Posted on 06/04/2007 11:35:52 AM PDT by cryptical
At a recent backyard barbecue in Miami's Upper Eastside, a group of middle-age, middle-class folks tamely sipped berry cocktails and beers. Among them: a couple of lawyers, a couple of city administrators and an arts administrator. Somewhere between the skirt steak and the apple pie, somebody lit a joint and passed it around.
Nobody blinked. Even in mainstream, white-collar settings, smoking marijuana can be commonplace and unremarkable, like having a little wine with dinner.
Once a stamp of the arty, the marginal and the counterculture, today marijuana's popularity cuts across social boundaries. Yet several high-profile marijuana arrests have recently made headlines, highlighting the hazy double standard that exists around an illegal, potentially harmful drug that continues to encroach into the mainstream:
• In March, Lawrence Korda, 59, a Broward Circuit Court judge, was charged with openly smoking marijuana in a park in Hollywood. Korda completed a drug and alcohol program to erase the misdemeanor charge, and must take monthly random drug tests for six months and perform 25 hours of community service.
• Last month, Utpal Dighe, 31, a prosecutor in the Miami-Dade state attorney's office, was fired after police charged him with buying marijuana from a street dealer in Coconut Grove.
• Also last month, Ricky Williams, 30, erstwhile superstar running back for the Dolphins, probably ended his Miami career by testing positive for marijuana for the fifth time.
For good or ill, people from all walks smoke weed. In fact, 40.1 percent of all Americans 12 years old and up admit having tried marijuana at least once -- and 6 percent acknowledge having used it in the past month, federal drug surveys show. The FBI says 786,500 people were arrested for it in 2005, the latest figures available.
One group at least modestly turning away from marijuana is middle- and high-schoolers, ages 12 to 17. The percentage who have used pot at least once dropped from more than 20 percent in 2000 to about 17 percent in 2005, federal researchers say.
''I don't know if more people are smoking or more people are admitting it,'' said Betsy Wise, a Miami stand-up comic. Wise recently started to freelance for a New York ad agency. She confided in a co-worker that a friend was delivering pot brownies to the office -- and told him to help himself.
''When I got to the agency, all but a few of the brownies were gone,'' Wise said. ``Pretty much everyone partook, right in the office. They all greeted me with smiles. I thought that was remarkable. I would have expected maybe one or two people would have been simpatico.''
More and more, weed is cropping up in the popular culture. It isn't just the domain of hip-hop records with parental-guidance labels. On cable-TV shows like Six Feet Under,The Sopranos,Entourage and The L Word, characters have sparked up casually, the way they might sip merlot, without their marijuana use being part of any plot development or morality tale.
And it isn't just cable. On ABC's Brothers & Sisters, Sally Field's character gets high. The kids on That '70s Show often emerged from clouds of funny smoke.
GOING UPSCALE
''I think there is more of a laissez-faire attitude these days about smoking pot,'' said Jenji Kohan, creator of Showtime's Weeds, about a mother who sells marijuana to make ends meet after her husband dies unexpectedly. 'One of the things that I find interesting is that there are boutique farms that are really into their strains. It reminds me of when wine started to become really popular and people started talking about this vine and that grape. Marijuana has become more upscale. In L.A., dealers have full menus of `unique teas.' ''
Not that marijuana use is a function of wealth.
For $20 on the street, a buyer can score one-eighth ounce of low-grade marijuana from Mexico, Belize or Jamaica -- enough for four or five cigarettes. For $800, the connoisseur can acquire an ounce of exotic, extra-potent marijuana grown from modern hybrids in hydroponic labs or special soil indoors in ''grow-houses'' from Pompano Beach to Coral Gables, said James Hall, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Substance Abuse at Nova Southeastern University.
''It's like wine; you can buy an expensive one or you can buy the jug stuff,'' Hall said.
The truth is, for all of the marijuana possession arrests, police often look the other way, or let smokers go with friendly warnings.
At a Snoop Dogg concert at a Fort Lauderdale club a while back, a uniformed officer stood by unflinchingly as Snoop, and dozens in the audience, sent up telltale clouds.
''It's selective enforcement,'' said Miami musician Todd Thompson, who doesn't have a problem admitting that he gets high. ``At Langerado [a Broward outdoor music festival], there was smoking going on everywhere. I wouldn't do it in front of a cop, just in case. But cops don't always do something about a little marijuana smoke.''
Marijuana laws are a mishmash among the 50 states. It isn't entirely legal anywhere, but 12 states have at least partly decriminalized it, to the point that in Alaska there is no penalty for possessing an ounce or less at home.
In Florida, possession of 20 grams or less -- 28 grams would be an ounce -- is a misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail and/or a $1,000 fine; having more than 20 grams is a felony worth five years and/or a $5,000 fine.
Over the decades, debate about whether marijuana should be legalized has remained lively.
Said Howard Finkelstein, Broward County public defender and legal guru of the ''Help Me Howard'' segment on WSVN-Fox 7: 'We're making war on our own people. We take good fathers and lawyers and doctors and wives and make them outlaws. We're playing a stupid and harmful game of `gotcha.' ''
Some support for legalization comes from the belief that it's not dangerous to health, says Dr. J. Bryan Page, professor of anthropology and psychiatry and an expert on substance abuse in the University of Miami Department of Psychiatry.
''A student I knew claimed to be part of a group who all had grade-point averages over 3.6 who were very regular users,'' he said. 'She wanted me to study them to counter all the `Just say no' stuff.''
White House drug czar John Walters, not surprisingly, sees it differently. In April, his office released an analysis from the University of Mississippi's Potency Monitoring Project that said the level of THC -- the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana -- has more than doubled since 1983, from 4 percent to 8.5 percent.
`WAKE-UP CALL'
''This new report serves as a wake-up call for parents who may still hold outdated notions about the harms of marijuana,'' his announcement said.
The increased potency is from the exotic new hybrids and sophisticated indoor growing techniques, says Nova Southeastern's Hall.
Marijuana-related emergency-room visits increased from 45,000 in 1995 to 119,000 in 2002, the most recent comparison available, federal drug officials say.
Added Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse: ``Science has shown that marijuana can produce adverse physical, mental, emotional and behavioral changes, and -- contrary to popular belief -- it can be addictive.''
Norman Kent, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and board member of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, scoffed: ``More people died last year from eating spinach than smoking pot.''
The power to regulate v. the power to prohibit
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1419654/posts
The socialistic ~majority rule~ philosophy that there is no constitutional limit to laws controlling behavior rapidly falls apart when analyzed as above.
No government or society in the history of the world has ever restricted their laws that way — before our own.
750,000 people arrested last year on marijuana. Apparently, not everyone is smoking at home. Besides, smoking at home is not the issue. The issue is legalization, and legalization would harm society. Use would double if not triple, especially among teens.
Currently, 20% of marijuana smokers are underage. That happens to be quite a bit, by the way -- only 6% of smokers and 6% of alcohol users are underage. With legalization, that 20% could grow to 30-40%.
So, we'd end up with a legal product with close to half the users remaining illegal! Plenty of customers for the gangs and plenty of work for the criminal justice system. There go the savings.
If marijuana was legal in the US (and remaining illegal in the rest of the world), why wouldn't the gangs turn from illegal imports to illegal exports? Grow their own legal marijuana and smuggle it out. Proving in court that they're doing that would require a lot of manpower. Oops. More savings lost.
"You either have to do it in a place with the proper liquor license or in your own home."
I understand that. I'm trying to envision the world YOU want, with laws limited to activities that harm others. In YOUR world, public drinking, public urination, and public intoxication would be legal. Get drunk, run around naked, yell and scream, puke your guts out, hurl insults -- all legal. Ain't freedom great? For the drinkers, that is.
The socialists among us ~claim~ to understand that concept; however it is obvious they do not, - as their knee jerk reaction is to hype that by saying that in YOUR world, public boozing, public peeing, and public drunkenness would somehow be legal. Getting drunk, running around naked, yelling and screaming, puking your guts out, hurling insults -- all supposedly would be ~legal~ just because you want privacy in your home.
Aint the freedom to exaggerate great? For socialistic agitators, that is. [- Actually, - ya gotta love it when they throw their silly hissy fits.]
It is great entertainment.
Did you ever stop and think that maybe that number is so high because of the "forbidden fruit" aspect of marijuana? After all there are many other drugs such as Salvia divinorum that will get you high and can be purchased off the internet legally, yet 20% of the teen population is not on salvia.
I understand that. I'm trying to envision the world YOU want, with laws limited to activities that harm others. In YOUR world, public drinking, public urination, and public intoxication would be legal. Get drunk, run around naked, yell and scream, puke your guts out, hurl insults -- all legal. Ain't freedom great? For the drinkers, that is.
That is a perfect example of a strawman argument. Besides, how can you say those activities you listed above do not harm people? Yes, I know they may not be harmful physically but they can harm others mentally. That is why sexual harassment can include simply making obscene remarks to a person. I accept the fact that the government can regulate that kind of behavior in public, but when the government tells people they can't drink or smoke in their own home that is unacceptable.
Well, I can bring up the Alaska experiment again, showing that teen use was cut in half when marijuana was made illegal.
And if you're wrong, if teen use doubles or triples, then what?
"That is a perfect example of a strawman argument."
It's a lousy example of a strawman argument. It's merely a logical extension of your argument. You want marijuana legalized because it's an activity that doesn't harm others. What about other activities that don't harm others? Why are they suddenly off the table?
"Yes, I know they may not be harmful physically but they can harm others mentally."
Public urination and public drunkenness harm people mentally? That's what you meant by "harm"? Oh, please.
If you're going to ban those activities because they "harm others mentally", then I'll simply claim that I'm harmed mentally if people smoke pot.
"but when the government tells people they can't drink or smoke in their own home that is unacceptable."
Excuse me. What do you want? Seriously. What is your point? Do you want marijuana legal? Or do you want to be able to smoke marijuana at home? Big difference.
If you simply want marijuana to be legal at home, then how is that much different than today? Smoke your pot at home and no one will know.
Now, if you want pot legalized, then how are you going to restrict it to the home? Cigarettes aren't. Alcohol isn't. Marijuana is illegal and 750,000 people are arrested in public smoking it.
Yet if it's legalized, you're telling me no one will smoke it in public. No offense, but I don't believe you.
Of course some people will smoke it in public, just like some people drink alcohol in public, but those people are arrested. And no offense to you, but I fail to see how you can compare someone vomiting or urinating in the street to someone smoking pot in the privacy of their own home.
Excuse me. What do you want? Seriously. What is your point? Do you want marijuana legal? Or do you want to be able to smoke marijuana at home? Big difference. If you simply want marijuana to be legal at home, then how is that much different than today? Smoke your pot at home and no one will know.
Well for one thing I don't have any connections, and I am sure people that do have connections would like to be able to buy marijuana without committing a criminal act.
I wonder if the author knows that article is a farce and omplete waste.
The wealthy, Cops and lawyers always have the best pot, always have and always will.
“More people died last year from eating spinach than smoking pot.”
I’m curious. Do you only post on drug related threads? I never see you on FR doing anything else. lol
What was that citation again?
None of those activities harm others. If one of those activities is made legal because it harms no one, then all should be legal for the same reason. That was the point I was trying to make.
"Of course some people will smoke it in public, just like some people drink alcohol in public, but those people are arrested."
That's basically the system we have today. Smoke at home, you're not arrested. Smoke in public and you are.
Marijuana is illegal and 750,000 people are arrested in public smoking with it. Plus, I'm sure they were all caught on their way home to smoke it in private.
Drugs, guns, U.S. Constitution, and Middle East. Just the subjects that interest me.
See my post #75.
I didn’t say they were all on their way home to smoke it in private. I’m sure a goodly amount of them were arrested selling it. But surely you admit that there is a difference between smoking in public and having it on you. And it does not appear to me that most people on this thread are in favor of it being legal to smoke in public. Most people seem to want it legal and regulated in a similar manner as alcohol, which is also illegal to drink in public.
Yeah, I hear them calling for the arrests of all the current Hempfest '07 attendees. If legal pot is illegal to smoke in public and the cops arrest everyone smoking pot outdoors, we'll be right back to where we are right now. What's the point of legalization?
"Most people seem to want it legal and regulated in a similar manner as alcohol"
Which means public bars, sports events, "beer gardens" and "beer tents" at festivals, weddings, picnics where alcohol is allowed, backyard cookouts, etc. And you can be 100 yards downwind and your kids will know.
It will be smoked in public if legal. Let's at least admit that much so we can move on.
You said "in public" not "on public property".
Geez Louise. It's not even legal and already you're playing your weasel-word games.
I’m weasling because we disagree over what would qualify as public. When I think public I think of places where people will get public intox tickets. Those places do not really qualify. Especially weddings and backyards.
I guess. I think of "in public" as the opposite of "in private".
The poster was arguing for legalization, saying there was no harm when people are smoking pot in the privacy of their own home. I said it would not be restricted to the home and that it would be smoked in public.
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that smoking marijuana at weddings and in backyards is not what the poster had in mind when he referred to the "privacy of one's home". As I said, it's not even legal and already the "legalese" starts.
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