Posted on 02/16/2009 7:45:30 AM PST by SolidWood
SEATTLE — Washington State law prohibits the possession of marijuana except for certain medical purposes. Hempfest is not one of them. Yet each summer when the event draws thousands to the Seattle waterfront to call for decriminalizing marijuana, participants light up in clear view of police officers. And they rarely get arrested.
“Police officers patrolling are courteous and respectful,” said Alison Holcomb, drug policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.
One reason for the officers’ approach, said Ms. Holcomb and others who follow law enforcement in Seattle, is the leadership of R. Gil Kerlikowske, the chief of the Seattle Police Department and, officials in the Obama administration say, the president’s choice to become the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, known as the drug czar.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“Again, I’m not for legalizing all drugs, only marijuana.”
Do you do pot?
Do you drive over 55 in a 55 zone? Do you stop completely at every stop sign? Do you take a long break on your job?
Of those situations, one is theft! But, I'd bet you've stolen a few minutes here and there from your employer. He doesn't see it, so it's OK! Right? No moral disfunction!
I smoked plenty of it when I was younger. Now I’m in my mid forties and about all I ever do is drink one or two beers on occasion. Pot smoking got old and so did I.
Most people don’t like it that much. I think it will end up being legalized someday and I think most people still won’t smoke it. According to the government surveys though more than half of all adults under 60 have tried it. More than 100,000,000 Americans have smoked it. Most of them didn’t like it that much. Legal or not it will never have nearly the appeal that alcohol has. Millions of people do smoke it though and many billions of dollars are spent on it. Americans consume more marijuana than all other illegal drugs combined. It’s here and it’s here to stay. It’s easy to find everywhere and it’s relatively cheap already, cheaper than beer on a per use basis for the most part. All we are doing is wasting a fortune trying to keep up the ban and we’re enriching organized crime to the tune of many billions of dollars a year and causing all sorts of other problems on top of that.
We should have legalized it a long time ago and sooner or later we will legalize it. Some folks will be like you and they’ll go into histrionics when we do legalize it. They’ll think the sky is going to fall in. But in a few years most people will be wondering why we didn’t do it a long time ago.
Yeah, thought so. Sorry, potheads opinions are just noise.
I’m not a pothead. I’m one of more than 100 million Americans who have smoked marijuana and like most of them I don’t smoke it anymore.
Sure but you want it legal so that corporate America can package it, sell it and corrupt another generation of youthful idiots. Sorry, your desires and admitted criminal past relegate your opinions to noise so far as I am concerned. Those who advocate legalizing pot are still potheads. Noise. Just noise.
Give an inch and lose a mile.
Right. The real problem is a personality disorder that makes people use drugs in order not to face life.
You miss the point. Entirely. You want to legalize unsafe drug use that DOES affect others. It is not victimless.
Those programs, police and ATF, are already in place. Obama and his DC posse would need a new organization to for legal drug sales. They're Dems. More government is just the ticket.
Free country? Yes. But no one has the right to jeopardize anothers safety.
You know why? Because there's no stigma to being a pothead. Then there's the lying that it's a "safe" drug. It isn't.
Actually it's very similar to the gay movement. Push it continually and the shock value wears off.
Our society is in moral decay and you want to push it down the slippery slope just "that" much further.
We'll just legalize pot. Yeah and 30 years ago we were just going to legalize abortion for rape and incest.
Take the blinders off.
That's because society has removed all stigma's. Including you.
I would rather leave everyone else alone to do what they want so I can.
Cop out.
It's not the use of a drug that is bad, but the abuse.
One can abuse any drug, licit or illicit.
The most abused drugs in America are licit drugs issued under prescription by physicians.
And these drugs are entirely legal.
It’s a waste of money trying to protect morons from themselves.
I officially became pro-legalization when I had the flu. I couldn’t find decongestion to save my live because it is now behind-the-counter because morons turn it into meth.
Wal-Greens found no one bought it because it’s a total drag to wait in line and fill out forms to get Sudafed.
So they stopped carrying it.
COMPLETELY SUCKS.
Legalize drugs. Tax them.
Let the druggies die. I don’t care, they will anyway.
Marijuana probably will be legalized someday, maybe by 2020, probably by 2030. That's my bet. Already when they conduct polls support for legalizing marijuana is up to around 40% and it keeps growing. Since the 1990s it's been growing by around one percentage point a year. There hasn't been a poll in a while except one done in 2006 by Zogby I don't trust that put support for legalization at about 46%. I would not be surprised to see the percentage for legalizing it in the mid forties on other polls today though. There is almost no support for legalizing the hard stuff. It won't happen. Marijuana probably will be legalized in the not too distant future and I think that on the whole we'll be better off for it.
That is naive and delusional.
So in the name of victimhood, we better outlaw guns altogether, just to keep the fabric of society together.
Stupid argument. We don't jail guns or drugs. It is people who are dysfunctional. And you want to make it easier to be so.
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