Posted on 02/20/2002 6:08:45 AM PST by Magician
My first reaction is WHY NOT?
It’s a question of common sense.
Our marijuana laws do not work. They never have, and they never will.
Their stated goal being to rid society of the so-called affliction of marijuana use, the harsh reality is that since prohibition, usage rates have increased drastically.
Either we legalize it, and fast, or we get busy locking up millions of Canadians. With one out of three Canadians admitting to having tried marijuana, we may very well be locking up our best and brightest, not ruined by drugs, but ruined by the criminal sanctions that go with getting caught for what amounts to a common social practice. I can’t even begin to count how many elected officials admitted to having used it, yet everyday hundreds of average citizens are arrested for marijuana offences.
So, why are there so many users, and why is marijuana so easy to acquire?
In a strange twist, prohibition is to blame.
When a product is illegal, the profit margin skyrockets. Prohibition turns an agricultural product (a plant that’s very easy to grow) into a drug worth its weight in gold. Without prohibition, marijuana would cost pennies to produce. No wonder some adventurous modern day prospectors are setting up in their own back yards and basements to try and get in on the gold rush. Who could blame them? They aren’t hurting anyone, they’re making good money, and most of all customers are willing, grateful participants in the process.
We must come to grips with the fact that the demand for marijuana is never going away and find a better way of dealing with it. Imagine the billions of dollars spent on marijuana and enforcement going to more noble causes like health care and other social programs.
The general public understands this. Support for legalizing marijuana recently reached the much sought after 50%+1 majority. Recent polls show that 51% of Canadians support legalizing marijuana, a slim, but very real majority.
And with more and more advocates, the trend is just taking off. Several European countries like Belgium, Switzerland, Holland and Germany are successfully leading the way towards tolerance with legislation aimed at helping drugs users, not by treating them as criminals, but as human beings deserving of respect. There is no reason why Canada should lag behind. We should be on the cutting edge of this new international movement.
Now it is time to step onto the world stage and assert our sovereignty by legalizing marijuana once and for all. I would venture a friendly wager that the international community would stand by Canada on this issue. Our inevitable success would then make us a world leader in marijuana reform—an example for others to follow.
(I can hear it already): But marijuana is dangerous!
For the record, marijuana is NOT dangerous. It is no worse than coffee and much safer than alcohol. Marijuana is also much less addictive then cigarettes. Chronic use is rare as the majority do not smoke it everyday. Try that with tobacco!
What little risks that may be present with marijuana are no worse then any other risks deemed "morally acceptable". Should we ban music because, if played too loud it might hurt your hearing?
French fries and gravy are far more dangerous for our health then marijuana. Should we ban fast food and send overeaters to mandatory fitness camps?
Who are we, as a society to judge? What exactly are marijuana users guilty of? Who are they hurting? What have they done wrong?
To deny marijuana users the right to choose what they want to consume is nothing more than an arbitrary decision based on moral values, not public interest......
Legalization does not mean promoting use. It means providing medical care, support, education, quality standards and proper labeling. We then trust that responsible adults will make their own choices. This is what makes legalization healthy for our society. At least legalization would force retailers to be accountable for what they sell.
Under prohibition, the government has waived its responsibility for the well being of marijuana users, and is only responsible for their arrest and persecution.
This total disregard for their rights drives a wedge between them and the rest of society and breeds contempt for our legal institutions. If society does not tolerate pot smokers, how are pot smokers supposed to tolerate society? This does not make for a healthy social climate and even less a basis for sound policy.
If a policy so deeply flawed as prohibition not only fails to reach its goals, but actually makes the situation worse, it should be radically changed.
Prohibition is the problem, and legalization the solution.
In places where marijuana is tolerated use actually decreases.
Of course, don’t count on the politicians to have the courage to change the law—it’s not in their nature. Look instead to the Supreme Court. That is where most significant legal change comes from anyway. Gay rights and abortion issues were resolved there, and, some time this year our land’s highest court will also rule on the constitutionality of marijuana prohibition. I strongly urge government to make a wise decision and end this madness now. Millions of bright, productive, patriotic pot-smoking Canadians are counting on it.
Most sincerely, Marc-Boris St-Maurice Le Parti Marijuana
Oh I get it, you just want to debate the imbeciles because you can always win. :-)
Those other guys are on total God trips: A CA G, on this thread alone, has proved himself to be the mother of Carrie . . . "evil, evIL, EVIL!!!" (ad nauseum).
The other guys don't know much about God if they come onto every thread and bear false witness. I always ask them why they think God wants them to use guns on people who have vices, they never answer. They will get a chance to stand in front of him and say, "Don't worry God, I took your place down on earth when you were tardy in cleaning up the mess, aren't you proud of me? I handled the stuff you obviously couldn't handle, so where is my room?"
It should be an interesting scene.
Then why do you spend 99% of your time here attacking libertarians, you are the most anti-socialist people in America. You attack libertarians, who usually shock most conservatives, who are , in fact, moderate socialists these days.
Your argument does not hold up.
So you wanting to stick your nose in other citizens business by putting them in jail for using non-approved substances doesn't count?
More hypocritical BS.
So I assume since you didn't answer that you are/were a drug user too. Anyone who never used drugs would be proud to say so regardless of their stance on the unconstitutional WOD.
Their days of man-handling our culture and country are just about over.
Their existence comes closer to proving Jung's 'collective conscience' theory than any other demographic anomaly.
How come the crime rates started to skyrocket when drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, and heroin started to find their way into the American culture in the mid-60's?
Dane, there's something called demographics that can answer that. Criminologists have determined through years of research that the prime "crime committing" age group ranges from 18-26, with a sharp dropoff after that. In the 1950s, the 18-26 cohort (Silent Generation) was very small in number (due to the sharp falloff in birth rates during the Depression era 1930s.)
Contrast that with the colossal Boomer 18-26 cohort which first hit 18 in 1963-64 and first passed 26 in 1971-72, the last Boomer cohort passing 26 in the mid-1980s, and that correlates closely with the high crime rates of that era.
Moreover, existing drug law enforcement was relatively lax until the late 1960s, when Dick Nixon created the model for the WOsD that exists today, and even as bad as it was, his approach was more treatment-centered than prison centered, the latter which Mr. "I never inhaled" and Reichsfuehrer McCaffrey backed to the hilt.
LOL! I guess I am a "bigot" now, because I think that drugs should be illegal.
Well at least you are consistant Libertarian, they think the Boy Scouts are "bigots" also.
"Even bigots(Boy Scouts) have rights," he(Santa Barbara LP Secretary Robert Bakhaus) said.
Laugh all you want. The fact remains that Leary is simply a private citizen. My tax dollars don't pay his salary, and he's not the one setting public policy. You've done nothing but try to change the subject and try to deflect attention away from the issue of the government lying to us about marijuana from the very beginning. You can't make a case defending marijuana prohibition based on any kind of objective criteria, because you don't have any. All you have is ad hominem attacks and a lot of emotional hand-wringing about the evils of pot that have no basis in fact.
Bwahahahahahahahahahaha.....yeah, it's not like people ever get legally loaded out of their mind of booze. Boy, if brains were dynamite, I doubt you'd be able to blow your nose...
No. I wrote you come from your position through prejudice---your prejudice that holds that everyone who smokes pot is a member of the Drug Culture, and ergo a leftist who supports socialism or marxism. If you think your devotion to your stance makes you a bigot, that's your interpretation, not mine.I assume, then, that you believe smoking pot makes one a leftist?
I think that's an interesting question that probably nobody could fully answer, but there are some points so obvious we can actually probably agree on them.
The fact that these drugs were illegal evidently did little or nothing to prevent a major increase in their use and in crime. I presume you won't argue with that, will you Dane?
In fact, this illegality presumably contributed if not caused the increase in drug use in several ways. You, Dane, seem to think that a major factor in the increase in drug use was the rise in the counterculture: tune in drop out or whatever. This was kids rebelling. As I've posted numerous times, having drugs illegal makes them attractive to kids who want to rebel. Even you, Dane, agree don't you that one major reason drugs were attractive to 60's rebels was because they were illegal and shocked the moral majority?
Also, you agree don't you that the fact that drugs were illegal raised their prices dramatically-- thus causing great financial incentives for dealers? Under this financial incentive, and also the incentive because of the illegality to get more compact and thus shippable products, the "product" was much improved in the '60s and beyond: pot was bred to be more potent and tastier, cocaine was refined and ultimately processed into crack, and so on.
You know, Dane, it took a while for alcohol prohibition to escalate crime, and everybody already used alcohol. My guess is drug use ramped up in large part because of the drug war, and crime naturally followed.
Why crime has dropped in the last decade is another question. The rise in gun ownership and concealed carry probably has something to do with it. Demographics in the population probably had something to do with it. An academic paper published recently proposed the rise of abortion may have had something to do with it as many of the babies who were aborted would have been prone to develop into criminals. Its a controversial proposal, but not necessarily wrong. I suspect also that the drug trade has become more mature. As the drug trade ramped up in the 60's and 70's, the gangsters fought over turf and clients. But wars are expensive. Its plausible to me that by the 90's the drug trade became so mature that the cartels and what not were more often able to settle their differences in less expensive and violent fashion.
And the fact is that Timothy Leary promoted drug use to a whole generation and a liberal media and entertainment industry gave him a big microphone, just becuase he wasn't with the government in the 60's doesn't excuse that fact.
You can put your head in the sand and use technacalities(he wasn't part of the government) to say Timothy Leary wasn't influentiual, but using those tactics makes you look like that you think that the Earth is flat.
What a thought-impoverished universe they inhabit.
Your obsession over unlimited police power is so extreme it's downright pathological. The sun rises and sets over unlimited police power. All the important questions of life--and all of the solutions--come down to the use of unlimited police power eventually. Power uber alles. You and your Trojan horse-WOsD buddies are sanctimonious liars and pathetic cowards, like most closet authoritarians, hiding behind the iron fist of the State.
I assume, then, that you believe smoking pot makes one a leftist?
Uh no I am just using facts. It seems that the vast majority of people who want to prostelytize the drug culture come from the political left. (Barney Frank, Geroge Soros, Timothy Leary, the ACLU, the Green Party, ELF(Earth Libertarion Front) etc. etc.)
Sure there will be exceptions such as William Buckley, but that still doesn't negate the fact that drug legaization is a major tenet of the American left. If those facts are "predjidice" to you so be it, that's your problem.
Still more emotional drivel. You don't have a case to make, so you label my arguments a "technicality", and try to divert attention away from questions you don't want to answer. You want to talk about Leary's influence, start a thread. Don't try to turn this thread into one to make it look like you have something rational to say.
If drug legalization is such a major tenet of the American left, why hasn't my state, Massachusetts---as Ground Zero of the American Left---legalized drugs, or even decriminalized marijuana, or even pushed for it? Why isn't it one of Ted Kennedy's or John Kerry's major issues?
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