Posted on 10/16/2012 9:45:44 AM PDT by SmithL
DENVER (AP) — It's not all hippies backing November's marijuana legalization votes in Colorado, Oregon and Washington.
Appealing to Western individualism and a mistrust of federal government, activists have lined up some prominent conservatives, from one-time presidential hopefuls Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul to Republican-turned-Libertarian presidential candidate and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.
"This is truly a nonpartisan issue," said Mark Slaugh, a volunteer for the Colorado initiative who is based in Colorado Springs, which has more Republicans than anywhere else in the state.
"States' rights! States' rights!" Slaugh cried as he handed out flyers about the state's pot measure outside a rally last month by Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan. Quite a few passing Republicans took the flyer.
"It's fiscally prudent. It would be taxed, regulated, monitored. It makes a lot of sense to Republicans," he said.
Most Republicans still oppose legalization.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
The problem is that this is not seen in the context of quid pro quo. Why should we give the left anything at all?
Now, let’s say for a moment that the left was willing to trade legalization of pot for illegalization of abortion. Now we’re onto something! I could be very happy with a deal that would allow the left to chemically lobotomize itself in exchange for keeping the unborn alive. Heck, I’d throw in legalization of heroin and cocaine as well.
Neither state has legalized - that's why OR is one of the states with a legalization initiative on the ballot.
Expanding individual liberty is giving to every adult, left, right, or center.
Don’t care if marijuana is taxed, regulated, monitored, etc., if we can just get the cops to stop kicking down doors, and shooting dogs over it...
That alone is enough to make me favor legalizing it.
Nor are we alkies, yet we support the legality of the mind-altering drug alcohol.
Avoid buying anything that you don’t really need. Become more self-sufficient each month
Grow your own!
Legalization is a smaller gov't, i.e. conservative issue.
Following Obama’s stunning defeat in November, I would hope that the Romney administration not spend 2 seconds considering this issue and move on to something much more relevant. The economy, our security, undoing the chaos of the marxist Obama’s policies, etc.
By that logic, we should ban every taxable commodity.
Camels made with hashish, no filter. Great. More cancer causing natural ingredients in the crop then that found in natural Nicotiniana (or proprietary additives and flavors).
So government should ban that which is unhealthy? Tobacco? Bacon double cheeseburgers? Staying up late?
Lord, save us from the pestilence of Progressives and Statists.
Illegality of marijuana is the quintessential statist policy.
Here in Arizona, they've already figured out ways around the above.
Around what, exactly? And what are those ways?
It just ain't happening. If they want it legalized, just legalize it.
You think if it's regulated and monitored, it's not legal? The mind-altering drug alcohol is regulated and monitored - is it not legal?
Libertarians are not the same as conservatives.
Libertarians and conservatives share certain interests, such as smaller government, balanced budgets, lower taxes, freedom from oppressive government regulation, and freedom to raise children without government interference.
If libertarians and conservatives could only work together, then they would have taken back control of the government long since. But the press and the libs work hard to divide them, and they are only too willing to be divided.
I said this a thousand times over the decades, and it bears repeating.
Real libertarians have to understand that freedom entails responsibility, and that if you don’t want to be controlled by the police then you need to have self-control. You have to take responsibility for basic respect of your neighbors. You have to recognize that a free society is built on marriage, family, and neighbors.
We saw that when the libertarians refused to understand Rick Santorum, who ran ahead of Gingrich almost the entire time, and second to Romney because of the divided vote among Romney’s more conservative opponents.
Rick Santorum did NOT say that he would MAKE people behave like good Christians. He said that he would set the example and ENCOURAGE people to behave like good Christians—or Jews, or agnostics with principles. But the press pretended that he wanted to be a moral dictator, and too many people believed him.
So, once again the libertarians and conservatives were split by the opposition and the GOPe, and we got Romney as our reward.
The solution for drugs is neither our current one—a government that goes after the little guys and takes a rakeoff from the cartels—nor one in which everyone from the age of six on up takes pot and bathsalts and does whatever he likes. What we need is honest law enforcement, as far as that can be achieved in an imperfect world.
Try proving it's curable - post something other than a personal insult.
I don’t know about the ‘monitored’ but Washington State will definitely get the “taxed and regulated” part down. The state revenue department is stull chasing old hippies from the 60s around the hills for unpaid sales tax collections.
How are libertarians opposed to marriage, family, and neighbors?
The solution for drugs is neither our current one—a government that goes after the little guys and takes a rakeoff from the cartels—
The history of the War On Drugs is generously peppered with arrests of major drug lords ... not one of which made the slightest difference in the drug market.
nor one in which everyone from the age of six on up takes pot
I don't know anyone who supports that, nor is it in any of the ballot initiatives under discussion.
and bathsalts
Bath salts and other designer drugs are a product of the War On Drugs - they are made that much more desirable by the fact that they are legal (and however many chemicals you ban, someone can cook up something mind-altering that's not on the banned list) while their better understood and relatively safer competitors are illegal.
and does whatever he likes. What we need is honest law enforcement, as far as that can be achieved in an imperfect world.
That's no answer at all. In this imperfect world, law enforcement is subject to temptation - and the War On Drugs, by hyperinflating drug profits and channeling them into criminal hands, ensures that there is means, motive, and willingness to tempt them.
Have you ever lived in CA or OR?
I lived in CA for 15 years and OR for 7.
“Medical MJ” has turned it defacto legal with people doing drugs in public.
I was eating in Santa Cruz resturant while people were passing out pro-drugs propaganda to customers.
“Expanding individual liberty is giving to every adult, left, right, or center.”
I don’t view drug legalization as an individual liberty issue.
Let’s define “liberty.” Here’s one textbook definition from dictionary.com: “freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.”
OK, so the freedom from control intereference, etc. we’re talking about here is I suppose my freedom. So how is MY freedom positively affected by initiating legislation that will ultimately restrict it by increasing my taxes and my costs? You see when you buy into the legalization argument, you pick up the negative side of the argument as well. I.e. increased levels of intoxication and addiction due to increased ability to access the drug in question.
By legalizing marijuana or any other illicit drug, you increase the addiction rate as well as the use. While it’s been argued that the societal costs of legalization are less than those of prohibition, it’s as much of a cost shifting as anything. And it’s a cost shifting that proponents of legalization are quick to ignore. Instead of my paying increased taxes to lock dealers up, I’ll instead get to pay increased taxes for treatment of addicts as well as the increased costs of testing to ensure that people in critical positions (e.g. locomotive engineers, pilots, cops, other drivers) are not doped to the gills. Not to mention the very direct, yet unquantifiable costs that I will pay if one of my family members gets hurt or killed because some knucklehead wants to toke up.
And this increase in cost will benefit me exactly how? So I can legally take a drug I don’t really care to take?
No, when you talk about “individual liberty” you’re not talking about MY individual liberty, you’re talking about the individual liberty of drug addicts.
Now, I’m willing to grant that even the individual liberty of drug addicts is worth something. But don’t come to me saying that I benefit from this, because I don’t. The only way I benefit is if I get something out of the deal.
Come to me with a deal that says: “we’ll eliminate the personal income tax in exchange for legalization of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin” and you might be surprised how willing I’d be to consider it. But come to me and say: “we want to increase your taxes and increase the danger to you by letting a bunch of addicts get their fix legally” and see how quickly I reject that as the lousy deal that it is.
We ought to do the right thing, whether it makes the left happy, or apopleptic.
I think marijuana use would increase some, if it were legalized, and that would be a bad thing. The public policy question is "does preventing that increase in marijuana use justify the (marijuana component of) war on drugs?
I'm not prepared, today, to answer that question "No", but I think that the question should be answered at the state level.
Wasn't ending Prohibition of the mind-altering drug alcohol a conservative move? Then why not do the same with marijuana?
Yes, the Tea Party seeks new ways of thinking about the old issues. The Tea Party does not think like the old guard establishment authoritarian Repubs. No way.
The Nanny Stater “conservatives” that want to continue the archaic 1930s policy should stand right with Bloomberg and the libs that want to ban soft drinks, smoking in your own residence, beef, fatty desserts, cars we like, on and on. So soft drinks are bad, but there’s freedom of choice, and education. So drugs are bad, but there is freedom of choice, and education. Personal responsibility, not govt, and fed control. At least leave it to the states to decide.
This is a lost unwinnable war. And in Portugal the evidence that legalization -reduced-, yes, REDUCED, addiction. It’s a nonsensical and stupid war unless your goal is to perpetuate the police state and swarming SWAT teams across this land.
"De facto legal" is not legal. But I'll bite - what has "de facto legalization" "done to CA and OR"?
I was eating in Santa Cruz resturant while people were passing out pro-drugs propaganda to customers.
It's called the First Amendment - if you don't like it, you're free to leave any time.
“We ought to do the right thing, whether it makes the left happy, or apopleptic.”
Absolutely! But the “right” thing to do is not to jack up everyone’s taxes so that a relatively small portion of the population can have a legalized fix.
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