It's Time to Rethink Marijuana Laws

Philadelphia Enquirer ^ | July 9, 2007 | Kathleen Parker

[Eric Blair 2084]

WASHINGTON -- News that Al Gore's 24-year-old son, Al Gore III, was busted for pot and assorted prescription pills has unleashed a torrent of mirth in certain quarters.

Gore-phobes on the Internet apparently view the son's arrest and incarceration as comeuppance for the father's shortcomings. Especially rich was the fact that young Al was driving a Toyota Prius when he was pulled over for going 100 mph -- just as Papa Gore was set to preside over concerts during a 24-hour, seven-continent Live Earth celebration to raise awareness about global warming.

Whatever one may feel about the former vice president's environmental obsessions, his son's problems are no one's cause for celebration. The younger Gore's high-profile arrest does, however, offer Americans an opportunity to get real about drug prohibition, and especially about marijuana laws.

For the record, I have no interest in marijuana except as a public policy matter. My personal drug of choice is a heavenly elixir made from crushed grapes. But it is, alas, a drug.

Tasty, attractive and highly ritualized in our culture, wine and other alcoholic beverages are approved for responsible use despite the fact that alcoholism and attendant problems are a plague, while responsible use of a weed that, at worst, makes people boring and hungry, is criminal.

Pot smokers might revolt if they weren't so mellow.

Efforts over the past few decades to relax marijuana laws have been moderately successful. Twelve states have decriminalized marijuana, which usually means no prison or criminal record for first-time possession of small amounts for personal consumption. (Those states are: Alabama, California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Oregon.)

[Eric Blair 2084]

Just a couple of things before the debate begins:

1. I haven't smoked pot since the first Bush administration. The crap just made me paranoid.

2. The first line: "News that Al Gore's 24-year-old son, Al Gore III, was busted for pot and assorted prescription pills has unleashed a torrent of mirth in certain quarters." means that Ms. Parker has been reading the right wing blogs and websites including FR and saw the thread that I am thinking of here. (these columnists don't live in a cave and I could do their job a lot better than they do if the damn pay wasn't so miserable)

3. You just have to love the logic of aging liberal hippie douchebags who think pot smoking is OK (it is in my book, just not for me) but clamor for tobacco smoker bans and higher excise taxes on cigarettes "for the greater good" to reduce smoking rates and reduce health care costs.

4. If it was President Bush's daughters who were caught with illegal contraband, would the compliant MSM who support authoritarian policies suddenly find their libertarian streak?

[bajabaja]

Has anyone every studied the health effects of smoking marijuana on the lungs? Seems to me that smoking tobacco puts one at risk of roughly 1 in 11 of contracting lung cancer. But being a dried leaf like tobacco, isn’t marijuana smoking likely to present the same or similar cancer risks?

[struggle]

One thing everyone is ignoring is that Al Gore was a seriesly hugh pot smoker in his day according to his college roommate.

I just can’t understand someone going 100 after smoking weed. You can usually tell someone is smoking weed and driving because they are usually going 10 mph below the speed limit.

[struggle]

I think someone posted a study on fr showing that pot led to lower lung cancer rates or somesuch. Remember though, cancer comes from a combination of sources. Japan has one of they highest amount of smokers and the lowest occurance of lung cancer.

[A CA Guy]

Outside of leading to other drug use and mixing of drugs, regular use does change the way your brain works on a chemical level.

The recreational drug users are big losers anyway, so who cares?

[A CA Guy]

More than likely he mixed it with other drugs but got away with only the pot being reported.

[Eric Blair 2084]

Your stats are wrong. Let’s see if anyone else repeats it before a nanny state ping is necesary.

[sig226]

I’m still trying to figure out how you can make a Prius go 100 m.p.h. without tossing it out of an airplane.

[Principled]

I remember a college roommate who drove to alabama two hours at 85 mph and came back in 3.5 hours going 54 mph. He didn’t tell me what he went to get....wonder what that was about...

[headsonpikes]

It's Time to Rethink Marijuana Laws

Re-think???

Since when has thinking, apart from a certain feral cunning, had anything to do with marijuana laws?

No thinking please, we're just civilians!

[weegee]

Al Gore Junior (the former senator and VP and college dropout) was also a pothead. But Al Gore Junior made prominant statements against sex, drugs, and obscenity in rock music (he led senate hearings into it with his wife) and during the Clinton Administration came in "tough" on drug offenders.

His son is a repeat offender.

There was no national discussion of how drunk driving accidents are from those much higher than 0.08 BA level or how smoking bans are a new prohibition or how an adult at Chuy's should've refused the Bush daughters illegal service instead of serving them and then calling 911 and the press.

But the Inconvenient Son gets busted AGAIN and now we need to look at changing laws. And they say that Paris Hilton got a break.

[Son House]

Marijuana will just Posion the mind.
I didn’t like it,
I didn’t inhale(I only contracted my diaphram),
and it won’t enhance the quality of life.

[Onelifetogive]

The younger Gore's high-profile arrest does, however, offer Americans an opportunity to get real about drug prohibition, and especially about marijuana laws.

Why not rethink prescription drug laws and speeding laws while we are at it? Why is it that pot-heads only care about the pot laws?

[weegee]

You can usually tell someone is smoking weed and driving because they are usually going 10 mph below the speed limit.

Isn't that how he was busted the first time? Driving something like 20mph at night with the headlights off and the sunroof open in cold weather?

Maybe this time he dusted his pot with PCP. Or maybe he wanted to go faster than 100MPH but was restricted by his car and the pot.

[Thrownatbirth]

To me, the pot is almost inconsequential when compared to the dangers of those pills. That’s what addicts, incapacitates and kills.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

States should be allowed to legalize marijuana. Period. Legalize the damn drug and stop the insanity. Under these certain conditions:

(1) Buyers must be 21 & show valid state ID or driver's license (must be state they live in no out-of-state purchases)
(2) Can only purchase during daytime hours
(3) Fine or jail sentence if caught giving it to minors
(4) DUI laws still apply

Place a 5% sales tax surcharge on it, and states wouldn't have to confiscate my hard-earned money as much to support their socialist lifestyle.

P.S. - Legalize industrial hemp too, for clothing and fuel, so our farmers can have another crop to grow. Drugs such as cocaine and heroin should remain illegal.

[Lancey Howard]

Artist: Association
Song: Along Comes Mary
(Tandyn Almer)

Every time I think that I’m the only one who’s lonely
Someone calls on me
And every now and then I spend my time at rhyme and verse
And curse those faults in me
And then along comes Mary
And does she want to give me kicks, and be my steady chick
And give me pick of memories
Or maybe rather gather tales from all the fails and tribulations
No one ever sees

When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch

When vague desire is the fire in the eyes of chicks
Whose sickness is the games they play
And when the masquerade is played and neighbor folks make jokes
At who is most to blame today
And then along comes Mary
And does she want to set them free, and let them see reality
From where she got her name
And will they struggle much, when told that such a tender touch of hers
Will make them not the same

When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch

And when the morning of the warning’s passed, the gassed and flaccid kids
Are flung across the stars
The psychodramas and the traumas gone
The songs are left unsung and hung upon the scars
And then along comes Mary
And does she want to see the stains, the dead remains of all the pains
She left the night before
Or will their waking eyes, reflect the lies, and make them realize
Their urgent cry for sight no more

When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch

[toddlintown]

“I just can’t understand someone going 100 after smoking weed. You can usually tell someone is smoking weed and driving because they are usually going 10 mph below the speed limit.”

Not if you’ve got a couple 10/600s of Vicodin in you. You’ll drive down the road at 100 + singing AC/DC’s “Big Balls.”

[Eric Blair 2084]

The recreational drug users are big losers anyway, so who cares?

"The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and comcribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent."

That is how Billy Sunday, the noted evangelist and leading crusader against Demon Rum, greeted the onset of Prohibition in early 1920. We know now how tragically his hopes were doomed. New prisons and jails had to be built to house the criminals spawned by converting the drinking of spirits into a crime against the state. Prohibition undermined respect for the law, corrupted the minions of the law, created a decadent moral climate-but did not stop the consumption of alcohol.

Milton Friedman From Newsweek, May 1, 1972

[CGTRWK]

Seems to me that smoking tobacco puts one at risk of roughly 1 in 11 of contracting lung cancer. But being a dried leaf like tobacco, isn’t marijuana smoking likely to present the same or similar cancer risks?

The most useless heavy potheads I have ever met didn't smoke a tenth as much as even a moderate tobacco addict does. No kind of smoke is healthy but it would stand to reason that smoking pot a few times a day is not as destructive as getting a tobacco fix every 30 or 40 minutes.