Looks about the same as last year.
Posted on 08/08/2014 1:36:04 PM PDT by Mariner
Since Colorado voters legalized pot in 2012, prohibition supporters have warned that recreational marijuana will lead to a scourge of “drugged divers” on the state’s roads. They often point out that when the state legalized medical marijuana in 2001, there was a surge in drivers found to have smoked pot. They also point to studies showing that in other states that have legalized pot for medical purposes, we’ve seen an increase in the number of drivers testing positive for the drug who were involved in fatal car accidents. The anti-pot group SAM recently pointed out that even before the first legal pot store opened in Washington state, the number of drivers in that state testing positive for pot jumped by a third.
The problem with these criticisms is that we can test only for the presence of marijuana metabolites, not for inebriation. Metabolites can linger in the body for days after the drug’s effects wear off — sometimes even for weeks. Because we all metabolize drugs differently (and at different times and under different conditions), all that a positive test tells us is that the driver has smoked pot at some point in the past few days or weeks.
It makes sense that loosening restrictions on pot would result in a higher percentage of drivers involved in fatal traffic accidents having smoked the drug at some point over the past few days or weeks. You’d also expect to find that a higher percentage of churchgoers, good Samaritans and soup kitchen volunteers would have pot in their system. You’d expect a similar result among any large sampling of people. This doesn’t necessarily mean that marijuana caused or was even a contributing factor to accidents, traffic violations or fatalities.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Pointing out that your statements are false isn’t an insult. Now maybe if you actually told the truth once in a while. But you don’t.
Looks about the same as last year.
I have been arguing with Libertarians for a very long time. They will seize upon the slightest thing to trumpet the wisdom of their ideas, and they are so intent on getting validation that they really don't care if it's true or not.
From what I could gather from the article linked at the top of this thread (reads like it was written by a pot-head with it's projections and logic twisting.) that accidents are down slightly from last year, but are not the lowest they've been in the last 12 years.
And i'm thinking "You are really going to try to turn this into a story?" Why yes. Yes they are.
Then i'm guessing you live in Austin or the vicinity. It has been invaded by California pot heads for many years now. They are bringing the stupid with them. They soiled their nest in California, now they are trying to soil the nest in their new State.
Yeah, that cohort is highly educated and specializes in tech, especially computer science, networks and such. Many of them attended prestigious universities and grew up with silver spoons in their mouths.
Sure, people like that can probably handle smoking pot, but have you ever considered that not all of the population is made up of such gifted people? What do we do about the non-wealthy/non-gifted people who smoke it? To the poor it represents a real danger to their ability to earn a living. It causes a lot of them to not be able to put food on the table, and their entire families end up suffering.
Should we have one set of laws for the wealthy gifted class and a different set of laws for the poor mundane class?
It’s a plant.
But you appear capable of reason.
DiogenesLamp is still claiming the right to determine who is capable of reason...and claiming the right to determine who can smoke pot.
“I looked through some of your past posting history. You appear to be pretty much a Libertarian. Some places I agree with you, and some places I don’t.
But you appear capable of reason.”
A small l Libertarian I think.
I certainly try to apply reason to whatever I’m considering.
Well thank you. For me this topic mostly holds little interest. It just so happens there is a guy I have been arguing with about it for the last six years that has turned me against it. At first it was just a lark when I challenged his position, but after awhile I got so sick of hearing about it that it got me to thinking perhaps I need to understand this subject better.
I knew drugs were bad because I had seen so many examples of them bringing death and misery to people I have known, but I had to come up with reasoned arguments as to why we should oppose them.
Over time, I realized that what these people wanted to do has already been tried, and it turned out to be a horrible disaster.
At the bottom line, I have become convinced that most people who advocate in favor of Drug legalization are motivated by the exact same thinking as the Draft Dodgers during the Vietnam War. If you know anything of the era, they created this big "Peace" movement which was against war. (As if any sane person was for it.)
In reality, underlying it all was the fact that they really weren't against war, they were just against *THEM* having to fight in a war. Their "Noble Cause" was just a vehicle used to disguise their cowardice.
Now I'm not suggesting that Drug Legalization advocates are Cowards, what I mean is that their reasons are entirely personal, though their rhetoric is lofty and noble. (i.e "Rights!" "Freedom!" "Opposition to Tyranny!" etc.)
The bottom line is they want to get high legally, but they don't want to present their arguments from so base a platform because all that noble sh*t sounds so much better.
I doubt many of them ever consider what would be the long term ramifications to the overall society if they get what they think they want.
This current generation fancies itself smarter than all the other ones which have came before. It never stops to consider that old lessons were learned the hard way, and there are very good reasons for heading those long ago learned lessons.
I am sorry, but I just cannot seem to arouse any interest in responding to your posts. I see you repeating something i’ve already demonstrated to be wrong, so I don’t know why I should bother covering this ground again. I think I am better off confining my efforts to people who have the ability to remember things they have already been told, and who also have the ability to reason honestly.
I'm not sure you are grasping my point. Much of what we face is systemic and inevitable, and a not quite so obvious byproduct of prosperity. I should be interested to know how much history you have studied. You seem to think that what is happening now is new or something.
Do I have to draw a graph line for you from Chuck Berry to the Berkeley Free Speech movement, through the Summer of Love, the drug sex rock counterculture through the liberal paradigm shift in the American ethos? Are you really that blind? Do you know who Chuck Berry is? The fuel of that counterculture was literally and effectively cannabis, period. It continues to be.
You can draw a line if you like, but your analysis is far too simplistic. I *HAVE* written virtual essays on the sexual revolution in the aftermath of World War II. Given the changes which occurred to society as a result of World War II, the Sexual revolution was inevitable, and no, it didn't have anything to do with pot. It would have happened had that stuff never been discovered.
Your “money” gambit is nothing more than a set of blinders. What are you saying- that the American Dream destroyed America?
Overly simplistic, but something along those lines. Yes.
Suddenly in 1964, a generation after WWII, personal wealth corrupted our youth?
Not at all. Wealth and the absence of hardship corrupted them the moment they were born. Never before did so many children grow up into materially well to do homes. Hunger was virtually unknown in their lives. Their parents wanted them to have a better life growing up than they did, and so their parents worked very hard to give it to them. This had the consequence of instilling into them a sort of Pollyannaish mindset, the consequences of which manifested as they grew older. (We are for Love, not War!) Spoiled children come of age is all they were.
Strange all that wealth failed to turn America’s captains of industry into liberals ages ago, if wealth liberalizes.
I don't fault you for being unfamiliar with the concept, and you are obviously unfamiliar with it or you would realize that liberalizing effects of Money only tend to apply to people who have acquired it without having to work hard for it themselves. Most of the Robber Barons were workaholics and their massive piles of money was the product of their efforts. Not so their wives and children.
No, people who work for wealth are seldom liberal, but people who gain wealth with little or no work (Such as actors and singers, and Silver spoon children) tend to be Liberal because it was no great misery for them to acquire money and so they have a cavalier disregard for it that no hard working poor person would express.
This is old. This has been around a very long time. I direct your attention to "Leftism Revisited" by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. In it he points out that much of the French revolution was funded and promoted by the Wives and Children of those wealthy French Aristocrats. Not the Aristocrats themselves, but those members of their families who lived off the benefits of wealth which they themselves didn't earn or acquire. They ended up feeding the cat that ate them.
The Communist Internationale had nothing to do with this?
And where did that come from but the spoiled children of wealthy families?
Try to get the point, will you...the radical counterculture- Viet Nam War era potheads of every type and description took over, not only academia and media, but every other type and description of enterprise from Ben & Jerry’s to Virgin Records to Virgin Airways.
And you try to get the point as well. They would have done so even without pot. Pot is a symptom, not a cause.
The “evils” of cannabis, and more importantly, cannabis based cultural domination, has proven itself to be economically viable in a dog eat dog competitive economic game board.
That's one theory. Another is that people with wealth and talent can afford to do stupid things whereas poor people cannot.
Key term: low intensity cultural conflict. Google “Antonio Gramsci” and wake up.
Ha! The pup tries to tell the Hound dog how to suck eggs. Key term: Tytler Cycle.
And if you think that's an outlier, Google "Kyklos".
You’ll be debating the merits of marching to the front in uban camo vs. suburban camo while their tanks turn the village into matchsticks.
Oh, I don't agree with you so "There will be consequences to pay!!!" I've seen better intimidation by proxy.
Yes it will. We have seen societies proceed this way before.
Rather than Being "Diogenes' Lamp", I think I ought to call myself Cassandra. It would probably be more fitting.
Alleging that something which I have seen with my own eyes is a lie, is most definitely an insult. You want to technobabble about the distinction between someone who picks up a crack pipe and never puts it down and your oh so scientificly rigid definition of "addiction" so that you can pretend you have a point. I don't have the patience to deal with such a stupid dodge.
As do I. If you are not familiar with this concept, I would like to direct your attention to this thing called a "Chesterton Fence".
We have been tearing them down for quite a number of decades now. We will find out how important they were directly.
“As do I. If you are not familiar with this concept, I would like to direct your attention to this thing called a “Chesterton Fence”.
We have been tearing them down for quite a number of decades now. We will find out how important they were directly.”
Interesting POV.
I see the point. I don’t exactly agree with the conclusion tho.
No, what happened is that I slapped down your self-contradictory nonsense: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3189262/posts?page=66#66.
Alcohol and tobacco bring death and misery to people.
Sure you did.
How many people die from Alcohol and how many people die from Tobacco?
There isn't really a conclusion, just uncertainty. I do not know if Marijuana constitutes a grave threat to our society or not. If it does, it will likely be indirectly through it's effects as a gateway drug or by inducing indolence. There is a chance that nothing of great consequence will happen.
About Crack and Meth i'm pretty sure. Allow that stuff and things will go for us much the way they went for China with Opium.
The problem is, they cannot be separated in terms of Libertarian philosophy. If people have a right to smoke pot, they also have a right to smoke meth or crack or heroin.
They will even have a right to smoke the latest Pharmaceutical slave maker, no doubt some sort of a derivative of Rohipnol or something.
Open the door to the legal manufacture of designer control drugs, and we will see something really significant. Open that door, and that is what will be coming through eventually.
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