One of those cultures looks and lives like spaced out stoners, the other looks like and lives like productive straights.
Posted on 03/07/2012 12:16:09 PM PST by AnTiw1
It started last summer, when it seemed that Mexican President Felipe Calderón had understandably reached the end of his rope. After 52 innocent people were massacred in August by drug gangsters who set fire to a Monterrey casino – 52 added to the almost 50,000 drug-related murders in Mexico since 2006 – an angry Calderón said that if Americans were so “determined and resigned to consume drugs, then they should seek market alternatives in order to cancel the stratospheric profits” fueling the ghastly narco-bloodshed. Everyone agreed that by “market alternatives,” Calderón meant some sort of drug legalization.
(Excerpt) Read more at globalspin.blogs.time.com ...
Today, March 6, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will visit with Pérez and other Central American leaders – and, fittingly, they’ll meet in Honduras, now home to the world’s highest homicide rate: 86 murders per 100,000 residents last year, 17 times that of the U.S. and five times more than even Mexico’s. There are a number of reasons for this Mesoamerican nightmare, including Central America’s hopelessly corrupt and medieval police and judicial systems, which the region’s oligarchies (who are content to simply line their mansions with razor wire and security guards) refuse to modernize. But as far as presidents like Pérez are concerned, the root cause is the U.S.’s insatiable demand for pot, coke, meth and heroin – we spend more on illegal drugs in America than we do on higher education – and increasingly they’re coming to the conclusion that a good way to keep los narcos from earning their “stratospheric profits,” which they use to buy the guns that wreak the mayhem, is to legalize some of the drugs.
The U.S. has responded by reiterating its “opposition to decriminalization or legalization of illicit drugs,” as one White House official said last week. But there is a broadening global consensus that the 40-year-old “war on drugs” has failed. So Biden – who in Mexico on Monday said “there is no possibility” the U.S. will back legalization but did add “it’s worth discussing” – would do well to listen to Pérez and company today in Tegucigalpa and not be a gringo scold when they bring up the legalization issue. Because to a certain if not large extent they’re right: as countless drug-war observers like myself have argued in recent years, it makes sense to legalize at least more benign narcotics like marijuana, a drug that accounts for as much as half of the $30 billion the Mexican narco-cartels rake in each year.
What’s more, marijuana legalization is suddenly gaining acceptance in the U.S. Whereas just five years ago surveys showed Americans opposed it by an almost 2-to-1 margin, a recent Gallup poll showed 50% of them in favor of it and only 46% against it. Colorado and Washington will have the issue on their ballots in the fall, and other states may as well. That’s largely because fewer and fewer of us buy the U.S. drug-war leadership’s argument that pot is somehow as personally addictive and socially destructive as harder drugs like cocaine – or that it’s inevitably a “gateway” to those more dangerous narcotics. Meanwhile, more and more of us are tired of seeing U.S. law enforcement squander as much as $8 billion a year chasing down a drug widely considered no more harmful than alcohol if consumed in moderation.
And Latin American leaders like Calderón, Santos and Pérez know that, which is why their own ears are increasingly deaf now to Washington’s worn out insistence on letting drug cartels instead of tax collectors profit from marijuana sales. Ditto for the former Latin American heads of state who lead the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which calls for legalization. For now, Latin American presidents, including El Salvador’s Mauricio Funes and Costa Rica’s Laura Chinchilla, are only calling for the issue to be discussed – but they want both the U.S. and the U.N. to take that conversation more seriously.
And, the Latin Americans are right on this.
Yes, the Latin Americans are correct about this. However, they’re incorrect about the problems in their own culture and what legalization will do for them. Legalizing weed will create a boom economy here in the United States, since it is easy to grow, the expertise already exists, and you don’t need much capital to produce a good product for those who want it. Think about microbreweries; I’d imagine that each community will have its own local brands. In other words, the export business from Mexico will dry up and die, leaving that country mired in more poverty and corruption.
Of course, the federal government could also get involved and create bureaucratic logjams that might make Mexican weed profitable. In fact, I’m betting our government will do something stupid to mess with the free market, just based on past experience.
Typical liberal crapola. We should legalize drugs so we can end up a third world hell-hole like Mexico?
Marijuana is legal down in old Meh-hee-co. How’s that working out for them, hmmmm?
I get it. I do. Mexico wants to export its murdering drug cartels to the US so they can become legitimate legal businessmen.
But no one but an idiot liberal thinks that is a good idea.
Ive never understood why alcohol is legal and marijuana is not. Now I personally dont drink or smoke now (while not on holiday), but that is a choice which isnt decided on whether something is legal or not. Something like 50% of all arrests are for posession of marijuana, and having smoked my fair share of joints and consuming my share of alcohol while doing my masters in chemical engineering; my opinion that alcohol is way more harmful than marijuana, as marijuana has never caused me to suddenly wake up in the morning and wonder what happened the previous night. If someone wants to use a drug, they use it, the legality of it doesnt change that. That being said, there are a class of drugs such as heroin and crystal meth among others that can be physically debilitating.
I remember reading something about Portugal legalising all drugs, I wonder what the outcomes werein regards to drug use and crime.
Actually, just googled it now and came up with
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html
According to that, it seems to have worked out for them.
Not going to happen, legalization that is.
In fact when it is the turn of conservatives we are going to up the penalties, sentences and punishments of the drug supporters. We are going to repeal medical marijuana and lock up repeat offenders for life.
The enforcement actions against drug dealers and their useful idiots has hardly been serious but it will become very serious once we are in power.
You can fart out of your mouth all you want about the constitution this and the constitution that but we will have the last say when you are locked up behind bars.
We have not yet begun to fight. Not from the conservative grass roots where we put faith in God and value in family. If your drugs ever get within eyeview of our children, you can be assured you will wish you would rather be in Hell as an alternative to where we are going to put you.
You want the nanny state to wipe your ass aswell?
I think the issue is a matter of demographics and the state of the various cultures that make up a country.
American illegal drug users are too stupid, lazy and cowardly to change their own reality, so they use illegal drugs to escape their reality for a few minutes. Let’s hear it for the stupid, lazy chickens! Come on everyone! Hoooray chickens! Go chickens! Give them cheaper drugs! We’re proud of our chickens! There are Americans who could be profiting off your misery instead of Mexicans! Come on pushers! Go you libertarians who want large portions of our population screwed up so your kids can make more money! A big hand for the Democrats who encourage illegal drug use so they can manipulate voters! Hooray for the whole greedy, chickenshit lot of you!
In the year 2000, drug abuse cost American society an estimated $160 billion. More important were the concrete losses that are imperfectly symbolized by those billions of dollars—the destruction of lives, the damage of addiction, fatalities from car accidents, illness, and lost opportunities and dreams.
Legalization would result in skyrocketing costs that would be paid by American taxpayers and consumers. Legalization would significantly increase drug use and addiction—and all the social costs that go with it. With the removal of the social and legal sanctions against drugs, many experts estimate the user population would at least double. For example, a 1994 article in the New England Journal of Medicine stated that it was probable, that if cocaine were legalized, the number of cocaine addicts in America would increase from 2 million to at least 20 million.
http://www.justice.gov/dea/demand/speakout/05so.htm
This thread is about legalizing marijuana — one, very specific drug. It's quite disingenuous to shift to argument to a discussion of the evils of drugs in general.
You'll get no argument from me about the evils of cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, methamethemines, and Ecstasy. You should not attempt to conflate these drugs with marijuana. Conservatives should be capable of discriminating between different classes of anything, based on the harm they do.
As for marijuana -- there's a wide spectrum of evidence and opinion regarding the harm it does. Some think it's beneficial -- others think it's harmful. Most think it's less harmful than tobacco or alcohol. There should be no argument that the harm from the WOD outweighs the harm from marijuana. The "War" on drugs started out as more of a metaphor than reality -- we now have a full-scale shooting war. Why? Why not simply regulate marijuana like alcohol, and focus resources on fighting drugs we know are deadly evil?
If it’s legal here the drug cartels won’t be able to compete with Winston Salem and RJ Reynolds for price or quality control. Unless we totally screw it up with over taxation. That’s why bootlegging became mostly a hobby once prohibition ended. People who want a product that’s illegal are willing to buy from the black market, but once it become legal and the product is sold in Circle-K the black market shrinks very dramatically. Mexico was a mess before they legalized pot, and since the primary market for their pot sellers is us not them that legalization didn’t really do much.
Ahhh, the nanny state argument. Lame as ever.
What’s next? As if I didn’t know.
Next you’ll try and convince us that the WOD is as wrong as Prohibition.
After all, there is no difference between alcohol and crack or meth, huh?
(Sheesh!)
Anybody that thinks talking about the Constitution is farting isn’t a conservative. If actual conservatives actually took over they’d point out that the drug war is not only a massive fiscal failure but a complete and total raping of the Constitution and end it in a cold second.
If it’s legal here the drug cartels won’t be able to compete with Winston Salem and RJ Reynolds for price or quality control..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Quite the opposite is true. It’s the “kids: at Winston Salem and RJ Reynolds who won’t be able to compete with the “grown-ups” from the Mexican cartels.
The Mexican cartels run a trillion dollar industry. They run Mexico for that matter. Do you think they will just roll over and let go of their cash cow if America legalized dope?
The only way a complete surrender in the WOD would work would be to allow the Cartels to become successful legitimate US corporations.
Is that what you want?
Wrong as usual - personal possession of small amounts is legal.
How’s that working out for them, hmmmm?
Well, before decriminalization they were a paradise, so ...
there's a big difference...alcohol and tobacco use are the cause of 93% of all drug-related deaths...over a half million Americans a year
marijuana consumption has killed zero people in US history
Because legalizing drugs won't stop at marijuana. Anyone who thinks it will is the world's largest idiot.
“Marijuana is legal down in old Meh-hee-co. How’s that working out for them, hmmmm?”
Your assumption is that the culture in Mexico, independent of the legalization of MJ, has nothing to do with Mexico’s problems and that legalization of MJ in Mexico has everything to do with Mexico’s problems.
Yet three factors alone in Mexican culture - education, economics and corruption have more to do with Mexico’s problems than anything else and would still be driving Mexico’s problems no matter whether MJ was illegal or not.
RJR is bigger than all the drug cartels in Mexico, already has distribution set to hit every single convenience store in this country, and understands how to make quality control work for plant products so every pack tastes the same with the same effect. The cartels will have no choice but to roll over, because 10 minutes after pot gets legalized RJR will have pot cigarettes in every single business in America that already sell Camels, and they’ll be sitting along side Phillip Morris’ Potboro, and they’ll all be cheaper and easier to buy than anything the cartels can put up.
It’ll be the same as when Prohibition ended. Budweiser and Jack Daniel took over and the bootleggers had to find a new market, which we gifted them with when we started the WOD. Because the black market always has a larger markup per distribution step than a white market, and more distribution steps, and less ready access to public space black markets can’t compete with white markets. The only way the cartels “win” a legalized drug fight is if we screw up the tax situation to the point where the white market isn’t cheaper than the black market, which is a definite threat.
The WOD was a mistake. It was a stupid mistake that costs us trillions a year and has been used to completely shred the Constitution. We either “surrender” the WOD or surrender the country. The WOD doesn’t stop anybody from doing drugs, all it does is send the money to scum bag criminals, and give the cops the right to no knock raid my 80 year old mother-in-law because a “reliable tip” said somebody was dealing drugs out of her home with a warrant that incorrectly describes the home but she couldn’t point that out because they refused to let her see it until they were done with her search (actually happened, last week, less than a month after her husband died). That’s your WOD, no knock raids on 80 year old widows of war heroes.
And below is the entirety of the "evidence" (I use the term loosely) for that claim. Drug Warriors are aghast when liberty-lovers compare Prohibition to the war on drugs, falsely saying this "equates" alcohol with other drugs - but when it suits their purposes, they're eager to genuinely do such equating.
"There are over 50 million nicotine addicts, 18 million alcoholics or problem drinkers, and fewer than 2 million cocaine addicts in the United States. If cocaine were legally available, it is projected that the number of users would rival that of the other two substances."
For an example, see post #14.
After all, there is no difference between alcohol and crack or meth, huh?
The WOD, like Prohibition, is failing to demonstrably reduce drug use - and the WOD, like Prohibition, is enriching criminals, with all the negative consequences that entails.
Pick your poison.
what a false straw man that is
we're taking away their income, so we have no choice but to make MS13 a US corporation, that's your story
my story is taking weed away from them takes away half their income, takes weed offenders off the LEO watch and gives us more personnel and funds to secure our borders
difference being, my story actually makes sense
At one time Americans understood the limitations imposed upon the federal government. The ratification of the 18th Amendment shows that the people understood that the federal government had no authority whatsoever to prohibit alcohol without going through the lengthy process of actually amending the Constitution.
Now, the “socons” are fine ignoring the Constitution and expanding the role of the federal government beyond its limits when it suits their purpose. Who else does this? Democrats. No difference between them, really. They just want to ignore the Constitution for different reasons, each side advancing their own moral/immoral agenda, the law be damned.
You want to give the federal government the power to ban a funny looking weed? Amend the Constitution so that We the People grant that power to the federal government. Eventually you will learn that even a Constituitonal Amendment will not change the habits and behaviors of people — how is that Prohibition thing working out these days?
All gone now. Now we erect boogiemen and beg the government to fix it. Now the 4th Amendment is completely meaningless, we have no knock raids where the resident isn’t allowed to see the warrant and any allergy sufferer gives evidence against themselves every time they buy perfectly legal medicine. And meanwhile drug use remains the same before the WOD started.
That's what the Mafia did when Prohibition ended:
"The lush traffic in alcohol beverages during the violent years of 1920 to 1933 had laid the base of organization for a number of criminal gangs. The termination of the ban on liquor deprived these gangs of their most lucrative source of money and they were obliged to turn to some other avenue of activity." - Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce
Well said, I’m with you on this one. So many people (here on FR) criticize the left for wanting to regulate and control many aspects of our lives yet turn around and do the same thing. Marijuana can be bad and it can also have some positives. When taken/used in moderation the effects are pleasant just as a bottle or two of Lienenkugal beer seem to hit the spot. It’s all about responsibility. I drink too much I’m a menace to society, same with pot (although, not as bad (unless you consider cleaning the fridge out, Ill behavior)).
If you use your morality to judge others, that’s fine. If you use your morality to dictate what others can and can’t do, does society benefit? There are a lot of benefits that society gains from Christian values but where do you draw the line? Some so called Christians I’ve observed are a little wacky (I’m sure you’ve seen them on the corner holding signs up). Would you really like some of the more intense church’s dictating how we live our lives?
I have many friends, that I grew up with, that smoke pot and maintain their lives just fine. Most of them started in high school. We all got a little crazy with it (what high school kid doesn’t get a little frisky) but learned how to maintain. Same as with alcohol, a few nights passed out in the forest with pine needles in every crack teaches us about over indulgence.
As with alcohol, the people that have real problems are the ones that are restricted from using it, then all of a sudden are told go for it. Kids turn 21 and binge drink themselves into oblivion. Other kids move out of their parents’ house into a place with a few friends and go a little crazy.
I, for one would like pot to become legal and drugs should be seen as more of a medical/mental problem than a criminal issue. Yes, they all have the potential to ruin lives but it is the individual’s responsibility to keep their shit together, not yours.
If you were literate you would have realised that I mentioned harder drugs that should obviously be illegal due to their harmful nature.
But yes, the war on marijuana which causes rougly 700,000 arrests for posession and contributes to 50% of all arrests, clearly is like the prohibition.
Sheesh!
The Arabs have been a Cannabis based people for thousands of years, their culture looks different from Western culture, which has been alcohol based for thousands of years.
You seem to go into the anti-conservative agenda of libertarian ism, does that apply to homosexual marriage and polygamy as well?
Evidence?
their culture looks different from Western culture, which has been alcohol based for thousands of years.
That difference in drug basis (if it exist - for which no evidence has been offered) is far from the only difference, so it doesn't logically follow that any society in which cannabis is permitted will become like Arab society.
Thanks for your thoughts, Captain! It's good to be reminded how reality contradicts the Chicken Little fantasies of the Drug Warriors.
You never noticed how Arabs and others in that part of the world or any other place where Cannabis becomes accepted as ‘normal’ resemble ‘pot-heads’, and the Western world looks like clean, productive ‘straights’ ?
“The first known reference to marijuana in India is to be found in the Atharva Veda, which may date as far back as the second millennium B.C. 2 Another quite early reference appears on certain cuneiform tablets unearthed in the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, an Assyrian king. Ashurbanipal lived about 650 B.C.; but the cuneiform descriptions of marijuana in his library “are generally regarded as obvious copies of much older texts,” 3 says Dr. Robert P. Walton, an American physician and authority on marijuana who assembled much of the historical data here reviewed. This evidence “serves to project the origin of hashish back to the earliest beginnings of history.” References to marijuana can also be found, Dr. Walton adds, in the Rh-Ya [sic], a Chinese compendium dating from the period 1200-500 B.C.; in the Susruta, an Indian treatise originating before 400 A.D.; and in the Persian Zend-Avesta, originating several centuries before Christ. 4
The ancient Greeks used alcohol rather than marijuana as an intoxicant; but they traded with marijuana-eating and marijuana-inhaling peoples. Hence some of the references to drugs in Homer may be to marijuana, including Homer’s reference to the drug which Helen brought to Troy from Egyptian Thebes. 5 Certainly Herodotus was referring to marijuana when he wrote in the fifth century B.C. that the Scythians cultivated a plant that was much like flax but grew thicker and taller; this hemp they deposited upon red-hot stones in a closed room–– producing a vapor, Herodotus noted, “that no Grecian vapor-bath can surpass. The Scythians, transported with the vapor, shout aloud.” 6
Herodotus also described people living on islands in the Araxes River, who “meet together in companies,” throw marijuana on a fire, then “sit around in a circle; and by inhaling the fruit that has been thrown on, they become intoxicated by the odor, just as the Greeks do by wine; and the more fruit is thrown on, the more intoxicated they become, until they rise up and dance and betake themselves to singing.”
Like the ancient Greeks, the Old Testament Israelites were surrounded by marijuana-using peoples. A British physician, Dr. C. Creighton, concluded in 1903 that several references to marijuana can be found in the Old Testament. 9 Examples are the “honeycomb” referred to in the Song of Solomon, 5:1, and the “honeywood” in I Samuel 14: 25-45. (Others have suggested that the “calamus” in the Song of Solomon was in fact cannabis.) 10
The date on which marijuana was introduced into western Europe is not known; but it must have been very early. An urn containing marijuana leaves and seeds, unearthed near Berlin, Germany, is believed to date from 500 B.C. 11
Cloth made from hemp (cannabis), we are told, “became common in central and southern Europe in the thirteenth century” and remained popular through the succeeding generations; fine Italian linen, for example, was made from hemp as well as flax” and in many cases the two fibers are mixed in the same material.” 12 Nor were Europeans ignorant of the intoxicating properties of the plant; François Rabelais (1490-1553) gave a full account of what he called “the herb Pantagruelion.” 13
The use of marijuana as an intoxicant also spread quite early to Africa. In South Africa, Dr. Frances Ames of the University of Cape Town reports, marijuana “was in use for many years before Europeans settled in the country and was smoked by all the non-European races, i.e. Bushmen, Hottentots and Africans. It was probably brought to the Mozambique coast from India by Arab traders and the habit, once established, spread inland....”
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cu53.html
Your evidence shows only that cannabis was sometimes used, not that it was the basis of the culture or accepted as ‘normal.’
A British physician, Dr. C. Creighton, concluded in 1903 that several references to marijuana can be found in the Old Testament. 9 Examples are the “honeycomb” referred to in the Song of Solomon, 5:1, and the “honeywood” in I Samuel 14: 25-45. (Others have suggested that the “calamus” in the Song of Solomon was in fact cannabis.) 10
So according to you cannabis is biblical. Interesting.
The date on which marijuana was introduced into western Europe is not known; but it must have been very early. An urn containing marijuana leaves and seeds, unearthed near Berlin, Germany, is believed to date from 500 B.C. 11
Cloth made from hemp (cannabis), we are told, “became common in central and southern Europe in the thirteenth century” and remained popular through the succeeding generations; fine Italian linen, for example, was made from hemp as well as flax” and in many cases the two fibers are mixed in the same material.” 12 Nor were Europeans ignorant of the intoxicating properties of the plant; François Rabelais (1490-1553) gave a full account of what he called “the herb Pantagruelion.” 13
So Europe is not much different than the Arab world when it comes to cannabis.
Screw Latin America. He needs to listen to Clarence Thomas.
Cannabis never became an intoxicant in the alcohol based of Western Civilization, but it has been the intoxicant of choice in the Middle East and parts of Asia for thousands of years, it predates Islam. Europe was not drenched in Cannabis use and then somehow erased that memory and history.
The Middle East has always been know to be Cannabis based, even the word assassin comes from Hashish.
“The three religions of the Book, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are not well known for having drug cultures associated with them, so it comes as something as a surprise to learn that Islam, perhaps the most puritanical of the three, has a strong undercurrent of marijuana use throughout its long history.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ID11Ak03.html
Your evidence shows only that cannabis was sometimes used, not that it was the intoxicant of choice. \
Islam, perhaps the most puritanical of the three, has a strong undercurrent of marijuana use throughout its long history.
Look up the word "undercurrent." This statement does not support your "intoxicant of choice" claim.
One of those cultures looks and lives like spaced out stoners, the other looks like and lives like productive straights.
And for most of those centuries when it was busy not catching on, it was legal - so where's the worry in relegalizing it?
One of those cultures looks and lives like spaced out stoners
How so?
Not re-legalise.
Like all laws, the law doesn’t get written until the problem arises.
Not re-legalise.
Like all laws, the law doesn’t get written until the government claims that a problem arises.
There, now that's correct.
If you think America has always been a dictatorship, or whatever you think led to laws, such as the anti-polygamy laws in the distant past.
Polygamy is a better example, I don’t think that we have made “global warming” illegal, yet.
Probably true in most cases - but how does your claim "Not re-legalise" follow from that? Any action is legal before a law against it is passed.
75 years or so a law was passed because a problem was growing among American youth, it was reaching into the mainstream youth and it finally had to be addressed, I don't know why you phrased it that way, as though it had merely been suddenly "observed".
I don't know that homosexual marriage was legal before it is made illegal.
Probably true in most cases - but how does your claim "Not re-legalise" follow from that?
75 years or so a law was passed because a problem was growing among American youth, it was reaching into the mainstream youth and it finally had to be addressed,
If you're referring to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, it's very much open to debate that there was in fact a "problem" rather than simply Reefer Madness hysteria. We can agree that marijuana was in fact being used and was known to be in use.
You still haven't answered the most important question: How does your claim "Not re-legalise" follow from that?
I don't know why you phrased it that way, as though it had merely been suddenly "observed".
I meant simply that for activity X to be known to be a problem, it must first be known to be taking place.
Any action is legal before a law against it is passed.
I don't know that homosexual marriage was legal before it is made illegal.
Bad example - civil marriage is an act of government, and as such no kind of civil marriage (homosexual, polygamous, whatever) is legal unless and until government says so. The use of marijuana, which was/is an act of individuals rather than government, certainly was legal until government said otherwise.
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