Sheriffs Try to Overturn Legalization of Pot in Colorado

Time ^ | March 05, 2015 | Tessa Berenson

[Ken H]

The lawsuit brought against the state claims sheriffs are faced with a "crisis of conscience"

A group of sheriffs will file a lawsuit Thursday against Colorado for its legal marijuana law.

The lawsuit says legalizing pot on a state level while it’s still illegal on a federal one creates a “crisis of conscience,” USA Today reports.

Colorado is “asking every peace officer to violate their oath,” Larimer County, Colo., Sheriff Justin Smith, the lead plaintiff in the suit, said. “What we’re being forced to do … makes me ineligible for office. Which constitution are we supposed to uphold?”

[ConservingFreedom]

You have yet to explain how anyone other than a communist can disagree that an individual's productivity is his own

You got that from this? "A stoned society is not productive"

No, from "it's an argument against legal pot only if an individual's productivity is not his to diminish if he chooses."

If you want to say your statement was not an argument against legal pot but merely a rambling tangent, that's fine.

[ConservingFreedom]

"Marijuana related" means merely that when asked if they used marijuana they said yes - it's a garbage 'statistic.'

Mj related issues includes the multiple people I admit for cyclic vomiting syndrome directly related to their mj use as well as overdoses/suicide attempts where mj is involved.

They probably also would say yes, sure. You have stats that show these real conditions increasing? (And what defines an MJ "overdose" since it's never fatally toxic?)

[philman_36]

Prohibition was introduced as a fraud; it has been nursed as a fraud. It is wrapped in the livery of Heaven, but it comes to serve the devil. It comes to regulate by law our appetites and our daily lives. It comes to tear down liberty and build up fanaticism, hypocrisy, and intolerance. It comes to confiscate by legislative decree the property of many of our fellow citizens. It comes to send spies, detectives, and informers into our homes; to have us arrested and carried before courts and condemned to fines and imprisonments. It comes to dissipate the sunlight of happiness, peace, and prosperity in which we are now living and to fill our land with alienations, estrangements, and bitterness. It comes to bring us evil - only evil - and that continually. Let us rise in our might as one and overwhelm it with such indignation that we shall never hear of it again as long as grass grows and water runs. -- Roger Q. Mills

The same applies to today's "controlled substances".

[DiogenesLamp]

Those factors might help explain why the US is, despite the absurd and ineffective laws, being flooded with drugs and most of us aren’t even tempted.

Where do you get this "flooded with drugs" nonsense? Sure, the quantities of drugs being trafficked appear to be a lot, but compared to the population we have they are nothing.

Tell me, if heroin, crack and meth were legalized tomorrow, how much would you buy?

I would buy none because i've seen first hand what crack and meth do to people. But do not discount the effect on me from my neighbor buying crack. I haven't met a crack head yet that wouldn't sell his own mother for another hit. I literally knew one who's mother was a whore, and her son would drum up business for her.

My neighbor on crack means my property (and my life) is very much less secured. They are desperate thieves who will exploit anything available to get another hit.

I've seen the drug culture first hand, and I suspect you would be in shock if you had any experience with what it is really like. I knew a man who was a pimp, and he told me his technique for getting young girls was to walk down the street until he saw one, then he would charm her with his player talk. Eventually he would get her to try weed, and in a day or so he would sneak some crack into it.

Within a week he would have her on the street selling herself to support her newly acquired drug habit.

[DiogenesLamp]

If you want to say your statement was not an argument against legal pot but merely a rambling tangent, that's fine.

Your argument that it is a "freedom" to spread pot around is no different than asserting that it is a "freedom" to spread Herpes around.

No, you don't have the "freedom" to spread a malignant disease.

[ConservingFreedom]

Your argument that it is a "freedom" to spread pot around is no different than asserting that it is a "freedom" to spread Herpes around.

Anyone who wants herpes or pot should be free to get them; fraud is of course not a right.

[morphing libertarian]

Let’s make it illegal for anyone with herpes to have sex.

[DiogenesLamp]

-- Roger Q. Mills

The same applies to today's "controlled substances".

Yes, your quote on Alcohol prohibition totally refutes my own experience at seeing people wrecked and killed by their drug habits.

Behold "Freedom" everybody!

You people need to experience what i've seen. That would put an end to your stupidly naive beliefs. I have personally known several people who died as a result of their involvement with drugs. All of them left behind dependents who were cheated out of the support these people would have otherwise provided.

[CJ Wolf]

And that was when it’s illegal.

[DiogenesLamp]

Anyone who wants herpes or pot should be free to get them; fraud is of course not a right.

All mind altering substances are fraud. That is my entire point when I say people do not know what they are getting in to.

Does anyone start out believing they will become an addict? No. No one believes that, and no one expects it.

They never expect it. That's why it's fraud.

[DiogenesLamp]

Let’s make it illegal for anyone with herpes to have sex.

Do you feel the same way about AIDS?

[DiogenesLamp]

And that was when it’s illegal.

We have murders too, even though they are illegal. Is it your belief that legalizing something will reduce it?

How is having a hundred times as much of it an improvement?

[tacticalogic]

You people need to experience what i've seen.

You don't give a rat's ass about the unintended consequences your "solution" is going to have on the rest of us. Why should we care about what you've seen?

[ConservingFreedom]

Does anyone start out believing they will become an addict? No. No one believes that, and no one expects it.

They never expect it. That's why it's fraud.

To be incautious is not to have been defrauded - real fraud is addressed by warning labels and the like.

[philman_36]

Snarkiness and the fallacy of anecdotal evidence. That's some rebuttal.

That would put an end to your stupidly naive beliefs.

Since you chose to "go there"...pucker you lips and place them squarely, and firmly, upon my right gluteus maximus.

Have a nice day.

[eyeamok]

I’m sorry, I don’t do emotional arguments.

[ConservingFreedom]

[DiogenesLamp]

You don't give a rat's ass about the unintended consequences your "solution" is going to have on the rest of us.

If you knowingly break laws for a "thrill", you need to go to jail. You know the risk, if you don't like the consequences, don't tempt fate.

Why should we care about what you've seen?

I didn't say you should care about what i've seen, I said you should see it yourselves. It might make you grow up. Of course with some of you, I doubt even then if you would grow up. Some people just have to be children and are ill fitted to be adults in an adult world.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

-Edmund Burke-

[CJ Wolf]

people make their own choices. anyone can step in front of a car on the freeway and can take out the whole other family in that car unfortunate enough to be in the path. blame that person, not the method they took to achieve the destruction or for example the gun they might have used in the illegal murders you referenced. it was their choice, they screwed up.

[DiogenesLamp]

To be incautious is not to have been defrauded - real fraud is addressed by warning labels and the like.

A "Warning Label" does not address the degree of dangerousness that is the initiation of a drug user. Perhaps a skull and crossbones would be closer to the truth, at least for some.

I've known several people who paid the ultimate price for their drug habits.