no matter what the idiots who voted for this deserve to be robbed of their stuff....
Being potheads, they possibly thought that "legalized" weed implied free weed.
Personally, when it comes to drugs, I think conservatives have been brainwashed. In 1969 a fairly famous Psychiatrist (from the old school, homosexuality is a disease) published an article that said that if drugs were legal their side effects would be sufficient deterrent to keep most people from abusing them.
I think most Americans have very little knowledge of or experience with these drugs. The truth is Thomas Szaz was right. Let’s look at it. Opiates produce a mild to moderate euphoria for several hours when taken orally. During this time minor pains “become less significant” due to the euphoria more than analgesia. Some pains, for technical reasons GO AWAY COMPLETELY. Which is really, really nice if you are having one of those pains.
The same drug, when abused, is injected. Why? Because the euphoria is INTENSE, orgasmic. But that only lasts minutes or less. Then you have several hours of sedation followed by a fairly rapid onset of INTENSE CRAVING for more. The onset of this effect is stunningly rapid.
Take cocaine. Pretty similar, a couple differences. No need to inject because “snorting” produces the same effect. Very similar if not more intense “rush”. Instead of sedation the experience is characterized more as a sense of “heightened” awareness, sensation, cognition, and perception. An EVEN MORE PROFOUND craving than heroin.
I mention these two because they really are “the killers”. I would submit, as did Szaz almost 50 years ago, that the side effects are a deterrent. Rational, normal people, won’t climb on a hamster wheel of brief periods of euphoria punctuating intervening stretches of suicidal depression. They just won’t. If that life appeals to you you have bigger problems than drugs.
So, even in the case of the real killers, one can make a case, out of compassion, that even these should be legal. Suppressing them is a futile waste as we have seen again and again. Rational people don’t trade productive lives for a hamster wheel of depression. People who are attracted to it can be identified before they have destroyed the lives of everyone they know and either get help or OD. In any case the damage is reduced. The violence, crime, and corruption go away.
As I said, conservatives have been brainwashed into this insane War on Drugs and my position is NOT libertarian, you will please notice.
Let the adverse effects of drugs stand as their own deterrent.