This is an opinion site...you can listen or not listen to me if you wish... the first amendment lets us all at least pretend that we can speak with authority...but it doesn’t mean that it should force anyone to agree that I am an authority.
I speak from 28 years experience as an RN, experiences and perceptions admittedly colored by my personal views and take on morality and ethics. I share them...I sign my name to my opinions knowing that slings and arrows will come my way.
The second amendment guarantees the right to bare arms...the constitution does not guarantee the right to ‘bare pot”. Weapons owned by the general populace counterbalance efforts by those who would tyrannize the populace. Your attempt to compare my personal views on drugs with those who would take our guns is a non sequitor.
I value life and work in a field that attempts to blow the faintest sparks of life back into flame. There are nurses I know and recognize that do a much better job at it than I can...but I try to do what I can. I hate abortion and I hate life sapping drug addictions. I’ve seen too much of the destruction of what mind altering substances
do to especially weaker minded or to families and individuals of all economic backgrounds.
There is an 800 lb gorilla in the room, the question that many avoid that is the “why” of it all! Why even use pot and other drugs. Why is there a need for ‘escape’? A clear mind and conscience is a true gift.
2 Timothy 1:7
7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
There is your “800lb gorilla”, the whole “crux” of the matter! People run from God and truth which can produce a whole lot of anxiety. Drugs are one way folks use to deal with that anxiety. The drugs fade away and reality crashes back in again...made all the more worse as the body becomes accustomed to the drugs.(the body tries to enforce reality via it’s flight or fight mechanisms, hence the body tries to make itself more immune to the mind altering effects of drugs, forcing the user to use higher amounts of substances over time to achieve a diminishing high).
As for authority, as for truth, you can believe me or not or hold to your own opinions....it’s the “American way” after all!
James Madison actually argued against having the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. He warned that it could be abused to attempt to establish that the States and the People only have those rights explicitly enumerated, and the federal government all powers not explicitly denied.
Kind of sad that it comes to pass here.