Talk about your strange bedfellows, Congressmen Barney Frank (D – MA) and Ron Paul (R – TX) have collectively introduced a bill. It’s HR2306 “To limit the application of Federal laws to the distribution and consumption of marihuana, and for other purposes.”
Really? We talked about this stuff like this when I was in college. The older I got the less likely it seemed. Now Andrew Breitbart’s “Big Government” website is calling them the Doobie Brothers!
The bill won’t legalize pot, but it will make federal law enforcement respect local laws. If a state says pot’s OK the DEA and other federal agencies will have to steer clear. California’s pot dispensaries immediately come to mind.
No matter what you think of pot is its mere possession a proper cause for incarceration?
I remember a friend getting busted for pot possession at SUNY Stony Brook back in the late 60s. Forty years later does he have to disclose his felony?
During the recent Republican debate in South Carolina Congressman Paul spoke about the legalization of all drugs (going well beyond this proposed law).
“How many people here would use heroin if it were legal? I bet nobody would.”
And, of course he’s right.
As weirdly enlightened as this bill seems it’s going nowhere! House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith said it won’t clear his committee. It’s dead-on-arrival… a pipe dream.
“… a pipe dream” – Ugh!
This is a b.s. bill. Talk to former drug addicts of the hard core stuff. Every single on of them will tell you their roads to heroin started “innocently” with pot. The single best argument against legalizing any more drugs is the current legal one.
Nicotine in the form of cigarettes. We know the dangers of that noxious weed. Yet millions still light up. Alcohol is legal. Look how many abuse that to someone else’s death on the roads. I shudder to think what having high drivers would do to road safety.
There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.
Clearly, people who use marijuana overwhelmingly do not move on to other drug use. That’s why the number of people who use marijuana will always be more than 10 times greater than the number of people who use cocaine, heroin, etc.
The only real gateway that exists is created by marijuana prohibition
I read one report that says that nearly 100% of major drug users and addicts, as well as nearly 100% of the criminal element in the US started their lives on the gateway drug of milk!!!! Maybe we should ban that as well?
Seriously though a majority of pot smokers past and present smoked pot and little else, just as most people who have had an alcoholic drink don’t go on to become alcoholics. The current laws against driving while impaired would fit those who chose to smoke and drive. Though most of the people who smoked that amount that I know fell asleep.
The comment Geoff makes of being arrested once in your life for having a joint or two in your possession meaning you are listed as a felon for the rest of your life is well noted.
It is simply this,
1. Addiction is a self diagnosed, self treated disease. Only by willingness and true belief of your addiction can you trully be ready to recover. No matter how much you get arrested, it doesn’t matter. only your willingness will make you ready for it.
2. NOT every one one smokes pot is an addict, just like not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic. If this was true, no matter who drank we would be a nation of drunks. But there are people who enjoy a glass of wine or a bottle of beer or a shot.
If you eliminate the obvious, whatever is left over no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
If you have the same substance, with different results logic dictates the problem lies else where (In this case with the individual consuming it)
The War on Drugs has been as successful as the War on Poverty or the War on Terrrorism, and even less so since the killing of OBL!
Billions of dollars have been wasted and millions of lives ruined because of the very human desire to alter our consciouness. Every civilization in history has used various substances to this effect. Only in the 20th Century has Government tried to put an end to it, and the results have been disastrous! The Prohibition on Drugs has worked as well as the Prohibition on Alcohol of the 1920’s, which is to say not at all!It’s only gone on much longer! All each succeeded in doing is to ruin innocent lives and put trillions of dollars in the hands of criminals! The Government could save billions by ending this nonsense and reap a bonanza by taxing marijuana just as it does tobacco & alcohol, both of which pot is no worse than!
It is time to end the Madness!
I agree with you mot. Just the wasted money alone would be a wind fall. but coupled with the money they can bring in could do it’s part for the recovery of our economy.