Posted on 01/25/2009 10:28:56 AM PST by MAD-AS-HELL
Well, I never stated that smoking the stuff is good or safe. I am just stating that I think it’s better to legalize it, regulate it and tax it. It’s a wild goose chase that only causes more harm keeping it illegal.
It would be implemented the same way the tax on whiskey was implemented back in the time of the whiskey-rebellion...
1) develop a “roadside test” like a Breathalyzer that will accurately measure pot in the system, AND come up with reasonable standards for acceptable legal levels.
2) Ban 3rd party lawsuits from injuries related to pot use.
ie...Suing the employer because an employee injured someone or himself while having pot in their system.
#1 Will be difficult and #2 will be impossible to get past the RAT controlled Congress.
Give it up, will never happen.
One thing that would keep use down even if it were legalized is the fact that employers could still test and refuse to hire people who do use. So that should still discourage many from using pot, even if it were legalized.
Maybe they should start with allowing offshore drilling for oil first.
-PJ
How do you refuse to hire, or fire, someone for using a legal product? Unions will happily go along with that?
LOL...Good luck.
There are plenty of companies who refuse to hire tobacco users, and that has withstood legal challenges.
The reason they can refuse to hire people that smoke is because the anti-smoking Nazis are liberals.
The unions wont allow even the anti-smoking rules.
With each passing day, unions are becoming more and more irrelevant.
ZERO is going to change that. “Card check” ring a bell?
De-criminalizing MaryJ will relieve pressure on the court and jail systems, deprive law enforcement of cash and property seizures and generally force those two systems to find alternate means of funding or else reduce their staffs.
It’s never going to happen.
they’ll legalize pot WAY before they let those evil oil companies drill!
Oh, forgot to mention, there’s no qualitative test for pot intoxication as it stays in the urine for weeks. Companies open themselves up to liability hiring someone who tested positive to a legal substance and then causes an accident that could be blamed on that substance intoxication.
This will have to be resolved through the courts before legalization is allowed.
Horse crap, we did it after Prohibition with no problem at all.
-ccm
“Just how do you propose taxing an item for which there is an established tax free market which currently avoids the law?”
The same way they do on alchohol. My sweetie & I make our own wine - legally. The amount we can produce is limited & we can’t sell it. But there are lots of dope-heads who don’t have a green thumb & would be just as happy to buy it as try to grow it. Better quality, too.
Legalizing makes sense even if they can’t tax it. At least we wouldn’t be paying for the cops to waste their time on it & we wouldn’t be locking up otherwise law-abiding folks who want a toke now & then.
In the State of Florida, no firefighter may use any tobacco product on or off duty. It's been that way for ten or fifteen years. Quite a few businesses refuse to hire smokers, with the justification that having a non-smoking workforce reduces their insurance rates.
That being said, speaking as someone who's worked emergency services danged near forever (31 years) I see little reason to keep marijuana illegal. No I don't smoke marijuana, although I used to.
I don't think I've ever been to a wreck where marijuana was a significant contributing factor. Cocaine? Yep. Booze? Close to 50% of all wrecks I've been to. Heroin? Not as much, but it's less common. Lots of heroin ODs, though, as a percentage of heroin users. Meth? They just fall apart right in front of you. Crack? Same as meth.
As to marijuana being a gateway drug, probably it is. Some of that, though, is that to get marijuana, you have to deal with the same people that are selling other drugs.
Right now, the Feds won't allow it to be legalized. If the Feds backed off, I think Washington, Oregon and California would legalize it, as well as some of the more libertarian states like Montana.
Nobody stays "impaired" for three days from smoking pot. Just because THC stays in your system for weeks before finally being untraceable, doesn't mean that there is any form of impairment. The "high" from smoking pot lasts a few hours at most, and that's only if it's really potent weed and the person smoking it has gone for many days without at toke. Even your choice of the word "impaired" is a misnomer. Having the munchies, getting into deep philosophical discussions about God, listening to music, and laughing at cartoons does not qualify as "impaired."
The metabolytes from THC, which is what they test for, have a long half-life in your system, but they aren’t THC any more.
Ahh, but you miss the point. Only a person who is totally hide bound and steep in their own self righteousness doesn't think legalizing drugs would totally take the money and the crime out of drugs, therefore ending a useless and, actually, harmful to some totally lawful citizens, WOD. The politicians of this country(not all, but a lot of them)don't want to legalize drugs because they get their cut. Why do you think Ramos and Compean went to jail? Because they hid a few shell casings? They only committed a couple of misdemeanors and ended up with 12 years in the slam because they shot one of the sacred cows of the Mexican and US politicans: A drug dealer.
Bush went along with it, why? Who knows, but the bottom line is: Until we get the politicians out of office who are getting their cut, we will continue to have drugs running across the border and continue to have our useless WOD. Take the money out of it and you will end it, just as repealing prohibition ended the vast majority of bootlegging.
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