Pat Robertson: Pot should be legal like alcohol

Associated Press ^ | Thursday, Mar. 8, 2012 | MICHAEL FELBERBAUM

[JimRed]

Never met a dope smoking dope that I would hire or associate with.

Hire- no, but associate with? They can be entertaining in a fun-to-watch kind of way when they're high!

[JimRed]

Legalize drugs and watch what happens to this country. It will be uninhabitable by decent people.

Plenty of large cities and suburban areas already fit that description, and will continue to do so, drugs legal or not.

[af_vet_rr]

Wrong. Millions of people have never tried drugs or become regular users simply because there is a societal/legal sanction against it.

The people who are prone to abusing legal substances that can affect your judgement and/or mood can already easily do so. And many do - they kill over 10,000 of their fellow Americans every year and injure God only knows how many more. That's more dead Americans in one year than we've lost in both Iraq and Afghanistan in total over the last 8-11 years.

Society sanctions? I got a pretty good chuckle out of that. Some of our top movies, TV shows, and the celebrities who star in them openly celebrate illegal substances. Look at how many celebrities in our society get in trouble for abusing drugs, both legal and illegal, and they suffer no real harm. Sure they go through "drug rehab" and they avoid prison unlike the peasants like you and me, but their images aren't destroyed, they don't lose their audiences.

And if they die due to their drug abuse, does society harshly criticize them? No, they hoist them on our shoulders, put them on a pedestal, pretend that they were just incredible human beings who were "misunderstood" and "troubled".

Legal sanctions? Oh please, there are already legal sanctions against abusing legally-obtained substances that can alter and impair your judgement and mood, and that doesn't stop Americans from abusing them.

There are some really bad drugs, I will not disagree with that, but the drug war, which we've been fighting for four decades, is a failure. Well, if you like the idea of the government having more and more power as the years go by and destroying our Constitution in the process, and if you like the idea of your local police department equipping themselves as if they are going to patrol the streets of Baghdad, then I guess it's a huge success.

And the drug war and the legal powers the government has been amassing in its name are going to destroy this country long before the drugs themselves do.

I would rather see more drugs legalized and the drug war scaled back than to continue seeing our Constitution shredded in the name of "protecting" people from themselves.

[Windflier]

"No government has a right to the disposition and function of my very flesh and bones."

They decided that they did with Terri.

You just made my point. Thank you.

[af_vet_rr]

Millions of people have never tried drugs or become regular users simply because there is a societal/legal sanction against it. Take that away, add in the fact that it will then be legal to advertise and make drugs easily available to everyone, and you've got a scenario for a societal breakdown like what existed in Opium War-era China.

I would like to ask - how much do you think the government should be involved in protecting people from themselves?

[Wissa]

Mainstream is a Hashish Bar on Main Street.

What makes you think there will no longer be zoning laws?

Mainstream is a billboard for Chico's Sophisticated Crank on the I-95. Mainstream is commercials for Stoner's Pot Palace on TV.

Have you seen any billboards or TV ads for cigarettes recently?

Mainstream is a pop-up ad for high-quality needles on Yahoo.com.

It sounds like your biggest concern is having your delicate sensibilities offended.

[DNA.2012]

Define “drug”.

Many painkillers directly source from plants.

If a person raises those plants and refines the painkiller compound from them, is that a “drug” that Big Government must control?

[garjog]

"cheer your keen perception!"

Warning to all: Marijuana ingesting impairs ability to refute arguments without resorting to ad hominem attacks.

[Wissa]

X (fill in the blank of a legal, harmful thing) is more dangerous than smoking pot, and X is legal, therefore we should be consistent and legalize pot. We should not make our society worse for the sake of consistency.

Between federal, state, and local, the government is spending $40 billion dollars per year fighting this drug war. Police departments are becoming equipped as military units. Our rights are being trashed in the name of this war. The prohibition of drugs makes criminal operations to supply the drugs incredibly profitable, and the more control the government exerts the greater the profits. The profits flow not only to the drug suppliers but also to all the government employees that are corrupted. The cost of the actual raw materials lost is minimal so they don't lose much when the police do catch somebody. The costs just go up in bribing and threatening enough people to be able to stay in operation.

Tens of thousands of people are dying as a direct result of this drug war and it becomes more clear every year that it is futile. You're not going to stop all the people from using drugs or even a majority of the percentage of the population that would use drugs if they were legal.

All you accomplish is making the government more oppressive all the time and raising the resistance of people to that oppressive government. Sure, we get annoyed when the government tells us we have to use curly lightbulbs, but we eventually comply because making the change really doesn't affect us that much. Make a $40 billion effort to take away from some poor ghetto dweller one of the few things that he sees that makes his miserable life tolerable from day to day and he'll do everything he can to do battle against the society that does that.

[unkus]

I hope you can find some relief, FRiend. God bless you.

[headsonpikes]

That’s crap.

I live on the periphery of a pot-growing region of BC. Many older people use the stuff for relief of chronic pain.

Its certainly cheap enough - $50 for a quarter pound of trim is normal for locals. That’ll last a while!

[tbpiper]

If a person raises those plants and refines the painkiller compound from them...

Typical pothead question.

[Wissa]

Go take another bong hit genuis. The separation between you and everything that is right and good will only continue to increase.

It's been over three decades since the last time I used any drugs that the government considers illegal.

By the way, I notice you didn't try to actually refute any of that "garbage logic".

[Wissa]

Much better.

I'd expect that you feel like you're accomplishing more now too by presenting your side of an argument than simply responding with the equivalent of "Oh yeah? Well, screw you!!"

If you can actually state some reasons for your position like this to your son I'd bet he'd understand your point and steer clear of drugs, regardless of their legal status. A lot better chance that way than expecting him to avoid them by just screaming "EVIL!! EVIL!!".