Legalization? An Insult-Free Discussion

How do you prove DUI for a pot smoker? Wave a freaking Nutty Bar in front of them. If they salivate and lunge for it, they're high.

 

Legalize it, for no other reason than birds eat it, ants love it, goats like to play in it ...

Your link is missing, but I agree with the sentiment.

I don't smoke weed, but a lot of the arguments I see against it make little sense. The DUIs and abuse happen now, illegal or not, its not like weed is hard to get. You can't legislate common sense.

I'd take decriminilization as a compromise solution. Less politically messy common sense solution.

 

Go check the DUI rates in the Netherlands, where alcohol has a .05 ban and marijuana is legal in many instances. It's less than the U.S. There's no empirical evidence to suggest that pot is the road terror that some here are claiming.

Part of American culture is the glorification of certain activities or substances because they are banned. A good deal of our nation's problems with young people and alcohol stems from the fact that people haven't learned how to drink responsibly. In many places, like Europe, you learn to drink with your parents by a glass of wine with dinner or a cocktail when they deem you old enough and appropriate. Here, drinking is a teen-age rebellion staple and something viewed to be worth hiding from parents and other authority. There's a happy medium out there, and it's not parents buying kegs for the high school or lighting up with the kids.

Big Tobacco, the alcohol lobby and the federal government that porks the War on Drugs to death actually are unified in wanting to stop marijuana's legalization because it would hurt all of them in different ways.

 

Mini-threadjack Alert!!!

The craziest thing about the US drug laws is how it makes hemp illegal to grow.

BTW, the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act is what many people believe really got the ball rolling on demonizing cannabis...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Marihuana_Tax_Act

 

Actually, marijuana is illegal in the Netherlands. The authorities look the other way at what goes on the coffee shops. Try dealing on the street and you'll get busted.

I'm ambivalent about all this, but I will cite one observation. Over 20 years of being in this business, I've noticed one thing without exception: Co-workers who were regular smokers were, without a doubt, also were the ones who made the most mistakes at work, who skipped the most assignments and were tardy more often than those who didn't.

Don't know if it's coincidence or not, but it was true in every case.

 

They tend to spend the most on candy too.

 

I have no doubt of that. But I also wonder ... what were the rates in those categories for people who drank too much or were alcoholics?

 

I haven't worked with any known alcoholics, so it's hard for me to say. I can't remember any teetoatlers on any of the staffs on which I've worked, however.

 

Well I have worked with a couple of heavy drinkers and they had all of the above-mentioned problems. I've always worked with potheads and they were pretty damn good. I guess it's all in who you know. That being said, no one should be going to work high OR drunk. That's common sense and it's not a valid reason for being against pot.

 

For the record, I don't smoke the j. In the cases where your behavior impacts other people or your job, well, society has other means of dealing with those issues that make a law unnecessary. If you smoke weed to the point where your work suffers, why should that be treated any different from a situation where you drink to the point where your work suffers?

In some ways this is like the gay marriage issue to me. If the dudes next door are going Brokeback, what harm does that do me? None. And if they're firing up? Ditto.

 

I doubt the level of support among the general populace for legalization is as lopsided as it is in this poll.

 

I have no doubt of that. But I also wonder about the stigma people will feel if they come out publicly and say they support legalization even if they don't smoke.