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.
“It’ll be both. When people don’t have to hide it, they’ll use it in your face.”
Rocky Mountain High !!
Meanwhile, the person who utilizes responsibly, holds a job, pays taxes, etc... runs the risk of being looted or killed by the state for their statutory violation because they have assets.
If legalized, with certain protective caveats allowing the law abiding to defend themselves and denying state subsidized care to the irresponsible (ending it altogether would be best), then the irresponsible would slowly weed themselves out of the body politic...
I recall two potheads damn near sleeping at a major intersection traffic light. It is true as the county sheriff was a neighbor of mine, and; he arrested the driver. The driver was so stoned he was talking about colors. That was 1978.
Frankly I disagree, and; the US army alone has a large fort in CO. I would probably close the Fort down or make the state off limits. With the losers Obama has thrown on the military I bet that Fort Carson becomes a real popular place, plus commanders will be involved in UCMJ actions often there.
That would be fine, Article 1 Section 10 ...”no law impairing contracts”...
‘Course, 20th century employment laws have pretty much gutted that...
Study: Marijuana Use Doubles Risk of Testicular Cancer
They were creating a hazard and operating a vehicle while impaired. Both good reasons to arrest them. Whether they were drunk or stoned should be irrelevant.
Yeah it is.
Have you really closely examined enough subgroups to honestly claim to have observed a statistically relevant correlation?
The Amish... tatooed Oktoberfest attendees... diabetic Maori bookkeepers... Presbyterian taxidermists... left-handed color-blind saxophonists?
In fact, have you even undertaken an objective investigation of enough pot-smokers to make a qualified statement? How many hundreds of pot-smokers have you interviewed?
If I were you, I'd exercise more caution in passing such across-the-board judgements.
Regards,
The New Left, and their spawn such as Obama, had their psyches and world views shaped in large part based on their marijuana and hallucinogenic drug use.
It’s a major contributor to the mush head thinking that has allowed so many to become liberal and left and for it to be have been mainstreamed.
Big Gulps versus small bladders....
You are suffering from the so-called "Observation Selection Effect."
Regards,
I believe so. At any rateone House of their ‘leglature has approved them.
Thanks for the response.
Sounds like you had a lot of ‘adversity’ growing up.
You know what they say.... Adversity breeds character.
Yeah, like in North Korea!
Regards,
Was there prohibition during biblical times? Does the Bible say there should be such laws?
So drug warriors, are you going to defend the Tenth Amendment and support CO and WA’s constitutional authority; or are you going to whore your principles out by supporting fedgov and the fraudulent Wickard Commerce Clause?
I’m old enough to remember when abortion was illegal and the same argument was made...”It’s my body! It’s a matter of privacy...” and other such facetious nonsense.
Now labor can be induced at full term and the baby tossed into the trash.
The dope users are not interested in freedom but their own habits and when people are murdered to feed their habit they couldn’t care less. Both sides of the equation have blood on their hands...seller and buyer...just like the abortionist and their customers.
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