Posted on 03/12/2013 6:54:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Denver television station CBS4 reports that Colorado has seen a sharp spike in marijuana use among teenagers since voters passed Amendment 64 last November, legalizing recreational use of the drug. As described in The Economist, along with a Washington State measure also legalizing marijuana, Amendment 64 is “an electoral first not only for America but for the world.”
That means two American states are to the left of the Scandinavian countries, Holland, and every other liberal country regarding marijuana.
CBS4 quotes a number of local high-school students:
“I’ve seen a lot more people just walking down the street smoking (joints),” high-school student Irie Johnson said.
“In high school it has kind of gotten out of hand,” student Alaina Tanenbaum said.
According to the CBS4 report, based in part on data from a local drug-testing lab: “Experts say the test results show that children are getting higher than ever with alarming levels of THC, marijuana’s active ingredient, in their bodies.”
The massive increase in both the number of users and the amount of marijuana used by young people is precisely what I and many others predicted.
It was easy to foresee.
When something desirable is made easier to obtain, more people will obtain it. It is difficult to imagine an exception to this commonsense observation.
So legalizing marijuana is foolish because it leads to far more use of the drug and the availability of ever more potent forms. But the foolishness doesn’t end there. Equally foolish is that as a society we have made peace with marijuana while making war on tobacco. This has been a classic example of upside-down thinking; and we are reaping exactly what we have sown. We have produced a generation of young Americans who would never put a cigarette or cigar near their lips, but who increasingly get high on pot.
Yes, tobacco — specifically cigarettes — kills and marijuana doesn’t. But, if you’ll forgive the ultimate political incorrectness, young people would do much better in life if they smoked tobacco rather than weed.
First, tobacco doesn’t kill young people. When it kills, it generally kills much older adult people. Moreover, according to a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, if you stop smoking cigarettes by age 44, you will lose only one more year of life than a person who has never smoked.
Second, regular pot smokers increasingly tune out of life, becoming what are known as potheads, or, to put it bluntly, losers.
Third, as noted in the CBS4 report, “new studies that have been published say the risk of a car accident increases two-fold after someone consumes pot.” In other words, innocent human beings — sometimes whole families — are more likely to be maimed, paralyzed, and killed by pot smokers than by cigarette smokers.
For myriad reasons, then, I would far prefer my teenager indulge in cigarettes — not to mention cigars — than pot. Anyone who thinks that pot is less harmful to a teenager than tobacco is fooling himself — and his teenager.
If this is not obvious, ponder these questions: Would you rather your airplane pilot smoke pot or tobacco while flying? How would Britain have fared in World War II if Winston Churchill had smoked pot instead of cigars?
In terms of the effects of tobacco and pot on the smoker while smoking, there is simply no comparison between pot and tobacco.
What the Left has done to America’s youth in the last 40 or so years is so damaging as to be unforgiveable. They have ruined public-school education; left them with so much debt that they will likely be the first American generation to live in a fashion materially inferior to that of their parents; and robbed their innocence with sex-education classes, now beginning in kindergarten in Chicago and elsewhere. Now they are making marijuana available to more kids and in greater potency than ever before.
But they have left them with higher self-esteem.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.
Because of increasing automation and increasing minimum wage America has increasing numbers of human pets that are good for companionship and entertainment but little else. The least resources they consume the better. Pot/cat nip may keep them out of more expensive hobbies. The trick is how to keep the 50% of teenagers with actual potential from going up in smoke.
Illegal drugs and guns aren’t the same. There’s zeal on both sides, for and against. However, the subjects themselves couldn’t be more far apart. Illegal drugs very rarely have any benefit to the user. Nobody can save their life or defend themselves with one. It’s all about getting high and escaping, period.
It’s like comparing abortion to guns. It’s a weird thing to even try to compare other than the zeal itself.
First, it is FR courtesy to ping a user if you mention them in your post.
Second, I can't tell whether you are (mistakenly) assuming I'm a mother, or whether 'mother' is short for a vulgarity.
Third, you seem to have no sense of humor , so I wonder what kind of drugs are you on ?
P.S. I'm not the only one who noticed your awkward spelling.
If there’s that many excess wasteoids I’d prefer euthanasia for them. Seriously, they are expensive parasites. If there was a rat epidemic spreading plague I’m sure we’d try to get rid of them outright. Well, these days there’d probably be leftwingers saying give them obamacare and housing instead.
Can you still make a list?
Maybe you could give it a try and tell me what it was like.
To me it makes perfect sense. A pot smoker is likely to vote communist. Don’t ask me why - it just is that way. If you’re perpetually high on weed all that stuff about lowering the sea levels, raising the minimum wage, and driving golf carts around all “make sense”. If you’re not a pot smoker some of that stuff may make sense or not - but it makes more sense if you’re hitting the pipe.
And I’m really not trying to be funny either. I’m actually being quite serious. And I think some (but not all) of the people pushing this agenda are fully cognizant of this.
As the thread progressed, I could see how serious you were about it.
I do have a question. Are you younger or older than your sister, and how did you avoid getting mixed up in drugs ? Did this all happen after you went into the military ?
They know about the thinking and behavior changes it causes. They just don’t care.
“Question for you. What does the law mean for companies who require a drug-free workplace? Is that still enforceable, and/or legal? Can they still drug test, including prospective hires.”
Companies restrict people from smoking tobacco all the time.
They don’t care.
Or in some cases they care and they *see it as a positive* because it’s yet another way of locking in votes. That’s my basic point.
Just like you can “buy” (or lock in) votes by means of immigration policy, “hand-out” policy, abortion policy - pot policy is yet another way of doing it.
With more people using cannibus, how is it obtained?
Rather ignorant here.
Are they illegally importing it?
Are they legally growing it?
Are companies growing and selling it like tobacco?
Just curious
Well, I was saying that the ones on here don’t care. On someplace like DU they sure care of course and want it to spread. They know it’ll cause people to be more dependent on the government and perform worse in general which is great news for the democrats.
Put another way - if you want to create a command/control/authoritarian society - what better way to do it then have a population of zoned out stoners who only care about eating Doritos, playing video games and are gullible when it comes to statements about how all this stuff is “good”, “fair”, “for the children” etc.
To me it all makes perfect sense. In fact in Brave New World I think Huxley described just such a world where (it’s been years but I seem to remember this) the population was using Soma I think it was.
Ah - got ya. Agree - 100%.
All Prager offers here concerning an increase in the number pot smokers is anecdotal evidence—the results of some local TV station’s study and a few quotes by high school students. Didn’t Prager used to be a libertarian?
One positive would be that if you made it legal, the narco terrorists in South and central America as well as mexico would lose their golden goose. Not to mention their minions who are growing it for them in our state and federal parks.
Not too long ago I read where a U.N. official pleaded with American gub mint official to not legalize it as it would remove the only money lifeline many of those in south and central America had of making a living.
not too worried about where they may be getting their next meal from
Most folks, high or not, (D) or (R), do not follow issues, they watch American Idol or some other pap in their free time.
This is how we end up with an electorate in which three out of five cannot name the three branches of government.
They talk about it more on the RELIGION threads than they do on the DRUG threads.
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