Posted on 08/02/2002 1:38:04 PM PDT by bat-boy
So thoroughgoing is the unofficial ban on debate of the nation's drug laws that American politicians prefer smoking pot to talking about it.
They typically try marijuana as teen-agers or young adults, suffer no consequences, then go on to maintain as elected officials that anyone with the temerity to do what they did should be arrested and maybe even jailed.
Once and probably future presidential candidate Al Gore, for instance, spent much of his post-adolescence smoking dope and skipping through fields of clover, according to biographer Bill Turque.
He somehow still managed to become one of the most notoriously uptight and ambitious politicians in the country. But Gore, like nearly everyone else, thinks smoking pot should be a criminal offense.
Not everywhere in the world is there such conformity on drug issues. Much of Europe is reconsidering its drug laws - in Britain, the Labor Party recently proposed downgrading the possession of marijuana to a wrist-slapping offense. Meanwhile, in the United States "the war on drugs" grinds pointlessly on.
At least there is some fresh air in the media. John Stossel took an ax to drug-war clichés in a special report on ABC this week.
Drug Enforcement Agency Director Asa Hutchinson had to insist wanly on air that, despite all the billions of dollars spent and countless thousands arrested, the war just hadn't yet been fought hard enough.
He sounded like one of those diehards who argued during the Cold War that socialism hadn't failed, it just had never been truly tried.
When it comes to marijuana, it's unclear why anyone would try to stamp out its use in the first place.
Alcohol and tobacco kill hundreds of thousands of people a year. In contrast, there is no such thing as a lethal overdose of marijuana.
Yet federal law makes possessing a single joint punishable by up to a year in prison, and many states have similar penalties. There are about 700,000 marijuana arrests in the United States every year, roughly 80 percent for possession.
For the vast majority of its users, marijuana is nearly harmless and represents a temporary enthusiasm.
Most marijuana users are between the ages of 18 and 25, and use plummets after age 34, by which time children and mortgages blunt the appeal of rolling papers and bongs.
Since drug warriors have a hard time arguing that marijuana itself is dangerous, they instead rely on a bank shot: Marijuana's danger is that it leads to the use of drugs that are actually dangerous - it is a so-called "gateway drug."
Not so. According to a report by the Institute of Medicine, "Of 34- to 35-year-old men who had used marijuana 10-99 times by the age 24 to 25, 75 percent never used any other illicit drug."
And users simply don't get addicted to marijuana the way they do harder drugs. One key indicator of the addictiveness of other drugs is that lab rats will self-administer them. Rats won't self-administer THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.
Two researchers in 1991 studied the addictiveness of caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, heroin, cocaine and marijuana. Both ranked caffeine and marijuana as the least addictive.
Despite the heated rhetoric of the drug war, on marijuana there is a de facto consensus: Legalizers think marijuana laws shouldn't be on the books; prohibitionists think, in effect, that they shouldn't be enforced.
A compromise would be a version of the Dutch model of decriminalization, removing criminal penalties for personal use of marijuana, but keeping the prohibition on street-trafficking and mass cultivation.
That, of course, would require that politicians apply some of the energy they once devoted to enjoying marijuana to discussing forthrightly its legal status. But they prefer to smoke, then keep forever mum.
* Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review, 215 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10016; e-mail: comments.lowry@ nationalreview.com.
The idea of 3000 Amendments is actually not half bad!
A CA Guy: ANOTHER drug thread by you. I see a pattern!
Reality Check!
The pattern is a snowballing effect gaining people that have done a reality check to know that the WOD should be stopped and especially they know that marijuana prohibition must stop. Coupled with the fact that reality has always been that marijuana prohibition should have never happened in the first place, glaringly clear in light of comparison to the tremendous health hazards from using alcohol and tobacco yet they are legal, and the destructive failure that alcohol prohibition was, those realities come screaming through as the demon-weed illusion crumbles. In other words one reality has always been that politicians and bureaucrats created, thru propaganda, the demon-weed illusion and then foisted marihuana prohibition on every person -- the entire country. A second reality has always been that marihuana prohibition should never have existed in the first place.
When any propaganda-fabricated illusion is foisted on people it is destined to inevitably crash and burn as simultaneously the reality that was hidden behind the illusion comes screaming into focus, ultimate justice is served. ...Declaring the winners/citizens to prosecute the losers/politicians/bureaucrats.
There will be no mere slap on the wrist and "we'll take over from here guys -- your fired." No. For a quick accounting of what their War on Drugs has cost, just the tax dollars to fund it is over a trillion dollars wasted, then there's the cost to each victim, their loved ones and lost productivity that would have benefited society. That massive amount of destruction warrants several orders magnitude more than a slap on the wrist to the guilty. Yet redemption is possible.
Recall that any and all propaganda-fabricated illusions will inevitably meet similar ultimate justice. But know that there is one clear route the guilty value destroyers can take to redeem themselves. That route is for them to consult in anyway necessary as directed by the team of Carl-Ichan corporate raiders they bring in to clean out government waste and abuse.
The "Genie" is Out of the Bottle
When this country was founded, there were no laws prohibiting morphine, opium, tobacco or whiskey. Beer was the beverage of choice for lunch and even breakfast. Nitrous oxide was inhaled at parties, which was where Georgia's Crawford Long got the idea for anesthesia. Yet, as you point out, most people were godly and community-minded.
Laws breed lawlessness. Without "vice" laws and their social apparatus, people live or die based on their capacity for self-governance. Thus, people with integrity survive, prosper, and form communities of like-minded individuals according to the level of indulgences which they will tolerate.
Vice laws stunt our cultural evolution and actually reward the behavior they seek to ban by making the rewards for purveying vice even higher.
19 posted on 8/2/02 5:14 PM Eastern by SteamshipTime
"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."
Harry J. Anslinger, testimony to Congress, 1937
"When any propaganda-fabricated illusion is foisted on people it is destined to inevitably crash and burn as simultaneously the reality that was hidden behind the illusion comes screaming into focus, ultimate justice is served up. ...Declaring the winners/citizens to prosecute the losers/politicians/bureaucrats."
The rest of that post is above at 103.
Making yourself a real hoot worth laughing at... but just briefly. Then you're just another bore.
Does heroin grow naturally?
Opium grows naturally and is the main ingredient in Heroine. Using it is almost as harmful and addictive as heroine. Also, coca leaves are to cocaine as opium is to heroine. I believe you'd benefit by rethinking your natural versus man-made argument,
When the government has the power to tell you what drugs you must not ingest, they also have the power to tell you what drugs you must ingest.
Regardless of the parents, government has been making many children take Ritalin.
SunStar: I just do not accept a man-made law against possessing a god-given, natural plant of ANY kind. Man-made drugs, on the other hand, should remain illegal. There should be a distinction between the two.
Lowelljr: Todays pot has been so high-breed that it is not normal. It is basically man made. Same thing with hard alcohol of today, it has been distilled to such strenghth that it is no where where Biblical days.
"If drugs make you stupid what does that say about someone who declares war on them, inanimate objects that they are, and is losing?" Utterly losing, I might add.
I've read your posts on this thread and have to wonder why you think any inanimate object that by nature has no power of its own to harm any person should be illegal. I mean, there's a long list of inanimate objects than a person can pick up and use to harm themselves and or other people. Guns are inanimate objects that never harmed anyone. Last century a hundred-million people were killed by people with guns. Governments alone killed sixty million of their own citizens. Guns don't kill -- people kill. Should people be illegal? Putting aside natural disasters and having out-competed animals, people are by far the biggest potential danger to themselves and other people.
When we focus on identifying which group of people in general does the most harm to other people and society then we can look closer to identify the specific criminals. That has been done and the conclusion is that upper-tier politicians and bureaucrats are the most destructive people. That's true in United States and all other countries.
The same arguments for outlawing drugs are used to attempt to outlaw guns (i.e., some people misuse them and use them to harm others so they should be illegal).
And guns are a gateway to militias.
Therefore all structures with concrete must be taken down since they must be against the Constitution by your way of thinking.
Have you ever heard of the 9th and 10th Amendments, ignoramus?
-ccm
Yep, primo buds don't shoot back.
BUMP:
The greater the number of laws and restrictions,
the poorer the people who inhabit the land.
The sharper the weapons of battle and war,
the greater the troubles besetting the land.
The greater the cunning with which people are ruled,
the stranger the things which occur in the land.
The harder the rules and regulations,
the greater the number of those who will steal.
I don't do drugs, not even alcohol or caffeine. Do you drink alcoholic beverages or coffee? If so it appears you're a druggie.
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