Posted on 12/19/2003 6:39:15 AM PST by bassmaner
Interestingly, a larger proportion of Republicans than Democrats supported legalizing the medical use of marijuana when voting in Alaska, California, Colorado, and Nevada.
Legalization is a CONSERVATIVE issue, folks. The national Republican Party needs to wake up and realize it.
The entire marijuana legalization argument in a nutshell.
Hey, drug warriors, this is the National Review talking here. Not some hippy-dippy special interest group. Come on in and tell us how this guy just wants pot to be legal so he can smoke it. Tell us how marijuana is so evil and pernicious that we need to shred the Bill or Rights to keep it out of people's hands, when any objective observer can see that it's no worse than alcohol or tobacco.
Tell us why one of the most prominent conservative publications in the world believes that keeping marijuana illegal is stupid, pointless, damaging, and wasteful, but nevertheless is wrong while you and your jack-booted DEA thugs are right. I'm waiting to hear it.
Wow one whole article probably tucked away down in the bottom of a web page or in the back of the print edition.
This is actually Doug Bandow talking, and I can't help it if he praises the same court(9th circus) that gives foreign combatants, the right to see lawyers.
JMO, but the people on the 9th circus are smoking the stuff that Mr. Bandow is swooning over and we see the results.
So you are basically saying you want to legalize all the other drugs so that they can catch up to alcohol in the problem dept.
Ohhhk.
A broken clock is right twice a day, Mussolini made the trains run on time, Hitler loved dogs, etc.
Maybe things are different where you live, and that is entirely up to the good people in your state to set their own standards, but here in California there has hardly been an arrest for simple possession of marijuana ever since Governor Moonbeam signed decriminalization legislation almost 30 years ago.
Uh but the clock is still broken, have no idea why you brought in mussolini or hitler, maybe you are enamoured that the 9th circus would give them both lawyers if they had been caught alive after World War II.
They were going to sell it on the black market to earn money to finance their terrorist activities: a black market that would not exist if the stuff were legalized.
Legalize drugs -- end financing of terrorism!
The Ninth Circuit is a bunch of lefty loons, to be sure, but even they get one right once in a while (just like Hitler and Mussolini).
This is actually Doug Bandow talking...
I take it you missed the cover story back in the nineties, when the editorial staff of National Review came out with a declaration that they supported drug legalization and ending the drug war. While there are still some NR writers that oppose that position, the majority have come out in favor, in article such as this one from 1996.
I don't know if you're misinformed about NR's position, or simply in denial, but this has been a consistent NR position for years now.
"...the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals barred..."
"The Netherlands has long tolerated..."
"Portugal has decriminalized marijuana use. So has Luxembourg."
"Belgium allows the..."
"...authorities in France and Germany..."
"The Swiss senate..."
"Canada provides..."
It won't happen that way. That's just another one of the many strawmen that the drug warrior yahoos continue to hold up to scare people into continuing to support their hopeless cause.
NATIONAL REVIEW has attempted during its tenure as, so to speak, keeper of the conservative tablets to analyze public problems and to recommend intelligent thought. The magazine has acknowledged a variety of positions by right-minded thinkers and analysts who sometimes reach conflicting conclusions about public policy. As recently as on the question of troops to Bosnia, there was dissent within the family from our corporate conclusion that we'd be best off staying home.
For many years we have published analyses of the drug problem. An important and frequently cited essay by Professor Michael Gazzaniga (Feb. 5, 1990) brought a scientist's discipline into the picture, shedding light on matters vital to an understanding of the drug question. He wrote, for instance, about different rates of addiction, and about ambient pressures that bear on addiction. Elsewhere, Professor James Q. Wilson, now of UCLA, has written eloquently in defense of the drug war. Milton Friedman from the beginning said it would not work, and would do damage.
We have found Dr. Gazzaniga and others who have written on the subject persuasive in arguing that the weight of the evidence is against the current attempt to prohibit drugs. But NATIONAL REVIEW has not, until now, opined formally on the subject. We do so at this point. To put off a declarative judgment would be morally and intellectually weak-kneed.
Things being as they are, and people as they are, there is no way to prevent somebody, somewhere, from concluding that ``NATIONAL REVIEW favors drugs.'' We don't; we deplore their use; we urge the stiffest feasible sentences against anyone convicted of selling a drug to a minor. But that said, it is our judgment that the war on drugs has failed, that it is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction, that it is wasting our resources, and that it is encouraging civil, judicial, and penal procedures associated with police states. We all agree on movement toward legalization, even though we may differ on just how far.
I highlighted the phrase above to make it easy to pick out. Now tell me again how the posted article was just one obscure story off the web site...
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