A serious discussion about marijuana.

[C23flyer]

E-Flyer, you're barely making any sense. I understand your point of view, and for the most part I concur. But you diminish the stature of your argument by trashing others' points of view, and the "lost respect" shots are a bit melodramatic. I would argue that your inability to communicate clearly and to articulate ideas without showing disrespect is a far more significant sign of unprofessional conduct. Work on it guy.

[B-rad]

.

[. ._]

What's the rule?

8 hours from toke up to gear up?

Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

-istp

[sky's the limit]

So if you want to lock it up that's fine...

The topic was locked over the personal attacks that had begun, feel free to carry on the discussion as long as it stays on topic.

stl

[niss]

I think the best way I can summarize my feelings about it is this:

Most pilots I know can be stoners as long as these pilots dont become like most stoners I know.

1 joint to unwind everynow and again is ok. But the people who feel they need to get high to get through the day the ones who need a wake and bake, or the ones who even rationalize to themselves and others that what they are doing is ok because at least they wont beat their wife.

You want to blaze? Go ahead but don't try to pretend it doesn't affect you, if it didnt why would you smoke? Admit you are getting high to get high and don't compare it to alcohol saying its better. It is still there to alter your state of mind, you are in no shape in my books to be trusted with anything other than staying on the couch and watching tv.

[Ernie Cryinghead]

i got no time for theese punks smokin the dope. if you where ever in the cockpit with me and i knew you smoked dope i would have your ass fired. its for lazy hippies and bums. i heard of a guy at this place i used to work that smoked dope and they all said he couldnt fly for beans, no hands and feet on the punk! get yourself a friggin brain and stop smokin the dope!

cryinhead

[flyin'high]

http://www.nida.nih.gov/Infofacts/marijuana.html

research has shown that marijuana’s adverse impact on memory and learning can last for days or weeks after the acute effects of the drug wear off (19,20,25).

19 Pope HG, Yurgelun-Todd D. The residual cognitive effects of heavy marijuana use in college students. JAMA 275(7):521–527, 1996.

20 Block RI, Ghoneim MM. Effects of chronic marijuana use on human cognition. Psychopharmacology 100(1–2):219–228, 1993.

25 Pope HG, Gruber AJ, Hudson JI, et al. Neuropsychological performance in long-term cannabis users. Arch Gen Psychiatry 58(10):909–915, 2001.

Again, you're kidding yourself. If you want to smoke a J, sure, go ahead, I don't care about you getting lung cancer, but it will surely impair your ability to operate motorized equipment for more than 24 hours.

Just curious Hedley where the results are from all your studies relating to the long term effects of marijuana?? You seem to think that you can argue scientific studies with your opinion alone.

[Ogee]

dope is for dopes.

And mindless slogans are for the mindless.

[Ogee]

"How long do chemicals from marijuana stay in the body after the drug is smoked?
When marijuana is smoked, THC, its active ingredient, is absorbed by most tissues and organs in the body; however, it is primarily found in fat tissues. The body, in its attempt to rid itself of the foreign chemical, chemically transforms the THC into metabolites. Urine tests can detect THC metabolites for up to a week after people have smoked marijuana. Tests involving radioactively labeled THC have traced these metabolites in animals for up to a month."

Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1984.

Um, you may not know this, but the National Institute on Drug Abuse is one of the least credible sources of information on marijuana in the world.

THC can actually be detected up to a month after smoking, radioactive or not.

[Dash-Ate]

Now we all know 100's of people exactly like the FO in this story. So what makes him a competent professional and the Captain a safety hazard and liability? How many tests do they have to do, to show that weed is no different than booze? Legalize it, tax it, and control the THC levels and distribution and Canada would be a lot better off. Spending millions trying to stop a relatively harmless plant from making it into the lungs of the public, when anyone can pound a 40oz, seems kinda ridiculous. By the way, I don't touch the crap I just think we need to wake up to reality and stop the criminals from becoming millionaires by running this stuff. I've also gotten very messy with many controllers and pilots, and when we go back to work completely sober, we're all very professional.

With the current group of religious extremists in the running like Harper, Palin that aint gonna happen. They will force their warped ideology on us.

Myself I don't touch the stuff never smoked anything.

[Ogee]

dopers are dumb and they cant be relied upon in a 100% working environment- in other words - their minds are wasted
I speak from experience with a co worker of many years ago who is even more off the planet now

Off the planet?

Let's review the facts. You are obviously someone high on Christal Myth. The effects of that drug on you are manyfold.

You are very likely homophobic, but the person you worship never had a single relationship with a woman until the time of his execution at around 33 years of age.

You believe that the earth and everything in it was created 6,000 years ago by an elderly male with a beard and having no fixed address, and neither the time nor inclination to father his own son by natural means.

Your drug makes you believe that a Jewish chap some 2,000 years ago walked on water, raised people from the dead, came back to life after a particularly unpleasant death, and shot up skyward without benefit of longline or rocket pack.

You believe that this chap will return to Earth at some time and the dead will rise and drag their mouldy arses off with him to somewhere called "Heaven"

And you're on here calling people "dopes" and telling them they are "off the planet".

Christal Myth is the most dangerous drug ever consumed by mankind.

Get off it. Now!

[Ogee]

and if you think this is a waste of time to be discussing this topic.. it has 59 people out of 215 vote who have gone the path of smoking in their free time. i think that's enough to turn some heads and bring it out as topic needed some attention. is like a 15 yr old daughter who's having sex. give your head a shake. its happening so why not understand it instead of being judgmental.

We do understand it. It's you that doesn't.

It's nothing like a 15 year old daughter who's having sex. I don't know how the hell you came up with that bizarre analogy. Are you drunk?

[Ogee]

I don't always work at flying. When I don't work at flying, I sometimes have a joint in the evening. If I'm going back to flying, I quit about two months before first flight.

I believe that marijuana is certainly less harmful than many products sold legally. I believe its illegality is maintained by the wishes of corporations whose profits would suffer if it were to be legalized and its price were to drop. They are assisted in that totally illegitimate effort by those who continue to advocate for prohibition based not on greed, as is the case with the corporations, but mind numbing ignorance as we have seen from B-Rad, E-Flyer, and the Cloud something or other dork. Useful fools, the alcohol and tobacco and pharmaceutical executives would refer to them as.

I am working as a pilot now. I don't smoke pot while I'm an active pilot for several reasons. Firstly, I have a duty to my passengers to live up to their expectations of me as a pilot. I don't think passengers, and their wives and husbands and other family expect their pilot to be anything but fully fit to fly. I know you're not stoned eight hours after smoking a joint, but I also think there are lingering effects that may impact badly on my ability to think clearly, especially in troubled times. About on a par with fatigue, but nonetheless a degradation in performance and a failure to live up to expectation.

I have no doubt that smoking pot over a few months does cause a very temporary loss of short term memory in very subtle ways and contexts. I think that could be very problematic when trying to exercise the responsibilities of a pilot.

I am one of the better known advocates for the legalization of marijuana in this country. People who know that and are also opposed to my advocacy also know I am a pilot. They falsely assume that I must be a prodigious pot smoker and that I carry that on into my work. In the worst case scenario, I would never give them the satisfaction of finding any trace of THC in my blood in an autopsy. Or even in my pee pee in the oilfields.

I think that being stoned and flying, even privately, is disgraceful. I don't think that pilot's smoking pot in wiser circumstances is at all. I'm certainly philosophically with people like STL, but I have chosen a different regime for myself.

I'm done in a few weeks and probably will have a few joints over the winter. As I hope many of you do as adults fully capable of making these choices about your lives and how you conduct yourselves as pilots.

And I wrote all that without ever once using that favorite word of all those who want to pump smoke up their own arses...."Professional".

[flyin'high]

Sulako, I am with you

Here is my opinion: Legalize marijuana, tax it, and regulate it. Take the industry away from organized crime. If our youth is to be educated about marijauna then they should be educated, and not misinformed with political/religeous propaganda. It is not up to our government to instill social mores and values. That is the responsibility of mother and father. Marijuana will be around for our children and grandchildren. They may or may not try smoking. If the moral fabric of our society is going to retain any credibility with our youth, then marijauna should be treated as a recreational drug and a regulated as such, not an illegal substance. Teenagers are smart, and when they are educated with facts, it would be surprising how many would make responsible decisions. Here is another thought: Maybe drug abuse doesn't stem from a lack of law enforcement, maybe it stems from a lack of strong social and moral upbringing. By this I mean maybe if children are raised with strong moral and social values and educated with factual and realistic data about drugs then there would be no rampant drug abuse, just responsible enjoyment of recreational products(alcohol and marijuana, not crakc cocaine etc). If our society continues on its current trend, our youth will learn that marijuana is not that which is protrayed by the government. When our youth realizes that the most harmful consequense of smoking pot is answering to the law, nothing has been solved.

It has already been established that smoking pot and flying is illegal in any sense, but the principal is misleading. Now lets assume that programs have developed to deal with pot abuse, laws have been designed for establishing legal limits (how long after smoking can you fly), methods for testing actual impairment have been developed. Now what... would I still be unprofessional if I smoked a joint and flew 4 days later. What if pot was legal and alcohol was illegal? all of a sudden half of commercial pilots would become unprofessional and the other half would become professional

[Hedley]

What I don't understand is why it is legal to smoke
(tobacco) cigarettes and then fly for hire.

Night vision, anyone? Bueller?

[Rockie]

Flying at night period should be illegal, especially at my age.

[Rudder Bug]

flyin'high,

Thats a great post, I wish I could write that good in english. Thanks for your input!

Hedley,

You're right too, cigarette smoking should be illegal. It kills people at a frightning rate. But I would have to buy my smokes from bootleggers then. I'm addicted to it since teenage and it hurts.

RB

[sky's the limit]

Well,

I just bought my part in 12 50gal drums of grapes.... that WILL be made into some very good vino, I sure hope knowbody's out to get wine drinkers!

stl

[BigB]

Age 65 + 1 day, fill your boots. Until then, be prepared for the ramifications.

Personally, I'm giving it a 1 in 10 chance of smokin' a doob on my 65th (and I haven't smoked since I was 17).

[2R]

That Olympic snowboarder dude said he only tested positive because of someone smoking in an elevator in Whistler.So whenever i was in Whistler i took the stairs !!!!
The reason :if you are involved in a serious accident .They will do a toxic test on your body .If they find traces of illegal drugs .The insurance companies will not pay your family any money to bury you or any other monies ,as you would have been engaged in an illegal activity .Do not take my word for it READ THE FINE PRINT in your insurance policy.You might be unpleasantly surprised at the outs the insurance companies have to avoiding paying benefits to beneficiaries.
Dope is not the drug of choice of Professional pilots as most who self medicate use drugs that rinse out before the next pairing .As they may have to pee in a jar and may not have a whizinator handy to give a sample of a clean friends urine.They sell piss in bottles for those who need it i had some once i think it was brewed somewhere south using Lake Erie water and formented using mad gopher spit
Could not drink more than twelve bottles of the muck myself terrible tasting beer .The flavour might improve if they were to take the old cigarette butts out of the bottle before they fill them with beer.

Anyhoo back to the thread .Read the fine print as not all accidents are covered if those involved are not pure of heart and all that good stuff

[lilfssister]

Well,

I just bought my part in 12 50gal drums of grapes.... that WILL be made into some very good vino, I sure hope knowbody's out to get wine drinkers!

stl

I do have some vacation scheduled in October...

[scrambled_legs]

Kinda interesting, so far 134 people have either smoked or are indifferent and only 100 are strictly opposed. Sounds like Avcanada would vote yes to legalization.

[Widow]

I haven't read through all seven pages here, so maybe this has already been covered but ... what if the pilot has a prescription? Surely we all realize by now that the gov't has recognized the medicinal value of mj for certain medical conditions ... Heck, you can even get a licence to grow it legally. There are some maladies which should have no bearing on a pilot's medical licence, but for which they could well be prescribed mj.

Just throwing it out there

[Hedley]

what if the pilot has a prescription?

Heh - then he probably has a medical condition which
is disqualifying

But seriously ... regardless of what various bits of paper
may say, no pilot should fly under the influence of
alcohol or THC, or anything else which reduces his
ability to correctly operate an aircraft. IMHO.

Of course, in the Bad Old Days, French Air Force
pilots routinely flew after having wine with their
meal, and on occasion RCAF pilots flew completely
drunk - with armed cannons - and routinely with
massive hangovers. Oxygen, anyone?

[Sulako]

Just as an aside, the US Air Force routinely dispenses amphetamines (Dexedrine in particular) to their pilots for long missions. The same stimulants are sold on the street as speed.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airc ... ornum.html

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/ ... peed01.htm


"The US armed forces have dispensed amphetamines - ''go pills'' in military parlance, ''uppers'' in civilian slang - to pilots for decades, arguing that they are vital for keeping aviators alert on extended missions...The Federal Aviation Administration does not allow commercial and private pilots to fly while under the influence of the drug, and the manufacturer warns that the drug may impair the ability to ''engage in potentially hazardous activities such as operating machinery or vehicles.''