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Professor and writer Mary Grabar had a recent piece at Pajamas Media responding to the death of a man who choked on a baggie of marijuana. Grabar wrote a critique of libertarians’ advocacy for legalized marijuana in response. FrontPage’s Associate Editor, David Swindle, engaged Grabar in debate at NewsReal Blog. Grabar was gracious enough to respond at NewsReal. FrontPage presents this dialogue thus far.
David Swindle:
At Pajamas Media today Mary Grabar, a thoughtful writer and an acquaintance, has an effective piece in response to a recent tragic death which has reopened an important issue that’s not discussed nearly enough:
A truly sad story about a 23-year-old Panama City man dying while being subdued by Bay County sheriff’s deputies has reawakened the debate about the legalization of marijuana. On December 11, 2009, Andrew Grande choked on a plastic bag full of marijuana as police attempted to arrest him on a violence charge. A video shows police valiantly trying to save his life once it became apparent that he was having difficulty breathing.
Two talk show hosts in Panama City have been discussing the case in the early morning hours — and revealing a divide on the right. Burnie Thompson of WYOO, the libertarian, has called Grande “a casualty of the war on drugs” and contended that because marijuana is illegal, Grande felt “compelled” to swallow a bag of it to avoid punishment.
Mary then presents a number of pro-drug war arguments and rebuttals to common libertarian, pro-legalization points. She highlights the traditional role of alcohol and the countercultural nature of marijuana. She points out that marijuana use hampers,
the work ethic, emotional engagement, sexual inhibition, and the ability to reason.
She notices that her stoner students who advocate for drug legalization do so in an incoherent fashion. She invokes conservative icon Barry Goldwater. (However she fails to mention that Goldwater supported medicinal marijuana in his later years.)
I’m sorry Mary but I remain thoroughly unpersuaded.
The arguments for drug legalization are numerous, and so as to avoid being dismissed as one of Prof. Grabar’s Jeff Spicoli students I’ll focus on one. (If Mary would like to engage the issue further then perhaps I’ll offer more.)
A single question for which all self-described “conservatives” should have a fairly similar answer: what is the purpose of the government as the founders intended?
The federal government does not exist to make the world better. It’s not here to eliminate poverty. (Look at inner city ghettos to see how effective the Left’s efforts have been.) It’s not supposed to try and make sure that more people can buy homes. (Look at the economic crash of 2008.) The founders never intended a government which would require all citizens to buy health insurance. (Look into a crystal ball of how the next few years will turn out.) When government is shifted toward bringing about some form of utopia it fails.
The purpose of government is to protect a free society. It’s to allow for a country in which the individual is sovereign, in which every man and woman can pursue his own destiny as they see fit. If they want to create jobs and raise families they can. If they want to destroy themselves then that’s their freedom.
So how does throwing people into jail for growing and consuming a plant fit into this understanding of government?
It does not.
Thus it makes sense that Goldwater was hardly the only important conservative whose opinion of marijuana softened over the years. William F. Buckley, Jr. went even further, advocating full-blown legalization in 2004. Perhaps it’s best we close with some of his words on the subject:
And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend. If all our laws were paradigmatic, imagine what we would do to anyone caught lighting a cigarette, or drinking a beer. Or — exulting in life in the paradigm — committing adultery. Send them all to Guantanamo?
Legal practices should be informed by realities. These are enlightening, in the matter of marijuana. There are approximately 700,000 marijuana-related arrests made very year. Most of these — 87 percent — involve nothing more than mere possession of small amounts of marijuana. This exercise in scrupulosity costs us $10-15 billion per year in direct expenditures alone. Most transgressors caught using marijuana aren’t packed away to jail, but some are, and in Alabama, if you are convicted three times of marijuana possession, they’ll lock you up for 15 years to life. Professor Ethan Nadelmann, of the Drug Policy Alliance, writing in National Review, estimates at 100,000 the number of Americans currently behind bars for one or another marijuana offense.
…
Such reforms would hugely increase the use of the drug? Why? It is de facto legal in the Netherlands, and the percentage of users there is the same as here. The Dutch do odd things, but here they teach us a lesson.
Mary Grabar:
I will respond to your post, David, because it, like many of the posts in response to my column points to a very important divide in the conservative/libertarian movement. Thank you for the opportunity.
Your post also points to a war of ideas, a war that conservative strategists have ignored to their peril. We lost the last election because we lost the culture war. I make that claim based on my experience of teaching college for almost twenty years. I have been in the middle of the culture wars, have seen its impact on young people and seen it played out on the political field. Make no mistake about it: The Left strategized for the long term and outlined their plans in 1962 in the Port Huron Statement.
Conservatives have been playing defense ever since. My tenured Leftist colleagues declare victory publicly and loudly.
Many, including those on our side, have simply forgotten the traditions and values that inform the fight. 
Many of the young have been brought up on the liberalism now reigning in our culture. It is a culture that says that all values are relative, that all matters of morality are a function of personal choice. This also seems to be the tack of a certain strain of libertarianism.
These libertarians rightly want to be left alone to live their lives. They want to be free to make their own decisions about health care and how they spend their money. They want to be free to protect themselves with firearms. I agree with all these goals.
But I often see something very reactionary in the responses that are made whenever laws affecting such social issues as drug use or prostitution come into play. An apt display is radio talk show host Burnie Thompson’s reference to Andrew Grande [who swallowed the bag of marijuana] as “a casualty of the war on drugs.” The statement, of course, ignores a central tenet of libertarianism, which is personal responsibility.
I think it also points to a certain absolutist world view, which goes something like “if we put any restrictions on marijuana all our freedoms are at peril.” But this absolutist worldview is based on an either/or fallacy. It promotes anarchy more than libertarianism. It assumes that we are a society of atomistic individuals; it can exist only in a cultural vacuum. The fact that I am accused of advocating “collectivism” because I favor keeping marijuana illegal I think is indicative.
It is displayed, I think, by your proclamation,
“The federal government does not exist to make the world better. It’s not here to eliminate poverty. . . . It’s not supposed to try and make sure people can buy homes. . . . The founders never intended a government which would require all citizens to buy health insurance. . . . When government is shifted toward bringing about some form of utopia it fails.”
I agree on all these points, but fail to see how they are connected to the legalization of marijuana. Certainly, our government regulates substances it deems dangerous, doesn’t it? It regulates certain drugs by prescription and outlaws others that are deadly. That government regulation of a substance considered harmful will necessarily lead to infringements on all our freedoms seems to be a slippery slope argument.
Like many of my detractors, you point to the harmlessness of the drug. But people are not thrown “in jail” for “growing and consuming a plant.” Surely, you would have to agree that marijuana is not just a “plant” that you would grow in your garden, like spinach. In fact, a better analogy might the one of growing poppies to produce opium.
Part of the absolutism is the refusal to acknowledge any of the dangers associated with marijuana or the concessions I made about the dangers of alcohol. In my column I compared smoking marijuana to drinking alcohol, which I think is apt, depending on the strain of marijuana. Both are used socially, both are relaxants, and both can be addictive. The debate centers on legality.
Although marijuana is illegal, the punishment for its possession (alone) usually is very light. What legalization proponents (including William F. Buckley) don’t say is that many of those perpetrators serving prison sentences supposedly for “drug possession” have pled their cases down or are repeat offenders with long histories of other crimes, including violent crime. So in effect they are not serving sentences for smoking a joint in their living rooms as many imply.
Those who do smoke in their homes (without any punishment I might add) say, “Look, I smoke every day and pull in six figures and pay my taxes, don’t beat my wife or kids, etc., etc.” That may be true. It is also true for functioning alcoholics.
Again, the similarities between the two substances, and I revert back to an argument based on tradition and specifically our Judeo-Christian heritage. I openly—and non-relativistically—assert that it is a heritage that is superior to all others. I base my arguments on this premise.
The fact that I am accused of being a theocrat for simply invoking our cultural heritage and advocating for its values again points to an absolutism on the part of these libertarians, and I think, implicitly a rejection of the Judeo-Christian foundations of our culture. Many of my detractors are absolutely hostile to the mere mention of the Bible or of why we should pay attention to it.
Such an attitude I think springs from an ignorance of history and a lack of appreciation for the roots of our culture, the very culture that supported the founding of this republic. Like T.S. Eliot in “The Idea of a Christian Society,” I make the argument on a broad philosophical basis. You can be an atheist and still appreciate the virtues of our Christian heritage. If you are philosophically honest, you will see that, as a worldview, Christianity was the first that admitted that “all men are created equal.” I came upon this fact, not in reading some religious tract, but an article by Francis Fukuyama in the liberal magazine the Atlantic.
In order to invoke the founding fathers, one needs to understand the cultural tradition they drew from. They read deeply and drew upon the rich traditions of Western thought. They agree with George Washington as he says in his Farewell Address, “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. . . . Who that is a sincere friend [to our form of government] can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?” I believe I was pointing beyond the isolated use of marijuana to the foundations.
Barry Goldwater in The Conscience of a Majority bemoaned the decay of morality, of the acceptance of the once “unthinkable” that “eventually could bring about the destruction of our free society”: “The ‘unthinkable’ says automatically that because of ‘changing times’ we not only must alter our old methods of living, but we also must change all of our previously held attitudes. Thus, you find a vicious and growing attack directed at every tradition, every standard and belief—no matter how fundamental it might be to an ordered society of freedom and justice. . .” I think we see this now with libertarian arguments that argue along lines divorced from tradition, standard, and belief. The “unthinkable” also concerns those behaviors that on their face have no harmful effects. One of these might be public nudity. I can imagine an “unthinkable” scene, of nude citizens in the public square smoking joints. It’s funny, but logically consistent with the arguments of those who would legalize marijuana and all other non-harmful behaviors. Our culture since Goldwater’s writing has accepted many, many other once “unthinkable” acts, usually to the detriment of our society.
For arguments based on practical reasons, I encourage readers to look up the comments of my friend Tina Trent who blogs on crime. She gives many good reasons why legalization won’t lower crime rates. In my column, I also linked an article that indicated that the legalization of marijuana in certain states has given young people the idea that it is safe. It is not safe. It has serious health effects. It is addictive. I personally know people who smoke it every day. They started young. One started after being in a motorcycle accident and used it for pain. These are people who are supporting themselves, true. But they are people who are operating way below capacity, who have lost the ability to think logically or to care enough to argue logically. Their emotional relationships are shallow. They have lost initiative and that fighting spirit that defends the idea of liberty.
Why now put the imprimatur of legality on a substance that does this?
One of the things that sets our culture above others is that we are a nation of laws—reasonable laws. And laws for possession of small amounts of marijuana need to remain at the misdemeanor level. This does not take away our freedom to use drugs in a legitimate manner, nor detract from our other freedoms.
The culture warriors of the 1960s used a multi-pronged approach to effecting a change in “consciousness.” One of those was to present the “unthinkable” in libertarian terms. Nudity, sex out in the open, orgies, destruction of public places, desecration of art—why not? The acceptance of all kinds of behavior, including some extremely self-destructive behavior, by my students worries me. They cannot articulate reasons why some behaviors—even those that seemingly affect only individuals—should be condemned. They cannot articulate reasons why our culture is superior to others.
Conservatives need to focus on educating young people who have been kept in ignorance about how our culture and country have provided them the freedoms they now enjoy. As Goldwater said in 1964, there is no freedom without law and order. The debate about drug laws entails larger questions about cultural values. To argue in an arid, absolutist manner is to indicate a certain disregard for our heritage.
As I see it, this debate really is about more than whether or not you smoke a joint in your living room—which for all practical purposes neither I nor the cop on the street much cares about. What I do care about is this one more capitulation in the Culture Wars.
David Swindle:
Mary Grabar’s response in our debate about drug criminalization has clarified her opposition to marijuana legalization in an important way. She concluded her essay with these words:
As I see it, this debate really is about more than whether or not you smoke a joint in your living room—which for all practical purposes neither I nor the cop on the street much cares about. What I do care about is this one more capitulation in the Culture Wars.
Mary is certainly intelligent and reasonable enough to acknowledge what is plainly obvious: marijuana is not functionally different in its effects than alcohol or tobacco and we should not be too concerned with adults using it responsibly in their own homes.
So why keep it banned? Why all the numerous arguments highlighting marijuana’s negative qualities? Simple: because in Mary’s estimation to allow legalization would be to grant a victory to the counterculture. And, well, we as conservatives can’t have that. Or can we?
Here’s an argument that might be rather counter-intuitive: conservatism and counterculture are in no way mutually exclusive. I’ve blogged about this before here in talking about author Douglas Rushkoff’s brand of Robert Anton Wilson-influenced libertarian counterculture:
“Wait a second,” some people must be thinking. “Isn’t the counterculture the same as the Left?”
Sort of. Not really. No. The Left as defined by Discover the Networks and the Freedom Center is a political movement. The “counterculture” is a cultural movement. The two frequently overlap (they certainly did in the ’60s when both had their heyday), and countercultural thinkers and leftist thinkers are often friendly. (Hence, Rushkoff frequently recruits feminist author Naomi Wolf to write blurbs for his books.) Counterculturalists are more about shifting the culture, not the political system. They promote their art, music, film, drugs, sexuality, spirituality, and philosophical ideas while often passing on the political sphere.
A good example of the difference is in the person of David Horowitz. In the ’60s he was a leftist, not a counterculturalist. He argued for a Marxist political system while basically adopting the cultural norms (nuclear family, no dope smoking) of American society.
Is the Conservative Movement a political movement or a cultural movement? Is it about conserving the political ideas of the founders or the Judeo-Christian, “traditional” culture of the founders? (This is hardly an either/or decision.) And if it is about preserving a traditional culture, is it going to use the tyrannical power of government to do it? (And spend billions of taxpayer dollars?)
My answers to these questions should be obvious. I’m concerned about defeating the Left’s political machinations. And that should be the primary concern of conservatives. It’s not pot-smoking counterculturalists that are sending Guantanamo detainees to Illinois. The push for socialized medicine comes from leftists. (Harry Reid and Howard Dean are in no way “counterculture.”) And the political fight against these problems can only be won by a functioning coalition comprised of many peoples with many cultures who are united by a common political understanding of the role of government — the one I articulated in my previous post.
Mary wrote in her rebuttal that,
We lost the last election because we lost the culture war.
No we didn’t. John McCain lost to Barack Obama because of politics, not culture. Obama was a more exciting candidate who ran a much more effective campaign. It’s that simple.
A conservatism that can win is one which understands itself and defines itself as a political movement, not a cultural one. To do otherwise is to begin to destroy a functioning coalition that has been vital to defending America since Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley Jr., and Ronald Reagan brought it together in the 20th century. Conservatism must take the same approach to culture as the Constitution does — neutrality. Such an attitude worked for the document which has guided and protected our country for centuries and it will work for the Movement who has the same objective.
Mary Grabar is invited to respond further if she so chooses.
The FDA?
It's a controlled substance…the government's position on pot is clear. It's bad, has no value, and should be stamped out.
Here is a statement from 2006:
http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/viewaddition...
There will be “professional” resistance to decriminalization for some of the same reasons it was made illegal in the first place. If you make it legal as a medicine for everyone, the drug companies would lose a lot of money.
They will make the “no medical use” excuse as long as they possibly can.
“I thought you were against laws against smoking pot?”
I am for decriminalization yes. I am glad they repealed prohibition but I don't want my airplane pilot drunk either. It's not either none of smoke pot or we are all forced to smoke pot.
“Drug test? You mean we can't trust their good judgement as you pointed out of my own judgement?”
Again…with people responsible for other people's lives, it's NOT ABOUT THEM.
I hear you Traeh. But I don't think it really is the “strongest” argument.
The strongest argument is that the voters, the people “on the ground” in the affected area got to decide for themselves and vote on it. That's the point. Yes, individual rights are important. But I also belive that We the People are smart enough to decide for ourselves what is appropriate and what isn't. It's one thing when a monarch or a tyrant living in some castle decides for US what rights we have and don't have. It's a different thing when those who live in the trenches decide for ourselves.
There are no resident religious extremists on NewsReal. There is only YOU calling anyone a religious extremist who disagrees with your progressive views and opinions. There is only YOU claiming that anyone who evidences the slightest religious sentiments is a “fanatic.” Your pasted comments here regarding my comments on the previous thread are shrill fabricated lies.
Here's the blog he's referring to folks… You decide.
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/12/22/pro-drug-war...
“There is only YOU claiming that anyone who evidences the slightest dissenting sentiment is a “fanatic.” “
That's an outright lie and you know it…
Here's this idiot's latest comment there:
“All I’ve ever asserted to you is that atheism inevitably leads to totalitarianism.”
Here's a recent series I wrote for NewsRealBlog:
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/11/01/lord-monckto...
And this putz has called me a Marxist over a hundred times.
Go figure !
What's the series link for Swemson? I didn't post a comment there. Or are you trying to appeal to your superstar status as a commentator on the blog site. Lends you some credibility, ey.
Why don't you post a link to the place where I first implied that atheism and Marxism are linked, so that we can put the comment in context with no debate? Please do. I'd love to go back and review that moment. I'd also love for people to be able to read your postings on that one.
But, any argument with you as been so unimportant and unstimulating overall, that I can't remember exactly where that post occurred.
Why don't we look at this link, Swemson? This does a better job of exposing who the liar here is. This link starts with my opinion which Swemson conflates into the hyperbole about how I called him a Marxist. Of course, that label in and of itself does sound silly taken out of context — which he does.
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/10/23/comment-of-t...
This is the good one I was looking for. It puts the context into the “Marxist” debate and shows what it really is. It also shows you insulting numerous people, receiving reactions from them. It includes you little leftist posting about the intellectual deficiencies of religious people.
Plus, it includes the comment from the moderator who called you down for commenting violations and noted the fact that you often step over the line on occasion.
They are just pulling your chain, they know very well that there is a lot of space between a total ban and allowing anyone, anytime to light up.
Tactics like these are used by peoplewithout an argument to toss back at you. So they pretend to find a flaw in yours that an idiot child can see is fallacious. I think it helps them sleep at night.
Good lord, the fallacies that abound in your comment stun the mind without the need for pot.
“1920's prohibition actually had a huge positive impact on our society in attaching a stigma to alcohol that has persisted and intensified in the past 1/2 century. In this our society has been a world-leader. “
I find it hard to believe that anyone with even a slight clue about history could claim such a silly thing! EVERY single issue that the prohibition was supposed to cure or alleviate got WORSE, MUCH, MUCH worse, after it passed.
It was supposed to curb under-aged drinking; instead it made drinking clandestine and EASIER and more attractive for youth.
It was supposed to improve the public health; instead it ushered in an era of rot-gut booze, 200 proof grain spirits and wood alcohol, all of them leading to much pain, sickness and death.
It was supposed to alleviate the corruption associated with the trade; instead it helped take the Mafia from a small-time operation to the nation-wide shadow government of a shadow society of drinkers that included what may have ended up being a majority of the adults in the country!!!.
It was supposed to improve morality; instead it gave criminals money to pursue their perversions and a clandestine society to play their sick games in out of the sight of the law.
But to you that was all okay dokey because you THINK that some kind of stigma was attached to drinking after prohibition? May I ask WHY you think that before the 1920’s there wasn’t a stigma attached to a regular drinker? I find it clear back to Shakespeare and earlier in the history I studied.
“The point is made that criminalizing pot has an impact similar to Prohibition's effect on alcohol. It promotes the belief that pot is harmful to the chronic user's health. This contributes to a stigmatization and attaching a stigma is an important and beneficial goal for society generally.”
It is what to whom? You have GOT to be kidding! Attaching a false stigma to ANYTHING in order to manipulate the public cannot be a good thing to anyone except a fascist control freak of a government! Have you not read your Orwell, Sir?
“It is, of course, true that there are no 'casual users' of pot or other illegal drugs in prison today. That 'full prisons' argument is complete fiction. The actual criminal charges need to be measured and not the end result of a plea-bargain agreement.”
What reality do YOU live in? In the one I inhabit there are many folks in jails and prisons who did nothing but get hassled by a hostile cop while carrying a bag of pot. I have spent time in court and poked into different courtrooms to see what actually goes on. I have SEEN a harmless old man given 2 months for simple possession. How do you think he fared in jail surrounded mostly by those real criminals you seek to punish? I have SEEN an assembly line of prisoners forced to declare guilty or not guilty in seconds, any attempt to do or say anything else resulted in their being sent back to jail to wait for another court date. I have SEEN a judge tell them that should they plead innocent to the possession charges they will be in jail for months before coming to a decisive trial.
Most disturbing I have heard a D.A. dismiss the concept of likely innocence with the words “They jury will convict, let’s do it.” And no, that wasn’t a typo, he said “they”. This was in the South where, white or black many supposedly educated people seem to view English as a second language.
“The criminal costs to society of criminalizing pot that we measure are very small. “
In your opinion you mean? As far as it impacts your little circle of reality? Forgive me, but I was under the impression that a bedrock feature of our legal system was the ideal that it is far worse to imprison an innocent person than to allow a criminal to go free.
Are you willing to be one of the innocent victims of the system in order to prove your dedication to Law and Order? If someone plants a kilo of weed in your trunk the next time you go to Mexico to load up on cheap tequila will you smile and go to prison willingly, knowing that the system is right and your coming introduction to the joys of emotional, physical and sexual abuse is for the best good of society?
“Could pot be regulated such that it is dissociated from criminal activity – probably not because it will always be produced by small growers who will sell an unregulated and untaxed product. I think pot is different from tobacco in the profitability of the product to the small grower. “
By that logic repealing prohibition should have totally failed to remove the criminal elements from the alcohol industry.
It seems there is a flaw in that idea as well. Alcohol is even easier to produce on a small scale than pot! Marijuana takes light, which takes open air or power, both of which make the operation less than private. I can make killer booze and no one need know a thing until I roll out the barrel!
“I do wonder why don't we have “boutique tobacco” cigarettes. We have 'boutique pot' growers but not small “boutique” tobacco farms. “
Tobacco has a lot more intense cultivation and a MUCH more involved curing process. It lends itself better to the large operations as opposed to the “micro” model.
“The question is interesting in that it tries to address the issue of small entrepreneurialship and pot. The point is that many pot growers, distributors, and retailers use pot as a cheap entry product for capital formation applied to other criminal activity.”
Say what? Have you been reading old Dragnet scripts again? If you had a low risk enterprise that provided a nice income why would you want to move into a high risk field? Since the medical marijuana law pot dealers in Ca. that ONLY sell pot have little to worry about. But, let them start selling meth or something else, WHAM!
Your theory needs some evidence beyond the anecdotal.
“Pot might be better compared to Crystal Meth in that each is a favored product of 'boutique' (small) businessmen. Pot should be compared to both alcohol and crystal meth in their impacts on society as well as on individuals.”
Why? Cooking meth is dangerous and requires conspicuous amounts of various ingredients. It also involves a horribly addictive drug that is toxic as hell. How many people sell their mother’s insulin kit to get pot? How many mothers let their baby starve to buy a joint? Seen a stoned dad screaming at his beaten child recently?
Please enumerate these EQUAL impacts on society OR individuals. I seemed to have missed them.
Sarah Palin stated: “I will not come in between a person and his doctor” in reference to medical marijuana.
I think that in all common sense, pot is harmless. In fact more harmless than alcohol.
Who s heard of a wife being beaten up by a stoner husband or kids being abused by a pot smoker.
Of course it is not 100% harmless. It makes some people lazy and it surely isn't healthy when smoked regularly, as anything burning inhaled in one's lungs cannot be healthy.
And the pot lobby is also being unreasonable when declaring that pot is the cure for all and the greatest medicine ever visited upon man. Silly.
Pot can reduce pain and increase appetite. Features which do help many people who consume it for medical reasons.
But imagine the electoral advantage a republican candidate could earn if endorsing the idea of de-criminalization. Especially if put into the health context.
Palin seems to understand this and is clearly toying with the idea at present.
Young voters are easy to get with the right message. And in all honesty who would be harmed if pot could be smoked by adults (not in public areas) in the country which prides itself on personal choice and liberty. Not to mention the resources freed to fight the real dope, meth and crack which do kill kids and destroy whole communities.
Pot isn't even a narcotic…
It's a mild hallucinogen.
Blah blah blah, same old story, same stupid nonsense…
Why are you cruising over here now ? Is it because you were literally laughed off the blog at NewsReal.. where 6 of your recent posts were hidden by the moderator because so many people gave you negative ratings.
You pontificate about things you know noting about, you describe in detail what I think, what my motives (are there any?) are, and where my beliefs, or lack of same lead me. Everything you say is a fact, and everyone who doesn't agree with you is a Marxist, and you don't even have the brains to understand our Constitution…
It even seems like your fellow bigots have abandoned you. Don't you have a life? Is this all you have you pathetic clown?
Go hump someone else's leg for a change, you became boring a long time ago.
Because I'm going to continue dogging you whenever you want to go around posting self-pity parties and bashing people of faith who don't agree with you.
You've already admitted that you are willing to be a hypocrite if it furthers the cause. Should I show you the comment?
Here you go with the Constitution thing again. Proving yet again that you don't really believe it's about opinion. You are right and everyone else is wrong, throughout history. Anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. Even the Supreme Court. Even the founding fathers. You don't have unlimited individual rights. You never have. Nor is there anything anywhere that says you do. Nor does God say you do – like you actually believe in God anyway.
I'm not pulling anybody's chain.
I implied nothing sarcastically about allowing anyone to light up anytime. What would be the point in that? Instead, I suggested the very reasonable issue of an airline pilot lighting up in his off duty time on a regular basis over the course of his career.
The issue is that we are talking about limiting usage even with the legalization. And the legalization is about pot. What about other drugs?
[...] that, he sent me the following links that relate to his dialog with Grabar (one, two, [...]
Ok ill bite normally just read comments. In your message you state that use by minors rose. Ill take this point as true because im at work and can't research. The main thing though is that marijuana was only decriminalized not regulated and distributed like alchol and tobacco. The reason this decriminalization does not work is because lack of regulation. In the last 19 year we have reduced teen smoking and drinking through strict regulation of the distribution of these goods. However with marijuana we gave the distribution to drug cartels and dealers which dont check IDs and they dont care who they sell to.
“Imagine forcing everyone in our country to smoke pot till they got addicted. That would be Al Queda's wet dream — stoned homeland security. That works for terrorists that is for sure.
I'm not suggesting that we are forcing pot on everyone but I am pointing towards the direction of where our society would go if you can buy it like a cigarette”
You know what i imagine when i think of being able to buy cannabis like a cigarrete?
I imagine a time when i wont have to go to a shady gehto deal with a shady dealer that may or may not have put some other drug on my cannabis. As for the addictiveness of pot i have stopped smoking it cold turky 3-4 times. I start using it again when i want to for recreational purposes sometimes its years in between uses other times months. Marijuana is addictive just like sex anything good is worth repeating.
Legalization of pot wont force anyone to use it. Use will rise for a limited period but plane off and teen use can be regulated similar to alchol and tobacco. Which is more effective then how drug dealers regulate who they sell to which they dont. If you have a15 year old ask them how long would it take for them to get pot and how long for beer. Most of the time pot is the easier substance to get.
I really don't care about the stats per se. There are all kinds of stats all over the place, and stats can be rigged or outright lies. The point is that the voters decided for themselves. They voted to legalize and they voted to un-legalize.
That's the nice thing about America. We can argue, we can debate, we can do one thing, and then undo it. And that's what it's all about. Not about the power of the majority over the minority, or the power of the minority over the majority. It's about deciding by representational government.
they never legalized they decriminalized the difference is in a legalized version the distribution would have been regulated. decriminalized means figure it out for yourself and btw they couldnt legally sell it so thats one of the problems with decriminalization.
Very well said. Thank you.
Okay. Maybe the next time the voters vote, they'll legalize it. It's a states issue.
Pot is unlike alcohol or tobacco and is like food. Because too many Americans have chosen to be food addicts and are obese as a result, should we ban food for all Americans? Of course not.
Mary's on a slippery slope saying the conservative movement should be based on “Judeo-Christian principles” that becomes diluted into “Christian principals” a few sentences later, a common technique used by religious extremists.
Swindle could have made a better case for the legalization of pot but didn't.
Medical marijuana already exists. It's called Marinol, a prescription drug. It comes in the form of a pill and is also being studied by researchers for suitability via other delivery methods, such as an inhaler or patch. The active ingredient of Marinol is synthetic THC, which has been found to relieve the nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy for cancer patients and to assist with loss of appetite with AIDS patients.
Marinol has been studied and approved by the medical community and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the nation's watchdog over unsafe and harmful food and drug products. There are no FDA-approved medications that are smoked.
Morphine, for example, has proven to be a medically valuable drug, but the FDA does not endorse the smoking of opium or heroin. In a similar vein, the FDA has not approved smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes.