Posted on 07/23/2004 7:55:29 AM PDT by cryptical
"...The tobacco and alcohol industries realize that when people smoke marijuana, they use less tobacco and alcohol...."
LOL--I can tell this writer didn't grow up during the 70's!!
should say "WHOM DOES IT PROTECT"
And as for the pulp-and-paper industry, they're not pleased about the prospect of using ANY annual crop for pulp, because then they'd have to build storage facilities for the crops they'd harvest in the fall. Trees just stay in place and continue to grow until harvest, which can be any time of year.
Here's my answer: Marijuana laws protect a very lucrative business for lawyers, and cops.
Walter Crondike once reported on the CBS nightly news that an article in the New England Medical Journal reported that smoking marijuana causes people to stttuttter.
lawyers and cops have to work, too.
You bet they do and pot busts are easy money for lawyers and for Gov't bureaucrats who don't have to raise taxes to bring in the revenue.
Worms gotta eat, too.
The only people protected by the Prohibition of Marijuana are the illegal growers, both here and abroad.
This is the same error, on a smaller scale, that was made in the 20's with Alcohol. It has always been a Fools Errand, suggested by fools, funded by fools, and actively enforced by fools.
If a law by Congress could stop "weeds" none of us would have crabgrass.
If we repealed drug laws think of all the people who would be out of work: everyone at the DEA; all the K-9 units that only sniff out drugs (the ones that sniff out corpses and bombs would still be able to find work); all the illegal drug dealers who can't show up to work on time wouldn't be able to work in the "coffee" houses; all the folks smuggling drugs across the border; and (if we can believe the government's advertising) the terrorists. Illegal drugs are a billion dollar industry - you legalize drugs and our entire nation's economy is crippled. Plus, they'd sin-tax the drugs - no doubt about that - and who wants to put that kind of money in government hands?
Here they go - the hippies trying to legalize drugs again. I suppose someone will make the "economist's" argument pretty soon that the folks in prisons are a "loss" to society because society loses their productivity while they are imprisoned.
We've got to stop people like this from making too much sense!
Good one. Don't forget the border patrol. Legalize pot and what else have they got to do? Light up another one, dude.
Yeah and drug dealing is easy money for losers who don't wanna get a job.
Got that right, imagine if they'd have to compete with bonafide dealers. They wouldn't stand a chance.
"The pulp and paper industry knows that hemp can provide more fiber for pulp per acre than trees."
If they would stop trying to link hemp and marijuana, we might actually be able to use hemp for pulp, paper, fiber, etc. Fact is that they aren't the same plant. Related, but not the same at all. You couldn't smoke enough hemp to get even the slightest buzz (unless you call oxygen deprivation a "buzz"). You couldn't even realistically process the THC out of it, it is in such minute amounts. Barely even detectable.
On the other hand, if you tried to use marijuana for pulp, paper, fiber, etc, you would have to use a massive amount of chemicals to treat it. It is an extremely oily plant.
Hemp and Marijuana are NOT the same plant!
Very, very true!
I'm still trying to find the "Congress shall have the power to regulate plants that...." part in the Constitution, though.
Yeah, and keeping alcohol illegal would have saved countless livers.
I don't want or need the government telling me what I can or cannot put into my body.
I smoke pot almost daily. I have a good job I enjoy, a wonderful wife and a modest home that we own. The only difference between me and anybody else is that I smoke a joint in the evening to relax instead of drinking a beer or cocktail. I have not been to a bar to drink in years.
People who smoke weed know that it is less harsh on your body and mind than alcohol. I'm not touting it as "wonder-weed", mind you, it's an intoxicant, but one of the mildest aside from caffiene and nicotine.
This is a personal freedom issue. Nobody should be able to tell me, in the Land of Liberty, that I cannot smoke a naturally occuring plant in the privacy of my own home.
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