Posted on 10/20/2005 7:51:19 AM PDT by cryptical
IN 2004, law enforcement officials arrested 771,605 people for marijuana violations, according to federal statistics. Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project was so alarmed he sent out a press release noting that there were more arrests for marijuana charges than all violent crimes combined. The number of arrests for possession alone was 684,319.
Said Mirken of the 771,605 statistic: "This is, in fact, an all-time record. This number of arrests is the equivalent of arresting every man, woman and child in San Francisco." Some 40 percent of Americans say they have used marijuana or hashish in their lifetime, and 34 percent of high-school seniors say they have used marijuana in the last year -- even though the last decade has seen a huge spike in marijuana arrests, according to federal research. When the number of marijuana arrests exceeds the population of some states, the country should be asking: Does it make sense to keep millions of otherwise-law-abiding citizens on the dark side of the law?
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Only to be expected after all it was a "American Film".
No, laws have existed that deserve only disobedience, so other laws might also deserve disobedience.
The holocaust was a law? Quote it, please.
YOU introduced the term "holocaust"; if it's irrelevant to my statement, that's entirely YOUR problem.
Let's revisit your statement.
if the law says to hand over Jews for gassing they should disobey that law
That wasn't a reference to the holocaust? Is that what you're trying to claim?
Tell that to the ones who keep trying to use it as the reason to legalize drugs.
The detrimental effects of prohibition and the immorality of an unjust restriction on freedom are the main reasons.
I disagree that the effects of prohibition are more detrimental than the legalization of drugs would be. I also do not agree it is an 'unjust' restriction. Of course, I hold a biblical world view. Not sure what your world view is based on.
I hate to keep repeating this, but murder is an act which, in and of itself, deprives an innocent person of their fundamental rights.
Using drugs deprives one of their mental faculties, thus endangering the lives of those around them.
But again, comparing murder to smoking pot is simply fallacious.
Claiming that smoking pot is a 'victimless' crime is fallacious.
With drug use (and I'm only talking about the act of taking the drug, which is the only thing on this table), there simply is no victim.
Again, I disagree. Everyone involved in a relationship with the drug user is a victim. Then of course, we have the individuals who are strangers or casual acquaintances of the user who end up being harmed because his/her mental faculties were impaired.
WE'RE supposed to be the advocates of personal responsibility.
Yes, so take responsibility for advocating the legalization of a substance which has and will cause untold pain and heartache.
If your argument for legalizing drugs is that the WOD has failed, then my statement stands.
I personally believe there is a coralation between Canada's liberal view and policies on marijuana connected to the decline of their youth.
Welcome to Free Republic. Most non-newbie FR members are aware that Ronald Reagan called libertarianism the "heart and soul of conservatism". Are you aware of this?
Anyhow, hope all's well and that you stick around for a while this time.
I'm in total agreement with Reagan on this. The LP has completely perverted the term 'libertarian'. I've found that organizations such as Ron Paul's Republican Liberty Caucus and Mike Pence's Republican Study Commitee are much better avenues for promoting limited government.
Prior avatar.
I am sure to them it smells like a nice smelling hippie potpourri but to me it smells like freshly stepped in cow dung.
Think about this. When you make drugs illegal, that means that the bad guys have the profits from the drug trade. Is that smart?
And what do they do with the profits? Their only motivation is to expand drug usage. Why do you think that giving the distribution rights to criminals will somehow reduce the spread of drugs? Why give them the profits????
You want to curtail drug usage? Then decriminialize drugs, put the government in charge, and guaranteed, usage will go down. Didn't we learn from prohibition?
Get ready to have more public parks filled with useless waisted government sucking invalids that create an eye sore for the public to witness.
Have you ever seen the crowds at these marijuana marches. They look like a cross between WTO protesters, 60s hippies and the wild humans in the Planet of The Apes.
One of the advantages of history is hindsight. The Founders were subjected to all sorts of medical procedures - for example bleeding - that we know now to be harmful. Nor did anyone realize the addictive effects of morphine until the mid-Twentieth Century. If the Founders smoked pot, perhaps they did not realize its harmful effects.
This is a very suspicious looking graph, I'd be very interested in the source of the data being graphed, which group put it together, and what their intent was.
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