Intriguing Info

[gailkate]

Do you walk around with a bottle of water stuck in your backpack, briefcase or hip pocket? As I was cleaning out some of the mountains of emails I get from roganizations and blogs, I found one on the bottled water industry. It seems that in tastes tests around the country, few diehard bottled water drinkers can actually tell the difference from tap water.

An outfit called Corporate Accountability International (CAI)
"has started a campaign to blow away perceptions that bottled water is somehow better-tasting or purer than good old H2O from the tap. At stake, they say, is the increasing commodification of a resource that should be a basic human right, not a product on sale for $1.50 at the local convenience store.

In the past decade, the bottled water market has more than doubled in the United States, surpassing juice, milk, and beer to become the second most popular beverage after soft drinks. According to a 2003 Gallup poll, three in four Americans drink bottled water, and one in five drink only bottled water. Together, consumers spent some $10 billion on the product last year, consuming an average of 26 gallons of the stuff per person, according the Beverage Marketing Corporation. At the same time, companies spend some $70 million annually to advertise their products. Typical are Aquafina's ads advertising the beverage as "the purest of waters," Dasani's ads contending the water is "pure as water can get."

In fact, says Kellett, not only does tap water often taste the same as bottled water, but it is also often safer to drink as well. "They are spending tens of millions of dollars every year to undermine our confidence in tap water," she says, "even though water systems here in the United States are better regulated than bottled water." That's because tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which imposes strict limits on chemicals and bacteria, constant testing by government agencies, and mandatory notification to the public in the event of contamination.

Bottled water, on the other hand, is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which according to federal law is technically required to hold itself to the same standards as the EPA. The devil is in the details, however, since FDA regulations only apply to water that is bottled and transported between states, leaving out the two-thirds of water that is solely transported within states. State laws, meanwhile, are inconsistent, with some mirroring the FDA standards, some going beyond them and some falling far short of the national regulations. What's more, FDA regulations rely on companies to do their own testing, and perform voluntary recalls if products are found to be in violation of standards (if a company fails to do so, the Justice Department can order a seizure of products).

A 1999 study by the National Resources Defense Council of more than 1,000 bottles of water found that, while most bottled water was safe, some brands violated strict state standards on bacterial contamination, while others were found to contain harmful chemicals such as arsenic. The report concluded that bottled water was no safer than water taken from the tap.

In fact, many times bottled water is tap water. Contrary to the image of water flowing from pristine mountain springs, more than a quarter of bottled water actually comes from municipal water supplies. The industry is dominated by three companies, who together control more than half the market: Coca-Cola, which produces Dasani; Pepsi, which produces Aquafina; and Nestlé, which produces several "local" brands including Poland Spring, Arrowhead, Deer Park, Ozarka and Calistoga (a fact that itself often surprises participants in the Tap Water Challenges). Both Coke and Pepsi exclusively use tap water for their source, while Nestlé uses tap water in some brands.

Of course, Coke and Pepsi tout the elaborate additional steps they take that purify the water after it comes out of the tap, with both companies filtering it multiple times to remove particulates before subjecting it to additional techniques such as "reverse osmosis" and ozone treatment. Reverse osmosis, however, is hardly state of the art -- essentially consisting of the same treatment applied through commercially available home tap water filters, while ozonation can introduce additional problems such as the formation of the chemical bromate, a suspected carcinogen. In March 2004, Coca-Cola was forced to recall nearly 500,000 bottles of Dasani water in the United Kingdom due to bromate contamination that exceeded the U.K. and U.S. limit of 10 parts per billion. This past August, three grocery stores chains in upstate New York who all used local company Mayer Bros. to produce their store brands issued recalls after samples were found contaminated with more than double the bromate limit; in some cases, contaminated water was apparently sold for five weeks before the problem was detected.
There's a lot more to this story, including suggestions that big corporations are reducing water supplies by taking free tap water and selling it at outrageous profits. Read it all at the source below. I've never bought bottled water unless I'm away from home and really thirsty, but I have firends who order by the case.

The Bottled Water Lie
By Michael Blanding, AlterNet
Posted on October 26, 2006, Printed on February 10, 2007
www.alternet.org/story/43480/
Michael Blanding is a freelance writer living in Boston. Read more of his writing at MichaelBlanding.com.

[joew]

If I'm at a luncheon meeting where bottled water is one of the beverages available, sometimes I'll take some. Once, when I hosted such a lunch, I took home a couple of leftover bottles. But I don't buy bottled water for use at home. If I want to drink water, I use tap water.

I've seen articles similar to this, but they didn't have to tell me that, apart from having a supply to take with you when you're on the road, bottled water is an extravagance.

Then there's the advice which my grandfather carved around the edge of a round wooden tray he made: "Drink wine. Let the water go to the mill.

Beer is okay too.

[doctork]

This is one of my take-home lessons from overseas. It is a blessing to be able to turn on the tap at home, and out comes a stream of clean safe water.

I occasionally buy a new bottle of water at the airport - inside the security checkpoint of course, since we all know that if the same bottle is purchased outside the CP, it can blow up the plane. I refill it with tap water whenever necessary, until it gets too grungy or I lose it, which is when I acquire a new bottle at a meeting, or the airport newstand.

If I really have my act together, I bring a clean empty water bottle through security, then fill it at the water fountain inside the "sterile area." I had a lot of chemistry classes in high school and college, but I missed the one where they explain how H2O becomes explosive, depending on where it fills the bottle, and whether or not the quantity exceeds 3.0 ounces (or 3.4 ounces, or 100 cc's).

Our obsession with bottled water seems so silly when more than 1 billion people worldwide do not have any reliable access to clean drinking water (UN Millenium Development Goals).

[juliastar]

As a matter of convenience and an alternative to pop, I keep a case of it on hand at the house and a couple of bottles in the car. I agree it should be regulated, but it's not like I didn't know they weren't using good tasting tap water in distributing bottled water. I drink my own tap water thinking it tastes good and I refill an Aquafina bottle at home that I take to work out, etc., but I don't like the city water and in the buildings I've been in downtown, it comes out of the faucet hot so I don't trust where it has been or how long it has sat there. I think safe water should be available to everyone (that's why I don't whine about taxes), but it doesn't mean I have to drink water I don't like if I'm willing to pay for a glass that was bottled some place else. At the office, we buy bulk bottled and purified water. Most people even use that to make the coffee. If someone has made coffee at work with the tap water, I can taste the difference immediately and I dump my cup. Same when traveling -- I almost exclusively drink bottled water because of consistency of taste. The stuff from the tap in other places in different parts of the country is often nasty tasting, imho, partly only because it is different.

[brutus]

We have a Pur brand water treater installed on our kitchen faucet. I think we paid around 30 bucks for the unit, and a packate of two filter cartridges costs us something like 24 bucks. That's a lot of gallons of water that we filter ourselves. We change the filter every three months or so. I try to drink at least half a gallon of water per day, so this unit has paid for itself several times when comparing to buying bottled water.
Straight tap water here does nothing to satisfy thirst. I think that often the "off" flavor to water has a lot to do with the taste given off by the plumbing in a building.
I've often thought that the bottled water industry is much akin to the snake oil salesmen of old. Someday this "fad" of drinking bottled H20 will die off, leaving a lot of expensive "osmosing" equipment sitting idle.

(glub, glub, glub!)
~B~

[Tillie]

joew said:

If I'm at a luncheon meeting where bottled water is one of the beverages available, sometimes I'll take some. Once, when I hosted such a lunch, I took home a couple of leftover bottles. But I don't buy bottled water for use at home. If I want to drink water, I use tap water.

I've seen articles similar to this, but they didn't have to tell me that, apart from having a supply to take with you when you're on the road, bottled water is an extravagance.

Then there's the advice which my grandfather carved around the edge of a round wooden tray he made: "Drink wine. Let the water go to the mill.

Beer is okay too.

Hey, Joe, Hope you still have Grand-Papa's tray! Hey, Rog, wanna job!? I'd like a carved tray and some for my friends and relatives, too! Or, is that below you and nevah above you!

Thanks, for the info, Gail! Actually, I've plastic water pipes and I don't trust the cranky plumping here or source of water but I've sipped and the water's a no-go for meme - tastes too chemically. But, you're saying that Poland Springs! - The "Natural Spring Water From Maine since 1845...which has come from carefully selected natural springs in Maine. That's why it 'just may be the best tasting water on earth.'" The label lists all the springs by name!, for goodness sake! But, in actuality, 'tis our tap water with awfully bad thingys? Oh, No, Can't run can't hide no mor' no mor' from tap water.....

[booklady]

Like doc, I buy some water and then refill the bottles from the tap. I've gotten so I have to have water with me almost all the time. Water in bottles doesn't spill, like water in glasses, and on your nightstand the cat can't try to drink from it.

I like Aquafina the best, but will settle for Poland Springs.

[booklady]

Speaking of water, this was in my local paper this morning. This neighborhood is just down the street from my house, and the story reads like those we were reading ten and fifteen years ago about plumes of pollution from the base. Of course, I have town water, not well water. No one in their right mind has well water in my town anymore.

Contamination found in Sandwich test well
By AMANDA LEHMERT
STAFF WRITER
SANDWICH - A small spike of contamination was found flowing in the water under a Forestdale neighborhood from the Massachusetts Military Reservation this week, military officials said.

The Army detected 13 parts per billion of Royal Demolition Explosive, or RDX, in a well drilled by the Army on Windsong Road.

The Army traces the plume of explosives back to former contractor ranges at the base. Before this most recent detection was discovered, the plume had only been detected within the base border as high as 290 parts per billion.

Army and environmental regulators said it is too early to tell whether the most recent discovery of RDX will spur them to adjust plans to install a mobile water treatment system at the base boundary.

Army officials are in the process of drilling a second well on Windsong Road and test results for that water will be completed soon.

Meanwhile, the Sandwich selectmen granted the Army's Groundwater Study Program permission to drill wells on Lichen Lane, Ladyslipper Lane, Dogwood Drive, Grand Oak Road, Pleasantwood Drive and Grandwood Drive. Army officials have not yet planned where the third well will be located. ''We wanted the ability to go wherever we needed to go once we find out what this other well tells us,'' said Kris Curley, spokesman for the groundwater program.

RDX is called a probable human carcinogen by the EPA. The agency's lifetime health advisory for RDX is 2 parts per billion, or equal to a teaspoon of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

The Cape's groundwater is the main source of drinking water for area residents. But the people who live where the RDX plume is located in Sandwich are hooked up to town drinking water, so there is no immediate health risk to residents.

In January, Army officials proposed placing a small, mobile groundwater treatment unit at the base border this spring. It would pump the tainted water out of the ground, clean it and then pump it back.

Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Environmental Protection officials said they supported the military's plans to start cleaning the water quickly, but wanted to see the test results from the new wells drilled in the community.

Curley said the most recent RDX detection doesn't change the treatment plant plans yet.

Lynne Jennings, EPA manager at the base, said the detection is one more piece of information that will help the Army define where the plume is located. A DEP spokesman said the most recent RDX finding was not unexpected.

''Perhaps we will be lucky and we will find out (the plume) is really close to the base boundary,'' Jennings said.

[liriodendron]

I keep a case of bottled water in my car. That way, when we are out and my kids complain that they are thirsty and start badgering me to stop someplace and buy them a drink, I have an alternative. I also will stick them in lunches when they go on field trips. If they lose the bottle, it's no big deal.

When we go on vacation, I will buy each person a bottle of that Propel Fitness Water (the ones with the twisty spout-like cap). Then I wash them each day in the hotel and refill them with plain old tap water and ice from the ice machine. Again, it's no big deal if the bottle is lost and since I buy each person a different flavor, it is easy to tell which one belongs to whom.

I did learn, however, that amusement parks are not so keen on having you bring bottles of water into the park with you. I thought it was so that they could sell you additional beverages throughout the day, however, the nice man at Six Flags who made me dump mine out (and told me that we could request free ice water at any food stand) told me that it was to keep people from bringing in alcoholic beverages disguised as water. Apparently they'd had some teens do that previously. How sad.

[doctork]

Several of you have mentioned bad-tasting local water. Our Bellingham water tastes fine to me, but I do recall my mother's water in rural Florida was pretty nasty smelling. She and my aunt filled pitchers with water, then let them sit a couple days to get rid of the odor, then pronounced them "fine." Undet those circumstances, guess I'd opt for bottled water sometimes.

My husband uses a Brita filter for his drinking water, but I don't notice it makes a difference, so I don't bother. He and my son use the filtered water for mixing their "sports drinks."

Then last week in my Environmental Health Class, two groups did presentations on Plasticizers used in such items as water bottles. The soft plasticizer group castigated baby bottles and commercially bottled water bottles, while the hard plasticizer group lambasted the Nalgene hard plastic bottle and similar.. We were confused. Since the "dangers" were based on lab animal studies, they were small in absolute numbers, and the "safe levels" extrapolated to humans are one-tenth to one-one-hundredth the level found to be harmful in lab rats, I decided not to worry about this, at least until further notice.

My group chose the topics of diarrheal illness (caused mainly by no access to safe drinking water, kills 1.8 million people yearly, mostly children ages 1 - 5) and landmine injuries, which probably kill 300 - 3,000 people each month, and maim many times that number. When I'm working in Lesser Developed Countries, I drink bottled water exclusively, and I follow the demining signs scrupulously.

At home, bottled water is a nice convenience, useful in many circumstances, but I'm very grateful for potable tap water, and lack of landmines.

[doctork]

Lirio, the CruiseCritics website is full of suggestions on how to smuggle liquor on board the cruise ship, when such is "not allowed." The number one suggestions is: disguise it in your water bottle!

[gailkate]

BL's news clip finally answers the question about explosive water

I like to carry water with me, too. I take some pills that make me very thirsty and drinking fountains can look like disease-growing petrie dishes. But I keep refilling a bottle (with a plastic straw) that I got at a company health conference about 10 years agao. The straw will go in the dishwasher but not the bottle, which has probably leached carcinogens for years. Maybe I'm radioactive.

Ah, Brutus, I hate to make cracks about ND water. But when I was a traveling book rep and had to go to Minot, I always brought my own water. The first time I went, I stopped for breakfast after a long drive, ordered and went to the rest room, came back to find my water glass already had a precipitate forming in the bottom. Talk about the lessons of high school chemistry!

But knowing that "pure spring water" may be worse than tap, and Coke and Pepsi are getting rich off our own tap water makes me dtermined to go out and buy one of those purifier thingies.

[doctork]

gailkate said:

BL's news clip finally answers the question about explosive water

So the TSA may really be onto something, eh?

What a revolting development this is!

Ah well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I'll let the TSA-phobes know.

[booklady]

doctork said:

gailkate said:

BL's news clip finally answers the question about explosive water

So the TSA may really be onto something, eh?

What a revolting development this is!

Ah well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I'll let the TSA-phobes know.

In the 90s there was an article about water pollution in National Geographic. One of the photographs was of a cigarette lighter, lit and burning jet fuel that had been pumped out of the test wells that our local water department had dug, looking for new sites for town water wells. The test well was on the grounds of a local summer children's camp, right alongside a popular pond. It was immediately discovered, of course, that the water was not drinkable, but it was the first evidence of what turned out to be massive water pollution emanating into all four towns that border the nearby military base. You can imagine that there was quite a bit of foot dragging by various branches of the military on cleaning it up. My former editor at the local newspaper wrote many investigative pieces at the time and lots of citizens got involved. At one time we were told that it was the biggest superfund site in the country, though I was always skeptical of that claim. It was an interesting time, though. In recent years a lot of progress has been made to clean up the damage and prevent more, including shutting down the artillery-firing test and training ranges -- though today's article shows that that was too late to keep the RDX from getting into the water.

[joew]

tillie said:

…
But, you're saying that Poland Springs! - The "Natural Spring Water From Maine since 1845...which has come from carefully selected natural springs in Maine. That's why it 'just may be the best tasting water on earth.'" The label lists all the springs by name!, for goodness sake! But, in actuality, 'tis our tap water with awfully bad thingys? Oh, No, Can't run can't hide no mor' no mor' from tap water.....

Take heart, Tillie. The article doesn't say that about Poland Spring. Here again is the bit about bottled tap water:
//The industry is dominated by three companies, who together control more than half the market: Coca-Cola, which produces Dasani; Pepsi, which produces Aquafina; and Nestlé, which produces several "local" brands including Poland Spring, Arrowhead, Deer Park, Ozarka and Calistoga (a fact that itself often surprises participants in the Tap Water Challenges). Both Coke and Pepsi exclusively use tap water for their source, while Nestlé uses tap water in some brands.// — emphasis supplied.
So, as you see, it doesn't actually say Poland Spring is tap water. It could well be other Nestlé brands which are tap. A couple of years ago there were articles in the Boston papers about the fact that the original Poland Spring was not producing enough water for the bottler, so they were using springs located outside the town of Poland, in neighboring towns. Some consumer-protection types were complaining that if they used springs outside Poland, it was fraudulent to call it "Poland Spring." But the government agency to which the complaint went seems to have decided that it's okay to keep the name. Based on that, I think Poland Spring is likely to still be spring water.

To the point of bad-tasting tap water — I hadn't thought about that. Most places I've been the tap water has tasted good, but come to think of it, when we visited my great aunt in Cleveland in the 1950's, the water was pretty heavily chlorinated, and I found it unpleasant, although potable. I think the same was true of Chicago water in the 1970's. So for those of you who live where the tap water tastes funny, buying bottled water makes sense. Although buying a filter might be less expensive in the long run.

[slb2]

The kids and I all drink Culligan water from our water cooler in the dining room. I decided to use Culligan when I was pregnant with the seven-year-old. I knew that invariably, I'd be sitting and nursing the new babe and someone would ask me for a drink of water. A cooler was the perfect solution. Now we prefer the taste to tap.

Ace drinks bottled water, the carbonated kind. It's the individual-serving size packaging that annoys me.

[mike]

I turn wine into water.

[gailkate]

Mike

I do wish you'd all read the whole article, because the parts about water rights and lawsuits will undoubtedly be more pertinent as time goes by. The Water War in Bolivia sounds like science fiction, but my guess is our own Southwest is going to be a litigious battleground before long.

Even if some of you haven't experienced odd-tasting local tap water, haven't you noticed the effects on you skin and hair as you travel? I got so I only used cream to clean my face in some northern MN towns. I hate that, as it doesn't seem like really washing, but my face would get all red and blotchy from the heavy load of minerals.

[booklady]

I read the whole thing and sympathized with the locals. It's no small thing to have natural wetlands and marshes, ponds, etc. disturbed by excessive water removal. There are areas (like my own) where there really is only one source of water -- down in the ground, and plenty of indigenous wildlife dependent upon the wetlands. I'm all for people doing what they want with their own property, but only up to a point. Trucking away water starts affecting everybody's else's property, too, as well as the environment and oftentimes the income from tourism that moms and pops depend upon.

[gailkate]

booklady said:

I read the whole thing and sympathized with the locals. It's no small thing to have natural wetlands and marshes, ponds, etc. disturbed by excessive water removal. There are areas (like my own) where there really is only one source of water -- down in the ground, and plenty of indigenous wildlife dependent upon the wetlands. I'm all for people doing what they want with their own property, but only up to a point. Trucking away water starts affecting everybody's else's property, too, as well as the environment and oftentimes the income from tourism that moms and pops depend upon.

All true, BL, I agree completely. But I feel on shaky ground when it comes to "owning" water. There's been talk of piping OUR water in states like MN, WI and MI down to the dry states where drought just gets worse and worse. Part of me says, "Too bad, you wimps, you moved down to Sun City because you're too morally weak to put up with winter. So lump it." But part of me sympathizes with the Indian idea that Earth's resources belong to everyone. Not that companies should be able to rob people of precious water and get rich selling it elsewhere, but the implications for the future interest me. I won't be here for the conflicts, but your kids might be.

[gailkate]

More intriguing info - the case for decriminalizing marijuana.
This time I copied the whole article because it's loaded with statistics that are hard to condense. I'm pretty sure I think pot use should not be a crime, but I'm not sure what I think about dealers. Thoughts?

Pot Prisoners Cost Americans $1 Billion a Year
By Paul Armentano, AlterNet
American taxpayers are now spending more than a billion dollars per year to incarcerate its citizens for pot. That's according to statistics recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics.

According to the new BJS report, "Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004," 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners suggests that there are now about 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses. The report failed to include estimates on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county and/or local jails for pot-related offenses.

Multiplying these totals by U.S. DOJ prison expenditure data reveals that taxpayers are spending more than $1 billion annually to imprison pot offenders.

The new report is noteworthy because it undermines the common claim from law enforcement officers and bureaucrats, specifically White House drug czar John Walters, that few, if any, Americans are incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses. In reality, nearly 1 out of 8 U.S. drug prisoners are locked up for pot.Of course, several hundred thousand more Americans are arrested each year for violating marijuana laws, costing taxpayers another $8 billion dollars annually in criminal justice costs.

According to the most recent figures available from the FBI, police arrested an estimated 786,545 people on marijuana charges in 2005 -- more than twice the number of Americans arrested just 12 years ago. Among those arrested, about 88 percent -- some 696,074 Americans -- were charged with possession only. The remaining 90,471 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses, even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use.

These totals are the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and make up 42.6 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Nevertheless, self-reported pot use by adults, as well as the ready availability of marijuana on the black market, remains virtually unchanged.

Marijuana isn't a harmless substance, and those who argue for a change in the drug's legal status do not claim it to be. However, pot's relative risks to the user and society are arguably fewer than those of alcohol and tobacco, and they do not warrant the expenses associated with targeting, arresting and prosecuting hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.

According to federal statistics, about 94 million Americans -- that's 40 percent of the U.S. population age 12 or older -- self-identify as having used cannabis at some point in their lives, and relatively few acknowledge having suffered significant deleterious health effects due to their use. America's public policies should reflect this reality, not deny it. It makes no sense to continue to treat nearly half of all Americans as criminals.

This article originally appeared in the Washington Examiner.

Paul Armentano is the senior policy analyst for the NORML Foundation in Washington, DC. (norml.org, 888-67-NORML).

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: www.alternet.org/story/47815/

[gailkate]

No one has an opinion about incarcerating marijuana users? Y'all must be so cool.

[juliastar]

I've never touched the stuff, but I think our reaction to marijuana has been disproportionate to the offense. These arguments that it is no more harmful than alcohol or tobacco have been around for a long time and with the war on drugs mentality, I don't see legalization getting a lot of traction anytime soon, but it wouldn't bother me (unless I had to smell the stuff in public places). I would especially like to see it allowed for the terminally ill as an option to relieve pain. Considering all the pharmaceutical crap that is legal with a prescription, it seems mere ideological nonsense that medicinal marijuana isn't legal in certain circumstances.

[doctork]

A number of states have legalized marijuana use for medical indications, with varying definitions of the "indications" and the process for obtaining the doctor's prescription. There is a moderately good body of literature supporting the efficacy of marijuana for cancer, AIDS, verious terminal illnesses, MS, glaucoma and other diagnoses.

But there have been federal level challenges to legitimacy of such state laws (I think Oregon won one such challenge, but I lose track). Immaterial, because most doctors have enough trouble with persecution/threatened prosecution by many state and federal authorities for so many "offenses" that they won't take on another obvious red flag to wave in front of the regulators.

Seems a little silly in light of the effect of 40% of Americans being declared criminals. What jails/prisons will hold them all, and how will our society function with half of the adult workers put away? And then - in my county, I sometimes think my husband and I are the only people who don't use marijuana. I'm pretty sure 100% of postal employees here are smoking...

[gailkate]

Well, well. Suppose, hypothetically, a person had used pot somewhat frequently - say, more than 30 years ago. Suppose said person not only didn't get addicted (unlike said person's terrible addiction to tobacco) never tried a stronger drug, and quit using when age and responsibility interfered with recreational law-breaking.

Would said person still be subject to prosecution and incarceration?

[joew]

gailkate said:

Well, well. Suppose, hypothetically, a person had used pot somewhat frequently - say, more than 30 years ago. Suppose said person not only didn't get addicted (unlike said person's terrible addiction to tobacco) never tried a stronger drug, and quit using when age and responsibility interfered with recreational law-breaking.

Would said person still be subject to prosecution and incarceration?

I suppose the statute of limitations would have come into play long ago.

To the larger question, having only skimmed the article and never used marijuana, I'll say that I think that criminalizing its use or possession makes little sense. I even think that criminalizing harder drugs carries such negative consequences in terms of the higher prices and the criminal behavior people engage in to support their habits that the whole system of laws about drugs needs to be rethought. And get the feds out of it. Let each state decide what to allow and what not to allow.

[Jane]

I never saw much sense in making mj a criminal offense.

My theory is that, for those addicted to "hard" drugs, making it readily available at no cost (with the option of good treatment if so desired) would cure a lot of problems--crime, homelessness, drug trafficing, child neglect and abuse etc. And, if we had little granny ladies in sensible shoes (like me) handing it out on streetcorners, it would soon be so totally uncool that no one would want to get involved.

[joew]

In some areas they might need a police escort, but I love the idea of little old ladies in the inner city saying to young gangster types, "Would you like some heroin, dear?" I can just imagine my mother enjoying that sort of thing if she had been given the opportunity.

[Tillie]

40% of the people in jail! Ridiculous! Marijuana in all its various names has been used by many people throughout the world for a long, long time. The first known use by people of this weed was around c 4200 - 3200 BC!
Famous writers like Balzac, who wrote 85 novels in 20 years, Dumas, Baudelaire, musicians, actors, artists, etceteras have used marijuana. Is this weed more deadly than liquor or cigs? As marijuana is naturally grown, could it be safer and just as effective as any synthetic prescription drug used in particular medical cases?

Has anyone here tried marijuana? Was anyone here adversely affected by marijuana used in moderation?

Personally, I'm against legalization of hard drugs.
Although, I could see Joe's Mother enjoy saying, "Would you like a little Maryjo, dear?"

[SeattleDan]

Tillie, I may have tried it, but I didn't inhale.