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Up in Smoke: Drug Legalization and Dealing


Martell Spy

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A thread to discuss the merits, or lack thereof, of drug legalization, and implementation. Or drug dealing experiences. Or if you should vote for a politician known to have dealt drugs.

Also, to discuss, heroin safe sites. Any Canadians familiar with the one in Vancouver? We've been having a debate on this in Seattle recently.

 

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7 minutes ago, Triskele said:

 That doesn't mean a person can't get really into pot where they have a really hard time putting it down in spite of negative consequences.  

I believe it’s called psychological addiction, to distinguish it from physical addiction in substances like heroin and cocaine.  

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I’m generally in favor of legalizing drugs and regulating production quality.  I think that needs to be accompanied by (1) huge public education on the risks and side effects of various drugs, (2) safe shooting galleries maintained by public health authorities, and (3) good addiction treatment programs for those who want them, and more investment in the pharmacology of treating addiction.

I think it might also be worth experimenting — for the deepest, least-functioning addicts — with safe shooting galleries as an in-patient/residential system located in remote places with the state providing the drugs and a managed residence, so that the addicts are not living at home (effects on kids/family especially) or on the streets, or committing crime, or blighting a neighborhood.  Basically they would be checking into a long term treatment location away from civilization until they progress toward sobriety or at least an ability to function as an addict.  I can see that could be viewed as basically incarcerating people for addiction, but I would hope it could be in-patient long term mental health care for people whose addiction will make them a danger to themselves and others.

But, honestly, I have no experience with addiction beyond traditional Irish alcoholism and my suggestions might be entirely naive.  I definitely acknowledge that legalizing drugs may increase usage and addiction, just as the opioid crisis seems to have grown from increased access to legal opioid painkillers.  I like to think of the war on drugs as an ultimately pointless and destructive error, but possibly drug use would be even worse without it.  The “left behind” slice of the population is growing and at risk of drug abuse.  Any drug policy needs to also address social disenfranchisement.

BTW - I have seen reports that legal marijuana in California has become a cover for increased production of illegal marijuana, which is cheaper to users and still sells in greater quantity. 

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6 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

I believe it’s called psychological addiction, to distinguish it from physical addiction in substances like heroin and cocaine.  

I'm not a fan of this binary. For a start, there's an accompanying implication that psychological addiction isn't serious. It is. It can be, over the long term, much harder to beat than physical addiction. For another thing, most drugs (legal or illegal) have both physically and psychologically addictive properties, and the two are not independent of each other. 

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10 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Fine. It doesn't matter how bad tobacco and alcohol are, I used these comparisons to show the moral implications for people. What matters is how bad weed is for teenagers. You wanna prove that being a former high school drug dealer shouldn't be a problem for a politician? You're up against a lot of research. Do you really want me to post all the scientific articles that prove that selling weed to teenagers is bad? Like seriously?

Look, I've done worse than selling weed when I was a teen. But I'm not gonna brag about that kind of stuff on the internet, because I've come to terms with the fact that 17-year-old me was a shitty person. If you're not mature enough to have done that kind of work on yourself, that's on you, and it has nothin to do with politics. But hey, if you want to prove to the world that selling weed to kids is a-ok, feel free to open a topic about it where we'll discuss the scientific literature on the topic. I'll be glad to help with your psychotherapy.

Holy judgmental bullshit Batman!  Suggesting I'm bragging about dealing as a kid because I responded to a political argument on prior drug use of politicians doesn't really warrant a response.  Barack Obama discussed his teenage drug use extensively in his autobiography commissioned by the Harvard Law Review.  Not sure if you've heard of him, he got elected president a couple times.  We fundamentally disagree on the "moral" implications of dealing drugs as a kid.  And while you've gone back and forth on whether there actually is any moral, or rather what you sometimes have called "pragmatic," implications of that, I'm totally fine doing what you said to begin with in that regard - agree to disagree.

10 hours ago, Fez said:

However, that does not mean I support the creation of the regulatory system that advocates push for. I think until we know more about the effects of marijuana (because it's true that there hasn't been enough research yet), it's foolish to allow the creation of for-profit entities encouraging the use of the substance. I'm not saying states should necessarily go as far as Vermont, which legalized but did not allow for any regulatory system to be created at all. But I do think limiting production and sales to entities that lack profit motives, such as public benefit corporations or government monopolies (when properly created), is worthwhile.

Uh, how much more do we need to know about the effects of marijuana?  This is treating weed like it's some new prescription drug just created in a lab.  The effects of marijuana have been as extensively researched as almost any substance.  Anyway, it sounds like what you're really objecting to is your perception of legalization advocates as encouraging smoking weed.  That's fair, to an extent, but generally hasn't been my experience.  Advocating legalization has a lot more to do with ending the abject iniquity of incarcerating non-violent offenders - which I think is a much more compelling moral imperative.

46 minutes ago, mormont said:

I'm not a fan of this binary. For a start, there's an accompanying implication that psychological addiction isn't serious. It is. It can be, over the long term, much harder to beat than physical addiction. For another thing, most drugs (legal or illegal) have both physically and psychologically addictive properties, and the two are not independent of each other. 

It's a very good point to emphasize that mental or psychological addiction can be just as - if not harder - to overcome in the long run.  And that there is at least a correlation between physical and mental addiction.  I think both are generally true, at least in my experience.  However, that doesn't mean there's not a distinction.  Withdrawal symptoms for physically addictive substances really really suck.  That's why I don't know of anyone who's gotten off heroin without a methadone clinic or some equivalent.  Or why coke withdrawal is probably the worst feeling I've ever had in my life.  Or why anyone who's tried to quit smoking usually fails at least their first few efforts.  Those are all distinct from ceasing to smoke (I guess I should say use now) marijuana.

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"Illegal" weed markets will always exist even in the presence of legalization of it isn't full legalization where you can grow your own without limits on plant counts, etc.  Especially the government is charging thousands of dollars to get a grow license - it's going to end up with expensive corporate stuff in legal dispensaries and the rest of us will just keep smoking the homegrown.

In Massachusetts the stuff at the dispensaries is super expensive and the lines and wait times are long.  Most of my co-workers smoke and none have even bothered to check out the dispensaries yet.  And the dispensary in Northampton just got bought  out by  a big  corporate  weed conglomerate out of Georgia.  The legal shit has to get competitive to be competitive.

As far as the health risks associated with weed go, they aren't the same as with tobacco.  In fact there seems to be a very different end result in how the two substances affect the lungs.  And of course you don't need to smoke it to consume it - just eat it!

I think the external costs and negative effects of weed legalization will be far fewer and less catastrophic than with tobacco or alcohol.  

I'm also reminded of an anecdote that a San Diego cop told me when she was writing me a ticket for smoking weed on the beach.  I'd just asked her how she felt about the new alcohol ban on the beach, and she said that in 20 years of responding to calls, she'd never seen a violent incident that didn't involve alcohol.  

Baked in the Berkshires, 

Larry

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2 hours ago, DMC said:

Suggesting I'm bragging about dealing as a kid because I responded to a political argument on prior drug use of politicians doesn't really warrant a response.  

Honestly this is why I’ve checked out of the conversation. Neither of us ever bragged about it. I brought it up to highlight that we shouldn’t be judged in our professional lives for minor stuff we did as teenagers. And somehow us selling to our friends of the same age turned into us being in our 30’s preying on kids. JFC indeed.

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6 hours ago, mormont said:

I'm not a fan of this binary. For a start, there's an accompanying implication that psychological addiction isn't serious. It is. It can be, over the long term, much harder to beat than physical addiction. For another thing, most drugs (legal or illegal) have both physically and psychologically addictive properties, and the two are not independent of each other. 

I agree with your principle.  I supplied Trisk with the term of art for this discussion, but I was not implying that psychological addiction is easy, trivial or truly distinct from physical addiction.  Those are just the labels currently used in addiction treatment to address two different facets of addiction.  Psychological addiction, in my inexpert opinion, is much larger, more persistent and harder to address, and acts as a motivation to start as well as a barrier to quit.

Many proponents of legalizing marijuana point to the lack of physical addiction as a crucial differentiation from heroin, crack, etc but overlook the psychological addiction and long term dependence.  Technically alcohol has no physical addiction either (a hangover is toxicity rather than withdrawal), but no-one doubts that alcoholics struggle to end their use/dependence.

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2 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Technically alcohol has no physical addiction either (a hangover is toxicity rather than withdrawal), but no-one doubts that alcoholics struggle to end their use/dependence.

Uh...Understanding the differences between a hangover and withdrawal:

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While alcohol withdrawal symptoms can look very similar to hangover symptoms, withdrawal symptoms don’t just go away after a few hours; in fact, in the first 6-12 hours of withdrawal, minor symptoms are typically just getting started. Within 12-24 hours of stopping you may experience audio, visual, or tactile hallucinations. Within 24-48 hours you may experience seizures. Within 48-72 hours you may begin showing signs of Delirium Tremens, a psychotic condition in which you experience disturbing symptoms such as confusion, disorientation, anxiety, and tremors. These symptoms persist as your body continues to struggle to re-establish normal function over a period of days or weeks. During this time you are vulnerable to both extreme psychological and physical damage, and even possibly death.

Is there marijuana withdrawal?  Sure.  However:

Quote

The first thing to understand is that it is certainly true that marijuana is not as physically addictive as drugs like heroin, alcohol, benzodiazepines, etc. These other drugs have a high potential for the development of both abuse and physical dependence, whereas the level of physical dependence associated with even chronic marijuana usage is comparatively mild.

 

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Up until the mid 1920s most traditional recreational drugs, most notably heroin and cocaine were legal in a lot of European Countries and I believe the US too, it was the moralizing pressure on said Countries by the prohibition stance US that convinced them to ban them.

Personally I'm in favour of drugs being legalised,regulated and taxed, nothing has proven there would be a huge uptake in drug usage, like others have said education and treatment should be available for those in need of it, plus it would instantly be a huge blow to organised crime and end all the pointless,avoidable violence and death.

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2 minutes ago, Bittersweet Distractor said:

Personally I'm in favour of drugs being legalised,regulated and taxed, nothing has proven there would be a huge uptake in drug usage, like others have said education and treatment should be available for those in need of it, plus it would instantly be a huge blow to organised crime and end all the pointless,avoidable violence and death.

I used to think this too until I looked into the Chinese addiction of opium crisis/war and how incredibly horrible it was. It's still not clear how bad it was, but it appeared to be a significant societal problem in general. And while the effects are debated, about 25% of the populace regularly used opium in China at its peak - so the notion that more people wouldn't use is obviously flawed.

And that was opium - a significantly less potent and less addictive substance than heroin or fentanyl, and without 180 years of companies being able to market and brand and cross-product and perform work to make it even more addictive. We've seen what companies can do with things like tobacco, and while smoking is addictive and has long term harm, it isn't as debilitating to actual day-to-day work as heroin is. 

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20 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I used to think this too until I looked into the Chinese addiction of opium crisis/war and how incredibly horrible it was. It's still not clear how bad it was, but it appeared to be a significant societal problem in general. And while the effects are debated, about 25% of the populace regularly used opium in China at its peak - so the notion that more people wouldn't use is obviously flawed.

And that was opium - a significantly less potent and less addictive substance than heroin or fentanyl, and without 180 years of companies being able to market and brand and cross-product and perform work to make it even more addictive. We've seen what companies can do with things like tobacco, and while smoking is addictive and has long term harm, it isn't as debilitating to actual day-to-day work as heroin is. 

I understand your argument here, at the same time though society is vastly different in terms of education and support than it was during the Chinese opium war.

Also people who want to take drugs will, prohibition and the war on drugs hasn't stopped that, surely it's time to admit that stance was a failure and take a new approach?.

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32 minutes ago, Bittersweet Distractor said:

I understand your argument here, at the same time though society is vastly different in terms of education and support than it was during the Chinese opium war.

Is it? People still smoke and smoke heavily. Opioids are known to be massively harmful, and yet we have about 80,000 people dying yearly from them. We know about a lot of the harm caused by things like processed food, sugars, saturated fats - but we are as a society massively overweight. 

And yeah, society is different. 180 years ago you didn't have multimillion dollar ad campaigns glamorizing heroin chic, or huge funded doctor studies indicating that oxycontin isn't actually that addictive to kids, or huge kickbacks to politicians. 

Educating people doesn't solve the issue, because it isn't a rational thing. Drugs make you feel good, and if you've ever been around any addict you'll know how they'll rationalize anything for getting a new fix. 

32 minutes ago, Bittersweet Distractor said:

Also people who want to take drugs will, prohibition and the war on drugs hasn't stopped that, surely it's time to admit that stance was a failure and take a new approach?.

The war on drugs is a failure as we've implemented it. On a whole lot of levels. That does not mean that the answer should be 'legalize it all'. We don't need a perfect answer. We simply need a better one. 

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35 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The war on drugs is a failure as we've implemented it. On a whole lot of levels. That does not mean that the answer should be 'legalize it all'. We don't need a perfect answer. We simply need a better one. 

I pretty much agree with you here. I'm fine with legalizing marijuana, but when we talk about things like Cocaine, Heroin, and Meth, I think it would not be wise. I admit to not having the most learned opinion on this topic, but what I know about the drugs I've describe is mainly from personal experience. I've never been a user, but I have known individuals who have been, and it seemingly always turns out very ugly.  Certainly I think we should try a less carceral approach.

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9 hours ago, DMC said:

Holy judgmental bullshit Batman!  Suggesting I'm bragging about dealing as a kid because I responded to a political argument on prior drug use of politicians doesn't really warrant a response.  Barack Obama discussed his teenage drug use extensively in his autobiography commissioned by the Harvard Law Review.  Not sure if you've heard of him, he got elected president a couple times.  We fundamentally disagree on the "moral" implications of dealing drugs as a kid.  And while you've gone back and forth on whether there actually is any moral, or rather what you sometimes have called "pragmatic," implications of that, I'm totally fine doing what you said to begin with in that regard - agree to disagree.

I gotta get up at 5am tomorrow, so I'll have to keep it brief.

9 hours ago, DMC said:

Barack Obama discussed his teenage drug use extensively in his autobiography commissioned by the Harvard Law Review.  Not sure if you've heard of him, he got elected president a couple times. 

I also remember the previous Democratic president, a guy called Bill Clinton, who pretended he "didn't inhale" when asked about it.
Obama could be honest about smoking weed, sure. Did he ever say anything about selling though? Times changed between Clinton and Obama, but there are still limits to that. I'm aware that you said "should" though, so I acknowledge that you're perfectly aware of these limits.

9 hours ago, DMC said:

We fundamentally disagree on the "moral" implications of dealing drugs as a kid.

Not really. I was a bit drunk last night and got hyperbolic when you started being a bit of a prick (argumentatively speaking). But the conversation was always focused on politicians. Now that I've sobered up there's three simple points I'd like to make:
- Selling weed as a kid is minor. We actually agree on that, all in all.
- Different countries have different laws and traditions. While selling weed is minor, it's enough to be barred from public service in France (for life). Were I ever to sell weed and get caught, I'd lose my job and my livelihood. To sum up: the laws are still quite strict on the matter where I live, the very recent legal evolutions notwithstanding. This affects one's way of thinking. Not to mention the fact that I teach in law school btw.
- I was a poor kid, and most of my friends were barely middle-class. So I have bad stories relating to drugs. I've literally seen lives wasted because of weed, as incredible as that may be. Or at least, hyperbolism aside, kids screwing up enough to quit school and/or screw up their studies because they started being stoned throughout the week ; some of these kids were friends or classmates of mine. And the research on the why and how of that is pretty well documented. I'd find it hard to believe that high school teachers don't take weed addiction seriously in the US, even in states where it's been legalized.

Based on points 2 & 3, the quantities and the amounts of money you mentioned are enough to get you in serious trouble in France and/or have a very real impact on a poor neighborhood. I get that selling drugs to upper middle class kids doesn't exactly have the same societal impact, because such kids are far less likely to be allowed to screw up by their environment. Still, I wouldn't take this lightly, as I'm sure some can be affected for various reasons (rich kids also have issues, and I'm sure they can have falling grades too).
In fact, I couldn't take this lightly if I was confronted with a kid making 300-500 a week selling weed to his classmates, it would literally be my duty to call the cops on them, regardless of who they were selling to. Dunno if I'd actually do it, but I would be expected to and might get in trouble if I covered for them and that was later found out. In a nutshell, given my personal role in society, one could say I'm distantly affiliated with law enforcement.

This being said, what we really disagree on is the standards we want to set for politicians. Since a former drug dealer can't become a civil servant in France, I find it perfectly logical that they shouldn't have the possibility of holding public office either (they do though, but that's for another debate). Now I'm not that judgmental myself, so if the politician simply admitted that it was wrong and apologized for any harm he may have caused I wouldn't think twice about it. But if they were to start saying it was no big deal for this or that reason, that would be a dealbreaker for me. I don't care a fig if individuals are a bit selfish or blind to the consequences of their actions (it's not like I'm a saint or exclusively befriend saints). But I expect a politician to be able to understand how one's decisions may affect other people's lives. If they don't understand that their minor deeds as kids may have affected others negatively, if ever so slightly, they certainly can't be expected to give proper thought to the consequences of the political decisions they'll make if they are elected.

Seems like a rather simple point to me. And given the origin of the conversation (awareness of systemic racism and the evils it entails) I would have expected that to be totally uncontroversial. You live, you learn.
 

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59 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Is it? People still smoke and smoke heavily. Opioids are known to be massively harmful, and yet we have about 80,000 people dying yearly from them. We know about a lot of the harm caused by things like processed food, sugars, saturated fats - but we are as a society massively overweight. 

And yeah, society is different. 180 years ago you didn't have multimillion dollar ad campaigns glamorizing heroin chic, or huge funded doctor studies indicating that oxycontin isn't actually that addictive to kids, or huge kickbacks to politicians. 

Educating people doesn't solve the issue, because it isn't a rational thing. Drugs make you feel good, and if you've ever been around any addict you'll know how they'll rationalize anything for getting a new fix. 

The war on drugs is a failure as we've implemented it. On a whole lot of levels. That does not mean that the answer should be 'legalize it all'. We don't need a perfect answer. We simply need a better one. 

I view smoking cigarettes as a rather pointless pastime, but to each their own, the US certainly has a big issue with opiates, but this has happened even with their illegality and rather severe punishments, I'm definately more in favour of legalisation and some of the taxes being used for both education and rehabilitation of people in need of it.

IMO the war on drugs as we've implemented it has been a failure mostly because vast swathes of people enjoy consuming them,prohibition hasn't worked, all its really done is give billions to criminals, complete with all the misery and violence that goes with it.

32 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I pretty much agree with you here. I'm fine with legalizing marijuana, but when we talk about things like Cocaine, Heroin, and Meth, I think it would not be wise. I admit to not having the most learned opinion on this topic, but what I know about the drugs I've describe is mainly from personal experience. I've never been a user, but I have known individuals who have been, and it seemingly always turns out very ugly.  Certainly I think we should try a less carceral approach.

Heroin and Meth are at an extreme end of the scale, I'm a bit conflicted about it but would still air on them being legalised, Cocaine and MDMA should be IMO.

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8 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Honestly this is why I’ve checked out of the conversation. Neither of us ever bragged about it. I brought it up to highlight that we shouldn’t be judged in our professional lives for minor stuff we did as teenagers. And somehow us selling to our friends of the same age turned into us being in our 30’s preying on kids. JFC indeed.

Well, it was me who characterized it as bragging   in post #297 of the last US Politics thread.  Maybe it wasn't the best word, but what was chapping my ass about it was you guys acting like this was nothing, or on par with just smoking it.  Selling a pound a month to teens is at least a little fucked up, and while I wouldn't say it would preclude someone from an elected office, it's certainly a red flag.  Moving a quarter pound a week is more than just getting a discount and hooking up your friends.  

Also, just saying, that's a pretty weak reason to duck out of a conversation.  

The reason I think I even went with the verb 'to brag' was you or @DMC saying something about how (paraphrasing here, will look up the actual post)* history proved you were right.  Obama getting high doesn't vindicate or legitimize profiting off selling drugs to highschool students.  Talking about it in such a cavalier matter comes across as bragging, especially when there are people who have been in prison for a long time for the same shit - and race and class have a lot to do with that.

 

 

Eta: * was your @Tywin et al. initial post about 'pushing weight'.  I have friends that have served years for the same shit, just kind of pisses me off to hear someone equating it to nothing.  I support legalizing it, but I'd set the legal age at 21.  My 18 and 16 year old sister's bug me for weed all the time because they know I'm a pothead, but not going to happen till they're older.

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24 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Well, it was me who characterized it as bragging   in post #297 of the last US Politics thread.  Maybe it wasn't the best word, but what was chapping my ass about it was you guys acting like this was nothing, or on par with just smoking it.  Selling a pound a month to teens is at least a little fucked up, and while I wouldn't say it would preclude someone from an elected office, it's certainly a red flag.  Moving a quarter pound a week is more than just getting a discount and hooking up your friends.  

Not really, assuming your friends are looking for larger amounts too.

Look, I wasn't trying to brag, I was stating that I take pride in being on the right side of history i.e. it should be legalized. And because I felt it should be legal, I looked to the bootleggers of yesteryear as an example on how to take action. 

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50 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

This being said, what we really disagree on is the standards we want to set for politicians. Since a former drug dealer can't become a civil servant in France, I find it perfectly logical that they shouldn't have the possibility of holding public office either (they do though, but that's for another debate). Now I'm not that judgmental myself, so if the politician simply admitted that it was wrong and apologized for any harm he may have caused I wouldn't think twice about it. But if they were to start saying it was no big deal for this or that reason, that would be a dealbreaker for me. I don't care a fig if individuals are a bit selfish or blind to the consequences of their actions (it's not like I'm a saint or exclusively befriend saints). But I expect a politician to be able to understand how one's decisions may affect other people's lives. If they don't understand that their minor deeds as kids may have affected others negatively, if ever so slightly, they certainly can't be expected to give proper thought to the consequences of the political decisions they'll make if they are elected.

Seems like a rather simple point to me. And given the origin of the conversation (awareness of systemic racism and the evils it entails) I would have expected that to be totally uncontroversial. You live, you learn.

Yes, this is rather uncontroversial - and not in contradiction with how this conversation started, or at least when I entered into it, saying:

Quote

Yeah I'll respond to this because I also kinda took that personally.  I don't think being "historically right" matters, but I too sold, like, a quap a week at most in my teenage years.  While you'd almost literally have to put a gun to my head to get me to run for public office, I don't think that should really be disqualifying to a political candidate.  Or even much of a problem.

Obviously, as you said, the politician should express regret and show compunction for the behavior.  But I don't think selling weed in high school should be disqualifying, and you seem to pretty much agree based on the bolded.

I also took issue with you stating (on post #206 of the last thread) that selling weed as a kid is "at least as bad as racism or sexism."  Considering the context of the discussion, that's essentially saying that I should (at least) feel as bad about my high school behavior as I should if I was one of the individuals in Northam's yearbook photo.  I find that ridiculous - I would feel much (much) more guilt about the latter, and I think any reasonable person should too.  And it's hard to not take personal offense to such a statement.  

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7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Not really, assuming your friends are looking for larger amounts too.

Look, I wasn't trying to brag, I was stating that I take pride in being on the right side of history i.e. it should be legalized. And because I felt it should be legal, I looked to the bootleggers of yesteryear as an example on how to take action. 

I'm going to give the bolded the eye roll.  You're either getting 30-50 people high a couple times a day or you're getting fewer people really fucking high.  

Even with bootleggers, alcohol ruins lives.  It's not like they were heros or something.  My objections and language were to characterizing selling weed in highschool as a positive.  I agree that it's less bad than being an overt racist.

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