Posted on 10/23/2006 5:03:34 PM PDT by JTN
Nevada is known for gambling, 24-hour liquor sales and legal prostitution. Yet the main group opposing Question 7, an initiative on the state's ballot next month that would allow the sale and possession of up to an ounce of marijuana by adults 21 or older, is called the Committee to Keep Nevada Respectable.
In Colorado, opponents of Amendment 44, which would eliminate penalties for adults possessing an ounce or less of marijuana, are equally certain of their own rectitude. "Those who want to legalize drugs weaken our collective struggle against this scourge," declares the Colorado Drug Investigators Association. "Like a cancer, proponents for legalization eat away at society's resolve and moral fiber."
To sum up, smoking pot is less respectable than a drunken gambling spree followed by a visit to a hooker, while people who think adults shouldn't be punished for their choice of recreational intoxicants are like a tumor that will kill you unless it's eradicated. In the face of such self-righteous posturing, the marijuana initiatives' backers have refused to cede the moral high ground, a strategy from which other activists can learn.
The Nevada campaign, which calls itself the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana, emphasizes the advantages of removing marijuana from the black market, where regulation and control are impossible, and allowing adults to obtain the drug from licensed, accountable merchants. To signal that a legal market does not mean anything goes, the initiative increases penalties for injuring people while driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
The "regulate and control" message has attracted public support from more than 30 Nevada religious leaders. The list includes not just the usual suspects -- Unitarian Universalist ministers and Reform rabbis -- but also representatives of more conservative groups, such as Lutherans and Southern Baptists.
"I don't think using marijuana is a wise choice for anyone," says the Rev. William C. Webb, senior pastor of Reno's Second Baptist Church. "Drugs ruin enough lives. But we don't need our laws ruining more lives. If there has to be a market for marijuana, I'd rather it be regulated with sensible safeguards than run by violent gangs and dangerous drug dealers."
Troy Dayton of the Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative, who was largely responsible for persuading Webb and the other religious leaders to back Question 7, notes that support from members of the clergy, which was important in repealing alcohol prohibition, "forces a reframing of the issue." It's no longer a contest between potheads and puritans.
The Colorado campaign, which goes by the name SAFER (Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation), emphasizes that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol and asks, "Should adults be punished for making the rational choice to use marijuana instead of alcohol?" This approach puts prohibitionists on the defensive by asking them to justify the disparate legal treatment of the two drugs.
So far they have not been up to the task. Mesa County District Attorney Pete Hautzinger has implicitly conceded marijuana itself is not so bad by implausibly linking it to methamphetamine. In a televised debate with SAFER's Mason Tvert, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers insisted "the only acceptable alternative to intoxication is sobriety."
That's fine for those who avoid all psychoactive substances as a matter of principle. But since most people -- including Suthers, who acknowledges drinking -- like using chemicals to alter their moods and minds, it's reasonable to ask for some consistency in the law's treatment of those chemicals, especially at a time when police are arresting a record number of Americans (nearly 787,000 last year) for marijuana offenses.
Despite a hard push by federal, state and local drug warriors who have been telling voters in Nevada and Colorado that failing to punish adults for smoking pot will "send the wrong message" to children, the latest polls indicate most are unpersuaded. Perhaps they worry about the message sent by the current policy of mindless intolerance.
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine and a contributing columnist on Townhall.com.
Good plan. You do seem to need rest. Thanks.
I'm not asking you to generate an exhaustive list. Just pick the top 3 or something.
Well I don't think it generally rises (or stoops) to coercion (although it sometimes does), but we can agree that the government puts too many restraints on business.
And I agree that we could all do a better job of minding our own business. I'm just mother-henning the baby in the bath water.
My Second Amendment right trumps that by 10mm...
"Oh, wow, dude... sorry I forgot to turn off that 480 breaker... will those black marks go away?"
So is intelligence, but you don't use that often, so we are even?
Your 4th Amendment rights don't trump anything. Your 4th Amendment rights exist to protect them.
It can't be done, but rather than admit to that, Sir Francis and others will resort to name calling and/or making rude and condescending comments towards those with whom they disagree. Just watch.
So, basically you're for using the power of government to force people to conform to your ideas of right and wrong.
As a matter of personal safety on the job, use of any intoxicants should have no place at work and should be tested for. If you want to label that "name calling," fine. You are a villain.
The rights of the dopers do not take priority over those of the sane people trying to make a living or the little kiddies at school.
The dopers, like the sex perverts, can only perpetuate an ever increasing market to support their filthy habits by molesting the minds and bodies of the young ones.
Get some exercise.
Drug raid yields Los Alamos documents...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1725423/posts
Drug raid yields Los Alamos documents...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1725423/posts
I'm sure I'll live. I've survived worse.
It's not because One is worse than the other or that big brother is trying to protect you from yourself. It's simply because at the time of the whiskey laws being first implemented, Uncle Sam recognized that it would be much more difficult to catch people in the act of wine/beer making that in the act of building and maintaining a still. The still is a large unconcealable piece of machinery that is unmistakable evidence very difficult to refute. It was a question of enforceability, not right or wrong.
Are you suggesting that there be practical aspects of the law, or that practicality be set aside?
This concept of enforceability is no doubt baffling to some of you younger citizens because Uncle Sam seems to not give a hoot about this concept much anymore. We get new laws right and left from the idiot bureaucrats that don't have a clue about practicality. They are too insulated from such tediousness up there in their palaces of higher thought and social engineering.
Are you the oldest person in the United States or just clairvoyant concerning my age? I'm still missing your point. Mine is that the citizens of the states effected have the authority to prohibit or legalize pot, as well as polygamy, incest, etc.
LOL. Good advice.
Public aspects of "vices" can be reasonably regulated by using State/local police powers, as long as due process is not violated.
-- Harlan said it best:
"-- The full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause `cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution.
This `liberty´ is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on.
It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints, . . . --"
State/local governments can have no delegated power to prohibit 'vices', as such powers are prohibited to them by both the 10th & 14th Amendments.
-- The 18th Amendment attempted [unconstitutionally] to prohibit the vice of drinking alcohol.
There are no amendments to prohibit drugs, as well as polygamy, incest, etc. --- because such 'lawmaking' would violate due process.
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