We have been discussing the growing support for the legalization of marijuana in the United States. Now, it is being reported that The New York Times will come out on Sunday in favor of legalization — a major endorsement for the movement.
The editors concluded that “the balance falls squarely on the side of national legalization.”
“We considered whether it would be best for Washington to hold back while the states continued experimenting with legalizing medicinal uses of marijuana, reducing penalties, or even simply legalizing all use. Nearly three-quarters of the states have done one of these. But that would leave their citizens vulnerable to the whims of whoever happens to be in the White House and chooses to enforce or not enforce the federal law.”
This is a major development for legalization. However, as we discussed earlier, the greatest factor may be simple economics. Despite what has been alleged to be efforts to slow down the market and supply of legal marijuana (and the Obama Administration’s effort to cut off water to marijuana growers), a huge market has emerged for medical and legal recreational marijuana with the attending tax revenues and investments. Legal marijuana is not just becoming more socially accepted in line with alcohol but it is becoming more profitable. That could be a critical combination.
Source: Politico
Recreation. Sky diving, snow skiing, motorcycle riding, spelunking, mountain climbing, speed boating, ATV riding, airplane races, demolition derby racing, sailing, etc.
Recreation. Marijuana, cocaine, morphine, opium, heroin, codeine, amphetamine, LSD, quaaludes, ecstasy, meth, crack, etc.
What are the accident to death ratios of each category?
Law should concern behavior not substance consumption.
Driving/ UNDER THE INFLUENCE (exceeding an established threshold) of any substance should be illegal.
Behavior bears, the particular substance does not.
If alcohol and marijuana are legal and multiple other drugs are not prosecuted, ALL drugs should be legal or not be illegal as was the case less than a century ago.
Prosecution should only occur against behavior.
There’s a big difference between drinking and enjoying a glass of wine and being a wino. There’s a big difference between using and enjoying marijuana and being a pothead. I should be able to use and enjoy both, responsibly, without having my life destroyed by the legal system. Our current national approach is just insane, profoundly destructive, for nothing.
Prego, Samantha.
Nick, thanks for the heads-up.
iconoclast. Yes you would still be high. I was just speaking about the carcinogen concern you expressed. Cannabis does pose a problem vis a vis quantifying how impaired a driver is. We have a good system for alcohol but cannabis stays in your system much longer. You could test positive for cannabis and not have had used it for a week, or longer. That is a problem that must be solved.
Nick–would you not still be high? I fear someone high on pot just as much as I fear someone drunk on alcohol. The states where they’ve passed this still haven’t made me feel very comfortable about the additional intoxication on the highways. (And yeah..texting makes me nervous, too.)
Another thing: every time an issue arises some of you insist on making it an opportunity to bash the other side. Intellectual dishonesty. I’ve figured out which ones are doing this with consistency…and I scroll past anything you have to say. You are actually using links to heavily biased blogs to make your cases. Meh. Stop it. Professor Turley should toss your asses out of here because you’re all downgrading the discussion.
Use a vaporizer, no carcinogens, or use edibles and drinkables. Problem solved.
BarkinDog- You are so very right. In the late 1980s, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that showed smoking a joint (marijuana cigarette) is three times more carcinogenic than tobacco. Three times. I find this whole race to legalize pot completely suspect. Someone is poised to make money from it. We don’t yet have a satisfactory way to measure pot intoxication and driving and yet, there’s this race to make recreational use legal. But— medical marijuana is a different matter. They’ve figured out how to use it without making your kid high and there are pretty compelling cases where it is useful. Check out the CNN documentaries by Dr. Sanjay Gupta. (I personally know his producer and she’s so very professional that I can attest she did not research this subject with a pre-formed opinion.) So…dumb idea at this point to race to legalize. But–after talking with some of the folks who’ve worked on drug policy in the US since the 1970s…it is equally dumb to saddle kids with big time criminal records for less than an ounce. The other thing is..if it’s so damn safe, then just allow people to grow their own. Why not? Because then there’s no tax revenue and corporate profit to be made.
Samantha, My troll warning is in effect on this thread. One of the worst! Just sayn’.
Supak wrote: “If your personal liberties are a major concern of yours, don’t vote for Republicans.”
Well, Americans have lost more personal freedoms in the last 5 years then in the last 5 decades. So that rules out voting for Democrats, too, unless you have some underlying hatred for independents.
The New York Times has vilified Snowden and Greenwald and so it makes sense that they would go the pothead route. NSA all the Way.
Excellent. So the NYTimes has come to the same conclusion I as a 13-year old (30 years ago) came to?
Some might call me a Liberal Dog. But I agree with Squeeky above. I would add that smoking tobacco is the biggest killer in America today. Adding pot to the legal side only encourages the tobacco suicides. Suicide is not painless. Smoking is one of the worst ways to go if cancer is the mode chosen by the body. Went in dumb, come out dumb too. America– now well past its prime. Land of the Free and Home of the Brave but one cant say Braves or Redskins but one can smoke tobacco legally and impose the death threat on others. If pot heads would just eat the stuff it would be better.
Reblogged this on sea-swoon.
“Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge. ”
–Lao Tzu, 6th Century BC Chinese Poet
Well , some things people just have to experience for themselves. A country with more potheads and stoners than it already has ain’t going to be pretty. Give it twenty years and it will become another national health crisis.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
The Gray Lady finally woke up, did she?
In the two recent House votes regarding marijuana laws in the states, the vast majority of the GOP voted against them.
On easing banking laws for pot shops, it was 94% of Democrats for, and 20% of Republicans for.
The one before that, getting the DEA out of the state medicinal programs, it was 92% of Democrats for, and 22% of Republicans.
On the Patriot Act, 70% of Democrats voted against renewal, only 14% of Republicans did.
The pattern is clear. If your personal liberties are a major concern of yours, don’t vote for Republicans.
If you do, there must be some other issue, or some underlying hatred of liberals, that you care more about than your personal freedoms.
Politicians and the MSM are always way behind the public. The MSM is becoming more irrelevant every day,