't just walk into the shop and buy shit. you have to have proof that you are 18. There is a limit of 5 grams per customer(per day so that's plenty.) Not just any coffee shop sells either. The coffee shops with the license to sell will have a little square sticker in the window that is half white and half green that says coffee shop in the middle. When you walk in it's not like weed is lined up behind the counter either. There will be a book on the counter top, you skim through the book and pick what you want then they go in the back room and come out with a bag of either Hash or Marijuana. There are hundreds of Coffee shops in Amsterdam, but they also have places called smart shops were you can buy other drugs. Such as Guarana, Gingko Biloba, and also Magic Mushrooms. Must be an amzing country to live in. They believe that rather than punish people for petty crimes with these drugs they would rather have shops that help you understand what they are really about and in return expect you to be safe with the drug, and it seems to work just fine. They have set laws against hard drugs, but they consider pot to be a soft drug, so therefor it is legal. It's a lot like bars here but with less restrictions. You can purchase it and consume it there, but you are only allowed to consume it through pure cannibus joints, bongs and pipes on the premises. Shops that sell Marijuana can not sell alchohol. They are also not allowed to advertise.

Mmm... i agree with pot being better than cigs. At least pot isnt addictive. Most people just say their addicted because they dont wana deal with real life and stop smoking it. Cigs are bad for you though. I hate them. There ok every once in a while if everyone is just drinkin and chillin but there not worth killing your lungs in the long run.

these pretty much already exist in cali. not all shops have "weed experts" but there are many. i would love having that type of service, because i for one don't have the time to learn which type is better than the next, i just wanna smoke the shit :)

I believe Toronto has pot cafes/clubs and hash bars too.

My statement was in reference to the fact that a society dictates the type of government which governs it and therefore the laws laid down by said government. Whether its a republic or a communist nation the society aggressively or passively decides what type of government rules them. This particular nation was founded by very religious people and that type of belief system still resonates throughout today's society. Our particular society is very divided in its beliefs and as a consequence those who are aggressive are the ones who call the shots. The religious right have always been very active in voicing their beliefs and influencing politics therefore laws favor their belief structure.

The assumption you drew from my statement was completely inaccurate:

"Since the type of society we live in has a good amount of idiots in it that cant think for them selves we need government to tell us whats best for everyone and we should just do as they say"

I made no reference to anything related to 'idiots' or the government telling us what to do. Whether the laws of a nation are created and carried out by the majority or a minority, the fact that they exist is a reflection of that society. In the case of when your belief system is the most aggressive and therefore in 'control' of the government you must maintain control long enough to have a substantial effect of change on the laws. In our country in particular it is a very long and dangerous road to try and change the laws that have already been established.



"Sometimes I feel as if you're a statist and wish the government had even more control over our lives" - Genocide

Nothing could be further from the truth.




tl;dr

your beliefs are those of a losing minority, a passive majority, and/or our society is in a transitional period in which the laws aren't reflective of the most aggressive minority (yours) and your minority must maintain power long enough to establish its laws based on its belief system.

I have also been to Amsterdam but I have to correct a few things with what your friends said. Firstly , I went to about 10 coffee shops while I was there and most (if not all) had the weed behind the counter. The "book" idea is correct, in that you see a list of strains along with price per gram and sometimes some info as to its genetics (cross breed, Indica, Sativa etc.) Also, you can buy, like you said, 5 grams at a time, but that's per person, per coffee shop. Usually what happened was that you tell the person what strain and how much you want and he weighs it out in front of you. Also, they're precise as F*CK (they will actually sprinkle tiny pieces to get you that extra tenth of a gram that you paid for). Amsterdam is a city that has made a ton of money by legalizing marijuana and it's proven that crime rates haven't climbed. I also tried shrooms with my brother. I was amazed that these packages were just sitting there in a little fridge with descriptions and ratings of the intensity of the high (visual, physical and psychological highs, 5 star rating system).

@ Durango:

Toronto does have coffee shops but I can't remember what they're called.

last night as i was driving home from work i started wondering if they legalize pot in cali, will they keep it banned from being carried at their airports? airports are municipal/state run facilities, but have federal oversight (FAA). i would think this would be a big issue for trafficking into other states, but i'm curious because if they don't monitor it i may want to make a special trip to cali if they legalize. if it is prohibited at airports, i may just have to drive since i live in AZ :)

If you mean the founding fathers were christian... then you are wrong, some were but the predominate ones seemed to have a vitriolic hate for the religion. Many of them studied occult spirituality, whether or not that's considered religious is up to debate.

No, I am not talking about the founding fathers.

Vision has a perfectly valid point but his original comment just wasn't worded so well, that's all

hehe Not that i buy into all this, but saw this posted online today and it reminded me of this thread.






Flame on!

I don't know how recently you have been to Amsterdam, but I also checked on the laws before I posted that comment. A lot of shops are now putting marijuana behind closed doors because of not being allowed to advertise openly. But I may have missunderstood a little of what I read. So I stand corrected because I have never been there. So I can not be %100 accurate. Oh ya and I know it's per shop. I don't think I would even need to go to more than 1 shop. With how good some of the shit they have is I could deal with the 5 grams alone per day lol. I'de hope they would be accurate, I mean it's a business after all haha. Gotta be profesional!

And this is to Zuol, pot can be a very addictive drug. You must not know people who have been smoking quarters minimum per day that have tried to just up and quit cold turkey. If you can have withdrawls from a drug it is addictive. and yes you can have withdrawls from pot. They aren't severe or deadly like hard drugs. But you can end up losing a lot of weight in a very short period of time, because one of the withdrawls is not being capable of eating correctly. I smoked entirely to much before I just randomly stopped so I know first hand that eating can be nearly impossible for about a week. A few bites of food a day is all I could handle before my body would try to regurgitate what I had ingested. It was uncontrolable. So no matter how intelligent of a person you are, saying it isn't addictive is not true. It's a proven fact that 4% of the people who even attempt it develope a dependancy on the drug.

Here are 2 links if you are having problems believing me. No matter how small of a percentage of people actually develope the dependancy, even if it was .0000000001% that still means that you could end up addicted. You just have to consume a larege amount daily over a period of time.

This site gives information on the percentage of addictiveness and also the thoughts people convince theselves with to think that it's not:
http://www.spiritualriver.com/is-marijuana-addictive/

This site just has more to know about how it's more of a mental adddictiveness. Wich is very true. If you have heavy prolonged use and you just quit without preparing yourself mentally you will have withdrawls, but if you prepare yourself to quit in advance you most likely wont have any. Wich is what I tell my addicted friends all the time. I'm not at all against pot in any way. I love the stuff and plan to smoke again in the future. I just believe people should know that it can be addictive no matter what you're beliefs are.
http://hubpages.com/hub/Is-Marijuana-Addictive

I really hate spelling things out for people. Very few people ever learn anything unless their made to think for themselves.


Another factor when considering legalizing addictive products is the potential for an individual to becoming addicted. It's my opinion that one of the main influences of addictive behavior is genetics. Another is the childhood and adolescent environments of a person and how they develop themselves in those environments (in the case of a 'negative' environment they either become a part of it or rise above it). These 2 factors I feel are the biggest contributors to an addictive behavior and setting up a preventive health system which involves awareness to everyone about these important factors and how to react to a person who has demonstrated they have a problem.

American society today can't even handle how to eat right from either the industry or the consumer perspective which has now, for the first time, led to a generation which has a predictive average lifespan that is less than the generation that came before them. How can it be expected to handle yet another legal drug? Like most problems this country faces instead of facing the topic head on it'll just use its 'charge it and think about it later' mentality which has served it so well.

If you want someone to figure it out, at least comment in the general direction and not some vaguely insulting bullshit. "That's pretty immature...." isn't exactly an allusion that you want me to figure something out for myself. It's more of a "hey DiCE by judging your opinion I think you're a wee bit childish" statement.



Marijuana isn't addictive. It isn't dangerous. It doesn't make its users violent or experience extreme mood swings. You're beginning to dip into government propaganda scare tactics and voodoo pharmacology.



American society CAN handle eating right. Some just don't give a F*CK. A minority of fat lazy asses don't make the rest of us fat lazy asses. Even if it did, its none of the government's business (in a "free" country). The whole "wait and think about it later" mentality is one of the biggest reasons our congress is totally F*CKING worthless - they never do anything but agree to do something later until backed into a corner - OH HI HEALTHCARE. Most governments behave this way - HELLO CLIMATEGATE.



I'll list the ways:

1. Happier
2. With smaller, cheaper government
3. With a nice chunk out of the national debt
4. With less violent crime
5. Higher
6. Better than the generation before.

I said, "considering the type of society we live in," which sounds like it wasn't enough for you



Let's just agree to disagree. I've seen quite a few lives destroyed from weed.



A minority of fat lazy asses? I think you should read more on the topic because it doesn't sound like you understand the actual facts and percentages.

The mentality of Congress is to do what it takes to keep their jobs. That's it. And if you look at their re-election rates you'd see their doing a pretty good job of it.



1. Possibly, but again your only talking about a portion of society
2. Smaller, cheaper? really? exactly how is that going to happen
3. Total assumption that the majority of the profits will be used towards the national debt
4. I highly doubt it, in fact I would estimate a substantial increase in B&Es and thefts
5. Everyone is going to walk around high?
6. Better how? I really don't see it having the effect you think it will.

it's starting to get hot in here. this is why the political forum was closed.

Very true. It's only getting hot because the people that smoke it will stick up for what they believe in. And the people that don't smoking it are sticking up for something they slightly understand, but not at all really.

Calm down people.

1.) If you smoke pot, walk away from the computer and go smoke a bowl and relax for a minute. You already understand the stuff and what it could possibly do for our high strung ignorant nation.(Wich goes for both sides of this situation, because no one is honestly taking the time to fully comprehend the situation from another point of view. Everyone is just sticking up for there beliefs and blowing off what doesn't matter to them.)

2.) If you don't smoke pot you made the choice that it doesn't mean that much or even anything to you. If it's not worth your time to smoke it, it shouldn't be worth the extra time to fight about it. So why are you continuosly rambling on about something that doesnt matter to you and wont really effect you if it passes ? You will see some new shops open and some people wont be nervouse and sketched out on the streets(meaning a lot more happy people!)

Come on now people it's not like they're legalizing crack or something. Plus I don't see crime rates sky rocketing. If anything they will plunge downwards. People wil be to lazy to go out and get violent! Also they'll be to paranoid of going to jail blown out of there minds!

I just want to smoke weed without the fear of getting busted

You've just shown me how ignorant you are.

thank you.

[/quote]

You've just shown me how ignorant you are.

thank you.[/quote]
That message was all to rushed. Was on the way out the door to go to the mountain. I don't really care if you think i'm ignorant or not. I know i'm slow and that the ways I think aren't well understood by people like you. My mind thinks about way to many things at once to keep on track. ADD at work! If I try to explain something I tend to stray off before my point is even out there, let alone proven. Really doesn't matter to me though. I don't intend on being a polotitian. I mean I know it will effect everyone. But do you really think if someone is dead set on the fact that pot is bad, they are gonna change their outlook on the drug because of a message written by some random douche on the internet? That's sorrta what I meant by what I was saying. No matter what anyone in here writes or how long, detailed and intelligent there message is. When it comes down to it, they still stand for what they believe in. If someone believes that all pot does is F*CK your life up and they have been thinking like that for a while. They might not understand the possibility that it can do some good in life. Maybe there opinion is based off of a personal experience, or maybe they just don't take the time to look at it from another point of view(Like someone that smokes pot for medicinal purposes.) There opinion might be based off of the bad name drug abusers give it. But if you've gotten my point, look at the 3 pages of messages and that's all I need to prove it. It is all just a bunch of people sticking up for there own personal opinions and at the end of the day they go to sleep thinking the same way they did when they woke up. Goes to show i'm not the only ignorant one in the bunch, wich is why I dont care that I am. Everyone is in one way or another. Now that my mind has been joggin the track for a while blabbering on, i'm going to continue on being my slow ignorant self. lol!