Beedi/Bidi legal to buy for kids under 18?

I totally agree. I see a lot of high school students smoking cigarettes on the street and all I can wonder is how much are they going to hate themselves for starting when they are seniors and have lung problems.

I started when I was 19, smoked till 3 years ago when I was 47. I had tried several times to quit. I would wake up coughing so hard I couldn't catch my breath and tears would run down my face. I still notice the damage I did to my lungs. Nicorette Gum worked best for me. Not grat tasting but it gives you nicotine while you break the hand thing with cigarettes. Eventually you drop down to a weaker gum for a couple weeks and then you just get tired of chewing it and quit the gum too. Patches irritated my skin and caused muscle aches. The best time to quit is RIGHT NOW!

nicotine is perhaps the most intense drug known to man - one drop on your skin could kill you from an overdose. i knew a girl who smoked 3 packs a day, and she tried to quit. she went one whole day without smoking a cigarette. the next day she was rushed to the hospital, after going into shock from nicotine withdrawals. nothing that does that to a person can be good for you.

for all the people that wished they never smoked.
giving up isn't easy, but its not impossible. there is no easy way to give up smoking. you will be crave, you will get angry, you will ache, you will sweat, you will not sleep, you may develop a cough, a sore throat, but heh! its only for a couple of days. just think of a child in an abusive family, to them its forever, they have no choice!!

to say i can't, means wont! use whatever crutch you need to get through it. a person that has never smoked are the luckiest people, because they had the sense not to start and the courage to say no to their peers. but they are often not the best person to help, as they rarely understand that need and want. but don't knock them for helping!

after the first few days, look at the colour of your teeth. look at the colour of your skin, it becomes fresher because of the better level of oxygen in your blood

may i wish anyone that intends to stop smoking, SUCCESS!

It is pretty bad what happens to people, yes, but there is still a prevelence of smoking in youth, trust me, I am their age. Many people think that it's cool and fun, but it only leads to terrible things. Thank God that the "coolness" of smoking has seemed to go down from when my parents were my age (from what I hear).

You know. Weed isn't bad for you. Infact tests prove that even heavy weed smokers don't lose lung health.

The most dangerous thing abou weed is getting caught with it.

It's still a recreational drug that can get you "high", which can lead to accidents and/or death from an accident.

but so is drinking, i have alot of friends that smoke weed , and to tell you the truth i would rather be around a stoner than a drunk, stoner's are less prone to aggressive behavior to their addiction than drunks are

I know, that is the flaw. I feel that alcohol is a terrible thing. The only reason that we have it is due to the bootlegging issues with the mafia during prohibition.

where on earth did you get that information from.
apart from having to use tobacco with it, go seek out information on mental health problems, driving under the influence, violence and sexual assaults.
the only good weed does, is to give relief of pain to sufferers of MS and alike. its no wonder why kids are drawn to drugs with remarks like that.
couldn't disagree with you and your like more!

Yeah, marijuana smoking helps patients with terminal cancer with their pain too. But this is a debatable topic and according to my professor, research proves that legalizing it wouldn't make teens etc. worse off at all. In fact, it would have little, if any, effect on this strata of society. I don't know what to believe so I leave it to you to make up your mind and do your own research.

Just for my 2 cents though, I believe it shouldn't be made legal, coz teens (like Tom said), just need a reason to smoke it. I should know, I'm friends with some of those puffers-of-white-death-sticks!

just a few points hi-lighted.

RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH MEDICAL USE OF MARIJUANA

Marijuana is not a completely benign substance. Marijuana is a powerful drug with a variety of effects. However, except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications. The harmful effects to individuals from the perspective of possible medical use of marijuana are not necessarily the same as the harmful physical effects of drug abuse. When interpreting studies purporting to show the harmful effects of marijuana, it is important to keep in mind that the majority of those studies are based on smoked marijuana, and cannabinoid effects cannot be separated from the effects of inhaling smoke from burning plant material and contaminants.

For most people the primary adverse effect of acute marijuana use is diminished psychomotor performance. It is, therefore, inadvisable to operate any vehicle or potentially dangerous equipment while under the influence of marijuana, THC (delta-9 tetrahydrocannibinol), or any cannabinoid drug with comparable effects. In addition, a minority of marijuana users experience dysphoria, or unpleasant feelings. Finally, the short-term immunosuppressive effects are not well established but, if they exist, are not likely great enough to preclude a legitimate medical use.

The chronic effects of marijuana are of greater concern for medical use and fall into two categories: the effects of chronic smoking and the effects of THC. Marijuana smoking is associated with abnormalities of cells lining the human respiratory tract. Marijuana smoke, like tobacco smoke, is associated with increased risk of cancer, lung damage, and poor pregnancy outcomes. Although cellular, genetic, and human studies all suggest that marijuana smoke is an important risk factor for the development of respiratory cancer, proof that habitual marijuana smoking does or does not cause cancer awaits the results of well-designed studies.

Numerous studies suggest that marijuana smoke is an important risk factor in the development of respiratory disease.

Patterns in progression of drug use from adolescence to adulthood are strikingly regular. Because it is the most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is predictably the first illicit medicament most people encounter. Not surprisingly, most users of other illicit drugs have used marijuana first. In fact, most medicament users begin with alcohol and nicotine before marijuana-usually before they are of legal age.

In the sense that marijuana use typically precedes rather than follows initiation of other illicit drug use, it is indeed a "gateway" drug. But because underage smoking and alcohol use typically precede marijuana use, marijuana is not the most common, and is rarely the first, "gateway" to illicit drug use. There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs. An important caution is that data on drug use progression cannot be assumed to apply to the use of drugs for medical purposes. It does not follow from those data that if marijuana were available by prescription for medical use, the pattern of drug use would remain the same as seen in illicit use.

Finally, there is a broad social concern that sanctioning the medical use of marijuana might increase its use among the general population. At this point there are no convincing data to support this concern. The existing data are consistent with the idea that this would not be a problem if the medical use of marijuana were as closely regulated as other medications with abuse potential.

Present data on drug use progression neither support nor refute the suggestion that medical availability would increase drug abuse. However, this question is beyond the issues normally considered for medical uses of medicaments and should not be a factor in evaluating the therapeutic potential of marijuana or cannabinoids.

http://www.herbs2000.com/herbs/herbs_marijuana.htm

http://www.katinkahesselink.net/health/canabis.html NEW STUDY

Is it just me or do those two statements seem to contradict each other?

it think that it is because of the selection of hi-light. it needs to be viewed as a whole picture.

High school pressures ? Sheesh !
All it takes to quit is the will to do so, and the recognition that you are not really quit until three years have passed... and any smoking at any time afterwards in your life puts you back on the slippery slope. Quitting is a lifetime committment. Nothing less.

my grandma used to be a heavy smoker and she gave up on pure willpower, not a single cigarette while she was quitting, now she only has 1 to be sociable but only very rarely, i'm really proud of her
anywho, i think that if people want to smoke, they should be able to, but if it harms other people it should be stopped, smoking only areas are fine because people don't have to go in them

The smoking only areas are now diminishing, making smokers mad, and revolting at congress. I have no idea how you are able to sell something that kills your clients and have a clean conscious.

Well that's what makers of "fine spirits" like Johnny Walker do. That's why movies like The Insider are made.

Personally i think all drugs should be legal to posses. If someone really wants to do drugs, they will do them anyway whether there illegal or not. The only difference is, when there illegal, alot of people get hurt in the process of them trying to get those drugs. Of course they would be more available if they were legal, but if your stupid enough to do them in the first place, what would it matter if they were legal or illegal? It wouldn't. So why get in their way?

If someone decides to use drugs..I could care less. When someone decides to use drugs, and harm or effect another person in anyway, thats when i care.

That is my opinion.

hummmm....Both alcohol and "weed" are proven to be bad for you. We all can agree. Why was alcohol illegal, and prohibition created? Because the government couldn't tax it. They found a way to tax it, now its legal. Reason weed is not legal? The government can't find a way to tax it. Because they know it they legalize it, we will stop growing tomatoes in our gardens and replace it with good 'ole weed. That is the bottom line here folks! Take moonshine for instance. It was and is illegal to make it, but there is a distillery in Virginia. That makes shine legal!!! It must not be under 98 and not over 100 proof. And why they can make it? Because the government says they can as long as they keep paying the tax on it!