| This thread has been locked, it will not receive new replies. |
|
Locked on 01/15/2014 11:23:33 AM PST by Jim Robinson, reason:
Enough already! |
Posted on 01/13/2014 11:39:29 AM PST by Kaslin
Right now, China and Russia are having a great laugh at America’s expense. For a once proud country with strong moral character and intellectual ambition, we have become a nation intent on destroying itself from within. The publicly sanctioned and widespread celebration of indolent potheads toking themselves into oblivion in Colorado is only the latest example.
We have come a long way from Nancy Reagan’s largely successful “Just Say No” campaign to educate students on the dangers of drugs and their consequences. Call it “You Can Say Yes. “
In the minds of many conservatives, the lines are becoming quickly blurred on the legalization of mind-altering substances as well as the punishment of drug offenders. Libertarians are taking up the cause to push for universal legalization of marijuana around the country. Some are doing this because of Americans’ growing fear of our government’s intrusion into our private lives while others are doing it because of easier access to their favorite recreational pastime. Indeed, the latter motivation seems to be so popular, that it quickly turned into one of the most popular battle cries amongst the young adults for the election of Rep. Ron Paul in the 2012 Republican Primary.
Unfortunately, many traditional Conservatives are also getting on the drug bus because they have bought the Democrat lie that the money collected by drug users could be fiscally beneficial. In the most recent year, Colorado generated $9.1 million in retail sales tax from the sale of medical marijuana. This figure is bound to grow with the introduction of recreational sales and the additional 25% in excise and sales taxes since becoming legal on January 1st.
Looking beyond just the tax revenue, the industry generates millions of dollars every year for the state from licensing and application fees. To apply for and obtain a license to run a medical marijuana facility serving more than 500 patients, for instance, the necessary application and license fees alone approach $40,000. Colorado has agreed to take this new revenue and use it for the education of its children and construction of new schools. Does this mean at 18 every high school graduate will be handed their diploma and a doobie with the instructions to get addicted in order to help fund future generations’ educations?
We are now seeing a very odd mix of bedfellows. One of my favorite Tea Party Senators, Mike Lee of Utah, and one of the most odious liberals in the Senate today, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, both are now in agreement to reduce the mandatory jail sentence time on non-violent drug offenses in hopes of reducing prison expenses. A federal inmate’s yearly cost for one inmate ranges from $21,000 to $33,000 depending on the prison's level of security. Because of the current system, about half of the nation's more than 218,000 federal inmates are serving time for drug crimes with virtually all of them subjected by some form of mandatory minimum sentencing.
Am I living in the twilight zone right now? Has our country become so ignorant that we have abandoned one of the few positive goals of eliminating substances from our cultural landscape? Drugs that have reduced the productivity, health and advancement of our society? Don’t think drugs have a negative effect on the community? Just look to Washington State, where within the first 6 months of pot being legalized, 745 drivers stopped by the police tested positive for marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient THC and over half of those tested were over the state’s legal limit of 5 nanograms. This means there are more impaired drivers on the roads of Washington and now Colorado driving alongside families on their way to school and people on their way to work. Please tell me how a price can be put on their safety or tell me that drugs cannot hurt innocent bystanders? Please go ask a family who has lost a loved one to drug use or more importantly whose family was affected by someone under the influence.
We are witnessing the steady decline and intentional corrosion of America’s social structure. This is the ultimate goal of leftists: total control of the state that would make middle and lower class its feudal subjects. What better way to destroy a culture then to encourage mind altering substance use by the general public?
Ronald Reagan often quoted John Winthrop’s shining “City upon a Hill” but ultimately under these types of legislative policy, we might suffer more the fate as predicted by Alexis de Toqueville who said “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
Would you have felt better if he was drunk the night before and had a hangover?
R2nd, the theory behind outlawing pot and booze (prohibition) is precisely the same as the theory behind outlawing guns.
Blaming pot and booze for the behavior of those who abuse them, is precisely the same as blaming a gun for a shooting.
So, yeah, the gun-grabbers' argument is fundamentally the same one: outlaw guns to prevent crime, outlaw pot to prevent self-destructive weakness.
Yes, the standard was "eight hours bottle to throttle."
Eight hours just wasn't enough time for the effects of marijuana to leave the pilot's system.
Sometimes I wonder if this doesn't explain some of the idiot stunts I see drivers pull on the Interstate.
The only problem is that when something becomes ordinary and allowed, it doesn't satisfy the risk takers who like to stretch the boundaries.
Besides that, what's going to happen to legal marijuana? I could see its strength being contorlled, it being diluted with additives, and the taxes getting outrageous.
One argument for strict laws is so those who live outside them don't destroy civilization. I wish marijuana and other drugs would stay illegal, but even more I wish pharmaceutical companies would stop destroying peoples bodies and minds with a supposed cure for everything.
See this. There are two kinds of America Haters. One is the typical leftie socialist who loves Sweden and Europe and hates American superiority, prosperity, free markets, productivity, and freedom.
The other kind of America Hater is the one who thinks Americans are all stupid children who voted for Santa Claus, when it's pretty clear that imaginary Americans are the ones whose "votes" tip the balance toward leftism and progressivism because in reality, America is a nation of people too smart to vote for leftism -- that's why it has to cheat to win.
Both kinds of America Haters are emotionally invested in hating America, and both kinds I think should move to France if they think America is filled with losers.
You're a philosopher and an optimist! ;^)
Nonsense.
You express my feelings exactly. The only thing I still have, and will always have faith in, is my Saviour Jesus Christ. He told us that where our treasure was, our hearts would be also, and every day more in this country proves the truth of that. The Son of God was never wrong.
The war on drugs is like trying to plow the ocean.
Oh, America was the greatest achievement civilization ever saw, and was an unequivocal force of good in the world. I marvel at its history and heritage. As recounted on another thread, I used to go to library and I spent HUNDREDS of hours reading through old newspapers on microfilm (apparently while other FReepers were out getting wasted on dope), going through endless decades recounting America’s greatness.
THAT was America. Not Obama’s Choom-Gang America, full of socialists and deviants. America is a pathetic, dying shell of everything it once was. A country that is so intent on defining deviancy down, with a putrid culture of dope, homo-marriage, and Miley Cyrus twerking... is a country that has thrown itself away. Embracing dope, faggotry and evil. That’s what America is transitioning to, an truly degenerate and evil entity.
They might be just partially symbolic, but the country now gung-ho on fag-marriage and now ‘endorsing’ dope, makes me question my lifelong interest in wanting and trying to salvage the country as a whole. A dopehead nation is not a nation I’m going to put my life on the line for, to put it mildly.
Please. Do America and yourselves a favor: MOVE THE HELL OUT OF THE U.S.A. You hate America and your fellow Americans so much so you are now part of the problem. Please LEAVE.
Unequivocally. WOD has failed to accomplish any reduction in the availability of drugs or the number of people using them. I sometimes wonder if the country’s drug problem would be less severe if the government had just done nothing as opposed to making drug smuggling very profitable by making drugs illegal and relatively easy by leaving the border wide open.
History shows, the UK was able to take power over most of Asia through the Opium trade.
Having a stoned populace is good for politicians and the power grabbers.
Those who sacrifice freedom for security shall deserve neither and lose both.
States right, IMO.
No. I still live amongst Americans who believe as I do, a traditional view, whichn s that it is not a good thing for people to be addicted to drugs (or alcohol). Holland was way ahead of us on this score, why didn’t you move there all the years when my view was the prevailing one?
I call BS to your BS. For the same reason: Not much.
Pot was a well known weed and this nation didn’t turn into a bunch of pot heads, no more than we are all a bunch of drunks because we legalized alcohol.
The same arguments were made of medicinal pot: “Look out! Colorado will turn into a State full of potheads! OH, MY GOD!!!!”
Sorry, didn’t happen. In fact, 99% of the country probably didn’t even know we had legal pot.
“The more taboo you make it, the more appealing it becomes.
Nonsense. “
You obviously fail at human psychology or history. Every teenager knows why they smoke cigarettes.
Your belief is that government should punish people for moral weakness by criminalizing whatever their poison is and thereby justifying it as punishing "criminals," which IS one of the few legitimate jobs of government. But you want to use government to make a crime of a self-destructive weakness -- an obese person who is morally weak and destroys himself and becomes a burden and a danger to everyone around him much the same as a dopehead or addle-brained alcoholic, is a lot more difficult to criminalize unless you want to outlaw some of your own indulgences, such as sodas, over-eating, sugar, free choice in meals, etc.
Like you, I also hold "a traditional view." Unlike you, I love America and Americans, and I have faith and confidence that the balance of Americans are good. My belief is that the government should be RESTRAINED from doing the work you think it should be doing. If government was RESTRAINED, then people would be free to tell homosexuals to take a hike, rather than being punished for it, as government does now. If government was RESTRAINED, churches and service clubs and moral people could deal in a MUCH more righteous, loving, and Christian way, with the morally weak among us, whether they are potheads, alcoholics, or the morbidly obese.
Where does anyone say anywhere, even on the left, that it's a good thing for people to be addicted to drugs? Seems to me that the only ones advocating that are apolitical, as in pharmaceutical companies that addict boys to drugs because they have ADD (and then those boys go nuts and shoot up schools, like Columbine) ... and the left blames it on the guns, and the right blames it on the drugs.
I blame it on the government. If the government wasn't as deeply entrenched in education as it is, schools would be LOCALLY controlled as opposed to State and Federally controlled, and locally controlled schools would probably tell the "nurses" and teachers unions pushing drugs for ADD to take a hike.
Sorry, but you seem very much to hate America and Americans, and to want to use government for things it only makes worse; you think Americans cannot do it without government because you have lost faith in Americans. You have created a vicious circle for yourself.
“alcohol’s effects will usually be gone in no more than eight hours. “
Not even close. It depends on the amount consumed and many doctors consider the effects of alcohol to be 24 hours. For flying, it is a minimum 8 hours bottle to throttle, however, there is also the 0.04 BAC standard that now applies because we know 8 hours isn’t nearly enough depending on the consumption level.
It looks like you fail, teens don’t take up smoking because it is taboo anymore than they take up cool forms of spitting.
Beating up girls, and child porn, and having homosexual sex are all strong taboos.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.