Posted on 04/23/2014 10:42:00 AM PDT by usalady
While Americans of all ages in Colorado happily celebrate the legalization of marijuana in various forms on April 20, 2014 as a smoking holiday the mental health and safety risks are being ignored by the media.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Because its Conservative Dogma that the government must protect you from yourself. Apparently.
I agree. I won’t say that allowing the widespread use of another intoxicant is beneficial for the country and it’s considered a leftist position to be in favor of legalized pot. However, the idea that possession of a plant can land you in prison smacks of the nanny state that so many on this site are against.
The most dangerous side effect of marijuana use is prison rape.
Hardly need a study. A gander at the footage from that 420 festival is all that’s needed... degenerate human trash.
Whatever its negatives may be, marijuana is demonstrably magnitudes less dangerous and damaging to society than, say, alcohol. Alcohol (the worst drug on the face of the earth) causes more violent crime, domestic abuse, health problems, vehicular homicides, etc., etc., than all illegal drugs combined.
Thus, the Prohibitionist mind, to be consistent, would have to advocate that alcohol be banned as well. Anything less is abject hypocrisy.
And yet society tolerates alcohol. Why? Because we are supposed to be a Free People, that's why, and we accept such evils rather than embrace overtly unjust alternatives.
As we all know, alcohol Prohibition was tried (thanks primarily to women getting the vote, IMHO) and it failed dismally for a myriad of logical reasons. And for the same reasons, the War on Drugs is an utter failure.
No amount of hand-wringing will ever change the fact that Prohibition is Tyrannical, having been used to justify blatant violations of Fourth Amendment rights, among others. And it necessarily requires Big Government in order to succeed in its deterrent goals. Practically speaking, contraband law cannot be enforced without trampling Natural Rights.
Of course drug use causes problems in society! That is a logical corollary of the big, scary, challenging concept known as Freedom. Education, not incarceration, is the only just way to mitigate such ills.
In America, authoritarian solutions to society's problems are not legitimate. When someone violates another's rights via the use of force or fraud, or demonstrates palpable negligence, then and only then has a crime been committed, and then and only then should such a person be subject to imprisonment.
Contraband law invariably leads to no-knock warrants, asset forfeiture, unjust imprisonment, black markets, involvement of organized crime, expansive and intrusive government, and general disdain for the rule of law. That's why almost everybody ended up being a criminal during alcohol Prohibition. Sound familiar?
Some among us apparently think that possessing the wrong plant, medicine, or recreational chemical should make criminals out of otherwise peaceable American citizens. This is nanny-state mentality at it worst, and such un-American attitudes are obviously not limited to Michael Bloomberg and his ilk.
Sometimes it seems to me like the classical Left and Right simply disagree over whose version of Tyranny should be imposed!
No thanks! I'll take Freedom instead, warts and all...
Very well said.
On the other hand, tens of millions of Americans have used marijuana over the years with no or little health effects. But the reefer madness crowd keeps trying, bless their hearts.
In my experience, the majority of people on FR who say they are against Big Government are really not. They just want the Govt controlling different things than the left.
They need to do studies with twin animals to truly prove it- one with pot and one without. They haven't released any results of even a SINGLE such test because it probably shows pot didn't cause anything at any dose.
People get killed in SWAT raids and going to jail too. At rates higher than from consuming pot. If you think prohibition results in an overall reduction of harm, you are mistaken, even granting that that woman would be alive today if the man hadn’t consumed pot. There was a first automobile fatality, after automobiles were invented, absolutely unquestionably due to the vehicle. Nevertheless, the correct response wasn’t to ban automobiles.
What an awesomely informative sentence you posted.
Too bad the rest is hidden at that scumbag Examiner blog.
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