Posted on 08/27/2008 2:26:50 PM PDT by april15Bendovr
Soros behind Mass. effort to decriminalize pot By STEVE LeBLANC – 1 hour ago
BOSTON (AP) — A measure that would decriminalize minor marijuana-possession cases is on the ballot in Massachusetts largely because of one man: billionaire financier and liberal activist George Soros.
Of the $429,000 collected last year by the group advancing the measure, $400,000 came from Soros, who has championed similar efforts in several states and spent $24 million to fight President Bush's 2004 re-election bid. The Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy needed about $315,000 of that just to collect the more than 100,000 signatures that secured a spot on the ballot, according to campaign finance reports reviewed by The Associated Press.
"All of us owe George Soros a great deal of gratitude," said Keith Stroup, founder of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.google.com ...
Kind of
Metaphorically speaking when you see the wrecks first hand it changes your perspective.
The perception that this is a harmless drug is what bothers me the most.
Of the ones your clinic treats or counsels for marijuana abuse, what percentage would you estimate are under some kind of legal supervision for a marijuana offense?
There's very little, if anything that is totally incapable of causing harm to anyone, in any amount.
"Harmless" is a relative perception based on weighing the number of "wrecks" against the number of people who don't seem to suffer any apparent harm.
He is a naturalized U.S. citizen.
There is term called "protecting supply" we use a lot when treating addicts.
That term besides protecting the actual substance also means the user justifying and creating whatever means possible an ability in their own mind a rationality so they can continue to use.
In order to understand addiction you have to understand something called the Pleasure pathways in the brain. Here is an example
How Does the Brain Become Addicted?
Typically it happens like this:
* A person takes a drug of abuse, be it marijuana or cocaine or even alcohol, activating the same brain circuits as do behaviors linked to survival, such as eating, bonding and sex. The drug causes a surge in levels of a brain chemical called dopamine, which results in feelings of pleasure. The brain remembers this pleasure and wants it repeated.
* Just as food is linked to survival in day-to-day living, drugs begin to take on the same significance for the addict. The need to obtain and take drugs becomes more important than any other need, including truly vital behaviors like eating. The addict no longer seeks the drug for pleasure, but for relieving distress.
* Eventually, the drive to seek and use the drug is all that matters, despite devastating consequences.
* Finally, control and choice and everything that once held value in a person's life, such as family, job and community, are lost to the disease of addiction.
I can't understand that line of thinking. If you are going to decriminalize, why not just go one step further and legalize and take all those billions and billions of dollars being made on the marijuana trade away from organized crime? That, and we'd separate marijuana from the hard stuff. The meth and cocaine and so on wouldn't be flowing through the same channels that marijuana flows through so using marijuana wouldn't increase exposure to the hard stuff so much. Is it because you think more people would use it if it was completely legal than would if it was just not technically a crime?
I understand that. The problem is that the argument is used to imply that everyone taking any drug with a potential for abuse or addiction should be assumed to be an addict - the fact that they don't feel like they're becoming addicted is held up as evidence that they are - the classic Catch 22.
Could be because your sample is tainted, i.e., made up entirely of people who needed your services as a mental health counselor. If you think about it a bit, you might realize the type of people who might need mental health services might also be the same type of people who would self-medicate with recreational drugs like marijuana.
Ever think about that? Probably not . . .
Just try to tell some of the people on this blog that they are not allowed to smoke their pot. :)
Guessing that this would be the a major voting issue if, at first it were legalized, and then prohibited.
Just try to take away their doobie.
Would you argue that everyone who voted against a county ordinance to ban alcohol sales was an alcoholic?
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise — pot is self very destructive.
A brilliant kid can turn into a complete idiot on the stuff.
Initiative, ambition and self motivation are gone.
Life is put on hold. And the fear of facing the realities of life keeps them using. A life that is a bit of a mess because they are using. Compounds the problem. And they are probably exposed to other drugs.
Eventually, after years in a stupor, they stop and they find out that they have lost 10 years of their life.
Very important years that would have been spent going to college, getting a degree, and developing a career and starting a family.
Their lives are forever affected.
Save your boogey man pictures for the junior high school children, friend. They're the only audience impressionable enough to bite off on your silly rhetoric.
What’s your measure of “effectiveness at controlling people”, and where are the measurments?
A brilliant kid can turn into a complete idiot on the stuff.
Are you relying on nobody being able to figure out that "can happen to someone" doesn't mean "will happen to everyone"? If that's the kind of argument you have to rely on you don't have much of a case.
Seems that your are suggesting that alcohol is bad. I agree.
So, the solution is to make another nasty drug, pot, available to the masses?
Two wrongs don't make a right.
If an ardent socialist who wishes to destroy our culture and way of life is pushing pot then what does that say about pot?
What does the UN banning it say about it?
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