“Abuse and/or harassment is already unlawful, and is the use of force against another. Have the person arrested for abuse/harassment. Problem solved. No need to outlaw a plant that has many other uses.”
I disagree with you.
For someone to deliberately make themselves insensible to a large degree or another, or to make themselves crazy on purpose, or to make themselves incompetent; is a direct threat to me.
I don’t want to wait until I am attacked; or run over; or some stoned slob burns the building down; I don’t want to wait until someone neglects their kids to death or harm, or forgets to turn off the stove because they are too interested in smoking their crack, or decides to go ahead and rape me because they are so horny and the self control is set aside, or abuses their grandpa because it all of a sudden seems funny, or takes pot shots at cars because it’s so cool when you’re high.
I know you can be prosecuted afterwards. That is a cold comfort.
Most of the above can happen accidentally. And it can happen if someone is crazy through no fault of their own. Those are tragedies.
To deliberately increase your likelihood of doing anything like the above is criminal.
Your comments demonstrate that you have absolutely no idea what marijuana does to a person and are instead going off of assumptions pieced together from 1970’s era after school specials.
I think that lying to kids by lumping marijuana in with drugs like cocaine and heroine does our country a real disservice because it sends the message to kids that drugs are not as bad as adults make them out to be.
They see their friends smoke pot with no visible damage and they think that adults are also exaggerating the effects of cocaine and heroine (which makes them more incligned to try the latter.)
Why not legalize marijuana and then free up like 60% of our “war on drugs” budget to concentrate on border security (which would also help keep the truly bad stuff from coming across the border).
By the way...anyone that “gets high and leaves the stove on...burning down the building you are in” is not going to be dissuaded from doing so because it is a class C misdemeanor...no matter how much better you are sleeping at night.
If your aim is reduce all risk, at the point of a gun, you have that opinion.
I believe that freedom entails some risk. And requires a citizenry willing to protect themselves, and not rely on government outlawing a plant, on the theory that it causes rapes, attacks, house fires, child neglect, elder abuse, sniper attacks, and littering.
/johnny