Posted on 02/28/2009 8:55:36 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
GLENN BECK, HOST: Marijuana brownies, anyone? This is the worst — the people in our green room, I'm happy to say it's clear they've never been high.
I'm going to ask you what's wrong with this picture. Chicago is trying to fix $50 million budget — their budget gap by taxing car rentals in suburban areas. And now, California is talking about legalizing marijuana and taxing marijuana to solve their budget problems.
Rob Kampia is the executive director for the Marijuana Policy Project.
How are you doing — how are you doing, Rob?
ROB KAMPIA, MARIJUANA POLICY PROJECT: Doing well.
BECK: All right. Do you smoke marijuana? Do you have any those marijuana's...
KAMPIA: Occasionally.
BECK: Occasionally?
KAMPIA: Yes.
BECK: It's against the law, you know.
KAMPIA: Yes. So, is speeding, a lot of people do that, also.
BECK: Wow. OK. You used to work for NORML, did you not?
KAMPIA: Yes.
BECK: Yes?
KAMPIA: Fourteen years ago.
BECK: Fourteen years ago. And is it true that you quit working with NORML because they were stoned all the time and that's all they really wanted to do was get high? They weren't serious about changing the laws?
KAMPIA: No, everyone there is very serious about changing the laws.
BECK: Really? OK.
KAMPIA: And the reason that — the reason that I left and started up the Marijuana Policy Project because I wanted to focus almost exclusively on lobbying and ballot initiatives.
BECK: OK. So, tell me because — look, I'm a libertarian. You want to legalize marijuana; you want to legalize drugs — that's fine.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
legalize marijuna and demilitarize the local and state police,Federal DEA ect
Proof liberaltarians can be as stupid as liberals!
Historically, we know that prohibition of substances that defy control(i.e. easily manufactured) is virtually impossible. Alcohol products(home made brews, wine, gin, whiskey..you name it) are fairly easy to produce anywhere. But no where near as easy to produce as pot. When you just step out into your back yard, grab a few leaves off your own bush, dry them and light them up, it leaves little for even those of the least of metal faculties.
As for the War on Immigration, that is controllable. What's lacking is the will. Why would an illegal come here if there was no work for them, no free benefits provided and no automatic citizenship for those born of illegals here. We just need to make the penalties so severe that no one would risk it.
Just as with the War on Terror, we need to take it to them where they are, not wait until they get here. Does anyone think we can't today kill off most of the coca plants in Columbia with a year-long campaign of aerial spray erradication? They only grow in the mountains there.
I am for legalizing Marijuana (a plant that needs no chemical conversion) but not for legalizing drugs.
In Holland the legalization lead to fewer users. Among Dutch youths smoking dope isn’t cool anymore. From Germany however they are coming in great numbers. When I was younger, friends and I went there from time to time too. Sitting in a coffeeshop and smoking worldclass Skuff...someday I’ll have go there again :).
Like with casinos that have landed in some big Midwestern cities often on their riverbanks. Regulations have owners paying big bucks to "shameless" rehabs, schools, infrastructure.. etc.
The more I talk the more I think the time has come to make some changes with what is going on at our doorstep south of the border. Mexico now teetering, can easily fall to these violent cartels fighting for power. Corrupt police. Head's rolling. Families terrorized. You will have a pouring across the border of immigrants searching for safety like you have never seen before. We are talking a big issue here: National Security!!
Hurts me to consider perhaps the time for legalization and regulation is needed. Hey, the government will tax the crap out of product just like they have cigarettes and other sin goods.. etc.
| ..not so many years ago that the city (NY) was overrun with a dozen or more lawless gangs whose feuds and killings kept the police on the run and disturbed the peace and quiet of different sections of the city." -October 30, 1921 NYTimes. |
Just wondering and too lazy to look it up but when did this weed become illegal and why. I am an old man and don’t remember it being a problem years ago. Hemp rings a bell. SF
“100 years ago our society was more religious and more moral.”
You can believe whatever you want to, all I will agree to is that more people went to church.
Being a realist is good but I think there needs to be room for taking a stand on principles as well. Otherwise we are going to have to give up prohibiting other “substances that defy control” such as prostitution, gambling, and meth. As for the War on Immigration, I would say it is no easier to win than the War on Drugs and the same response (yours) can go a long way in controlling both. “Make the penalties so severe no one would risk it” after all, few LEO’s are being killed in the War on Immigration compared to the War on Drugs. Thx
You obviously have no real experience with pot. There are as many levels of "high" as there are of drunk.
It's also IMPOSSIBLE to become as impaired with pot as it is with alcohol. Anyone real experience of both knows this and would not disagree.
From experience I can tell you that it is not a "gateway" itself. The gateway is having to go through criminals and pushers to buy a stupid dry weed. While buying pot in the past, I was offered every illegal drug known, prostitutes, forged documents and illegal guns. I don't get these 'gateways' at a liquor store. My friends on the west coast don't get these 'gateways' buying from a legal dispensary.
Neither I nor the dozens of smokers I know have done hard addictive drugs. Out of dozens of smokers I don't know a single addict, hard drug user or anyone hurt by pot. OTOH, I knew two people that DIED from alcohol poisoning. I know one alcoholic locked up now because he liked beating and molesting his daughter while drunk. Countless old friends I knew from Ukraine became alcoholics and disappeared.
Both death and violence are FREQUENT results from alcohol and alcoholism. I'd like someone to show me a single case of pot poisoning, violence or abuse by a "pothead".
Before anyone comes in with a "dude" response: I don't say "dude", I don't vote leftist, I'm a mechanical/nuclear engineer and I'm tired of the inaccurate "stupid pothead" stereotypes.
According to this article in Wiki “Legal history of cannabis in the United States” prohibition was made illegal throughout the states by state law in the early nineteen thirties. The article agrees with things I read many years ago. There was one particular egregiously false movie made in the early 1930s called “Reefer Madness.” It set the tone for all the misleading scare tactics that have come since.
Has anyone except me noticed that there never is a news story where two guys get into an argument and one kills the other after a long day of smoking pot?
What you are saying here is because of one fouled up gov’t program (SSI) we should not get rid of another failed gov’t program (the drug war).
Isn't there something wrong with this idea? Isn't this how our ruling class continually justify more & more intrusion into our lives?
A bunch of the people now in charge in DC think that meat is bad for you. Also, the production of meat is bad for the environment, or so they say. This is causing expenses to go up at the EPA & in Medicaid.
So, do you favor a ban on meat to keep gov’t costs down re. the environment & health care? Many people do! Seems to me that would be a huge gov’t savings.
Do you believe the gov’t has the right to tell you what you may & may not ingest?
The other one that people don't think about is medical marijuana.
How odd it would be that libs ban smoking everyplace but then, if things go the way some want, somebody next to your table lites up a joint to settle his stomach.
I'm on your side, I think, if you don't shoot me first.
I really don't care what other people do in their own time as long as it does not impact on others. I just care if they stick it in my face and say I have to accept it as normal for me and everybody else.
That is about the funniest thing I have ever heard.
Hey rabs, ping up a few libertarians and see if they agree.
Meth is a wholly different matter and IS controllable to some extent. It requires access to the amphetamines to produce it and is extremely dangerous to produce (i.e. cooking ether). Amphetamines are hard to produce and require an industrial capacity to make in any quantity. The same can be said for coke, heroin and their derivatives.
As for the illegals argument, just any realistic punishment for hiring illegals which is actually enforced should be enough, coupled with lack of a reward for the illegal. But, because there seems to be no penalty at all for hiring illegals to speak of, there is no deterrence to do it.
It was a job creation program way more than it was a solution to a threat to this country.
Hmmmmm! Our current president seems bent on job creation programs.
Will it be the Light bulb Enforcement Agency or the Federal Bureau of Food Investigation? The Gun Gestapo has a nice ring to it!
Okaaaaaay....
Invade mexico?
This is the level of the WOD crowd...
If we would arrest the millions of white, middle and upper middle class Americans pot would be legal tomorrow. we continue our charade because mostly minorities are arrested, so ‘no problemo”. The hypocrisy allows us to continue to pretend that weird, degenerate stoned hippies and n’er do well minorities use pot or cocaine or ( heaven forbid, Rx drugs).
While it makes some Americans feel morally superior decrying the damage pot does...it sure is interesting how no one is calling for prohibition of alcohol or mass arrests of middle class “drug” users. So why not just stay in your cocoons/ why look at real statistics and outcomes? why would we even want to compare legal Rx drugs abuse, the ravages on society with alcohol use and the costs of cigarette ‘s being legal?
Now...before you post a flame telling me to ‘get back to your bong” or ‘you need more recovery’ or “just another immoral libertarian.”....I don’t drink or use drugs, yet still am totally against the FAILED WAR ON DRUGS.
The principle I was talking about is the one we talked about earlier. The slippery slope and where to draw the line. Why ban coke and not pot? If we legalize pot the arguments will immediately start for coke or meth. Meth is no more controllable than pot and the only thing controlling either is the fact that it is illegal. The reason it is dangerous to make is because we have strung out meth-heads who haven’t slept to 48 hours making this stuff in the bathtub. The argument will be “if only we would legalize this it could be made safely in government controlled and taxed labs. why we could balance the budget for the children”
As for your illegals argument, we have people now who are willing to risk fines, loss of career and imprisonment to get high. Why wouldn’t they risk it to get out of the hell-holes they come from?
I don’t know about invading Mexico, might well be worse than Iraq and Afghanistan put together. That being said, Libertarians believe that it isn’t the Federal Government’s ROLE or responsibility. I believe they want it legalized so that it can be regulated like any other drug, and studied, and appropriately USED like anything else.
If the Fed isn’t going to go after Pot Traffickers any longer, it HAS to be regulated, or we end up with violent Mexican drug cartels living in the National forests. THAT would be BAD. Far worse than it is today.
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