Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire the horrors of marijuana

There, I have to disagree. Seen it. Done it. The memory loss and performance issues linger on longer after regular pot use vs regular alcohol use.

Why do you insist on comparing pot USE with alcohol ABUSE?

out of curiosity, what is your profession?.....i work with printing presses and alcohol or pot or narcotic pain pills or sleeping pills or whatever are most definatly NOT allowed while working cause you can easilly loose a hand to the presses. however as far as what you do on your free time, so long as it doesnt affect your hours here i could care less.....

prolly cause no one makes consessions for marijuana use versus marijuana abuse...........

Rattler - it's pretty easy to find out by checking my previous posts, but I'll just tell you I'm in railroading. We have random and "for cause" drug testing - thank God. The tests have a very low threshold for both alcohol and drugs. They will pick up pot use off the job, but not alcohol (within those tolerances). This is good, given what I already covered here. The memory and performance issues are critical to our safety.

Like I've said - this stuff ain't theory or hearsay to me.

Maybe so, but if you're gonna compare the effects of both, you have to restrict it to comparable use. You can't argue that pot should be legal because "reasonable" recreational use of pot is safer than alcohol abuse. Abuse is abuse - no matter what the substance. If you want to argue for "reasonable use" (assuming there is such a thing), you must compare it to reasonable use of other substances - or else you argument is hollow.

That deserves attention.

I smoked both tobacco & marijuana back in the 60's and guess which I dropped the use of decades ago? (Hint: I still buy store bought tobacco.)

The marijuana laws now on the books are actually a hinderence to law enforcement more suitably focusing on more important, difficult crimes.

first off i am VERY for employer's rights to drug testing their employee's if you as an employer dont want to hire ppl who smoke pot ect thats fine, so long as the person is informed up front. i cant stand ppl who change rules mid-game. i, personally refuse to work for such employers, not because of pot cause there isnt a test for it i would have pulled a positive for it in the last 5 years cause i havent touched it in ATLEAST that long but because i do take opiate pain killers at night to help me sleep and dont want to deal with the headaches this can cause with drug tests. watched an uncle get busted time and time again because of them just due to his love of poppyseed muffins.

the main problem with testing for pot is i dont think their is a test for recent use.....all the tests i know of are for the active ingrediants which are all fat soluable and not water soluable. so reguardless if you smoked a lil bit 2 weeks ago or last night your going to test positive cause it takes 3 or 4 weeks for it to work completely out of your system. basically you test positive weither its affecting your mental state or not, unlike tests for drunkeness....someone can abuse opiates and depending how the tests are given pass with flying colors more often than not cause they flush completely much faster.

Maybe people have changed? Huh?

I haven't smoked the stuff in decades, but when I did I didn't seek getting "stoned." I knew quite a few people who smoked it pretty much like they'd have wine at dinner.

In any event, laws regarding substance abuse ought to focus on abuse more so than use, in my view. Some substances are simply poison & toxic at first use and maybe need to be given the attention a substance like marijuana now gets.

Well Rattler, you and I don't agree on much...



I agreee with that, up to this point...



As we respond to things learned the hard way, rules often change. (BTW - if you want to see an environment where rules change at a ridiculous pace, come work with me).



...as is your right



Sorry, but that just doesn't get anywhere with me in my position. If you are impaired, legally or not, justifiably or not, I can't work with you. That's just the way it is...



We have never had that problem withour testing. If we had, I would just give up the poppy seeds. What's the big deal? If a guy keeps getting busted over a simple little thing as that - who's to blame? The employer, or the guy who stubbornly keeps eating poppy seeds? The job must not be too great if the poppy seeds mean more...



See my above posts. I don't care if someone used pot today or three weeks ago. I don't want to work with 'em. OTOH - I don't care if my coworker has a couple beers every time he gets off work. That won't effect me.

If there are folks who can abuse pot or even just use it regularly without failing a drug test (of the quality I am subject to) even a week after the last use, I would be more than surprised - and that would be a rare individual. Still - I don't think that is even relevant. OTOH - if a guy shows up drunk - as you referred to - I don't want to work with him either. So that isn't relevant either.

You seem to do a good job here in differentiating use and abuse. I don't blame you one bit for not wanting to work with someone who's sotted (no matter how), because if that condition creates impairment of his abilities in any manner that could likely endanger you, he's endangering the workplace, which is quite properly a valid concern for you and management.

a pain killer, taken only before bed to make sure i sleep has ZERO impact on my work the next day. if i were to take one before going to work thats a whole different story but in the 12 hours between taking the pill and going to work its effects have left my system and pose no threat. no different than me having a glass of beer the night before with supper.

as far as changing rules mid stream.........in your occupation im guessing there have been drug tests since day one, atleast far enough back its mute point. changing what drugs you test for is not the issue.......i understand the need of railroad workers to be stone cold sober in all respects.....to many ppls lives are on the line.....i cant think of any business that doesnt know at this point whether or not they need drug testing. if they dont then they have bigger issues......if businesses expand than job descriptions change then there is an opening to implement drug testing. my work has....how is it put? "DO NOT embarress the paper while on the clock" which means anytime any employee will be in the public eye while on the clock drinking and such is not tolerated. and there is a no intoxicated rule while out in the press room regardless if your meeting the public face to face but generally press men have enough close calls stone sober to scare someone into not being intoxicated while running the press....hell my boss has pulled me off them for something as simple as having a bad headache.

My wife smokes pot. Her day starts at 8 AM when she turns out and feeds a dozen horses. She trains a couple to four horses a day, mostly by riding them for 45 minutes each, she teaches 2-5 riding lessons a day. She fixes fences when they need it, she scrapes up mud and puts down gravel, she brings in the horses at night and often her work day doesn't end until 9 PM.

She does only take one or two puffs when she smokes it. She usually does that right before she goes out to muck out the stalls in the barn or clean some tack. She's been smoking dope off and on since she was 15 years old and she's 42 now. She's never committed a crime to get the money to buy the stuff. She's held other jobs, mostly managing other types of farms. She's successful, good at what she does, and hard work is no stranger to her.

I know a guy that's got a doctorate in archeology and has been working in that field his whole life. He makes a butt load of money, had published papers, testified in courts, and is recognized as an expert in his field and he smokes pot pretty regularly.

I know a guy that was the head of the emergency medicine department at a hospital for three years. Usually the docs rotate through that job for a year at a time but he was good at it and they had trouble getting a replacement. He smoked pot all through med school, residency, and for quite a while as a practicing doc. Pot never seemed to slow him down a whole lot.

I think stereotypes aren't very useful in decision making. Most of the adults that smoke dope that I know use it just like a person would have a beer or maybe two and the effect is the same.


The facts are that some portion of the population can moderate their behavior and some can't. The reason for alcohol prohibition was because of this fact. It doesn't matter what the substance is. Cigarettes have the same addiction rate as heroin yet they're legal and will kill you just as dead as the heroin will about half of the time.

Rattler - of course every employer has it's own rules, but this is how it applies to me. I'm not a pharmacist, so I don't know what the effects of your particular pain medication are or how long they last. But If I had to take such medicine, I would be required to notify my manager immediately. He would then refer to our medical officer who is knowledgeable in such matters. That individual would notify me whether I could continue to work while using this medication and under what conditions.


As long as I adhere to these requirements and my instructions, even if I fail a drug test (because of said medication), I will be okay.

This seems to be a workable system.

As far as changing rules - the whole drug test thing came along well after I entered the industry. As time progressed, more substances were added to the list of "prohibiteds", as experience indicated a need. Each time, we have been notified in advance of the rule change. Works for me.

I see no problem with drug testing by employers, if it follows this model.

Good post!

I admire and applaud its meaning and how finely it was stated.

Steely - your wife, I suppose, is an example of a pot user who doesn't put herself in a position for it to harm or cost anyone - an exception to the rule.

That someone could go through college and get various degrees while using pot regularly doesn't mean a whole lot to me these days (knowing plenty of college-educated um, "experts"). And if I found that my doctor was using regularly, I would find another.

I don't care if he's done just fine so far - I ain't waitin' to see if he makes a mistake on me. BTW - I remember reading somewhere a report that mentioned how doctors manage to hide their drug abuse better than most other folks. That's all I'm gonnna say about that.

In the old days I used to work with a lot of guys who thought they did just fine while using pot. Even the ones who only used it off-duty were kidding themselves. I was there. I know.

I'm not so impressed. Tobacco smokers don't make me nervous when they're working around me (given plenty of ventilation). Heroin users do. The longer both have been using, the bigger the contrast.

I'll clarify my praise: prohibition didn't occur because of immoderation on the part of those who consumed alcoholic beverages. It was much more a nanny-state sort of endeavor than that -- my bad here.

See my signature for further emphasis.

actually that model works fine for me aswel for drug testing procedures......

as far as this:



are you positive they would have been good works minus all pot or where they already using, even if only in there off time, before you became in contact to them....im inclined to believe they werent top notch employees using or not.

i dont know i was taking and passing calculus doing parts of the equations in my head the others in the class couldnt....if i could do that sorta applied abstract thinking while smoking pot after school.....well i stick to my story that recreational use has lil bearing on anything you do in your day to day life, if your stupid sober your going to be stupid stoned.....it might affect something a minor percentage of the popuation has to do and so long as their employers impliment drug testing i dont see the real harm in pot being legalized.......

Your concerns are easily understood, FreeMe. I won't mock them. But putting heroin & tobacco together as substances likely to create troubles in the workplace is a stretch. I'll offer this: isn't a lot about this whole topic basically based on how people are impaired in the workplace, on the highway and such as in contrast as to how they might be in the privacy of their own homes? Isn't that a worthwhile difference to pursue in legislating use?

It's true that some people are effected more than others, but...

"are you positive they would have been good works minus all pot or where they already using, even if only in there off time, before you became in contact to them."

Yep - I saw some of them after they quit using. Big difference.

And I hold that if you are stupid sober, you are even stupider when you're using.