While the Obama Administration continues its crackdown on marijuana, including medical marijuana, New York City is joining other jurisdictions in the decriminalization of possession of small quantities of pot. Last year, NYPD made 50,000 arrests for such small quantities of pot. The welcomed change further detaches the federal crackdown on marijuana from public opinion if not reality.
Possession of small amounts of marijuana is a crime only if the marijuana is in public view or if it is being smoked in public, but these arrests are part of the controversial policy of pat downs by police — the current debate of extensive use of the stop-and-frisk practice by police.
Just this week I was called by a friend whose teenage son was charged with other teenagers after a police raid on a party that generated a complaint over noise. He was simply in a house where officers found a small amount of pot but they still charged everyone upstairs with possession. It is obviously a ridiculous charge but I hear of such cases constantly in Virginia and other states. While some politicians insist that pot is a “gateway” drug to more serious drugs, it is more clearly a gateway to criminal records for teenagers who are torn from their schools and lives to face entirely unnecessary charges.
Source: NY Times
It just struck me how funny this is: the City is trying to make possession of a very small amount of marijuana OK while making the possession of a very large amount of popcorn NOT OK. So if you smoke up that small amount of marijuana and get the munchies, don’t go buying a large amount of popcorn or you’ll be in big trouble!
There is no industry to buy off the SGs, so why should I not rely on their opinions, especially since one came out strownly against tobacco, a very powerful lobby.
Your failure, TonyC, is in not being able to meet the
concrete criticisms of the indadequacies of your studies. You cite no specific studies, giving neither references nor do excerpts except in one brief case.
My criticism of in principal all studies based on recalled data over serveral years (a criticism proved by many studies and which is common knowledge) is not met at all by you.
Your reply is to degrade the argument to ignoring points made by me, and to attack with ad homninems.
A tactic you used some time ago in a previous discussion, by the way. You always start out on a pompous level claimeing “I can all, I am a scientist, I know all” but quickly degrade to first misinterpreting points made, and then ad hominem attacks while seeking a way to dismiss the other as not worthy of discussing with.
You don’t fool me, nor any others I feel.
Yes, one might get cancer of the respiatory tract by
smoking cannabis, but not as much risk as you have tried to make a case for. Tant pis.
LK,
The confusion and the “bought off” are indeed part of this same dynamic. Thanks for bringing up that point.
There was a man in Canada who was distilling the oils of the whole marijuana plant and curing all sorts of cancers with this oil. He gave it to people for free, but still ran into trouble with the law.
I certainly believe cannabinoids deserve intensive study for medicine, especially now with modern labs. The Schedule 1 listing of marijuana continues to stymie all the research of this useful plants chemistry.