Ohio votes down legalizing pot for medical, recreational use

WTHR ^ | 11-4-2015 | By The Associated PressWTHR

[tcrlaf]

Ohio voters have rejected a ballot measure seeking to legalize recreational and medical marijuana use in the state.

Failure of the proposed constitutional amendment follows an expensive campaign, a legal fight over its ballot wording and an investigation into the proposal's petition signatures.

[gleeaikin]

There is a new station in the mid-Atlantic area that covers police activity 24 hours a day. A program I find particularly interesting is Alaska Highway Patrol. There MJ is illegal, but alcohol is also illegal in a lot of communities by community vote. While you see quite a lot of violent crime related to alcohol consumption, you mostly see stupid behavior related to pot consumption, and frequently to both pot and alcohol use by the same person. I wonder how Alaska would be if pot were legal, but alcohol was voted illegal in even more communities. They do have a problem with people brewing their own hootch, or bringing in bottled booze from out of town and selling it for a big markup which is also illegal. If they have that program in your area, check it out, lovely landscape shots, and also law enforcement of hunting and fishing regulations which I find interesting. They have a $10,000 fine for “wanton waste” of killed game animals.

[wastedyears]

How it should be across the country.

[RginTN]

Limited govt Conservatism doesn’t mean no govt intervention on drug use/abuse, imo.

[wardaddy]

Only 11 posts before the truth

Not bad for here...encouraging

I think just straight medical only it likely would have passed

Which is good enough

[JediJones]

It goes far beyond personal behavior. We’re talking about people who waste themselves away contributing nothing to society and becoming a liability and burden to the rest of us in many ways.

We force people to attend school by law so they can become better members of society. There is no other reason to do that. Drug use is at the very least de-educational, ruining your cognitive ability and employability. It makes no sense to have a society that makes people get educated and then permit them to become stupid. We need drug laws to make sure people are minimally functional members of society.

There are countless laws meant to protect people from themselves. We mandate gun training for example before someone can buy a gun. Same with training to drive a car. Your home has to pass the fire code. Whether you’re going to do yourself self-harm, someone else is going to harm you, or an animal or inanimate object is going to harm you is totally irrelevant to the morality of the situation. Society needs to protect people from any avoidable dangers no matter where they originate. Drugs are one of them.

[wardaddy]

That final sentence is spot on

Freepers go on what they see and where they live

Blue state conservatives and just those unfamiliar here viscerally hate marihuana as a rule because to them it means lazy stinky dreadlock stupid progressive burnout idiots spouting progressive platitudes and canards and rejecting Christ and just being pretty much ignorant easily led and worthless but who likely don’t vote much

Whereas in Dixie where I live where whites vote 75-90% GOP there is no such distinction

None whatsoever

Extreme right shitkickers from Amarillo to Aiken and Louisville to Laredo May very likely smoke kush right along with their Shiners or Jack and yes be in the pew on Sunday

I don’t blame COW states and Colorado Freepers and other libtard state Freepers being so angry about weed

They deal with it from a negative which having a lot of experience with blue state hippies..they are right....it is like that

I think medical is good enough personally...it’s available and decriminalized but not so flagrant

Colorado...a great state otherwise has attracted a lot of bad people underneath the radar....not the Cargill or ADM investors but many burnouts and criminal elements beyond just ganja

Summit county for example especially around Fairplay and Alma s eaten up with bikers and corrupt law exploiting the cultural climate with meth and toot and Oxys

Canon City and Florence ditto

Not so sure about western slope

Aspen is spared this

Denver has issues.....hipsterism is bad enough already

Colorado is reaping taxes but at least to me my take away from being there and examining it is that the wide open legalization...rec....is not the way

Medical which anyone can get is better....its less suseptible to criminal end runs

Just my two cents

Btw....hippies....1960s version or their grandkids will never take the world

Folks need to relax

[wardaddy]

What about alcohol?

I’m just curious

I smoked pot off and on from 1971 till now

I took my first toke in 20 years two weeks ago and it felt like I’d never quit

I’m just too busy to indulge

But I hate a damn drunk

Drunks are selfish assholes who destroy everything around them and don’t quit till it affects them and they are scared they are gonna die after they have fukced up all the rest of us

Pot may remind you of hippies and lefties where you live but the culture damage sure as hell statistically isn’t nearly as bad yet folks here celebrate booze and joke about getting snockered and their toddys

So do you favor prohibition of booze too?

I doubt you do

Hence your problem with weed is who you see smokes it

Anybody here who knows me think I’m a lefty

I kinda like weed....if I had time I would smoke more...it pleases me....like a woman does or watching little children play or snow on the mountains while the cottonwoods and Aspen are aflame

Free Republic is fun ain’t it

I’m not trying to pick on you but why so angry and does your concern about intoxication apply to any agent of thus?

I know in my heart that drinkers here will rationalize this conundrum

Lol....they did in my youth too...isn’t that funny?

[free_life]

Morons, what next prohibiting alcohol again? Here get drunk but don’t touch that weed or your going to jail! Morons...can’t stand prohibitionists , always biggest hypocrites there are.

[wardaddy]

Is alcohol abuse in the same class as robbery rape and murder Jedi?

I’m trying to be nice but your logic is bordering on jihadi logic

Basically....IF ITS A PROBLEM KILL IT....ITLL GO AWAY.

Like the other poster said....careful what you wish for

[nomad]

One of the problems with the initiative was it only allowed a select list of power connected growers to profit off this habit. Personally, I didn’t care either way it went and probably would have voted yes, but I and most don`t want to give any potential profit to the ruling class and their cronies.

[nomad]

Agreed, the voters I spoke to all said that IF you were to legalize it, don`t give the monopoly to a select few, hell there was a second ballot initiative that bans monopolies.

[dp0622]

Having post stroke pain syndrome, I am for anything that will help those in chronic, severe pain.

I also remember being in plenty of brawls with drunk guys, but never with a pothead.

That beings said, this is GREAT news because it means Ohio is VERY winnable in 2016!!!

This was a conservative vote. Good news.

[HiTech RedNeck]

What has Singapore done to its soul in the meantime, however.

Trillyuns and trillyuns of dollars do nothing for you if they never go to eternity with you.

[RKBA Democrat]

It’ll be back without the crony provisions and will probably win.

Once Cali legalizes, it’s game over. Several New England states will legalize soon. NV and AZ are fair bets next year.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Good theology is that if you can do (whatever) to the glory of God then it’s at least permissible if not urged.

Alcohol, at least, can go both ways. It merits, in the bible, being used as a metaphor of joy (nope, Welch’s doesn’t cut it there) and also as a metaphor of self control lost to your own harm.

For what it’s worth, a lot of people who like pot are really hungering for something transcendent. Modern faith so often fails them, presenting a God of (at best) “good morals,” who has a hard time fighting His way out of a supernatural paper bag, let alone do any miracles. News flash, anyone can invent morals and call them good. It happened already, we call it the fall of mankind.

[RKBA Democrat]

Sorry. Drug use is decidedly NOT in the same class as murder, rape, robbery, or other violent crimes. Ultimately use of drugs is at the choice and at the peril of the person taking them. Further, use of our crimnal justice system is intended to protect us from those who do violence. Not protect people from their own extreme folly.

[neefer]

And jaywalkers should get at LEAST five years! You sound like someone who makes a living from privatized prisons.

[RKBA Democrat]

Its a profit item. Federal and other police agencies gain a significant part of their operating revenue from asset seizures.

I agree that this is really a state level issue. We talk about the Tenth Amendment in glowing terms when it does things that we like, but when the folks who utilize it are a bunch of pot smoking yahoos...not so much.

Freedom to succeed implies freedom to fail. WRT pot, it’s going to be legalized and I’d expect the Feds to be out of the business within 10 years. California will be the key. It’s a huge state, both physically and population wise, and once they gear up for legalized production continued prohibition at the Federal level is just going to be untenable.

[HiTech RedNeck]

What America has is not nearly as much a drug problem as a God (or rather, no-God) problem. Why were addictive uses of drugs shunned widely enough that nobody thought to ban them until around the start of the 20th century? Because “no good Christian” would countenance purposely embarking on such a use.

We’ve bid adios to God and we don’t even have a reference for devil any more that doesn’t give rise to a cornucopia of mockery and “Oh, that’s so middle ages.” And those who would manipulate language are right. If you can’t openly talk about the devil and God, about temptations to damning yourself with sin and about salvation from sin, the closest you can get is within the private confines of a church or (maybe, in a way) in a 12-step group.

[RKBA Democrat]

Well, one issue that folks really aren’t thinking about is the ease of production. Production of some of the more sinister drugs such as crystal meth is fairly involved, involves chemical knowledge, etc. Beer, wine, and other alcoholic drinks, on the other side of the spectrum, are incredibly easy to make. And the ingredients have other uses as well. Same goes for pot: you need some gardening skills. Hemp grows wild in much of the midwest.

You’re never going to be able to prohibit production of a substance that people can easily and covertly produce absent implementing draconian measures that are worse than the social costs of the substance itself.