To Lydia

About Australia, that is my own experience. We were sitting in the park one day smoking a joint. The air was still, and we had made this huge cloud of smoke around us giggling. Suddenly a policeman turned up around the corner and surprised us. Me and my buddies quickly sat on the weed, one threw a joint to the ground kept his foot on it. Another one had a joint in his hand and he held it behind his back looking real scared. The policeman said "now what could you boys be up to?"
"why nothing sir! just sitting around having a chit chat"
"you wouldn't happen to be doing anything illegal now, would you?"
"of course not! we're just talking about girls."
"girls? interesting! you sure your not up to anything radical?"
"NO SIR!"
"like setting fire to the public benches or anything?"
We all noticed there was smoke coming out from one of the guy's backs, the one holding a joint. He was red and sweating furiously trying to put it out by squeezing it.
"No sir! of course not. We're peace lovers!"
"Peace lovers, huh?"

He grinned, gave us a wink, and walked away shaking his head in amusement.

Listen, Lydia, everything I am saying is based on firsthand information. I can't tell you where I get my statistics because that might lead you to me and you know how paranoid we weed smokers get. Just kidding with ya! Surf around if your really interested in getting the information and you will find it.

It may surprise you to know I don't actually advocate frequent use of Marijuana. It does cause what I call "hash brain" (I say that for strict weed smokers too) and the symptoms are: unreliability, anything goes, beyond reach of normal conversation, "I'm so cool everybody must know it too".

I just have a problem with people using alarmist methods or saying there is only one way to smoke marijuana (until you get a buzz) and that there is only one type of effect from it or you are a drug addict and all that crap. I have a problem with a statement like there must be something wrong with it or it would be on the market.

The true facts are damning enough. A lot of European countries are way ahead in their education campaigns. They realize scare-mongering is what leads to ignorance, and ignorance is what leads to teenagers going "wow everything they told me about how bad this was isn't true at all" and then getting lured into more dangerous drugs. So the best education is truthful education. Your reports were just distortions and conservative scare-mongering. Sorry.