Posted on 01/23/2015 7:13:21 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Colorado’s decision to legalize marijuana was a bad idea, the state’s governor said Friday.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat who opposed the 2012 decision by voters to make pot legal, said the state still doesn’t fully know what the unintended consequences of the move will be.
If I could've waved a wand the day after the election, I would've reversed the election and said, 'This was a bad idea,’” Hickenlooper said Friday on CNBC's “Squawk Box.”
“You don't want to be the first person to do something like this,” he said.
He said that he tells other governors to “wait a couple of years” before legalizing marijuana as Colorado continues to navigate an unknown, non-existing federal regulatory landscape for the industry.
“There's a whole regulatory environment... that really regulates alcohol,” he said. “We're starting from scratch and we don't have a federal partner because [marijuana] is still illegal federally.”
In February 2014, the Obama administration released guidelines for the marijuana industry indicating the federal officials would not target financial institutions or businesses engaging in selling pot as long as those businesses were compliant with state laws.
Despite the guidelines, banks are reluctant to finance marijuana businesses in states where it is legal because federal law still lists marijuana as an illegal drug. Congress would need to pass a law removing that language.
Marijuana is legal in four states: Colorado, Oregon, Alaska and Washington. Congress has blocked the District of Columbia from legalizing pot after voters in November cast ballots that they wanted to make the drug legal.
The study only proves the known correlation that mentally ill are more likely to abuse substances.
The same exact correlation can be seen for tobacco use and mental illness. It only proves the mentally ill are more likely to use drugs and not care about their health. It does not prove the substance causes it.
There has not been a SINGLE before-after study or a SINGLE twin study showing ANY direct permanent changes from using pot in an individual. Neither in humans or animals.
Yet we allow people to consume alcohol without limit which is 100% guaranteed to rot EVERY cell in the body in EVERY individual
Beat Poet...pedophile...pot head Allen Ginsberg said it best..
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”
Bunk, it is a brain altering drug with negative effects for regular users.
I still remember my mom working prison ministry and finding all the violent offenders were pretty much always major pot users.
It is a drug. Best used for the real patient dying from a cancer or other illness of that magnitude. The rest of those trying to jump the train to use pot are simple drug addicts.
I brought my kids to CO from NM - where drugs (marijuana) are illegal, to live a safer life. They are now grown.
Just keep grasping at straws. True sign of someone trying to validate their excesses
Believe me. I lived through the 60s ...what I can remember of it. You’re better off with a few beers than that crap.
So if you still had youngins’ do you think that would affect you opinion on LEGAL pot? Do you think that subverts moral authority of parents? I don’t know, I am just asking a question.
I don’t disagree that people using drugs are destroying themselves. But the people using drugs now that it is legal were abusing their bodies before it became legal.
People perceive that because pot is legal in CO that CO residents are forced to partake, that they are all getting high when they weren’t when it was illegal.
Guess what - nothing changed. Those who wanted to and were getting high before are getting high now. Those who didn’t partake are still not partaking.
The age of my children does not affect my opinion on this. Again, we were living in NM, where there are all kinds of laws about illegal drugs, drinking and driving under the influence of alcohol. People die on NM roads with some frequency (in fact, one of the most dangerous states) in accidents involving drunk drivers. All of the laws in the world making drunk driving illegal, with stiff penalties, has not stopped it from happening.
And here is reality, all of the laws in the world making the possession and use of marijuana illegal are not slowing the access to it or the use of it.
Not sure what beast you mean, but I’d agree that it has stretched the Federal constitution beyond any likely original intent to construe it as bestowing the power to ban something within a state (cf the infamous Wickard) based upon secondary effects. This restriction was a feature, not a bug. If a state wanted to do something foolish, within generous limits it could. Others could learn from its example.
Shameless hypocrisy was ever a leftist trait.
Sounds like a defense of principle to me. Anyhow, now that there are places like Colorado, longitudinal studies should be easy. And I’d bet the price of a doughnut factory that yes, they will show pot wreaking measurable harm if consumed in sufficient quantity. But that points up the difficulty of measuring something that is in the shadows. It is hard to do. Far easier to measure something that is in the sunlight.
Ok I will make it easy. I am asking your opinion:
Note he’s not saying it’s a bad idea because of people getting stoned. He’s saying it’s a bad idea because leading the charge at odds with the fed is logistically difficult.
The campaign to make cannabis illegal on a federal level was fraudulent and indefensible. Now that it has been, however, to make it legal again will not come without a social cost. That cost must be measured against the real costs of the War On Drugs, which are considerable and quantifiable; if we can also observe and quantify social costs to re-legalizing it, then at least we can make an informed choice between the two policies. In that sense, legalizing it in Colorado wasn't necessarily a mistake, but it does put the citizens there in the role of an experimental population. That's what liberty is all about.
No, causation is a leap the researchers did NOT make. From your link:
"Whether cannabis can trigger a primary psychotic disorder that would not have otherwise occurred is unclear. However, in most individuals who use cannabis, psychosis does not develop"
There are countless cases of people who OD on drugs because of one bad trip. This rarely happens with alcohol.
Pot is largely a young person's drug. It opens the world of drugs to young minds.
I have answered this completely, you are just wanting your hand held.
Legalized pot no more undermines parental moral authority than legalized alcohol. In fact, I think legalizing the substance may give parents a bit more moral authority in discussing the use of intoxicating substances.
If anything, illegal anything makes a substance more tempting and more difficult to control.
Does making consumption of alcohol by people less than 21 years old make people less likely to drink?
But that was before marijuana became a powerful intoxicant. If some guy had figured out how to extract and sell hash oil in 1790, I’m sure the leaders of society and government would not have been too happy about this new vice.
out of context
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