I think medicinal marijuana has pretty well been accepted as helping cancer patients cope with nausea and other side effects of chemotherapy. I hear is it good for some other medical problems, too. I think it should be legally available for same.
However, in California, Weed users are gaming the system. They are using a law designed to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes to acquire it for recreational use.
Personally, I prefer the use of MaryJane over the use of alcohol. I would ban alcohol and make weed legal-based on my personal experiences with each. With alcohol I’ve experienced parental abuse, people being killed by drunken drivers, getting into bar fights, puking, hangovers, …vs getting mellow, enjoying sensory experiences, etc. with marijuana.
However, I am law abiding and believe strongly in that, too. If a state wants to make marajuanna available for recreational use, then they should pass a law and allow it. If they make it illegal for recreational use, then it is illegal.
The same attitude that encourages gaming the system for free disability and other free social benefits (including Handicapped Parking stickers), and Medicare rip-offs is being encouraged here. We are becoming an anti-government society that does not feel that we are the people; the government. We need to participate in governing ourselves to get democracy to work properly. Do you know who your Palm Coast and Florida representatives are? Did you vote? Use it or lose it!
3 comments:
If you can show me ANYTHING that the drug war has accomplished when it comes to reducing drug related death, disease, crime and drug use that has significantly improved any drug related area over a long period of time I’d appreciate you telling me what it is.
The Constitutional right to freedom of religion, free speech, a free press, to keep and bear arms, to be secure in your person, house, papers and effects against unreasonable search and seizure, to life, liberty and property, to be protected from having your property taken by the government without due process of law and without just compensation, to confront the witnesses against you, to be protected from excessive bail, excessive fines, cruel and unusual punishment, to vote and others have been unjustly denied to millions of Americans in the name of the drug war.
In 1914 when all drugs were legal in the US, 1.3% of the US population was addicted to drugs. Despite over 1 trillion tax dollars being wasted, millions of Americans being arrested, increasing harshness of penalties and all the other harms that have resulted from our failed drug prohibition policy, today 1.3% of our population is still addicted to drugs. That’s 0% improvement.
Because of the inflated prices of illegal drugs CAUSED by prohibition the profits between the point of production and the point of sale can be as much as 17,000%. Drug prohibition is a self perpetuating policy that draws people into the illegal drug trade like a magnet because of the enormous profits. Alcohol prohibition created the same problems as every other drug prohibition. The year alcohol prohibition ended violent crime fell by 65%. Regulating drugs is NOT a solution to our true drug problems. Regulating drugs IS a solution to our illegal drug TRADE related crime and violence problems. With rational drug regulation the authorities are in control of the drug trade instead of violent gangsters. That’s a huge step in the right direction and once regulation is in place we can effectively deal with our real drug problems. When was the last time you heard of alcohol dealers getting into a shootout? I bet it was when alcohol was prohibited. Regulation equals control. Prohibition equals crime and corruption.
More information about drug laws from Just Say Know:
Using Internet Explorer web browser: http://jsknow.angelfire.com/home
With All Other Browsers: http://jsknow.angelfire.com/index.html
FL voters: Please go to http://www.pufmm.com/ print, sign and mail the FL medical marijuana petition. No matter where anyone stands on recreational use of marijuana, preventing a Dr. from providing any safe and effective medicine they think will help a patient goes against the very foundations of human decency. THANK YOU!
Because of our prohibition policy bad laws have been put on the books that make it illegal for IV drug users to obtain clean needles. This results in AIDS and hepatitis being spread unnecessarily into our non drug using society on a huge scale.
Take a look at the way the Swiss have dealt with their heroin problem. You can watch a lot about this in the video titled “Jack Cole Interview” on the Just Say Know website (link below). In Switzerland they set up government clinics where heroin addicts can go and get pharmaceutical grade heroin. If you don’t have the money to pay for the drug it’s free. That instantly put every illegal heroin dealer in that country out of business… they can’t compete with free. Anyone that wants heroin can go into a government clinic up to 3 times a day and inject it. There are medical personnel on hand and anyone that wants to kick their habit is given counseling and help toward that goal. The results are that there has not been a single heroin overdose there in more than 13 years. Switzerland has the lowest AIDS and Hepatitis infection in all of Europe. Crime fell by 60% because no one is stealing or prostituting their self to pay for their heroin and after a 10 year study, they documented that there has been an 82% decline in new heroin users. Please tell me why our drug war seems like better policy than that. No one went to jail and no one got killed. This program is far less expensive than what we are doing and far less harmful.
True drug addiction of all types should be handled as a medical problem not a criminal problem. Drug use should not automatically be considered abuse or addiction. If a person kills or drives when they are intoxicated or breaks any legitimate law, we already have laws on the books to deal with those problems and if a real danger to society is recognized like it was with drunk driving, then those laws certainly should be rationally adjusted accordingly. Trying to lock up every drug user or eradicate every plant that produces illegal drugs from planet earth are completely unattainable irrational goals. We simply cannot afford to lock up every drug user and even if we could the vast majority go back to using drugs when they are released. Some countries even went so far as to execute drug users and even that has not succeeded in accomplishing a “drug free” country. At some point we have to realize that a certain percentage of people are always going to use drugs and implement policy that minimizes the harms without devastating society.
Most drugs are made from weeds that without prohibition would be of far less financial value. According to a fairly recent documentary by Walter Cronkite, all the plants needed to supply an entire year’s worth of the heroin consumed in the US could be grown on about 50 square miles almost anywhere on earth and the entire year’s worth of heroin could be transported in a single cargo plane. Doesn’t it make more sense to have doctors treat the addicts and rational laws to deal with drug consumption and the related harms like drunk/intoxicated driving than to try and stop heroin or any other drug’s production? It has to because law enforcement has only been able to prevent the production or transportation of about 10% of the heroin and all other illegal drugs according to their own statistics.
More information about drug laws from Just Say Know:
Using Internet Explorer web browser: http://jsknow.angelfire.com/home
With All Other Browsers: http://jsknow.angelfire.com/index.html
FL voters: Please go to http://www.pufmm.com/ print, sign and mail the FL medical marijuana petition. No matter where anyone stands on recreational use of marijuana, preventing a Dr. from providing any safe and effective medicine they think will help a patient goes against the very foundations of human decency. THANK YOU!
The goals of the drug war are to reduce drug related death, disease, crime and drug use. It has accomplished NONE of those goals after almost 100 years of prohibition policy, over 1 trillion tax dollars wasted, ever tougher criminal penalties, arresting millions of Americans, removing an ever increasing list of our Constitutional rights and all the other effort and resources that have been put into this failed wasteful and harmful unproductive policy.
The drug war is a real war and it is an unnecessarily harmful, completely unwinnable, and wasteful war. It is in fact a war against a certain large percentage of our own population that chooses to different degrees and with a wide range or results, to put a wide variety of different substances in their body and for a wide variety of reasons. It’s being fought in our communities with real guns, military styled raids against nonviolent citizens, teargas, dogs and virtually every other tool of war available.
Despite the drug war and all the money and efforts that have been put into it, drugs today are more potent, more readily available and often less expensive than they were in 1971 when Richard Nixon coined the phrase “war on drugs”. The U.S. had 200,000 prisoners in the 1970s, it currently has over 2.3 million, making it the largest incarcerator in world history. The U.S. accounts for 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of its prison population.
Right now we are installing 900 new prison beds and hiring 150 new correction officers every 2 weeks. Here in the “land of the free” for the first time in history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison. 2,319,258 Americans were incarcerated at the start of 2008. The United States now incarcerates more people than any other nation on earth, more than even far more populous communist China. Over half of our federal prisoners are serving time for a drug offense. Largely because of the drug war, arresting Americans is becoming big business. We now have companies attempting to privatize our penal systems. These companies are huge supporters of drug prohibition and any other laws that cause Americans to be incarcerated. The more Americans behind bars, the more money they get from the government.
Marijuana which accounts for roughly half of all drug arrests, never was a serious threat to society, families, or individuals and it never will be. Because of that bad law being implemented based on lies by a few people that stood to gain financially from marijuana’s prohibition and them intentionally deceiving lawmakers, literally millions of Americans that choose to use that plant for ANY purpose are criminalized needlessly. No one in the entire world of any age in all of recorded history has ever died from the ingredients in marijuana. In the US we arrest someone on a marijuana charge every 38 seconds.
Many big corporations that see marijuana as competition contribute heavily to promoting marijuana prohibition. Alcohol, tobacco, petroleum, cotton, timber, chemical and pharmaceutical companies, just to name a few see marijuana as unwanted competition and of course the government contributes billions every year to keep their prohibition cash cow alive and well. I’ve seen estimates that contributions toward drug prohibition may be as much as 1 million dollars per day. However, once people learn the truth about the issues they overwhelmingly are in favor of revising drug policy. That’s why 13 states have passed medical marijuana laws already and several have decriminalized. The federal government recently revised its policy about prosecuting medical marijuana patients that are in compliance with state laws. That’s a huge step in the right direction. It proves when enough voters take action rational progress toward regulation and away from prohibition is being made.
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