fwdude - this is not directed specifically at you - you just happened to be the last person I posted to, so your handle was convenient.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but anyone in Oklahoma that wants to smoke pot is able to buy it with fairly low risk. This pot already comes in from Mexico, through Texas, and to pretty much everywhere. It comes from California to pretty much everywhere. It comes from Georgia.
It has been going on for more years than I care to count. In order to NOT ACTUALLY STOP it, we give police enormous power to detain anyone, and with virtually no actual reason. How much more liberty do you want to give up to NOT stop people who wish to make bad choices?
It’s like saying “I don’t like that people do [fill in the blank] so state troopers should be able to snap on some latex gloves and probe their body cavities to stop them.”
Except there is no “their body cavities” to authorize, it is your own, your grandmother’s, your daughter’s, your son’s.
What ever happened to “He governs best who governs least.”?
What ever happened to “He who would trade his freedom for a little more security deserves neither.”?
The CFR now has a staggering 174,545 pages of laws. Add 50 states worth, and you have more pages than you can reasonable read in a lifetime. We are reaching, or have reached the point, where it is literally impossible for any person not to break some law. The law of the land now makes every single person a criminal, usually multiple times per day.
Are we so personally weak and petulant that we have to forcefully impose our will on people we don’t know to keep them from doing something we don’t like?
So here is a jolly idea: Let’s set up checkpoints on every freaking highway that crosses a state border! Yeah! That will improve our quality of life SO much!
</Rant>
A quick, simple question: do you favor ANY laws?
If so, what is the nature of laws you do favor?
This bears repeating until people wake up:
” We are reaching, or have reached the point, where it is literally impossible for any person not to break some law. The law of the land now makes every single person a criminal, usually multiple times per day.”
In some industries, you can be fined, prevented from participation in that industry, or prohibited for engaging in certain segment of that industry simply based upon the OPINION of a federal regulator, a State Regulator, or an industry association regulator. If they “don’t like it”, you get sanctioned under the most relevant rule they can find and if you want to fight it, that will cost more money than you could earn in years of that business. You still have the record of the investigation and potential sanction out there for all the world to see while the process drags on, eating away your livelihood and reputation.
When everything becomes forbidden, nothing will be actually illegal, but we will all be eligible for prison or personal ruin at the whim of an agency employee. What a wonderful world it is...