| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 9:01:51 AM | No doubt about that.
There is one huge reason to not legalize it, if not the biggest reason. Money! By keeping it illegal the amount of money local communities make off of fines for pot is huge.
I know a guy who got popped for possession about 12 years ago, just a couple joints worth. That cost him a few hundred bucks. Then last year he got popped with a pipe. Thats all just a pipe, no pot, just a pipe with pot resin in it. This time? 1000 dollars in fines, loss of license for six months (which gave another $100 to the DMV) and 7 days in jail. I think thats just rediculus.
Too many people believe the propaganda and not the facts about pot. | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 9:09:57 AM | | I think it's stupid using police resources to catch potsmokers when they should be out catching criminals. Pot is harmless. | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 11:20:18 AM | | Pot is NOT harmless! I had some ash fall out of my pipe and burn a hole in one of my favourite shirts. That wouldn't have happened with alcohol. | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 11:49:22 AM |
I think it's stupid using police resources to catch potsmokers when they should be out catching criminals. Pot is harmless. At the same time, it's odd when pot users make a complaint like this... if we make a conscious decision to break the law, then we really have no one to blame but ourselves for the consequences, no? | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 1:02:40 PM | I just think it's how the laws are enforced and the persons sentencing.
Here in VA if you get caught with any drugs. Which could be resin on a roach clip, or a joint or any other illegal drug. It's mandatory that your license be revoked for at least 6 months. This the state says is a deterrent. But a person could go rape or rob someone at gunpoint, and not lose their license. That is no deterrent, just another way to get money. In fact I do not know of any other crime other than driving related that you lose your license over. The fines are rediculus.
It is illegal, I do not argue that. But I do believe that the police could do more good by concentrating on more serious criminals. Robberies, rapes, murders, auto theft, assults, go unnoticed but at least they caught those two guys smoking a joint. Whew, I feel safer now.
But another reason that should be stopped is how the local police departments get federal funding by the amount of drug arrests they make. There's no financial gain for the police to go after harder criminals. Some states actually split any money deamed "drug money" confiscated, whether proven or not to the police, court, and DA's office.
The system is just bass ackwards. We need a judicial overhaul. | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 5:09:58 PM |
It is illegal, I do not argue that. But I do believe that the police could do more good by concentrating on more serious criminals. Robberies, rapes, murders, auto theft, assults, go unnoticed but at least they caught those two guys smoking a joint. Whew, I feel safer now.
This is because the "war on drugs" - just like the "War on Terror" and previous crusades against commies and liberals - is an ideological crusade, rather than a public health or safety issue. It's a sexy issue with a lot of political clout behind it.
And, like all good crusades, there's no way to know when it's over, because "the enemy" is ubiquitous, yet ephemeral. It will go on, waxing and waning as needed, as long as it serves its purpose: to distract the voting public from real issues.
How's yer economy doing down there, anyway? Good thing you didn't elect one of them tax-and-spend liberal types. You might have ended up with better public health care, education, and housing. I like the Bush plan better: run up trillion dollar deficits by sending the poor and disenfranchised overseas to fight wars so that the corporate trusts and their shareholders can pay to put higher walls around their gated communities, and widen the gates to accommodate their ever-widening SUVs... and we'll all sing "Kumbaya" in our happy, drug-liberal-and-muslim-free world.
(wow... zero to full on rant in three paragraphs. Gotta switch to decaf) | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 5:24:42 PM | | Oh, ok.. It makes perfect sense that we chase potheads instead of terrorists. My bad. I'll just pay my taxes and shut up, Ma'am. | |
|
| |
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 5:36:44 PM | Marijuana is not an easily taxable commodity, make that happen, and watch Big Tobacco step in and lobby for legalisation.
BTW, I am going to work at a site wher the urine test is right on entry, and they can refuse work to anyone with traces of weed from a month back. A MONTH. Yet a guy could get totally hammerred the night before he operates a heavy crane or whatever. It's B*llshit. | |
|
| |
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 5:42:01 PM |
BTW, I am going to work at a site wher the urine test is right on entry, and they can refuse work to anyone with traces of weed from a month back. A MONTH. Yet a guy could get totally hammerred the night before he operates a heavy crane or whatever. It's B*llshit. Oddly enough, it's not illegal to get hammered.
It really baffles me when people get so bent out of shape about this (that you can get drunk but not stoned.) If you don't agree, work to change the law (in whatever way you want) but being disgruntled because people are working within the framework of current laws just baffles me. | |
|
Nithog
|
Joined: 12/22/2004
Msg: 62 | |
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 5:53:24 PM | Yes. And I don't even smoke anything.
It's ridiculous that it's illegal, it's a waste of court time, police time.... so on.
Not to mention how much money the govn't would make if they sold it.. Somehow.. Like a beer store.
I don't see the difference between beer and pot. | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 6:02:22 PM | | I've smoked pot in the past, but don't touch the stuff now. Not only should it be legal, but it should be taxed, and sold like cigarettes or alcohol. Legalize all drugs, too, and prostitution. We're stupid to be jailing all these people, when we could be making money off of it. I don't buy that if it was legal, it would increase drug users. If a kid wants to smoke a doobie, he's going to get it, whether it's legal or not. | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 7:15:03 PM | | I have seen firsthand in college years how friends smoked pot and just giggled their lives away. They got paranoid, crazy, lazy, just dopeheads. We don't need that happening to young people. We should do the right thing, which is to fight drugs with everything we've got. Look what happened in Amsterdam. A nation of addicts. I've seen what it does, although I have never used any illegal drug myself. NO. We can't legalize anything that is now illegal. Stronger punishment is the answer. If you go to China these drug dealers are usually taken to a remote area and receive a gun to the back of the head (bullet). They don't mess around with capital offenses. | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 7:57:20 PM | | I think the hurdle here is that there is, overall, no great benefit to legalizing it that would warrant all of what would have to be done to do so. I don't think that it's about some evil entity shamelessly denying the people what they desperately need. Know what I mean? | |
|
Lainy1
|
Joined: 7/20/2005
Msg: 66 | |
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 8:04:53 PM | meekrob
Those friends would have been losers anyway, I know people who have smoked pot for 25 years and are successful, professional family oriented people.
Amsterdam's addiction problem stems from the decriminilization of heroin, legal and free methadone for addicts not pot smokers.
Alcohol and caffeine are far more dangerous than a little herb.
e | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 8:12:28 PM |
Alcohol and caffeine are far more dangerous than a little herb.
Unless, of course, you factor in the potential of Bubba as a roommate. | |
|
Lainy1
|
Joined: 7/20/2005
Msg: 68 | |
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 8:24:16 PM | Luckily I live north of your border, and up here they save the jail time for the dangerous criminals.
Yeah Canada! | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/25/2005 8:31:38 PM | | I don't disagree that that's how it should be... I just get tired of people who, instead of working to CHANGE the law, just whine and act surprised when there are consequences. That's all. | |
|
| |
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/26/2005 1:37:27 AM | too many people think that pot is dangerous, it's just not true.
Alcohol kills thousands of people every year in drunk driving accidents, fights, suicides, etc...
Pot: zero.
Think about it. | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/26/2005 10:00:12 AM | | Ocean lover: in the US, or Canada? If it's in Canada, I'd recommend checking with the provincial human rights commission to see if that's kosher. There are a lot of things companies do that aren't strictly legal (and sometimes baltantly illegal). | |
|
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/26/2005 11:36:05 AM | As i said before The question ought to be how and why was a useful plant made illegal
please understand the full implications of Madame Justice Mary Southin's observation in regard to HOODWINKED
Key Riced T!
"We wuz ROBBED!!!"
https://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/hras/2003-June/000246.html
Justice Mary Southin wrote she has sat on "over 40 cases which had something to do with this substance, which appears to be of no greater danger to society than alcohol."
In her reasons for judgment, Southin wrote that although she once accepted "the received wisdom that marijuana offences were serious crimes," she now has a different opinion.
"I have not yet abandoned my conviction that Parliament has a constitutional right to be hoodwinked, as it was in the 1920s and 1930s by the propaganda against marijuana, and remain to be hoodwinked.
"The growing, trafficking in, and possession of (marijuana) is the source of much work, not only for peace officers but also for lawyers and judges," she wrote.
"Whether that work contributes to peace, order and good government is another matter."
tax? Are you guys nukinfutz? | |
|
late™
|
Joined: 1/9/2005
Msg: 74 | |
| |
| Should marijuana be legalized....
Posted: 7/26/2005 11:56:30 AM |
See the origins of Marijuana laws"in the 1920s and 1930s" in the U.S. Does anyone have the crib(b?) version? | |
|
Home
login 