Posted on 01/12/2014 10:49:32 AM PST by Libloather
Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer (D) this week said he's opposed to laws legalizing marijuana.
While Maryland legislators are expected to take up several proposals to legalize the drug this year, the Democratic minority whip said he's concerned its a gateway to harsher narcotics.
"I'm not a proponent of the legalization of marijuana," Hoyer said Thursday during a taping of C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program, which will air Sunday.
The position puts Hoyer on the same page as Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), but at odds with a recent shift in public opinion.
O'Malley said earlier in the week that he's "not much in favor" of the legalization proposals members of the state's General Assembly plan to introduce in both chambers this year.
Ive seen what drug addiction has done to the people of our state and the people of our city, O'Malley said Wednesday in an interview with Baltimore's WEAA radio station.
Public sentiment, meanwhile, has shifted sharply in favor of legalization in recent years. A CNN/Opinion Research poll released Monday found that 55 percent of Americans support the move to legalize the drug up 12 points from 2012 and 39 points from 25 years ago.
A Gallup poll released in October put the level of support at 58 percent.
Interest in decriminalizing marijuana has skyrocketed since voters in Colorado and Washington state voted last year to legalize the drug for recreational use.
While marijuana remains illegal under federal law, the Justice Department announced last year that it wouldnt attempt to block state efforts to legalize it. Colorado venders began selling it openly on Jan. 1.
"By regulating marijuana like alcohol, Colorado voters hope to reduce crime and keep marijuana away from kids," Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) said as the sales began.
Along with Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Polis has sponsored legislation to eliminate the federal laws criminalizing the drug.
At least 18 other states and Washington, D.C., have legalized marijuana to some extent, though most of those laws relate to the treatment of medical conditions and require a doctor's prescription.
Hoyer this week noted that a former Baltimore mayor, Kurt Schmoke, had advocated for legalizing pot several decades ago. Hoyer said he supported that move at the time, but has since changed his tune based on his discussions with drug-treatment experts.
"My initial reaction was a positive one," Hoyer said. "Then as I talked to people who deal with drug abuse issues, with rehabilitation issues, I became convinced that marijuana was, in fact, a threshold drug and that it would lead to the use of harder, very harmful drugs.".
But you can guarantee that by keeping pot illegal none of those things will ever happen? Are you seriously telling us that right now, solely because pot is illegal, that
(a) no babies, children or pets have ever been exposed to THC- laced second hand smoke?
(b) no one has ever failed a drug test because of second-hand THC because none of their roommates or neighbors has ever smoked pot - because it’s illegal?
(c) no truck driver has ever been behind the wheel after smoking pot?
Really?
Question: If they legalize pot and the majority of American youth grow up half-stoned, how are they going to vote when they are adults? Do you think they will care that much about the Constitution? Nope, they won’t care.
If we care about the Constitution and any hope that we can keep it, we have to win back the young people. And that won’t happen if they are doped up.
You broads and your obsession with “protecting the children” are nothing more than Stormtroopers in Stilettos. Protect your own GD children!
People in manufacturing are doing it now anyways. Remember the story about Chrysler employees being filmed getting high on their lunch break in 2010? That was probably not an isolated incident. I believe they were all fired which is how incidents like that should be dealt with, but the union later forced the company to rehire them. Irresponsible people do irresponsible stuff regardless of the legality. My point is that the only way in which all the money and effort we have spent on keeping marijuana illegal has impacted availability is by making it more expensive than it should be. It is readily available in most locales in the states. It has been 40 years or so of the “war on drugs” but I do not see it lowering crime or drug availability; actually the opposite has happened. In my view, WOD has very expensively failed in meeting any of its stated objectives. Maybe it is time to try something else.
The premiere ‘threshold drug’ is alcohol.
He also made Marijuana too.
Danish name.
It won't happen when adults treat the Constitution open contempt, either.
So what section of the Constitution do you personally believe authorizes fedgov to override the Tenth Amendment and impose national prohibition?
It’s all about control.
“Sorry, but God trumps Constitution.”
Where. EXACTLY in the Bible is marijuana condemned as a sin? You don’t know anymore about God than you do about the Constitution. You just make s*** up as you go along.
Thanks
“Sorry, but God trumps Constitution.”
You can’t see how that could be considered a teeny bit fascist?
Yep, the Constitution was written and designed for a moral people. It’s rendered increasingly moot when the populace degrades into an amoral concoction of dopeheads and degenerates. Just look at the lack of response when Obama uses it for toilet paper. And as the Constitution becomes increasingly moot, so does the preservation of the republic. No doubt in my mind that America has entered its end days.
“Partially due to self-interest, however. Because if I happen to walk over to my local park and encounter two damned degenerates smoking their dope, Ive very liable to personally crack their skulls open.”
“Yep, the Constitution was written and designed for a moral people.”
Do you see any conflicting info in your posts?
Well there you have it. Typical prohibitionist contempt for the Constitution.
Did I say that “I” was a particularly moral or religious person? I’m too ornery to be considered either! I’m more apt to take bloody revenge on those I see that turned the country into the grotesque sewer that it has now become.
You’re behind the curve. America is dying. The Constitution has become all but meaningless.
Get out, Lurker, if you can't take the heat.
You’re the one who advocated torturing people, not me. Perhaps you’d be more at home in Cuba, China, or North Korea. I suggest you emigrate immediately.
Wish other Drug Warriors were as honest.
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