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.
Marijuana should remain illegal but should only merit a fine – not any jail time. It’s the only way the state can get money from pot because once it’s legal, people will grow it for free (not to mention all the money the state saves from court costs and incarceration). Driving under the influence of marijuana should merit the same penalties as alcohol.
Immorality has been rampant since the day Noah stepped off the boat.
By the way I love the pot heads alleged "Freedom" and failure to indulge in "group think." No subgroup thinks and acts in a more uniform manner than the pot smoker. Their words and deeds are the most predictable of all.
I think if the state can make a compelling argument as to regulating a substance like a drug, then let them make it, and if it falls under their enumerated powers to regulate it, then regulate it. I have no problem with that notion, though we could debate the efficacy of regulating a substance / turning the substance into valuable contraband.
The problem, however, with most pro-prohibition arguments for pot is that in their zeal to push their cause, the pro-pot-prohibitors typically conflate - very, very, very greatly - the "societal dangers" of pot by attributing the societal dangers of other, more pernicious drugs (like your heroin, coke, LSD from above) to marijuana as well. Or else they attribute other things that are bad or harmful - say, a car crash that kills young kids - to pot, because it's logically possible to drive a car while stoned.
The real world doesn't work that way, you see. You can't factor out an extremely complex societal equation with all sorts of unpredictable, dependent variables in it to, say, "if you're for legalizing pot, you're also for kids killing themselves in massive car accidents while driving stoned."
second hand drug smoking is just as bad.
My sister ended up on drugs, Heroin after starting at weed but she used to smoke the crap in her house and she had one girl at that time in the bedroom.
That poor girl now is slower, struggles in school and the Docs have said that it was because of all the second hand drugs she was breathing in.
Lets face it the druggies will argue all sorts, Govt out of my body, to liberties being taken away but in the end they want to get high,
THAT;S WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT and the left wants them high.
It must be different amongst yankees but this fixation on free republic about pot and leftists is alien to me in 2013 in Dixie
In 1969 one might have had a point....Marihuana...this is the age according to Uncle Jerry
However today i know scores of pot smokers and all i know are conservatives or at least not leftists
I agree chronic weed is bad but responsible use is much ado about not much
Addicts?
Have you ever smoked pot?
Its not like that
Same kids who already smoked, now just being more open about it. Because they can.
Whoop dee doo.
Would you seriously try heroin simply because it became legal? How many people do you know who would?
How so?
If you can put anything in your body, abortion and meth should certainly count as well. Anything goes right? After all, abortion is just inserting a vacuum. Who has the right to tell someone they can’t do that?
It amazes me how people can be against abortion and then say the government can’t limit what you do at the same time. Libertarian doublethink.
Oh yeah.... blame the drugs for poor typing skills and the inability to understand why you are forced to do a 'preview' before posting.
: )
Yes but are youth idealistic left leaning by nature or because of pot?
Are we to further ctiminalize weed so they won’t be libs
If only that would do the trick
And it has not been getting worse lately? Its underestimation is common to man.
No comment...
Drug legalization is hardly not all about Pot.
Sure that’s what’s being discussed now, because that’s what’s palatable.
The fine should be insanely destructive to the user. Frankly, I’d say go Singapore on their stupid asses.
But kids still get their hands on guns, resulting in bad consequences.
So, we should outlaw all guns.
(/sarc)
It seems to be more psychologically addictive than anything else out there. People get wrapped up in and for years or decades and end up all screwed up. Oh well, I’m sure you ‘quit’ too.
Make out a list of all pro marijuana arguments and then compare that list with the arguments of other marijuana proponents. They will be the same. I love it! The “group think” proportedly feared made manifest.
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