Posted on 03/12/2013 6:54:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Denver television station CBS4 reports that Colorado has seen a sharp spike in marijuana use among teenagers since voters passed Amendment 64 last November, legalizing recreational use of the drug. As described in The Economist, along with a Washington State measure also legalizing marijuana, Amendment 64 is “an electoral first not only for America but for the world.”
That means two American states are to the left of the Scandinavian countries, Holland, and every other liberal country regarding marijuana.
CBS4 quotes a number of local high-school students:
“I’ve seen a lot more people just walking down the street smoking (joints),” high-school student Irie Johnson said.
“In high school it has kind of gotten out of hand,” student Alaina Tanenbaum said.
According to the CBS4 report, based in part on data from a local drug-testing lab: “Experts say the test results show that children are getting higher than ever with alarming levels of THC, marijuana’s active ingredient, in their bodies.”
The massive increase in both the number of users and the amount of marijuana used by young people is precisely what I and many others predicted.
It was easy to foresee.
When something desirable is made easier to obtain, more people will obtain it. It is difficult to imagine an exception to this commonsense observation.
So legalizing marijuana is foolish because it leads to far more use of the drug and the availability of ever more potent forms. But the foolishness doesn’t end there. Equally foolish is that as a society we have made peace with marijuana while making war on tobacco. This has been a classic example of upside-down thinking; and we are reaping exactly what we have sown. We have produced a generation of young Americans who would never put a cigarette or cigar near their lips, but who increasingly get high on pot.
Yes, tobacco — specifically cigarettes — kills and marijuana doesn’t. But, if you’ll forgive the ultimate political incorrectness, young people would do much better in life if they smoked tobacco rather than weed.
First, tobacco doesn’t kill young people. When it kills, it generally kills much older adult people. Moreover, according to a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, if you stop smoking cigarettes by age 44, you will lose only one more year of life than a person who has never smoked.
Second, regular pot smokers increasingly tune out of life, becoming what are known as potheads, or, to put it bluntly, losers.
Third, as noted in the CBS4 report, “new studies that have been published say the risk of a car accident increases two-fold after someone consumes pot.” In other words, innocent human beings — sometimes whole families — are more likely to be maimed, paralyzed, and killed by pot smokers than by cigarette smokers.
For myriad reasons, then, I would far prefer my teenager indulge in cigarettes — not to mention cigars — than pot. Anyone who thinks that pot is less harmful to a teenager than tobacco is fooling himself — and his teenager.
If this is not obvious, ponder these questions: Would you rather your airplane pilot smoke pot or tobacco while flying? How would Britain have fared in World War II if Winston Churchill had smoked pot instead of cigars?
In terms of the effects of tobacco and pot on the smoker while smoking, there is simply no comparison between pot and tobacco.
What the Left has done to America’s youth in the last 40 or so years is so damaging as to be unforgiveable. They have ruined public-school education; left them with so much debt that they will likely be the first American generation to live in a fashion materially inferior to that of their parents; and robbed their innocence with sex-education classes, now beginning in kindergarten in Chicago and elsewhere. Now they are making marijuana available to more kids and in greater potency than ever before.
But they have left them with higher self-esteem.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.
That is not what i see around me
Pot smoking does not define a person
Have you ever tried it?
Absolutely. Those types of people are the worst scum of the Earth to me. Hypocrites from hell. Oh, and watch the next thing they’ll be pushing for is heroin and getting rid of age of consent laws as well as polygamy bans. After all, nobody’s gonna tell them what to do!
you’re a mother coming out with that, how proud you must be.
-Nevermind-
Suicide isn’t ‘illegal’. You’ll get committed if you try it for 72 hours, but you won’t get any jail time. Get your basic facts straight please.
Lol...
A Rocco slip...
EXACTLY.
They always use the same arguments for their actions and what they want.
I have one mother on here , on this thread actually telling me my druggie sister is a homosexual because I ytped cok instead of coke.
That is the mentality we are dealing with today.
Like you said, next get rid of sex age laws, then get rid of polygamy and then beastiality , then take LSD etc and all because Govt should not be involved.
Of course the bottom line is that they only care about what they want and what they want to do and thus they use the same argument, Govt should not be involved.
Probably not. It's just that we are much more aware of every thing that happens, due to instantaneous communications world-wide.
On the other hand, these same communication tools aid in the spread of immorality, so you could be right.
Sane citizens of these failed states should get out now, before they will be stuck with the bill of trying to keep these pot-head losers afloat.
Years ago, 60 Minutes aired a segment about the hippie life style. The interviewer was trying to talk to a stoned couple at their camp-site in the woods and getting nothing meaningful out of them. The camera panned to their ragged, dirty children about 3 and 5. They were playing on the nearby highway. What future did those kids have, stuck with such selfish losers for parents?
I maintain my stance: the drug war is ludicrous and only empowers the drug lords and strips US citizens of their freedoms... if someone is stupid enough to snort coke, you aren't going to stop them. At worst, you will see a temporary rise in experimentation. Think about it... how many people really quit drinking during prohibition? It's a ridiculous notion to think the same methods will work just because the vice is a different chemical. But for some reason, many people are willing to give all that power to the authorities and trust them with it when all we really need to do is properly educate.
This is how your argument breaks down:
As a teenager, my had such little self respect that she engaged in Behavior X in order to fit in with the cool crowd. Behavior X turned out to impact the rest of her life in a bad way. Therefore, government must step in to prevent others from engaging in Behavior X.
You really want to give government the power to govern as if all the body politic was a weak-willed teenage girl?
I'm still not going to try it.
Your predictions sound like the arguments against concealed carry, blood running in the streets, wild west etc., not to say they don’t have merit, but what do you base this on?
I don’t get the “in your face” part, it is illegal and its use is mostly out of sight.
The Left gives America more Zombie Voters ... just what we need!
No, but least it’s wonderful no one’s being thrown in jail for what they put in their own bodies and criminal gangs are no longer making millions in scarcity premia for distributing the product.
Pity..
what you said.
Seen it first hand and as for moving, well we did. I got my wife ut of the socialist state of MA and moved south.
Ever see anybody piss their life away on a bar stool?
You sound like a pretty interesting guy!
Absent other proof of harm, this assertion falls short of the title's claim of bad consequences.
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