Posted on 08/13/2014 11:13:55 AM PDT by ConservingFreedom
A few decades ago, marijuana was a topic that relatively few people, mostly counterculture musicians and comedians, spoke about in public. The comedy team of Cheech and Chong made films such as "Up in Smoke" that extolled the pleasures of smoking pot at a time the subject was still taboo.
"When trouble times begin to bother me," they sang, "I take a toke and all my cares go up in smoke." On the fringes of American society, it was usually possible to find activists who wanted to legalize it, as the reggae artist Peter Tosh famously sang. Efforts to legalize the substance in the mid-1970s failed.
Now marijuana has gone mainstream. Twenty three states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana. Colorado and Washington have legalized pot for recreational use. The media has featured lively debate over the issue.
Joining other media outlets that have run articles supporting this cause, The New York Times editorial page published a number of high-profile pieces that call for making pot legal at the national level and outline specific steps that should be taken to ensure that the industry evolves in a safe manner.
How did we reach this point? How have we come to the brink of ending the national prohibition against a drug that has been roundly condemned for years as a grave danger to health and a gateway to drugs that can be devastating over time?
Here are eight reasons: [...]
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
And what does that have to do with a F***ing thing? One's form of government does not convey immunity to narcotics. That is a PHYSIOLOGICAL problem, and last time I checked, we are also human just like the Chinese.
Your argument carries an implicit assertion that if the federal government doesn't do it, it can't and won't be done.
Heroin comes from Afghanistan and Cocaine comes from Columbia. Under what authority do you see the states doing anything about this? Who else can deal with foreign drug sources?
That mindset is what's allowed powers properly reserved to the States in the Constitution to be usurped by the federal government and handed over to beltway bureaucrats.
And your mindset is of someone who does not think things through and who doesn't appear to have sufficient information to offer an informed opinion.
Sure. Right after you show me where letting a poison gas cloud migrate across the border is covered.
Seems to me they all fall under the class known as "hostile acts" and don't require specific enumeration because they are covered as a class.
So you keep claiming. Here's what the American Society of Addiction Medicine says:
“Genetic factors account for about half of the likelihood that an individual will develop addiction. Environmental factors interact with the person’s biology and affect the extent to which genetic factors exert their influence. Resiliencies the individual acquires (through parenting or later life experiences) can affect the extent to which genetic predispositions lead to the behavioral and other manifestations of addiction. Culture also plays a role in how addiction becomes actualized in persons with biological vulnerabilities to the development of addiction.”
So farmers growing hemp became a "hostile act" as soon as the federal government said "we don't want you to grow hemp any more".
The beltway bureaucrats are going to have a field day with that as a standard.
The federal governments authority is at the border. It's well within their Constitutional authority to stop drugs coming in from other countries. The subject of the article is domestic marijuana, and all the available information says the original intent of the Constitution was that this is a State issue.
The abuse of the Commerce Clause that's being used give the federal government control of that is the same abuse that's enabled the EPA, NLRB, HHS, and a host of other agencies.
If the federal government needs that authority, then it needs to be explicitly enumerated and granted by the States as an amendment. That's the deal we were left with, and I don't see why there's so much argument over holding up our end of it.
There is the unanswerable question of cause and effect. Had narcotics not been available, would Robin Williams have spiraled out of control? The same for the rest of the celebrities who died of illegal drug abuse. There is, frankly, a class difference in treatment by the law and public opinion of wealthy people, including successful entertainers, and the average person when they have addiction problems. The ability to pay for competent attorneys and private treatment vs. public defenders and state medical facilities, and the reluctance of law enforcement and prosecutors to pursue the wealthy as opposed to the commoner have been characteristic of the War on Drugs.
“Genetic factors account for about half of the likelihood that an individual will develop addiction.
So you're point is that losing HALF of our population is acceptable? Why do I talk to you people?
Not interested in listening to efforts at justifying hard drugs by pointing at weed. Just not interested.
Take your little green strawman and smoke it.
“Genetic factors account for about half of the likelihood that an individual will develop addiction.
So you're point is
My point is that you're wrong to keep claiming that addiction is a purely physiological phenomenon.
that losing HALF of our population is acceptable?
No, "half of the likelihood" does not translate to "HALF of our population."
Asinine and nonsensical. If this were Nuclear, Chemical or biological weapons, you would not be spouting crap like that. (It is, in fact a chemical and biological weapon.)
The subject of the article is domestic marijuana, and all the available information says the original intent of the Constitution was that this is a State issue.
The subject of the article does not frame the debate. The libertarian philosophy does not recognize a distinction between weed and hash. If your argument is that people have a right to smoke marijuana, then you can't say that right ends at marijuana.
Do you believe people have a right to smoke marijuana?
The abuse of the Commerce Clause that's being used give the federal government control of that is the same abuse that's enabled the EPA, NLRB, HHS, and a host of other agencies.
I will not dispute that the commerce clause is abused far in excess of what ought to be tolerated, but as I have indicated earlier, the correct authority for drug interdiction is the defense clause.
Your OWN statement indicates this is true for HALF. Pointing out that it might not be true for the other half is just an effort to dodge the salient point.
What percentage of our population do you regard as an acceptable loss?
No, "half of the likelihood" does not translate to "HALF of our population."
Whatever it translates too, it represents a significant number of casualties. What percentage of our population do you regard as an acceptable loss?
So, you come into a thread about weed, try to turn it into a thread about hard drugs, and then you don't want to hear any arguments about weed.
What the hell did you come here for in the first place?
Who decided that?
You don’t get to frame the debate as you like.
Those of us who participate. If you aren’t up to a debate on your ideas, then perhaps you should exercise more caution in the future.
If the subject of the article doesn't frame the debate, what does and who gets to decide what that is?
They aren't my ideas. I borrowed them.
"It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield."
-From George Washington's Farewell Address
And so you may borrow the opposite ones tomorrow?
First of all, the marijuana of today contains more TCH than the old marijuana and the studies that are being done today use diagnostic techniques that were not available in the early seventies.
New studies show that there is real observable physical damage to the brain of marijuana users. Marijuana is stored in the fatty tissue of the body, the brain is the largest depository. The damage can be seen on an MRI.
Other studies show that ingested marijuana is more powerful than smoked marijuana. There have been two deaths in Colorado that have been attributed to marijuana laced food, one a cookie, the other, candy.
Will you accuse me of it, whether I do or not?
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