Libertarians Need to Rethink Support for Drug Legalization
Libertarians are fond of pointing to the wreckage caused by the abuse of alcohol: deterioration of health, traffic deaths, and domestic violence. This is true, but it is an analogy that emerges from an abstraction. Libertarians argue that the only difference between the two is traditional: we have stamped alcohol consumption with a seal of social approval.
But I would argue that tradition should be a reason for its continued legal status and for denying legal status to marijuana.
The sanction for alcohol use goes back to the Bible. In the New Testament, references to its use in ceremonies like the Last Supper and the wedding at Cana appear. But Jesus also warns about excessive use. In the Old Testament, alcohol is shown to cloud the judgment of Lot. The Bible, in this way, tells us when and how we can use alcohol.
This means very little, though, in the arid moral climate of today’s libertarianism.
But I would argue that it should, not only from my position as a Christian, but from my position as a citizen of a country whose foundational values spring from the Judeo-Christian heritage. The sanction for alcohol use has lasted for millennia. It has become part of our rituals at meals, celebrations, and religious services. That is a large part of why Prohibition failed.
Marijuana, in contrast, has always been counter-cultural in the West. Every toke symbolizes a thumb in the eye of Western values. So it follows that in order to maintain our culture, we need to criminalize this drug.
The prohibition against marijuana is one brick in the foundation of our society. On a practical level the use of marijuana also works to knock out other bricks, like the work ethic, emotional engagement, sexual inhibition, and the ability to reason. For example, when one of my college students leads off in defense of the legalization of marijuana, he invariably does so in a disjointed manner, unable to muster the resources of reason and conviction to his argument. (He also does this in his essays.) One caller, “Dave,” to the Doc Washburn program displayed the same apathetic, but friendly, attitude.
While one cannot come to class drunk without drawing attention, he can attend under the influence of marijuana, sitting in the back of the room with a glazed, though not unpleasant, expression.
But that’s exactly what the left wants: a nation of young zombies — indifferent, unengaged, and uncaring. They provide amenable subjects to indoctrination. Alcohol may fuel fights, but marijuana, as its advocates like to point out, makes the user mellow. The toker wants to make love, not war.
The libertarian maintains that values are the function of the private sphere: the family and church. But as Goldwater argued in the riot-plagued year of 1964, when safety and order are not maintained by the government, our freedoms are affected. In so many ways, the legalization of drugs will lead to the further breakdown of order.
To give sanction to a drug that robs the individual of reason and conviction is to give up on our way of life. It is another surrender to the counter-culture. It sends a dangerous message to young people. A recent study shows that the creeping sanction through legalization of “medical” marijuana in certain states is giving young teenagers a sense of safety about marijuana use.
Marijuana killed Andrew Grande, not only in the literal sense, but in the sense that it abetted his descent into a very sad, counter-cultural lifestyle. Its legalization is supported by the same forces that promote Kevin Jennings, one-world government, Gaia worship, and legalized prostitution. All these elements work against the traditional libertarian values of initiative, freedom, and honor. Libertarians need to rethink their position on drug legalization.
The author fails to consider the great cost of modern prohibition: limited government.
What article of the constitution permits the federal government to criminalize the consumption of a class of, in the botanical sense, vegetable? We know what gave it the authority to prohibit the sale of alcohol. It took an amendment to the constitution. One that has since been repealed.
It’s not about the drug. It’s about the power of the state. If it has the power to regulate or ban the use of marajuana and intrastate commerce therein it has the power to do the same to any substance. And if the government doesn’t have the authority to regulate other substances not involved in interstate commerce, like say carbon dioxide, it also has no authority to regulate marajuana unless it is transported across state lines.
Well, maybe for some it’s about the drug. The saying about the enemy of my enemy applies even if my enemy’s enemy is stoned.
This is nonsense. A man commits an act, specifically to protect himself against imprisonment, that causes him and no one else harm — unintended harm, at that — and you think it illustrates the evil of what he swallowed?
You maintain that a change in the law would tie employers’ private hands? What, is the law now going to mandate affirmative action for drug users?
As for that business with prostitutes and drug use, laws that force certain persons outside the law have always eventuated in those persons acquiring additional extra-llegal behaviors. With prostitutes, the lack of protection they receive from the law, owing to the illegality of their trade, has a powerful depressing effect, which leads directly to the use of intoxicants of all kinds. To say nothing of the anesthetic effects they often require after being physically abused.
I lost a brother to drugs. I’m no fan of them. But I’m even less a fan of laws, and the sanctimony behind them, that make some persons into outlaws because others disapprove of their private, nonviolent choices. To favor laws that cause a net increase in both lawlessness and self-victimization is insane.
In summary: Miss Grabar, you’re the opposite of a conservative. And the opposite of a thinker.
Mary, come on. Andrew Grande isn’t dead because libertarians believe that adults should have the freedom to indulge in recreational drug use. He’s dead because he was stupid enough to try and swallow a plastic bag of marijuana.
Ah, sorry i have to disagree.
I cannot say marijuana is harmless, of course. Its a drug, and as such it clouds the mind and abusive use is dangerous. But obviously its human nature that a lot of people feel the need to get high, or drunk. You cannot change human nature with laws (one of the reason communism must fail and also why the prohibition failed). People will always find a way to get their drugs, legal or otherwise.
From my experience as a judge dealing with crime, i can say that about 80 % of all violent crime happens with at least one party intoxicated with alcohol. Number of violent crimes under the influence of marijuana i´ve had in the last 7 years: maybe 2 or 3 out of several hundred cases
Experience in Holland also shows that legalizing marijuana does not lead to a significant rise in substance abuse.
Heck, our great-grandparents used to add a bit of hemp flowers to their tobacco in world war one.
No, the ban on marijuana is not rational and does more harm than good. Usually conservatives have it right, but here is one point i have to disagree.
“The author fails to consider the great cost of modern prohibition: limited government.”
You can have limited government without legalizing drugs. The “war” on drugs will never end…unless we decide that hard drugs for children is alright. As long as some drugs are not fine for some people, the war will continue. There has not been a single Western country that has legalized drugs. Marijuana was decriminalized in Portugal but that doesn’t mean that people are allowed to deal it — legalization. It just means that people are sent to rehab instead of jail for small amount of possession.
There is a way to thread the needle consistent with US conservative traditions and libertarian beliefs. There is no Libertarian bar against legalizing discrimination against drug users. In fact, social disapproval is a perfectly conservative impulse too. The problem is that sloppy drunks are differentiated from the occasional imbiber of alcohol yet moderate drug taking is strongly discouraged by the logic of the drug war. We’re stuck in a place where our past social disgust against the obvious drug taker has been replaced by a destructive and expensive legalistic substitute. We cannot afford to continue the legalistic approach yet we have no mechanism to reinvigorate the social approach.
If libertarians were to sign on to the social disapproval angle while maintaining their limited government approach to the legal consequences of drug use, conservatives would gain allies in establishing the only long-term effective approach to saving people from destroying their lives with drugs. The joint project establishing a social code of conduct equivalent to the code we have with alcohol (and ideally more effective than it) is better than just saying to libertarians, “give it up”.
We would end up at a more stable equilibrium point, drug legalization eventually but social disapproval now. But would conservatives bite at that offer? Would libertarians?
Outlawing a simple deciduous plant is ridiculous prima-facia. Spending Billions of dollars to obstensively protect people from their own bad habits is nothing more than a way to funnel large amounts of cash into the politicians’ pockets from the trial lawyers.
The drug laws have ruined far more lives than the drugs have. If you feel we need a police state in order for you to stay off drugs I pity you.
If you MUST outlaw a plant, why not pick ragweed? That really does cause a lot of grief.
the “war on drugs” has failed dismally. It has filled our prisons and wasted billions that could have been better spent elsewhere. the time has come to legalize (or decriminalize) many of the drugs in question and tax the hell out of them. additionally, we should have learned from the folly of the 18th amendment…that was an abject failure and gave a huge impetous to criminal enterprises, just as the “war on drugs” has allowed the amassing of huge levels of wealth by drug cartels.
Prohibition has never, ever worked – except perhaps in China where they executed drug users. The consequences of prohibition are usually than effects of the prohibited substances themselves.
AH yes… the half and quarter thought out arguments of the drug surrenderists pop up like fleas at a seedy kennel.
Riddle me this Batmen….
For whom do you propose to legalize which drugs?
Once you answer that.
Does that remove the illegal drug trade, the black market, and all of the social criminal pathologies that accompany the drug culture?
Think hard. Drink some coffee… (mild stimulant there…) breathe. When you get past the number 21, you might have a clue as to what the answers to those questions are. You might also get an glimmer of realization as to why Mary Grabar is spot on.
Regards,
The Mighty Fahvaag
The pot afficiandos are out in force.I guess I could live with a few more societal parasites who want a crutch to disguise their indolence by calling it freedom. Drugs like cocaine are something else. Do we really want to see 20 year olds dying of heart attacks after a line of coke? How about prescription drug abuse, a la Michael Jackson? Tiger Woods and his Ambien plus Vicodin?
As a practicing physician I am most offended by the medicalization of marijuana. I’m sure that people dying of cancer benefit by getting stoned. That, after all, is what palliation is all about. Trouble is, all kinds of faux diseases like “chronic fatigue syndrome” are given the green light to use pot as a treatment.
I have a suggestion for a trade-off. Anybody who wants to live as a stoner is welcome to do so: but he can’t receive public assistance in any form as long as he uses. Getting welfare is contingent on passing a monthly drug screen. Otherwise, take your chances earning money in competition with the underworld, which will only grow more powerful if drugs are legalized. The creative destruction of drug capitalists is evident right now in Mexico.
1. Unlike climate science, laws only work properly when they are consensually obeyed. People have to want to obey them. I thought we learned that during the first prohibition. Not only do these laws make drug problems worse, creating scofflaws is a huge mistake. Consider Woodstock. A half a million people got together and happily obeyed almost all of the laws. What do you make of that?
2. Even though liberals apparently won’t legalize cannabis either, the marijuana laws create liberal voters out of young people for no other reason. This because of the law alone, not an automatic effect of smoking cannabis.
3. Cannabis is really not a drug in the sense that others are. This occurence was the result of choking on a plastic bag. Cannabis use has never killed anyone. Ever.
4. If you actually call yourself a Libertarian, please stop and MYOB.
The corrosive effect of marijuana extends far beyond the pharmacological effect. It’s continued prohibition gives government the ability to violate, even non-users, privacy on mere suspicion; proximity to that activity and in many cases just an excuse to go “fishing” for evidence of illegal activity.
I am about as conservative a person you are likely to encounter and even I support the legalization of drugs. I do not do drugs myself, never have and I also do not drink alcohol.
Education made drunk driving something to avoid rather than brag about. Illegal drugs need the same dedicated truthful exposure. Pot gains some romance just because it’s forbidden by law. Law enforcement becomes the enemy of decent people who like to smoke something they believe is no more harmful than booze. Prohibition is worse than legalization. But the culture of pot must be taken on. That song “Cause I Got High” was popular because it illustrated that every time he was about to get his act together, he got high instead and screwed it all up. High schoolers are well aware of the former A students who became pot zombies unable to complete a coherent sentence. I used to tell my kids they could become pot heads or they could do the stuff they really wanted, but they couldn’t do both. They grew up around enough pot heads to know it was true and acted accordingly. Legalization of pleasure drugs would bring the Mexican cartel war to a screeching halt. It’s time we tried common sense and an honest look at drugs and drug mythology.
This critique is overly presumptuous and draws many of it’s conclusions from ideologies rather then facts.
Just where is there a DUTY to preserve social order. That is an absolutely preposterous proposition that always leads to a more expansive set of laws, rules and regulations that require special interpretation by an activist judiciary. Who is going to define SOCIAL ORDER? YOU? Some unelected official? The Pope? Al Sharpton? John McCain? What people do in private is between their God and themselves. What Billy Bob does when he gets on a forklift at the steel mill is everybody’s business, and business owners already have a mechanism for preventing Billy Bob from endangering others. Get off your moralizing high horse. We need less legislation dictating MORALS. Your arguments have nothing to do with Libertarian philosophy, and everything with imposing your set of rules on the rest of us.
“…a nation of young zombies — indifferent, unengaged, and uncaring.”
Instictively we all know this to be true. Today’s youth and even Gen Xers would abuse dope if it became legal. How many more “Jackass” youth do you want running around?
Our youth suffer enough from an upside down culture. Do you really want to make it worse by allowing them to get stoned? Imagine the accelerated drop in our schools and individual achievement. Imagine the further breakdown in clasroom behavior. College students already think college is four years of partying what would happen if dope were legal?
Can any of you cite an independent study that proves dope is not a gateway drug? Do you really believe that safety and productivity at work would not be effected by dope? Do you want a school bus driver high while driving students to school, how about a train driver??? Surgeon? Pilot? Do you really believe that a stoned driver is a consciencious and safe driver especially since the prohibitions of driving stoned would then be removed?
And if you say in rebuttal that limits would be placed on when and where you could dope up then how do you enforce those regulations, and if you are going to regulate that then what is the difference in keeping it illegal in the first place.
And do you libertarians really believe the drug trade and crime would lessen if dope was legalized? Would not the doper still have to find money? Would there not still be a black market on manufacturing and distribution?
Our drug war and criticism of it is a red herring. If we really wanted to stop the importation of it, we could shut down the southern border. It is politics especially from the left and a MSM that seeks a drugged society that keeps the ineffective “war on drugs” from being effective.
Do you really want George Soros to be correct?
What a nonsense!
What’s next? Shall we go back to the prohibition years and start a War on alcohol too? you little taliban?
Mary,
This article is not up to your usual work, and your arguments are weak.
(Did a student hand this in and this is an experiment to grade the paper based on the comments? Oh, I hope so.)
Holding Andrew Grande up as the basis for your argument is laughable in the extreme.
Andrew Grande, by your own account, was:
a. not worthy of pity
b. choked on a plastic bag – in a vain attempt to avoid drug possession charges
c. was not intelligent
d. was not a productive member of our society or valuable role model
Tina Trent – “…studies show that the illegal drug trade flourishes despite the legality of marijuana in certain states and other countries”. Well – duh. Could it possibly be that criminals sell drugs to make money, and they can’t do that if the drug is legally sold?
“…today’s libertarians have made a devil’s pact with the pro-drug forces…” I’m sorry – I must have missed this on multiple levels. There’s a pact? There are pro-drug forces? Do these pro-drug forces want to force drugs on people?
“The sanction for alcohol use goes back to the Bible.” So does slavery, polygamy and animal sacrifice – Why are these not a part of our “foundational values” derived from “the Judeo-Christian heritage?”
I don’t think there is a single paragraph in this article that cannot be ripped apart with at least a “no foundation” comment, and most are just pitiful.
Please offer this student a chance to re-write it.
I agree with the other comments above – The real issue is government.
If your pants don’t fit and are causing you pain, it does not necessarily follow that you should walk around naked. Likewise, the abuses of the war on drugs do not constitute an argument for legalization. They constitute an argument for reforming the way the war is fought, and for reigning in abuses of due process.
wow..have to disagree with this article:
First: “Marijuana, in contrast, has always been counter-cultural in the West. Every toke symbolizes a thumb in the eye of Western values. So it follows that in order to maintain our culture, we need to criminalize this drug.”
ummm if its legal..NO MORE COUNTER_CULTURE to the lefties, how can it be if its legal??? makes no sense..
second: Defending alcohol>?? over pot?? This poster said it best: “From my experience as a judge dealing with crime, i can say that about 80 % of all violent crime happens with at least one party intoxicated with alcohol. Number of violent crimes under the influence of marijuana i´ve had in the last 7 years: maybe 2 or 3 out of several hundred cases”
I will add..watch cops!!!! stupid show but my god how many domestic violent abuses are done while drunk??? I just dont see how alcohol can be defended while pot is not?? Pot smokers dont seem to hurt as many people or effect others lives so much:, less domestic violence, less pot driving, ect…I have been around both and pot smokers are in general peaceful and nice. Check the show Jersey shore or any other crap show from MTV…when drunk young males are abusive and mean, check out the video of the Snookie(that her name?) getting punched in the bar by a man drinking…never see that from a pot head.
another thing: the man is dead because of his OWN STUPIDITY!!! Umm trying to swallow a plastic bag of anything is stupid and HIS choice…
All this being said i drink…a lot and too much, but even i cant defend drinking while demonizing pot, i have seen to much the effect of both.
sorry but this article is so far off…
And i am not for drugs at all, but to slam pot and defend booze is just not thinking right…
my 2c
This article is ridiculous. You can say what you want about the pros and cons of marijuana/ drug use but swallowing a bag of pot did not kill this man. He could have swallowed a bag of cancer curing anti-oxidants and it would have killed him. I can hardly believe this is even a featured article it’s so poorly thought out. This is truly an example of a man that died of a non-lethal substance MERELY due to the fact that he was persecuted for it.
And arguing that alcohol should be legal and marijuana not simply because of TRADITION is completely ridiculous. That’s like arguing that Afghanistan soccer fields being used for public beheadings instead of soccer is better because it’s what they’re used to.
There are plenty of arguments against the legalization of marijuana and other drugs but this article raised NONE of them. F
What part of “part free” does Mary want to be?
I’ve no problem with private employers discriminating against drug abusers. I wouldn’t use what are now classified as illegal drugs if they were free and FDA tested. I remember growing up in a mostly free country, one my kids and grandkids will never know.
If you think the war on drugs is working, or not corrosive to a free society, you aren’t worth debating. Save the anti-libertarian snark, I’m a veteran who has done his share for society, thank you. The deal is a two-way one, and let’s just say I’m heavily on the giving side.
The snark about welfare was laughable. You’ll spend hundreds of thousands to toss some druggie into prison, then pretty much guarantee the only way he can survive is to become a criminal. That’s smarter or more cost effective than treatment? I’m no compassionate conservative. My opposition is based on reason.
What Mary and her co-thinkers don’t understand is that we have a mutual obligation between government and citizens, and one side of the deal is being badly abused.
I agree with the David. Grande’s death had nothing to do with drugs. It was Darwinism in action. As to the legalization of drugs, I think the legalization of some drugs for adults might be a good idea. I also agree with Dan. Most of us have to consent, at least in theory, to drug testing in the workplace. I think it’s outrageous that money is taken from us by the government and then passed out to people who don’t have to pass any type of drug screening (or, for that matter, do anything else) in order to collect the money.
The war on drugs has failed and cannot be won because its obviously human nature -not in everyone, but in a lot of people- to get stoned every now and then.
So, if you legalize cannabis and give out “hard” drugs under supervision to hardcore addicts you eliminate 80 % of illegal drug trade and thereby about 1/3 of organized crime without raising costs to the state and with giving people more freedom instead of taking their freedoms away.
What Nate (#1) said.
The impulse to control others is what we’re fighting, Mary. Trust freedom.
#5. Robert:
Yes, you can have limited government without drug legalisation…
If you go about prohibition in a constitutional fashion. Anything you wish to ban or regulate must be explicitly named in an amendment to the constitution with similar language to that which prohibited alcohol.
Anything less requires you to find penumbras somewhere.
I have been looking for someone to convince I am wrong about the legalization of drugs, but I you have failed. I am active in recovery groups and volunteer at a homeless shelter. I am painfully aware that marijuana is a gateway drug and that today’s weed is much more powerful than the stuff that was around when I was in college 40 years ago. However, if government can regulate a weed because of its harmful effects on society, then why not trans fats? Oh, that’s right they do! And next on the list is soda and other items deemed “harmful” to society in general. The best way to regulate such things is the same way you point out that alcohol has and that is through societal pressure. Booze is legal, but show at work drunk and see what happens. I realize the method is not perfect, but I find it far preferable that the alternative!
Who here smokes weed?
Pot is illegal because the Hemp industry would put chemical, paper, and even the biofuel industries out of business.
This is the bottom line, and has been for decades. There is no resource on earth as efficient as Hemp to produce quality products that last the ages and are incredibly inexpensive to produce;
the declaration of Independace is written on Hemp,Any product made from petroleum by products such as plastic can be made from Hemp, and be biodegradable, Cothes from Hemp are superior to Cotton, fibreboard ( cardboard) is superior when made from Hemp…its a never ending list.
Dont kid yourselves, big business would suffer catastrophically if Hemp were legal and the US once again made products from Natures best resource. Pot was the excuse to allow Mellon chemical to create synthetic products, otherwise there is no profit as people would simply make their own as they had been for hundreds / thousands of years
The founders of the USA grew Hemp, it is also a superior natural pesticide, it would be interspersed in crop fields and maintain pest free environments.
Specious arguments…what do they say is the definition of insanity?
“But I would argue that tradition should be a reason for its continued legal status and for denying legal status to marijuana.”
So I suppose that if pot use continues into the future as it does today we should revisit this argument.
A person can have a drink or two, and be sober. Have a toke, and you are stoned. So the question is, if having a toke is legal, how do you advertise it? Smoke brand X tokes because it will make you higher than brand Y stokes?
Do you see a possible problem here?
The old adage “a libertarian is just a conservative on drugs” applies here. Ms. Grabar has made excellent points as to why cannabis shouldn’t be legalized, including a few I hadn’t thought of. And it is true in my experience: while getting high can feel good, it also tends to make you STUPID—for several hours at a stretch. And peopleunder the spell of stupidity tend to make stupid arguments and stupid decisions. I worked for several years in the substance abuse field. I knew women who had been strippers who were addicts. they all told me that drug addiction was the norm among strippers. Virtually all used drugs and alcohol nightly.
fact check-legaliazing pot would not make it illegal for employers to test. At a local hopsital, they test for tobacco use-which is a legal product, and fire smokers even though it is a legal product.
#27
Say, NAT, were you smoking weed when you parachuted in to kill a platoon of Charlies and save a company of endangered marines, picking up a nail yourself and for that receiving a Purple Heart and Silver Star? BTW, how’s that search for an MOS coming?
33. Bob McCrindle:
“A person can have a drink or two, and be sober.”
No, you’re not sober. Sober is having no alcohol in your system. “A drink or two” and you’re impaired, the only question remaining is one of degree – at least according to the cop who pulled me over.
The “it’s a plant” argument is a logical fallacy. Heroin and Cocaine both come from a plant, and THC the component of Marijuana that gets you high can be separated from the plant. This is generally known a Hash or Hasish. Many of you would shy away from the legalization of heroin or cocaine, so that doesn’t fly. Peyote is made from a plant as well and it is a powerful hallucinogen, I’m sure there are other plants that can be used to manufacture drugs or poisons as well that are regulated.
Also your arguments for “social pressure” not legal ramifications doesn’t remove the whole “counter culture” mystique either. It actually reinforces the counter culture mystique and removes several of the consequences of use and possession.
Those who place the highest priority on the benefits of marijuana usage accuse those who place the highest priority on the dangers of marijuana usage of peddling biased science. Which is exactly the same accusation made the other way.
Until science which does not have an axe to grind, in other words, is independent, is presented, the dangers of politicized science cannot be swept under the rug.
Hey, if we’re going to continue the prohibition line…then we need to really clamp down…invoke the death penalty for all who are found guilty fo trafficing…immediate appeals…through rapid courts and execution w/in 60 days of conviction. That’s the only way to overcome this BS. Because what we are doing has failed.
70% of ALL convictions are drug related, whether through burlaries to support habits, or minor trafficing to support a “free” use…at this point it’s an all or nothing proposition. But this country doesn’t have the will to actually do anything about this. After all, if it doesn’t give instant gratification, they why bother? We as a nation have come to think that if you don’t get instant results, then it’s just too much trouble.
so…either decriminalize it, or crank up the consequences to make it unthinkable to actually do the crime.
Most law breakers would agree that the law they are breaking is necessary to society and actually a good law. They break the law for some personal advantage or because of some personality flaw but generally do not become activists for changing the laws they break. Burglars believe there should be laws against burglary. Murderers, other than insane people accept that laws against murder are a good thing. They don’t want to be burglarized or murdered at a whim. Drug use differs. I don’t care if someone else smokes marijuana. As far as the danger to me from someone else who is “on” marijuana? I have to say it’s down there with worrying about getting hit by a meteorite. I guess it could happen.
The war on marijauna has actually caused the proliferation of harder drugs that no one but jazz musicians would have considered doing in the first place. It’s time to admit that the cure is worse than the disease.
Alex. fuggedaboutit….it was made illegal to protect industry and subordinate a class of people.
That’s an inconvenient truth.
I’m not going to dispute some people’s predisposition to stupidity.
Sorry Mary, this doesn’t pass muster.
From a philosophical perspective, there is no way a libertarian position can support laws about what a person does in their own home. If you think that its a good idea, you don’t understand the philosophy, go try again.
From a Big Government position… the Drug War has been horrific. Here’s the low down in case you’re too busy playing Busybody:
1. The US Government has not only repeatedly LIED about Marijuana, but the GAO has stated that the Drug Czar is PERMITTED to make whatever statements fit with his goal… truth is not required.(That alone would be enough for most sane ‘small governmnet’ types) so lets look at some examples!!
Is Marijuana potency growing at an extreme rate? According to the Drug Czar modern weed is 10 to 20 x stronger than the plants of 30 or 40 years ago. (John Walters, Washington Post May 1, 2002).
However, if we look at the real world… According to the federal Potency Monitoring Project, in 1985, the average THC content of commercial-grade marijuana was 2.84%, and the average for high-grade sinsemilla in 1985 was 7.17%. In 1995, the potency of commercial-grade marijuana averaged 3.73%, while the potency of sinsemilla in 1995 averaged 7.51%. In 2001, commercial-grade marijuana averaged 4.72% THC, and the potency of sinsemilla in 2001 averaged 9.03%.
Quarterly Report #76 University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project (Director of NIDA)
Last I checked, 4.72 was not 10 times more than 2.84, nor is 9.03 10 times more than 7.17.
In fact, for the Drug Czar to be telling the truth, marijuana would have had to have .4% THC in the 60′s and 70′s for merch and .9% for Kine Bud. That’s on par with wild hemp numbers…
AND THAT is how the Drug Czar got away with his statement. “Compared to Wild Hemp, culitvated hemp is 10 or 20 times stronger.” The falsehood was in making it appear that “wild hemp” is what parents smoked a generation ago (its not, they smoked cultivated hemp which is quite comparable).
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Another example of bad data handling lies with the “marijuana overdose visits in emergency rooms”. ONDCP mentions it in a number of places as have various policy papers. It comes in a variety of statements, but they all basically say that emergency rooms are reporting huge increases in Marijuana drug mentions, in cases.
Quote
Of an estimated 113 million emergency department (ED) visits in the U.S. during 2006, the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) estimates that 1,742,887 were drug-related. DAWN data indicate that marijuana was involved in 290,563 ED visits
- http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/DrugFact/marijuana/marijuana_ff.html
Stated as it is, we’re left to believe that people are going to the hospital BECAUSE they overdosed on marijuana or had some horrible side effect… let us leave to the side that overdosing is medically impossible and ‘horrible side effects’ would likely be ‘paranoia’… let’s examine what a ‘drug mention’ is.
The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) is the group charged with collecting the stats that ONDCP and others use for these claims. Here’s what they had to say:
Quote
“Drug Episodes vs. Drug Mentions
“Drug-Related Episode: A drug or ED episode is an ED visit that was induced by or related to the use of an illegal drug(s) or the nonmedical use of a legal drug for patients age 6 years and older.
“Drug Mention: A drug mention refers to a substance that was mentioned during a drug-related ED episode. Because up to 4 drugs can be reported for each drug abuse episode, there are more mentions than episodes cited in this report.” (p. 1)
Source: “Year-End 2000 Emergency Department Data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network,” Office of Applied Studies, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, US Dept. of Health and Human Services, July 2001.
So all that these numbers tell us is that when people go to the hospital with a problem with one drug, they ALSO might mention they smoked a joint. So the person in the hospital because they OD’d on heroin, if they smoked a joint that day, would get counted… even though the pot had nothing to do with their bareback horse ride. Or, if a person OD’s because they are depressed… and if they also happened to smoke because they were depressed… BAM another statistic.
There might be some cases where someone is in the emergency room because of pot related issues (maybe they burned themselves on a lighter), but the statistics as used, appear to strongly support a position which doesn’t appear realistic.
——————-
How about the Gateway Drug?
According to SAMHSA 2001 (National Household Survey on Drug Use) :
Quote
76.3 million people have tried marijuana, while only 2.78 million have ever tried heroin in their lifetimes and only 5.3 million have ever tried cocaine in their lives. The figures for monthly use are similar: 10.7 million Americans admit to being regular marijuana users, yet only 1.2 million admit to using cocaine each month – 1 for every 9 marijuana users – and 130,000 people use heroin monthly, or 1 for every 80 regular marijuana users.
Hrmmm, 1/15, 1/10, 1/80 those don’t appear to support any sort of gateway theory…. it does however support that people who do hard drugs may also smoke pot, but not that people who smoke pot are likely to try harder stuff.
———————-
Now one for the kids:
Quote
Research shows that kids who use marijuana weekly are nearly four times more likely than nonusers to report they engage in violent behavior.”
— Office of National Drug Control Policy, Marijuana Myths & Facts
(Online article from 2006 which is now missing, it was replaced by a document which doesn’t have this obvious falsehood.)
Now this is a great example of cherry picking. The original study which ONDCP referenced concluded with this:
Quote
“A disclaimer, or a note of caution, is indicated against over-generalizing the findings of a linkage between marijuana use with drug selling in the inner-city and with involvement in serious types of criminal and violent behavior. These significant marijuana-violence linkages that have been found for this study sample may not apply to a representative sample of the general population. The findings presented here may be specific for the sample of this study: an inner-city, relatively low SES, African/American sample. As postulated in the introductory section of this paper, marijuana use during adolescence is fairly widespread in this study sample, especially within specific peer groups. The regular users of marijuana maintain contact with the sellers of drugs, and thus become more familiar with the criminal life style, which may lead to a tendency to engage in drug selling themselves, and thus to a greater likelihood of committing violent illegal offenses. The drug sellers from whom they originally obtained the cocaine and other drugs during their adolescence, most likely were adolescent peers who grew up in similar circumstances to their own. The majority in the sample need the money. Some are helping their families financially with some of the money they earn from selling drugs. Thus, a peer bonding and friendship develops between the buyer/user and his drug provider. The buyer/user becomes a new seller, and eventually finds himself in circumstances in which engaging in violent illegal behavior is routine and is considered to be acceptable. “These findings on the degree of relationship of substance use to violent behavior may be somewhat inflated since we do not have available for control purposes, data on all the possible factors, in addition to substance use, that may be involved in violent behavior, (i.e., all of the relevant characteristics, behavior and life circumstances of the subjects, that predispose to violent behavior). The fact that there were available as many as 51 such relevant characteristics for use as control variables in the analyses, may be considered to be a relative strength of the study. On the other hand, it is a weakness, or a limitation of this study, that data on some of the factors or influences that are known to predispose to violent behavior were not available for the analyses. An outstanding example of such an influence is the amount of time spent during childhood and adolescence in watching TV programs and films that present violent behavior in an interesting and exciting manner. Such entertainment programs sometimes present, as heroic figures, characters who use drugs and engage in violence. In any case, the lack of more complete control data should not be a significantly greater problem for determining the effect of the use of marijuana on violent behavior, than this lack would be for the effect of the use of any other type of drug. Thus, it would not explain why the degree of marijuana use was found to have a greater degree of relationship to certain types of violent behavior, when compared to the degree of cocaine/crack use.”
A study completed two years earlier (Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 2004) made the statement:
Quote
“With regard to the associations between early frequent marijuana use and later violence, our conclusions are similar to those of White et al. (1999), in that what we are seeing is a selection effect. In other words, marijuana use is more atypical during early adolescence and becomes more normative with age, and the subset of males who begin marijuana use at younger ages are at elevated risk for several serious outcomes, including poly drug use, violence, and property offending. It is likely that this subgroup of males is inherently more deviant, engaging in multiple problem behaviors at earlier ages, choosing deviant peers, and being more likely to manifest their individual propensity for aggression and antisocial behavior later on. Our findings reinforce the benefits of primary prevention efforts that address multiple risk factors early on, as well as early intervention with high risk or aggressive males.
“Because the proportion of violent individuals who used marijuana frequently was larger than the proportion of frequent marijuana users engaging in violence, and because the prediction of violence from earlier frequent marijuana use was mediated by common risk factors, our results do not indicate that early frequent marijuana use causes later violence. Rather, we conclude that frequent marijuana use and violence co-occur because they share common risk factors (e.g., race/ethnicity, hard drug use). It is important to keep in mind that marijuana has been used for centuries and is the most widely used illicit drug today and that the majority of marijuana users do not engage in violence (Boles & Miotto, 2003). Our findings indicate that intervention with young violent offenders to prevent or treat substance use problems may be more practical than targeting marijuana users for violence prevention.”
—————–
Now, I am NOT claiming that these Studies are TRUTH or FACT… I am however, using them as examples where the Drug Czar and the ONDCP, the official government heads of Drug Control Policy, appear to select interpretations of data which fit their political policies, and appear to avoid data which disagrees with the official position. Indeed, that was exactly what the General Accounting Office concluded in the quote I made earlier. The job of the Drug Czar and his department is to support and promote the federal position… not dissseminate facts.
Quote
ONDCP is specifically charged with the responsibility for “taking such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use” of certain controlled substances such as marijuana —- a responsibility which logically could include the making of advocacy statements in opposition to legalization efforts.
-GAO
In this response, the GAP was citing an instance where the Deputy Director made claims which appear misleading, namely:
Marijuana is addictive.
Marijuana and Violence are directly linked.
No one is being imprisoned for smoking a joint.
Marijuana is a Gateway Drug.
Marijuana has no medical benefit (apparently the FDA is full of shit as they claim Marinol is medically beneficial).
So, here we have a government body that, according to the GAO is charged with supporting and promoting the current policy, even if it means they must provide ‘misleading information’ to do so.
AND THAT, before moral outrage, or timid sensibilities confused between propaganda and pot is why the Drug War is Bad and Wrong.
You fail to philosophically understand the right of individuals, the abuse of government or the huge waste of taxpayer funds. Your Bias is clear… keep your morals to yourself.
36. Fred Beloit:
You’ve been exposed and as a result, you’re bitter, I get it. Here’s the question – do you smoke weed?
Sorry, have to chime in with a couple of disagreements
1. you can never legislate morality
2. You should never make rules you know will not be obeyed- they weaken the structure the rest of the rules are based on
3. You cannot prevent stupid people from doing stupid things- “never teach a pig to whistle, it wastes your time and annoys the pig” Mark Twain
4. During my active duty days, I did two rotations for counterdrug ops in the mid-nineties. It was like trying to stop an avalance with a snow shovel. IMHO illegal drugs cannot be stopped unless we remake our society into something vastly different. I’m all for allowing the idiots access to all of the wonderful drugs they want. Stoned liberals can’t write healthcare bills or cap and trade legislation. Hmmm, maybe I’m on to something here.
Merry Christmas to all
Blotto,
Instictively we all know this to be true. Today’s youth and even Gen Xers would abuse dope if it became legal. How many more “Jackass” youth do you want running around?
Oddly enough, most GenXers I know smoke pot AND hold down respectable jobs… personally I make over six figures a year and have lots of responsibility… and I smoke. I have friends that are managers, developers, graphic artists, construction workers and my dealer is an Navy hero (one of the poor sods that Carter left in Tehran). So take your bigoted stereotypes elsewhere. Jackasses will act like jackasses with or without pot.
Our youth suffer enough from an upside down culture. Do you really want to make it worse by allowing them to get stoned? Imagine the accelerated drop in our schools and individual achievement. Imagine the further breakdown in clasroom behavior. College students already think college is four years of partying what would happen if dope were legal?
According to the actual evidence (not the crazy in your head.. but actual ya know… evidence) there would be a small surge and then the numbers would fall back to where they are now. This is because, right now, its easy to get pot. In fact, most teenagers will tell you that its far easier to get pot than alcohol. Because alcohol is LEGAL and they have to find an adult willing to risk getting caught buying alcohol for a minor… much easier to go buy an eighth from their friend.
Can any of you cite an independent study that proves dope is not a gateway drug?
Done see my last post. Sorry, the gateway drug theory has been blown to bits for years… the only ‘gateway’ effect is that since its illegal, our kids are dealing in the Black Market with criminals that don’t mind taking advantage of them. Legal pot, that you could buy at a State Store… well I’ve never seen a State Store with a “house girl” paying off her bill.
Do you really believe that safety and productivity at work would not be effected by dope?
Do you really believe people aren’t working stoned right now? Fake pee will easily pass a 10 panel drug test.
Do you want a school bus driver high while driving students to school, how about a train driver??? Surgeon? Pilot? Do you really believe that a stoned driver is a consciencious and safe driver especially since the prohibitions of driving stoned would then be removed?
Hey Stupid. Do you want those people to be drunk? No? Neither do I. There is no difference between intoxication by alcohol and intoxication by mary jane… your argument is fallacious.
And if you say in rebuttal that limits would be placed on when and where you could dope up then how do you enforce those regulations, and if you are going to regulate that then what is the difference in keeping it illegal in the first place.
See Alcohol, in any state… then try regrowing your missing brain cells.
And do you libertarians really believe the drug trade and crime would lessen if dope was legalized? Would not the doper still have to find money? Would there not still be a black market on manufacturing and distribution?
Ask the Chicago Mafia how that worked after thew repeal of Prohibition… or just go on living in your world of crazy.
Our drug war and criticism of it is a red herring. If we really wanted to stop the importation of it, we could shut down the southern border. It is politics especially from the left and a MSM that seeks a drugged society that keeps the ineffective “war on drugs” from being effective.
Wow, your stupid knows no bounds. Do you really think that most Pot crosses our borders? I would laugh at you, but its kind of sad really. Marijuana is being homegrown, right here in these wonderful United States, just as it has been since George Washington was separating the female ‘India Hemp’ plants because they were ‘far better’…
Do you really want George Soros to be correct?
Well, his opinion on ‘some’ conservative ‘thinkers’ seems right after reading your blathering. Makes me kind of sick to admit he’s ever been right about anything.
The sad fact is, drug abusers do not restrict their drug use to their own homes. The effects of it are felt everywhere.
Therefore, it’s not just their own, individual choice.
29. Now and Then.
“Who here smokes weed?”
Weed? As in The Now Unpopular Mr. President getting wee weed up?
Hey you Handsome Mixed European – American Turkey With a Touch of Black, don’t the Capitalist put hemp seed in Modern Liberal Turkey feed? To fatten you up.
Give all the Modern Liberal Turkeys free big fat joints! Then they could all pretend to be Ben Nelson For a Day.
Anvil definitely turned on. The Modern Liberal Turkey has no choice. He must be cool, really, really cool, and he is at the tender mercies of the dope controlling Capitalists.
12-22. Sweating hatchets, or avoiding?
Merry Christmas, “dazzling intellect”. “Amen, Brother.”
Gobble gobble Goebbels!
Marijuana has a history of safe and effective use that puts all other drugs to shame. There is no lethal dosage for pot – unlike virtually every other drug, you cannot overdose on cannabis.
The author makes an argument that is inconsistent, immoral, and certainly not compatible with libertarian ideals. No self-respecting libertarian could find a way to bend over this far.
If you want to make something illegal in order to prevent needless death, you should focus on the plastic baggie – it is much more dangerous than the contents in this case.
Peace.
DS
Mary are you truly that naive? With all the information on the positive uses of marijuana you cannot be that miss-informed. Remember this, Our Founding Fathers grew Hemp and probably smoked a little from time to time. You also fail to mention the complete abuse of prescription drugs. I would think that would be an more appropriate subject to write about. Stop demonizing Hemp cannabis.
Oh for Christs sake. Get over yourself. When has prohibition ever worked? All conservatives do is waste hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars so they can stand on a soapbox and tell everyone how moral they are.
Us libertarians would rather govern by reason which means dumping this ridiculous money pit called “the war on drugs” which has failed on every single front in a grand and glorious manner. More people have died in Mexico int he last year than the entire Iraq war all int he name of your stupid war on drugs. And guess what? You haven’t stopped anyone from using them.
Prohibition worked so well in the past you just up and decide to do it again. Absolutely pathetic on your part.
#42 Bear,
Yea, people have been brainwashed to believe a set of lies, and cannot think for themselves. Go back 3 generations of anyone on this board, if their ancestor was Farming they had Hemp on their land. It wasn’t a big deal so nobody made a big deal out of it.
When Andrew Mellon wanted to start chemical companies, he couldn’t compete with Hemp, so he had it made Illegal. Today that company is known as Mellon Chemical bank, the paper companies found they could now sell synthetic and chemically altered wood ( using Mellon Chemicals) and sell this artificial bleached white paper product at huge profit, etc, etc.
The debate about the Govt war on drugs holds no water, most governments in the world support Illegal drug trade and have been for hundreds of years. The British regular army invaded China to force the Chinese to stop intercepting their shipments of Opium into Shanghai in the early 1900′s. China was forced to give Britain Hong Kong to get the British Army off their land, but the Heroin continued to flow to Shanghai enriching the bank of England and their shareholders.
Anyone can read the Iran / Contra hearings and see for themselves the US was actively smuggling Cocaine into the US, and trading it for weapons…at one time over 20% of all Coke smuggled into the USA was managed by the US government, this was in the early 1980′s.
Today in Afghanistan the Heroin trade is overseen by the same people that ran Cocaine for the Contra groups…it is not a drug, it is a Product sold at massive profit.
Keep your heads buried in the sand, that is what the Government wants. Much easier to keep depositing Billions into the bank when people don’t ask too many questions.
I’m willing to bet this is a complete fabcrication.
Marijuana will become legal in California in June of 2010 when the citizens vote. As goes California so will soon follow the rest of the nation. Medical marijuana is a boon to many and the AMA has recommended more research be done to see what other unknown health benefits it contains. I grow legally six plants in my own back yard. Cannabis should have never been made illegal but the yellow journalism of the Hearst newspaper chains which feared the competition of hemp demonized the most incredibly useful plant known to humanity. Hearst should have to pay retribution to everyone who was hurt by their cowardly lies.
The fact that certain nanny laws are foolish does not mean that all such laws are foolish. I am ever thankful for local noise ordinances. We do not need to strike down all laws against prostitution and drug use because some are foolish, or because there are nanny seat-belt laws. We need wise legislation, and therefore we need to elect wise legislators.
Public drunkenness has been illegal for centuries. What is unconstitutional is not the restrictions, but the jurisdictions. The federal government has no business directly or indirectly controlling such things. That’s what state and local government is for.
Alice,
You would be correct. There are employers today that test for Tobacco use and do not hire (and do fire) employees that use tobacco. Marijuana is no different. The author is an idiot that apparently thinks writing an article==listening to some blather on talk radio and accepting it as True, rather than being arsed to do any research on her own. PJMedia is going to need a better staff of editors to keep puerile crap like this off their site.
john-TMF
The legalization of alcohol still hasn’t removed the black market for that, or the violence incurred, so your post has no reasoning. Nascar was started in the 50′s AFTER prohibition was lifted (how could that have been a constitutional amendment still amazes me) by ‘rum-runners’ those still illegally making their own alcohol, and it still persists. There is also a black market for many other things that are available, and with any balck market comes the ‘social criminal pathologies’.
Marijuanna wasn’t always illegal, or tradition as Mary Grabar would have you believe. It was legal until the 1950′s when the government decided it wanted to try and stop the inflow of illegal mexican immigrants.
I know quite a few users of pot, and they all go to work every day, are considered an interegal part of their company, are in a long term relationship-with children, and can articulate very well. To say that marijuana use curbs this for everyone based on some is inconsistant with reality.
If marijuana was legalized, there would still be those who had a mental additction to it, just like those mentally addicted to sex, money, work, their car, love, etc. There is a physical addiction to alcohol that does not come with marijuana use.
The worst part of marijuana is when it is burned to acquire the thc, that is what causes the most damage. There are now ways to induce the thc into the body that does not include getting the other many dangerous chemicals that smoking does.
Marijuana is also an unprocessed drug, nothing else needs to be done from growing to use except for drying, with alcohol and the harded drugs, processing is involved, making marijuana the one of the few natural drugs available.
To keep marijuana illegal goes against our inalienable rights of life, LIBERTY, and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
Our prisons are full of drug abusers, most of whom are nonviolent. Foreign gangs seem to have no trouble operating in our country. Their treasuries are replete with illegal cash, and they aggressively seek to expand their customer base by selling to our children. Over the last forty years, as the penalties for possession have increased, availability has not changed a great deal. All law enforcement has been able to do has been to increase the price of drugs, which plays into the hands of the gangs. While it is difficult to predict outcomes, legalization would probably reduce the price to a level where it starves the gangs of money, making their business unprofitable. Phillip Morris can probably undercut them in price and drive them out of business in about ten minutes. Once that happens, advertising and pushing the product can be regulated. The product should be treated like tobacco, whose use has been steadily falling since people have become aware of the risks involved. The federal government should get out of the business of regulating the molecular composition of everyone’s bloodstream. When they assert their right to do this, then we become their slaves. Our founder’s intent was to have them serve us, not the other way around. If the federal laws were dropped, the states would be free to regulate as they see fit. Then some state would legalize, and we would see what happens on a small scale. Having see what happens, we might be able to make an intelligent decision about which way to go.
Employers can run tests for any drugs they want. People who test positive for banned substances (by the employer’s definition) or who refuse to submit to drug testing can be summarily fired.
Marijuana is a gateway drug ONLY because it uses the same distribution channels as the more deadly stuff.
Remove the criminalization and you remove teaching kids how to obtain crack, meth, heroin, etc.
Myth Buster,
But then people would have to be responsible for their own decisions… Good ‘Conservatives’ like Mary don’t want that… we might not decide the same thing they decided.
The difference between people like Pelosi and people like Mary… is that Pelosi is obvious about her intentions. Mary hides behind words, but in the end is just as much a fan of controlling others as Reid and Company.
I don’t smoke and personally I’m against it. I have friends who have smoked it regularly for many years and they have no physical detrimental effects only mental ones. They become liberal, wishy-washy, flaky, and find conspiracies everywhere. Not being an American the worst thing I see is these ridiculous prison sentences that are meted out for at worst foolish but relatively harmless behavior. Of course liberalism is a form of insanity but surely there are better treatments than imprisonment.
We won’t dispassionately investigate or rationally debate which drugs do what damage and whether or how much of that damage is the result of criminalization. We’d rather work ourselves into a screaming fit of puritanism and then go home and take a pill.”
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
P.J.O’Rourke
I am convinced that we can do to guns what we’ve done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control.” George L. Roman
“Since when is “public safety” the root password to the Constitution?” C. D. Tavares
The legacy of Democrats and Republicans approaches: Libertarianism by bankruptcy.” Nick Nuessle, 1992
“The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.” Henry Kissinger
The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this. “Albert Einstein, “My First Impression of the U.S.A.”, 1921
View the link below for many more applicable “Quotes” applying in today’s dismal political enviroment. Proof that many Statesmen before Obama’s socialist agenda came to light our Fore Fathers knew the realizations of Tyanny and a Government out of control against “The Will Of The People.”
It is my contention that what I do isn’t anyone’s business and in particular the government. So I disagree with what amounts too a shallow and very hollow empty reasoning that “maruijana” is the so-called “gateway drug”.
A person’s “weak” mind is the “gateway” towards hard core drug use not the occasional “joint”. You’ll never impose a law to curtail a persons thinking or willingnes to do what they want to do, particularly when maruijana can be grown in the basement for personal consumption,avoiding any taxation altogether.
[ As a Fair Tax Supporter the Fair Tax Plan captures this underground ecomony as well as all those who "Work Off The Books" every time they purchase any and all "New Goods or Services]
Prohibition of maruijana [The Feds ludicrously classifing it on the drug scale with that of herion is a joke] has killed more people in this illusionary “War” against it than the drug it self,including warehousing non-violent so-called criminals at great expense to the taxpayers in overcrowed prison system[s] on simple “possesion” charges while the Judges, prosecutors, and defense attornys all go out for their two, three “Martini” lunch following the imposed “Recess By The Court! The Judge screaming “wait for me!” While the jailer is smuggling it in or turns a blind eye at its importation into the jailhouse. So give me a break. And by the way I’ve never been arrested for any crime concerning the State’s “blanket” term[s] in defining drugs.
WE SHOULD ALL BE DEMANDING THAT THE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, PROSECUTION ATTORNEY’S AND ALL JUDGES STATE OR FEDERAL BE DRUG TESTED, AS A “PUBLIC SAFETY” ISSUE DUE TO THE “SENSITIVITY” of their positions in Goverment over us as citizens making their test results “public”. Watch the cover-ups begin while slobbering all over themselves with their assertions of “THEIR” “privacy rights” under the guise of medical “confidentuality.” Furthermore the abuse of “regulated” prescription drugs far surpass that of maruijana use to the point State laws have been imposed for the tracking of same and momitoring the leaglized “Drug Stores” along with those who dispense them. “AMERICA’S WAR ON DRUGS IS A COMPLETE, UTTER AND DIMAL FAILURE WASTING OUR TAX DOLLARS IN THEIR FEEBLE ATTEMPT TO REGULATE WHAT AL CAPONE EXPLOITED WITH ALCOHOL. Creating the advancement of the Italian Mafia who did much more harm in the Country than Maruijana ever did.
Now we have a Mexican Drug Cartel and “Open Boarders” policy serving America’a cultural thrist for drugs including but more importantly the “hard core” variety.
Just imagine if every dollar spent on this futile war would have been used to close our Boards, the gang wars for “their turf” could have been quashed a long time ago. Just imagine how much the $8 million spent by Ashcroft could have been used to do so or other more important things like helping the poor, other than the prosecution of a “bong” displaying a picture of a cultural “Celebrity” of the 60′s-70′s. Ashcroft needs to smoke a JOINT and “Chill Out”
http://nw.com/jamesd/libertarian-quotes, was HTMLized by jamesd@echeque.com page 1 of 16
I haven’t smoked weed in 10 years. The fact that it’s illegal is still stupid. If weed became legal I would not be any more compelled to smoke it than I am today.
As far as weed being a societal pathogen goes, I’d have to concede that to a minor degree, predicated on the assumption that intoxication or being mind-altered itself is in and of itself bad or wrong or unhealthy. I think it can be bad to be stoned, I think it can also be fantastic.
But I think the idea that illegalization of it has limited it’s social pathology is beyond merely ridiculous. Pot is omnipresent in america. Our national consciousness is at maximum saturation with THC… and has been apparently for a very long time. I’m almost 40 and it’s not like it was a new thing in the 80′s or the 60′s or the 30′s.
Does any of this make me want to smoke weed? No.
I’m sorry PJM but articles like this only serve to divide our coalition.
The author simply does not understand Libertarianism. Her entire argument is collectivist and intent on preserving “our way of life”, “foundations of society” and “judeo-christian heritage”.
These things are not meaningful in the Libertarian context. It is like arguing against Capitalism because it would destroy the obviously desirable goal of “state control of the means of production”.
To the Libertarian way of thinking pot may very well be bad for you and legalizing it may not produce the best results for society as a whole, but that is beside the point.
Libertarianism is not utopian. It accepts that social outcomes may or may not be “better” if we respect individual liberties. It is a principled moral argument, not an empirical one. Society and government cannot have rights, only people can and yours stop at my nose.
A Libetarian can either cringe or laugh when the author says that Pot, or something else, needs to be illegal to preserve “our” culture, but would only take that as evidence for the dangers of collectivist thinking.
Watch what happens if I propose that I dont care what “our” culture says, but “my” culture says differently. She will tell me to pack my bags and go elsewhere and if I dont follow the rules “we” will be happy to lock “me” up because although I have done no harm to anyone except perhaps myself I have not done my share in preserving our culture, our biblical values, or something else of ours.
Spindok
I have to say, you are horribly wrong.
The costs of prohibition have been huge and to continue it would be a terrible idea.
Your logic is also flawed. A man, trying to avoid arrest dies by choking on a plastic bag and that makes the contents of the bag somehow ban-worthy? I agree that cannabis is bad; I don’t agree that it should be illegal.
The legalization of drugs is one of only a few areas where the liberal left and the libertarians agree. The conservative far left and the right wings that currently dominate the two main political parties will not change their policies on these matters. Hence, the war on drugs will continue as it has been now since the early twentieth century when many recreational drugs were outlawed as non compliant with good solid christian values. The drug wars cost billions of dollars and benefit several big corporations and keep many an unstable politician in office so I see no change in the short term. Now, where did I put my pipe?
Thank you. Look at the author’s archive, she’s a fabulist and disinformatory apparatus.
Hrmmm… I did not make the comment above. I agree with it, but I think the poster errored.
The one thing people tend to miss in their comparison of THC (that’s really what we’re arguing about here not the Hemp plant since Hemp plants (especially males) can be grown that contain very little THC for commercial uses) to Alcohol is that we have reliable tests for sobriety that can even be performed at a traffic stop for one but not the other. Urine tests and even blood tests are not accurate enough to determine sobriety for THC, any pot smoker knows it takes 30 days for THC to leave your system, and since THC is fat soluble it can remain in the body and be released into the blood stream long after actual use.
Its much easier to pass as “sober” when high on THC than drunk on alcohol. Without an accurate way to determine sobriety on site THC cannot be legalized, until then I will continue to oppose its legalization. People also neglect to take into account that legalization will lead to increased use (no more fear of job related drug testing) which will result in more traffic deaths due to impaired drivers. Employers can still test however due to the 30 day window most tests will be useless. Most other drugs have a very short period of time that they remain in your system (barring hair tests) and thus are useful in making hiring decisions, positive tests for THC would have to be ignored due to the length of time you can test positive after use.
That legalization would end the drug trade and the need for enforcement is also a fallacy, the rising costs of cigarettes due to taxation has lead to more black market sales and “bootlegging” of cigarettes. Same thing will occur with THC based products, probably worse as many of the methods for circumventing government regulation already exist. Add “local growers” who import seeds from the Netherlands and then sell a “gourmet” product under the table to select clientele and nothing much changes. In addition, just because you remove one item from the list you’ve still got a host of others that still require resources for enforcement, prisons for law breakers, etc.
Legalization is not the panacea many here have made it out to be. With that you also will have to increase social programs to deal with the addicts, law enforcement for the associated ills, medical cost/programs to deal with resultant medical issues, etc.
I’ve seen what heroin, LSD, crack, pot, ecstasy, cocaine, PCP, and meth do to people and was lucky enough not end up like them despite my own recreational use of several in that list. It’s not pretty.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that. It clearly had nothing to do with the desire of millions of Americans to get buzzed or drunk…
Only one response… which is par for the course. NYer accidentally makes my point for me.
1. The assertion that the legalization of drugs will make the black market go away is false. No rational government is going to legalize drugs for minors, and in this nation, we have categorized those under 21 years of age as minors for those purposes. People between the ages of 13 and 21 are a huge chunk of the drug addicts in this nation.
There is an adult drug usage problem, but those people (from personal knowledge – being 50 and having grown up through the drug age) started their habits long before their 21st birthday. I would wager at least a gum ball that very few people who START using drugs after the age of 21, continue to do so long after that. I would also wager another gum ball that there are very few people (percentage wise) who actually START using illegal drugs after the age of 21.
2. SO the reality is that the massive social problems wrapped around the use, procurement, and funding of mind altering substances will most definitely NOT go away if the prohibitions on their use are lifted. The problem will actually get much worse. The availability of the substances will far outstrip the ability to limit their access by children and minor adults.
3. Drug users are dysfunctional. They have poor judgment, low capabilities, and a decreasing desire to do much more than get stoned. Recreational users are fooling themselves, but then that is the nature of chemical intoxication, isn’t it? It warps the thinking and the logic of the individual toward the ultimate rationalization for the continual need to get high.
If you want to see what our civilization looks like in 100 years of legal drug availability, one might examine the Toltecs, Olmecs, Inca, Moche, Maya, Aztecs, Mississippian PreColombian civilizations. Those societies used drugs in key parts of religious and social practice. Non survive today, and non-survived themselves. They were never complete, never rational, and never survived longer than a few generations before being abandoned by their citizens.
If this nation legalizes drugs, there is no telling how far, how fast it will eat itself.
Drugs were made illegal for a reason. The housewife of 1900 addicted to laudanum might be able to tell you why. Laziness and surrender…. sounds like a drug addict’s response to a challenge to me.
r/The Mighty Fahvaag
Post #58 Since people have become aware of the risks involved” What would those “risks” be and who are the “people?
Spoken like someone who has no idea of what they’re talking about. The only reason the War on Drugs is even marginally effective now is because of the rampant abuses of authority and extreme jail sentences (the average small time drug dealer gets more prison time than most women who murder their own kids). Take away the militarized police, restore the 4th amendment, take away the bank monitoring laws, etc. and you will have a drug prohibition that is flat out unenforceable except when people get really stupid.
NYer:
Some time when you’re stone cold sober (and I’m not saying you were or were not when you posted), do some research on exactly what was meant by the words “pursuit of happiness” as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Well, actually, you’ll have to do a lot of research to understand what was meant.
The argument for keeping pot illegal only works if the law is followed, no? Or is it just symbolic? Just because you allow something does not mean you allow it’s abuse, just like alcohol. You over do it and you go to jail. Smoking pot is not dangerous, being wasted in public is. The law should stick to that.
Drug users are dysfunctional. They have poor judgment, low capabilities, and a decreasing desire to do much more than get stoned.
Apparently you missed the bit where I mentioned that most pot smokers I know are hard working members of society and hold down good jobs. I’d love to compare my paycheck with yours. Bet I’d win…
Libertarianism is not utopian. It accepts that social outcomes may or may not be “better” if we respect individual liberties. It is a principled moral argument, not an empirical one. Society and government cannot have rights, only people can and yours stop at my nose.
However you miss that in the case of society dealing with the ramifications of drug addiction it doesn’t stop at your nose or mine. If you passed laws that were in effect “you made your bed now lie in it” to go along with legalization then you’d be correct. However, government will confiscate more of my income to deal with the issues of drug use and addiction. When others vote to confiscate the fruits of my labors so that social programs can hand out needles, provide free methadone, pay for medical costs of overdoses, rehab programs, etc it goes right past my nose and into my wallet.
There are too many interconnected issues within our society to carve out just one thing. Libertarianism requires personal responsibility, something our society is finding in ever shorter supply, and that also includes acceptance of and responsibility for the consequences of your decisions. Too many people think Liberty means the freedom do whatever they please short of criminal acts, but it really is the freedom to do what is right. Think about the old story of the Ant and the Grasshopper, in today’s social atmosphere they would confiscate 50% of the Ant’s stores so that the Grasshopper wouldn’t go hungry even though the Grasshopper exercised his “liberty” to slack off. The Grasshopper then should have been allowed his “liberty” to stave to death. Too many Libertarians forget to take into account consequences, everything you do has a consequence, even if it is not readily apparent.
This is a good topic for an article, but its important to address the libertarians main argument, which isn’t that alcohol is worse than pot (that’s an argument, but not the main one), it’s that in order to fight the war on drugs, the government demands that we give up hard-won liberties.
Where we are now is that the goal of drug prohibition is a good one, but the methods are flawed.
1) It shouldn’t be a Federal issue. States should have the authority to decide how they deal with drug use and to try different methods. That’s the “laboratory of democracy” concept.
2) It makes much more sense to go after distribution networks rather than individual users. Why stop one blue collar guy with a bag of shake when you can pick up sixty gang members importing tons of the stuff. The gangs are probably running guns, prostitutes, laundering money, etc too.
3) There are just some moral issues that can’t be legislated without turning into a disaster. Adultery is wrong, but if you were to criminalize it, police would be stopping couples on the streets or in bars or spying into bedrooms, half the country would be in court, etc, and it wouldn’t work anyway. The cure is worse than the disease.
4) Technology is turning the street drugs “pot, heroin, etc” into poor mans drugs while the wealthy, who have their own doctors, get prescription drugs that are just as dangerous. So the system of deciding what drugs are illegal isn’t really fair.
Libertarians don’t have to adjust their philosophy with every performance of Darwinism .
No one to my knowledge is asking to make drugs legal for minors.
The reason legalization is gaining ground is because for every story of the straight A student who turned on and dropped out, there are probably a dozen stories of the occasional toker who didn’t drop out, didn’t go on to harder drugs, and lives a pretty normal life.
Which makes the anti-drug propaganda look just silly.
One toke doesn’t lead you to do anything. It’s all a personal choice.
And it is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
What societal harm does the occasional toker, or drinker cause?
We have laws to deal with the aftermath of driving while impaired, as well as just about any effect a drug abuser can have on society.
The simple fact is that he died because he wanted to do two things, smoke dope and remain free. He elected to do something that seemed harmless in order to maintain his freedom. Accidents happen and his death does not, in my opinion, impact the legal MJ argument one way of the other.
If you are a true libertarian then you likely think the MJ laws a waste of resources and an impingment upon freedom. You likely also feel that he made a decision which affected his own life and he has paid the price. Is that now the cornerstone of the libertarian belief?
I am a conservative libertarian and an ex cop. I find the MJ laws have a use but in the long run I think relaxing them will just shift problems from to arena to another. I think it should be tried though. If it fails, we can return to the current failed system.
“Libertarianism requires personal responsibility, something our society is finding in ever shorter supply, and that also includes acceptance of and responsibility for the consequences of your decisions. Too many people think Liberty means the freedom do whatever they please short of criminal acts, but it really is the freedom to do what is right.
Guess what bub, a representative democracy also requires a great deal of personal responsibility. Drug laws were passed because different skinned foreigners were doing something that was culturally accepted within their community, but which WASPs thought was just going to absolutely destroy society because it caused their sons and daughters to come into contact with those different skinned foreigners. As such, it was more racism, then protecting civil order.
And who exactly get’s to decide “what is right?”
Currently it’s the Democrats and they’re determining that it’s right to penalize people who don’t have the money for health insurance, and the people who have “to much” health insurance.
One reason people have stopped taking responsibility is the nanny government that do-gooders of all stripes have implemented. Seat belt laws, no smoking laws, helmet laws. The list goes on and on where we’ve legislated something that used to be a personal choice.
You can’t legislate common sense or morality.
Try as you might, you aren’t going to prevent someone from murdering another, just by passing a law. All we can do is deal with the aftermath.
Legalize drugs, and TAX THEM. With the tax going directly to abuse education and treatment. Anything left over would go into the general fund.
Of course, you’d never get such simple legislation passed with the current clowns in goverment.
If abortion is allowed due to a woman’s right to privacy about what she puts/keeps in her body, why is inhaling the smoke of a weed a criminal act?
Pajamas commenter Kazooskibum puts it well. Remember: The issue is never the issue. The issue is control.
I’m jumping in here. This is an area I’ve spent a lot of time in. I did a post explaining part but not all the problems with legalizing drugs. I’ll put it at the bottom. Here’s the rub. Like I said in the post legalizing drugs is like peeling an onion. The more layers you pull off the worse it smells.
Most libertarians I know that like the free drug argument have two common traits. One- they usually use weed or something along that line. Not the hardcore crack/meth/oxy drugs that kill people. Just weed, or as one of the comments said- a vegetable. Two- The active libertarian does not work or live or suffer dealing with the hardcore drug user. Their argument is a classroom argument, not a real world argument. I’ve seen the end result of hardcore drug use. Meth, crack, prescription pills. I’ve actually seen it kill the user and more often kill an innocent. Legalizing anything with that kind of power and put it in the hands of people who can’t control it is stupid and dangerous. We do live in a society where our right to screw up ends at the nose of the guy next to us. There has to be controls on behavior.
WsGraves repeats an urban myth about prisons and drug use. The prisons are not filled with drug users. In fact, I can tell you will certainty, after twenty years on the job, that drug users seldom end up in prison. Traffickers yes, but not usually not for long on their first several offenses. You have to REALLY screw up to get sent to prison from state court. Feds are a little different, but their impact is small compared to the overall prison population. Do you go to jail if caught? Sure, but as a whole you will end up with bail and then a fine. Half the judges in our system are current or former weed smokers (being a lawyer/judge does not require a good moral or drug free background). One juvenile judge, frustrated with the juvie arrests for dope, said in OPEN court, “I don’t see the problem here, when I was in college I did everything but drink the bong water!” Great. The message we want sent to kid too young to really grasp the danger.
The greatest lie in this “war” on drugs is that it is a war. It is not. In a war, I get to kill the bad guy with my gun. In this “war” I have to find probable cause then arrest the guy. Obama’s new way of fighting terrorism aside, what kind of way is that to fight a war?! Seriously? If the cops could shoot the dealers on the street corners like rabbits, your drug usage would drop significantly. So let’s put that whole “war” thing aside. It’s a joke.
In my post (feel free to link and read) I cover some of the issues like juvenile use, taxes, and the great issue for all trial lawyers- liability. I didn’t cover the violence of drugs, trying to keep the post lighthearted. However, anyone who thinks legalizing drugs will stem drug related violence is missing the point. Drug dealers aren’t killing each other and innocent people over the drugs, they are killing over the MONEY!! It is always about the money. In one article I wrote I tried to give an example of just what would happen if we legalized drugs. Let me shorten it up for this post. If you have one drug dealer (a pure cash/entrepreneurial business if there is one) selling drugs for, let’s say, twenty dollars a rock on a street corner and another one shows up on the opposite street corner selling for ten dollars a rock, you are going to have a conflict. First, there is the territory issue, the second guy is intruding. Second, there is the income loss issue. Crackheads are always looking for the cheapest deal, they’re crackheads after all and holding a job is out of the question. Outside prostitution and theft(robbery/burglary/check fraud/ID theft/etc.) they don’t really make the cash. So dealer #1′s customers are going to dealer #2. Do you think that will stand? Do you think the dealer, probably a low end, uneducated, socially challenged young man, is going to call his lawyer and sue? Complain to the city about some kind of license infringement? No. He’s going to do what he did before drugs were legal and put a beating on or a bullet in the other guy. I won’t go into drug dealer ripoffs like the one my City suffered a couple of days ago where the bad guy pistol whipped the woman and then fled only to end up in a shootout with the police, which got him killed. Nor will I take the time to list the dead bodies from the wrecks, beatings, stabbings, shootings, and drowning related to drug use and the money surrounding it.
A couple of you bounced around the real problem with legalizing drugs and that is legalizing behavior that hurt you and the people around you. Listen, I’m a libertarian at heart. I could give a rat’s rear end if you want to smoke, poke, or inhale yourself to death- as long as you aren’t stoned driving there, or you aren’t ripping me and my friends off to get the money to do it. Don’t care. However, it never works out like that. There are always consequences impacting the people around the doper. Your wife or husband, mom or dad, kids, friends, co-workers, or some innocent somebody that just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve worked hundreds of robberies related to dopers robbing people (they like little old ladies and young women) so they could get the money for the next fix. I’ve worked tens of thousands of burglaries and thefts for the same reason. None of you supporting legalizing drugs deal with this? Is the government going to pay for it? Will it pay enough to support the habit?
Worse, and my last point. My Captain told me this twenty-five years ago. “Here’s the problem with legalizing dope. Say you have a ten year old son who comes to you and says, “Dad, I want to smoke dope.” You can go ahead and tell him about the dangers, the long term effects, the way it can stunt or end your chances of a normal life (good job, decent wife, kids, income, etc. etc.) You can do all of that and say “Son, I don’t think doing drugs is a good idea.” At which point he’ll say, “But Dad, the government says it is.” At that point all of your arguments are mute.
Don’t believe me?
In 1996 I was assigned to a street crimes unit that dealt with street level crime and gangs. We ran across and tried to help a lot of kids from 12 to 18. I saw twelve year old girls giving oral sex to their “boyfriends” as an act of friendship. When I told them it was wrong, and it is by the way, they would say, “But it’s not sex.” (Sound familiar?) When I caught them with drugs they would get upset. “Why are you giving me a hard time about using drugs. It’s no big deal. The President does it!” Believe me when I tell you it leaves you very little wiggle room when faced with that.
http://truthandcommonsense.com/2009/06/08/peeling-the-onion-the-argument-over-legalizing-marijuana/
If abortion is allowed due to a woman’s right to privacy about what she puts/keeps in her body, why is inhaling the smoke of a weed a criminal act?
Because some humans are stupid and believe the lies that the government tells them regarding marijuana. Have you ever seen some of the historical ‘anti-marijuana propaganda’? Perfect example of government lies and manipulation, sadly there are still people like Mary here that just don’t bother to be skeptical of their government… sad really.
Mary, you completely miss the point about libertarians. The point isnt that marijuana is good or bad. The point is that you dont have the moral right to tell people what they can and cant do to themselves if they arent otherwise harming you or hampering your rights.
Is marijuana dangerous? I simply dont care if it is or isnt. If someone wants to destroy their lives with drugs, thats their business, not mine. Their lives arent mine to direct. I can certainly voice an opposition to drug use… but who am I to force someone into prison over it? (which ultimately I would be doing if I supported politicians who support banning drugs)
Mary, the problem with a lot of republicans this day and age, particularly your country club repubs, is that many are really just as big statists as democrats… they just want to control different areas of people’s lives. Get past that. Accept that the only way to truly be free is that you agree, in return, to allow other people to be free… even if it offends your personal sensibilities.
44. Now and Then
NAT say: “Fred Beloit:
You’ve been exposed and as a result, you’re bitter, I get it. Here’s the question – do you smoke weed?”
NAT, what have I been exposed to? Why am I bitter? If you think my mistake in missing Libby’s commutation was my first mistake, you are wrong. I have made many mistakes. There are those like you, perhaps, who never make mistakes and would be devastated if they made one. Especially such a very, very serious one. Me? I accept my limitations.
I’ve had Mary a few times, but gave it up. It made my thought processes as weak as yours. Also, the libruls have made laws against smoking in many places and will probably continue to make more such laws. They say smoking is bad for you.
Have you ever noticed, NAT, that long-time pot users all seem to look alike… skinny, sallow, pale, wrinkled and haggard? Is that how you look too, NAT? Or do you not indulge? BTW, how is your quest for an MOS going?
aercher52,
Looks like you swallowed the governments whole load of bullshit… Good regurgitation though.
Age Limit: Currently underage individuals regularly report in surveys that it is EASIER to get Pot than Alcohol. This is because alcohol is regulated and there are laws in place which make adults not so keen to buy beer for kids.
When I argue the legalization question with someone I always start at the top layer. “So, you want to legalize marijuana, just open the gates, so to speak.” I get the “Oh hell yes!” answer. “Fine, so everybody can smoke dope right?” The other guy is reaching for his pipe was we speak. “Absolutely!” I continue, “So, everybody, including twelve year olds??”
This is a stupid argument, but one that the “For The Children” dupes love. ALL available evidence indicates that Marijuana could be legalized and regulated just like alcohol and tobacco. At worst, it would still be easy for kids to get, at best it would become as difficult as Alcohol. Further, speaking of Alcohol… alcohol, the legal intoxicant, has far worse consequences for children than Pot, both from a long term and short term perspective. Finally, on this topic… “For The Children” is a false argument. Children are the responsibility of their parents. If they inbibe in a drug, legal or illegal, it is the fault and responsibility of the parents. Laws should not exist to deny pot to all ‘because of the children’. Please go peddle bleeding heart bullshit at DailyKos.
I start out by saying, “I have to ask, how do you plan to collect taxes on what is basically a backyard industry?
Well, gosh I dunno… HOW ABOUT THE SAME WAY WE DID FOR ALCOHOL post-prohibition?
In our city there were repeated shootings between the rival dope growers and traffickers…
Yes, and in the 1920′s we saw the same thing among the moonshiners and gangsters. Once that shit was legal though… well what happened? People could purchase their drug legally, rather than risk getting arrested, so they went legit and the crime dried up.
“Let us agree for the moment that marijuana is legalized by the Government. If that is true, does that mean the government becomes responsible for regulating the drug?
And here I thought I had heard the dumbest arguments for prohibition… you just beat the best!
Your article, if it can be called that, is flawed beyond belief. It’s arguments are vaccous strawmen that uyou build and bust with Fakie McStoner your imaginary debate opponent.
As for what you tell your kid? You tell them what you tell them about alcohol. My parents told me about drugs and I didn’t drink until I was 21 and didn’t smoke pot before I was 25.
But, I guess you’re one of those ‘special’ conservatives that want small government unless its enforcing your retarded beliefs.
86. archer52: Worse, and my last point. My Captain told me this twenty-five years ago. “Here’s the problem with legalizing dope. Say you have a ten year old son who comes to you and says, “Dad, I want to smoke dope.” You can go ahead and tell him about the dangers, the long term effects, the way it can stunt or end your chances of a normal life (good job, decent wife, kids, income, etc. etc.) You can do all of that and say “Son, I don’t think doing drugs is a good idea.” At which point he’ll say, “But Dad, the government says it is.” At that point all of your arguments are mute.
And yet, this argument must work pretty well with alcohol since every school age child is not a walking around drunk and smoking cigarettes.
How, oh how did this happen without making alcohol and tobacco completely prohibited???
My parents made it simple. You don’t touch that stuff until you’re 18. If we got caught we got our butts whipped. Of course, the nanny state now considers that child abuse, because some parents go far beyond what most would consider unreasonable.
And then we wonder why the kids are out of control (not that I’m arguing that parents should be completely free to beat their kids.) And how many of those kids you saw were the result of a broken home, and what actually broke their homes?
We give people pretty lenient control over a 1-3 ton deadly weapon. And while there are scores of accidents, we haven’t yet made driving a privilege of the wealthy. Anyone who can afford a car, and a pass the simple test for a license can drive.
People can purchase firearms pretty freely in most of the country, and most of us can accept the societal costs.
I’ve seen the cost of drug abuse, and it is horrible, no matter what the drug of choice. Alcohol, coke, sugar, caffeine, nicotine, pot, meth. Abusing anything has ill effects on both the abuser and those around them. And yet, for 4 of those we accept that, and 3 of them we don’t.
Keith_Indy,
Shhhh, you’re making sense… it might hurt archer52′s poor little brain. He can’t think past his own ‘wit’ (if you can call that hack piece wit).
Hi Redbear, #19. I agree that “duuh” is certainly the right response when people must patiently explain that legalization of this drug — and certainly of all drugs — will not reduce the need for policing much, if it doesn’t actually increase the need — whenever intoxicants, including alcohol, are more accessible, there is more public disruption (like, Pensacola during Spring Break). That’s not a moral stance: it’s just a reality.
The radio discussion in which I participated arose from libertarians’ claims that the man who choked to death on a bag of pot was a “victim of the drug wars.” That’s a ridiculous claim in light of the facts of that evening and his prior record of violent incidents requiring police response: he was clearly an out-of-control person whose own friends called the police when he began attacking a woman. It wasn’t a drug call.
But to some, he’s now a benighted hero of the valiant war against enforcement of the law and a victim of police brutality. The latter theme is especially troubling in a year with a 26% increase in policemen being murdered on the job.
Relentless, groundless accusations of police brutality make policing more dangerous, and cops in America already put themselves in danger every time they respond to a call. The police who tried to save this man also put themselves in danger in two additional ways: they did not know if he was on some sort of methamphetamine that would render him more powerful and less controllable at close range, and they did not know if he had transmittable diseases common to drug users. Regardless of these dangers, in an effort to save his life, they put their hands in his mouth as he was struggling. The libertarian activists who not only denied this but also encouraged blame to be laid on the police are playing a dangerous game with officers’ lives, and they should be called out for it.
On the legalization issue, I take a realpolitik approach. Legalization in America is not going to result in “less intrusion in our lives,” as activists claim. For better or for worse, virtually all drugs except alcohol remain detectable long after intoxication has faded. Therefore, in our system of liability and employment law, it’s going to fall upon every employer to repeatedly monitor employees for drug use in order to minimize their liability. This also isn’t a moral issue but a practical one, and I think everyone is denying the potential impact on all workers, regardless of industry.
We’ve also seen in Oregon and California how American-style legalization rapidly and unfortunately devolves into the creation of huge bureaucracies designed not merely to deliver legal pot but to build a positive, actionable, and taxpayer-subsidized “right” to the drug as a medical treatment — not just for valid conditions like chemo-induced nausea and glaucoma, but for anything and anyone. I don’t want my tax dollars going to create such bureaucracies, and I don’t want the courts tied up with ridiculous fake disability and employment-rights litigation. And I’ve never seen any reliable statistics proving that taxation will offset these costs.
Other claims by activists don’t pass the smell test, either. Our prisons and even jails aren’t stuffed with drug users who were caught with a personal stash; more than 90% of those arrested only for possession get diversion counseling, which doubtlessly helps many people who can be helped but are going down a bad road; minor drug arrests resulting in jail time are virtually always suspended unless there are other outstanding charges; legalization will not stop illegal drug trafficking or sales to minors, and legalization will likely increase driving and crime incidents arising from intoxication. Statistics activists wave about the number of people in prison for possession are meaningless because vast numbers of people plead down to a drug offense from multiple charges for things like assault, burglary and theft. Accuracy does matter, and no academician is doing research that takes such pleas into account.
Abstract arguments about morality and liberty are one thing — but in the process, let’s be realistic about what legalization will mean in America, and let’s be honest about its impact in several states in Europe: no reduction in the need for policing, no end to violent, illegal drug trafficking and marketing to minors, increases in public disorder, addiction, and funding for addiction-based disability (no matter what activists claim), and the creation of huge and expensive government bureaucracies to subsidize users’ lifestyles and even their drug purchases.
That’s the real choice here — not freedom versus repression, or freedom versus policing. Libertarian arguments only work in libertarian societies. We just aren’t.
So-con fail. AGAIN.
This is the most ridiculous argument I have heard about this subject. Why not blame a hamburger or greenbeans if someone chokes on them. Why not blame everything around someone that may have aided them to become fat and eventually die. Anything we can do to avoid actually blaming the person. Has free will vanished from our world? Are we all pawns of destiny and external forces?
The entire argument that society is built around the war on drugs is utterly not true. Just because your house may have it as a foundation, does not make it a pillar of society. Millions of people have been thrown in prison for a very long time over a plant. Has the damage to their lives, families, and communities matched or exceeded the damage done to your cultural fabric? Oh, look at what damage can be done in the name of protecting people from themselves and protecting children (which apparently teenagers are now firmly entrenched as full blown children. How long before 25 is considered a young child?)
Also, the ability to disregard arguments due to a few previous encounters with apathetic and non-coherent advocates is astounding. They probably couldn’t respond very well to you because of all the off the wall comments you made. You made my head swim a little because you are so off base and out of touch. Hopefully you’ll read the flurry of comments below your article.
Tina Trent,
I agree with you that the guy that swallowed the bag isn’t a “victim” of the Drug Wars. However, I disagree with most of the rest of your post. It simply doesn’t match actual evidence where legalization has happened. Your beliefs are not in line with facts. I think you should research the topic further.
(Though you’re right on the possession not equaling Jail Time for most people).
Mary Graber wrote: > Libertarians need to rethink their position on drug legalization.
Mary Graber needs to rethink her argument from authority:
The sanction for alcohol use goes back to the Bible. In the New Testament, references to its use in ceremonies like the Last Supper and the wedding at Cana appear. But Jesus also warns about excessive use. In the Old Testament, alcohol is shown to cloud the judgment of Lot. The Bible, in this way, tells us when and how we can use alcohol.
Ipse dixit.
And unpersuasive.
The primary article is the epitome of Carrie Nations and Harry Anslinger’s arguments reborn into the modern world. They were wrong in their day, and the arguments have not magically become correct with the passage of time.
One of several pet peeves I have with discussion of the ‘drug wars’ is the conflation of cannabis with other, truly addictive and harmful substances, such as opiates, barbiturates, and other various chemical cocktails which can be shown, scientifically, to have marked detrimental effect through either chemical dependency or outright harm to the body, virtually none of which apply to cannabis. Nicotine can kill. Alcohol can kill. THC – well, unless the researcher increases the gaseous diffusion to the point that the partial pressure of oxygen in the mixture falls below minimal levels, in which case asphyxia is the issue, rather than the THC. . .
Which goes to the root of demonstrating the sheer hypocrisy of placing cannabis on schedule A of dangerous ‘narcotics’. The rest of the items on the list can and do directly kill. Taking measures to ensure they are not abused is as logical as combating the notion that drinking household bleach or antifreeze randomly is somehow beneficial, with solid arguments for doing so.
Cannabis, on the other hand –
The history of the criminalization and demonization of cannabis is a strange tale indeed. Evidentiary records indicate that both Washington and Jefferson both not only cultivated the plant, but performed selection and breeding to favor not only the Sativa strain over the Indica, but the female over the male plants – activities completely irrelevant to fiber production. Further, they were known to exchange ‘smoking mixtures’ – and given Jefferson’s disdain for tobacco. . .
So, pot makes you lazy and stupid. eh? Well, some of the passages of the Declaration of Independence do take on a different light.
Aside from competing economic interests during the early 20th century, for what reason was cannabis, marijuana, included in the wave of puritanical scolding and banning?
Racism. Bigotry. Intolerance.
Harry Anslinger, the original ‘Drug Czar’ was a monumental bigot – going so far as to testify before Congress that one of his primary reasons for advocating the prohibition of marijuana was that blacks and Mexicans used it, and if white women got hold of it, then those same blacks and Mexicans (along with Jazz musicians) would be able to have sex with the white women.
Really. Dig into the Congressional record – it’s in there.
Nixon, the ‘modern’ proponent for the drug war, empaneled a commission to study the effects of marijuana use – and when their report found little reason to continue the laws, and actually recommended legalization, he disregarded it completely. There is speculation that Nixon preferred having the law to use it against the anti-war crowd, many of whom used cannabis, for the convenience provided, but opinions vary. Other opinions are that it rankled his sense of morality – which seems to be the basis for the argument in the primary article here.
And this would be different, in principle, to the argument that a woman must wear a burka, how, exactly? By degree, almost certainly, but the argumentative basis is the same.
Another commenter pointed out the concept of the cure being worse than the disease, and US policies on cannabis are a classic case study. What has evolved is a system under which significant portions of the population have their lives significantly interrupted and irreparably damaged – to the point that the ‘collateral damage’ to innocents is one of the dirtiest secrets of this modern day crusade. The documented cases collected by serious scholars, such as the Cato institute, of the examples of unwarranted home invasion, maiming, and death wrought by increasingly militarized and aggressive police forces is, or should be, extremely unsettling. The amount of funding wasted upon this travesty is absolutely staggering. But as long as it happens to someone else, and it makes do-gooders and moral scolds salve their righteous indignation that such a moral travesty is being ‘handled’, what of it?
Trillions of dollars. Hundreds of thousands of lives. Pretty soon we’re talking serius money and self-inflicted pain.
Oh, but to save society from horrendous collapse! Would that the effect of preaching obvious and provable lies to generations from early childhood could be quantified on an easy to digest Excel spreadsheet, spiffy slogan, or moving sermon. Human nature having the capacity for suspicion, what societal benefit comes from implanting the notion that ‘if they’re lying about this, what else are they lying about?’ as an official policy?
And people seem surprised that people think there was a shooter on the grassy knoll, or that 9-11 was an inside job, despite any and all evidence, particularly evidence with governmental approval, to the contrary.
Simply watch the classic, government approved propaganda piece ‘Reefer Madness’ for clues.
Besides what I would consider a misconfiguration of young minds, what of the concern to ‘protect the children’? How, in any sense, can someone stating concern for shielding children from what they deem to be such a harmful influence, could anyone advocate or support a systematic approach that demonstrably makes the harmful influence more available, widespread, and uncontrolled as an end result?
How can the ends justify the means, if the means fail to produce the desired results, and in such a spectacular manner?
Survey after survey reveal that the mere prohibition of cannabis has resulted in easier, unregulated access to the substance by minors, in stark contrast to tobacco and alcohol. Legalization and regulation would place rather successful, in a tried and proven sense, controls in place. The manager of a 7-11 certainly is a much more socially responsible agent than the street corner or back alley lackey of a criminal cartel. Would we actually see cannabis for sale in a convenience store? Possibly – alcohol and tobacco are available there now, despite efforts towards societal approbation of those substances. The key question, is, however – are they available for sale to 12 year olds? No, they aren’t.
From just about any perspective other than one that Anslinger and Nations may have been comfortable with, it isn’t the use of marijuana that makes people stupid, but the phobias against it, based upon the results.
Now, as for some disclosure, to the rather loaded question of ‘do you smoke weed?’ Personally, I enjoy cannabis, finding it much preferable to alcohol, which I find repugnant to the taste, and excessively detrimental in effect – put more simply, it tastes like crap to me, no matter how masked, and I really hate hangovers, throwing up involuntarily, and being rendered unable to safely operate a vehicle due to diminished physical coordination.
Have I been smoking it for a long time? Only lately – I abstained during my tenure as a member of the Armed Forces of the United States, out of concern for my career, and the possible degradation of my professional capabilities. It is something I have come to enjoy during my retirement. I was, interestingly enough, a ‘drug warrior’ during a portion of this time, and am rather proud of my involvement in the interdiction of literally metric tons of cocaine from approaching US borders.
That, to me, is a righteous ‘drug war’. Foiling the machinations of foreign thieves, thugs, and murderers peddling a truly dangerous substance.
Throwing our own neighbors in jail for something they can grow in their own back yards, and enjoy in the privacy of their own homes during their leisure time seems madness to me. Not to mention hugely hypocritical in a society that at the same time condones and even celebrates the home beer brewer.
Some day, hopefully this country will come to its senses.
TruthHugger-
Here’s the problem with your problem with what I said. Yes, kids can get weed easier or as easy (frankly I’ll argue alcohol is more plentiful thus “easier” to access, but let’s stay on point) as alcohol, so what? It doesn’t change the argument or the problem. Kids should not be smoking dope. However, by legalizing it, you remove one of the barriers to the drug. Now you have to deal with weed behind the counter at the 7-11 next to the Playboy. Or “smoke my weed” commercials from major companies like Johnson and Johnson or G.E. in magazines, on TV, or on the radio. Is that a good thing? Just so some adult dopers can get their weed and not worry about 5-0 snatching them up?
Not to mention the problem we have now with homeless drunks and other vagrants caused by too much booze will be joined by a new group of homeless dopers. Before you say your favorite word, read about Europe and the Demark/Holland/Netherlands experiment with open drug use. The government provided everything, being a doper was accepted. It was glorious and all the “free my dope” advocates across the world pointed to the success. Well, they aren’t pointing now because the experiment failed. Towns were ruined by the presence of the slovenly, criminal, useless career doper. The towns went as far as posting “No dopers here” type signs and running people out. The drag on society was significant. Is it worth damaging all of society at some level for a personal desire to be legal?
You still don’t deal with the argument of whether or not kids should have access and use weed (and let’s keep it to weed, but the argument seems to be about legalizing drugs of all types). If it is legal, then prepare to have even dumber kids that we deal with now. If you decide to make it illegal for kids to use it, then I ask this; What is the age limit? What are the penalties? Remember as WsGraves puts it too many people are in jail for drug use now, so what is the interdiction plan for stopping kids from using. Talking to them? And if that doesn’t work out, throw up your hands and say “oh well”? Then you have to deal with the drug dealers (Who will be anybody and everybody if they can access the huge cash payoff that comes with dealing drugs and having no fear of criminal penalties.) who refuse to ignore the large cash market that is the juvenile population. They want it, they have the money, somebody is going to sell it to them.
As far “crime drying up” you must have missed your history class or any of the three “Godfather” movies. Crime didn’t dry up, it went into the drug trade!! They used many of the same routes they used to bring the booze in! Crime will find a harder drug to sell, or another product even more dangerous than weed. They are CRIMINALS!! It is what they do! When alcohol went legit did all the prohibition era criminals wipe their brows and say “Whew, I’m sure glad booze is legal. I was really having a crisis of conscience here. I’m starting my brewery tomorrow!” If so, where is Al Capone’s brewery? Other than Joe Kennedy, name one that went to the legal side and stayed there. I’m sure there are some, but not a bunch. People will always seek what they can’t have! And somebody will sell it to them. Dude, put the bong down!
Also, you seem to like studies, some of which you cite here that say long term pot use isn’t as dangerous as long term alcohol use. Now, that’s a funny way of putting it. It’s like saying AIDS is far worse than syphilis, so let’s all do some syphilis. Ah, come on, you can do better than that! The fact is there are studies, some very current, which I read that indicate long term marijuana use (steady use like an alcoholic would drink) does cause serious brain impairment. That aside, I can tell you from street level experience after watching kids grow up using the weed daily, that it makes them dumber than a hammer. As for saying that parents are responsible for their kids, I agree. However, the reality in the real world is that kids are subjected to massive pressures and influences that even the best parent simply cannot deflect all the time. Adding legal drugs, even pot, is just one more problem. Also, you say the parents are responsible, but you know and I know they are limited in their power because of exactly that kind of “me first” attitude I see with you. In my grandfather’s day, if someone was harming the kids the parents would ban together and confront that person and nobody sued anyone or called the police. It was handled. For example, let’s say a parent with young children is living next to a doper whose behavior is negatively influencing the kids. Stoned, dirty, verbally abusive, even offering the dope to the kids for fun. What should the parent do? Call the cops? For what? It’s LEGAL now! So, in your opinion that parent must do something to protect his/her child. The doper won’t listen, as a matter of fact, he’s quite threatening, due to his constant drug use. What is their options? (Visit my site for what I’d do, but not here.)
Now as far as taxes. I’m not sure where you are going here. Are you in favor of a larger government with a special agency set up to track and collect taxes? Of course you compare what the market and production methods might become for marijuana to what happened to alcohol post prohibition. I’m not sure what to say. Are you advocating a Jim Beam, Millers, Anheuser-Busch type industry for the production of weed? Now you’ve got me thinking. Unlike the initial expense of setting up a brewery for alcohol production, growing weed in your home is far less expensive. Heck, you could grab some potting soil, a bedroom, some lights, fertilizer and a watering can and you are in! So, why buy from Miller? Unless, some government politician from the “marijuana making capital of the world” made it illegal to own the plants personally. Just thinking out loud…
Now for my argument about legalizing drugs and making the government responsible. Understand, who is going to distribute it? Pay for it? Regulate its quality? You have to regulate the quality because the first death, injury or harm caused by weed the government is going to jump all over it. It is the nature of that beast. I don’t like it, but it is the way it works, sadly. Look at something as simple as cellphones, cable/satellite television and the Internet. The government is all OVER this stuff because of the cash involved.
Will the government pay for it? Right now we have stories of SSI checks going straight to bars for alcoholic recipients, what’s the difference? If you don’t think the government will get involved at all levels, remember FDR took care of the issue about growing something and using yourself when he managed to get the Supreme Court to agree it still violates the commerce clause. If marijuana is legal, and used as a medicine (crazy idea huh, that a government would recognize it as a medicine…uh, never mind…) won’t the government be forced to provide it, at a federal level? That means your money, the ones you’d buy your dope with, is being taken as taxes to pay for some other idiot who managed to fill out all the forms and qualify. There would be Weed for Humanity organizations run by former a President (Clinton comes to mind for some reason); A minority or diversity program to make sure all minorities can get their weed, nothing worse than weed racism; And probably some huge money swamped weed lobby that caters to politicians who want everyone out here in America to get stoned at least once a week. It will make living in a world gone mad easier to deal with. I can see Barney Frank now, suddenly recognizing a weed plant (unlike the ones in his boyfriend’s apartment) and saying that all people should have access to their own weed patch in their home. It is the American dream. (Fanny Weed/Freddie Smack?) Just thinking out loud…
As for not starting to smoke and drink until your were twenty-five. Good. That means anything bad that happens to you is your fault; poor job, bad women, messed up kids (Boy, have I seen that since the “sixties” and “seventies” generation grew up, had kids and instilled no values in them out of guilt!), lack of finances and owning a fabulous 1996 Buick with most of its rims still intact.
Here’s my point. You are an adult. You want to smoke dope I could care less. If you manage to control it so it doesn’t control you, great. I had a friend who did a little too much when he was younger and I saw it affected his judgment and career. He got it under control and today is a millionaire. God love him for it. However, if anyone tries to sell, give, or try to influence my kids with drugs, because they think they have a libertarian right to do so, they will deal with me, the parent. Which begs the question, can a doper can smoke through a straw.
Just saying…
92. Ratatosk:
Keith_Indy,
Shhhh, you’re making sense… it might hurt archer52’s poor little brain. He can’t think past his own ‘wit’ (if you can call that hack piece wit).
There’s no need to denigrate those who oppose you on a political issue.
They wont listen to a guy who’s smoked pot in the past, and was still able to pull an almost 6 figure income, and not drag down the world around him.
They will ignore their own hypocrisy with regards to alcohol vs pot by justifying it on religious and cultural habits, and ignore evidence of the use of pot and other drugs in religious and cultural habits.
They accept the societal costs of their drug of choice, alcohol and say we will see different results with other drugs, well, because.
They want to justify their enforcement of morality by saying they are protecting people from themselves.
Yes, there are some substances out there which some people can and will become addicted to. Sucks to be them or around them I’m sure.
The willingness to use the force of the state to prevent people from harming themselves is what is disturbing to me.
We can have different rules, laws and regulations for minors and adults. That not only passes the libertarian test, but also the Supreme Court.
We already have laws which make a crime of giving minors intoxicating substances.
I think they are as effective as they can be without putting people who break the law to death.
Anyone that thinks that marijuana should stay illegal but are not for the criminalization of the much worse drugs like alcohol and nicotine are hypocrites of the worst kind.
Gentlemen, the solution is a very simple one:
We must outlaw plastic bags!
When plastic bags are outlawed,
only amateur gay porn stars will have plastic bags!
Or something like that…
UR a douche
When I read the first page of straw man ramblings against Libertarianism, I knew the article had to end in Jesus-hugging wharrgarbl. And sure enough it did.
The New Testament also sanctions keeping slaves (Ephesians 6:5). If you’re going to the Bible as a basis for public policy, you’re living in the wrong century entirely.
This article is ridiculous. To say that, “Marijuana, in contrast, has always been counter-cultural in the West. Every toke symbolizes a thumb in the eye of Western values.”, is false on so many levels. At one time, in the history of this country, Cannabis was very legal and socially accepted, especially in the Northeast. It was not unit the South began pushing for criminalization in the early 1900′s that Cannabis began to get a bad name. And it wasn’t for Health Reason’s. Anyone who knows a thing or two about the actual history of the crimilization of cannabis knows that the whole Criminalization Movement started in the South and was aimed at Southern Blacks and Mexicans, claiming that they were scourges of sociaty that would get stoned and rape white women. This author needs to do a bit of good ol’ Journalism and stop playing the tired, “It needs to be outlawed for Sociaty’s Sake” crap. It reeks the stench of propagation such as, “Reefer Madness.”
Do a bit a statistical analysis and any fool can see that Alcohol, is way worse. Just because it was sanctioned by the Bible does not make it ok. Genocide was sanctioned praised in the bible, (i.e. Crusades). Does that make it better?
Sincerly,
Responsible Toker
Hey Rat: Obviously you were stoned while posting. You were addressing me as if I HAD already read your post.
So your rebuttal leads to the conclusion that pot is okay, should be legal, will not harm kids/youth/young adults, will not cause any needless injuries, will actually increase productivity and earnings (like yours), will lead to less crime, that THC is not addictive or bad for the human body, will cure cancer,that companies right now have pot smokers working for them and their drug tests are ineffective, that legalizing pot would not make public travel less safe, etc, etc. Have I pretty much summed up your post?
But wait, did you not say: “Hey Stupid. Do you want those people to be drunk? No? Neither do I. There is no difference between intoxication by alcohol and intoxication by mary jane… your argument is fallacious.” So you CAN be intoxicated on pot which would be dangerous. Therefore, your argument that pot is harmless is invalid.
The basis for your argument favoring the legalizing of pot is that it is harmless. Equating being stoned to being drunk does not serve your argument well.
“Now, I am NOT claiming that these Studies are TRUTH or FACT… I am however, using them as examples where the Drug Czar and the ONDCP, the official government heads of Drug Control Policy, appear to select interpretations of data which fit their political policies, and appear to avoid data which disagrees with the official position. Indeed, that was exactly what the General Accounting Office concluded in the quote I made earlier. The job of the Drug Czar and his department is to support and promote the federal position… not dissseminate facts.”
Additionally we are to take as gospel that government studies which do not jive with your positions are all lies conjured up by the government to oppress you. But the studies which support your position are all true, peer reviewed, retested with the same results, and can be trusted. Is that it? Do I have your argument right? Sooo cherry picking is okay as long as it supports your propostion?
“Almost all of the marijuana consumed in the multibillion-dollar U.S. market once came from Mexico or Colombia. Now as much as half is produced domestically, often by small-scale operators who painstakingly tend greenhouses and indoor gardens to produce the more potent, and expensive, product that consumers now demand, according to authorities and marijuana dealers on both sides of the border.” WaPo 10/7/09 So we are both wrong.
We are so happy that you make a six-figure salary while being stoned. Wonderful! You must be so proud of your self; your self-esteem must be off the charts.
As the THC begins to ruin your memory though, I hope you will have someone around to help you.
In 1996 I was assigned to a street crimes unit that dealt with street level crime and gangs. We ran across and tried to help a lot of kids from 12 to 18. I saw twelve year old girls giving oral sex to their “boyfriends” as an act of friendship. When I told them it was wrong, and it is by the way, they would say, “But it’s not sex.” (Sound familiar?) When I caught them with drugs they would get upset. “Why are you giving me a hard time about using drugs. It’s no big deal. The President does it!” Believe me when I tell you it leaves you very little wiggle room when faced with that.
Great anecdote. It’s a poignant example of what happens when you combine lack of education with poverty. Your weak attempt to use it as an argument against drug legalization is somewhat humorous but mostly depressing. Why work on improving the situation of these people by improving education, urban blight, improving employment rates, fighting gang violence, etc. when instead we could spend our time arresting and jailing them for minor drug offenses, effectively ruining their chances of turning their lives around by finding gainful employment and guaranteeing that they will pass on the legacy of poverty and low education to the next generation, completing the cycle your ignorance supports so beautifully.
LOL! “legalizing marijuana will remove the freedom employers now have to test for the judgment-impairing drug.” rubbish! cocaine and alcohol get out of your system in 8 hours, so they can’t test for it. unless the testee is a moron and doesn’t abstain for 8 hours. i don’t know about you, but i consider these drugs to be WAAAYYY more dangerous than marijuana use. here’s a wake-up call for all you anti-marijuana people… a lot of the people that serve you in a public sense are not on marijuana, they are on coke and are alcoholics!
Ray,
Well, lets not tell her that there’s some evidence that the Israelites may have used Marijuana as well… she may explode!
Author is fail. Alcohol is a drug, and kills many more people than marijuana.
Are both harmful? Yes. Is she my mom? No. I’ll do how I do until the day I die. Keep your holier-than-thou opinions to yourself and don’t try to meddle with my life. Jesus is dead LOL.
Marijuana, in contrast, has always been counter-cultural in the West. Every toke symbolizes a thumb in the eye of Western values. So it follows that in order to maintain our culture, we need to criminalize this drug.
Yikes! This is the most biased, poorly argued opinion I’ve heard in a long time. As someone who uses cannabis in therapeutic form, I have to disagree. I am a member of multiple governing boards of non-profits, run my own company, am accountable for people’s jobs, and work my hardest every day.
Your argument works in your mind because of a few stereotypes that people of your persuasion have been pounding into the national dialogue for decades, ever since Hearst went around convincing white folk (like me) of the Mexican marijuana smokers who were lazy and would rape white women. It was then expanded to include black ethnotypes, and finally, when racism went out of vogue (at least for some), to those on the low end of the socioeconomic scale.
Please stop trying to push your values onto our country, especially when you do it veiled in the language of liberty. Liberty entitles people to their own beliefs, not yours.
“Other claims by activists don’t pass the smell test, either. Our prisons and even jails aren’t stuffed with drug users who were caught with a personal stash; more than 90% of those arrested only for possession get diversion counseling”
Cite your sources. America has the highest percent of people in prison, and most of those are due to non-violent drug-related crimes.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/basicfax8.htm
There are so many problems with your argument, I am having trouble picking a place to start. Ok, here goes.
- None of the legalization efforts can stop an employer from random drug testing:
“And legalizing marijuana will remove the freedom employers now have to test for the judgment-impairing drug.”
If you are drunk at work, you can be fired. If you are under the (negative) influence of a legally prescribed drug while at work, you can be fired.
- Tradition is generally not a good argument for/against something:
“But I would argue that tradition should be a reason for its continued legal status and for denying legal status to marijuana.”
Beer, for example, dates back to Egyptian times, so that is a good, long history. But oh…didn’t Egyptians have slaves? Slavery has been “legal” for millennia and wasn’t ILLEGAL until about 130 years ago. Were the South’s argument in favor of slavery because of tradition, valid arguments?
- Don’t go bringing up the Bible as a source of authority because it opens a whole can of worms:
“The sanction for alcohol use goes back to the Bible.”
Based on one of your arguments, since the Bible endorses alcohol, it is OK. Well, by that logic, since the Bible ALSO endorses the owning of slaves, slavery is OK.
- Marijuana wasn’t illegal until 1937:
“The prohibition against marijuana is one brick in the foundation of our society.”
Although our nation has a relatively brief history, 70 years ago is hardly part of our foundation.
My head is going to exploding, trying to reason with you. And the funny thing is, I have never smoked pot and I never will. I think people who do are idiot losers. I just think their right to be idiot losers is guaranteed in the Constitution. I also don’t mind having idiot losers benefit me through taxes on their stupid habits.
An absurd article, I suggest the author read the comments. My own short contribution: you use fallacious argumentation to link stripping and drug use, Jesus used cannabis to heal the sick (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/06/science.religion), America’s founding owes more to hemp than it does to Judeo-Christian values (http://www.naihc.org/hemp_information/hemp_facts.html). I can’t believe you have a job writing, they should fire you for being so myopic and blatantly misrepresenting this grievous attack piece as journalism.
When I was in high school, one of my best friend’s mom was a teacher at our school. Teacher mom didn’t smoke pot – she might have lost her career over it – but she DID drink, quite heavily. The mom would get drunk and beat the hell out of my friend, but was allowed to remain teaching. (Yes, the school administration was aware of her problem; I made damned sure of that.) But if she had smoked a little dope, she would have been fired. In what universe does that make sense?
I am very pro-legalization, especially for medical purposes. I find it astonishing that my doctor can prescribe morphine, but God forbid I want to use an all-natural, unrefined substance to help with my pain and nausea.
I’d far rather be in a room full of stoners than with one nasty drunk.
Also see: http://librivox.org/what-prohibition-has-done-to-america/
“In What Prohibition Has Done to America, Fabian Franklin presents a concise but forceful argument against the Eighteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Beginning in 1920, this Amendment prohibited the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages in the United States, until it was repealed in 1933. Franklin contends that the Amendment “is not only a crime against the Constitution of the United States, and not only a crime against the whole spirit of our Federal system, but a crime against the first principles of rational government.” Writing only two years after Prohibition began, he correctly predicts many of its disastrous consequences, such as runaway bootlegging and organized crime. The book is both a passionate defense of liberty, and a reminder to Americans of the perils of surrendering it. (Summary by Leon Mire)”
17 blotto
Today’s youth and even Gen Xers would abuse dope if it became legal. How many more “Jackass” youth do you want running around?
Jackasses prone to wild and reckless behavior are such regardless of whether or not they ingest THC; if you’re not one already, THC is not going to suddenly turn you into one. You seem to have a very after-school-special view of the effects of THC. Can you point to a credible study showing the types of behavioral modification you imply in this comment? I suspect not; why rely on science when you’ve got such keen “instincts” on the subject, right?
Our youth suffer enough from an upside down culture.
What a vapid, silly thing to say. What does this even mean? Would you care to elaborate on what’s “upside down” exactly, and why only “our youth” suffer from these things when all of us share a common culture?
Do you really want to make it worse by allowing them to get stoned?
In what ways would it be worse, and what is being made worse? You keep stringing sentences together that seem to contain English words, but there’s absolutely not meaning behind them whatsoever.
Imagine the accelerated drop in our schools and individual achievement. Imagine the further breakdown in clasroom behavior. College students already think college is four years of partying what would happen if dope were legal?
Can you link to the studies upon which you’re basing these claims of increased dropout rates and lower classroom or individual achievement? Or is this another case in which we’re meant to legislate based upon your flawless “instinct” on the matter?
Can any of you cite an independent study that proves dope is not a gateway drug?
Can you cite a study which proves Christmas Trees are not a gateway drug? Burden of proof is on the positive claimant. You cannot make a baseless statement unsupported by evidence and then demand your opposition disprove it. That is intellectually dishonest and demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of how scientific research works. You are putting forth an assertion: pot is a gateway drug. Go prove it through research. Starting with the assumption that the statement is true and working in reverse is “upside down,” as you say.
Do you really believe that safety and productivity at work would not be effected by dope?
Yes, I really believe responsible people make responsible decisions about when to utilize recreational activities that may effect their ability to do their job. Nobody wants to get fired, or do a bad job. For the same reason I might have a few glasses of wine after work on Friday but not before work on Monday, I would not make choices about marijuana that would impact my ability to do my job. Why do you think people would? For the most part, people like being employed. They want to do a good job so they will continue to get paid, receive promotions and excel in their fields. No evidence suggests that THC removes these desires for success in people. Do you have some reason to believe otherwise?
Do you want a school bus driver high while driving students to school, how about a train driver??? Surgeon? Pilot? Do you really believe that a stoned driver is a consciencious and safe driver especially since the prohibitions of driving stoned would then be removed?
I wouldn’t want a school bus driver driving while sending text messages, but that doesn’t mean text messaging should be illegal. I don’t think pilots should shampoo their hair while they’re flying, but I don’t think shampoo should be illegal. Do you see the fallacy of your argument, yet? It should be obvious. The fact that something impairs someone’s ability to do their job safely has nothing to do with the safety of that particular product itself. We rely on people like school bus drivers, pilots and surgeons to make responsible decisions about how they perform their jobs and under what mental and physical conditions they are in when doing so.
And if you say in rebuttal that limits would be placed on when and where you could dope up then how do you enforce those regulations, and if you are going to regulate that then what is the difference in keeping it illegal in the first place.
I think I just showed how illogical and purposefully ignorant this statement is. The difference between making driving while impaired illegal and making THC illegal is the same as the difference between making shampooing while driving illegal and making shampoo illegal. One is incredibly dangerous, the other is relatively harmless unless you get it in your eyes.
And do you libertarians really believe the drug trade and crime would lessen if dope was legalized? Would not the doper still have to find money?
Most “dopers” have jobs.
Would there not still be a black market on manufacturing and distribution?
Why would there have to be if it were legal?
If we really wanted to stop the importation of it, we could shut down the southern border.
“Shut it down.” How, exactly?
It is politics especially from the left and a MSM that seeks a drugged society that keeps the ineffective “war on drugs” from being effective.
Wow. What?
There is a lot of speculating here on whether or not drug legalization is wise.
There is a good way to determine the effect of legalizing drugs on society; we can observe what happened in Portugal since they legalized all (including cocaine and heroin) drugs in 2001.
The CATO institute wrote in April 2009
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080
that none of the nightmare scenarios envisioned by anti-legalization crowd came to pass. Portugal did not become a worldwide haven for drug dealing or consuming. Society did not crumble. Crime went down, drug use went down (significantly lower than European states that had strong anti-drug laws). The experience in Portugal clearly demonstrates the utility of favoring drug treatment over drug prohibition.
You can have your theories about why this or that would be bad in terms of drug legalization. The experience in Portugal is documented and irrefutable.
Time to end the drug wars; the war on drugs is a war on our own people. We have better and more pressing uses for our police and our money.
And legalizing marijuana will remove the freedom employers now have to test for the judgment-impairing drug.
Impaired judgement appears to be the rule in (Corporate) America…
no need for any drugs
Yes, some drugs are very bad for you; others, less so. So what?
If the government can tell you want you can put in your body, what can’t it do?
If you believe in limited government, you have to believe in drug legalization. Otherwise, it’s all just a policy question of how best the government should exercise its (unlimited) authority.
“Archer52″ points out that few people go to prison for simple possession. EXACTLY! If the government put everybody who smoked pot in jail — well, it couldn’t, the system would fall apart if it tried. So it only puts people it DOESN’T LIKE in prison. That’s how totalitarianism works.
(As for the various people claiming all we need to end drug abuse is more vigorous prosecution, well, wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. There are illegal drugs in supermax prisons, there were illegal drugs in countries that had and enforced the death penalty for using it, I’m sure there have been illegal drugs in space by now. I was visiting a Communist hell-hole and my guide complained of the trouble that the authorities were having keeping college students from smoking opium IN THE CLASSROOM. So, no, give it up, this is as good as it’s going to get.)
I can’t believe you have a job writing, they should fire you for being so myopic and blatantly misrepresenting this grievous attack piece as journalism.
Welcome to the Blogosphere, we’re trying hard to be the next MSM!
Invoking Barry Goldwater to justify the expansion of the federal government necessary to undertake the drug war is disgraceful. Barry Goldwater voted for the 1957 Civil Right Act, but refused to vote for the 1964 Civil Right Act on the grounds that it unconstitutionally eroded the rights reserved to the states. The modern drug war goes far beyond any damage done to our national constitution and the principle of federalism by imposing a de facto general police power on our entire country. This author should be ashamed of himself. The modern drug war started with Richard Nixon, a man Goldwater rightfully despised, and has continued in that vein of authoritarianism and disregard for our rights as Americans as well as the sovereignty of South American countries ever since.
This article is an indicator of the intractable differences between libertarianism and conservatism that Hayek described in “Why I Am Not A Conservative.”
Seriously miss Grabar, were you born an idiot or did you have to work hard to become one? Absolutely the worst reasoning and ideas I have heard in the past 17 hours, 4 minutes and 38 seconds. Honestly I have heard 12 year olds make more convincing arguements than what you just attemted. And what’s up with the bible reference? That’s the best you can do, traditiion? Really? Please let me know where you got your phd, I don’t have one, but it sounds like wherever you got yours from, they must pass ‘em out like candy.
“Andrew Grande choked on a plastic bag…”
Why isn’t the issue plastic bags? Trying to swallow a plastic bag is hazardous to your health no matter WHAT is inside of it. The pot inside was pretty safe.
To determine a lethal dose, researchers have tried to kill large dogs with marijuana and hashish. The animals could not ingest enough to kill themselves. The same cannot be said for humans and alcohol.
“Case in point is the sad story of Andrew Grande, whose secret life as an amateur gay porn star is not being told in the media.”
Maybe because it has nothing whatsoever to do with being stupid enough to try to swallow a plastic bag.
#70
Its much easier to pass as “sober” when high on THC than drunk on alcohol. Without an accurate way to determine sobriety on site THC cannot be legalized, until then I will continue to oppose its legalization.
If a person ‘high’ on THC can pass the coordination test, he’s not a problem behind the wheel.
I’m so glad I never smoked weed during my high school days…. oh wait I did. I even managed a perfect 4.0 and full ride scholarship. Use to grow my own too, even had cloning down. Botany is cool stuff. Did you know you can splice plants together and make new strains? I don’t smoke any more and never did coke or heroin. Either I’m super special and an anomalous exception or the false propaganda stereotype of what a weed smoker is has little to do with reality.
The drug laws are totalitarian idiocy.
I used to buy all the rhetoric about Grass. Even years after I stopped using it and associating with its users. Then I was simply forced to use my senses to evaluate users well past their twenties and up into my age. What a sad, and unchanged lot.
The amazingly immature things I used to believe, I can now list as questions.
Why would you want to take a drug to make cheap worthless food taste better?
Why would you need to make SEX better???????????
Why would you listen to music that needs drugs to sound good?
Why would you knowingly consort and conspire with criminals?
Why , if it is indeed harmless, would parents risk the custody of their children in order to use it?
the list goes on.
I think you are right about the Dems and Dope too, but consider this;
each generation of Zombies produced will also wait lemming like, for the “Government” to legalize drugs, until chronic use and consistent criminal behavior has wasted most of their lives.
Finally then, why hasn’t Pot been legalized after all this time?
easy answer. Ex users do not want it legalized. they know better.
This article illustrates exactly why the republican party is struggling…..The power(money) is in the religious-right side of conservatism and not on the libertarian side. The utter stupidity of the religious-right is astounding and I’m sure Barrry Goldwater is spinning in his grave as we speak….Marijuana legalization is a true “no-brainer”….and even the legalization of hard drugs deserves at the least, serious consideration.
The GOP has to seize the opportunity to embrace its libertarian roots else we should facilitate a split in the party, not unlike the one in the early 20th century with the bull-moose party.
At some point conservatives forgot about addiction. There currently stands a belief among conservatives that if only the abusable substance is gone, then we don’t have to worry about addiction.
We as a nation have an addiction problem, but we can’t admit it because we have so many schizophrenic views about it. If you are addicted to money, then we are impressed, but warn you to be careful. If you are addicted to work, then we praise your puritanical ideals. If you are addicted to family, we praise your dedication. But if you are addicted to drugs, then something must be done about it.
Perhaps it comes from ideas like “love the sinner and hate the sin”, but we seem eager to vilify drugs so that we don’t have to deal with the other issues. Making the drug evil doesn’t explain why Vietnam vets recovered from addiction at a much better rate than the average population, even from heroin. Or why in an experiment rats put in a plain cage would remain addicted to cocaine, but rats in a cage with activities would wean themselves off the drug.
Conservatives need to step back and look at the larger issues at stake. You are afraid of young people being liberal, but are only willing to approach their issues with simplistic rules. No wonder they are sympathetic to Obama’s more nuanced, contemplative approach. Would you rather be treated as a peer, or as a child.
how the hell did u get a phd?
If you’re going to use the bible as justification for alcohol use, then you really shouldn’t leave out Genesis 1:29 when talking about pot.
Just sayin’.
To Vulcanzied:
Wrong assumption. I worked in a city dominated by white/black middle to upper middle class kids raised by parents with some educational background. The “blight” you refer to is societal, not limited to the neighborhood. It isn’t always a black issue, or an inner city issue or an educational issue, those are the pat answers so many fall back on when confronted with the decay we see in our nation. Drugs are everywhere, but worse, the forgiveness for drug use is even more prevalent due to our politically correct “everybody is a victim” society. As you can see in some of these arguments, there are people here who are teetering on it being a “right.”
I’ve seen all the arguments here and none really address this one issue. What portion of the responsibility for the further decline of our society will you personally take in order to have the freedom to smoke dope. What piece of the pie are you willing to claim?
As far as young kids not getting jobs and a chance at getting out BECAUSE we arrest them for minor pot possession, that makes no sense. What you are really saying is given the choice between controlling their own behavior and not using drugs or using drugs and giving up the opportunities in life, the kids that use drugs have made a free choice, but shouldn’t be held to any accountability for that choice. How does that square with the free will libertarian concept? How can you wish to have your cake and eat it too and still demand respect from us who have had to make that choice?
Here’s some facts:
1- Being poor does not mean you have to do drugs.
2- Being from the inner city does not mean you have to use or sell drugs.
3- Being from a neighborhood with a failing school does not mean you have to use drugs.
4- Being in an area occupied by gangs does not mean you have to use drugs.
5- Being black or Hispanic does not mean you have to sell or use drugs.
6- If your daddy left your mom, you don’t have to use drugs.
7- Having a democrat or a leftie or a libertarian say it isn’t your fault if you do, still doesn’t mean you have to do drugs.
However, if you do and something goes wrong, blame only yourself. It was your choice. Even if we legalize it and remove the police, employers still won’t pick a stoned doper over a kid who decided to stay straight and work hard toward a goal. Unless of course somebody, someday would try to make it a right and could sue the boss for not hiring you because you’re stoned.
Crazy huh.
( Post #5 Robert ) “There has not been a single Western country that has legalized drugs”
Mexico is western aren’t they?? Small amounts are now legal.Not just pot.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=d9a763ho0&show_article=1
The drug war has clearly failed and is a massive waste of money.The DEA spends hundreds of millions yearly attempting to eradicate ditchweed in this country.They have failed miserably in eradicating a weed that can’t get you high, what makes us think they can eradicate the weed that can get you high?
http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=7033
Also,I’m told that, in South America, the dea is more of a paramilitary outfit and is widely hated by all.I do not support the funneling of tax dollars to a program that has never worked and never will.
There’s a lot of nannies on this site…Just so the nannies can understand that all pot is NOT alike; there are basically 2
different effects.The indicas are what’s popular among the kids these days.Makes you sleepy and lethargic, good for a rainy
night at the house, a good meal and a movie and a little romance if you can stay awake that long. They mostly have an effect
similar to alcohol,making thoughts disjointed, hard to follow a conversation because you forget what was said 5 seconds ago.
(Google Kush)
Then there are sativas,which is (mostly) what we had in the 70′s and are the basis of the best heirlooms that are more suitable to
growing outdoors in this country because of mold and heat resistance.(Indicas are more suited to colder,dryer climes)
The effects are more like coffee, making us upbeat, alert and improves our outlook on our surroundings,generally speaking.
Thoughts come freely and allow for precision in our work.It also makes the sex better all the time, every time.I would prefer my brain surgeon smoke this the night before and forego the 12 year old scotch or Wild Turkey….
There is no difference in todays potency and yesterdays.All of the most potent varieties of today are based on old varieties that we’ve always had.The only difference is that yesterday, they allowed plants to go to seed which limits thc production.Today they grow sensimilla or seedless,which allows for better thc production.Also, we’ve had many years to select sports or anomolies from heirloom lines that are passed around in the form of cuttings.These are selected because of unusually high amounts of thc or a unique flavor.
Of course hybrids between the 2 make up most of the pot to be found on the street and this gives a wide range of effects that are a nice blend of indica and sativa..(Google ‘Trainwreck’, ‘NYC Diesel’ and ‘Haze’)
I find it hard to understand how the same people who will go out today and fight to keep pot illegal, will get up again tomorrow and fight to keep the murder of helpless unborn babies legal. Seems like they would remove the beam from their own eye first, and worry about the dust mote in my eye later.
This is way of out context in many ways, but..Oddly enough, this reminds me of a line from the film Fight Blub where Brad Pitt procedes to tell a polition of some sort with a knife to his groin “we wash your clothes, cook your food, ect., ect.”. Ah yes, I’m sure many of those low paying jobs he mentions employ a mass of stoners or users of some kind of susbstance…BUT WAIT! What about ceos, government official, investment bankers, doctors?(I know a few doctors that smoke pot, strange) Look at these respectable positions I have named above, do you know someone with one of the named postions that uses marijuana? I can. These are a few positions of friends and family that currently use marijuana. They are all great people living the american dream, paying taxes, and helping local and other comunities, great mothers/fathers. Its a silly reference to a great film, but its even sillier for blaming societies woes on something like pot.
PS: I don’t use marijuana, or proof read things…obviously!
The Libertarian POV becomes difficult in application, which is why I think that it is more a direction or philosophy than a practical plan of government.
Our author begins with premises which make no sense to a Libertarian. Yet neither can make its way to the reality of life as we know it without significant concession.
Our Collectivist author thinks that the basic task of government is to preserve collective values such as tradition, judeo-christian values or something like that. Individuals who wish to deviate from that must militate against that basic ideal.
The Libertarian begins with the premise of individual rights and then makes concessions from there.
I have thought that the problem of Mountain Climbers is a good case to see how hard this is to work out in reality.
Mountain climbers take huge risks. When things dont work out, mountains being what they are, often there are enormous costs to others in rescue attempts, etc. Many rescuers bravely risk and lose in the attempt. There are financial costs and a small proportion of my taxes go to such efforts and safeguards.
So why should I pay so that mountain climbers can do such things?
This is human psychology and hence…difficult. I think I dont object to Mountain Climbing because I somehow recognize value in a world where people still can do such things. Try finding that value, and selling it, about a guy who smokes a joint at the end of the day to chill his aching bones and mind and gets up and goes to work at his crappy job the next morning.
Now we are in the world of the economists. They can explain much, yet cannot tell us where our heart and soul should be, only where it is or might be.
That is your choice.
And with that I am a libertarian at heart,
Spindok
#128DON Are you talking about ex-users or abusers, there is a really big difference. Carl Sagan said he liked marijuana because it gave him perspective, it is “how” you use anything that makes the difference.
#106BLOTTO There is a big difference between intoxication behind pot or alcohol. Have you ever heard of a pot smoker going into a bar or a party and starting a fist fight? Of course you haven’t and you never will. You certainly can’t say that about an intoxicated drinker.
If MJ was legal, then the guy wouldn’t have to have had to worry about hiding it. Simple as that.
106. blotto:
It never ceases to amaze me how hateful people are on the far right and far left…
Abuse is abuse. I can flat out say that I see more corrupt overbearing,egotistical people who abuse power, money and position than I do that abuse marijuana. Drug addiction is an issue, that usually does have it’s roots elsewhere. generally it’s more of a singularly personal thing than the other forms of abuse.
God bless the meek for they shall inherit the earth…the rest of you can go to ….
Spindok – Very well said. Thank you.
Mary, what Libertarians ‘Need to Rethink’ is how to better disassociate ourselves with Fundies that really believe they have not only the mandate, but the God-given right to control individuals and society. You have no such right, nor will you ever as long as we have some level of church/state separation.
I own my body, thus I am a free man. Any substance I take into my body is my choice, thus I am a free man. IF I do not do phyical harm to another, other’s are free also. IF I do harm another I shall
pay that price, thus we all are kept free. If you take one man’s harmless choice away, all Americans lose freedom. IF you disagree with me thats great, in my world it maters nothing to me. When you force me at tme point of a GUN,to agree with you
that changes the game.
I am 50 this Nany state crap has been creeping along as I can remember. I can not site here all the freedoms we have allowed to be taken away. All in the name of making the American People safer. Well Thank You for your consern. But I am a free man and hopefuly I can remain that way. The way things are going I have my doubts. This kind of fuzzy logic from my side of the isle dosen’t help my mood.
IF my behavor does not cause you phyical harm (Not some grand Idea of national harm) Than leave me the HELL alone. My Mom use to say “If it’s not hurting you, MIND YOUR OWN BEE”S WAX.
A new pol party anyone???
Wow! Thanks, guys. Was it something I said? Seriously, Tina Trent has the facts and archer52 seems to have the experience, and good arguments based on that experience (doing some very good work). And that’s one of the points I was making in my column: the problem with a lot of current libertarianism is that it operates in a vacuum. Too many of its proponents advance arguments without regard (or experience) about how it affects real people (including children who are victims). For a lot of my critics it seems to be an either/or issue, without any of the nuances behind what is behind our laws: customs, values, relationships. Many defend themselves as pot smokers and claim not to have been harmed by it. Hmmm. I’ve heard that before. Denial is not a river in Egypt.
I encourage everyone to visit Tina Trent’s and archer52′s blogs.
Mary Grabar makes a good argument from the standpoint of tradition. But it is a narrow one since it does not comprehend the infinitely more pernicious consequences of the War on Drugs. For those who use illegal drugs and those who do not (I am in the latter camp) the assault on the liberty of us all by government coercion, intrusion on privacy and seizure of property runs more strongly counter to Western Tradition than does drug use itself.
I agree with Ms. Grabar that the use of illegal drugs (and imprudent use of legal ones) undermines the ends of civil society, and I have no good remedies to offer.
Still, the model of prohibition and its costs should teach us something about human nature and the consequences of laws that do not account for it. Drug lords are Mafia dons on steroids, and their enormous profits are used to corrupt government and society at large. If marijuana were legalized, would it remain California’s largest cash crop? I don’t know, but it is worth considering.
Drug abuse may tend to be self-limiting. In the early part of the last century, the use of cocaine and opiates (then legal) became widely popular. When the destructive effects became generally recognized – about a decade later – usage sharply declined. While the analogy with marijuana may be weak, if the cumulative effects of its use came to be seen as destructive, it might fall out of favor. If not, arguments against it lose power.
If marijuana (and/or other drugs) were legalized, one could expect an increase in human suffering, but its effects would likely be more confined to users alone than is the case today.
In short, the War on Drugs has greatly increased the size, reach and scope of government with a corresponding loss of liberty. Drug use, like every other serious problem, it is only exacerbated by government involvement.
They give out PHD’s to everybody nowadays, huh?
People should have the right to decide whether they want to be that annoying guy everyone avoids because he’s stoned all the time and only wants to talk about how great it was seeing some generic jam band last summer.
I should also have the right to harsh that guy’s buzz.
/not all drugs should be legal, though: http://www.urinalgum.com/?p=614
Clearly the logical solution is to start a war on blastic baggies. Forget about marijuana; we can’t have our little ones swallowing plastic bags left right and centre. It’s horrendous! It’s amoral! It’s… Darwinism? Wait, forget I said that. Who’s with me!?
Was this a serious article or just a big joke? I can’t tell if miss PhD is trolling or just crazy.
The principled libertarian starts with one simple principle: it is immoral to initiate aggression against peaceful people. It is not a crime to engage in behavior that does not directly harm the person or property of others without their consent, even if there is a statutory prohibition. Indeed, all acts that lead to the harm of individuals or their property are crimes even if statutorily allowed.
No one who believes that initiating violence against others is wrong can support drug prohibition. The advocates of prohibition would say that “drugs harm society”, but “society” is not a thing that exists in reality but is merely a label for an aggregate of individuals, and therefore cannot be shown to be harmed unless specific individuals can be shown to be harmed by the drugs or the use of the drugs by other individuals. Obviously, it’s not the possession, distribution, or use of the drugs that causes one individual to harm another, but related activities. In principle, then, only those related activities, such as shooting one’s competition in the drug trade or beating a prostitute and forcing her to take drugs, are crimes and as such should lead to punishment, and perhaps a harsher punishment than is usually provided now.
Prohibition and punishment of peaceful individuals because some individuals have acted irresponsibly is a collectivist, authoritarian notion and is the advocation of violence as a tool to regulate behavior that has not, in itself, caused harm.
wow, what a dumb article! here’s my favorite line: “So it follows that in order to maintain our culture, we need to criminalize this drug.” sheesh. what a bass-ackward way of thinking.
marijuana should be decriminalized or legalized IMMEDIATELY. the only reason it’s a “gateway” drug is that it’s illegal. if it was legal then the people who tried it wouldn’t have that pathway to harder drugs. I mean, hello? it’s obvious.
legalization also means an instant–INSTANT–decrease in crime. it puts the dealers out of business. period. how is it you don’t see that?
and of course the most important reason is that adults ought to be able to ingest whatever the heck they want as long as they don’t bother anybody else. let’s face it: the real reason pot is illegal is that this country still has that Puritanical streak that really despises people enjoying themselves.
I see Mary has posted a response thanking everyone for writing and then telling us all why we’re wrong. hey Mary? maybe you should actually READ some of the comments, not just notice they’re there.
Wow, this is easily the most bizarre, most out-of-touch-with-reality article I have ever read. Wow…seriously, how did you manage to just make everything up like you did here? I guess that’s what your PhD is for. Congratulations are in order, no?
Ah, but that’s pure propaganda for you. Blatant, distorted and obvious.
Good article. I agree with Mary.
The argument that legalizing drugs will reduce crime is nonsense. Did the criminals go away and become good citizens when prohibition was repealed? Of course not. Criminals are criminals because they want to be criminals.
Carl Sagen was an idiot.
The ‘war on drugs’ has not failed, it’s just not 100% effective-but then nothing is.
Society does have the right to decide the morals of the society they live in. That’s what America was founded on. The simple fact is that if the majority of the people wanted drug use legal it would be legal.
I’ve been listening to stupid arguments for the legalization of drugs for years. They don’t wash.
From a former drug user, thanks Mary, good article.
I have one question for those that say pot smokers are nothing more than a dredge on society: Have you ever heard of Carl Sagan?
Mary,
Wow again…Alcohol is SOOOOOO much worse..please read my comment in the beginning.
Yes Mary j is bad for us…but who said the gov should tell us no?? Are you now Obama to tell us whats good and bad for us?? Lots of things kill children, including dumb ass parents! But we dont out law them!
Its kind like anti gun laws…i still dont know how those kids in VA got killed?? NO GUNS allowed on campus..so how did they die?
Mary im sorry but your arguments sound like what i hear from lefties about other matters!
And now its “save the children”??
My main point is NO WAY SHOULD POT BE ILLIGAL AND NOT DRINKING, THEY ARE BOTH BAD FOR US AND SOCIETY.
And my god, how many BILLIONS of $ have we wasted??? I dont smoke but can get it within 2 hrs if i want…
And bet most here know someone they could get it from, or a friend of a friend. Had this same argument with my dad….and i said you know me dont you and he said yes…so i said there, now u know someone who can get you some!!
Its everywhere so how has making it illigal helped anything???
And trust me..pls dont take my booze away…i might cry
Dear Marry Grabar,
Gosh a PHD, GREAT!!!
“With a Librarty card 50 cents in late fee’s you would have saved youself $1000′s”
You need to read the First amend. that thing about establishment thing, ‘You know Dude its totaly cool…Woooh Dude this is great S%*T’. I could give a Flying F*@K about “YOUR Tradtion and Culture” What kind of hubrus does it take to think you know what the culture, and tradtion of this Great Nation is, or for that matter, what’s best for all of us? Im’ sorry to say this but…You sound like A Lib. One of the ‘I’m smarter than you, and I can run your life better than you, Lib’s I deal with daily’. Our Gov. is full of them. This is not about DRUGS! It is about FREEDOM! WHEN the people of this Nation give in to the people that think they know best for all, we all will become Slaves. If we have not already become so. Just LEAVE ME ALONE. Give up your free will if you must, thats your freedom. I WILL HAVE NONE OF IT!
I have to admit something. I smoke a lot of dope. as a result I’ve become somewhat indolent. That said, I have a real love for fine automobiles. So, I ask all of you to donate to my new car fund. I’m warning you, I have expensive tastes. Specifically, I’d like a new Mercedes S600. It runs about $150K. But I’m sure that if you all pull together as a team, you can get me my little dream ride.
So, who’s first? Step right up and help a brother out.
Alcohol is ‘worse’ due to the fact that is very widely accepted…almost a passage thing.
People drink everywhere, for any reason…weddings, baptismal, birthday, because it’s tuesday at 7 pm..yes, alcohol should be banned like pot. It serves no “real” medicinal purpose.
With pot there is some relief for cancer patients, arthritis, ms etc
First Im glad that its a freedom for employers to drug test and fire people for impairment a month ago, while off work, at home and on the weekend. Thats the big scam when it come to drug testing all heavy drugs and alcohol leave the system very quick 24-48hrs, even Meth can bee done on the weekend and at work monday you will pass your pee test.
So this is such a ploy to keep a segmint of the population down, the whole deal with marijuana prohibition since the start, it was started based on racist reasons and has kept going on due to that same reason. Nixon hated hippies and so when the report came in in 72 saying marijuana shouldnt be illegal and that keeping it that way would cause more harm than marijuana ever would, he threw it in the trash and ordered the start of the Drug War, to quite hippies and minorities too.
Say what you will, but keep in mind all the lies and misinformation put out there to keep this failed policy going doesnt sound any smarter written in this artical. Your safer smoking 20 joints of the best cannabis on mother earth than you are eating a big mac, driving to go get it or taking that presciption drug for gas after eating it.
Lastly, all you prohibitionists out there, its over, the majority now knows the truth and are sick of the money thrown down the pit called the drug war. Some day students will learn about the Drug war and Prohibition, I wonnder what they will think, will they wonder how come people didnt see the truth, yes because we wonder that everyday! Keep in mind that most wars in history have led to War Crimes brought about by the winners. I wonder what crimes will be charged for those that lied or spread the lies and those that have pushed their agenda at the expence of locking up nonviolent citizens?
As for those that truly think your doing good by being a prohibitionist, I hate to tell you, you have been bamboozled, and you need to start reading. There are thousands and thousands of studies and papers written telling the truth and you have alot of catching up to do, so go get started, you may just relize you were wrong this whole time.
143. Mary Grabar:
Wow! Thanks, guys. Was it something I said? Seriously, Tina Trent has the facts and archer52 seems to have the experience, and good arguments based on that experience (doing some very good work). And that’s one of the points I was making in my column: the problem with a lot of current libertarianism is that it operates in a vacuum. Too many of its proponents advance arguments without regard (or experience) about how it affects real people (including children who are victims). For a lot of my critics it seems to be an either/or issue, without any of the nuances behind what is behind our laws: customs, values, relationships. Many defend themselves as pot smokers and claim not to have been harmed by it. Hmmm. I’ve heard that before. Denial is not a river in Egypt.
I encourage everyone to visit Tina Trent’s and archer52’s blogs.
Seems you missed the great majority of arguments for legalization which present solutions to some of the ill effects it could have.
I’m putting you in the same class as anti-gun zealots who spout we must ban guns “for the children,” and prophesize apocalypse should we relax control over ADULTS having access to weapons. The apocalypse didn’t happen when the majority of states went to shall issue concealed carry permits.
Seems the only people operating in a vacuum are the zealots of any issue.
And it also seems that the pro-pot posters on this thread have a better grasp of history then the Phd and other people with “experience” have.
We need to keep marijuana illegal because of tradition?
Well, if we are going to use that standard, get back in the kitchen.
143. Mary Grabar:
Wow! Thanks, guys. Was it something I said? Seriously, Tina Trent has the facts and archer52 seems to have the experience, and good arguments based on that experience (doing some very good work). And that’s one of the points I was making in my column: the problem with a lot of current libertarianism is that it operates in a vacuum. Too many of its proponents advance arguments without regard (or experience) about how it affects real people (including children who are victims). For a lot of my critics it seems to be an either/or issue, without any of the nuances behind what is behind our laws: customs, values, relationships. Many defend themselves as pot smokers and claim not to have been harmed by it. Hmmm. I’ve heard that before. Denial is not a river in Egypt.
I encourage everyone to visit Tina Trent’s and archer52’s blogs.
________________________________________________________________
Speaking of Egypt:
THEN THE LORD SAID TO MOSES, “TAKE THE FOLLOWING FINE SPICES: 500 SHEKELS OF LIQUID MYRRH, HALF AS MUCH OF FRAGRANT CINNAMON, 250 SHEKELS OF KANNABOSM, 500 SHEKELS OF CASSIA – ALL ACCORDING TO THE SANCTUARY SHEKEL – AND A HIND OF OLIVE OIL. MAKE THESE INTO MAKE THESE INTO A SACRED ANOINTING OIL, A FRAGRANT BLEND, THE WORK OF A PERFUMER. IT WILL BE THE SACRED ANOINTING OIL.
THEN USE IT TO ANOINT THE TENT OF THE MEETING, THE ARK OF THE TESTIMONY, THE TABLE AND ALL ITS ARTICLES, THE LAMPSTAND AND ITS ACCESSORIES, THE ALTAR OF INCENSE, THE ALTAR OF BURNT OFFERING AND ALL ITS UTENSILS, AND THE BASIN WITH ITS STAND. YOU SHALL CONSECRATE THEM SO THEY WILL BE MOST HOLY, AND WHATEVER TOUCHES THEM WILL BE HOLY.
ANOINT AARON AND HIS SONS AND CONSECRATE THEM SO THEY MAY SERVE ME AS PRIESTS. SAY TO THE ISRAELITES, “THIS IS TO BE MY SACRED ANOINTING OIL FOR THE GENERATIONS TO COME. DO NOT POUR IT ON MEN’S BODIES AND DO NOT MAKE ANY OIL WITH THE SAME FORMULA. IT IS SACRED, AND YOU ARE TO CONSIDER IT SACRED. WHOEVER MAKES PERFUME LIKE IT AND WHOEVER PUTS IT ON ANYONE OTHER THAN A PRIEST MUST BE CUT OFF FROM HIS PEOPLE.”
EXODUS 30:22-33
Biblical.
Was this written as satire? Sure seems like it…..
What a great example of why conservative Christian right wingers are terrible defenders of freedom.
Reason and logic should be used to defend capitalism and freedom. But that is lacking this article.
eg/ The author states: “legalizing marijuana will remove the freedom employers now have to test for the judgment-impairing drug” Utter nonsense. In a free society an employer should be allowed to screen his employees for anything he wishes.
The author assumes that you can force morality onto a populace. False. You cannot force people (via legislation) to care about their health and well being. Self destructive or hedonistic tendancies in a person are indeed immoral, but as the war on drugs demonstrates, attempting to enforce morality per se is counter-productive (and anti-American). eg/ Iran.
Then the article states that “tradition” and “the bible” are proper standards for legislation. This is both false and dangerous. This is clearly not objective law based on reason and logic.
Incidentally, the once proud and free USA was founded by Deists, not by Puritans. The oppresive, collectivist, fear mongering, un-democratic history of Christianity is anti science, anti freedom and anti human life as the dark ages clearly demonstrated. Thankfully the ancient Greek texts were re-discovered in the west allowing the re-birth of science and the age of reason.
First thing about pot club, don’t talk about pot club…I think the “pro-drug” people mary’s talking about are actually anarchists living communally, surrendering their wages to fund random acts of vandalism and terror. Maybe she’s the one who watches too many movies.
I was scanning and can across a reply to make comment.
Here is a succinct observation that has no purchase on reality. None what so ever. Consider this. There is no reason to consider that vicious or violent people would refrain from smoking marijuana. None. That the typical user I so into a one dimensional mentality about drug use and character is telling.
In this dimension the drugs create the actions not the individuals. There is a documented correlation with all illegal drugs and other crimes. Crimes of violent people are not the product of types of drugs used. The lack of reasoning skills of drug users however are the product of hoping to let a drug do the thinking and make the choices.
or a joint makes you a new man
and the new man,
wants a joint.
Most of the criminal population in prison today,for what ever crime
are pot users.
One more comment, then I’ll move on. The only reason I’m spending the time here is to try and make the point Graber is making, nobody acts in a vacuum. I wish we did, it would free us to do what we want, when we want, but no functioning society can operate without some rules and restraints. As much as many of you think I’m a down the line supporter of the “man” you’ll have to trust me when I say I’m not. I just know, from experience, that the argument many of you are making does not work. It can’t work. It never has. People are people and their interactions can be harmonious or chaotic depending on the environment they reside within. For example, you want to drive down the road at a hundred miles an hour. At the same time, the kids at the end of the block want to play in the street. Neither of you are wrong in a pure sense, but you cannot exist together at the same time without tragedy. Thus, there must be rules. The kids can’t play when fast cars are driving down the street. You can’t drive fast in a neighborhood. Is “the man” messing with your right to do with your body what you chose? Who cares if you wrap yourself around a tree, as long as you are alone and it is your tree. I don’t. But your right to drive fast does not extend to the murder of children playing. That is why we have such laws as DUI. Driving drunk. Driving is legal, drinking is legal. But together they are illegal. Why? Because when you are drunk, you can harm someone who didn’t have a vote in whether or not you should be driving.
The legalization of drugs, and I’ll admit I have no real problem with weed being legalized and regulated like alcohol, is that is allows one more nail to be hammered into the coffin of our society. I know many of you don’t believe it does, but I know better. I’ve seen the end results. I’ve seen the dead mother who just wanted to party with some coke, dead and naked, found lying on the floor with froth dried on her mouth by her son and daughter. What damage did she do? She left her children alone. She left her children with the last vision of their mother in such a state. A few hours of getting high in exchange for a lifetime of nightmares borne by a child? Or the grandson who buried a claw hammer into the head of his grandmother because she wouldn’t give him some money for weed. Or the young man who wanted to rape and kill his neighbor, a young mother, and had to get high in order to get up the courage to stab her to death.
These are examples of the real world. Not the weekend smoker who works hard all week sober. (Although the smoker who is a doctor is a little disconcerting. Frankly, do you want cops to smoke weed and drive around with guns on their belts? There should be some restrictions on employment.) Not the high school kid who chills out and causes no problems and still manages to get good grades. But these people are like the prostitute in “Pretty Woman” more a stage prop than reality. Sure, they exist and if they were the ONLY ones out there, I would not care. But they aren’t.
Finally, as you can see by the actions of the gay rights community ( a stretch but bear with me for a second) we started out with a little of this and a little of that, nothing too offensive. Now we have a gay marriage fight on our hands, not that I care mind you. But right behind them is the “Why can’t three people get married, or four?” “How about my dog and me?” “Why have marriage at all, it is so archaic?” “Can you make the government pay for my transgendered surgery?” Most of us that didn’t care one way or the other about gay unions are going, “Hey, hey, wait a minute!” Things are getting out of control. Its human nature, and it will be the same for drugs. If marijuana is legalized, openly, then shortly behind it will come cocaine, crack, pills, meth, hash, and on and on. The argument will be the same as what we see in the gay argument. “Why is it okay for them and not us?”
At some point, to continue to function, a society must draw a line in the sand somewhere. I’ve met pot smokers say, “I agree, just draw it behind us.” Cool. But like I said, that doesn’t work. It never works. People are greedy by nature and self-serving by character. They’ll want what they’ll want and work to get it. You know this to be true. So, where is the line? Can you accept you might have to make a sacrifice in order to send a message to the next generation that smoking dope is not good for you, that drinking is not good for you, that having unprotected sex is not good for you. Sometimes the ultimate example of exercising your free will is not to exercise it at all. Self-discipline and sacrifice can be just as powerful a message as standing on a soap box and screaming you’ve been violated in some way. Actually, as messages go, the two are probably the strongest block in the foundation of a relationship, a community or a nation.
Or you could fire up a doobie and mellow out. It is in fact your choice.
Here is a question for you advocates of pot use
at what age would you encourage kids to start smoking pot?
The Bay County Sheriff’s Office and the PCPD have a long history of screw ups in the arrest and investigation of supposed drug “offenders.” Case in point, the screw ups in the Club La Vela drug raids in the late 1990′s. I would argue with the author that the argument that marijuana use promotes moral decay and the break down of social order is somewhat disjointed. There are actually many hallucinogenic OTC herbs such as Salvia that are completely legal, but much more devastating than marijuana. A cultural prohibition is not acceptable logic to allow a regulated drug like alcohol, but not pot.
I used pot from 1966 until 1979, then I decided I wanted my stolen attention span and energy back. I don’t want bus and cab drivers stoned. I drove a cab; it’s stressful enough with a clear head. When the NTSB releases its yearly figure for the number of deaths on American highways during the past 12 months, think about adding large quantities of an additional intoxicant to that mix. Please. I ride in buses, cabs and cars.
There are so many things wrong with this so called article that I can barely believe it was created by someone with a Ph. D. These are the words of someone without experience and a complete lack of knowledge on the subject. Closed mindedness and religious “facts” are not a way to run a society based on freedom. The war on drugs is an ENORMOUS waste of money which does nothing to curb the supply or stop drug use. Just like prostitution is still around regardless of law and gun laws do nothing to stop criminals from getting guns.
Personally, marijuana is the only thing that has helped me with anxiety and tension for a few years now. Though you most likely rolled your eyes there, a natural plant has helped me more than man made chemical drugs have. I stopped trusting the FDA a while ago. Like most of this government, money ultimately talks and things get approved that shouldn’t. Not to mention that half the time, the side effects are 10 times worse than any of the symptoms to begin with. Some depression medications have side effects of thoughts of suicide…what part of that sounds rational? It’s a shame that there are still people out there who actually think like this…but I guess it explains why this “drug” is still illegal.
And Don…really? So because people are for legalization they automatically would encourage kids to do it? So we all encourage kids to smoke tobacco? Or drink alcohol? Or gamble? Or any of the other immoral sins of society? Give me a break. There are too many comments for me to go through now and I really hope there aren’t many like that. I hope people have more sense.
167 Don “at what age would you encourage kids to start smoking pot?”
I “encourage” discovery not pot smoking, “age” is an irrelevant factor to experience.
All hail tradition! Mom and Dad didn’t smoke pot and neither should you! That’s the arguement made by the author in a nutshell. Sheesh.
Somehow the country survived until the 1930′s without a ban on pot. The anti-pot laws came about due to the fact that the primary recreational users were blacks and latinos. The Grabars of the early half of the 20th century felt the need to ban pot as more good white folk were partaking and it was wrong for them to do the same things these inferior races were doing.
Somewhere in your precious Bible there’s an admonition to not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Isn’t it bearing false witness to call someone’s actions a crime when there is no real criminality in the act? Or does majoritarion politics make bearing false witness acceptatble?
Why is it acceptable to bring violence against people who are acting peaceably? Where is the morality in that? Several prohibitionists lament that nothing happens in a vacuum, ergo the risks pot poses in some situations to some people must be dealt with a total ban on pot. But it never occurs to these same people that the police actions and laws they support don’t occur in a vaccum either. Doesn’t it occur to you that the very disorder you decry stems from the immoral laws you support? Why is it acceptable to have a few beers, get a little drunk, put the kids to bed, but unacceptable (apparently the end of western civilization) if dad takes a few hits, gets a little high, then puts the kids to bed?
You are all sorry the young man referenced in the story is dead. Well, he would be alive today if there wasn’t a prohibition on pot. Would I be out of line if I said that Ms. Grabar and those that agree with her sound more like Pilate and not like Jesus? I don’t think so. Jesus exhorted people not to sin, I don’t recall him recommending jail time for sinners.
Christians say they don’t beleive in forcing God on folks. Yeah, right. It’s evident in this thread that they don’t have a problem forcing folks to act as Christians. “Don’t believe in God, too bad nothing I can do about that.” says the Christian. “Don’t expect to live like a Christian, well, that’s another matter.” says the Christian. And conservative Christians wonder why more and more americans have less and less respect for religious authority. You want folks to follow Jesus, but if they don’t, you’ve already handed a stick to the government to force sinners down the path. Gotta love that high-minded biblical morality.
167. Don:
Here is a question for you advocates of pot use
at what age would you encourage kids to start smoking pot?
________________________________________________________________
Thanks for the loaded question!
I would never ENCOURAGE my kids or any one else to smoke pot. In fact I would discourage it. But if there was an age I would be less let down if my child decided to smoke it would be 18 when they are old enough to die for what is left of their freedoms in America.
“at what age would you encourage kids to start smoking pot?”
At the age they’re ready for it.
Being a libertarian like myself
I disagree with you.
smoke your weed-just dont expect me to save
you from being brain dead at 20
life can be cruel
the smart and strong survive.
the stupid–well–stay stupid,and stoned.
somebody has to work the drive through.
we must preserve the constitution
and all the founding fathers created
for us.
“at what age would you encourage kids to start smoking pot?”
How about never? You are -completely- missing the point. There are many harmful things in the world that are not illegal. We don’t encourage our kids to do these things, yet we recognize that making them illegal would do more harm than good.
Are you so afraid of the answer that you refuse to even consider the right question?
This piece is not up to the typical standards of Pajamas Media. The reasoning is specious; the generalizations, broad; and the arguments poorly supported. Sadly, this writer is no Bill Whittle.
Gosh, I hope that Mary Grabar has a very twisted sense of humor. If this is meant to be taken seriously, Mary needs to return to school and undertake attempting to master basic logic.
Mary, needing to be stoned before undertaking topless dancing does NOT suggest that being stoned causes topless dancing and it doesn’t suggest that topless dancing will be curbed if dancers are denied the drug.
There are a half-dozen examples of slovenly argumentation in this worthless argument. Toss it out.
What’s the point of sobriety if it doesn’t result in a better grade of thought than is to be found here?
For those of you that think using cannabis is not a Godly thing, Let’s take a look at a quote from the first chapter of the first book in the Old Testament.
“And God said, behold I have given you EVERY HERB BEARING SEED, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it
shall be for meat.”–Genesis 1:29
So right from the get go, the Lord is commanding us to utilize cannabis. It is an herb bearing seed, therefore, it is on earth for man’s consumption. Every herb bearing seed, over all the earth; there is no doubt. Here’s a quote from the second book of the Old Testament.
“Take thou also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even two hundred and fifty shekels, and of sweet kaneh-bosem(Hebrew words), two hundred and fifty shekels”–Exodus 30:23
This is the beginning of the recipe for the Holy Oil to be made by Moses. Now, in Strong’s Bible Concordance the term ‘kaneh’ means “reed”. The term ‘bosem’, according to the Concordance, means “odorous” or “fragrance” or “perfume”. So, the Lord is commanding us to use about 6 pounds per gallon(boiled down)of an “odorous reed”(Kaneh-Bosem, Kaneh-Bos, CANNABIS!) to make the Holy Oil. SHOCKING. But what does Christ have to say on the matter?
“Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man but that which cometh out of his mouth, this defileth a man.”–Matthew 15:11
People, hemp and cannabis were the most important plants in ancient times(hemp is “passive” cannabis, virtually no THC, the psychoactive agent). What was the rope made from that was used to build the Temple? Hemp. What kind of paper was used to write down the Old and New Testaments? Hemp paper. What were the fishing nets made of that the Disciples and Jesus used? Hemp. What was a main ingredient in the oil that anointed the Anointed? Cannabis.
So if Christ doesn’t have a problem with people smoking or eating cannabis, and the Lord doesn’t have a problem with people consuming seed-bearing herbs(cannabis) why do you?
Until the right removes the beam of moral socialism from your sight, you will never see clearly enough to remove the mote of economic socialism from the left’s eyes.
I was very intrigued by the use of tradition and religion regarding the evils and legality of pot and alcohol. As appropriate as this may be in terms of the U.S. gov’t and it’s foundation, I feel that it is not very beneficial to the debate between those two substances. While the bible does provide for the necessity of alcohol to be legal, it certainly only says that it is used ceremonially and not for pure recreation. As a college student at your Alma mater, I must say the downtown scene is not synagogues and cathedrals but bars serving alcohol and occasionaly water to the DD. I don’t find anything odd or outrageous about this at all but the “tradition” of bars and drinking are not a secret in Athens. We do get ranked in that poll very highly. I do want to oppose this religious grounds for legal drink with the provision that, in respect to religious traditions, certain western American native Americans may legally use peyote. It’s illegal for anybody else to use and even at that Marcie Americans, for all I know, don’t have bars for peyote. Should bars screen peoples backgrounds and verify their religion provides for the use of alcohol? Overall, I find the religious grounds for this to be a shaky argument. Also, I have a thought on the point that the bible offers an instruction manual of sorts for alcohol. This really offers no insight on pot. The lack of concrete mention of pot in the bible should have no relevance to it’s legality at all. If it said “this is bad,” then I would understand but the omission is hardly a call to ban pot. In conclusion, I can only imagine that the kosher diner doesn’t avoid turkey; it isn’t said to be non kosher but is, with any historical or geographical sense, obviously non native to the cuisine available to the early jews as well as entirely beyond their knowledge of existence. Does that make turkey not kosher?
As with all politics and laws, control is priority 1. Pot was made illegal due to racial tensions between whites and Mexican Latinos as a way to easily arrest and manage Mexican workers in the rural southwest.
This article proves to me that one needn’t be smoking pot to achieve total ignorance.
At this point in the long and ancient history of cannabis use, there is no excuse to be so misinformed. It makes me wonder what vested interests the author is carrying water for?
Enjoy.
Drugs are legal already anyway, in the sense that they are on sale everywhere and easy to get hold of.
So, when we speak of prohibition, we’re only discussing the price that people are willing to pay — users as well as tax payers.
Nothing, not even losing their teeth and messing up the innards stops people from using meth and other poisons, nor have the Iranian mullahs managed to do anything about Iran’s world record supply of smackheads who are not even deterred by applied sharia in all it’s gory severity.
And in the meanwhile, the drug business is still growing steadily into one of the biggest industries in the world — an untaxed, unregulated, never-ending money supply for Jihadists and other assorted gangsters.
One wonders whose side Mary Gruber really is on?
One need not travel to China to find indigenous cultures lacking human rights. America leads the world in percentile behind bars, thanks to ongoing persecution of hippies, radicals, and non-whites under prosecution of the war on drugs. If we’re all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance global credibility.
The drug czar’s Rx for prison fodder costs dearly, as lives are flushed down expensive tubes. My shaman’s second opinion is that psychoactive plants are God’s gift. Behold, it’s all good. When Eve ate the apple, she knew a good apple, and an evil prohibition. Canadian Marc Emery is being extradited to prison for selling seeds that American farmers use to reduce U. S. demand for Mexican pot.
Only on the authority of a clause about interstate commerce does the CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) reincarnate Al Capone, endanger homeland security, and throw good money after bad. Administration fiscal policy burns tax dollars to root out the number-one cash crop in the land, instead of taxing sales. Society rejected the plague of prohibition, but it mutated. Apparently, SWAT teams don’t need no stinking amendment.
Nixon passed the CSA on the false assurance that the Schafer Commission would later justify criminalizing his enemies. No amendments can assure due process under an anti-science law without due process itself. Psychology hailed the breakthrough potential of LSD, until the CSA shut down research, and pronounced that marijuana has no medical use, period. Drug juries exclude bleeding hearts.
The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) allows Native American Church members to eat peyote, which functions like LSD. Americans shouldn’t need a specific church membership or an act of Congress to obtain their birthright freedom of religion. John Doe’s free exercise of religious liberty may include entheogen sacraments to mediate communion with his maker.
Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? The Mayflower sailed to escape coerced conformity. Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction.
Common-law must hold that adults are the legal owners of their own bodies. The Founding Fathers undersigned that the right to the pursuit of happiness is inalienable. Socrates said to know your self. Mortal lawmakers should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. Persons who appreciate their own free choice of path in life should tolerate seekers’ self-exploration.
143. Mary Grabar:
“Wow! Thanks, guys. Was it something I said? Seriously, Tina Trent has the facts and archer52 seems to have the experience, and good arguments based on that experience (doing some very good work). And that’s one of the points I was making in my column: the problem with a lot of current libertarianism is that it operates in a vacuum. Too many of its proponents advance arguments without regard (or experience) about how it affects real people (including children who are victims). For a lot of my critics it seems to be an either/or issue, without any of the nuances behind what is behind our laws: customs, values, relationships. Many defend themselves as pot smokers and claim not to have been harmed by it. Hmmm. I’ve heard that before. Denial is not a river in Egypt. I encourage everyone to visit Tina Trent’s and archer52’s blogs.”
Have you every been told you have passive aggressive tendencies?
I happen to agree with your premise that libertarians should not use the “legalize pot” as a campaign platform – it turns off far too many on the center right. However, this premise is not well founded in your article. And notice that almost all of the comments refer to whether pot should be legal or not – which based on the title was not really what the article was about. Perhaps all we really need to do is change the title to “Should Pot Be Legal?”.
There – now all of your arguments work. And the answer is yes – it should be legal.
Two follow-up articles for you. (1) “At what point does Freedom become Anarchy?”, and (2) “When does law become totalitarian” .
#83. Guess what bub, a representative democracy also requires a great deal of personal responsibility.
The term you’re looking for is Republic, and if you look at the Legislative and Executive branches of our government you only prove my point further. Also nice try with “RAAAAACIST!!!” Lefty battle cry, depending on what pro-pot activist you read at any given time it was the blacks or Latinos that “Whitey” was trying to persecute. I’ve laughed at Refer Madness myself, I once stood among your ranks, and I’ve read all the BS you’ve read, and made the same arguments you’ve made. I was wrong, and you’re wrong.
For every “functional” pot smoker there are many more dysfunctional ones. Every Libertarian argument for the legalization of pot depends on being in a vacuum or using a 1 out 100 example. We live in a society and not a vacuum as both myself and Archer52 have pointed out. As for the whole idiotic “morality” argument, doing drugs is really not moral or immoral, its the loss of control and abdication of responsibility that is immoral. It is why drunkenness is spoken of negatively in the Bible, not drinking but drunkenness. A couple people have also taken pot shots (pun intended) at conservatives about being “big government” when it servers their needs. Well how do you think the taxes, regulation, etc. of your new Marijuana industry will occur, will the rainbows and unicorns do it? Government expansion occurs either way, in fact it gets bigger by legalization.
That is the crux of the problem with intoxicants and addiction. Most people don’t have an issue if someone wants to get a little buzz on in a safe and responsible manner; they do have an issue if your choices impact others. All too often the intoxicant user’s choices affect others and far too many end up being irresponsible and others end up paying the price.
Really if you want to see THC legalized you should be spending less time flapping your gums about it on blogs and more time developing a reliable cost effective test to determine THC intoxication that can be applied in the field. Just think of it like a bong building project…
#150 – legalization also means an instant–INSTANT–decrease in crime. it puts the dealers out of business. period. how is it you don’t see that?
Put down the bong and step away slowly…you’re wrong because you’re making the argument in a vacuum. No it doesn’t, they just switch to cocaine, heroin, LSD, stolen prescription pills, Ecstasy, crack, or something else. Also unless you make it legal for children there will still be those that sell to kids, you’ll still need regulation and enforcement. There will still be a market for underage users as many users are under 21 now, someone will supply them and the knowledge to grow is already wide spread. How will you stop that? Pot users have great “pipe dreams” but they usually fail in the implementation of those ideas because they don’t see the entire picture.
“Every toke symbolizes a thumb in the eye of Western values.”
No doubt Mary, in 200 AD, would have been enthusiastically feeding Christians to the lions, because this weird new cult was outside the Roman traditions, and, you know, no culture can ever change one iota or adopt a single new custom without its total destruction ensuing.
its the loss of control and abdication of responsibility that is immoral. It is why drunkenness is spoken of negatively in the Bible, not drinking but drunkenness. A couple people have also taken pot shots (pun intended) at conservatives about being “big government” when it servers their needs. Well how do you think the taxes, regulation, etc. of your new Marijuana industry will occur, will the rainbows and unicorns do it? Government expansion occurs either way, in fact it gets bigger by legalization.
You mean “serves their needs” right…
Seems we already have a structure and bureaucracies IN PLACE to deal with taxing the illegal diversion of alcohol and tobacco. Now, remind me what that agency is again???
Oh yeah, the ATF, you know, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
And what is the other one dealing with taxes… Oh, yeah, the Treasury, which also has a special division for alcohol and tobacco tax.
“…valiantly trying to save his life…” Yeah, after using a taser on him.
1st degree misdemeanor marijuana possession in Florida means up to 1 year in jail & $1,000 fine.
“…Trent indicated that Grande had faced probably only a misdemeanor charge…” – Hell, chances to go to prison for a year and still owe $1,000, why, I think I’ll take two.
Now walk in a single file children, don’t color outside the lines, live in little pink houses and never, ever question authority. Excuse me, I think I’m going to be sick.
Why is it that every so often someone has to write a piece trashing libertarians for believing that the “war on drugs” is a nonsense? The legalisation of pot is just a no-brainer and its hard to see a limited government argument for keeping the ban. Now I personally don’t use the stuff, however when I had cancer I certainly wanted to have access to it to ease my pain and the affect of the chemo drugs. The ban on pot serves one really purpose (as did the ban on booze), it makes criminals very rich and criminalises people that should not be criminalised.
Then again the 21 year old drinking age is just as much a counter to natural justice and logic as well.
You can tell when an argument is being lost “its for the children” is wheeled out. That excuse, beloved by banners, statists and big government type is wheeled when the debate is being lost.
The pot argument exposes statists every time.
You have a degree in English and you claim that Marijuana “literally” killed this young man?
The plastic bag literally killed him.
Mark Twain said, “Evidence … proves that prohibition only drives drunkenness behind closed doors and into dark places, and it does not cure it or even diminish it.” He was talking about alcohol, but it’s the same result with prohibition of pot. Supporters of America’s insane war on drugs fail to realize that the tactics used in this war will NEVER result in victory. You can buy drugs in prison, and even if the DEA turned the entire nation into one huge prison, you’d still be able to buy drugs.
The war on drugs will only be won by education, and by fostering within individuals the sense of personal responsibility that must accompany personal liberty.
“…but from my position as a citizen of a country whose foundational values spring from the Judeo-Christian heritage.”
But Jesus Christ is imaginary. He is a myth, not a historical person. Therefore, any doctrines associated with Christianity came from primitive 1st century goatherders, church fathers, and other early Christian cultists, not divine revelation.
What exactly does it mean to say that the country was founded on Christianity anyway? Where in Christian doctrine are the specific concepts of checks and balances, separation of powers, constitutional republican government, federalism, objective law, unalienable individual rights, etc.?
The Founders did not use the Bible to develop their system. They poured over historical and contemporary secular political writings to come up with the specific secular concepts encoded in the Constitution. This is simply a historical fact, and trying to draw parallels between the Constitution and the Bible to prove a Biblical heritage is gamey and dishonest.
Further, the Founders were not social conservatives who believed that citizens were subordinate to a moral order. (That is what the whole concept of unalienable individual rights means). The Founders fought off sumptuary laws. Hemp was in use back then. There weren’t even any abortion laws on state books until the early 19th century.
Our judicial system came from English common law. English common law was not based on the Bible.
Yet we in the 21st century are supposed to enslave ourselves to twisted interpretations of the incoherent thinking of a bunch of 1st century primitives? Beyond ridiculous! If you think a “moral order” as defined by you and not me is so dang important, then leave the country and start one yourself. The rest of us want our freedom.
167. Don:
“At what age would you encourage kids to join the NRA?”
I like the war on drugs because it has almost eliminated all drug use.
Also there are no more drug-related killings or violence any more because drugs are too expensive and so people naturally just stop being involved with drugs.
I’m an excellent driver. Uh oh, fifteen minutes to Judge Wapner.
Seems we already have a structure and bureaucracies IN PLACE to deal with taxing the illegal diversion of alcohol and tobacco. Now, remind me what that agency is again???
You must not be that familiar with how the Feds work. Take DHS for example, why do we need a DHS when we have all those other agencies like the FBI, CIA, DoT, etc. that can cover their area of the pie? ATF and the IRS would undergo a massive expansion if a separate government department were not created.
Wow – this is wrong in so many ways. Mary – you don’t like pot don’t smoke it. Keep it away from your kids – do whatever you like. Me – I’d just as soon the gov’t doesn’t think they can go into my home and drag me away in handcuffs for smoking weed.
Vulcanized@117: So you ripped my comments but yet did not state anything affirmative about your position. Did you cite any references that show THC is NOT addictive or that it will not harm your brain or system? Did you show us that using pot will not harm innocent people? Did you show us references where crime will be reduced by legalizing pot? I’m sure the Hells Angels and other MC gangs plus the crips/bloods will not want to see their fortunes taken away. Think they will not increase their efforts to control pot? I’m so sure that legalizing it would help Mexico and their drug cartels….
Did you give us a reason to legalize pot? Other than making the comparison with alcohol that if it’s okay to drink it should be okay to do dope, have you defined why it should be legal to use. Doing one bad thing-alcohol should not be your best argument for doing another bad thing. You can do better I’m sure.
Can you tell us that pot will not cause more traffic accidents due to its intoxicating effects? Surely you cannot believe that smoking pot will NOT lead to people doing stupid things like driving under the influence. Remember that thing about responsibility.
Some may claim that doing H is necessary and helps them; should we make allowances and legalize H? And let’s not forget the racial component here: many blacks are in jail for crack use and many may want to do crack as their recreational drug of choice so should we make crack legal? Meth? coke? In the 60s I’m sure devotees to drug use would tell us that LSD was okay to use and should be legal. How about bringing LSD back?
Finally, why do you need to smoke pot? It seems you are arguing from the standpoint that pot is essential to you and you cannot function without it.
Look you have the perfect storm in Congress to get pot legalized. So why not turn your ire on them and get them to legalize it. I bet the Messiah would support you.
194. Now and Then:
167. Don:
“At what age would you encourage kids to join the NRA?”
—————————————————————–
10 like was. The NRA is great for education about fire arms and firearm safety. Not sure what your point was though since the NRA and pot are not comparable. One is a drug that amounts to a waste of time and money and the other is an organization of like minded people who support the 2nd Amendment and educating people.
You should stop trolling. Not because trolling is bad but because you really suck at it.
The war on drugs will only be won by education, and by fostering within individuals the sense of personal responsibility that must accompany personal liberty.
That is the problem, we’re moving further away from personal responsibility as a society. Real and total personal responsibility is also hard for people to stomach as well. To implement it would seem harsh and callous, to allow the junkie to die in a pool of their own vomit rather than waste public resources to send the ambulance, EMTs, and take them to the hospital. They chose to take the drugs so the consequences of their actions is death. That dear Libertarians is the true implementation of your views, otherwise you’re being hypocrites, because that is their liberty stopping at their neighbor’s nose. If you spend other people’s money to mitigate the consequences of their choices/actions you’ve gone past their neighbor’s nose and into their wallet. Taking the fruits of my labors from me essentially by force to give to another via social entitlement programs is little different from slavery and no different than robbery.
Same for health care, there are many people who “can’t afford” health insurance yet can afford to buy a pack or two of cigarettes & a 6 or 12 pack of beer every day, or an ounce or two of weed every few weeks. However I’m expected to pay for them to get coverage…why?
This is an excellent article that truly shows the difference between libertarians and conservatives.
Libertarians are not conservatives. Libertarians believe that peaceful adults should be free to do as they wish with their own bodies, minds, and property.
Conservatives, in contrast, believe that the State should control people’s personal and economic lives “for their own good.”
Remember the “Don’t tread on me” flag? Libertarians are the ones who won’t tread on you. Conservatives (and liberals) tread on you all the time. For your own good, of course.
It is illuminating to see the arguments presented here in defense of keeping marijuana (and other drugs) illegal.
Libertarians need to understand the fears that keep libertarian-leaning people from embracing the re-legalization of drugs. Once they know the facts, thoughtful conservatives will join libertarians and others to work to restore the fundamental America right for adults to choose what they will put into their own bodies — a freedom enjoyed from 1776 to well into the 20th century (marijuana was outlawed at the federal level in the mid-1930s).
By the way, all thoughtful conservatives should check out the February 12, 1996 issue of National Review.
National Review is the bible of the conservative movement, and it has been for over half a century. The magazine’s founder, William F. Buckley, was the father of the modern conservative movement. The magazine has defined and led American conservatism for decades.
Yet this cover story announces, in bold letters: THE WAR ON DRUGS IS LOST.
Inside, the introduction to that cover story includes these striking words:
“… it is our judgment that the war on drugs has failed, that it is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction, that it is wasting our resources, and that it is encouraging civil, judicial, and penal procedures associated with police states. We all agree on movement toward legalization, even though we may differ on just how far.”
It is signed by “The Editors” of National Review.
Here is William F. Buckley, dean of modern conservatism, along with the editors of the world’s leading mainstream conservative magazine — denouncing in very strong terms the War on Drugs as a failure and a threat to liberty! And — this was more than a decade ago.
You can get the article here:
http://nationalreview.com/12feb96/drug.html
In 2001, National Review’s Jonah Goldman reiterated: “It is the editorial position of National Review that narcotics should be legalized in the United States.”
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Mjc2YzAyNzI3OGY1NzQxOTNlYmI3MmQ2MmNjYWJhODY
You cannot be free if the government can tell you what substances you can and cannot ingest. You are simply a servant of the State.
199. Phranc:
Frank, Frank, Frank . . . incensed? 10 years old, eh? Speaking of like-minded people . . .
http://streetknowledge.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/kkk-kids-awwwww-how-fing-cute/
Reading pro-government war on drugs propaganda is funny. But it’s not as funny as all the pathetic, moralizing, nanny-statist conservatives who believe it. You people are worse than liberals.
this article is nonsense.
of course drugs are harmful to spirit, mind and body (ALL drugs including alchohol)
it’s about the power of the State vs the responsiblity of the individual to self-regulate, once you take away the individuals responiblity to self-regulate they don’t.
the Founders understood this which is why they didn’t make drug laws.
@147 Christina:
You know, there was a city alderman in Chicago who last year actually proposed making the trafficking, possession, etc., of “dime bag” type bags illegal.
Yes, I wish I was joking but I have a link to prove it: http://cbs2chicago.com/local/plastic.bag.ban.2.670165.html
It is the height of hypocrisy and self-deception to insist that marijuana be illegal and alcohol be legal. It is time for so-called, self-styled “conservatives” and alleged “moral” individuals to actually live up to their rhetoric and outlaw alcohol with the same penalties and strength that marijuana is outlawed.
Anything else only reveals these supposed “conservatives” to be nothing but rum-soaked hypocrites who are in the pocket of the powerful booze lobby.
I am a christian, I pray to God every day but I don’t go to church because the churches are full of ppl like the writer of this piece, ppl who would impose by law that which has to come from within, like liberals/marxists they don’t see any problem with taking away other ppl’s free will, God gave us free will and he intends us to use it and is very aware that horrible choices will be made. Junkies and Alcoholics are to be shunned out of individual choice the reason there are so many junkies and alkies is due to tolerance of our society not due to the tolerance of the Law.
don’t look to the Law for that which you lack the spine to do yourself.
As Mark Twain said, “Tradition is the only hold the dead have over the living.” Tradition is a pretty lousy reason for anything that involves regulating other people’s behavior.
Libertarians believe that peaceful adults should be free to do as they wish with their own bodies, minds, and property.
Fair enough, but who foots the bill when those peaceful adults overdose and cannot pay the cost of their resultant medical care? Who foots the the bill when they have to go to expensive rehabilitation centers? Who pays for the social programs when they wreck their lives and/or screw up their kids?
Society. You, me, and Joe & Jane Taxpayer. Yes there a people who can use occasionally and function just fine, but there are many more that cannot and they impinge on the liberty of the rest of us by requiring ever more taxes to pay for the social programs to deal with their “doing as they wish with their own bodies, minds, and property.”
That is where the problem lies with legalization. Unfortunately our illegalization of drugs doesn’t exist in a vacuum either and has some serious issues as a result. Problems seem to have simple solutions when taken on their own without other factors, however when applied to the real world it doesn’t work. Just as making drugs illegal doesn’t take into account those people who can use recreationally and not impact others legalization doesn’t take into account the much greater numbers of those who cannot.
It is the height of hypocrisy and self-deception to insist that marijuana be illegal and alcohol be legal. It is time for so-called, self-styled “conservatives” and alleged “moral” individuals to actually live up to their rhetoric and outlaw alcohol with the same penalties and strength that marijuana is outlawed.
Absolutely incorrect.
Do you know of an accurate, economically feasible, and field usable test for determining THC intoxication? Not just the presence in a person’s system as current tests do but actual intoxication levels. How then would you expect a police officer to determine if a driver was under the influence? How about on the job accidents involving the operation of heavy equipment? Would you want your airline pilot doing their job stoned? Surgeon? Cab driver? Air Traffic Controller?
That is one of the major impediments to legalization of THC products and it one of the things I have yet to see anyone of the pro-legalization crowd address.
the Founders understood this which is why they didn’t make drug laws.
Wrong. They didn’t make such laws because Federal social programs did not exist and were left to the States. The medical impact on an individual was not fully understood, and people were left to their own devices. If John Q. Public OD’d on Laudanum he died, he was not rushed to the hospital via ambulance to the tune of tens of thousands of public dollars.
The town drunk and the poor were taken care of via charity and the church, with willing donations of the fruit of the community’s labor not via robbery by their State and the IRS.
oh boy. now I’ve heard everything. smoking pot will make you gay? this is a prime example of the conservative-crazy-train-off the rails-deep into a canyon-whackaloonship that I’m talking about.
In abandoning the duty to enforce social order, today’s libertarians have made a devil’s pact with the pro-drug forces of George Soros and company.
I’ve rejected the possibility of “limited government” and shifted towards anarchism over time, but I’ll humor you on this & ask the following: beyond the streets not running red from random murder, what definition of “social order” are you thinking of? Also, what part of this view of defining & then defending a certain “social order” by force is, beyond your particular favored order, distinct from anything those durned libruls do?
#152GRAYMAN Saying Carl Sagan was an idiot was a good example of an idiotic statement.
#165DON You make a lot of statements yourself, but you don’t list any source for the factuality to back up those statements. I suspect they really are just you biased and bigoted opinions, aren’t they.
You sound very much like the intelligence challenged and racially bigoted sheriff that once stopped me and my girlfriend and rousted us, tore apart my beautiful ’55 Caddy looking for drugs threatening that if he found three marijuana seeds he was going to arrest us and impound the car.
You aren’t that ignorant poor excuse for a lawman are you?
Not sure where you some of you folks grew up but I was able to get pot much easier than booze when I was in high school. The “access” to kids argument is totally false…
Drugs are evil and that includes smoking and drinking. Libertarians and Liberals can scream and rant all they want about legalization; I’m not listening. Would love to outlaw drinking the same as they have prohibited smoking.
So your rebuttal leads to the conclusion that pot is okay, should be legal, will not harm kids/youth/young adults, will not cause any needless injuries, will actually increase productivity and earnings (like yours), will lead to less crime, that THC is not addictive or bad for the human body, will cure cancer,that companies right now have pot smokers working for them and their drug tests are ineffective, that legalizing pot would not make public travel less safe, etc, etc. Have I pretty much summed up your post?
No, you’ve made a bunch of strawman arguments though.
1. Pot is a drug, and just like any drug it can be abused by individuals. However, as someone who believes in LIMITED government and personal responsibility… I do not believe that pot should be illegal.
2. I have seen personally kids who tried to escape their problems by abusing pot (just like alcohol). The pot didn’t help, the pot made the existing issue worse. However, among adults, this trend is not common. Generally, most adults I know that smoke hold down actual jobs and earn a living, have a family etc. They use pot as a way to relax, just like alcohol. Of course, on the down side for both kids and adults, Alcohol has SHORT and LONG TERM side effects which can be fatal, Alcohol can result in Alcohol poisoning and Children and Adults DIE from that every year. Alcohol often has violent side effects resulting in fighting and occasionally homicide. Alcohol is responsible for various diseases like cirrhosis of the liver and alcohol is Addictive. Marijuana is not addictive, studies indicate that its effects are not long term, it is impossible to OD on and by and large, marijuana does not incite violence.
3. Marijuana will neither increase nor decrease your income… that is YOUR responsibility… not some drugs.
4. THC is NOT addictive.
5. I have no idea why you think it will cure cancer, apparently you need lessons in reading comprehension.
6. Companies DO have pot smokers working for them NOW and drug tests are easily circumvented.
7. Thus far, actual evidence indicates that it will NOT cause more traffic accidents. You should go read actual studies instead of cerel boxes.
But wait, did you not say: “Hey Stupid. Do you want those people to be drunk? No? Neither do I. There is no difference between intoxication by alcohol and intoxication by mary jane… your argument is fallacious.” So you CAN be intoxicated on pot which would be dangerous. Therefore, your argument that pot is harmless is invalid.
Of course you’ll get intoxicated on Pot, WTF is wrong with your brain? However, intoxication is not necessarily HARMFUL. Again, these poor conservatives and their failure to grasp Personal Responsibility is staggering.
Additionally we are to take as gospel that government studies which do not jive with your positions are all lies conjured up by the government to oppress you. But the studies which support your position are all true, peer reviewed, retested with the same results, and can be trusted. Is that it? Do I have your argument right? Sooo cherry picking is okay as long as it supports your propostion?
ABSOLUTELY NOT. As I stated eariler, I don’t believe any of the studies completely. However, my point was that the ‘reports’ by the Drug Czar cherry pick from studies… in most cases studies on the issue do not support the governments position. In fact, a number of government reports are now stating that prohibition is neither necessary or working.
“Almost all of the marijuana consumed in the multibillion-dollar U.S. market once came from Mexico or Colombia. Now as much as half is produced domestically, often by small-scale operators who painstakingly tend greenhouses and indoor gardens to produce the more potent, and expensive, product that consumers now demand, according to authorities and marijuana dealers on both sides of the border.” WaPo 10/7/09 So we are both wrong.
Sure… I’ll go with 50/50. Based on my experiences I’d guess its 60/40 or more but that’s immaterial to the discussion.
We are so happy that you make a six-figure salary while being stoned. Wonderful! You must be so proud of your self; your self-esteem must be off the charts.
Actually, I have a pretty kickin life and my self esteem is much better now than in the past. Lots more accomplishments, lots more success… and ALL OF IT due to one thing: Personal Responsibility, I’d have a kickin life without any pot involved… but the pot doesn’t turn me into a couch potato… in fact, I’m more active now than I was before I smoked.
As the THC begins to ruin your memory though, I hope you will have someone around to help you.
Still stuck in propaganda eh? Get with the 21st century boyo. All recent studies point to NO permanent brain cell loss or memory loss. IN fact, what they found was some problems with short term memory while under the influence was common. However, this doesn’t appear to be due to memory damage, but rather the ease of distraction while under the influence.
In short, I find marijuana less dangerous to the human body and to society than Alcohol. I believe that both can and are used responsibly by adults. I believe that both can be abused by adults and children, though abuse of alcohol has far more dangers associated with it than abuse of Marijuana… And FINALLY, MOST IMPORTANTLY I believe that we as human beings are
“each gifted by nature with individual freedom; required by the law of nature to call no man, or body of men, his masters; authorized by that law to seek his own happiness in his own way, to do what he will with himself and his property, so long as he does not trespass upon the equal liberty of others; authorized also, by that law, to defend his own rights, and redress his own wrongs; and to go to the assistance and defence of any of his fellow men who may be suffering any kind of injustice” – Lysander Spooner, No Treason
THAT is what it means to be Libertarian, that is the philosophy of any who would truly go “John Galt”. For the rest, for those that think the government should play nanny at any level… well, they are not libertarian, they are something else, far more closely allied with the philosophies of Liberals and Socialists.
Mary, dude, smoke some weed and chill out.
jesus packed my bowl
it’s a love affair
mainly jesus and my bowl…
lol, pajamas media…fail. what next for an encore? lecturing libertarians on how they need to rethink their position on gun rights:)
Outlawing a simple deciduous plant is ridiculous prima-facia. Spending Billions of dollars to obstensively protect people from their own bad habits is nothing more than a way to funnel large amounts of cash into the politicians’ pockets from the trial lawyers.
The drug laws have ruined far more lives than the drugs have. If you feel we need a police state in order for you to stay off drugs I pity you.
If you MUST outlaw a plant, why not pick ragweed? That really does cause a lot of grief.
202. Now and Then:
199. Phranc:
Frank, Frank, Frank . . . incensed? 10 years old, eh? Speaking of like-minded people . . .
http://streetknowledge.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/kkk-kids-awwwww-how-fing-cute/
———————————————————————
Incensed? Is the question mark because you don’t understand the word? And thanks for proving my point with your straw man. When your argument is failing from the get go playing up race always wins…. At least it does if you are so ignorant you had no valid argument to begin with. It’s ok though I don’t blame you, you just don’t know any better. By the way my name isn’t Frank but thanks for pretending to know something else you are clueless about.
“But that’s exactly what the left wants: a nation of young zombies — indifferent, unengaged, and uncaring. ”
It’s statement like this that remove the author from rational discourse. And there are quite a few statements like this within this article and the distracted attempts to support it. I smoke pot just about every night before bed, have for years and I wake up the next morning to debug a codebase more complex than most people can imagine. I’ve been doing both for about 15 years and my diagnostic skills are top notch.
Which is why it’s so amusing to me to watch the anti pot folks try to dance their way around this intellectual conundrum: Pot is safer than alcohol – safer both for the individual and for society. Ask any law enforcement officer which drug gives them more trouble. The author and her supporters are hard at working trying to find ways to support the criminalization of something that in all respects is safer than what is currently legal (alcohol). Failing to have any decent arguments or data to support their position, they resort to personal attacks. Calling us hippies (which is really what this article does).
Try this. I’m just as good a citizen as every one of you, yet I’m a criminal for doing something that hurts no one in the privacy of my own home.
Its always amusing to read social-conservative rants against cannabis. Its a wedge issue that hides the fact they are just as statist/big government lovers as the socialists. They use the same argument for banning responsible adults from using booze under 21, porn and anything else they don’t like. Their love for the Constitution, natural rights and smaller government is a sham. They want to use the federal government to limit the rights of citizens, just not in the same way as the socialist. Anything they don’t like they want to ban.
NB: Not all conservatives are socialist conservatives. They are merely one type of conservative, the type that obsessed with “social” issues over all else.
“Don’t tread on me” means… get the hell out of my body, my bedroom, my computer and my TV set.
Mary, I hope one day you understand how completely and thoroughly you have just embarrassed yourself. I’m betting you will not, but I hope nonetheless.
This article was a steaming turd. You have no excuse for writing it. This website and it’s editor (I’m actually not sure if this site has one with this type of drivel being posted…) has no excuse for posting it.
There are at least a few very good arguments to support your position. You have brought up precisely zero of them. What you did bring up is a pile of BS that anyone with half a brain can see through in about 5 seconds.
We should keep doing it because it’s tradition and that’s the way we’ve always done it before? Srsly? Are you a big fan of genital mutilation, foot binding or ritual sacrifices to the gods then? Yeah, thought not. How about applying a little critical reasoning to your positions before you start trying to tell other people what positions they should be taking, hmm?
There are a lot of things that convince me that you should not be taken seriously by any thinking person:
1. The pitiful collection of personal beliefs, logical fallacies and blatant falsehoods that you have thrown together and present as a reasoned argument here.
2. The obvious homophobia that possessed you to bring up the victim’s sexual orientation even though it had absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. I know it was a nice transition into making moral judgments about strippers, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with the point you were making now does it? It’s just some petty ad-hominem BS thrown in for no apparent reason.
3. [i]“And recent reporting has shown that our “safe schools czar,” Kevin Jennings, was head of an organization that used the schools to promote homosexual sex between boys and men. Certainly the ability to engage in such destructive behavior is enhanced by the use of drugs.”[/i] I don’t even know what to say to this. Even if it had not been thoroughly debunked as completely false – which it has – it has nothing at all to do with making your point. You are just spreading homophobia using lies. You pitiful attempt to link that “destructive behavior” to drugs is laughable, even if you use the word “certainly”.
4. Your obvious racism, evidenced by many of your incoherent ramblings – ahem – writings on the subject of multiculturalism in education.
5. Your assertion that the bible should be used as the basis for drug policy. Should we stone people to death for eating shellfish as well?
All those are valid reasons to put you in the “clown shoes” category, but that’s not really why I commented. The one thing that really pissed me off was the fact that you (supposedly) have a Ph.D. in ENGLISH, and you can’t write to save your life. I’ve seen 12 year olds with better structure. I’ve met houseplants that were better able to connect premises to conclusions. I have squeezed off things into the toilet that have better flow than you do. I would literally rather read the instructions on a box of toothpicks than most of the things you’ve written.
I could write pages on the mistakes you’ve made, on the reasons why you should be banned from teaching students anything about language. But instead I’ll limit myself to one piece of advice:
FOR GOD’S SAKE, CONTROL YOUR USE OF COMMAS. You are addicted to commas. You are silly with them. There are at least twice as many if not three times as many as need be in this article. You put commas everywhere you should, everywhere you could but shouldn’t, and then most places you can’t just for good measure. The first page of the article is bad enough, but the second is just laughable.
Instead of worrying about what your students are smoking, how about brushing up on your basic English composition skills, hmm?
Mary, I hope one day you understand how completely and thoroughly you have just embarrassed yourself. I’m betting you will not, but I hope nonetheless.
This article was a steaming turd. You have no excuse for writing it. This website and it’s editor (I’m actually not sure if this site has one with this type of drivel being posted…) has no excuse for posting it.
There are at least a few very good arguments to support your position. You have brought up precisely zero of them. What you did bring up is a pile of BS that anyone with half a brain can see through in about 5 seconds.
We should keep doing it because it’s tradition and that’s the way we’ve always done it before? Srsly? Are you a big fan of genital mutilation, foot binding or ritual sacrifices to the gods then? Yeah, thought not. How about applying a little critical reasoning to your positions before you start trying to tell other people what positions they should be taking, hmm?
There are a lot of things that convince me that you should not be taken seriously by any thinking person:
1. The pitiful collection of personal beliefs, logical fallacies and blatant falsehoods that you have thrown together and present as a reasoned argument here.
2. The obvious homophobia that possessed you to bring up the victim’s sexual orientation even though it had absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. I know it was a nice transition into making moral judgments about strippers, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with the point you were making now does it? It’s just some petty ad-hominem BS thrown in for no apparent reason.
3. [i]“And recent reporting has shown that our “safe schools czar,” Kevin Jennings, was head of an organization that used the schools to promote homosexual sex between boys and men. Certainly the ability to engage in such destructive behavior is enhanced by the use of drugs.”[/i] I don’t even know what to say to this. Even if it had not been thoroughly debunked as completely false – which it has – it has nothing at all to do with making your point. You are just spreading homophobia using lies. You pitiful attempt to link that “destructive behavior” to drugs is laughable, even if you use the word “certainly”.
4. Your obvious racism, evidenced by many of your incoherent ramblings – ahem – writings on the subject of multiculturalism in education.
5. Your assertion that the bible should be used as the basis for drug policy. Should we stone people to death for eating shellfish as well?
All those are valid reasons to put you in the “clown shoes” category, but that’s not really why I commented. The one thing that really pissed me off was the fact that you (supposedly) have a Ph.D. in ENGLISH, and you can’t write to save your life. I’ve seen 12 year olds with better structure. I’ve met houseplants that were better able to connect premises to conclusions. I have squeezed off things into the toilet that have better flow than you do. I would literally rather read the instructions on a box of toothpicks than most of the things you’ve written.
I could write pages on the mistakes you’ve made, on the reasons why you should be banned from teaching students anything about language. But instead I’ll limit myself to one piece of advice:
FOR GOD’S SAKE, CONTROL YOUR USE OF COMMAS. You are addicted to commas. You are silly with them. There are at least twice as many if not three times as many as need be in this article. You put commas everywhere you should, everywhere you could but shouldn’t, and then most places you can’t just for good measure. The first page of the article is bad enough, but the second is just laughable.
Instead of worrying about what your students are smoking, how about brushing up on your basic English composition skills, hmm?
Good piece Mary. I’ve seen how soft-on-drug laws hurt the Dutch. But adults-only libertarians are closet socialists. They’re anti-liberty, and anti-family. All they do is defend porn, illegal welfare-dependent immigrants and crazed drug addicts whom destroy private properties. If they were pro-liberty they wouldn’t censor Christian voices on their websites. Or make excuses for bloodthirsty dictators.
Amen Ben. The reactions to this have proven that libertarians are nothing more than libertine liberal socialists masquerading as something else. Conservatives should fight them with as much ferocity as any Socialist or Communist.
this is not about ‘libertarians’, ‘the Bible’ or ‘zombies’. it’s about a prohibition that does more harm than good, about a gov. solution to a non-existing problem. we’ve been wasting big money w/ this for quite a while now, and it only makes bigger profits for the drug cartels… that’s right, marijuana is still cultivated like crazy in California, drug cartels still make huge profits, and American teens smoke pot younger and in greater numbers than the Dutch teens -they can get it from the coffee shop. These are facts not speculations, and there are some more to point out that we need to rethink our approach on this matter.
‘But that’s exactly what the left wants: a nation of young zombies — indifferent, unengaged, and uncaring.’ it might be true, that it’s a lefty ‘dream’ :}, but lets be rational: it’s not because of the laws that not all the young are zombies! it’s harder for a teen to get alcohol than weed…. does that mean anything to you Mary? yes, its about personal choice, it always is! (our ‘biggest’ problem as a nation right now is the abuse of prescription drugs. no one knows how deep in trouble we are, because no one talks about it. this nation is so over medicated that the history will write about it ;]) and let’s remember about the hippies who changed the US, lets not forget who the zombies and indifferent were at some given times in history, because that would be a shame. here we are again at war (not just one!) and we don’t really care about it. so i guess we are exactly what the right wants…
‘That is a large part of why Prohibition failed.’ ;];] – it failed because gov has no business in regulating what we drink or eat. they did that in communism w/ the bread, butter, oil and oranges… -it’s not that fun when the gov makes the choice for you! and about that, you dont’t need to be a medic or a scholar to laugh at the laws regarding marijuana. you just need some common sense to see how wrong the whole system is: marijuana is in the same class w/ heroin, it has no medical use and it’s very addictive… we used to throw people in jail for a joint.
and YES, we PAY for these MEASURES! ;]]
@143
“Wow! Thanks, guys. Was it something I said?”
For Jesus H.W. McChrist’s sake! Is this a dark joke? you just wanted lots of comments? Otherwise you have just missed all the refutations to your ideas, the Bible-based ones, the tradition-based ones, and even the really-important ones -like individual responsability/freedom; all based in LOTS of real life experiences. If you have an ounce of intellectual honesty you should review your ideas because they are just wrong. Of course, it’s America, you have the right to hold wrong ideas in your mind (as long as it keeps in the ideas realm). Just be aware your ideas doesn’t work in the Reality.
So, how, first of all, is criminalizing mariuana a conservative idea? It is explicitly (as previously explained) stretching the power of the federal Government beyond what is constitutionally granted to it. The left isn’t the crowd that wants it legalized, the libertarian idea you’re talking about is far more right wing than you are. Hate to break it to you, but preaching about morals and Christianity does not make you a conservative, and, thinking that Christianity is what our laws should be based on makes you un-American.
In closing, the fact that you take what is really a tragic case and use it as a spin machine to preach your ridiculous views on Government is kind of disgusting. It’s not weed’s fault he died, it’s people like you who keep people like him from being able to use a substance (which, like alcohol, has been openly used since…well, ever, let’s say that) without fearing incarceration.
Mary takes the traditional view of conservative partisans. The kind that are blind as to how their dislike of the subcultures of some of those who get their jollies from substances other than alcohol, caffeine and nicotine affects their judgment. David took the position of a conservative that has actually thought about the realities of the situation.
In the initial article Mary starts off with a litany of dense doublethink extracted from a Doc Washburn’s comments on Panama City radio station WFLF:
“He invited former Congressman Ernest Istook from the Heritage Foundation and Tina Trent, who blogs on crime, to speak about the dangers of marijuana to the user and to society.”
She (Trent) talks about “the dangers to user and society” of a drug that causes less harm to users and society than CAFFIENE does??? Do you get paid for that lady, or are you a non-profit nut?
“Trent indicated that Grande had faced probably only a misdemeanor charge;…”
And Ms. Trent is aware of just what a misdemeanor charge means when added to a violence charge? She is aware of what the full penalties of “only a misdemeanor charge” entail? Not likely as…
…”she pointed to studies showing that the illegal drug trade flourishes despite the legality of marijuana in certain states and other countries.”
In other words since limited legalization of pot for a VERY limited group of people with limited conditions did not somehow make ALL illegal drug sellers stop their traffic the program is a failure to society? Should we also mention that some counties in the “legal” states have been fighting tooth and nail against complying with the new laws? Naw, why burst her bubble. Stout Ale bubbles probably.
“And legalizing marijuana will remove the freedom employers now have to test for the judgment-impairing drug.”
This has been a pet peeve of mine since I was a clean and sober kid and the whole travesty was initiated. WHAT purpose does testing for illegal drugs do for a business, when the overwhelming majority of workplace losses attributable to chemicals are ALCOHOL related? Sick calls, accidents, deaths, you name it and alcohol is at the back of it. OR nicotine! To get to something like pot you have to go so far down the list that you must argue in favor of also testing for parenthood as a deterrent to workplace losses!!!
Drug testing in the workplace has no purpose other than promoting drug testing companies! We have companies that own insurance companies and testing companies. Why should we be surprised when the insurance companies give discounts if you use a drug testing firm?
The estimable Mary Grabar goes on to say…
“The position on the legalization of marijuana provides the point of departure from the traditional libertarianism of Barry Goldwater. In abandoning the duty to enforce social order, today’s libertarians have made a devil’s pact with the pro-drug forces of George Soros and company.”
This statement simply shows that Mary is as ignorant of history as your average Leftist. Before 1900 it was universally considered NOT THE GOVERNMENTS BUSINESS to regulate what substances a person privately chose to inflict upon their body. This included such things as heroin and cocaine not just nicotine and marijuana! What was regulated then was the REPRESENTATION made of something when sold and the BEHAVIOR of people when the used the product. This whole attitude is further exposed for the fantasy it is when we consider the effects of nicotine and alcohol on society and their users. Does Mary advocate IDENTICAL application of the law regarding “drugs” to THOSE deadly drugs?
At this point English Phd. Mary Grabar descends into the gutter of innuendo and sheer sophistry. In her desperation to build her “case” she implies that the dead man’s status as an “amateur gay porn star” (whatever that means in reality) was caused by his pot smoking!
From there Mary loses all touch with reality…
”…Libertarians are fond of pointing to the wreckage caused by the abuse of alcohol: deterioration of health, traffic deaths, and domestic violence. This is true, but it is an analogy that emerges from an abstraction.”
What does those two sentences even mean? It is a solid fact that all of the above wreckage in society is caused by alcohol more than ALL other substances combined!!! Where is the abstraction here, other than in Mary’s delusion that this means nothing about legalizing marijuana?
Having made this confusing assertion she goes on to state that:
“Libertarians argue that the only difference between the two is traditional: we have stamped alcohol consumption with a seal of social approval.
But I would argue that tradition should be a reason for its continued legal status and for denying legal status to marijuana.”
Again, say what? Forgetting the real damages that alcohol causes, as opposed to the negligible damages (except when the law is attacking you for it) of marijuana Mary feels that because we have historically used one and hardly used the other we should keep the harmless one illegal. I guess I can understand her using this argument for keeping alcohol LEGAL but not why she uses it in support of keeping a harmless drug illegal.
Leaving aside Ms. Grabar’s ignorance of historical times when drugs of various sorts were not just allowed but “trendy” we now see how it is nothing but provincialism that makes Ms. Grabar defend alcohol and attack pot:
“The prohibition against marijuana is one brick in the foundation of our society.”
Since when? Oh, right since the 30’s when yellow journalism and false testimony caused congress to outlaw marijuana.
“On a practical level the use of marijuana also works to knock out other bricks, like the work ethic, emotional engagement, sexual inhibition, and the ability to reason.”
None of which are in any way harmed by alcohol you must understand! Lazy drunk is the term as I recall it, not lazy stoner. Emotionally distant is a common description for an alcoholic by their children. Sexual inhibition? Pot causes so many rapes and assaults every day doesn’t it? Including this is not just ignorant, it is borderline hateful. And finally, drunks reason well while pot smokers cannot reason? How then does Mary account for the many pot heads who are acclaimed in intellectual areas? Influence by UFOs?
Not content with her drug dreams our esteemed English prof. goes on to combine ad hominems and the old argument by association trick with her political opium:
“For example, when one of my college students leads off in defense of the legalization of marijuana, he invariably does so in a disjointed manner, unable to muster the resources of reason and conviction to his argument. (He also does this in his essays.) One caller, “Dave,” to the Doc Washburn program displayed the same apathetic, but friendly, attitude.”
And intelligent reader can see that this has no bearing at all on which side of the argument is correct in its facts. Content that her readers are either stunned or fled Prof. Grabar now resorts to out and out lies:
“While one cannot come to class drunk without drawing attention, he can attend under the influence of marijuana, sitting in the back of the room with a glazed, though not unpleasant, expression.”
Many are the students or workers who have gone “stoned” through their days on wine or beer or whisky despite Mary’s rose color glasses. In fact, it is HARDER to detect an impairing dose of alcohol than one of pot in a regular drinker. Yet Mary does not advocate breathalyzers at the door or schools or businesses along with drug testing.
I am not sure if there is a single fallacy used by the anti legalization people that Mary does not dust off and use. She even pulls out the old “if they get stoned the Communists can invade without a fight” idiocy!
“But that’s exactly what the left wants: a nation of young zombies — indifferent, unengaged, and uncaring. They provide amenable subjects to indoctrination. Alcohol may fuel fights, but marijuana, as its advocates like to point out, makes the user mellow. The toker wants to make love, not war.”
In the 30’s and 40’s the fascist minds wanting control of the populace declared that pot smokers where violent and dangerous individuals due to the drug. Then in the 50’s the “party line” changed to pot being evil because it made people mindless zombies r4ipe for Communist takeover. It seems to me that there are plenty of mindless zombies on the far Right as well as the far Left and that there are also MANY very militant pot smokers in the political arena. Once again it seems that the only thing Mary proves is her pre-judgment and closed mind.
Next on the list of fallacious argument techniques Mary fishes out argument by authority:
“The libertarian maintains that values are the function of the private sphere: the family and church. But as Goldwater argued in the riot-plagued year of 1964, when safety and order are not maintained by the government, our freedoms are affected. In so many ways, the legalization of drugs will lead to the further breakdown of order.”
No Mary, legalizing pot has not been shown to lead to the “breakdown” of anything! Until the late 1930’s pot and just about all other drugs were LEGAL and there was LESS organized criminal activity associated with it than there is now. Before prohibition gave the dying mafia a shot in the arm, society functioned just fine by penalizing any CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR of those on drugs rather than the fact that they were on something or other.
“To give sanction to a drug that robs the individual of reason and conviction is to give up on our way of life.”
But to Mary this doesn’t apply when that drug is already a major PART of that way of life (alcohol), in which case PART ON DUDES! And girls, just hold still and try to enjoy it. IT is sanctioned by the Bible after all.
And you KNEW that she had to include this stupidity:
“It sends a dangerous message to young people.”
What message? That society values reason more than empty gestures? In what sick mind is that a horrible thing to teach young folks!!!
“A recent study shows that the creeping sanction through legalization of “medical” marijuana in certain states is giving young teenagers a sense of safety about marijuana use.”
Oh, the horror! You mean kids are actually finding out the truth, that pot is NOT very harmful at all? Which Bush administration DEA official said it was better for parents to lie to their kids to keep them off drugs. That they dare not tell them that the parents experimented when young and didn’t turn into bums like D.A.R.E. claims they all do? I am sure Mary agrees with him whoever he was.
In her coda Mary Grabar puts her credentials as a heartless thug of the rightwing variety on view for all to see. Remember she is referring to a man who chocked to death on a bag of pot that could put him in jail for months to years because of the “drug war”. This wa not a heroin dealer, this was not a person carrying a pound of meth, this was a man with a bag of pot afraid of what “society” would do to him if he was caught in possession:
“Marijuana killed Andrew Grande, not only in the literal sense, but in the sense that it abetted his descent into a very sad, counter-cultural lifestyle. Its legalization is supported by the same forces that promote Kevin Jennings, one-world government, Gaia worship, and legalized prostitution. All these elements work against the traditional libertarian values of initiative, freedom, and honor. Libertarians need to rethink their position on drug legalization.”
Methinks Mary, that you need to rethink just about everything, from you morals to your logic. And please, shop your little article around a support group for the families of alcoholics. I would bet that you will get some rather strong responses to your “logic”. Be prepared to duck.
Totally disagree with this article.
Prohibition violates an individual’s right to control his property and his body. Period.
This article is promoting several logical fallacies and false premises including determinism, collectivism, rights-by-consensus in order justify his irrational desire to control other men’s lives, bodies, and property.
I am so shocked that someone actually wrote this that I half suspect it was a brilliant double-agent from the drug reform movement.
I don’t know if anybody else addressed this, but there is anthropological evidence of cannabis use among humans dating back over 10,000 years (if you accept that Earth is at least that old). The fact that it wasn’t in the “West” is utterly irrelevant, as are her little stories about her stoned students. “For example,” is not proof, Mary. It is not even evidence, just like this incoherent rant is not evidence that we should legalize drugs.
The one time Mary actually bothers to bring science (scratch that, statistics) into the issue (when she cites the attitudes of teens towards Mary Jane), she fails to connect the dots meaningfully for us. So what if teens attitudes are changing in a certain direction? Are they changing in an inaccurate direction? It doesn’t seem so, since this story of a man choking on marijuana was probably the first death due to marijuana this year/decade/century/… Marijuana is remarkably safe, and if teens’ attitudes are changing in an accurate direction, we should ask why we wouldn’t want that and why the attitudes weren’t accurate to begin with.
Why didn’t she complete the thought? Is it because she would no longer be able to avoid the absurdity in what she was saying, and because she was just using “reason” as a smoke screen to veil the fact that she is ONLY REPEATING WHAT SHE HAS BEEN TOLD? Did your mother feel like this about drugs? To be perfectly honest, Mary sounds a bit like her student she was so proudly publicly flagellating. Do you actually teach at a university, Mary? Are there people in those classrooms?
I don’t mean to be cruel, Mary, just giving you a taste of your own medicine. I still love you:)
And as for the Gaia worship thing, are you insinuating that we should take a certain side on an issue because of the religious views of some people who take the other side? “Don’t think that thought–I knew a bad person once and he thought that. He was bad because he wasn’t my religion.” This is infantile, Mary. Infantile. We are all human, regardless of which story we tell about ourselves.
The whole piece is little more than another lunatic rant about how the “bad people” are taking over the world and we have to stop them. I don’t think we should hate lunatics, but I don’t think anybody gains anything from giving lunatics the microphone. However, I did hear that marijuana sometimes helps crazy people become sane again…
BTW I am a frequent marijuana user and I am a very productive individual. Marijuana does not rob the individual of reason. Some people use it to hurt themselves and some use it to help themselves. Get over yourself, Mary, it’s okay. You’re still one of us, human. You’re just not better than everybody else
With regards to the “Drug war”, this retired veteran is decidedly anti-war.
You can chose to support a Federal government which operates within the boundaries which the Founding Fathers set for it, or you’re just another faction of the Constitutional wrecking crew.
“In short, I find marijuana less dangerous to the human body and to society than Alcohol. I believe that both can and are used responsibly by adults. I believe that both can be abused by adults and children, though abuse of alcohol has far more dangers associated with it than abuse of Marijuana…”
Yet even the libertarian has to define adulthood for purposes of such “limited” government. “Less dangerous” (and “stoned”) still implies danger. Arbitrary, no? But then again, perhaps “objective” science and laws can provide the solution. Objectively, what are the dangers/costs of abuse the libertarian can absorb without government intervention? Isn’t the door for abuse still opened? (Real Deal makes cogent arguments here.)
And in regard to those Founding Fathers who only “poured” over government texts, quick and easy search lands quote from John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (Goatherders? Try fishermen. What demeans those professions anyway?) Deists? Quick search again: http://www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html. Those impulsive, irrational, unscientific men…
You cannot legislate morality, never could and never will.
nuff said
This is twaddle. The author makes the following arguments as to why marijuana should not be legalized but alcohol should remain legal:
1) Yes, Alcohol wrecks lives but it has been wrecking lives since the age of the Bible.
2) Someone swallows a plastic baggie full of pot and has a porn career at the age of 24. Therefore, his problems and death are due to pot and the drug war is justifiable. The impeccable logic of poor choices !
3) Alcohol is cultural and marijuana is counter-cultural. By extension, drinking a bottle of whiskey and dying from lethal blood-alcohol levels while being pursued by the police for a violence charge is cultural while swallowing a baggie of pot while fleeing from the police on a violence charge is counter cultural.
4) Jesus Christ served alcohol at the Last Supper while warning against excessive consumption. The author fails to mention the phenomenon known as alcoholism and the application of this warning to the phenomenon.
5) One who comes to class high does not draw attention while one who comes to class drunk must inevitably draw attention with awful behavior. The conclusion drawn is that pot should remain illegal because the left wants zombies. I can only assume that the drunken student who comes in to class smelling of rancid beer, slurring his speech, and acting as a general nuisance is not a zombie and that zombie movies are about people who sit innocuously as the protagonist spends an hour and twenty minutes deliberating whether they are zombies or not and if, in fact, being a zombie is necessarily a bad thing.
6) Libertarians argue that the distinction between alcohol and marijuana is due to tradition and societal stigma rather than reasonable policy. The author’s counter argument is that it is a societal stigma and extremely traditional.
With such inane reasoning and with such a void of evidence, this woman is either drunk or high .
Theists suck
210. Real Deal: Fair enough, but who foots the bill when those peaceful adults overdose and cannot pay the cost of their resultant medical care? Who foots the the bill when they have to go to expensive rehabilitation centers? Who pays for the social programs when they wreck their lives and/or screw up their kids?
Same people who pay for the obese who have a heart attack and can’t afford to pay their medical bills.
That is your justification for prohibition. Well, there may be actual costs to peoples bad choices and people aren’t willing to pay for them, so we just have to prevent them from making those bad choices. Which by the way is ludicrous, as prohibition has not decreased the bad choices people make with regard to illegal drugs.
Using that justification, just make everything illegal and highly regulated that could result in any extra cost to society. Of course, that’s not the tradition America was founded on.
Ratatosk
I have read every comment, all 238 to date, and just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to spell it out for everyone so patiently. There are many good comments and many based on emotion and ignorance but your last post said it all…
QUOTE…#218
In short, I find marijuana less dangerous to the human body and to society than Alcohol. I believe that both can and are used responsibly by adults. I believe that both can be abused by adults and children, though abuse of alcohol has far more dangers associated with it than abuse of Marijuana… And FINALLY, MOST IMPORTANTLY I believe that we as human beings are
“each gifted by nature with individual freedom; required by the law of nature to call no man, or body of men, his masters; authorized by that law to seek his own happiness in his own way, to do what he will with himself and his property, so long as he does not trespass upon the equal liberty of others; authorized also, by that law, to defend his own rights, and redress his own wrongs; and to go to the assistance and defence of any of his fellow men who may be suffering any kind of injustice” – Lysander Spooner, No Treason
THAT is what it means to be Libertarian, that is the philosophy of any who would truly go “John Galt”. For the rest, for those that think the government should play nanny at any level… well, they are not libertarian, they are something else, far more closely allied with the philosophies of Liberals and Socialists.
END QUOTE
I will add my own experience to this. I am 43 years old. I have been married 15 years with a 11 year old son. I have worked the same job for 14 years successfully and do NOT make 6 figures but do make a very comfortable living. I do not smoke or drink and have never tried any illicit drugs other than cannabis. I have no criminal record at any level including tickets or accidents. I tried pot when I was 24 years old after years of military sevice to this country. It was on a whim on the beach with my best friend at the time. I have been a recreational smoker since. My main reason for using at this time in life is to relax in my home after a very long stressful WEEK of work. It takes the edge off all the BS and allows me to look around and be thankful for all I have and the future I hope to have.
So I guess now I have outted myself as a terrible criminal-person-father-husband-son-member of society. I suppose now I should be thrown in jail for the rest of my life….NO WAIT…I should be killed in punishment for my personal indescretion as has been suggested. Jail or death would surely teach me and my family the error or my ways. Think of all the good that will come from removing me from our moral and civilized society.
I am sure I am one of a kind in this country and none of the 45 million other canabis smokers can possibly be like me and be a responsible recreational consumer. I am sure NONE of the 800,000 persons arrested in 2008 were like me. But wait, if they were not like minded and responsible to some extent this country would be in utter chaos would’nt it?
So I say again Ratatosk, thank you for being so patient with all your comments. I am finding it harder every day to be patient with laws and morals (covering all topics not just prohibition) that have twisted and badly distorted my personal rights and freedoms.
All drugs were legal until 1914. Society wasn’t falling apart. As soon as pharmaceutical companies started pushing patent medicines, plant based unpatentable drugs became illegal. Coincidence? The biggest agricultural crop during Jesus time was Hemp, do you think he didn’t use it in some form? Our founding fathers all smoked and grew marijuana. Why hand this billion dollar market to criminals?
I’d love to go into a detailed and thorough disputation of your claims Mary, but so many have done so more eloquently, and with more CONVICTION than I can muster at this time. So I’ll simply say..
POPPYCOCK!!
My father was killed by a drunk driver. Alcohol continues to kill at a rate of 75,000 Americans a year. I don’t care if you consider alcohol ‘socially acceptable,’ cannabis is FAR less lethal, but you’re twisting logic to make an outlandish claim stand up, that on it’s face is ludicrous.
DON’T TREAD ON ME!!!
Real Deal and archer. You two are, without a single doubt in my mind, the biggest idiots currently available for public viewing. I hope you two enjoy your hypocrisy flavored alcohol this Christmas. Sincerely.
“But adults-only libertarians are closet socialists. They’re anti-liberty, and anti-family. All they do is defend porn, illegal welfare-dependent immigrants and crazed drug addicts whom destroy private properties. If they were pro-liberty they wouldn’t censor Christian voices on their websites. Or make excuses for bloodthirsty dictators.”
I laughed out loud at this comment. Its completely deranged and counter to reality. This is about as stupid as saying that social conservatives are basically closet fascists. This sort of vile rhetoric helps no one and only serves to create a rift. Don’t counter any points just attack the commenters as “socialists” how truly pathetic.
Quoate:
“So, how, first of all, is criminalizing mariuana a conservative idea? It is explicitly (as previously explained) stretching the power of the federal Government beyond what is constitutionally granted to it. The left isn’t the crowd that wants it legalized, the libertarian idea you’re talking about is far more right wing than you are. Hate to break it to you, but preaching about morals and Christianity does not make you a conservative, and, thinking that Christianity is what our laws should be based on makes you un-American.”
Very well said buddy.
Oh and Ben and Jettboy… my previous comment is directed to you two clowns as well. Socialism != libertarianism! IDIOTS!
Post #73. Thank you for your comment Chris. The obvious risks are twofold.
First, we know from medical studies that the movement of heated tobacco smoke into the lungs leads to particulates permanently lodged therein. The cumulative effect of this deposition is a variety of lung conditions, such as emphysema and lung cancer. Infrequent use doesn’t entail huge risk, but chronic smoking does.
The second risk is associated with the operation of heavy equipment, vehicles, or high voltage apparatus, or in fact smoking in bed. These are associated risks deriving from secondary activities while intoxicated. The ‘Automatic Sprinkler System Handbook’ cites the bedroom as the most probable initiation point of fatal home fires, not the kitchen. Prudence on the part of the individual can minimize these risks, and we already have laws governing the operation of vehicles while the operator is intoxicated.
Hopefully, that clarifies my comment.
Ms. Grabar writes, “I would argue that tradition should be a reason for its [alcohol's] continued legal status and for denying legal status to marijuana.”
The argument from tradition is as arbitrary and vapid as the Libertarian’s argument for freedom. For example, had men like Galileo, Locke, Washington, Ford and a few thousands like them not renounced tradition, most of us would not be alive today.
Nor is freedom a primary. It too rests on more fundamental concepts – like volition, trade, progress, rights, and the purpose of government – each of which must be defined and integrated into a non-contradictory sum of knowledge. That is the task of philosophy which most philosophers have defaulted on for the past 150 years.
The Grabars and libertarians have no answers. Read Atlas Shrugged.
Total and absolute nonsense. Illogic masked as commentary…very sad. To claim that alcohol is somehow righteous while a plant that God made and called ‘ good’ is bad is insanity.
The writer of this drivel knows ZERO about cannabis, zero about history, and nothing whatsoever about logic. She does not, and cannot, address the FACT that Prohibition, in all forms,is a LOSING proposition, in every measurable way. She does not address the FACT that this can be boiled down to a simple example:
If you were to ask the American public the following question, it would show how insane prohibition is. Here it is:
” Do you think that potentially harmful substances should be controlled and regulated by: A. The Federal and State governments…or B. Criminal cartels and street dealers.
Of course the answer is: The people who would choose ‘ B ‘ are called Prohibitionists !! Once you expose the insane logic of supporting the cartels and criminals that would sell anything to anyone of any age just for profit, the prohibitionist platform is shown for what it is: Failed policy that cannot be supported by any data, facts, science, history or example that shows it is effective in any way.
The definition of insanity is doing the same failed thing over and over, yet expecting different results!! Prohibition is the best example of all to show how mad it is to try and deny the People what they want, and WILL GET, while ignoring the obvious and harmful consequences of the policy itself.
Prohibition cannot be a success, even when measured by the twisted and distorted’ facts’ regurgitated ad nauseum by the drug war zealots, who are losing numbers as fewer intelligent people are willing to accept lies and truth and nonsense as policy.
The author of this piece should be ambarrassed by producing such drivel; it can be said to be so ridiculous as to be almost funny…as if such a travesty could be amusing.
#152 gray man:
The Majority of Americans DO want pot legal you troglodyte.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/07/zogby-poll-52-of-ame.html
Prohibition of drugs implies that people do not own their bodies. That their bodies belong to the state, not themselves. That is the moral libertarian argument.
Grabar relies on appeals to authority(the Bible which also gives guidelines for owning slaves and stoning rebellious teenagers) and demagoguery.
To the “argument” that criminals won’t just turn into good guys when drugs are legal: no shit. Entrepreneurs and businesses will take over the drug trade, just like after the repeal of alcohol prohibition. Medical marijuana dispensaries are already taking away the drug cartel’s money in California: http://www.drugwarrant.com/2009/10/they-finally-figured-out-how-to-hurt-the-cartel/
And economically the number
And the BS that the number of drug users will rise: no. The fact is if someone wants to get high, they can and will, prohibition or not. It is not difficult for anyone to get drugs, and in my high school, kids RAN the trade right under the noses of adults despite numerous sweeps for drugs with dogs every month. There will appear to be a rise in pot users as they don’t have to hide their use of the drug – like how there are more gay people today than in the 50s because it’s more socially acceptable to gay.
The silly arguments from archer52 could be applied to alcohol, tobacco and hell anything legal. It’s legal for me to sever my hand off with a circular saw so the gov’t must approve of it! His anecdotal experience shows to me the evidence of harm prohibition does by driving an entire market underground. That and piss poor parenting. And his analogy of booze and pot to AIDS and syphilis is hilarious. The argument was that alcohol is many times more harmful to the user and society than pot is, so why not ban it following the “it’s harmful” logic? The “it damages families” is stupid as well because this damage has happened under prohibition, so it’s not going to stop it. I have no pity for people who mix alcohol and coke. Not only does it create cocaethylene(it should be obvious that mixing has harmful cardiovascular effects because coke is an upper and alcohol a downer) but what happens if you snort a line and wake up in the hospital? Oh hey the coke was cut with industrial laundry detergent(like how booze in prohibition could blind/kill you from iodine, creosote, or embalming fluid). What are you gonna do? Sue your drug dealer?
The “What about the children?!!? There are other victims too!” can be made against booze, tobacco, soap operas, casual sex. If you really care about the children in abusive families, adopt them, rather than putting them in foster homes where they will still be abused. Don’t think that prohibition will save them.
There will be shitty parents. There will be drug addicts. and prohibition exacerbates these problems by taking kids to shitty gov’t approved homes and ostracizing addicts, banning methods proven to reduce the spread of disease and use like needle exchange, heroin maintenance, and addiction breaking drugs like ibogaine(which is a hallucinogenic so even research is banned).
Arguments about “tradition” or “heritage” or “culture” are not arguments at all. They’re appeal to tradition fallacies.
The “People will come into work sotned!” is… depressing. 1. What happens when people come into work now drunk? THEY GET FIRED. Anyone who thinks they wouldn’t would be never have an important job 2. Who lights up at 7 in the morning? Layabouts who don’t have jobs anyway?
Mary and archer would like to use force to shape society in their view. Instead of letting people govern themselves, they want a society dictated through nearly every step of life by moral busybodies. Never mind the impracticality of prohibition that creates inflated prices and an entire market(and then hands it to criminals), police abuse/militarization, a mindset of soldiers(us vs them) in cops, the growing abusive nature of the legal system, the special interests profiting from it(private prisons, drug testing companies, big pharma), hell, mj(equating it with industrial hemp) prohibition was just an example of economic rent seeking by the chemical and timber industry.
The fact is that if you advocate prohibition you advocate violence against a non-violent party(the users). You advocate violence against anyone who wants to use their body in a manner that they want.
“Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!” - George Washington
“Some of my finest hours have been spent on the back of my veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as the eye can see.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica.” -Abraham Lincoln
“Marijuana, in contrast, has always been counter-cultural in the West. Every toke symbolizes a thumb in the eye of Western values.”
I must chime in with support for this bold defense of Western Values!
Entering college in the mid-70′s, my goal was to become an academic philosopher. However, I soon fell in with a group of stoners in my dorm who questioned my career goal: “Why are you majoring in philosophy? You’re never gonna be able to GET A JOB!”
One was a pre-med. Under the influence, his ambitions waned… and he wound up as a… chemical engineer.
Another entered with the goal of becoming a pharmaceutical researcher… weed robbed him of his motivation… oh the degradation! Toke after toke after toke… he wound up as a… petroleum engineer.
Another stubbornly hewed to his original goal of becoming… an electrical engineer!
And the final tragedy: the latter two BOTH eventually wound up working in PROFESSIONAL ROLES for… Exxon/Mobil.
As for me, my mind befogged by a haze of marijuana smoke and helpless against the merciless “You DO want to GET A JOB, don’t you?” arguments from these hopeless slackers, I switched my major to Economics. There was worse to come: after graduation with High Honors and being inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, I pursued a career as… a COMPUTER PROGRAMMER!
I know this is a shameful story, but I felt compelled to share it. Society would have been so much better off if three out of these four had been imprisoned for 20 years for felony possession of an hallucinogen. PLEASE… THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
AAAND dumb ass, it was a PLASTIC BAG full of weed! I’m sure even you could choke on a bag full of your favorite stupid pills, which is obviously what you ate for breakfast.
It would take at least an equal amount of space for me to address every point in this article directly but I will limit my comment simply to say, without hostility or rancor, that you desperately need to do some actual research on the science, culture, history, use and characteristics of both the substance Cannabis and the war on Cannabis. And by research I mean INDEPENDENT research of all available sources not quotes from political “drug warriors” and discredited “studies” by entities such as NIDA(national institute on drug abuse) and others whose funding and very existence depends on keeping the drug illegal.
I would bet money that if you took this advice to heart, as I did once, that in a years time you would reread this article and and find yourself incredulous that you could have ever believed the points you made in this article.
If you think you have the right to control other people’s behavior, then I should have the right to make sure you’re in a place where you can’t. In any other context the place we put those kind of people is called JAIL.
Perhaps we should legalize drugs, pardon all past ‘offenders’ and then use the empty prison space to put fascist moralists there.
(That makes about as much sense as your anti-pot arguments, Mary. Thought I would come down to your level.)
BettyBlue: “The sad fact is, drug abusers do not restrict…”
Abusus non tollit usum. [Abuse is no argument against proper use.]
Drug prohibition laws assume you are property of the government.
If you (an adult) don’t own your own self – your own body – then the idea of ownership has no meaning.
it is ironic to find people that support tea party’s and want government out of their lives are at their core dysfunctional control freaks. the height of psychosis is the need to control others so you can feel at ease.
their is plenty in the republic’s constitution to support control of fraud, violence and theft. punishment is clearly authorized. there is nothing in anyway condoning the legislation of anything to do with anything anyone ingests as long as the ingestion is not due to force, and or fraud. penalties for fraud violence and theft of drug users are fine. anything a person ingests whether it is apricot juice heroin, or Viagra is not any of their neighbors business.
if we spent as much on prosecution clear crimes, we would have less of a drug problem. certainly less crime in the Americas if you do not believe a person’s body is their sovereign possession you cannot claim to be an American that believes in the republic’s constitution. period.
yer just one more dysfunctional control freak that wants to use the power of the state to order people to live as you wish. what happened to “your rights end at the tip of your nose” ?
Lots of recreational drug users in this country, eh? Mary is right, next subject.
Even though you speak of how counter-cultural Marijuana is, you fail to really back it up with any reason. Ive read the article a twice through, and still fail to see what is counter-cultural.
If anything, keeping it illegal is counter-cultural, and heres why Mary:
1)What are 3 of the main pillars America was built on, and became what it is today: a) religion, though now it is in decline, religion was a founding element. b) the automobile, i do not think anyone can argue that the automobile was revolutionary and world changing. c) the declaration of independence, and the constitution.
a) There are many references towards “seeded plants” and a “herb” through out religious writings, though, since it is religion, the interpretation is highly to the reader.
b) the original model-T was built from hemp (cannabis!!) and was made to run on hemp fuel. Your hybrids great grand daddy used cannabis to get going, huh hows that feel?
c) Both the declaration of independence and the constitution’s original draft was on…….HEMP paper. The ideals of freedom and justice and liberty were LITERALLY written on cannabis. The FOUNDATION of the american culture all rested and finely penned into cannabis.
Quick facts: George Washington grew hemp / cannabis in his back yard. At a time, you could pay your TAXES with hemp and cannabis. In certain areas, there were short term laws in place where if a farmer was NOT growing hemp and cannabis, they were JAILED.
Now, on to why its illegal: 2 reasons, Corruption and Racism.
Corruption: Large pulp and plastics companies were under pressure from the hemp industry, for reasons like 1 acre of Hemp = 3 Acres of harvestable forestry, oh and hemp can be harvested anywhere in the world and 3 times a year. How long does it take to grow a forest? So large industries needed hemp to be gone, and powerful people (harry asslinger for one…)had their hands deep in the companies pockets, so they used their leverage to make it illegal, not without a little bit of help though, they needed public support, now, what kind of mind set did the American people have at the time… oh yeah, they were just kinda racist.
Racism and yellow journalism: They used the peoples racism and hate to fuel their win over hemp by use of yellow journalism and statements like “Marihuana persuades the ni**ers to look twice at our white women” and “with use of marihuana, the ni**ers begin to believe they are on par with white folk”. And the term “Marijuana” was a slang term used by mexican workers. So asslinger and the gang picked up the term and linked the use of marijuana with the image of lazy mexicans. Well, the people kinda ate that shit up, and marijuana (along side hemp) became illegal.
Now you might argue that the American Medical Association signed off on the illegation of marijuana, so there HAD to be some creditable reason right? Well a week after it became illegal, the AMA released the statement that they were not made aware that Marijuana was in fact cannabis. They were under the impression it was a manufactured drug. Woopsies!
So, by saying if we legalize marijuana, it would be counter cultural, you are, by connection, saying that you support corruption and racism, and don’t believe in the american founding principles (that one may be a stretch but oh well), and believe that 72 years of illegal weed is more important and more culturally significant than hundreds of years of legal marijuana.
Marijuana kills a baffling and mind boggling zero people a year. I know, its a hard number to count, pretty higher up there. The GOVERNMENT sees fit to imprison an average of 800 000 people for non violent crimes, 30 000$ for each person. 800 000 x 30 000. Yes, THAT number is very higher up…. What happens to most of the people who go to jail because of marijuana? Well, chances are their life becomes a whole lot harder, jobs once had are no longer there, scholarships once earned no longer pay for you to get a education. Peoples lives are being ruined. And what happens to those young non-violent offenders when they go to prison and are forced into violence and behaviour they would of once never considered? What happens when they get out, and are now involved in gangs? Oh, thats right, another criminal for american “justice” to hunt down and throw in jail again. Hey, the PRIVATE correctional business needs money to. Its not like the billions we waste away could go to education, its not like the American education system ranks below most other developed countries or anything.
Now, you stated that when legal everyone will dissolve into stoned zombies.
Do you truly have such little faith in the american people? Do you truly believe that once marijuana is legal EVERYONE will pick it up? If you do, than i can, without guilt, say you are a novice journalist who does not know how to properly look into a subject.
One name debunks every single world ending claim about marijuana legalization. One name stops the crying of scared parents who think their children will go crazy with drugs and become a criminal. One name qualms all politicians bullshit when they speak of increased death rates and injuries and decreased school averages. One name: Portugal.
Prior to 2001, Portugal had a very similar, if not exact, problem that America currently has. Prohibition wasn’t working, drug use was becoming rampant, correctional facilities were past strained, and an economic deficit which resounded in lack of funding to needed sectors (once again, who needs dumb things like skooling and proper spelingz n graamor). Then, they did something drastic. In 2001, Portugal legalized ALL drugs. Not just weed, but every drug. They put into place programs for health help instead of correctional. They treated drug addicts as sick people, instead of criminals. Take a look then to now. STI spreading as declined sharply due to the decline in dirty needles, their correctional facilities are no longer bunkered down with non-violent offenders. Self help and seeking in addiction treatment has gone through the roof-
(not to be confused with the latest stats in america which show the same thing with marijuana. What those stats don’t tell you is the judge gave the convicted a choice; jail or rehab… who says “hellz yeah! sign me up for the big house, im ready for the crappy food and the possible sexual abuse from bubbah, my cell mate!!”. So yes, self admitted help has gone up statistically, but its a false statistic. True self admittance without an ultimatum has not moved or slightly decreased.)
back to Portugal; Oh and the one thing that might surprise you mary… drug use, WENT DOWN. All drugs, including marijuana, and in all age ranges. At first there was a slight increase in marijuana use, but now, its lower than what it has been for years. In the past 5 years, more people in america have tried cocaine for the first time than new users to marijuana in Portugal. Damn, america is soon going to have more coke heads than Portugal has stoners. Wonder how that happened.
You say that a recent study shows how in medical marijuana legal states, youth are gaining a sense of safety. Well, whats not safe about it? Its MIND ALTERING, so is chocolate. Chocolate gives you that happy warm feeling inside since its linked to the release of the pleasure hormone. Coffee is mind altering aswell. Though both of these to a less degree. Alcohol is not just mind altering, it is also mind destroying. Yes a glass of wine a day is a good oxidizer, but getting drunk kills brain cells. Its also a poison which harms many inter-bodily processes and organs. Marijuana does not kill brain cells, it acts on the cabanoid receptors which are ALREADY there in the brain, muscles, joints, and many other places in our bodies.
It makes people lazy and unmotivated: This has NEVER been proven true. If you have a lack of inhibition before smoking, you will still have a lack of inhibition after. Have a strong will before, you will have a strong will after. (i am not talking about substance abuse, that should not be linked to the argument of legalization since abuse of ANY substance can be harmfull and most of the time fatal…. drinking to much water will kill you, inhaling to much oxygen (pure o2) will kill you.)
Will smoking cause a case of the brain crazies (schizophrenia): never been proven, no signs have been shown.
But its smoke, you will get cancer!!! : A 30 year long study has recently been concluded on the link between marijuana smoke and the lungs. The verdict…….. No bronchial issues, no tar in the lungs, no smokers cough, and crazy enough, no cancer, infact there was slight evidence that it works against cancer, though this evidence was to small and can’t be properly credited to marijuana.
Oh, another crazy thought, baking marijuana removes the need to smoke it and removes the argument against legalization when it comes to smoke. You can also vaporize it which means heating the herb to where the THC becomes vapor, but it does not burn the leafy material that releases carcinogens.
Another point which could be used to argue against legalization is the “dangerously” high levels of THC in modern marijuana than in marijuana from the past. Law enforcement found up to 1000% increase (from 2% of thc in marijuana to substances which contained 40% THC). To bad that upon closer inspection, it was learned that the modern analysis also contained the thc content in hashish and keif, which is concentrated forms of the THC. So obviously it would be a higher concentration. Take that out of the equation and your left with marijuana that have around 8% THC.
That still to high for you? Well, according to the federal government and the AMA, and any other channel to legalize pharmaceutical drugs, 100% is not to high. Marinol. A pill containing 100% THC. Though synthetic, it is structurally and chemically the same to THC found in marijuana. Most users do not like the pill because it comes with adverse side effects which cause different problems for the patients.
If you want to use the incline of THC as an argument, please get legal products like marinol out of the pharmacies first, until then, your argument is simply something to laugh at.
You spoke of a college student in your class, that when he makes the argument for legalization he falls short of facts and proper evidence to justify legalization, you also mention that his essays are that of a lower caliber aswell. Ever consider this man, instead of being a pot head, is simply a poor debater and never got the quality of education needed to write a sound, structurally proper paper where facts and evidence supports main ideas? Could he be another victim to blatant disregard by the Government? Maybe, or maybe hes a stoner and hits the bong everyday. I do not know this man first hand, so i do not have those answers. However, you must consider that the thousands of others in post-secondary who also support legalization probably should not be stereotyped and looked down upon due to this one student. I am a college student. And though this response will never be read by you, and though it also does not follow proper paper standards and structure, it still kicks all of your ideas and arguments “reverse area”.
What is counter-culture about legalization? What are the dangers, social/political/moral/physical, of marijuana use and legalization? Where is the evidence to support any of your arguments, or are all of your points based of off ideals? If you wish, i will provide evidence, facts, and written documentation on all of the things i have said. Every recount i have written when relating to a study, or a quote, or paraphrase from history, i WILL and CAN back up and support. Then i can make more arguments for legalization and support them equally well.
A Government which purposely harms it’s citizens for individual gain effectively forfeits any right to govern.
@ 55. Amphipolis:
“We need wise legislation, and therefore we need to elect wise legislators.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh…Oh…. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Ooooh… I… um… Oh hell! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I I… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! hope you were trying to be funny. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Thanks for the gift of laughter on Christmas Day.
“It is an indictment of a person’s character, who wants to be a politician.” — MB Kitchen
Hey, Dopey
I come back just to check as the list of comments grows. :: ))
I see your anger at not getting what you want.
I admire your infantile sarcasm, your quick, pithy, pharmaceutically induced comebacks, your exasperation that we refuse you your “Harmless” weed.
We will never legalize it. Go ahead and cry. :: ))
Hey, Don
You can’t stop us having a good time no matter how hard you try, just deal with it already.
P.S. Jesus was a homeless black hippie.
P.P.S. Where did I put my bong?
@ Don:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aKNQlqjXCQ3w
Go there. If your to lazy, ill summarize:
Californian people had gathered signatures to put a new legalization bill on the ballet. They needed circa 400 000 signatures. They currently have circa 650 000, and they are going to continue gathering until vote day, just to show how many people really want this bill to pass…
When its voted on by the citizens of California (which the majority favor legalization, actually, 54% of ALL Americans favor legalization, but Cali is in front with the most per state), something tells me that its going to pass.
Never going to be legal? Give it a year.
After its legal and the world doesn’t end, we are going to see a huge shift in outlook on marijuana once the people who have been indoctrinated to no end no longer contribute to society (its a sad fact, but people grow old, i will grow old, and people will regrettably die). Once the people who have a stick up their ass either move on, mentally or physically, then there will be no one to say “god weed is terrible! what a disgusting destructive drug”. Itll be more like “weed isn’t that bad, but everything in moderation” just like that magic sweet tasting drink, whats it called again, oh yeah, alcohol.
huh, i guess my summary was a little long so:
TLDR: Cali people got enough signatures to get legalization bill on ballet next year. The vote of the people will probably be to legalize.
With respect, any cry to have the Federal government step in to solve a problem outside of the enumerated powers is anti-libertarian.
The writer’s values have drifted from the core principles of Libertarianism.
Individual states should be able to make their own rules free from the oppression of the Feds who’ve expanding so far from their charter that the line is no longer recognized.
So, how long has your head been stuck in that position???
If I swallow cardboard (a legal substance) and chock and die, is it refered to as a cardboard caused death?
You’re good at cherry picking your pulpit serenade, why did you leave out God saying that He gave us “every plant that produces seed and that it is good?” Where is the lie? IS there a lie?
The opium poppy is not a “bad” plant. Where do you think morphine comes from? Try telling a wounded soldier that he can’t have a shot of morphine because he could become addicted. Listen carefully to his response.
What is the good in being so “heavenly minded” that one is “no earthly good?” How many do-gooders do I have to check in with every morning to check my schedule to assure that I won’t inadvertently ruin “Western civilization?”
I I don’t feel good, I con’t check with my priest or local cop first. I go directly to my doctor. Yet, you’d have me meet with your “council” first to be sure we don’t “rock the boat.”
The nice part of this whole fiasco is that once prohibition dies, everyone’s words will still exist on the net for us all to point to the next time “they” have some strange position.
You brought up that drugs have been illegal for 72 years. Possibly, it could even have been a bit longer. However, what the writer failed to present is that drug prohibition started at the State level and only after all states came onboard, did the CSA appear. Now, the States are correcting their past. Not because they carry some moniker. No, it’s because people are opening up to facts and logic, items missing in prohibition.
Please show us one, just ONE, Prohibition that has worked. Please! And be sure to start with Prohib I, the Garden of Eden.
We’re waiting……
Mary, oh poor Mary. So damn educated that you have become dilusional. Education is an ongoing thing. I won’t get into the banter about all the ills of your article, but I will address the “Tradition” you are openly supporting.
ARE YOU SUPPORTING RACISM?
Here a Quote from the hearings that first prohibited marijuana in “the west”, by the first director of what became the DEA. “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US,
and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers.
Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage.
This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations
with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”
If you really care you can do a search for Anslinger Qoutes and you should be discusted. These arguments are the foundation of your traditional prohabition.
If you want to burn a cross, do it on your property! We will watch and comment, but not stop you from burning down your house if you chose. But, do it on mine, and I will gladly, and constitutionally, justifiably and traditionally, beat you until you experience the peace of christianity you seek.
Be well all.
Yo Mighty Fahvaag: People are proposing to legalize and moderately tax adult cannabis use (except that grown for personal use), one benefit being that the government desperately needs the money and savings on enforcement, and could use the newly empty jail cells to house violent criminals longer. It will deprive the cartels of the majority of their profits, helping to cut them down to size, it will provide a desperately needed legal alternative to killer alcohol, and end the unbelievable and unbearable hypocrisy of killer alcohol users lording it over cannabis users. And it will make the united in United States more of a reality and less of a cynical joke. Millions of citizens will become much more willing to cooperate with the police once they are treated as citizens and not as designated scapegoats.
If cannabis legalization goes well, I would then hope hard drugs could be discussed in a more serious and less hysterical way. Many people are failing to distinguish between the harm done by hard drugs and the harm done by the attempt to prohibit them, which includes not only all the robberies and murders committed by addicts in need of money to pay black market prices but also all the trauma after such events, and all the fear of such events happening, fear which probably affects almost everybody.
This is directed to the non users on the board.
First, I like to say, ‘Liberals are Idiots and Conservatives are Morons’.
That is my political position.
I like to say that as an American my religious beliefs are personal; that is, none of your business.
That is my religious position. :: ))
I would like to point out the Racism that the Boomers used to sell Marijuana to the working class during the sixties.
While all the decent Black and Hispanic and Asian parents were doing their best to keep their kids off drugs, the white college age elite were selling the notion of the “Non Westerners” happy as larks and all in tune with nature, high on dope, ya dig?
This whole line is a lie. There is no non western culture that loves intoxicated beggars wandering the streets.
We should drop the Western values line. It demeans world civilization. Again the whole non western in tune with nature high on dope song and dance is a racist lie.
Marijuana users are criminals. They sell a dangerous drug that makes people feel good. Please note the Makes, as in forces. Why this alone, something that forces someone to feel good is not enough to persuade users of the drug’s danger reveals their incapacity for moral reasoning.
The User’s persistent lies about the drug relationship to behavior is worthy of inspection. Consider the individual that promotes their life direction and choices as due their use of the appropriate drug. This pharmaceutical replacement for character development is worthy of inspection as well.
In sum, for your consideration as you are no doubt a better writer and thinker than myself.
Western values have no patent on law and order, sobriety or industry.
There is no correlation between non violence and Marijuana use. Most violent felons are marijuana users.
Marijuana users are criminals. They consort with and conspire with other criminals; they risk custody of their children to live their criminal life style.
They sell a dangerous drug and promote its use without truly knowing if it is harmless or not.
I would only like to hear from the non criminals, please.
You are all right. If it is legalized I and everyone else will have to deal with it. That is how a free society works. :: ))
Don: Surely you cannot be serious…but I have a sinking feeling that you are. Because there is a law against cannabis in most places, provably due to racist and nefarious causes, the users are ‘ criminals’ to you…as if that blanket pronouncement means something…it does not. Criminalizing cannabis is WRONG, in the moral and literal sense..in all respects, when viewed through the eyes of science and reason.
Claiming that pot is a ‘ dangerous drug’ with absolutely No proof offered, so stas, no science..is nonsense. Every single complaint Don has can be laid at the feet of Prohibition: ” They consort and conspire..” “…they risk custody..” makes it sound so dark and dangerous, doesn’t it? Too bad that it is totally wrong, with no support from aqny reliable source.
Don either has a vivid imagination or sees the world in a way that most of us cannot see: he sees the results of prohibition and claims that they are inherent parts of a plant!! Assigning properties that no botanist or scientist would dare claim without a shred of worry about being correct: brazen refusal to recognize the facts even when paid bare in front of him.
Demonizing the smoker is the way many like Don try to get around the truth and facts..just because we refuse to bow down and live our lives in subjugation to bad laws and unreasonable policy makes us heroes, not criminals, no matter what the corrupt system says!!
The laws against pot are wrong, fundamentally because they were based on such corrupt policy making basis that no decent human being could possibly defend the roots of cannabis criminalization. Just read Anslingers comments about ‘ white women having sex with negroes and entertainers’, and ‘ stantanic music, jazz and swing’..and on and on. Sickening and open racism…calling people’ darkies’ and with no shame degrading entire classes of people bnased on factors that now seem shameful ..or maybe they don’t…if you thibnk like Don…maybe the old days seem Ok..
jeez..seems to me that we would reject those old hatreds and lies and adopt the truth,…but until guys like Don wake up and quit blaming the people for the policy, we will always hear the refrain about how bad the weed people are….sad and pathetic..isn’t it?
“A person can have a drink or two, and be sober. Have a toke, and you are stoned.”
Only an alcoholic would make such a stupid statement.
So people can build tolerance to alcohol, but none whatsoever to cannabis?
The first time I heard such a dump on logic, I thought it was just some random idiot. But apparently, I hear this “You can be sober from beer, but not from pot” argument multiple times now. Is stupidity contagious?
Dear libertarians: you’re not actually taking anything this pseudo-Christian authoritarian Mary Grabar is saying to heart, right? Just checking. I figure you tuned out the moment she expressed outrage that you might agree with Soros the Antichrist on this or any other issue — as though the notion that liberals and libertarians might be in sync on social issues (if occasionally for different reasons) is not as basic as it gets with respect to the political map.
Still, if we’re going to convince Mary that arresting a million citizens per year on marijuana charges is a bad idea — especially in these trying economic times — we may need to turn to the Bible:
“God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth.…To you it will be for meat.’ … And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:29-31)
Compare and contrast Ms. Grabar’s words: “Marijuana, in contrast, has always been counter-cultural in the West. Every toke symbolizes a thumb in the eye of Western values. So it follows that in order to maintain our culture, we need to criminalize this drug.”
This is God in the role of God and Ms. Grabar in the role of Pontius Pilate.
This piece is so poorly reasoned as to be unworthy of a serious response.
Re-legalization of a plant will occur in 2010, but no one will force you to smoke it. Re-think that!
“But I would argue that tradition should be a reason for its continued legal status and for denying legal status to marijuana”
Then you’re a complete moron who should look up the logical fallacies before trying to make an argument again (specifically appeal to tradition fallacy for starters).
The rest of the post can just be summed up with ‘but marijuana is bad’. Apparently the only reason why you want to keep alcohol legal is because the Bible (which is not the law of the land and was never used to found this country) makes it so.
Are you now going to want to ban cigars, cigarettes, fatty foods, caffeine or unprotected sex?
If you don’t have the right to do things that could be self-destructive (as long as they don’t harm others) you do not live in a free country, period.
“They’re anti-liberty,”
Are you joking? There’s a huge list of things that libertarians would like to see legalized or will defend, how does that make them anti-liberty?
“and anti-family.”
Do you have anything else besides conservative slurs?
“All they do is defend porn,”
what’s wrong with this
“illegal welfare-dependent immigrants”
Not all illegal immigrants depend on welfare and you can get a libertarian going off against welfare.
“and crazed drug addicts whom destroy private properties.”
Not all drug users destroy private property (dumbass) and if they do you can charge them for destroying the property (the real crime) without charging them for taking drugs (the non-crime). How is that complicated?
“If they were pro-liberty they wouldn’t censor Christian voices on their websites.”
It’s their private website they can censor comments if they choose, they’d also defend your right to make a website and censor comments.
“Or make excuses for bloodthirsty dictators.”
Name one.
A brief comment, Dr. Dan, If one is part of the 5% which possesses the lions share of the fat of our great nation, it is appropriate to assume that individual is not subject to mandatory surveillance. A libertarian as I understand strives to eliminate the new deal altogether. Unequal protection under the law is unconstitutional!
On my 40th birthday, I smoked my first joint. Why you ask? Because MS had given me such painful leg cramps that I could not walk. I could not sleep. I could not think. I was forced to use a wheelchair. Nothing the doctors gave me worked. NOTHING. But the drugs the doctors gave me did put me into a stupor. Out of desperation, I tried pot. It eased the cramps. It reduced the pain. It did not cloud my mind nearly as badly as the legal meds. It got me out of my wheelchair. Let us consider. I can use “approved” drugs that cost an arm and a leg and don’t work. Or I can use a drug I can grow myself and does work. Am I a criminal?
I absolutely despise the ephebiphobia that goes on in arguments like these. We need to protect young people from the use of hard drugs and alcohol or they’ll destroy this country? Youth suffers from an upside-down culture in this country? Last I checked, it was Baby Boomers and the AARP that passed every fiscally ruinous bill in recent history. It’s not the young who are destroying this country, it’s the aged. The young are going to need every hard drug available to cope with the massive, steaming pile you’re leaving for us when we inherit the reins of government.
Keeping Cannabis illegal while tobacco and alcohol are dispensed freely is *MURDEROUSLY STUPID*.
ANY questions?
http://tinyurl.com/Tashkin
http://tinyurl.com/Henningfield-Benowitz
-Richard Steeb, San Jose California
Mary, I think you judge to much. I know that your interpretation of Christianity is to hate and judge people who don’t think like you, but you’re doing it way way way wrong. Spend some time with people like yourself who are uptight and unrealistic. Drugs and prostitution are two hobbies that have always been fought against, why not allow it to be legalized and regulated properly? Would you rather a pimp on a corner selling women who are forced to become addicted to drugs? Or women to be able to stay safe from STDs and the choice to say no to a John? If a woman strips, its her business to strip…it does not make her a drug addicts. Furthermore, if you had smoked pot you would know that it wouldn’t help you relieve the stress of getting in front of people in the buff. It would probably make them more reserved. You are thinking of hard narcotics like Cocaine, Heroin and all too popular Oxycontin. Sure one could stand in front of a college class on a high horse and say that the guy with glazed eyes is not absorbing information, but how did that student do GPA wise? Probably fine considering its college and it takes effort to get there and accomplish it. If you want to bring scientific facts against pot to the table that would be great, at least your arguement would attempt to SAY something. Studies have proven time and time again that pot is not as bad as alcohol, no matter what the bible says, and science will back that up 100% of the time. In conclusion, Mary you should get a life. I think you’ll find people who want a smaller government (libertarians) will be against anything that allows lobbyists special interests, and that gives us citizens less control over our own choices. If one wants to smoke pot at home, why shouldn’t they be able to? If its because the bible says so, you’re wrong! Check out Rastafari, which is based on the Bible. Also check your poli sci books about what governmental expansion does to oppression levels the working class. If you still think that Libertarians are wrong on this topic and that pot smokers are lazy, why is there a national push towards legalization? Its because its not a bad thing. If kids hung around parents who smoked pot vs. drinking I’m sure the kids will be more grounded with ganja than booze. Again, get a life.
Wow, it must be hard to have a Ph.D. in English yet be so blatantly illogical and dense in your writing. Perhaps you should attempt to get your money back from Georgia.
Marijuana is not a sin: http://www.showmethefacts.org/2009/03/26/attention-religious-marijuana-sin/
Tradition is what you resort to when you don’t have the time or the money to do it right.
Kurt Herbert Alder
And legalizing marijuana will remove the freedom employers now have to test for the judgment-impairing drug.
Barring employers from discriminating against dopers wouldn’t be very libertarian.Employers can discriminate against tobacco users right now.
Why wouldn’t they be able to not hire/fire drug users?
Did the author just quote the bible? Oh yes I do “believe” she did. No pun intended but: Good Lawd!
Maybe ignorance is truly bliss.
LOL, I think some folks disagree with the flagrant ignorance and logical fallacies this article is rife with.
Wow at the display of ignorance in this article. Sad.
How come some of the anti-legalisation individuals claim that they are worried our nation will become filled with so-called “dopers” (what a condescending term) and “zombies?” What evidence do you have of that?
From my perspective, and I’ve lived in several different regions of the United States coast-to-coast, it seems not much would change as far as the behavior of current cannabis users, let alone the number of users. Those who want to use cannabis do already, regardless of its legal status. It’s easy enough to obtain as is. So please… cut it out with that argument.
Also want to say that the “pot is a gateway drug” claim is ludicrous. Most people I know who smoke don’t use anything else, and DON’T WANT TO. I certainly don’t. Also, ever since I began using cannabis, my desire to do other destructive things to myself has lessened dramatically. I rarely get drunk anymore–although I enjoy an occasional glass of Riesling–and I have stopped using my prescription drugs. I don’t need Zoloft when I have cannabis to ease my depression/anxiety.
I want to know how many pot-smokers Mary actually knows.
P.S. – Thanks to Radley (of theagitator.com) for linking to this (ridiculous) article.
Mary, you are very, very mistaken in your argument here. I actually find it hard to read, knowing how wrong you are. Conservatives are the ones that need to come around on this issue; libertarians have it right. I can only hope that you will continue to seek the truth here, and come to reconsider your stance. Prohibition does nothing to lessen the use of marijuana or any other drug, it merely enriches drug dealers, leads to more crime, and isolates addicts. There is much empirical evidence here. If you really care about helping people lead lives without drugs, focus your energy on offering support and rehabilitation for those who are addicted or at-risk. Making drugs illegal has been a senseless waste, just as the prohibition of alcohol was.
Mary, first off libertarians believe in Natural Law. Natural Law says that we all have self-ownership. That means we have every right to do what we want with our bodies, so long as we do not infringe on anothers liberties. This has always been the libertarian position (Classical Liberal aka Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Patrick Henry, Frederic Bastiat, John Locke, et. al.). I think it’s quite clear you have no idea who and what libertarians are, because you think Barry Goldwater epitomises libertarianism. Sorry, Barry Goldwater was apart of the New nascent Right. He was not a libertarian. Granted, he wasn’t as socially conservative as conservatives and neo-conservatives today, but he was just as much interventionist as they are. He had no problem with big unlimited Government abroad.
So, lets dispense with the crack pot utilitarianism in this blog post. Libertarians are against all victim-less crimes for moral reasons. You, or anyone else have no right to tell me what I can or cannot do or put in my body. I own my body, you do not own me. Secondly, I find it despicable you are trying to use this mans death to further your own social conservative agenda.
As a history lesson “traditional libertarianism” is CLASSICAL LIBERALISM. Look it up Mary.
What century was this garbage written in?
Even if libertarians were to accept your inane arguments that the government has to promote your idea of social order AND that marijuana somehow undermines it your conclusion is still baseless. It doesn’t follow from the premises.
Making marijuana illegal doesn’t make it go away. It doesn’t even make it harder to access. When I was in high school I could get as much marijuana as I cared for, while on campus, even, but getting my hands on a Budweiser was a real task. And what is the price to be paid for your moralizing? Tens of thousands of people die every single year in the drug war, and billions of dollars are funneled into violent criminal organizations. This is how you propose to ‘protect social order’?
Another note: libertarian thought goes back a bit further than Barry Goldwater, you boring hack. You could have taken a look at the Wikipedia page before making an ass out of yourself with this terrible article.
“The sanction for alcohol use goes back to the Bible.” The biblical mention of alcohol makes it more moral than God causing something to grow wild in the ground? Lady, do you even HAVE a brain?
Cannabis has been used for over 4000 years, and has a wide range of therapeutic uses. Alcohol….causes psoriasis and violence. Not that I believe in the prohibition of alcohol, that obviously didn’t work, but the prohibition of cannabis has only been around for 70 odd years. Before prohibition, it was a routinely prescribed medicine. And it remains one of the most religious, social, homeopathic, conscious expanding sacraments in existence. Hopefully cannabis will be legal in my lifetime, its potential is unfathomable…
Every time I see someone weaving down the road, or has a glazed-over look in their eye, sure enough, what have they been imbibing on? ((A cell phone.))
Science, not rhetoric. There is no scientific reason for the prohibition of cannabis. None. Case closed.
The Bible also can be seen to sanction slavery, subjugation of women and dozens of other anti-liberty standpoints.
When considering which “other drugs” we should legalize, let’s remember that what we often call “drugs” are really very useful, culturally relevant plants with a beneficial medicinal and social use which goes back into pre-history, well before the Bible and even alcohol.
Coca leaf, opium poppy, cannabis flowers and peyote cactus all have a long history of beneficial social and medicinal use. The idea that we need to ban these natural plant medicines is absurd and a violation of the liberty of the individual.
No plant should ever be illegal! Anyone who believes that a human being should not be allowed to grow any plant they desire in their own garden is absolutely not a libertarian in any sense of the word.
Prohibition is enforced religious morality on steroids. It so belongs to the horse and buggy days of history. We should end this futile attempt to control victimless activity by threat of fines and jail because real resources are being squandered on imaginary crimes.
The planet has a troubling fever, a worldwide recession/depression, and the last time I checked, hundreds of millions of people were without food and potable water. Let’s redirect our energies to find 21st century solutions to real problems and leave the morality police to the church.
Dumb stoners, like dumb drunks were most likely dumb children. Alcohol is so much more dangerous and debilitating than cannabis that there is little doubt who would win the stoner vs drunkard Olympics.
Most marijuana consumers, like most alcohol users exhibit the normal range of skills, intelligence and (ahem) memory. This negative stoner stereo typing is untrue and unfair to those who make the safer choice by choosing marijuana over alcohol.
Dumb Stoners? Why not instead refer to the mental acuity of Carl Sagan, the political wit of Bill Maher, the acting of Woody Harrelson, or the athletic prowess of Michael Phelps?
P.s. Written by a stoned stoner J
I note that Dana Larsen is a respected (if occasionally controversial) Biblical scholar. I agree with all of the points he makes.
In a modern, secular, pluralistic democracy, we ought to take into account all peaceful religious practices, regardless of origin. Many of the world’s religions (including those from small-scale societies) recognize that plants are a gift from the gods, the Tao, or whatever. The use of plants for spiritual practices is *documented* over 7000 years ago, and no doubt goes back much, much further.
As a practicing Taoist, I am offended that anyone would attempt to restrict access to plants. Attempts to justify such a restriction based on an interpretation of the Bible makes equally as much sense as using the Koran to support alcohol prohibition. Sorry, those particular books carry no authority for me.
BTW those of us who propagate classical Chinese medicine are constantly encountering similar attempts to restrict other traditional, healing herbs. In many cases, the justification is “scientific” as opposed to “Christian”. The fact is that scientific method has evolved more than once in human history, and the ancient Taoists had an effective scientific method at least 5000 years ago. Without their empiricism, it would have been impossible to have developed Chinese medicine. The difference between Taoist science and Western science lies mainly in the rules of evidence, which explains why the two methods have slightly different capabilities.
Really we are talking about culture clash here. Christians tend to exclude other religions from consideration, even going so far as to classify them as occult. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but that is an ignorant attitude, and has absolutely nothing to do with libertarianism.
Just because a lot of people do something for a long time (i.e. tradition) doesn’t give it moral sanction. Morality is not culturally relative. Culture might be a reason to consider WHY people hold certain morality, but simply doing something as a result of cultural traditions does not justify a given act as moral.
Should we condone female genital mutilation in parts of Africa simply because it’s their tradition? Condoning locking people in cages because they choose to put a substance in their body that is not supported by cultural consensus is no different.
Aside from the moral argument, prohibition simply doesn’t work. The War on Drugs is only costlier, more violent, and less practical today than it was 30 years ago.
Your examples of the “disasters” that would ensue following legalization are asinine and based on the idea that every other government intervention is OK. Employers should be able to use any standards they want for screening employees. They should be free to test them for grape lollipop use if they want and bar all grape eaters from employment. It’s their business, their money, and they can use whatever arbitrary (if bad for business) criteria they want.
As for stoners eating up welfare, that’s just silly. Aside from the fact that the majority of marijuana users are perfectly productive people, welfare is nearly as an egregious offense as locking up drug users. Nobody should have money forcibly taken from them to be given to someone else.
I think what libertarians really need to do is reconsider their association with conservatives (at least the kind who hold views like the ones expressed here). There’s so much wrong with this article it’s almost mind-boggling, but I’ll just start by echoing Dan Patrick’s comment about whether tradition provides moral validation for an activity. Slavery had a rich tradition in western “civilization” for millennia. Should we bring that back? How about torture? Oh, wait, nevermind. (Also, you might want to rethink how this argument applies to marijuana, since it’s only been illegal in the U.S. since 1937.)
But of all the ridiculous ideas expressed here, perhaps the most absurd is the notion that in order to protect our freedoms the government must “enforce social order”—by preventing people from smoking a plant that makes them inclined to sit around, laugh, and eat junk food. Do I need to point out the irony here? You talk about the left’s dream of a nation of zombies, so drug-addled that they’re unable to resist indoctrination. But what’s the right’s dream? A nation of bright-eyed, enthusiastic drones eager to put the shackles on themselves?
The latter scenario sounds a bit scarier to me. Almost enough to make me want to roll up a doob and take a few tokes of the daemon weed.
The author is perplexed that libertarianism and traditionalism are not the same thing?
“In abandoning the duty to enforce social order, today’s libertarians have made a devil’s pact with the pro-drug forces of George Soros and company.”
Soros and Co. are practically salivating at the opportunity to enforce their version of the social order. I don’t see that their vision differs from the author’s in any respect that I would consider important.
Can you describe the first part further? The more things change, the more they stay the same,