Ugh, Spicoli...take that stoners!
Posted on 05/11/2005 2:55:09 AM PDT by rhombus
As the nation's "drug czar," John Walters is supposed to be saving us from the ravages of hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. At least that was the original sales pitch for the "war on drugs" in the 1980s. But the war has evolved into largely a fight against marijuana, which no one has ever claimed is a hard drug. Walters is nonetheless committed, Ahab-like, to arresting every marijuana smoker in the country whom law enforcement can lay its hands on.
It used to be that drug warriors denied that marijuana was much of a focus for them, because they understandably liked people to think they were cracking down on genuinely dangerous, highly addictive drugs. No more. We are waging a war on pot, a substance less addictive and harmful than tobacco and alcohol, which presumably friends of Walters enjoy all the time with no fear of being forced to make a court appearance.
According to a new report by the Sentencing Project, in a trend Walters heartily supports, annual drug arrests increased by 450,000 from 1990 to 2002. Marijuana arrests accounted for 82 percent of the growth, and 79 percent of that was for marijuana possession alone. Marijuana arrests are now nearly half of all the 1.5 million annual drug arrests. Marijuana-trafficking arrests actually declined as a proportion of all drug arrests during this period, while the proportion of possession arrests increased by two-thirds.
Has the use of other drugs declined, prompting the focus on marijuana? No.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
This is just asking for trouble, awfully early in the morning ...
Hahaha good point. I see you called in Mister Republican for backup. Don't forget robertpausen.
I doubt he'll be backing me up. But I might get yet another opportunity to ask him why he cares what people do in their own homes.
Very true.
If sodomy is legal in your own home, surely smoking a little pot should be. It's about the right to privacy, isn't it?
Previosly posted here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1400499/posts
yesterday.
Oddly enough, though, it seems that we are rapidly discouraging smoking a pack of cigarettes in the same manner we discourage smoking marijuana rather than the other way round.
Now, without wars and enemies a people so diverse cannot remain united.
So we have wars:
And in the process of all these wars, our individual rights are being incrementally infringed... diminished... and perhaps one day demolished.
The borders remain virtually wide open to illegals, with feigned efforts to curtail the number one threat to our national sovereignty. The minutemen are openly called 'vigilantes,' by the administration.
Priorities are definitely out of whack.
"the case for imposing criminal sanctions for possession of small amounts of marijuana is weak."
I agree with you. Alcohol is much worse than pot, but it is still legal.
"Priorities are definitely out of whack."
Good points.
Sorry, i searched both title and author. I bet people will enjoy the same ole fight nonetheless.
No, I don't think privacy enters into it, or if it does it's not the most important part. I think it has to do with freedom and nanny state and the size and scope of government. I think it has to do with prison populations and loss to society. I think it has to do with do-good politicians bent on protecting us from ourselves at our own expense.
But last week MisterRepublican asked rhetorically, "Why should we care what people do in their own homes." So, seeking an answer, I asked him repeatedly why he does care. I still don't know.
They always do.
The real war is against people in general. Keeping the masses under the heel.
Studies show that drinking moderate amounts of beer and spirits reduces the chances of developing stroke, dementia, gallstones, and Parkinson's disease.
It’s been estimated that coronary artery disease strikes moderate drinkers 40 to 60% less than those who don’t drink any alcohol.
Alcohol reduces blood levels of C-reactive protein, a marker for inflammation. Inflammation, it’s believed, is a key process in the development of many diseases, including heart disease, arthritis, cancer, stroke, and senile dementia.
The moral of the story is, keep a bottle of bourbon next to your bong.
That has always been the most mysterious aspect of the 'generalized right to privacy' jurisprudence to flow from Roe v. Wade: how is an abortion, which involves the mother, the father when the child is conceived, and an abortionist at a clinic, not the 'client's' home, and most of us on this board would argue, the child who is killed, a "private" act protected by a "generalized right to privacy" (what was the phrase?) "created by penumbrae emanating from" whichever amendments it was, while growing a pot plant (or heck, opium poppies) in your basement with grow lights, for you own at-home consumption, is a matter of compelling state-interest that can get you a criminal record, a term in the slammer, and seizure of your property?
The latter, since it involves no one at all, other than the grower/user, is arguably a private act in a sense much stronger than an abortion (or for that matter consensual sodomy, which still involves more than one person).
Since Roe, the SCOTUS has upheld erosions of our explicitly guarnteed rights against unreasonable searches and seizures (such as random test sobriety checkpoints in which no probable cause is required to subject our persons to a form of search), but not actually protected anything with theis 'generalized right' except abberant sexual behavior, and the murderous removal of the consequences of the least abberant form (ordinary fornication).
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