Posted on 09/05/2006 8:16:10 AM PDT by tang0r
Generally, there are two types of marijuana users. First is the most commonly stereotyped stoner, depicted in the media of movies (e.g. Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and television (e.g. Shaggy from Scooby Doo). These are the dead-end job, ambitionless abusers who ingest marijuana to escape their already dismal lives. They represent the image which is most often associated with marijuana use. Certainly, the average American high school is teeming with similar directionless pot-smoking losers, further cementing this public perception.
(Excerpt) Read more at prometheusinstitute.net ...
Why is that important? Why is that even an issue? Who cares?
Because---and please do correct me if I am wrong---is not one of the bedrock, set-in-stone goals of the War on Drugs to prevent drugs from being sold to and used by minors? If so, one would think the way that minors acquire drugs is of the utmost importance.
What's important is what teens use. And teens use alcohol 2:1 over marijuana. I say that's due to the legality of alcohol -- society has said that alcohol is legal and it's OK to use. Legalizing marijuana will increase teen use for the same reason.
Legal status has nothing to do with it: America's preference for alcohol is cultural. Even when marijuana was perfectly legal, it was used primarily by . . . gulp . . . latinos. And blacks. Not White Anglo Saxon Protestants. Quite simply, this country loves its booze. Pot is, was, and will always play a distant second fiddle to alcohol.
Better yet, why not just give the middle class a tax cut and leave the pot users alone?
"You enlist government agents to act on your behalf to initiate harm/force on persons that have
harmed no onebroken the law." Yes I do. Break the law, pay the price. Your choice.
I can play your silly game. To be precise, you enlist government agents to act on your behalf to initiate harm/force against innocent persons that haven't harmed anyone and, you enlist government agents to use force in self-defense against suspected-guilty persons that have harmed another person. In both instance the persons have violated the law.
Break the law, pay the price.
Again you verify that your ideology is that the constitution is a living document. Meaning that every law obeys the constitution so long as the court has not said it's unconstitutional. The most recent, blatant violation of the constitution that comes to mind is McCain-Feingold. There's you beloved living-document ideology at work.
Your choice.
You've made it abundantly clear that your choice is the constitution is a living document. I'll stick with the original meaning and intent of the constitution and that it is not a living document.
>>Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies
> You might note that we're both guilty of the fifth transgression.
Ummm... uh-oh. I have a Nintendo-64 emulator on my computer at home. Does that mean I'm barred from spending eternity with the televangelists?
You never have before.
rp: What's important is what teens use. And teens use alcohol 2:1 over marijuana. I say that's due to the legality of alcohol. 253
Legal status has nothing to do with it:
When LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) speakers give presentations to college students they ask: "Is the reason you don't do drugs because they are illegal?" Almost nobody raises their hand.
It's recklessly naive to assume that legal status alone would prevent the vast majority of potential drug users from using drugs. It might matter to those on the fence, but those people, by and large, aren't going to turn out to be the type of drug users who turn into societal problems. And those drug users who are societal problems demonstrably could care less about their drug of choice's legal status.
The original intent and meaning of the CC was to regulate which doesn't mean nor intend to prohibit.
Quite true. Socialists however argue that because Jefferson and Madison used the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations to prohibit trade in 1807 and used the power to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes to prohibit the sale of alcohol in 1802 -; -- that this allows Congress to use a 'power to prohibit' in regulating commerce among the several states.
In 1802 & 1807 Congress used their 'power to regulate' to prohibit trade [legitimately] with adversaries of the United States.
Ever since, Congress has ~ illegitimately ~ attempted to use that power -- by prohibiting trade among the people of the several States. -- In effect they have decreed themselves to have an adversarial power over the people of the States they are bound to serve.
Socialist's also claim that an opinion in the case of Gibbons v Ogden, 1824, justifies that:
"-- The power of a sovereign state over commerce, therefore, amounts to nothing more than a power to limit and restrain it at pleasure. --"
-- Ignoring the fact that nothing in our Constitution delegates a power to "limit and restrain" commerce "at pleasure".
Geez Louise. How confused can these socialist's get?
Yes, it does. You have permission to express the appropriate amount of grief.
In reality, laws are not a deterrent -- they're to protect persons from initiation of force. In reality, politicians and bureaucrats wield the power of government to create laws as a deterrent without regard to those laws initiating force, threat of force and/ fraud against persons and their property.
The federal government creates on average 3,000 new laws and regulations each year. Each state creates about a third that many. Almost everyone breaks the law several times each year, not including traffic laws. Surely with such profuse lawlessness persons and society should have self-destructed -- run headlong over a cliff edge long ago. But they haven't. Instead, persons and society have increasingly prospered in health wealth and well being.
Politicians, bureaucrats and other assorted parasitical elites, as well as patsies/stooges on this thread would have us believe that persons and society are always precariously perched on the precipice, just one step shy of plummeting to self-destruction.
In effect they have decreed themselves to have an adversarial power over the people of the States they are bound to serve.
In reality, they have been adversarial to The People. With much harm done to the people and The People's government. They usurped the power belonging to The People. As wrong-headed as alcohol prohibition was, at least the amendment process was used to maintain legal status with the constitution.
How confused can these socialist's get?
Round and round they go -- irrational, circle-chasing their tails.
Would you say the same thing about quality music, a beautiful piece of art, or natural scenic sights such as the Grand Canyon?
That's the difference between regulating commerce "with" foreign nations and the Indian tribes, and "among" the several states. If it was all the same it wouldn't have been necessary to specify them separately, and in different terms.
The original intent and meaning of the CC was to regulate which doesn't mean nor intend to prohibit.
Quite true. Socialists however argue that because Jefferson and Madison used the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations to prohibit trade in 1807 and used the power to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes to prohibit the sale of alcohol in 1802 -; -- that this allows Congress to use a 'power to prohibit' in regulating commerce among the several states.
In 1802 & 1807 Congress used their 'power to regulate' to prohibit trade [legitimately] with adversaries of the United States.
Ever since, Congress has ~ illegitimately ~ attempted to use that power -- by prohibiting trade among the people of the several States. -- In effect they have decreed themselves to have an adversarial power over the people of the States they are bound to serve.
Socialist's also claim that an opinion in the case of Gibbons v Ogden, 1824, justifies that:
"-- The power of a sovereign state over commerce, therefore, amounts to nothing more than a power to limit and restrain it at pleasure. --"
-- Ignoring the fact that nothing in our Constitution delegates a power to "limit and restrain" commerce "at pleasure".
Geez Louise. How confused can these socialist's get?
Yes, that's how the Commerce Clause was initially used. Are you saying that the Commerce Clause was limited to ensuring a free trade zone between the states?
If so, then please back that up with something ... anything.
Read the history of the Commerce Clause. The all-encompassing definition of the clause is fairly recent, mainly established by FDR's New Deal.
Well yeah, since the clause wasn't really used by the federal government until the 1900's, as your link emphasizes. It's illogical to assume that since the commerce clause wasn't used in the past to prohibit commerce among the several states, that meant the power to do so wasn't there.
I would like to see something that says the Commerce Clause was limited to ensuring a free trade zone between the states.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.