Posted on 11/03/2015 7:04:14 PM PST by tcrlaf
Ohio voters have rejected a ballot measure seeking to legalize recreational and medical marijuana use in the state.
Failure of the proposed constitutional amendment follows an expensive campaign, a legal fight over its ballot wording and an investigation into the proposal's petition signatures.
I’ve never had an alcoholic drink and never will.
The case for banning alcohol is just not realistic given its pervasiveness in all aspects of the culture including religious ceremony. I would definitely ban all advertising for alcohol though. There’s also the issue that someone can have a limited amount of alcohol without getting intoxicated. So it’s not necessarily harmful in moderate use.
Alcohol abuse is extremely destructive and definitely is in those categories. It’s definitely worse than robbery. It also often leads to other harm like accidental death, disease, violence and rape.
Listen to any conservative media today. Listen to the talk radio callers. They agree with me and disagree with you. You’re delusional if you think this was voted down by a bunch of people who want legal pot but didn’t like the economics of how it was going to be produced. Take that latter piece out and it still would’ve been overwhelmingly voted down. You seem unaware of how deeply socially conservative southern Ohio is.
The idea that keeping something illegal will keep us safe is the same mental illness that gun control advocates have.
Then why don't we legalize murder, rape, robbery, etc.? Who needs all these counterproductive laws that supposedly increase the occurrence of everything they outlaw?
See #119
The media is focused on ‘pot’ — legal or illegal. That’s all that’s on their minds. They don’t look at what actually was taking place in Ohio.
Look at the actual title of the Issue that includes the word ‘monopoly’.
But, whatever. Believe what you want to believe.
Our government does plenty of things to protect people from themselves. Gun safety/training requirements, driver’s license test requirements, seat belts, speed limits, closing down dangerous roads/bridges, fire and building codes for your home, vaccines, school truancy laws, anti-gambling laws.
Making a safe, productive society includes protecting people from harming themselves or becoming wasteful burdens on society. It’s an irrelevant distinction. Whether you’re harmed by someone else or by yourself, it creates problems for society in equal measure. Drugs fall even less into the category of “only harming yourself” because of how easily the damage can spread to other people, e.g. neglected families, intoxicated driving, children finding the drugs, employment problems, school graduation problems, people added to welfare rolls, etc.
Doesn’t matter. No one who wanted legal drugs would have chosen to continue to risk their own arrest and incarceration for using them on the grounds that they opposed a monopoly. It’s just common sense that no one would vote that way other than a tiny fringe of libertarian extremists. The idea that taking the monopoly part out would have swayed 17% of the nay votes the other way is a wild theory that you have the burden to prove.
Issue #2 passing proves it...it was an anti-monopoly amendment.
It says that over half of the electorate opposed a monopoly.
Issue #2 passing proves it...it was an anti-monopoly amendment.
It says that over half of the electorate opposed a monopoly.
None of this is to say that the people wanted recreational pot to be available, and I’m sure a lot of people voted with that as strong on their minds, but Issue 2 says they ALSO didn’t like the monopoly aspect of it.
Issue 2 passed by a lot less than Issue 3 was rejected by. You had 48% saying they were fine with monopolies but only 36% saying they wanted the pot monopoly.
All 52% who voted against monopolies may have been anti-pot too. It’s up to you to provide evidence otherwise.
'I can't believe I voted no when it was finally on the ballot,' said Marty Dvorchak, 62, of the northern Cincinnati suburb of Fairfield. 'I think it's ridiculous that marijuana is illegal. The war on drugs has been a failure. But I don't think 10 people (growers) should have a monopoly.'
'Issue 3 was nothing more and nothing less than a business plan to seize control of the recreational marijuana market in Ohio,' Curt Steiner, director of Ohioans Against Marijuana Monopolies, said in election night remarks. 'Issue 3 was designed and built primarily to garner massive and exclusive profits for a small group of self-selected wealthy investors.'
As a landowner in Ohio with a creek-front floodplain that I keep wild to retain soil, I know that anything could grow there. As the law now stands, and as confiscation stands with drug indictments, it’s always possible that nature or someone else could grow some pot on my property, and I’d never see it. Never. I avoid the area in the summer due to its being overgrown and full of ticks, mosquitos, etc.
Because of that I would welcome some aspects of pot legalization, but I voted against it because of the monopoly.
The prohibitionist propaganda in this thread is astounding.
It was a terrible initiative and deserved to be voted down as such just on the monopoly issue alone.
Cannabis should be decriminalized & the failed drug war/waste of resources should end. Period. I’m fine with it being done on a state by state basis. Peace :)
The voters nearly approved monopolies in general but overwhelmingly rejected a pot monopoly. I can point to a caller to Laura Ingraham today who said the monopoly excuse for it failing was a joke and everyone she talked to at her polling place was there to reject legal pot in all forms.
You’d have to find about 30% of the anti-monopoly voters who wanted legal pot but stood against it solely on the monopoly principle to switch their vote and get it passed. I don’t think anyone seriously believes those votes are out there.
We’ve failed to eradicate murder, rape and robbery after centuries of legal prohibitions on them. Should we end those “failed wars” as well?
The caller on Laura Ingraham was wrong. I don’t think Laura even lives here.
The Ohio Legislature and the Ohio Secty of State, John Husted, were right. They both named it and initiated Issue 2 to counteract it.
Are you an Ohioan?
“We’ve failed to eradicate murder, rape and robbery after centuries of legal prohibitions on them. Should we end those “failed wars†as well?”
Non-sequitur much?
Equating murder rape & robbery with the infamous “war on drugs” is a terribly disordered argument. Have a nice day.
Hmmm, same argument used by the gun control advocates.
The other comment is a straw man argument, and you know it. Only those that can’t defend their arguments throw out this as a response. Seen it before.
How is that war on drugs working out for you, btw? Got all of those drug users stopped? Got the manufacture and distribution of “illicit” substances under control? Nah, didn’t think so. But, we keep going back to the same approach.
As I said, pro-WOD people suffer a mental illness.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
"Tonight's vote is a resounding statement that Ohioans do not support the enshrinement of marijuana cartels in Ohio's Constitution. Tonight is a great victory for Ohio's families, public safety, and the democratic process."
“The ballot initiatives to legalize pot aren’t always Music Man hucksterism. Sometimes they are desperate moves by Democrats to bring new young voters to the poll with hopes they will pull straight D ticket ballots.”
...aaaaand here ya go:
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