Posted on 06/23/2018 2:47:03 PM PDT by Mariner
Some day soon, even as sweet, skunky smoke drifts in from the streets outside, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other staunch opponents of marijuana may draw inspiration from a true believer named Morris Sheppard. After the repeal of national Prohibition in 1933 and until his death in 1941, the Texas senator embraced a yearly custom. A progressive Democrat often considered “the father of Prohibition,” Sheppard would rise on the Senate floor to rail against alcohol and call for a repeal of Repeal.
“It was a ritual,” Daniel Okrent, author of the 2010 book “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,” explained in an interview. “Clearly he didn’t expect anything was going to happen. It was paying homage to his cause.”
Sheppard, a proponent of bank reform and an advocate of women’s suffrage, may have been the country’s most sincere Prohibitionist, but he ended up on the losing side of history. As such, he faced a dilemma that may soon become familiar to another group of prohibitionists: marijuana opponents. When society turns away from a cause, how long should its supporters fight on? After committing themselves to a lengthy, even decades-long struggle, how can they simply let it drop?
On July 1, Massachusetts will join states such as Colorado, Washington, and California, whose voters have chosen to legalize cannabis for recreational purposes. The implementation of the law has been bumpy, not least because Sessions and the federal Justice Department still have the authority to crack down on cannabis use.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonglobe.com ...
“Alcohol and marijuana are nothing alike. “
Sure they are. It’s all a matter of dosing.
Most people have 1 or two drinks and stop. But MILLIONS have far, far more. And every day.
Yes, there are 10s of millions of habitual drunks.
I don’t care if it’s legal or not. Legal or illegal, there are problems with either. Which way is best? Ya got me. When in doubt I tend to side with freedom. But I just don’t have a side that moves me on this one.
Many anti-pot people don’t care that much about whether it’s legal. It just makes them feel superior to curse the pro-pot people, just as that worked for the original Prohibitionists.
Do we have a Mothers Against Potheads Driving yet?
“The problems of brain damage, loss of ability to be productive, criminal behavior, etc., are symptoms of addiction that are common to all schedule I drugs.”
You left out alcohol. Especially liquor.
Alcohol causes far more brain damage than marijuana. And it’s permanent, physical damage.
As for addiction, I watched an uncle in DTs for about 4 hours. It was damn spooky.
We got him to the hospital, but he almost didn’t make it.
Alcohol, and it’s withdraw, kills regularly and often.
It reflects a trend towards the identification of sin with substances or objects rather than with acts and choices of souls.
“Many anti-pot people don’t care that much about whether it’s legal. It just makes them feel superior to curse the pro-pot people, just as that worked for the original Prohibitionists.”
I agree wholeheartedly.
Actually there are more restrictions on pot smoking than cig smoking even in states where it’s legalized. You can’t smoke it in public, and aren’t supposed to even be observed using it on your own property in Colorado for example.
Cig smokers can do both, if outside and not close to a doorway, etc.
“It reflects a trend towards the identification of sin with substances or objects rather than with acts and choices of souls.”
Brilliant and insightful.
“Oh just stop already. I don’t care if you take bong hits but don’t get silly about it. “
I don’t use marijuana or alcohol.
But your argument is empty.
Banning an object or a substance is a poor stand-in for a robust belief in God and the consequent ability to “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” It might, however, be the only thing that a highly materialistic society can do to keep order. Singapore, as an example, is sparkling clean and crime free, in part, because it does crack down so terribly on these things.
“Reefer madness” might better be understood as but one form of “Forgetting-God madness.”
The article makes a good point about pot prohibition going local. Even here in the SF Bay Area, which is about as pro-pot as you can get, there are recreational shops in the big cities but not in any of the suburbs. I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Me, smoked a bunch. It's not like alcohol, it's bad for you, it shouldn't be legal.
I quit debating the stoners years ago. They use the same tired arguments.
Drug use is a huge problem today with the youth. The argument that pot is harmless is a fantasy.
End of rant. Now you stoners can bash my post ( if you can remember what I said).
Prohibition of Alcohol is a case study in the cherry picking and twisting of statistics. A case study in fake news.
As a direct result of 13 years of Prohibition, alcohol use declined bigly. With it, cirrhosis of the liver and other alcohol related diseases and deaths dropped dramatically. Domestic violence dropped bigly.
The Al Capone style murders existed in the US, and especially in Chicago, long before prohibition and long after it ended.
In 1968 a Chicago street gang murdered 7 people on my block alone. Those murders involved solely money and control of extortion of money. There was no alcohol or drugs involved in any of them.
Prohibition did not cause an increase in crime. What it did was give J Edgar Hoover the opportunity to build a very political FBI.
I am amused at those who think the politicization of the FBI is something new. I read the FBI (and local police) reports on those who, like me, were investigated prior to draft into the Army in the 64-67 era. The FBI was extremely political back then, doing favors for both elected and unelected power brokers.
Currently alcohol is the #1 correlation in gun death and injury, both suicide , murder and accidental. Alcohol is the #1 correlation in knife death and injury, in boating, RV, snomobile, skiing and recreational tragedies. Alcohol is the #1 correlation in domestic violence, in unwanted pregnancy, in rape. Across the board, Alcohol is the #1 correlation with social problems in American society.
I don’t have the solution. But let’s be honest about the problem. Guns don’t kill people; People kill people... mostly people who have been drinking kill people.
I smoked more than my fair share 40 years ago.
Then got smart.
You have committed the fallacy of the excluded middle. Now can you keep your own mind together long enough to grasp that? If you can’t, you as a hypocrite are no help.
And I must be quite the “stoner” for never once having ingested or smoked any pot. Now that is sarcasm in case you missed it.
How? Everything you go on to say can be said of alcohol.
I have seen bright students become dull and failures after going on pot. I have seen some of them graduate from pot to harder stuff and become tragic sta tistics. It is NOT a victimless drug. The user is the victim.
“The argument that pot is harmless is a fantasy.”
No rational person attempts to make such an argument. If they try, they should be immediately dismissed as an irrational idiot.
Certainly you are free to present the unpicked cherry tree, but it just seems you’ve picked some sour grapes instead.
To handwave that “oh, crime existed” is to visibly dodge the question of its magnitude and severity and causes of involvement.
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