Posted on 01/11/2012 9:29:52 AM PST by Hemingway's Ghost
Contempt for the Constitution is not a virtue.
Only if the Feds get out of the marijuana regulating business.
You said a few posts ago, "there’s a good argument that drugs should be regulated by the states, not the Fed," which would seem to mean that the Feds SHOULD get out of the marijuana regulating business. Are you backtracking?
The Founding Fathers opposed tyranny of the majority: "When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens." - Federalist #10
It’s fine to quote the Federalist Papers — they’re an excellent philosophical guide — but what’s binding is the Constitution. And the Constitution is absolutely silent on marijuana. So the matter is delegated to the people through the states — per the Constitution.
So are you willing to live in the kind of country some of whose "crap, third-world" states tolerate prostitution and heroin usage?
Wrong. The 12 Nevada counties in which prostitution isn't prohibited have a lower average poverty rate and higher average income than the rest of Nevada - and than the USA as a whole.
When newspapers exposed the horror of the shattered lives in the opium dens that were prevalent in New York, San Francisco, and other big cities, popular outcry — or ‘tyranny of the majority’ — resulted in their being banned. Because smart people knew where tolerance would lead.
"opiates taken daily in large doses by addicts were not a social menace under nineteenth-century conditions, and were not perceived as a menace. Opium, morphine, and heroin could be legally purchased without a prescription, and there was little demand for opiate prohibition. But there was one exception to this general tolerance of the opiates. In 1875, the City of San Francisco adopted an ordinance prohibiting the smoking of opium in smoking-houses or "dens."
"The roots of this ordinance were racist rather than health-oriented, and were concerned with what today is known as "life-style." Opium smoking was introduced into the United States by tens of thousands of Chinese men and boys imported during the l850s and 1880s to build the great Western railroads. The Chinese laborers then drifted into San Francisco and other cities, and accepted employment of various kinds at low wages --- giving rise to waves of anti-Chinese hostility. Soon white men and even women were smoking opium side by side with the Chinese, a life-style which was widely disapproved."
- The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs, Edward M. Brecher and the Editors of Consumer Reports Magazine, 1972
I’ve smoked it (not heavily) and it was hard on my lungs.
Please show me this study. I have yet to see a single study that proves permanent brain damage in users of any age or quantity.
Even the “brain scan” technology itself is in dispute.
There is also no study I’ve seen that proves smoking causes mental illness. Nothing disproves the idea that the mentally ill are more likely to smoke.
Show me the money
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