Proponents of Prop 19 claim:
- “Legalization would keep pot away from children. Drug dealers don’t check ID”. Have they ever been to a party of college students? Legalizing alcohol did NOT keep it out of the hands of minors
- “Legalization will make the Mexican drug cartels and the violence they bring go away”. While it would reduce their profits somewhat gangsters will not stop being gangsters unless they have a better alternative. People turn to crime when it pays better than honest work. Mexico’s problem is poverty and lack of education, not drugs. And if the progressives want to eradicate the drug cartels, why don’t they just stop buying weed from them? It’s not like medical marijuana is illegal anymore. It takes both supply and demand to tango.
- “Legalization will raise tax revenue for the state”. Not if the aforementioned illegal drug dealers can sell weed at a lower price than legal dealers.
- “Legalization will increase respect for law enforcement”. Do you respect a police officer only if s/he doesn’t enforce the laws that would inconvenience you? Only the liberals! Since Schwarzenegger signed a reform bill decreasing the penalty for possessing weed from jail to a $100 fine, marijuana users no longer have to worry about going to prison anyway.
- “Legalization will not affect current safety laws regulating DUI”. While Prop 19 does prohibit smoking while driving, it fails to prohibit smoking before driving or to set a standard of what is considered intoxicated. The proponents don’t want marijuana to be treated like alcohol; they want to have MORE rights than alcohol users.
- “If there is something wrong with smoking marijuana, that’s something that needs to be taught, not legislated”. On paper, this sounds reasonable. The problem is that immediately after saying this, they turn around and try to prohibit programs like DARE that aim to do just that: teach kids about the dangers of various drugs.
- “Marijuana helps us to see what is wrong with the Establishment”. I actually saw this quote in an anarchist publication. If you have to use a psychoactive drug to see what is wrong with the Establishment, maybe the Establishment isn’t so bad after all. Suggest that to a liberal pothead and watch their heads explode.
The biggest change under Prop 19 would be the state’s open endorsement of the marijuana lifestyle. Drug use has never led to a freer nation. Look at nineteenth-century China or Aldous Huxley’s dystopia Brave New World where soma is used by a totalitarian government to keep the citizens docile and complacent. As frightening as George Orwell’s 1984 is, Brave New World is more frightening still, not just because the citizens are accomplices in their own oppression, but because it is coming to a state near you.
I’ve been reading where employers WILL NOT be able to deny employment or fire dopers who show up to work testing postive for marijuana.
There is not one single reason why California should pass this bill.
So pot proponents started out with a high and are now coming down from it? Bummer, dude.
Well C-span quickly went to a another shot as SMOKE came billowing from the crowd. Now we know it ISN’T the evile cigs.
Why you mean the participants in this pathetic joke of a rally are smoking MariJane, yeah dude. We know the FEDS aren’t REALLY interested in the POTHEADS.
So much for the notion that dopers will carry Brown and Boxer to victory. Apparently they don’t even know there is an election.
On to the next ‘concern’.
Prop 19 completely legalize possession, but would prevent ALL private growing and require the possessor to prove they purchased from a legal grower (and thus paid the tax) on the spot.
Growing your own or not carrying the tax stamp would result in even stiffer criminal penalties than current law.
City of Stockton measure I is designed to get Stockton in on the ground floor of this brilliant "Tax the Dopers" scheme.
Arizona has a Prop 203 allowing medical use of marijuana. Anybody know how that’s trending?
I guess the supporters are too stoned to respond to polls.
I may have spoken too soon. Now polls are looking uncertain, it could go either way... All that’s certain as of this moment is that it’s going to be a close call.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_localsfo/20101025/ts_yblog_localsfo/prop-19-could-flicker-out
http://blog.mpp.org/tax-and-regulate/latest-prop-19-poll-shows-52-percent-support/09302010/
Didn’t Soros pour a lot of money in supporting Prop. 19? If so, what does this say about Soros?