To which protein wisdom replies, “so what if they are?”
Christ. Guys like this are the reason so many people have for years confused conservatism / classical liberalism with blue-nose moralism — and the kind of aggressive “values” statism that simply disguises itself by wearing a flag pin and keeping its shoes nicely polished.
I’m no anarchist, trust me. But the more laws we get rid of, the better off we are as a society. And frankly, if we want law enforcement to concentrate on protecting society from crimes more serious than inhaling a little plant smoke, we should incentivize such behavior by taking away “the pothead lobby” as an object of its easy fixation.
Dunphy asks (somewhat rhetorically), “[…] even if marijuana is truly no more harmful than alcohol or tobacco, do we wish to see what societal costs would result if it became just as widely consumed as these two already legal substances? Is there anyone who would argue there would be none?”
To which I reply, are there no societal costs that come with overcriminalization? And how are those costs any less detrimental to society than the costs you posit might arise from the overindulgence in late night cool ranch Doritos binges?
Me, I say we err on the side of freedom and individual choice. But then, of late I’ve come to distrust cops nearly as much as I do politicians, so pardon me if I find Dunphy’s concern over “societal costs” anything more than a canned, petty tyrannical talking point.
That’s right. I said it.
I’m cool with them legalizing maryjane in CA. Perhaps all the potheads will move there.
Which would do wonders for the state.
While they’re at it, if they legalized Crack, I bet things would improve in Detroit.
Most of the arguments against the Devil’s Weed are just as easily applied to my drug of choice, alcohol. No, I don’t want someone who’s high operating on me, but I wouldn’t want a drunk doing it either. Impaired is impaired, no matter how you got there. Potheads are probably overall less dangerous to themselves and others than drinkers, since it doesn’t seem to make people want to fight as far as I’ve seen.
Why not let one state see what will happen if it’s legal? That’s the whole point of Federalism, isn’t it?
If alcohol had just been discovered, it would be illegal.
I get caught on the terms sometimes, like as between legalize and decriminalize, where there may be nuances I’m simply not grasping on account of my ignorance of such stuff. So for instance, does legalize imply replacing bad laws outlawing certain behaviors with other bad laws written to permit them and control the permitted? Or does something like decriminalization imply taking the bad laws off the books to be replaced with nothing (the better course, I’m thinking) but a shrug and a “that’s none of our concern” from the law books?
Amen. How about the societal cost of having a law that many in the middle and upper class feel is pointless and so they not only ignore it themselves but consciously or unconsciously encourage their children to pick and choose which laws are to be observed? How about the societal cost of having so many people run afoul of that law that the prisons are “too full” and it is expected and accepted that someone will serve 25% of their “sentence?” Meanwhile, people aren’t overdosing on pot, and driving while high is already illegal.
Heck, Dunphy should support letting them legalize it. The anti-smoking and anti-fast-food police will immediately start lobbying to make it illegal again but it will be the leftist nannies that get tarred with the blue nose reputation.
There will be control on the sale and distribution, most likely, so legalize would probably be the correct term. I agree that decriminalizing would be much better, but I’m not sure how that would tie in with Federal law.
Establishing all of the causes and effects in complex law — which, being nothing more than manipulation by the powers of opinion and perception, all law is overly complex — is like establishing all the causes and effects in nature. Forget about it.
At what level does law double back and start consuming its society? At the point you arrive at about the time you pass murder, theft, damage, and fraud as the truly essential prosecutable social immoralities. About that point stuff starts being corrupted until at the point we find ourselves at today, everything related to law is innumerable nested positive feedback loops, aiming at an overall instability that takes entire structures down.
Sure, that was an opinionated rant. But was it incorrect? A society that outlaws and redresses murder, theft, damage, and fraud is not an anarchy. We’re some millions of laws, statutes, policies, and general manipulations of natural order past that point.
I was brought up in a home where pot smoking was the norm.
Don’t expect me to bang the drum for you folks.
Let the individual states decide this. But make sure that people aren’t subsidized by the feds to sit in the basement and do bong hits all day, whether directly or tangentially.
I haven’t smoked in decades.
But this isn’t about me. It’s about the wishes of CA voters. If they want Boxer and Brown and weed, fine. Enjoy!
this more than anything is what is going to lure my unenthused ass to the polls – I think as written this prop sends a very clear message – usually I figure there’s not much freedomyness in replacing a criminalization regime with a taxation regime, but this prop allows a reasonable amount of home cultivation for people – I think that’s very America.
My friend A says you get mites in your house though.
Busted, tokin’ liberal!
are there no societal costs that come with overcriminalization?
Who pays those costs? I know I don’t (save for taxes), whereas an increase in the number of potheads will affect me more than the alleged overcriminalization.
Pot is no more dangerous than tobacco or alcohol? Granted.
But if tobacco or alcohol were new on the scene, they wouldn’t be any more legal than pot.
how are those costs any less detrimental than the costs you posit might arise from the overindulgence in late night Dorito binges?
People who tank up on Doritos aren’t more likely to plow their cars into a school bus than those who don’t. Same for tobacco, BTW. Tanking up on Doritos clogs your arteries, which, those health-care costs you ought to be paying for out of your own pocket.
But as cranky-d says, impairment is impairment. Pot-smoking parents are neglectful rather than overtly abusive, but neglect still messes kids up, and we all pay for that with schools that spend most of their time taking care of discipline problems instead of teaching. We’re already reaping our first crop of poorly educated kids. (O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA!)
It always comes down to whether society is willing to permit the recreational impairment of private citizens in exchange for the measurable cost to society. I’ll repost this Orson Scott Card essay (scroll down a bit) wherein he observes:
I’m not ardently opposed to legalizing pot, especially if just for chemo patients and the like. But let’s be clear: right now, the only price I’m paying–and the rest of the non-rec drug users are paying–for “overcriminalization” is money.
A much larger subculture of sluggish potheads who create more of the same? Not my idea of an improved society.
Besides, you think the drug kingpins, having been deprived of their primary source of income, will go back to repairing cars or something?
Let the individual states decide this. But make sure that people aren’t subsidized by the feds to sit in the basement and do bong hits all day, whether directly or tangentially.
Bob, I think the federally subsidised bong hits are the least of the worries. Sweet! Dude.
linky http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-07-04-1.html
I haven’t smoked in decades.
But this isn’t about me. It’s about the wishes of CA voters. If they want Boxer and Brown and weed, fine. Enjoy!
I wasn’t aiming my comment at anyone in particular. I get that many conservative are for legalizing pot. I understand their arguments. But I’m completely uninterested in supporting their efforts.
If California makes it legal, God bless ’em. Just another reason for me to avoid that shithole.
We can only expect more silliness, and progressively lazy hollywood screenplays.
Pot-smoking parents are neglectful rather than overtly abusive, but neglect still messes kids up, and we all pay for that with schools that spend most of their time taking care of discipline problems instead of teaching. We’re already reaping our first crop of poorly educated kids. (O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA!)
Ding ding ding. Messy house. No food. tuned out mom.
Yea. We need more of that.
Just what CA needs to attract a bigger middle class and industrial tax base, everywhere to smell like a Grateful Dead concert!
FOR THE FREEDOM™.
I was brought up in a home where pot smoking was the norm.
Don’t expect me to bang the drum for you folks.
Wasn’t exactly sure how to read this comment, because I anticipate arguments from both sides on this blog. Your #15 leads me to believe that you’re not all that enthused about pot.
But make sure that people aren’t subsidized by the feds to sit in the basement and do bong hits all day, whether directly or tangentially.
What, like we do now?
I don’t know that opposing legalization is against conservative values. Doesn’t conservatism, or at least Burkean conservatism, operate on trusting the established wisdom of the past, meaning that new ideas are viewed with suspicion? On the other hand, classical liberalism generally views infringement of liberties with suspicion, meaning the two philosophies use different rubrics in evaluating societal goods. In this case, marijuana has been illegal for several generations. A conservative would view a move to change it with suspicion due to the established policy of pot=bad while a liberal would question whether the infringed liberties were worth whatever societal benefits the policy provided.
American conservatism has a large vein of liberalism to it and that generally muddies the distinction between conservative and liberal significantly. Social issues like these are a good place to see which value a person holds higher, liberty or tradition.
Besides, you think the drug kingpins, having been deprived of their primary source of income, will go back to repairing cars or something?
They could become greeters at Walmart!
I think its ridiculous to be legalizing/decriminalizing marijuana at the same time we’re criminalizing/outlawing tobacco.
I can’t shake the suspicion that the advocates of the latter are primarily interested in bringing about the former.
And frankly, it’s California. (Apologies to PW’ers from CA) I’m happy to let them be the laboratory for this.
I’m really good at not smoking weed and if we legalize it I’ll get to show off my crazy non-partaking skillz a lot more often
dicentra raises some good points, ones that, having seen what goes on in parts of Holland where it is effectively decriminalized, I used to agree with wholeheartedly.
But at this point I’m going to defer to the individual state houses on this one. Should a state decide to accept the societal risks concomitant with decriminalization? So be it.
But I would also point out that all of the arguments made regarding neglectful households, impaired drivers, etc can also be made vis-a-vis alcohol.
At least, based on my experience; and I haven’t partaken in more years than I care to say.
So I have my 10th amendment based opinion, but much like Carin, this is a fight where my political energies won’t be expended for either side…
This is the litmus test for me, and what tells me that the whole mess is futile.
It’s all about the individual! Freedom and individual rights! The American people are responsible for their own destiny! Get the Government out of personal decisions! No Nanny State!
Except–
The childish irresponsible a*holes are liable to ingest things that are Not Good, so we have to spend billions on legions of door-kickers, trade inspectors, and nosyparkers alert for irresponsible behavior, and micromanage the doctors so’s they don’t prescribe the Wrong Things.
It’s just a little, I dunno, incongruous perhaps? The same people who don’t want “death panels” to interfere in medical decisions are full-throatedly enthusiastic about a regime of regulations that make sure nobody gets Oxycontin without full judicial review. The two don’t go together very well.
But don’t mind me, and go ahead and trot out the euphemisms and justifications. No nannystate! Deploy all the cops necessary to Stop Drugs!
Regards,
Ric
I fear the damage second-hand toke will do to my fragile brain cells.
Wasn’t exactly sure how to read this comment, because I anticipate arguments from both sides on this blog. Your #15 leads me to believe that you’re not all that enthused about pot.
Not.
I see it as a bad thing, but I understand the arguments people make for it legal. Your Orson Scott Card quote is dead on.
I’m torn, because being a classical liberal (heh) I really believe that people should be able to make decisions for themselves. But there is something about drugs – even Pot – that takes away ones freedom to choose.
It’s a “controlled” substance, in that it eventually controls their life.
Dunphy likes pot being illegal because it gives cops an easy target for drug busts and monthly quota reqirements.
“I think its ridiculous to be legalizing/decriminalizing marijuana at the same time we’re criminalizing/outlawing tobacco. ”
Excellent point Ernst, maybe not one without the other; “No Luckies, No Weed!”…
Could have been vodka. Or soap operas. Or Twinkies. Or video games.
Just because some people can’t handle it doesn’t mean we all have to risk being criminals for showing we can.
incongruous like William F. Buckley’s neurotic phobia of legalized gambling
Not Good, so we have to spend billions on legions of door-kickers, trade inspectors, and nosyparkers alert for irresponsible behavior, and micromanage the doctors so’s they don’t prescribe the Wrong Things.
Not to mention -thanks to Obamacare – the cost of Health care coverage for drug addiction treatment.
Drug-taking robots. That says it all. and this:
Word.
oops
sorry I meaned William Safire … I have no idea what Buckley thought
I wouldn’t smoke it (again) if it were legal. Also, I don’t find most of the arguments against legalization compelling, because some people are going to medicate no matter what, and I don’t think that number will change all that much no matter what drugs are available. Any argument that comes from an anti-impairment angle is an argument for the prohibition of alcohol. I really cannot see the difference.
or cupcakes
but twinkies are a gateway snack cake
It looks like Bob beat me to it.
But I would also point out that all of the arguments made regarding neglectful households, impaired drivers, etc can also be made vis-a-vis alcohol.
And that invalidates my point how? What I’m saying is that we already HAVE legal ways to become impaired, and that wreak horrible costs on society (on HELPLESS CHILDREN, for the sake of Pete), so it would be awfully foolish to add another to the list.
As one who does not partake of these substances for various reasons (one being that I have a hard enough time keeping my brain chemistry balanced and I don’t much like screwing it up on purpose, thankyouverymuch), I’m not really excited about legally condoning and paying for–in various ways–other people puking on my front porch and breaking my windows. Metaphorically speaking.
It’s like being required to vacate your home for a weekend so that a crowd of partiers can have their way with it–and I am required also to clean up the mess afterward. They have the time of their lives: I get stuck with the bill.
No thanks.
If you want to roll a spliff of your homegrown, I don’t care. Strip bark off a vine and commune with your ancestors? Don’t care. Eat a mushroom from a cow pat and trip your face off? Don’t care. Make hooch from taters and fall on your arse? Don’t care. Operate a vehicle while under the influence of the above? Then we’ve got a problem. Do what you want on your property, and leave me to do what I want. I’ll try not to bother you.
A thread where Jeff is joined by feets and Bob Reid and Mr. Locke and the rest is all noise.
Yep. THE OVERARCHING PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY MATTERS and all else is relativity and subjectivity and dealing on variable moralities, proclivities, subjectivities, projections, presumptions, judgments, and opinions.
That crap, in turn, is precisely how Laws Get Written that as The Slickmeister once pleaded, Get Back to the Business of (hypermanaging) the American Sheeple.
You want safety? Deny liberty. You want liberty? Deny “safety”. How is this even debatable?
I really doubt we’d end up dragging any more useless people along with us than we do now. However, why not just take away more of the incentives to be useless?
Let’s face it, doing a lot of any drug turns you into a useless lump. It makes it okay to accomplish nothing with your life. That wil be true no matter what you use to squash the voices telling you to get off your ass and do something.
ould have been vodka. Or soap operas. Or Twinkies. Or video games.
Just because some people can’t handle it doesn’t mean we all have to risk being criminals for showing we can.
My experience with drug culture – from toddlerhood until I moved out as a young teen – was that there was absolutely no criminalization involved. No one I ever knew – or my mom knew – was ever arrested.
And sure. It could have been something else. But it wasn’t.
Added bonus – parents who smoke pot are usually ok with their kids smoking pot. Some EVEN SMOKE WITH THEIR KIDS.
A touching family moment, I assure you all.
Could have been vodka. Or soap operas. Or Twinkies. Or video games.
Only one of those things has a physiological effect on the brain, resulting in impairment of judgment and change in disposition. Only one of those things breaks up tens of thousands of families a year. Only one of those things makes you more likely to steer your car into a school bus or beat the tar out of your wife and kids.
That proggs have gone ahead and crossed the line (as they always do) doesn’t mean the line can’t be drawn, defined, and defended.
Too many Twinkies might give you diabetes, but only YOU pay for the insulin, capiche?
California has much bigger things to worry about than this.
Marijuana would still be criminalized for underagers, yes? And so a regime of law enforcement aimed at the seller to user would have to stay in place. Will the FDA expand and get involved in setting standards and enforcing quality control, since it’s a consumable product affecting health? Will local and state governments have a growing interest in the sales tax monies? Licensing alcohol is a HUGE governmental industry. Just saying.
Meanwhile, all sorts of shit gets manufactured and sold on the black market to users of all ages. We will still have the DEA, corrupted officials and bankers, addicts, fad drugs, ODs, overworked honest and dirty cops and DAs, etc. The CA initiative on marijuana is just about marijuana. If passed, then some people will gain some liberty wrt that particular drug, but there’s a damn good chance government will get the munchies and fatter on the lucre and control.
There is an argument to be made how legalizing weed is not an unalloyed, principled good.
All of those things has a physiological effect on the brain, resulting in impairment of judgment and change in disposition, dicentra.
You’re forgetting the whole federalist impulse in your calculus. Which further muddies the waters.
For years I’ve said that I am a classical liberal. The left has conflated that with conservatism, but in truth, classical liberalism is somewhat of a nexus between conservatism and libertarianism. I view tradition with as much suspicion as I do overhyped “progress” and “change!”, but I will generally defer to said tradition if I don’t see it as violating any constitutional right / protection.
I am more a legal conservative than I am a social conservative — and even as a legal conservative, I’ve written many time about my displeasure with the stare decisis that seems to go along with “conservatism” on the bench. Give me more justices like Thomas, who are willing to say definitively, “legal tradition be damned, that ruling was flat out wrong, and it’s time to roll it back.” That is, more fidelity to the Constitution than to prior justices seems to me proper and good.
If you think it shouldn’t be legalized because of the ill effects on users, than in no way, shape or form should you be drinking alcohol or believe that alcohol should be legalized, too. None.
Bing-effin-o. And this is being said by a guy who has never, ever smoked weed in his life. People are different. Legalizing (decriminilizing) pot won’t turn us all into extras on Half Baked. I promise.
The house across the street from my Detroit house – they’ve been selling pot out of it for years. Calls to police have been ignored. I’m guessing because they really don’t care that much about pot, when they’ve got crack and meth to worry about.
Ric,
I’m in favor of “ordered liberty”, as Mark Levin called it. Different people are going to draw the line between “order” and “liberty” at different places. An anything goes attitude towards pharmaceuticals (recreational or otherwise) is, it seems to me, as dangerous to liberty as is the erection of a police state to protect order. Arguably the pendulum has swung too far “towards a perpetual war on drugs for perpetual peace from the social harms of drug abuse.”
It might be nice if we could reach some kind of legal regime in which the underlying attitude was “do whatever the hell you want to yourself, as long as you don’t expect somebody else to either pay for it or help you pick up the pieces.” That’s not going to happen for a variety of reasons.
Not the case. This I know.
SCIENCE!
I was all set to (reluctantly) vote in favor of Prop 19 until I ran across this post at Rep Tom McClintock’s site:
Read Prop 19. It will keep lawyers very happy for quite a while.
Tom on the Props link.
Copy and pasted and saved your #48, Jeff. That sums me up in a nut shell. Well said.
THE OVERARCHING PRINCIPLE OF LIBERTY MATTERS and all else is relativity and subjectivity and dealing on variable moralities, proclivities, subjectivities, projections, presumptions, judgments, and opinions.
Bullsplat.
First, it’s foolish to privilege one and only one principle in every single occasion. Liberty always and forever? The reductio ad absurdum for that is anarchy.
To conflate pot with Ding-Dongs is ridiculous and you all know it. Proggs are the ones who lack the ability to discern or defend actual distinctions, not classical liberals. And definitely not the denizens of this blog.
The issue is self-induced impairment of the brain’s judgment center, not “whether it’s bad for you” according to any random metric at all. That’s progg-splat, not real thinking.
That means the issue regarding legalizing pot is the trade-off between “the costs associated with criminalization” and “the costs associated with an increase in self-induced impairment of the brain’s judgment centers.”
Yeah, you can get all abstract about Burkean vs. whatever-the-hell you like, but it doesn’t stack up to real people’s lives being destroyed by real substances that people really ingest.
Focus, people. Focus. The fact that the proggs can’t discern is no excuse for you.
When in doubt, err on the side of liberty.
Always.
George Washington toked the reefer. And he managed to throw a quarter across a river and kill people just with his eyes.
That’s good enough for me.
You’re way, way out of tune today, dicentra. Sorry.
Bullsplat. People choose to take drugs. I don’t blame the drugs for their destruction, I blame them.
That’s like blaming the gun when someone gets shot.
The costs of making marijuana illegal outweigh the benefit of trying to prevent it’s use. It’s that simple.
I don’t smoke no, haven’t in over twenty years, and the once or twice I did…I hated it, so this isn’t about indulging a personal habit.
Besides, they are coming for my halloween candy next. Time to take America back, people.
This is such a frelling echo chamber. What the eff is wrong with you wingnuts?
I don’t have a problem with bringing the question to voters, and if it wins I’d love to see the sour faces on the lobbyists for the alcohol industry and the grimaces from the tax revenuers who realize that you can’t tax something that you can grow in your windowsills.
I’m all about upsetting applecarts that way.
Christ. Guys like this are the reason so many people have for years confused conservatism / classical liberalism with blue-nose moralism — and the kind of aggressive “values” statism that simply disguises itself by wearing a flag pin and keeping its shoes nicely polished.
Word. I’ve had more than one conversation with FiCons who really don’t understand why more fiscal conservatives don’t realize that the only thing that they and SoCons have in common is the term “Conservative” in their labels. I simply don’t understand why Classical Liberals and Libertarians don’t make a full break from the “Conservative” umbrella, as currently held by the GOP.
It’s time for another political party. Period. It’s time to put the blue noses out to pasture. They’ve done irreparable damage to the conservative label. Let them have it. Let’s take over the country from the real grass roots. Teehee. ;-)
Dicentra, you have this one wrong. Legal use doesn’t mean use let alone abuse. Marijuana helps ease anxiety and for most is a harmless habit. Heavy use is bad and will ruin one’s life, but it’s always the same people who find whatever is available to ruin their own lives. The laws stop noone, and help noone.
ballotpedia says Prop 19
Maintains an employer’s right to address consumption of cannabis that affects an employee’s job performance.
so you can tell Tom McClintock is lying
here is the actual wording of the prop
No person shall be punished, fined, discriminated against, or be denied any right or privilege for lawfully engaging in any conduct permitted by this Act or authorized pursuant to Section 11301 of this Act. Provided however, that the existing right of an employer to address consumption that actually impairs job performance by an employee shall not be affected. – Section 11304: Effect of Act and Definitions
If you think it shouldn’t be legalized because of the ill effects on users, than in no way, shape or form should you be drinking alcohol or believe that alcohol should be legalized, too. None.
Hello? Tee-totalling Mormon here! I’ve never had a drink in my life nor do I plan to. I was raised in an alcohol-free culture. It’s really weird to see how obsessed the rest of the culture is with alcohol, whether it’s all the different glass shapes for different drinks and whether to have white wine with that dish and the various judgments you make on people depending on whether they drink appletinis or boilermakers.
But at this point, it is impossible to reasonably advocate for the banning of alcohol. It’s embedded but good into the culture, Prohibition having shown that. Also from the OSC essay in my #14:
Card is a tee-totalling Mormon, too, so there’s no hypocrisy with him, either.
We already have one legal substance that wreaks severe havoc on the culture. We need one more?
Really?
Or perhaps you should consider that a stoned populace is MUCH much easier to make dependent and compliant. Where’s your liberty now, beyotches?
Why? Aren’t we now starting a “war” on “childhood obesity”? Does diabetes not kill?
Conflating pot with PCP or some such is a lot sillier than conflating pot with Ding Dongs.
Knowing this and noting it doesn’t make me anything like a progg. It makes me less like a nannystater, though — provided I follow up on the observation by taking the principled stand I’ve taken.
what I think is neat is nobody here is pointing to tax revenues as a rationale for the legalizings
You’re way, way out of tune today, dicentra. Sorry.
There’s a tune I’m supposed to be singing? Really?
What Carin says about pothead parents and kids is certainly true in some instances, but, it is probably as true with alcohol as well.
As an example: folks that let their kids “party” at their house, so they can be sure where they are and that they aren’t out operating motor vehicles.
As I said, my opinion used to mirror dicentra’s, but after years of consideration I can’t see any difference between grass and booze. Both can be addictive, both if abused are bad for one’s health, and both may lead to less than optimum home environments when abused by parents. Emphasis on the “can” in each sentance…
I imagine the good citizens of Utah would vote to keep wackyweed verboten.
I imagine the good citizens of Colorado would vote to let people toke it up.
I imagine those from either state who feel strongly enough about it would move to t’other state.
These imaginings brought to you from The Fantasyland That Is A Weak Federal Government Which Recognizes The Sovereignty Of The Several States.
And sorry, but Card is wrong. There are no effective controls on drugs.
I don’t have a middle-class income, or a nice brick house in a suburban neighborhood. I’m down here with the grotty plebes, the welders and plumbers and hay-haulers and Wal*Mart clerks, and I can tell you flatly: anybody who wants drugs can get them, no problem. The only function the War on Drugs serves is to provide an(other) reason for the cops to hassle anybody they please. Full legalization, as in eliminating all laws on the subject for or against, wouldn’t make a ten percent difference in drug use among the cohort I live with.
Sorry to bust your bubble.
Regards,
Ric
oh. here is the ballotpedia summary page I meant to link earlier
The substance doesn’t wreak havoc. Its abuse does. And those who abuse it are a tiny fraction of a fraction of those who use it.
Focus.
Freedom.
dicentra, sing it sister. You are really hitting the notes. Even though tobacco and alcohol are legal, they have *many* of the same problems (we’ve got an entire Federal government agency devoted to controling them, just like the DEA) as weed. Legalization/decriminalization is not the no-skin-off-my-nose issue that people want to make it out to be.
Aren’t we now starting a “war” on “childhood obesity”? Does diabetes not kill?
We who? No, the proggs are the ones who are pushing that crap. I’m not talking about That Which Kills; I’m talking about Self-Inflicted Impairment of the Judgment Center.
Fat people are not more likely to beat their spouses than thin ones. Diabetics are not unproductive slugs.
Drug addicts are.
Heavy use is bad and will ruin one’s life.
And the lives of everyone around them, including their kids. Or did you not read Carin’s posts?
(we’ve got an entire Federal government agency…)
See my imaginings above in #70, and further imagine about 600 fewer of these things you mentioned ,DerHahn.
Much more liberty and happiness ensues.
Yes.
That there is a way to live other than as a Mormon and still not wind up in a gutter somewhere, but for the restrictions the state puts on us for our own good. And for the children.
You can’t tax something that you can grow in your windowsills.
I’ve heard tell of a bunch of good ol’ boys in the Appalach’ backwoods who thought the same thing about “White Lightnin'”
Don’t forget to be polite to your friendly “revenuers” when the Drugs Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agents kick down your door. Be sure to have your tax stamps in order.
At least DAFT is an apt acronym for a Federal Agency.
@73 – That really is the classic example of the subtext of most legalization/decriminalization arguments – if it’s legal it won’t be abused. Sorry, dicentra’s example of abusing of a legal drug, alcohol, is spot on. Legalization will *not* get rid of the abuse.
Seems to me it is you who is acting like the progg, then — only with the caveat that they are at least ostensibly out to save lives.
You, on the other hand, are out to legislate potential bad judgment.
Heal thyself, doc.
The substance doesn’t wreak havoc. Its abuse does. And those who abuse it are a tiny fraction of a fraction of those who use it.
And we need a tiny fraction more?
When you’re drunk, Jeff, you’re impaired, even if you only get soused on Friday nights just sitting in your living room watching DVDs. Someone who is drunk for the first and only time in their lives can still kill someone with their car.
Liberty is not absolute unless you’re an anarchist. When it comes to judgment-impairing substances, the issue of liberty vs. public safety isn’t that clean cut.
Or were people wrong to try to stop Typhoid Mary from infecting hundreds of people, even against her will?
Or it would have been if I had gotten Firearms and Tobacco in the right order.
How many thousands or tens of thousands have lost their lives in the War on Drugs, dicentra.
Really. Speaking of wars, this isn’t a cause you want to take up with all that myopic zeal and fire. You’re dead wrong and as someone posting under your moniker said to me in this thread, you know it.
Legalization will *not* get rid of the abuse.
Is “getting rid of abuse” really the endgame? Or a proper role of the Federal government?
There will ALWAYS be abusers. Unless we nanny away everything that people can abuse.
But criminalization will — and it won’t involve its own abuses. Right?
Thanks for protecting me from myself.
Wouldn’t want to end up non-productive slug for having blown a few bong hits.
the status quo is gay
Someone who is drunk for the first and only time in their lives can still kill someone with their car.
Oh for fuck sake: Someone who is alive (for the first and only time) can still kill someone with their car and judging by the half-million or so lives lost at the hands of bad drivers every year, apparently do with great reckless abandon.
Now multiply that times all the ways people can influence, impact, harm, and destroy the lives of their fellows.
Who is “we”? Are you talking about the Greater Good?
So can someone who is playing air guitar to “Sister Christian” while driving. We already have laws against driving impaired.
Seems to be from your perspective…
I don’t know what Joseph Smith told you, but getting high isn’t a communicable disease.
Except maybe at a Phish concert.
HappyFeet, have you ever tried arguing without casting aspersions?
Rep. McClintock is a pretty solid no nonsense conservative from California. Rep. McClintock probably has a pretty good understanding of unintended consequences.
I read Prop 19 also. As I said, I voted against it, because I have to agree Prop 19 is poorly worded.
Calling McClintock a liar because he thinks Prop 19 is poorly worded and a lawsuit waiting to happen, is, well, lying. Or, at least, impugning motives.
Just what dog does McClintock have in the hunt when it comes to Prop 19?
^ #88: The first line quotes our dicentra.
There will ALWAYS be abusers. Unless we nanny away everything that people can abuse.
I wanted to amend this from my #85. I don’t mean to imply that it’s possible to remove every possible source of substance abuse. I mean, people can abuse food. There will always be people who have in their nature the need to abuse something (others, intoxicants, possessions, et al.) If the typical abuse substances are removed, there is no way to predict how that need will express itself, and if that expression will be more or less dangerous to self and others.
Also, let me point out that we’re dealing with the will of the voters of California. That IS the community operative in this equation.
So what you’re saying, dicentra, is we need to protect the will of the community from the will of the community. And you are happy to leap into that breach. To stop them from killing themselves with the equivalent of Typhus.
Is that about it?
All of which is off target.
#82 dicentra: What you and similar thinkers always do is ignore Ric’s Rule #3. People whose ambition is to be in charge don’t care what the rules are; they just want to be the ones enforcing them. The mullahs of Iran have no problem whatever filling the ranks of their religious police, and if you think Iranians are any different from Americans in that respect you are fooling yourself.
So you build this enormous, expensive, violent Committee for the Preservation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Then along comes somebody whose definitions of “Virtue” and “Vice” differ from yours, and the enforcers don’t care — they’ll enforce the rules of the New Regime with the same vigor and elán that they did the old ones. That puts you in continual confrontation over who has the power to command the enforcers.
Which is where we are now.
Regards,
Ric
If I lived in California I would probably oppose legalization or decriminalization or whatever the fuck it is they want to do — but I wouldn’t get worked up about it. It would be nice though if the change would lift felon status from people like my brother who lost both his right to vote and his right to own guns because the judge and lawyers in his case misread or misrepresented the deal he was offered for his guilty plea.
In the end though legalization beyond the state level, if it ever happens, will result in THC being sold in caplets by prescription only, going generic only after Pfizer or whoever gets done enjoying patent protection on their unique formulation. In the short term California’s medicinal marijuana card system is doomed if recreational weed becomes legal, and weed clubs will eventually come under regulation under the same rationale as ABC regulation of alcohol.
All of which are why I wouldn’t get worked up over it. The status quo is nothing if not adaptable.
dicentra, so if outlawing something (pot, booze, guns, whatever) saves even one life, it’s worth it? Uh, no.
The answer IMHO is that if I run over someone in a car and kill them, I get tried. Having booze / pot / etc. in my system is treated not as an excuse, but as a premeditation, and I should be executed. Quickly.
If I can’t hold a job, then I can apply to private charity. They can make singing hymns part of the receiving, and that will be their privilege.
Part of the “price of freedom” that we like to natter about is that everyone has the freedom to screw up…. and be held accountable in such a fashion that they can’t ever screw up again.
Legalization beyond the state level, if it ever happens, will result in THC being sold in caplets by prescription only, going generic only after Pfizer or whoever gets done enjoying patent protection on their unique formulation. In the short term California’s medicinal marijuana card system is doomed if recreational weed becomes legal, and weed clubs will eventually come under regulation under the same rationale as ABC regulation of alcohol.
All of which are why I wouldn’t get worked up over it. The status quo is nothing if not adaptable.
I almost forgot:
According to Happyfeet’s Me Against the Entire pw Commentariat Style Guide, I am now obliged to call you all manner of nasty names.
I really should have taken care of that earlier in the thread.
My bad.
Actually, Mcgehee, Philip Morris trademarked Acapulco Gold back in 1972.
Incidentally, I have no problem with those who oppose 19 on grounds that think the legislation is poorly worded, etc.
That’s not what Dunphy is talking about though — and that’s not the complaint we’re hearing in the comments.
“Someone who is drunk for the first and only time in their lives can still kill someone with their car.”
And yet, we have tough DWI laws on the books in most of the 50 states.
dicentra who at PW have I ever called nasty names nobody that’s who except sometimes Darleen but that’s sort of a give as good as I get thing
As Ric points out, in areas where pot is in demand, it can easily be acquired. Why line the pockets of ersatz criminals with the black-market inflated proceeds?
And happyfeet mentioned enjoying not seeing the tax revenue argument, but I’ll bring it now that I’ve mentioned other economic effects.
It’s a large untaxed area of commerce on which at least sales tax could be collected. So said Keith Stroup of NORML in the late 70’s/early 80’s.
Just so you know it’s not my personal idea hf :)
there’s a tasty marijuana soda beverage in Colorado I would definitely like to try that sometime just cause I’m sort of a tasty beverage whore
Jeff G, you wouldn’t be reducing the police state one whit. There will still be an effing War on Drugs. This isn’t about blue-nosing and it’s not about growing pot in the pot on your windowsill.
Support of this initiative will, most ironically, go to expanding the state. Give it a couple of years if it passes and get back to me. All of this “classically liberal” Mom/Dad, god/dog, and apple/chicken pot pie as long as it doesn’t impinge upon Me tolerance is well-intentioned (not that it’s my place to impute, sorry about that.)
But, some of us see how the principle of Individual Liberty allegedly cleanly applied to this one substance, this one substance only, will end up being a gateway party at which classlibs pass the reefer and far worse substances to an out-of-control licensing, revenue collecting and still law enforcing government.
There’s no good answer, but even the Netherlands is reconsidering its “cafes” for some reason. I’d much rather responsible middle class have to bother themselves to illegally get or grow their stuff to mellow out than bring gov into the expanding role of regulating, licensing and profiting off of drugs, since there would STILL be a huge black market and law regime for those substances not approved for health or political reasons or for the underage who will always self-medicate, do the wrong, and cave to peers.
Growing government will be the biggest outcome unless we cut it down to size and get back to better constitutional bones first. THEN, marijuana liberty will be more a matter of individual choice and not state intrusion, subsidized medical interventions, etc. THEN, we could get real principled and say, Hey, why are we stopping with MJ and not legalizing coke, crack, smack, meth, acid, designer whatever by whomever? Why are we discriminating against minorities, entrepreneurs, and individuals like that?
Mr. Blake Californians what say on any issue at all – you name it – that ohnoes if we do this there will be lawsuits lawsuits lawsuits isn’t in on the joke I don’t think
happyfeet, you have tarred and feathered whole swaths of people here with your “rhetoric.” To deny it just makes you look stupid.
Really? The same people?
Huh.
Who knew.
…
What was the question, again?
Who has said such a thing? There will always be those who abuse and as Ric has alluded to, drugs are not hard to get and guess what…They’re ILLEGAL! Let’s not bring in straw men to the debate.
“Someone who is drunk for the first and only time in their lives can still kill someone with their car.”
And yet, we have tough DWI laws on the books in most of the 50 states.
Jeff argued that only those who abuse alcohol are causing the problems, whereas the rest of the folks aren’t. I was countering that you don’t have to be a problem drinker to cause problems. I wasn’t making any point beyond that.
And I brought up the Mormon thing only because someone pointed out that if you’re arguing against legalizing pot because of the social harm, you better not be an alcohol drinker, which is a good point. I merely asserted that I’m not a drinker, either, so the hypocrisy charge is moot.
So what you’re saying, dicentra, is we need to protect the will of the community from the will of the community.
I did not argue that Californians shouldn’t be able to legalize pot in California. Didn’t even imply it. I argued that the societal costs of decriminalization are higher than the costs of keeping it illegal. Some of you say the opposite. Fine. No problem. The limits of liberty are always worth arguing about, even vociferously, which is not something we get to do amongst ourselves very often.
So I’m going to push things further.
If it’s NannyStateism to ban pot, what about opium, heroin, cocaine, crack, LSD, meth, and the other “recreational” drugs that are out there? Should we legalize all of those in the name of liberty? Will we actually end up more free or less after the consequences play themselves out?
Furthermore, should it be legal for me, a private citizen, to dispose of my broken curlybulbs and mercury thermometers any way I want? Can I drop them down the storm drains? Chuck them in the river? What if my Very Small Business does it?
Where do you draw the line as far as Dangerous Substances are concerned? Allow them all?
one time I did kinda excoriate “those who would legislate their religious beliefs” but they told me that was crazytalk
We’re talking about users, not addicts.
We don’t make alcohol illegal because of a few drunks. We should not be making pot illegal just because some people like to smoke the stuff, from time to time. Hell, I’d probably give it a whirl if it were both legal and not counter to the rules governing my clearance.
Not all smokers of marijuana are potheads, I think.
I’d put it a different way: if you’re arguing against legalizing pot, it just might be a sign of consistency that you’re also arguing for making alcohol illegal.
Marijuana is a Dangerous Substance? Who knew?
You can screw yourself up pretty badly on some cold medicines, I hear.
TSpeaking purely as someone in the commercial and workers comp insurance industry – this would be a really, really bad Proposition to pass. As this is written there is one big winner in this…. the lawyers. Of course, they tend to win in almost any major change – at least for a while.
I wonder what the ISO “cannabis exclusion” form will read like?
Also, my old man did some consulting with a drug rehab place – I got to see and hear long term pot users. Never touched the stuff after that. I don’t mind a state of the lotus eaters, but when he is allowed by a welfare system, subsidized housing, etc., to start to paw through my money to get his next bag… then I got to see how wonderous places like Amsterdam, Zug and such became. Bleah.
Oh, and cannabis use yields no short term equal to a hang-over, so don’t try to make the two substances dead equal.
CA voters will have to inflict this on themselves with no good wishes from me. I’d rather some smaller state tried this first, but it is their ballot, so they can put on it whatever they want.
For an interesting interview with Milton Friedman on drug legalization see here: Link>
…….,,,,,,,,,,,””””””????!!!!
There ya go, feets. Let me know if you run out and I’ll send more.
So, if this is where you want to go, better perhaps to begin at the beginning in order to get there.
“Never touched the stuff after that”
That sounds wrong. I have never used it. Just to be clear on my position.
Part of the “price of freedom” that we like to natter about is that everyone has the freedom to screw up…. and be held accountable in such a fashion that they can’t ever screw up again.
Doy? If you are the only one whose life goes down the drain, then I have no problem making you pay for the consequences of your stupidity. You get obese and diabetic because you won’t stop buying Little Debbie, then by all means, if you pay for your treatment and insulin and all that, go for it.
I’m talking about what happens when people deliberately alter the the judgment-centers of their brains. If all they did was ruin their own lives, then there would be no need to argue about the costs of criminalization vs. the costs of legalization.
Please don’t argue with the progg in your head who wouldn’t think twice about banning Hostess Cuppy Cakes “for our own good.”
And Ric, I’m well aware of the hazards of government power to control this or that. But you’re not an anarchist and neither is anyone else on this blog. Arguing about how far to extend gubmint power is never bad argument to have.
Sorry Dicentra,
We are under sole lisence to, and for the expressed use by, happyfeet alone, to diminish and marginalize xtianists lifeydoodles and critics of Mitch Daniels as he sees fit. Any unathorized use will result in a costly lawsuit, and the application of said terms of art to your person.
Amsterdam also is crawling with the tuberculosis – I’ve wondered if there’s any connection but not enough to ever google – probably mostly just an immigration thing
HappyFeet,
So, I should vote for anything I agree with, even though the statute is so badly written, it will create more problems than it solves?
As I said, I would have voted to legalize pot, if the statute wasn’t so poorly worded. Anything that potentially games things against employers in CA should be viewed with suspicion if not downright animosity. CA already punishes employers through regulatory overreach. I think Prop 19 would contribute to that burden.
Milton Friedman is simply not good at discerning.
FOCUS, Milton!
the state is actively taking away the God-given freedom of people what are marijuana people Mr. Blake
That’s a big deal.
Jamarcus Russell is the exception vis-a-vis cold medicine, not the rule, Slart.
Whereas the kinds of people you see in rehab clinics for marijuana abuse are the rule, and the millions of people who’ve smoked marijuana and gotten on perfectly with their lives are the exception.
people are in jail cause of they sold a plant
In America.
That’s fucked up six ways to Sunday.
I’d put it a different way: if you’re arguing against legalizing pot, it just might be a sign of consistency that you’re also arguing for making alcohol illegal.
I already established that making alcohol illegal is vain because most people don’t want it to be illegal, which makes such a law utterly unenforceable. Yes, I know that pot smokers do it anyway. I also know that their percentage is far lower than those who resisted Prohibition.
We were arguing whether the costs of criminialization were higher than those of legalization. Pointing out the cost of the legal drug alcohol is one way to demonstrate the costs of a legalized, recreational drug. That’s as far as the argument goes.
Dicentra, you’re just flat wrong. Not about impairment, but about who gets impaired and how they manage it. People tend to divide, as mice in lab experiments, into categories of eschewers, occasional users, party users, and addicts. Research indicates that abusers make up a fairly steady proportion of the population; the abuse will occur, and it will occur with whatever is handy.
Laws have not made it unavailable, they’ve just made a market for criminals to sell it. They haven’t prevented M.’s cultivation, and it’s impossible to eradicate a widely dispersed weed that grows wild in any case. Most use is casual and occasional or linked to relief of pain and illness – heavy users you will note, have not been impeded by laws and are unlikely to ever be impeded by laws. The cost of the laws is too great for the benefit gained.
Legality doesn’t mean use. That is a false choice. The choice is to sponsor organized crime and overreaching law enforcement (with tremendous opportunity cost, or to let the usual persons destroy themselves in the usual manner, and others moderately or never use.
“Oh, and cannabis use yields no short term equal to a hang-over, so don’t try to make the two substances dead equal.”
That’s a good point that I hadn’t considered Colonel John.
Sorry about the quasi-double–post above, but PW was giving me fits and I had no idea whether the first version of my comment would ever show up.
Lordy. HF, the more you comment in favor of legalization the more I’m inclined to go back to being an über drug-war supporter. Why’n’cha just shut up and let the grown-ups talk?
So the argument here seems to be that we shouldn’t advocate for freedom in the short term, because in the long term the state will use it to take away freedom.
Is that right?
DIcentra, numbers do not really signify since marijuana laws are similarly unenforceable. It doesn’t matter if fewer person use marijuana if enough do to make the laws pointless and too costly.
DIcentra, persons can grow their own. Tax that. Good luck with that.
In the end, it really comes down to self-ownership–either you own yourself and can decide whether or not to self-medicate, and with what–or the state owns you and usurps that decision.
people are in jail cause of they sold a plant
Tell me about it.
FOCUS, Milton!
Freedman wasn’t conflating Twinkies and Mary Jane. Freedman was arguing that the cost of criminalization is higher than the cost of legalization. He used body count to make his point. It’s an on-point argument, assuming that his estimate is at all accurate.
However, one also has to measure the body count against the effects of legalization, which may or may not be body count.
Look, I’m not able to purchase Papaver somniferum (Opium Poppy) seeds in the U.S. I could grow them in my back yard or windowsill, just like a Cannabis plant.
You want people growing opium in their back yards? Processing it in basement labs? All legal, of course?
heroin is addictive I think that’s a totally different kettle of sugar punkins
Why ever on earth not?
All of this talk of personal liberty by, most likely, a bunch of middle class old white folk who came of age in the 70s. What I’d like to know is why aren’t you raising the banner for Free Choice for a friend of mine who grew up white, poor, sexually abused in a wholly dysfunctional family who’s 53 and hooked on meth? That shit costs her way too much (and her teeth) since it’s illegal, and it’s really tough on her to score. What about my acquaintances who do crack, both white and black? Why are classical libs all about the marijuana and not the drugs of choice of other demographics?
There are competing stats, but my suspicion is that CA won’t be saving on prosecution and incarceration costs all that much, since minor possession of weed is a joke. I’ve heard a DA say that charges are often brought against those doing worse crime but the cases were weaker than going with simple possession or dealing. Keeping weed illegal would tamp down some of its use by minors, which is small consolation, but it also wouldn’t open the floodgates to state control of what had been a guilty pleasure for trying so hard to feel outlaw otherwise responsible middle classers.
But, hey, those with more disposable income do the cocaine, shouldn’t we legalize it and Tax The Rich?
States rights, fine. Nobody here and certainly not I seem to be proposing that Californians and Iowans etc shouldn’t vote on it, subject to Constitutional review. Yet, it does look like some are saying vigorous debate over the initiative is tantamount to opposing states rights and personal liberty. Simplisme. On top of keeping the organized crime, black markets, and corrupt officials we’ve always had, we’ll now get a Gov officially enriching itself on the drug trade.
if enough do to make the laws pointless and too costly.
And that’s the question, then: what constitutes pointless and too costly?
What about insider trading? That’s pretty hard to prosecute. Is it pointless?
DIcentra, plus, that is a dishonest argument. You oppose it because you believe it gives persons another opportunity to abuse with fear of legal reprisal.
Why you think there is some special point to making marijuana, which George Effing Washington grew and used, for heaven’s sake, illegal, escapes me. You just believe using drugs is bad and want there to be some big daddy somewhere saying “NO”, when that daddy properly is oneself or one’s own daddy.
Why ever on earth not?
So you’re voting “legalize it all,” then. Just so we’re clear.
Can I dump mercury down the storm drain? What about just scattering it around my back yard?
I also think that if I owned a large number of main battle tanks and had a kick-ass air force, the feds would think twice about afflicting me with “healthcare reform.”
making alcohol illegal is vain because most people don’t want it to be illegal
What better way to convey the will of the majority if not a statewide referendum?
“You want people growing opium in their back yards? Processing it in basement labs? All legal, of course?”
Yes.
DIcentra, insider trading laws have little enough to do with drug laws. The purpose isn’t comparable, and that’s a straw argument. If there were swat teams breaking into houses and shooting people’s dogs over sale of apple stock, perhaps we might discuss enforcement overreach. However, the threat of punishment and disgrace of generaly law abiding people from behaving in dishonesty in a way that affects markets lots of other people invest money in, can’t be compared to a personal habit that controls mood that others need not indulge in. Especially since the same persons will be indulging in SOMETHING, no matter what. It’s not like society is being saved some evil.
I would argue that for the state to prohibit your cultivation of poppy, and production of opium would be an even greater infringement than the production of something that is primarily recreational. Since opium has well established medicinal purposes they are effectively limiting your ability to manage your own affairs, and thereby compelling you to use only state approved means of treatment.
Might as well tell you what to worship.
we should for sure have this one it’s like catnip for people
You just believe using drugs is bad and want there to be some big daddy somewhere saying “NO”, when that daddy properly is oneself or one’s own daddy.
If that were the case, I would also be in favor of the law forcing people to stop drinking coffee and tea, because those are against my religion. I’d also want to outlaw clothes that my church thinks are immodest, and I’d want the state to enforce the payment of tithing, the attendance at Sunday services, daily prayer, and scripture study.
Oh, and Perez Hilton would be publicly flogged on a regular basis just for being such an insufferable douche.
You just believe using drugs is bad
I don’t “just believe.” Drug use destroys lives, including the lives surrounding the drug user. Is the destruction of these lives more pointless than the cost of enforcement?
If pot is OK, why isn’t heroin?
Dicentra,
How about this little compromise?
CA votes to legalize pot.
Utah keeps pot illegal.
Yay! Federalism at work.
I believe if you read Jacob Sullum in Reason, he’s pretty much come out for heroin decriminalization.
As for your friend, sounds like the state should raised her.
After all, your friends’ bad parents — and the subsequent fall out in her life — should affect how every one else ever is forced by the state to live.
Yep.
Can I dump mercury down the storm drain? What about just scattering it around my back yard?Different kettle of fish. There’s no market there, i.e. you’re affecting others without their knowledge or assent. Whereas, your opium ain’t affecting no one unless they enter into an agreement with you to offer you something of value in exchange for it. Or maybe you give it away, in order to create goodwill. Still, there’s an exchange.
I would argue that for the state to prohibit your cultivation of poppy, and production of opium would be an even greater infringement than the production of something that is primarily recreational. Since opium has well established medicinal purposes they are effectively limiting your ability to manage your own affairs, and thereby compelling you to use only state approved means of treatment.
Opiates aren’t illegal; they’re controlled. You want them uncontrolled?
“Drug use destroys lives, including the lives surrounding the drug user. Is the destruction of these lives more pointless than the cost of enforcement?”
So also does Socialism. Whadda we gonna do about it?
I’m with sdferr, really. I take public health problems more seriously than you. I think solutions should be based on research on cause and treatment of addiction, not barring regular people from using substances as their own conscience and need dictates.
And that’s likely because Friedman was asked about marijuana decriminalization, not about taxation on junk food — or the inevitable move by the state to start regulating salt and fat intake once they are responsible for paying your medical costs.
So also does Socialism.
No, Socialism keeps people safe and cocooned.
Oh! It also prohibits them from smoking pot and taking drugs!
Look, 1984 isn’t the only dystopia; Brave New World has people drugged out of their minds so that they won’t rebel.
And don’t think the proggs haven’t taken that into consideration.
Dicentra, Heroin is illegal, even by script. It should not be. Yes, I want pain control medicines uncontrolled as they were in the beginning of the twentieth century.
FDA should regulate strength, purity, and claims of efficacy and safety and nothing more. The DEA should not exist. Persons who commit crimes under the influence should be punished.
The day pot gets legal is the day that there’s a land boom in Kentuckiana like you’ve never seen.
Beats me.
or the inevitable move by the state to start regulating salt and fat intake once they are responsible for paying your medical costs.
Which is why I’m totally opposed to Obamacare and myriad other state (as in local) requirements and controls regarding
insurancemedical pre-payment plan coverage.“Socialism keeps people safe and cocooned.”
Ha. Tell that one to the Ukrainians. And the Russians. And the Chinese. And Cambodians. And Vietnamese. And . . .
Why must one “want” it? Isn’t it enough to recognize that what he or she wants is really not the issue here?
DIcentra, that’s your problem drug use CAN destroy, but not all use, and not all who use destroy. Those who destroy and are destroyed neither increases nor decreases because of law. The same people abuse. The SAME NUMBER OF PEOPLE. The law is no aid to your purpose.
ok I’m sold on the legal heroin… chronic pain is not to the glory of god I don’t think
Jeff G, just who do you think does those drugs besides marijuana? Really squared-away types?
Are you just for individual choice when it comes to whitebread and hep black cats toking? I mean, where’s your sense of rave justice? Why not designer drugs by whomever for whomever? Why not push for anything to be legal and for the FDA and the ATF to quit their regulating for our safety and their profit? Let’s not care what’s in our orange juice, Jack Daniels and acid?
I’ve never been in a rehab clinic. They see lots of people in rehab for abusing pot?
That’d be surprising to me, if true.
Cost is the only important factor?
What kind of fucked-up slide rule got you that solution?
Soma, right?
There might be a difference between mandatory and available, though.
“Can I dump mercury down the storm drain? What about just scattering it around my back yard?”
This is an invalid, apples and oranges, analogy I think; and one more in line with the public health controlling contagion arguments you were putting forth earlier.
The spread of heavy metals will inherently and intrinsically effect the health of others; against their will and unwittingly by mere association.
Contaminating someone else by brief exposure is not the same as the emotional, and sometimes phsical at the hands of a batterer, abuse suffered by addict’s loved ones; because they can sever their ties with the addict.
So legalizing pot in California by a vote of the citizens is like a combination of SOMA and a Typhus outbreak?
Those who destroy and are destroyed neither increases nor decreases because of law. The same people abuse.
No, Sarah, that’s not true. When pot becomes legal, its use will increase. Why wouldn’t it? Some people actually DO refrain from things because they’re illegal and/or socially unacceptable. Legal inevitably means socially acceptable.
Behold the disparity in numbers between those who smoke pot and those who drink alcohol.
If you legalize pot, you’ll get more pot smokers.
Why must one “want” it? Isn’t it enough to recognize that what he or she wants is really not the issue here?
By “want” I mean “want it to be legal.” And what someone wants or does not want is at the root of self-governance.
Cost is the only important factor?
By cost I don’t just mean money. You can include anything from dysfunctional homes to loss of liberty in the cost ledger.
pot is socially acceptable anymore – the president of the whole united states of AMERICA enjoyed copious marijuanas in his youth and he’s widely acknowledged as the 44th best president ever in history
Oh, I see. So if Californians vote to legalize pot, they may as well be asking for Upton Sinclair to mind his own fucking business, is this the hysterical breadcrumb trail I’m to follow? That by allowing the citizens of California, aware of whatever risks there may be to pot use (and already in receipt of laws that punish the impaired who threaten public safety), to vote on legalization of marijuana is akin to voting for total substance anarchy, and an end to food and beverage safety once and for all, in toto?
Mark this whitebread hep cat meth head hater down as unimpressed.
Sure, Sarah – and who is going to produce, market or insure said sellers or producers heroin? Crack? Meth? PCP, LSD too?
Hell, we have people smuggling cigarettes from Kentucky into Illinois over tobacco taxes… oy. When Cali gets its meat hooks into cannabis, you will get a glimpse of the lovely dead hand of the G weighing in again.
The Proposition needs to be rewritten.
Counterintuitive, but true: legalizing all this shit is the road to serfdom. We all talk a brave game, but no one wants to buy and ingest poison or, worse, have our kids do it. Hence, regulators and revenuers and gatekeepers to what’s OK or not and bigger government vested in our highs. The romanticism I read here on legalizing pot is like a concert haze. We won’t be getting government out of our lives. We’ll be more controlled, not less, and we’ll be OK with that. And we’ll be fighting as to the fairness issues of which drugs to sanction and which not.
Individual liberty, not so much.
Liberty does have a cost associated with it. There is no way around that except in ways that reduce liberty. The only question being asked here, I think, is about where you are going to draw the line.
So legalizing pot in California by a vote of the citizens is like a combination of SOMA and a Typhus outbreak?
Day-um Jeff, I’m not even talking about California. They want to legalize it, fine. But they WILL have to deal with the costs.
One cost—consequence—of wider-spread drug use in the population is that people stop being self-sufficient and are therefore susceptible to the sweet promises made by proggs who say “well pay for your rent and food if you want to get high, just vote for us.”
What, we can’t take that into consideration when talking about drug legalization? The fact that drug use will increase and that we’ll have just that many more idiots willing to let someone else do their thinking for them?
Oh, I see. So if Californians vote to legalize pot, they may as well be asking to go back in time and tell Upton Sinclair to mind his own fucking business, is this the hysterical breadcrumb trail I’m to follow? That by allowing the citizens of California, aware of whatever risks there may be to pot use (and already in receipt of laws that punish the impaired who threaten public safety), to vote on legalization of marijuana is akin to voting for total substance anarchy, and an end to food and beverage safety once and for all, in toto?
Mark this whitebread hep cat meth head hater down as unimpressed.
You want them uncontrolled?
Nothing of the sort. Commercial drug products can rightly be controlled. What people choose to do of, by, and for themselves is not within the purview of the Federal government, nor most state government.
oops, my last got cut off – should be rewritten to make sure that not just private individuals have their course of conduct proscribed (shall not…), but the G needs to have its conduct proscribed too. Taxes? Other controls of marketing, insurance, etc.
A better written Proposition would be a much better test case.
What if it turns more people toward freedom and away from the nannystate?
I say spark ’em up!
FOR FREEDOM!
“That by allowing the citizens of California, aware of whatever risks there may be to pot use (and already in receipt of laws that punish the impaired who threaten public safety), to vote on legalization of marijuana is akin to voting for total substance anarchy, and an end to food and beverage safety once and for all, in toto?”
Nope. It’s to vote for more. Far more.
OT: is anyone else having trouble loading/refreshing today? Is traffic up?
“You want people growing opium in their back yards? Processing it in basement labs? All legal, of course?”
How many people distill their own whiskey now that it’s legal? How many people grow their own tobacco?
How many people cook up their own meth… oh…
cranky-d: Liberty does have a cost associated with it. There is no way around that except in ways that reduce liberty. The only question being asked here, I think, is about where you are going to draw the line.
Azactly. Unless you’re an anarchist or a totalitarian, this is the argument you have to have.
Also, I love this owl.
And for those who were wondering wondering wondering about Matthew Gray Gubler’s Halloween costume, he dressed as Beaker.
Then decriminalize it instead.
But I don’t buy the argument that the more individual freedom we possess, the closer we are to serfdom. That only applies if we forget that the government is supposed to be comprised of — and representative for — us.
That by allowing the citizens of California,
Again with the idea that someone objects to their right to legalize pot. I’m not arguing against their right to eff up their own state. I’m just arguing that they ARE effing it up. That’s all.
Arguing about whether drug abuse is a good or bad thing is a waste of time. It’s a bad thing.
This country got along fine for its first century without drug prohibitions. The British built their Empire without drug prohibitions. The Romans built their empire without drug prohibitions. “Heroin” is a trade name for purified opium! Arguing that society is going to collapse because of drug use is simply saying that the society has already collapsed, and is a Potemkin village propped up by armed goons.
Repeat, louder: THERE ARE NO EFFECTIVE CONTROLS ON DRUG USE. It’s effectively “legal” RIGHT NOW, with the only caveat being that it serves as a “hook” to allow the police to hassle people. Arguing from good effects of drug prohibition is a waste of time and effort, and adds CO2 to the atmosphere, which will drown the poor Bengladeshi.
Yeah, marijuana makes people stupid. So we add on police harassment to that. This is a benefit? To whom?
Regards,
Ric
the more individual freedom we possess, the closer we are to serfdom.
That wasn’t the argument being made. The argument was that the more we ingest mind-altering substances that cause us to stop being self-sufficient, functional adults, the closer we are to serfdom.
Unless you’re arguing that unless we’re free to consume all recreational drugs, we’re pretty much the USSR.
But I don’t think you mean that.
BTW, little trivia.
Carisoprodol, the primary ingredient in Soma(R), is not a controlled substance, it is not even biologically active – it has no pharmacologic action of it’s own.
It is however, metabolized in the body into meprobamate, which is biologically active, and is a medium potency sedative. Meprobamate, when sold as a drug product is a controlled substance.
Go figure.
Then what’s your point?
Whether they are or they aren’t, it’s theirs to mess up. And I’m not convinced they’ll mess anything up by legalizing marijuana use.
Really? Because I read this differently: “Counterintuitive, but true: legalizing all this shit is the road to serfdom.” Especially because if was followed up by notice that the state would get more involved by way of regulation, etc.
One of us missed that point.
Repeat, louder: THERE ARE NO EFFECTIVE CONTROLS ON DRUG USE.
Numbers, please. You need to show that legalizing a recreational drug does not increase the percentage of the population that uses it, or conversely, that making a recreational drug illegal does not decrease its usage.
This country got along fine for its first century without drug prohibitions.
Oh, don’t even try that, Ric. Do I need to list the societal ills that we DID have instead of meth-heads? Reductio ad slaverium?
Again, show exactly what happens with and without law enforcement.
Heroin is not merely purified opium, it is a synthetically created molecule, using opium a a precursor.
Opium travels across the blood-brain barrier rather slowly, giving it a delayed onset of action. Diacetylmorphine (heroin) crosses the blood brain barrier faster than any other opiate. That’s what makes it so popular with the recreational crowd, the rush is like nothing else.
“Yeah, marijuana makes people stupid. So we add on police harassment to that. This is a benefit? To whom?”
Ric, there isn’t all that much police harrassment over dope in CA, some, yes, but mostly it’s over bigger badder drugs. CA will still have drug enforcers for all of the illegal substances, still have hideous crime on account of same, and both on top of creating a new class of regulators and revenuers for the now legal weed. Just don’t assume a net subraction of government intrusion and, instead, ponder how delicious the revenues are going to look to fat bureaucrats.
Just like the dumb state lotteries. Mostly those revenues went to expanding gov, pensions and benefits that are now death to state solvency.
Anyway, CA and you are all racists and classists. Legalize crack, you crackers
Counterintuitive, but true: legalizing all this shit is the road to serfdom.” Especially because if was followed up by notice that the state would get more involved by way of regulation, etc. One of us missed that point.
Both of us did.
I was emphasizing the part about voluntarily impaired people making for a less-free populace, which was not the point oregano was making. Oregano says that if we legalize THESE SUBSTANCES, then the state will still have its tentacles in the whole business, even to a greater degree than it does now, and that such a circumstance equals less freedom.
I’m not convinced they’ll mess anything up by legalizing marijuana use.
And I’m saying they will. Which, I thought that was the point of your original post. Costs of this way vs. that way and stuff.
At the same time as all this, the dumbfucks in Sacramento (and various left-liberal city governments) want to ban tobacco, only they can’t actually bring themselves to pull the trigger because of the tax revenue it generates…
In other words, with ALL legislation, you’re effecting a trade-off. ALWAYS.
And it’s always about whether the trade-off is worth it.
By the way: why is it that the same people who at the front end argue for “discerning” and differentiation then move quickly on to the suggestion that if you support legalizing pot, you must also support legalizing all other drugs?
criminalizing drugs and such draws from the same well as eugenics I think… betterment of society… controlling socials costs… putting the undesirables away behind bars.
What is this, some kind of zero-sum, inverted costs-to-society proposal?
*social* costs I mean
Jeff, I thot you said something in support of legalizing it all, in support of individual liberty?
#202 Jeff G.
The “slippery slope” isn’t dramatic enough, so the “drop off the cliff” is deployed?
h on top of creating a new class of regulators and revenuers for the now legal weed
Proverbial tits on a bull. The stuff is a friggin weed that thrives in just about anything. Nobody with any serious desire for MJ is gonna go out and but the stuff commercially. Everyone and their crazy uncle will be growing it.
It’s not like tobacco. You can grow that, but it takes real knowledge and skill to turn it into a smokeable product.
Growing your own pot is easier than sorting your recyclables.
Dude! Don’t bogart that liberty.
In Los Angeles they don’t make you sort the recyclables except for you have a separate bin for grass and stuff in Burbank.
I think that’s pretty much a vote of no confidence on their part.
No, I got oregano’s point. And it was she I was responding to.
You know how that uncle got crazy in the first place, right?
He smoked the Devil’s Weed.
@203 – That, and plain old rent-seeking.
I think there is a closer comparison between pot and twinkies than pot and heroin. You gotta smoke a lot of dobbies to OD. And meth labs are kinda like pouring mercury down the drain. Outlawing a weed is stupid.
Well, I don’t make the rules. And I accept that.
But I was curious about the move from discernment and distinguishing right directly to either/or / zero-sum on the part of some of the commenters here.
Jeff – a couple of points, if I may. As stated earlier, I think this thread is PROOF you run nothing but a right wing echo chamber!!11!1! And, if this one doesn’t reach 350+ comments, nothing will, heh heh.
Damn squares here don’t want to do something illegal, anymore. Of course, gov will get into the biz and big time. Certainly, demographic politics will get into the fairness issue and who can blame people? Blacks go to prison for crack, poor white crackers for meth, and the well-to-do do cocaine with near impunity. (Poor Paris and a couple of other sacrificial celebs, but the cachet it confers…)
Legalize and tax coke. Legalize and subsidize crack. Legalize and institutionalize at government expense meth heads.
>
Spiffy. I am all about self-governance.
With emphasis on self. You want to pass a law so that it’s illegal for you to indulge in some activity or other? Fine by me. Just don’t pass laws telling me what I can and cannot do, based on your notions of right and wrong. You can, of course, pass laws dictating consequences should I cause harm to another, or be in a position where I could cause harm to another, while under the influence of any drug (alcohol and pot included). I’ll agree to that. But if I were to do a couple of bong-hits in the privacy of my own home and then go to bed, how on Earth could that possibly concern you, or anyone else?
move quickly on to the suggestion that if you support legalizing pot, you must also support legalizing all other drugs?
Sometimes they move quickly onto that suggestion, and sometimes they are asking where you draw the line when it comes to legalization, it being a rhetorical ploy to draw out where YOU are making YOUR distinctions, “they” having explicitly made the distinction at “all mind-altering drugs.”
I’m going to revise & extend the above by noting that my compliance with DoD clearance requirements is strictly voluntary and has little to do with the legality of pot. If pot were legalized, DoD regs might continue requiring its nonuse. And I’d continue not to use it.
But once I retire, I’m going to start my bong collection.
A person on cocaine would still be unable to maintain a relationship or be reliable on a job, whether it was legal or not. A person on marijuana would still live in a haze of irresponsibility.
That’s a lot of frank bullshit.
It’s not anything else (like a pet hobby or something) – it’s just so damn wrong.
Addicts and irresponsible people are addicts and irresponsible people, and as we plainly see, it don’t much matter if the drugs are legal or not – they will do them.
People make this sort of stereotype, I think, because of the one’s who are visible.
When you meet someone new, do you ask “Do you smoke pot?”. Do people walk around like “Hey, wanna smoke pot?”.
There are a lot of people who’d you’d never suspect who smoke pot. They function just find, they’re perfectly responsible, lucid, and normal. You don’t see these potheads because… well, there you go. They’re not gonna run around shouting about how they do something that is illegal and carries some social stigma. It’s only the trash that can’t hide their use, and frankly I wonder how much of their behavior is because of that use, and how much is just them – and it gets attributed to the drugs by association, since they’re the kind of irresponsible person who can’t hide it.
People who are irresponsible to begin with, are also irresponsible with drug use. Go figgure.
Hell, most people have done it at least a few times. You can’t go claiming that someone who smokes once or twice a year at a party, or even once or twice a week for a few hours in the evening, neccessarily lives in a ‘haze of irresponsibility’.
Again – it’s the dude who sits on his ass and does nothing BUT smoke pot that that describes. But before you blaim that on the pot, ask yourself what the hell kind of person does that to begin with? It’s a self-selecting sample.
You got the kind of guy who blows off work to smoke pot and leaves his kids at school without a ride home, it’s not the pot – it’s just him.
But if I were to do a couple of bong-hits in the privacy of my own home and then go to bed, how on Earth could that possibly concern you, or anyone else?
If that’s all that happens, then it doesn’t concern me at all. If all drug users simply got high on occasion and stayed off the roads while doing it, there would be no room at all for me to object.
If it were merely a question of my personal preferences concerning right and wrong, I’d be all up in your grill for not reading the scriptures every night or for dropping the F-bomb.
Of course, they should have repealed this ridiculous law when the repealed the rest of the Vorstead Act.
Actually, I get the feeling people here realize that they are daily doing something illegal, and that that is itself a problem.
You can try to ironize it away — and in so doing set yourself up as more hip then we wannabe hipster whitebread 70s suburban bourgeois jackholes — but that doesn’t change the fact that you are misreading many of us, and congratulating yourself for doing so, in a manner far more ostentatious than is necessary.
IOW, the argument here is contradictory: legalize on the basis of classic liberal individual choice and less government interference but don’t support the legalization of drugs preferred by others and don’t consider how the State will augment in order to sanction, test, regulate and tax the newly legal commodity while keeping in place an onerous law regime against all of the other substances and underage use of even the legal one.
Either say you support legalizing weed only because you like it and think it’s relatively harmless or support individual choice (Liberty) to take whatever. Either say you’re aware that the State will intrude and grow with the industry or be honest about your hazy, libertarian ideas people will grow it on their own and not merchandise it so that the State will have no commercial and regulatory interests.
(Merchandise is code for the State to intervene, no? Avocados, make way for the weed.)
Entropy: Are you arguing that legality has no effect on the percentage of people who use?
If so, please provide some numbers. The other observations about how some people do it anyway are moot.
OT: Big commotion outside, so I went to look.
Six UH1D helicopters, the fat-bodied troop-carrying version, all painted shiny white with no logos or markings but the registration numbers, all with glass-covered camera ports in the “V”-shaped section aft of the main troop compartment, go over at about 750′ AGL, rotors slapping merrily away. It looks like they landed at the local airport.
S*t, guys. I thought the helicopters were supposed to be black. Did they decide that’s too unfriendly and ominous? Smiley faces on the noses next?
Regards,
Ric
Like caffeine? Tobacco? Dopamine? Endorphins?
Careful with those comedy movies.
And then we could have a merry discussion about the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon.
Instead, though, we must reluctantly return to the topic:
Since when are your preferences, even the capricious ones, justifiably restrictive of my behaviors?
So, you’ve got the possibility of accidental death or harm. I’ve already addressed that. What other objection could you possibly have?
So oregano is saying that the best way to keep weed free from gubmint regulation is to keep it illegal?
There’s something to be said for that.
Ric, they’re working on a happier version of fascism.
And then we could have a merry discussion about the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon.
You would lose. Sorry.
Since when are your preferences, even the capricious ones, justifiably restrictive of my behaviors?
What makes objecting to self-induced incapacitation capricious? What makes objecting to objecting to self-induced incapacitation capricious?
So, you’ve got the possibility of accidental death or harm.
Which we also have with power tools. Do you not see the distinction I’m making?
avocados you can grow new ones on the window sill
legally
until your mom says throw it away the water in it stinks
Like caffeine? Tobacco? Dopamine? Endorphins?
I guess I left out the part where the alteration was to the judgment center of the brain.
Interesting. We had at least a half-dozen C-17s fly into MCO yesterday; maybe more. I wonder what is going on?
“You can try to ironize it away”
No, please, that’s why I only buy polyester.
free robert mitchum
So either you are for anarchy or you are a hypocrite, is that the gist of it?
OK OK OK! I’ll admit it! I just can’t stand the idea that someone else is having fun that I’m not allowed to have because I’m too uptight!
Geez!
Is it so hard to admit that when people voluntarily disable their judgment centers, it affects the rest of us? And that such an effect must be weighed in the balances when deciding how to deal with it from a legal standpoint?
Those don’t affect judgment?
I have years of high school and college to prove that thesis wrong…
Typical argument by assertion. See also: an increase in the number of potheads will affect me more than the alleged overcriminalization.
Ah, that’s your objection? That’s not capricious, but that’s also none of your damned business.
No. Why don’t you elaborate? Who’s “we” in the above sentence?
Come on, Jeff, give us a consistent argument on principle or the specific.
Jeff, I thot it clear my use of “you” was rhetorically collective, except for the last post, and apologies if you took them as all about you. Any insults you might personally level at me won’t keep me up tonight, but you nearly always do better than that in strong debate.
I’m being perfectly consistent. I don’t believe classical liberalism commits one to the idea that any laws abridging any freedoms deconstructs the idea of classical liberalism. Classical liberalism exists inside social compacts, and classical liberals recognize that such is the case.
Add to that the federalist principles at work here, and the question needs be turned around to you: if you don’t believe the people of California have the right to decide whether or not they are capable of smoking pot — and if you’ve further laid claim to the position that increased individual freedoms result in growing the state in the long term — where do you place yourself politically?
Entropy: Are you arguing that legality has no effect on the percentage of people who use?
No, I am not.
I am arguing legality has no effect on the amount of people who can’t fuckin function and do nothing but it.
Will more people use it? OF COURSE.
But you know… the type of person who doesn’t use pot because it’s illegal is not the type of person who – having legal access to it – will quit his job and tour with Phish.
And they type of person who quits his job, lives in his mom’s basement and plays frisbee in the park all day is not the type of person who gives a shit if it’s legal to spark up.
It’s like guns people. GUNS.
Does legalizing firearm ownership have ‘no effect on the number of people who own guns’? Hell no. It has marked effect.
However, does legalizing guns have any effect on the amount of criminals comitting crimes with guns?
No. Because criminals weren’t paying attention to the law to begin with. The people who refrained from buying a gun because of Chicago’s gun laws, are not the ones – having now legalized guns – that are going to go shoot up a 7-11.
Same thing with pot. You see the guy who is a trashball and does nothing but abuse drugs and jerk off all day. Well that guy is a trashball and he does nothing but abuse himself all day, any way you slice it. Banning the drugs hasn’t stopped him none.
Thinking that legalizing the drugs will turn everyone into him is ridiculous. The sort of person who’d only use it if it was legal, is the sort of person who’d use it responsibly and not go nutso.
The trashball is obviously immune to social stigma. The responsible person obviously gives a rat’s ass if people view him as a responsible and dependable person. Both will act accordingly in either legal environment.
The sort of person who’s using it now, illegaly, but isn’t an irresponsible pothead, wouldn’t be suspected by you or his neighbors, – he’s going to continue just as he has. Social stigma obviously MATTERS to him, unlike the trashball, so he’s not just going turn around and turn into Cheech now that we’ve repealed the $15 fine for possession.
The trashballs are a self-selecting sample. If someone only smoked pot once a month, to unwind on a friday night and listen to some music and read a novel in their home, well you wouldn’t really know it, would you?
So you turn around and legalize pot – it’s not going to make that person throw on a potleaf t-shirt and pink glasses and build a giant bong in his front yard. Nor has illegalizing it stopped the fellow who has.
And the sort of person who wouldn’t do pot unless it was first legal, falls into the former, not the latter category.
Guns don’t kill people, and drugs do not tour with Phish. People do.
C’mon, oregano, you take it as granted that the State apparatus will take over and regulate Marlboro Blunts the same way they currently do Marlboro Lights. How ’bout if move for legalization, and at the same time, shrink the government apparatus? How ’bout if we look at revenues generated by “sin taxes” as an alternative to other taxes, rather than a supplement? Wouldn’t revenues raised on liquor and weed be preferable to general revenues extorted by threat of force from every wage-earner and every property owner?
dicentra, I’m the guy who, years ago, suggested the Fatal Breathalyzer.
That is, the tube you blow into is the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun, and the needle on the gauge connects to the trigger. Self-enforcing, no plea bargaining involved, and d*n few repeat offenders.
Which is to say: I am all for laws regarding public behavior that causes harm to others. Laws that support the ability of J. Random Citizen to walk out the front door and use the public highways and byways to engage in commerce without undue fear or hassle. But laws that I would support require that the harm has to (1) actually happen and (2) be a significant impact on the expectations of JRC to engage in commerce.
All of which means: Prevention won’t hack it. Making something subject to forceful sanction because it might, when the wind is right and the Moon is in the Seventh House, cause harm to somebody is the very basis of the Nanny State. The Law can sanction overt public acts; it might, with some difficulty, be able to sanction precursor acts that inevitably lead to other, damaging acts; when it tries to sanction things that might, sometimes, lead to damage, the citizenry is going to sniff simultaneously and say, “Well, that doesn’t apply to me,” and if the act has some other positive payoff for them they’re going to bend their efforts to evading the prevention. The result discredits the very notion of “law enforcement” at the basic level, because Law Enforcement is largely psychological; if a large majority of the populace feels that they won’t be punished for disobeying a particular law, the feeling slops over into all the others.
I keep saying, and you keep ignoring it: drugs are “legal” now. The People have “voted with their feet” on the subject. Anybody who wants drugs can and does get them. If I wanted a truckload of cocaine or oxycontin, and had the money (I wish!), I know damn well I’m a maximum of three handshakes, more likely two, away from somebody who could and would deliver the goods. You may well be right that it’s a good idea to keep dangerous drugs away from people. Unfortunately no one knows what color the sky is in the world where that’s possible. It hasn’t happened, it doesn’t happen, and it won’t happen.
Regards,
Ric
This “because it’s MIND ALTERING” is equally idiotic and wrong. Just wrong. It pisses me off, not because I disagree with it, but because from a practical, rational standpoint, it’s willfully ignorant. Note: not entitled to your own facts.
Coffee is a mind altering drug. (and tea, and soda pop).
Chocolate is a mind altering drug.
Aspirin is a mind altering drug.
It’s like when liberal hipster-doofii tell you they only eat natural things and not ‘chemicals’.
Hey dip, water is a chemical! Anything that’s not a pure atomic element is a chemical. Unless you live on soot, ozone, and gold dust you can’t eat nothing but!
“… the question needs be turned around to you: if you don’t believe the people of California have the right to decide whether or not they are capable of smoking pot — and if you’ve further laid claim to the position that increased individual freedoms result in growing the state — where do you place yourself politically?”
Jeff, I DO believe, and have said before on this thread, that CA voters have the right to vote on whatever, with Constitutional review. I disagree as to the well-intended effects of passing such an initiative and have a right to debate the merits and fallacies of the pro case, don’t I?
I don’t accept that “increased personal freedoms” should have to grow the state, but in this case they clearly will. And be regarded as not going far enough and discriminatory. Good luck with that getting Gov out of our lives thing. If a perfectly good illegal behavior has been working so far, why eff it up with Big Daddy regulation and profiteering and grievance groups after theirs?
BTW, a correction b/c my wording in a previous commentt sounded p-a: apologies if my wording offended in a personal way. And I mean that because you’re one of the bright lights on the net.
Still, you answered my pointed question with a distraction question, you know
Oh, and listen to Entropy.
Me, I’ve got errands to run. Bill paying time. Maybe I’ll go check out the helicopters at the airport.
Regards,
Ric
Criminalizing the effects, if that’s what you are worried about — impaired driving, sleeping under bridges, stealing Fiddle Faddle from 7-11 — I’m cool with that.
Thing is, those actions are already prohibited.
The rest is just you saying you know what’s best for me — or that you don’t trust I can be trusted without the state as babysitter.
<But I don’t buy the argument that the more individual freedom we possess, the closer we are to serfdom. That only applies if we forget that the government is supposed to be comprised of — and representative for — us
True and something about the eternal price of freedom being vigilance.
Top part supposed to blockquoted. Must have been smoking too much cheeba :0
Interesting parallel with hate-crime laws, here.
I guess I left out the part where the alteration was to the judgment center of the brain.
Orly?
You sure this is a path you want to pursue? Because you’d lose that one.
Blockquote on the first sentence…
I blame OI, whatever he’s smoking is contagious.
Why? If that’s the case, what’s the TEA Party movement about? If we can’t fix the regulatory nanny state, what’s the point of any of this debate?
I think you can stand up for the principle without surrendering to the bunting the government tries to add later. There is nothing inevitable about government overreach. Provided we remember that the government is there to serve us.
And of course you have a right to argue the merits / fallacies of the pro case. But doing so by suggesting those with who you disagree are lazy-thinking whitebread bourgeois suburbanites with muddled libertarian (when convenient) impulses isn’t the best way to get a gracious answer, I don’t think.
Not that I mind terribly. But because it is my post, I tend to read the responses oftentimes as directly aimed at me personally — sometimes to my own detriment and distraction.
Some of us here have actually wrestled with these questions long before today.
Question not in the least answered by anyone here: Is this pot issue about the principles of classical liberty and freedom of choice and getting the state out of our lives?
Or, is it about marijuana *specifically* not being the Devil’s smoke and about how we should be fine about the state sanctioning, regulating and taxing it, while shutting out most other street drugs via a still potent DEA and strong arm of the law?
“Question not in the least answered by anyone here: Is this pot issue about the principles of classical liberty and freedom of choice and getting the state out of our lives?”
That strikes me as nonsense on its face, unless the tenor of most every post written here is unintelligible.
Could you address what you realistically project to be the safety and revenue regulatory aspects of this issue, Jeff?
sdferr, i’d love your response to the question. Speel it out for this dummy
I think you’ll find that many here find the “war on drugs” silly, ill-advised, and not cost-effective (in the sense Friedman discusses in a link earlier in the thread).
I tried to address your larger point by noting I’d be more thrilled with decriminalization than legalization — and that I have no problem with the criminalization of effects that lead to public safety problems.
Attractive women impair the judgment center of my brain.
Burkas for all of them, I say!
And then address the second part of the question you truncated, sdferr, if you will. Thanks :)
Or, is it about… how we should be fine about the state sanctioning, regulating and taxing it
Who has offered that argument here, other than the strawman standing next to you?
Mr. Dunphy sure doesn’t make a very good case for voting against Prop 19. I think Mr. Darth had probably the most salient point though…
Me I say force the moment to its crisis.
(after tea and cakes and ices)
Back when I first smoked pot I took on a freakishly ambitious class load and worked two jobs. Immediately after college, I still smoked pot for a couple years and worked around 70 hours a week. Had the same roommate that whole time. Guy never smoked or drank but did the bare minimum at school and in the workplace.
This proves nothing, of course. Because correlation doesn’t equal causation.
Some people are highly motivated, others aren’t. That’s it.
The house across the street from my Detroit house – they’ve been selling pot out of it for years. Calls to police have been ignored. I’m guessing because they really don’t care that much about pot, when they’ve got crack and meth to worry about.
That’s because the cops know that growing and selling marijuana is one of the few successful industries operating in Detroit today. While the commercial stuff still is imported, almost all the high quality pot smoked in Michigan is grown within the city limits of Detroit. Were it not for the marijuana trade, the economy south of Eight Mile would be even worse.
The only reason people perpetuate the stoner stereotype is that their friends who are doctors, lawyers, engineers, and yes, cops, that smoke pot don’t share that part of their life with them.
Oh, and for those of you so concerned about “impaired” driving, all of your friends who smoke pot also drive when high. There are virtually no regular pot smokers who don’t drive when stoned. If it was a safety issue, we’d see a lot more wrecks instead of folks missing their exit.
We have a society where females who control the educational system insist that young boys must be drugged with Ritalin because they act like, well, boys. SSRIs and other anti-depressant drugs are handed out by shrinks like candy on Halloween. Celexa, Paxil and Zoloft are just as much mood altering and mind altering as pot is, perhaps even more so, but they are socially acceptable. Yet if I happen to enjoy embellishing life with a little buzz on, folks like Carin see it as somehow threatening civilization.
While smoking dope in front of your kids isn’t the best idea, there are plenty of sober, yet still toxic, parents whose behaviors are far more damaging to their kids than being high.
Since the herbal one seems to have missed it: your assertion at 179 and repeated since is a false dichotomy. One may acknowledge that legalization of a give substance is likely to increase the scope and power of the government bodies which regulate it. But this growth does not have to go unchecked, as you assert. Free people have the ability to limit their government. Revenues raised via taxes and fees on controlled substances can be limited; further, those revenues can displace general revenues that are collected from the population as a whole, thereby replacing involuntary taxation with voluntary taxation.
You might say that such a scenario is unlikely, and I’ll grant that in the current environment you’d be correct. But as the idea of personal responsibility and limited government catches on, it’s more and more likely that the “starve the beast” voices will be heard. In this event, not only are people free to ingest what they will, but they’ll also enjoy lower levels of forced contributions to government. That’s increased freedom on two fronts.
Geez. You guys type a lot faster than I.
If that’s all that happens, then it doesn’t concern me at all. If all drug users simply got high on occasion and stayed off the roads while doing it, there would be no room at all for me to object.
Well, if all gun users just shot guns at deer or paper targets and were careful with their stray bullets while doing it, there’d be no room at all for me to object.
But since some gun users rob stores, I’ves got to say, we must preventatively ban guns. Because they take a horrible toll on society.
How am I being inconsistent?
I don’t see any new safety concerns. As for regulation, I expect the commerce clause would come into effect: perhaps dealers have to register as small businesses and pay taxes on sales.
Again, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. And Thom Jefferson grew mofo’n hemp. It does seem kind of counterintuitive that by legalizing pot that you’ll officially bring in the nannystate and all her accompanying excesses. However, that is not a fait accompli. Not by any stretch. What squid said, too.
Sorry ThomasD. I had the vacuum set to blower. My bad.
“I think you’ll find that many here find the ‘war on drugs’ silly, ill-advised, and not cost-effective (in the sense Friedman discusses in a link earlier in the thread).
I tried to address your larger point by noting I’d be more thrilled with decriminalization than legalization — and that I have no problem with the criminalization of effects that lead to public safety problems.”
Of which drugs? Just pot, some others, or of everything else? Is it about individual liberty to choose whatever, or about some social-political consensus as to cost-benefits of specific, individual choice circumscribing highs?
Where is the sophisticated, latest analysis of sconomic, social costs by way of increased government, expenses and individual taxation wrt legalizing pot and/or other to all substances? Some of the libertarian philosophers cited here today weren’t really up on addictive designer drugs that can change from week to week and how government will capture revenue, grow and corrupt given the chance to sanction any of it.
There’s no easy principled answer, in my mind, as in how healthcare is broken but the Obamacare cure far worse. CA can go ahead and legalize pot, but my instincts tell me they’ll rue it, despite appearances of enshrining some straightforward “right.” The analytical calculus has been too emotional and arguments both sides confused and conflated.
Does legalizing firearm ownership have ‘no effect on the number of people who own guns’? Hell no. It has marked effect.
But this is precisely my point.
Thinking that legalizing the drugs will turn everyone into him is ridiculous.
And this is not.
It is of course true that there is always a certain percentage of people who will do what they do regardless of the law.
It is also true that when you legalize something (remove the penalty) you get more of it.
Like gun ownership. Loosen the laws and you get more people owning guns.
You really can’t plausibly argue that legalizing pot won’t result in an increased consumption of the same. All you can argue is that the detrimental results of the increase are not as detrimental as keeping pot illegal.
To which I say: the detriments in the drug war do not negatively affect me and mine the way the detriments of increased pot use will. And that includes the personal freedom perspective.
oregano, you seem to be worried that having legalized drug use, the government will create Soma.
I can tell you the ‘natural’ drugs do not have the effect you perscribe them to have on governments. Pot was legal in this country from 1776 to about 1930. Ecstasy – one of those designer drugs – was discovered I think in the ’20s and not banned until the ’80s. Coccaine use to be in the cola. Society neither devolved into teenage college movie nor became slaves to the state like the hasshishan and the Old Man in the Mountain. With something like pot, it’d be way too easy to break the monopoly. It’s a weed. It’s harder to kill than grow.
As for what they may come up with in a lab? Well… like someone else said, eternal vigilance. If the people walk themselves straight into that one, mayhaps that’s just what they get. There’s nothing stopping them from creating a post-dictatorial super despotism as it is. They don’t even need drugs to do that. There’s no compelling argument that keeping them illegal helps liberty, either.
You seem to be arguing from ignorance (non-perjorative, the term ‘argument from ignorance’). You’re asking others to provide some unknowable that I doubt you (or anyone else) could either.
There are still those here who think they’re agreeing with one another, while some say weed is traditional, not at all bad, and others say we should be able to do WTF we want with whatever.
Specific or principle, people? The convergence of mutually serving convenience is sorta cheap. So I remain unconvinced that legalizing pot is a principled idea, and that we can keep the state out of it, as others suggest here. Like candy to a toddler, sugar highs and ADHD for our government. Meanwhile, who’ll notice because we’re so mellow like?
If the effects you think harmful to the public are already circumscribed, the question about “which drugs?” should be something akin to don’t ask, don’t tell.
You can’t drive impaired, or rob a store, or pass out under a bridge, or try to feel me up because you’ve dropped acid and I’m wearing paisley and you insist “it’s like a million tiny peacocks making love!”
But if you want to sit in your house and shoot heroin, that’s on you.
Somebody needs to take away your copy of Reefer Madness.
Or at least, explain to you that it’s only a propaganda movie.
Also, I saw Johnny Depp catch Jack the Ripper and expose an entire royalist/Masonic plot — all while addicted to the opium pipe.
Speaking of which, de Quincey got a book out of it — and punk has been a net positive for humanity.
So, like, Q.E.D.
Somebody needs to take away your copy of Reefer Madness.
Never saw it. I also don’t get my door kicked down by the DEA.
Just sayin’
Well… like someone else said, eternal vigilance.
Which consists of what? Passing laws?
Specific or principle, people?
Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? Because few problems concern differences of kind but not degree. Pot is not as harmful as heroin. Aspirin is less harmful than pot.
Now what?
Free people have the ability to limit their government.
How’s that working for us so far?
Huh?
Dicentra, you missed my point by a mile.
It is also true that when you legalize something (remove the penalty) you get more of it.
Like gun ownership. Loosen the laws and you get more people owning guns.
When you legalize gun ownership, you get more gun ownership. You do NOT get more armed robbery. If you wanted that you’d have to legalize armed robbery.
When you legalize pot use, you get more pot use. You do NOT get armed robbery. You do not get wastoids just because pot is legal.
You really can’t plausibly argue that legalizing pot won’t result in an increased consumption of the same.
I’m not.
All you can argue is that the detrimental results of the increase are not as detrimental as keeping pot illegal.
No, I can argue what I just did argue which you’ve ignored.
Having an increase in pot use does not mean having an increase in the detrimental results you wrongfully insist must follow.
Seriously – can you TRY to actually CONSIDER what I’m saying and respond to IT? Because I’ve had this conversation before, and the reason why these sorts of arguments (like “mind altering”) aren’t just something I disagree with but actually piss me the hell off, is because consistently, the people spouting them are immune from external input. It’s like trying to argue the divinity of Jesus. They are ‘epistemically closed’, so to speak, on this issue.
For instance, pretty much sidestepping my argument entirely and showing no real evidence of having read or heard it at all.
In fact, you pretty much just tried to force a dichotomy on me and said my argument can not exist. “All you can argue”? I don’t get to argue for myself?
Not well.
I say we abandon the idea entirely.
Entropy, let’s put cocaine back in the colas! Lots of money in that. I’m a Pepper, you’re a Pepper, won’t you be a sugar and coke addict, too?
Libertarians here (and I lean that way) are willfully blind to the State and Corporate possibility that will mine your precious rights to weed etc. for control and profit. Admit it, light up and relax, or are you already zoned out and blissful as to the real-life consequences?
Arguments for legalizing pot (it’s OK, everybody does it or it’s about teh Liberty) are simple almost to the point of disingenousness for such otherwise smart people. When there’s no accounting for the probable downside, there’s no honesty, unless we are to believe in rainbow hopping unicorns
Choose: either you can have aspirin AND crank, or you can have nothing. CLASSICAL LIBERAL HYPOCRITE!
SSRIs and other anti-depressant drugs are handed out by shrinks like candy on Halloween. Celexa, Paxil and Zoloft are just as much mood altering and mind altering as pot is, perhaps even more so, but they are socially acceptable.
Not true. A few people have bad reactions to anti-depressants, just as a few people have bad reactions to all drugs, but the fact that they affect the brain is the only thing they have in common. There are myriad ways to affect the brain, and street drugs on the one hand and SSRIs on the other are in totally different categories.
CHEMICALLY AND MEDICALLY, not just socially.
Trust me, no one takes SSRIs for fun.
With all due respect: your comfort is not an overriding priority with me.
But it’d be a good thing, for the sake of your argument, were you to unpack and substantiate in some small way the detriments of pot use will. I’m just not seeing even a potential for statistically significant danger, there. Doubtless you do, and can describe it, but as far as I can tell you have not done so.
OTOH there’s always the potential for harm in law enforcement endeavors, as any even occasional reader of Radley Balko could tell you. So the no-risk assumption has its own flaws.
Which consists of what? Passing laws?
Ummmm…. no.
‘Not getting hooked on gubmint Soma’ howbout?
Or not letting the federal government deal drugs in the first place, since as I recall the constitution said nothing about that, making it a power reserved either to the people or the states.
Nobody has said there isn’t a downside.
The only reason proponents appear to be making “simple” argument is because you aren’t arguing with them; you’re arguing with cartoons of your own creation.
People have answered you: they recognize the government will try to get its snout in. But that’s a problem with government and its snout. Your argument amounts to punishing the trough.
When you legalize gun ownership, you get more gun ownership. You do NOT get more armed robbery. If you wanted that you’d have to legalize armed robbery.
Fair enough.
Then let’s say that instead of getting more armed robbery, you get more accidental shootings, more toddlers killing their siblings. Stuff like that.
Again, I am asking for actual numbers regarding the actual effect of legalizing a street drug. Numbers concerning the increase in usage, and what the results of that increased usage ARE. Numbers with regard to broken homes, kids needing to be in the foster care system, absenteeism at work. Stuff like that.
If the numbers show no increase in the detrimental effects of legalizing pot, then I’ll shut up.
Ritalin was the most dealt drug on campus when I was teaching.
my instincts tell me they’ll rue it, despite appearances of enshrining some straightforward “right.”
Again, who is taking the position that California is in any way enshrining anything? (other than the referendum system.)
This is Californians telling Californians what is permitted. Who really has been fooled into thinking otherwise?
There are myriad ways to affect the brain, and street drugs on the one hand and SSRIs on the other are in totally different categories.
CHEMICALLY AND MEDICALLY, not just socially.
I say bullshit. They are different like they are all different from each other.
Which is to say, lab manufactured THC is different from Zoloft like Paxil is different from Zoloft. Each has it’s own unique structure and acts differently.
But the only concrete distinction that can be drawn between all legal drugs, and all illegal drugs, is the state of their legality.
I have to say that I have enjoyed this discussion immensely. Sober.
I’m off to lift. Then I’m going to enjoy a spliff and watch Ghosthunters.
Later.
#291 – Really? Are you sure that serotonergic drugs have no abuse potential? Really sure?
Because I can name a couple off the top of my head that are recognized as, not just having abuse potential, but actually being abused today (citalopram, and quetiapine.)
People can abuse/misuse just about anything that has psychopharmacologic effects; where there is a will there is a way.
I think I’m going to pound a few beers after TKD practice and reread the thread, just for grins. I’ll try hard not to hurt anyone in the process, given that I’ll be somewhat judgement-impaired.
Then let’s say that instead of getting more armed robbery, you get more accidental shootings, more toddlers killing their siblings. Stuff like that.
So you’re against the 2nd ammendment?
Seriously?
Guns are way more dangerous than pot.
I’m gonna go make lamb shanks.
Now there’s a mood altering substance.
which should put a gun and a dime bag on a table and see which one makes a move first
dicentra, when you stop sounding like every other progg in the universe who wants to ban things because of the harm someone might do, I won’t have to.
“We can’t let people own guns for self-defense; the wrong person might get shot.”
“Don’t use your cell phone or text while driving; you might hit someone.”
“We’ll have to pay the medical bills if you shoot yourself, so of course we get to tell you what to do.”
Ad infinitum, ad nauseam, and back.
*we* should put I mean sorry I was on the phone and trying to comment
that never works
“People have answered you: they recognize the government will try to get its snout in. But that’s a problem with government and its snout. Your argument amounts to punishing the trough.”
Whoa, there, Jeff. That’s a prob with Guv? Pretty passive that and uncognizant of the tremendous efforts of late to try to roll even a little of our Goliath back. Good luck to us Davids, I just think it won’t happen in a revenue-hungry and corporate-agri state and, esp, wrt a substance that gets ingested. The people will always want safety, quality control and truth in advertising. And our Government will always be happy to oblige.
Libertarians who advocate for legalization of pot and sometimes other and all drugs often forget the concomitant expansion of State regulation and revenue collection that will inevitably follow. Also, corporate control, but that’s cool, right, because we’re Libs who need to realize most of us are not noble savages doing our own thing in our private backyard wooded glens. Most Americans demand they not be cheated or harmed when it comes to things they put in their bodies.
The CA initiative will be OK for some ma and pop outlets but increasingly lucrative for corporation and state which is fine, as such, but a complete mixed bag(gie) as far as libertarianism is concerned, ESPECIALLY if it’s called out on the principle and practicalitie$ of which substances to legalize or no.
Many, many people die to guns every year.
So far as I can find, the figgure on ‘death because of marijuana’ is negilible. 0.
I can get data on ‘heroin related fatalities’, I can get data on ‘alchohol related fatalities’. I can get data on ‘cigarette caused fatalities’ although I find it dubious.
But can anyone even provide us with a workable figure for mary jane? And if not, why not?
Libertarians here (and I lean that way) are willfully blind to the State and Corporate possibility that will mine your precious rights to weed etc. for control and profit.
Bullshit. Not so long ago, I made a cruchy granola undergrad who volunteers at the radio station cry when I explained to him that legalizing pot did not mean that his head shop would enjoy great success, but in fact meant that Marlboro Blunts and Camel Spliffs would dominate the market. I have no illusions about corporate and governmental behavior, and I’ll thank you not to assert otherwise.
Still, I reject your false dichotomy that one must choose between lawlessness and freedom. I’m not an anarchist, so I can think in shades of gray when it comes to the necessity of regulations and taxes. On the flip side, I’m not a statist, so I don’t take it as given that the regulation and taxation of drugs is going to turn the government into an Orwellian machine crushing all of us under its weight.
Getting the government out of the Drug War is part and parcel of the effort to shrink its scope and power generally. One can grant that revenues generated from controlled substances may be used for good or ill by the government, but one need not grant that these revenues are limitless nor guaranteed in perpetuity, and one can also balance the relative evil of these revenues against the revenues currently generated by forfeiture laws and their abuse.
“Bullshit. Not so long ago, I made a cruchy granola undergrad who volunteers at the radio station cry when I explained to him that legalizing pot did not mean that his head shop would enjoy great success, but in fact meant that Marlboro Blunts and Camel Spliffs would dominate the market. I have no illusions about corporate and governmental behavior, and I’ll thank you not to assert otherwise.”
Isn’t the CA initiative written to only allow small producers?
Again, I am asking for actual numbers regarding the actual effect of legalizing a street drug. Numbers concerning the increase in usage, and what the results of that increased usage ARE. Numbers with regard to broken homes, kids needing to be in the foster care system, absenteeism at work. Stuff like that.
If the numbers show no increase in the detrimental effects of legalizing pot, then I’ll shut up.
I have a better idea: let’s give the whole “personal responsibility” thing a try, and if the numbers come back showing that everything’s going straight to hell, then we can talk about returning to Prohibition.
The precautionary principle is great, but I wish it would be applied to State intervention in my life with a bit more gusto.
I’m talking about what happens when people deliberately alter the the judgment-centers of their brains.
Bacon, cheesecake:
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2737117#ixzz0jWFVGD0F
Chocolate:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web2/Slaughter.html
Apart from observant jews and muslims with the bacon, I’m not aware of any religion whatsoever that bans cheesecake or chocolate.
Lots of people seem to think that giving children sugar will noticably alter their behavior.
I’m talking bigger picture, eldo. Trying to show that one need not grant the State unlimited power in any legalization effort.
This is such a frelling echo chamber. What the eff is wrong with you wingnuts?
Yea, that’s what I was thinking. Shesh.
National Review dedicated an entire issue to this debate several years back. Buckley supported legalizing Mary Jane, if I recall.
As I said, I ain’t banging my drum, an if California allows to legalize it, I could care less. Another reason not to live there. Let all the potheads move there. Really, it’s a win/win in my book.
Peter Tosh – Legalize it live
Yep, legalize weed and the Drug War is ovah.
I mean, vastly reduced.
OK, a tiny bit displaced by other Government and Big Biz control.
Meanwhile, important people do their coke, disaffected types shoot up, teens huff, fringers speed, down and outs rot on meth, hipsters get Ecstatic and whatever, while blacks sit in prison for crack.
Is the argument here just for pot generally, pro-pot/whatever as an affirmation of states’ rights, or for any substance man can design and sell for consumption?
meanwhile the asian carp menace is stealing our children’s futures
Ok, I’m going to derail the thread by introducing another red-hot, red-button issue:
Resolved: Kingfishers totally rock.
Let’s see any of you… ANY… refute that without filling your drool cup.
the bird’s smoking somethnig
Birds are twitchy and can’t be reasoned with. If we were much smaller no one would think they’re so cute, we’d realize they’re a terrifying Bjorkian menace.
And sometimes they poop on you.
the gull sees farthest who flies highest though there’s a definite point of diminishing returns you reach on this what is not as high as you might think
Aspirin is not less deadly than pot, it is more deadly. It’s killed more people by overdose, and by accident than pot ever has. Especially since no one has ever died of an overdose of smoked marijuana.
does satisfying the munchies choking on dorritos count
gulls: the pigeons of the beach
we should dump aspirins in lake michigan
see how cocky the carp are after that
Aspirin is not less deadly than pot, it is more deadly. It’s killed more people by overdose, and by accident than pot ever has. Especially since no one has ever died of an overdose of smoked marijuana.
Aspirin is not a recreational drug. It does not screw with the judgment centers of the brain.
Marijuana might not kill your body but it can turn you into a lump.
But if we want to talk about the world’s most deadly ingested substance, that would be dihydrogen monoxide.
lump lingered last in line for brains and the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane*
*
Birds are twitchy and can’t be reasoned with
Today I went into my Chicken coop with a container of food, and one of the chickens (it may have been the run-away, for it was perched where she hangs during the day) JUMPED me. They were out of food, so the chicken JUMPS into the food bucket I’m holding with one arm. Lost half of the corn on the ground.
They will eat that, so no big loss. But DAMN. Yes, birds are twitchy and can’t be reasoned with.
But I got 9 eggs today from 11 hens, so who am I to complain?
Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m becoming a bit worried about the chicken menace.
I think if we can ever perfect dehydrated dihydrogen monoxide the result will be a boon to mankind, as it would be easily transportable to arid or flooded and contaminated regions and would only require water to reconstitute.
you’re working with the carps aren’t you?
I consider myself a fiscal conservative but an economic liberal. Light up.
Yes, donkeys
birdsare twitchy and can’t be reasoned with.you’re working with the carps aren’t you?
Carpsman?
they’re
carpsman
I’m skipping only because this needs to be addressed:
existing right of an employer to address consumption that actually impairs job performance by an employee shall not be affected …
wherein HF claims McClintock is lying that employers would be sued for drug testing.
Do note again the part I bolded. What that means is one actually has to be impaired on the job. Since MJ can be detected up to 30 days by a drug test, there’s the hole you can drive a truck through on pre-employment screening or random drug testing.
This actually puts MJ in a more priviledged position than tobacco. An employer can require one to be tobacco free, regardless of whether or not you smoke only on your own time. From the wording of Prop 19, an employer cannot make the same demand of a pot smoker.
BTW, I’m reluctantly voting for it, because I can’t stand the hypocrisy of the so-called “medical mj dispensaries”… either legalize it or not, but stop with the fucking pretend prescription shit.
BTW #2: pot smokers are usually not even on a cop’s radar here. Unless they are doing something particularly stupid, like being in the next car over from the cop car at a red light and still smoking.
Another note on why I’m annoyed with Prop 19 and the rest of the “personal responsibility” canards about drug taking
Until you dismantal the Welfare state, please don’t give me the sh*t about druggies taking responsibiity for their addictions. They keep their kids, they get their welfare check & food stamps & WIC and Section 8 and Medical and number of state/local/fed Dollars (you know, a portion of the earnings of people who actually ARE responsible).
CA already has 12% of the nation’s population and 1/3 of the nation’s welfare cases.
Remember, when Cali goes bottom up, it’s going to take the rest of the country with it. Don’t sneer too hard.
Which is a different problem entirely from whether or not people should be permitted, if they so choose, to fire up a doobie, or jab themselves with a needle, or smoke some opium.
I already said twice in this thread that effects to civic order can be punished — that’s part of the social compact — leaving me free to do what I please so l don’t hurt you, or my children, etc.
If regulatory apparatus springs up as a result of legalization — and again, I’d prefer decriminalization, but we’ll deal with legalization here — that is one of the trade-offs. But how and what that regulatory system operates, and how much power it has, will be decided upon by the people affected by the law.
You know, I’m cool now. My husband just esplained the beauty of legalizing the MaryJane.
Once it’s legal, I can just get my garden going. I’m gonna grow that shit right out next to my chicken coops.
You think I can get a road-side stand going?
the tyranny of employer based health care.
Remember, when Cali goes bottom up, it’s going to take the rest of the country with it. Don’t sneer too hard.
I make no promises.
I thought the linked text was very misleading that McClintock elided the part about “the existing right of an employer to address consumption that actually impairs job performance by an employee shall not be affected.” That is very important, but sure there may be lawsuits – but employers shouldn’t have the right to drug test for marijuana if marijuana is legal. That’s a little invasive, no? I think that’s a little invasive. Employers what drug test your ass for a legal herb you consumed on your off time should be sued. They should be sued to fuck and back.
They need to document impairment.
Same as with alcohol now.
“You think I can get a road-side stand going?”
Oh hells yeah, enterpriser, just be prepared for energetic competition from down the road.
And, I’ll note it’s perfectly legal for me to make my own wine, beer, and alcohol.
I’m already a gardener. So it’s a natural fit.
I also have a nice collection of poppies. Just saying.
Oh hells yeah, enterpriser, just be prepared for energetic competition from down the road.
I’ve got a natural advantage. I don’t smoke the profits, and I wake up nice and early to weed and water.
I’d rather buy from you than somebody I don’t know, Carin.
Provided your shit is good, naturally.
Team up with Monsanto to do a few trial fields Carin and you’re on your way.
to fuck and back is how they should be sued
soon you’ll be importing taliban for their poppy skills
I think if we can ever perfect dehydrated dihydrogen monoxide the result will be a boon to mankind, as it would be easily transportable to arid or flooded and contaminated regions and would only require water to reconstitute.
We could take it to the moon!
#341 Carin: Sure, no reason why not.
During WWII my grandfather paid off the farm by growing it for the Navy (it still makes the best “ropes” for certain purposes EVAH). Grandmother said that the closest she ever saw John come to cussin’ was when he was trying to eradicate the durned ol’ hemp —
Granddad died before I knew him consciously, but I’m entirely old enough to remember serious discussions of trying to kill the hemp so as to keep the n–s from getting high in juke joints. The conversation generally took place over frosty cans of Pearl.
Regards,
Ric
I also have a nice collection of poppies.
Me, too. Papaver orientalis, Eschscholzia californica, P. rhoeas.
And Digitalis (has medicinal uses and is deadly otherwise) and Solanum (nightshade) and any number of plants that you really, really don’t want to eat so much as look at or smell.
Why? Did they force someone to take the job?
but employers shouldn’t have the right to drug test for marijuana if marijuana is legal
They can test for tobacco and alcohol and those are legal, hf. Where have you been?
See, like I said, McClintock wasn’t lying and if you have a problem with testing take it up with the courts.
I wake up nice and early to weed…
Wake ‘n bake!
I also want to note that I just dug up my potato crop, consisting of a small bucketful, and that potatoes are Solanum tuberosa.
McClintock clearly implied that dirty potheads would be able to foist their dirty pot into work places.
If you want to smoke pot in your own world, I don’t care. But don’t bring it into mine.
That’s simply not the case. The law says no you can’t be impaired at work.
Tom McClintock is a dirty liar.
Ooooh.
The major species grown worldwide is Solanum tuberosum (a tetraploid with 48 chromosomes).
Tetraploid sounds cool.
Why? Did they force someone to take the job?
that’s something what needs to be worked out case by case I think… and lawsuits are a useful tool for that. I would rather err on the side of people not getting all up in other people’s shit. But the fact remains that if you’re stoned at work or you light up at work, this prop does not impede your dismissal, and McClintock is being very misleading on this point.
He’s just another failshit Republican what when push comes to shove can be counted on to not stand up for individual liberty against the state.
I agree with this.
Personally, I dislike the idea of marijuana legalization, and if I lived in California I would vote against any initiative to decriminalize it. But were it to be legalized, I would hope there would be some minimal restrictions in place.
As for tobacco, I’ve long disliked the excessive taxation and smoking bans that have proliferated over the past twenty years – those need to be reduced sharply. And as for alcohol, the minimum drinking age should be lowered to 18. It is absolutely absurd that an 18-year-old can vote and join the military (and potentially die for his country) but cannot legally purchase alcohol. The federal legislation which set that national standard (with the strong backing of Elizabeth Dole) was as ridiculous as the national maximum speed limit established in the mid-1970s. Thankfully, the latter legislation was repealed in 1995.
I’d rather buy from you than somebody I don’t know, Carin.
Provided your shit is good, naturally.
If Mary Jane grows well with chicken crap … well, this may be providence.
I could have weekly specials; Buy a dime bag, get a half-dozen eggs for FREE!
plus the sooner pot-legalization gets off the ballot the better off Team R will be – pot-legalizers are in large measure not big fans of Team R – not all of them, but it tends to get an anti-Team R element to the polls what might not be particularly motivated in a mid-term
Hempseed makes an excellent chicken feed.
Wups. Did we get perpetual motion here?
Regards,
Ric
Most lawsuits aren’t good for much of anything but lawyers. There should be no grounds for a suit. Should be immediately dismissed. If someone offers you a contract that you don’t like, pass on it. Drug testing, hours, salary, weekend hours, work conditions, any of that.
This is my way of erring by not getting into other people’s shit. Employers should be able to ask for what they want and employees should be able to ask for what they want. If they can’t come to an agreement, the result shouldn’t be a lawsuit, it should be a handshake at the end of the interview.
Towards McClintock and all of that, I don’t really care about the dude.
Nono, Carin, you have it backwards. If it’s growing all over the place, it will revert to its more or less native price, i.e., about like alfalfa hay.
So if you buy a dozen eggs, you get an ounce baggie to try out. If they smoke it, they’ll get the munchies and come back for more eggs. Entry drugs, y’know.
Regards,
Ric
I think you are right Mr. bh especially with respect to stipulations at the time of hiring and if that is what Darleen meant then she is right too
but I don’t think that sort of nannyployment should be encouraged and I think people should take a dim view of that sort of thing
but that’s a nuanced point what is separate from Mr. McClintock’s scaremongering misleadyness I think
Mike and Ernst – Ordered liberty is also my ideal. However, in the case of that liberty contemplated by the founders included no restriction on intoxicants or medicines, and particularlry not marijuana ( grown and used medicinally by Washington, no less – certainly a person concerned about decorum and consideration for othersin every aspect of daily living).
This point continually flies past the heads of opponents of this proposition: this creates no NEW “disorder.”
Employers hire at will in most places. You are not their slave, they are not your master, and you may part ways when either is disatisfied with the other.
An employer can ask for a drug test, asking isn’t getting. You have no right to keep your job now, so you certainly don’t have the right to a job and the avoidance of a drug test.
An employer can make passing any sort of test that isn’t against public policy a condition of employment. In return his pool of applicants or available labor may shrink.
An employer can ask to test you for amphetamines, pain-kllers, mood-controlling drugs like cigarettes, intoxicants like alcohol, and hepatitis if they so choose. It’s perfectly legal.
You don’t have to work for them. Go work someplace else.
I’ve never been subject to nannyployment, in fact, I’m currently having a hard time coming up with enough incentives to get a guy to move from New York to the middle of nowhere. The last thing I’d do is risk pissing him off with random drug tests or anything like that.
But, I can imagine scenarios where an employer is faced with some negative publicity (“Their school bus drivers reek of ganja!”, “Those elevator mechanics have dread locks!”) and the only way out of it would be drug testing for awhile and an advertising campaign. In that scenario, I’d prefer being drug tested (even if I needed to stop for a month or cheat somehow) rather than lose my job.
Is the above scenario likely? I don’t know. But remember all the news stories awhile back about drunk airline pilots? You can lose some serious money quite quickly over shit like that.
SarahW — It’s useless. I generally weigh in on threads on this subject, but the fog of Pure Righteousness is impenetrable. The arguing is kind of fun, though.
Regards,
Ric
I’ll concede that I’m not in a typical profession in a variety of ways, but I’ve worked with a lot of stoners who are somewhat addicted, psychologically, and not only use during work but it affects their performance a great deal. Fortunately it ain’t brain surgery or driving buses, but it still makes it somewhat laughable to me when I hear the pro-marijuana contingent – which I’m nonetheless among – argue their case.
yes you are right SarahW I should not have argued that point as I did
I was wrong.
for incentives have you thought of hiring a pastry chef where you work?
Abe, I’m not in favor of people using drugs, especially on the job.
But Entropy, above, has it right: People aren’t dirtbags because they use drugs, people use drugs because they’re dirtbags. If it wasn’t the weed, they’d be finding some other way to screw up.
Down at my social level drugs are readily available, and the occasional thirty days in County for possession is just time not spent having to pound the pavement looking for a job. Most people don’t use, a goodly number use for recreation, and a few dirtbags get wasted. If you expunged all the drug laws tomorrow morning, there’d be about a year of nastiness, after which it would sort out that most people don’t use, a goodly number use for recreation, and a few dirtbags get wasted, just like it was when Thof. Jefferfon lived in the White House.
Regards,
Ric
A dedicated pastry chef would probably be about half as much as what I’m offering above the standard. The problem is that you can network every single night and weekend in New York and Chicago. People know how valuable that is.
The other problem is that I’d probably beat the pastry chef up and then run wind sprints.
thank you carrie nation
maybe real estate is where buying a corporate apartment in NY makes sense? This way there could be more back and forthing? My little company did that for awhile for commuters and satellite office people to take advantage of.
Many adventures ensued.
Peyton is good. Damn good.
could be a seiu member with a gaia complex
The other problem is that I’d probably beat the pastry chef up and then run wind sprints.
Have I told you folks about fartleks? They’re a cool form of wind sprints. Supposed to improve my time
I’ve been pitching variations on that like a mofo, ‘feets. Partially because I’m stuck doing two jobs until I finally hire my replacement. Senior partner X likes to see people face to face quite a bit though and he doesn’t fly for anyone less than a mega elephant client maybe once a month. Which I think is stupid but he’s the insanely rich guy who owns guns worth more than my car so maybe the face to face seeing is integral to procuring expensive weaponry.
it says it’s some sort of swedish torture from the same toolkit what includes parking at Ikea
No, but this is something I now need to know urgently. Give!*
*Want to stipulate that I recognize something named “fartleks” might be a joke.
Not true. A few people have bad reactions to anti-depressants, just as a few people have bad reactions to all drugs, but the fact that they affect the brain is the only thing they have in common. There are myriad ways to affect the brain, and street drugs on the one hand and SSRIs on the other are in totally different categories.
Not just bad reactions. I’ve used enough drugs recreationally or medically to know when I’m under the influence. When I was taking an SSRI I felt drugged. I was having some auditory hallucinations (whooshing noises) and I felt time shifted, like I was on a different clock than everyone else. These were not considered “bad reactions” by my doctor, but rather the normal activity of the drug.
Oh, and while some many not abuse SSRIs, other frequently prescribed psychoactives, like Ritalin, are used non-medically.
Frankly, I’d rather have my kid be operated on by an ER doc who smoked a joint on her way to work than by a resident on the end of a 36 hour shift.
well if you got a pastry chef for the apartment in NY maybe Senior Partner X would travel more
bacon chocolate crunch bars are very persuadey
the fog of Pure Righteousness is impenetrable
Hey! You’ve never seen me in a really good snit. On account of this blog doesn’t much assert stuff what really gets my dander up.
Is anyone else happy that pw doesn’t give a rip about the horse-race aspects of this year’s elections? In the sense that if the GOP were take every single race, we still wouldn’t feel up to a gloat-fest, not like when Dubya got reelected in ought four, I mean?
as long as it’s a repudiation on a relatively large order of magnitude the rest is details
I’m kind of expecting all sorts of interesting ex-post facto mandates to be culled from the results though.
it’s interesting though who propaganda whore Viv Schiller’s National Soros Radio picks to be the poster child of the midterms
it’s informative to compare her ubiquity with how you hardly ever see pictures of that tard the socialists nominated in South Carolina
Note to self: don’t email photos of vulgar victory dance performed at Ron Johnson’s victory party tomorrow night.
Note to bh – please post same on youtube.
Well, should the Prop pass, that will shrink the recruiting pool a bit more for the Armed Forces…sigh. A small, but personally worrying aspect of this.
I expect this to pass, by a small margin. And then we will see… so, I believe the arguments here are more immediately checked, ‘predictive’ than people may think :)
Heh, I should do nothing of the sort, JD.
Still, I remember back months ago when people were saying we had no chance against the fearsome Russ Feingold. Conservatives were saying this shit.
Yes, I’ll gloat a bit and do vulgar dances and have a few celebratory drinks. Just one night.
I think it will fail MR. LTC… the dirty socialists put out the words a few weeks ago hint hint that the longer they can have this recur on the ballot the better it will be for dirty socialist turnout in future
*Mr.* LTC I mean
Peyton to Reggie. Poetry in motion. Assbeating on the Texans. Note to Dems – this is what it is going to feel like tomorrow.
Mr. Soros gave a million though to pass it
Careful JD, as soon as you typed that the Texans got a TD back… I wasted my evening watching the Blackhawks fail yet again against an inferior team.
speaking of Mr. Soros, ten years later propaganda whore Viv Schiller’s National Soros Radio still doesn’t know which party Gary Condit belonged to
Things are under control, LtC John. We are about to get 7, or at least 3.
And Mike Fontenot gets a World Series ring.
A great thread. I’m still not convinced that legalized pot would be useful or helpful in any way to our morally shredded society; but to have an opportunity to vote it up or down is a good thing. California’s vote reminds me of the various state’s votes for amendments to keep marriage as a form of sacrament available between a man and a woman: a point of social order that needs to be aired out, passed around.
A shame for dopers that a certain US District Court judge hasn’t come out and declared pot smokers a newly-protected class that shouldn’t suffer unfair discrimination from bigots and h8ters, that smoking a joint is no different from getting your tongue-fu on with a couple-three dudes in a hot tub in the Castro district (where there’s much celebrating right now, I’d guess).
Is it a coinky-dink that the large set of pot smokers I’ve known over the years almost fully includes the smaller set of gays I’ve known over the years ? Inquiring minds want to know.
Are you sure they are conservatives?
I’m not.
Blackballed.
And some of them are still saying we have no chance against the Obama juggernaut in 2012.
And now I have a most excellent name for my vulgar victory dance.
Hear what you’re saying. (Not) pragmatists were shit talking everyone but the big spending dinosaur, Tommy Thompson.
BLACKBALLED?
Why is it BLACKBALLED? How about WHITEBALLED Ya bunch of redneck racists?
Podhoretz doesn’t seem to have a way with numbers here but on the other hand hasn’t any trouble communicating his excitement.
Comment by happyfeet on 11/1 @ 6:11 pm
Jesus, hf, give it up. You smeared McClintock and just won’t admit it. It’s like every little bone you get in your snarly poodle grip.
no he’s a liar I think – there’s no way you can construe what he said as being an honest statement of the law’s text or intent
He’s just another failshit Republican what when push comes to shove can be counted on to not stand up for individual liberty against the state.
How about the Liberty of the business owner against the state telling him/her exactly who to hire and under what circumstances someone can’t be “discriminated” against?
HF, smoke all the weed you want … just don’t force me to hire or retain you just cuz pot is “legal”.
I don’t smoke weed at all. I already conceded the point about employers having the right to test.
serr8d
shame for dopers that a certain US District Court judge hasn’t come out and declared pot smokers a newly-protected class
SHHHHH!! Hf is already there, let’s not give out any more ideas!
In California, even if you’re a retail business owner and one of you salesmen decides suddenly to start wearing dresses to work, you cannot discipline or fire the guy – no matter how it affects your business.
Is it any wonder that businesses try to screen as much as they can prior to hiring? Including drug testing for both legal and illegal substances?
The problem Dunphy has probably isn’t with the marijuana… it is the collectives and storefronts that are not really regulated and taxed appropriately… how can a collective get robbed for $300,000 cash when their declared ANNUAL gross revenues are less than that?… oops
meanwhile back in Texas
that’s pretty fucked in the head
link
Tonight we should probably be talking about feasting on the corpses of our enemies, ‘feets.
We have the another two years for the rest.
The Texans will have a long flight home.
tasty corpses yay!
Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their
womenpundits…A hard rain’s gonna fall tomorrow.
My favorite part of enemy corpse are the tiny glands that make tears. It’s a delicacy.
Yay!
glands of liberty!
I hope Team R is a more gracious winner than Team Douchenozzle will be poor losers.
My typos and grammatical errors are through the roof.
Which part of enemy corpse restores this?
You know, S- P- did a darn good interview with Bill-O tonight; she said an awful lot of what we talk about here.
http://tiny.cc/fkuxw
It’s the bottom of 2 videos posted.
It might even make happyfeet a little less nervous about her by seeing it.
But, Dude! It’s HotAir, so stay away from the comments :)
{{{But, Dude! It’s HotAir, so stay away from the comments :)}}}
“Which part of enemy corpse restores this?”
Cmon bh,
It’s the the left wing army corpse of engineers;)
Corpse of engineers…
That’s pretty good Danger :)
Ahhh, I should have guessed.
what did the stoner say when he was drowning?
‘like-help’
dude…wait…what?
“dude…wait…what?”
It was probably lost somewhere in the 400+ comments but did anyone mention the(ironically) left’s favorite crutch; the commerce clause, in this discussion.
Cus it might be a buzz killer;)
The effects of pot, for the overwhelming majority of users, are largely unremarkable. As psychoactive agents go, it’s about as innocuous as it gets. And that fact belies the hystrionics employed to demonize it. All of which reinforces the notion that government is full of shit. Putting pot smokers in jail is not justice, and employing dubious psychopharmacology to justify such a miscarriage befouls the institution.
I know CEOs who smoke pot and work 100 hour weeks and whose firms are profitable. This moralizing and hand-wringing is precisely the predicate for every disintermediation of liberty. I mean, what of nootropics and cogitive enhancement? We need to be able to experiment with this stuff. There are almost certainly all manner of legitimate pharmacological applications for LSD, but we can’t even study it.
ephedra helped me see god
well just the once
Why do you hate Jesus?
Racist.
that was really well-said actually even if you don’t google nootropics
my own personal nootropics is Cinemax after dark.
One day science will be able to explain it.
To dicentra.
Fine, ya’ll want Marijuana legalized great. I want shooting arrogant fucking potheads legalized, since 99.9% of the potheads I come into contact with are the aforementioned arrogant assholes. They are everywhere, and worst of all, they are in my sons family, and are influencing him to be just like they are. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t shgare your enthusiasm for yet another thing to fuck this country up…
I have no great enthusiasm, CD. I just don’t think criminalization of marijuana has done anything but clog the jails and ruin lives by giving people who don’t deserve it criminal records.
Wait. There can’t be any arrogant potheads, because marijuana is illegal.
I will support the legalization of pot when the UPTIGHT BLUE-NOSERS deregulate and decriminalize the legal substance tobacco.
Ric is somewhat right about the easy availability amongst certain classes, but I think he’s a bit off about the universality of use in those classes. I think that for some in the lower classes there are still certain moral and social inhibitors that prevent them from joining their brethren in a drug and alcohol haze. I also think that the loosening of those inhibitors will cause some of those to indulge, and a portion of those who do will become addicted and/or unhealthily dependant.
I used to be more Libertarian about drug legalization, until I lived with family and friends who lost their minds over various pharmaceuticals, legal or not. Then my son became a teenager…
The “loosening” of those inhibitors? Those inhibitors are within. They are natural. and they don’t disappear or appear because of law.
Celtic dragon, I don’t use marijuana, so the following arrogance is completely natural: Have you noticed that the potheads you revile…are potheads? As is, the law has not dissuaded them from their habits or traits? The legality of marijuana will not have much effect on that situation.
You seem to assume that more people would use more regularly, and I say more might try it, but the same split that is present today will remain in perpetuity…
SarahW-you seem very very Smart
Perhaps you could argue the case that smoke from pot is less damaging to others than smoke from tobacco?
Celtic dragon, you have a flaw in your logic, that because drug use, legal or illegal, can have very ill effects, that making drugs illegal solves that problem. It doesn’t, nor would legalization make it worse. Drug abusers tend to gravitate to the safest and cheapest self-medicator they can get their hands on, and there is even the possibility that greater access to safer, cheaper meds will improve the lot of that segment of the population that will be an abuser no matter what.
I don’t care to argue whether one smoke is more dangerous that the other. Neither is “safe”, though benefit has to be weighed against risk.
Any smoking in public is unfair to people who don’t smoke, as it gets smoke in their lungs and eyes and faces and on their clothes…it forces them to share the habit. Smoking should be a private habit, reserved for private spaces or a crowd of willing sharers of the smoking experience.
I suspect you come into contact with far more people that smoke pot than you realize.
“Any smoking in public is unfair to people who don’t smoke, as it gets smoke in their lungs and eyes and faces and on their clothes…it forces them to share the habit”
Interesting answer. So pot should be legalized so that UPTIGHT BLUE-NOSERS (such as your dear Smart self) can BAN IT?
Ever notice how WE have “stuff”, but other people have “shit”?
Weird, huh?
Sarah W, many of the inhibitors are social, religious, and work related. Legalization, including the wording in Cali’s Prop 19, would do much to remove what little is left of the social stigma, and force work and religious institutions to treat potheads as a protected class. So, there WILL be more (forced) acceptance of pot smoking , and therefore more smokers of it. Legalization will also increase the amount of use among teens, as it gets even easier to get than it already is, and more acceptable to use. Amsterdam is great for dirty stinking pothead hippies and whoremongers, but not so much for anyone else.
Mr. Dragon you should make sure to see Sarah’s updated thinkings here
Pable, I live in South Texas, along the border with Mexico. I am also a truck driver. I live and work among a lot of working and lower class people. I know EXACTLY how many people I meet who are pot smokers and drug users…
“I used to be more Libertarian about drug legalization, until I lived with family and friends who lost their minds over various pharmaceuticals, legal or not. Then my son became a teenager…”
I just want to point out once again that we are talking about weed, not pharmaceuticals.
If this were a legalization of all drugs, I would be on dicentra’s side. As is, with that caveat, I am in line with Jeff.
Too bad the initiative didn’t include licking toads, you would have to vote for that, wouldn’t ya? Just to see it?
1st: “Even if…. No more harmful than…” Where exactly does he get his information from? Alcohol is much more harmful than pot, in terms of long term health effects.
2nd: What were the social costs of the alcohol ban? We got the Kennedy clan! (cymbal clash for cheesy, if true joke. We had a huge increase in organized crime, which can be seen today with the Mexican govt being either powerless, or hand in glove with, murderous thugs.
3rd: For the true greenies, (nutty as they are there is a bit of wisdom here), you can get more cellulose out of an acre of pot than of trees, (good for the planet), or for fuel than corn, and since pot doesn’t need pesticides and herbicides that melt the earth, and fertilizer that pollute the rivers, (good for the earth), it would cut our dependence on fossil fuels, (good for the nation), and the list goes on.
Legalize pot. Encourage its industrial use as well as allow recreational.
(and as an aside to the “gateway drug” advocates, STFU)