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Treatment or Jail: Patrick Kennedy Wages Fierce Anti-Pot Crusade
NBCnews ^

Posted on 02/17/2014 11:15:17 AM PST by gooblah

As a hard-partying teenager, Patrick Kennedy met President Reagan at a fundraiser for the JFK Library, a meeting captured in a photograph that the former Rhode Island congressman now hangs in his home office. He used to think of it as a funny episode, a collision of Camelot’s cocaine kid and America’s foremost opponent of illegal drug use. But Kennedy took his last hit of anything in 2009, and he’s since honed an anti-drug message that sounds a bit like Reagan with a Boston brogue.

Kennedy believes there is "an epidemic in this country of epic dimensions when it comes to alcohol and drugs.” He'd like to treat it all, but he’s convinced that the single biggest threat to America’s mental health is free-market marijuana. So even as Democrats favor the legalization of pot—by a 34-point margin, according to the latest WSJ/NBC News poll—the scion of America’s most famous Democratic family has broken ranks, criticized the White House, and aligned with the likes of Newt Gingrich to warn voters against trying to tax and regulate today’s psychoactive chlorophyll.

(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; US: Massachusetts; US: Rhode Island
KEYWORDS: libertarians; marijuanalaw; massachusetts; medicalmarijuana; newtgingrich; paleolibs; patrickkennedy; presidentreagan; rhodeisland; ronaldreagan; temperancemovement; warondrugs; zerotolerance
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To: Chuckster

Being as cynical as I am against the Washington parasite class, I can only assume that he is being funded by the cartels that want to keep their profits sky high.


21 posted on 02/17/2014 12:06:18 PM PST by Stand W ( You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!)
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To: gooblah

I may not have liked the Kennedy’s for their politics or their alley-cat morals, but Patrick Kennedy was a true punk. He was a disgrace as a congressman.


22 posted on 02/17/2014 12:09:28 PM PST by Tallguy
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To: Ouderkirk

Yeah, I have heard that too. Don’t agree, I know too many pot smokers who don’t, and too many cigarette smokers who do, use harder drugs to buy it; but a lot of people say that.


23 posted on 02/17/2014 12:15:06 PM PST by Chuckster (The longer I live the less I care about what you think.)
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To: gooblah

What will he call his campaign Pill Poppers Against Pot Heads?


24 posted on 02/17/2014 12:23:52 PM PST by TigersEye (Stupid is a Progressive disease.)
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To: Opinionated Blowhard
And Patrick Kennedy is a great poster child for the proposition that prolonged marijuana use causes IQ loss and psychosis later in life.


25 posted on 02/17/2014 12:29:43 PM PST by Focault's Pendulum (I live in NJ....' Nuff said!)
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To: JoeFromSidney
If we have to have laws, let's make it a crime to drive under the influence of pot, cocaine, etc.

It already is and has been for decades. It is illegal to drive impaired and that includes Rx drugs, OTC drugs and even sleep deprivation.

26 posted on 02/17/2014 12:30:11 PM PST by TigersEye (Stupid is a Progressive disease.)
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To: F15Eagle

And Choomie boy is a poster child for this sort of colossal stupidity.

His brain is as dull as any stoner, despite protests to the contrary.


27 posted on 02/17/2014 12:54:24 PM PST by Ouderkirk (To the left, everything must evidence that this or that strand of leftist theory is true)
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To: Orangedog

gateway is not bullshit....who starts using heroin a graduates to marijuana ?


28 posted on 02/17/2014 12:59:44 PM PST by Ouderkirk (To the left, everything must evidence that this or that strand of leftist theory is true)
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To: AppyPappy

It’s the “free market” part he’s really against.


29 posted on 02/17/2014 1:00:18 PM PST by Lurker (Violence is rarely the answer. But when it is it is the only answer.)
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Comment #30 Removed by Moderator

Comment #31 Removed by Moderator

To: gooblah

Good for him. He knows what he’s talking about.


32 posted on 02/17/2014 1:15:20 PM PST by DouglasKC
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To: Orangedog

No, it’s not and with 27 years of nursing under my belt including psych nursing and icu,I’ll blame the next stoned out, OD’ed kid for whom we have to turn the ventilator off... on people like you!


33 posted on 02/17/2014 1:40:42 PM PST by mdmathis6 (American Christians can help America best by remembering that we are Heaven's citizens first!)
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To: gooblah

OUTSTANDING!!!!!


34 posted on 02/17/2014 2:11:11 PM PST by RaceBannon (Lk 16:31 And he said unto him If they hear not Moses and the prophets neither will theybe persuaded)
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To: JoeFromSidney

all good laws address a moral underpinning

rape, murder, stealing, theft, assault

all are morals

Not just dope and drinking

people need to be consistent on their objections to moral laws


35 posted on 02/17/2014 2:12:45 PM PST by RaceBannon (Lk 16:31 And he said unto him If they hear not Moses and the prophets neither will theybe persuaded)
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To: Ouderkirk
gateway is not bullshit....who starts using heroin a graduates to marijuana ?

I'd be willing to bet that they were milk drinkers. Those junkies probably ate tomatoes, too. Gateway drugs, all of them!

Correlation does not equal causation.

36 posted on 02/17/2014 2:35:38 PM PST by Orangedog (An optimist is someone who tells you to 'cheer up' when things are going his way)
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To: mdmathis6
...,I’ll blame the next stoned out, OD’ed kid for whom we have to turn the ventilator off... on people like you!

Wow...that will sure teach us.

37 posted on 02/17/2014 2:37:49 PM PST by Orangedog (An optimist is someone who tells you to 'cheer up' when things are going his way)
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To: Orangedog

The issue of recreational use of marijuana vs gateway to harder drugs is beyond dispute. There is a direct link to the use of marijuana and the transition to harder drugs.

I will stipulate that not everyone who uses marijuana recreationaly instantly graduates to heroin.

But the idea that marijuana is harmless is also nonsense. It has more carcinogens than tobacco, and is much more cognitively debilitating than alcohol consumption.

In the case of tobacco one does not drag a cigarette/pipe/cigar the way one tokes a joint or inhales bong hits. These are much more deep penetration of the lungs and are held until most of the smoke has dissipated/absorbed. This may be related to the relative price differential and will concede this point. But with marijuana “the stronger the better” , and the fact nobody’s selling Panama Red “Lights” with lowered tar and THC speaks volumes.

In the case of alcohol, one may be hung over for a day from a good buzz, but the effects of marijuana last much longer and impairs the cognitive function for up to a week for a single use (a good buzz) and much longer for regular users.

There is a causation effect to marijuana and harder drugs since the purveyor of one, is also highly likely a purveyor of other illicit substances.

Nothing good comes from legalizing recreational marijuana, anymore than would come from legalization of recreational Quaaludes, LSD, heroin, etc.

Legalization is a bad idea no matter how you try to paint it.


38 posted on 02/17/2014 3:46:48 PM PST by Ouderkirk (To the left, everything must evidence that this or that strand of leftist theory is true)
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To: Ouderkirk
The issue of recreational use of marijuana vs gateway to harder drugs is beyond dispute.

I dispute it. Therefore it is no longer beyond dispute.

But with marijuana “the stronger the better” , and the fact nobody’s selling Panama Red “Lights” with lowered tar and THC speaks volumes.

When something becomes illegal, strength and density are selling points for obvious logistical reasons. Heavily armed domestic military forces doing thousands of raids a day isn't the kind of business environment that lends itself to a lot of R&D and product development.

There is a causation effect to marijuana and harder drugs since the purveyor of one, is also highly likely a purveyor of other illicit substances.

You're working against your point here. Make pot as legal as alcohol and you have people buying it at the 7-11, not from the dealer looking to expand his market by trying to make sales of harder drugs.

Nothing good comes from legalizing recreational marijuana, anymore than would come from legalization of recreational Quaaludes, LSD, heroin, etc.

What the hell...I might as well go ahead and turn this up to 11. Aside from the misguided desire to meddle in the lives of others, there is more harm that comes from keeping those things illegal. I have no intention of ever trying meth but I want to see Walmart and Target competing to deliver the highest quality meth for the lowest cost. Before you pop a gasket on how horrible that would be, consider how many people were killed in the largest city near you last year for control of the vodka trade? Probably less than one person dead in that power struggle. But control of meth, pot and heroin, likely more than one. A lot more than one.

39 posted on 02/17/2014 4:28:20 PM PST by Orangedog (An optimist is someone who tells you to 'cheer up' when things are going his way)
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To: Orangedog
I dispute it. Therefore it is no longer beyond dispute.

That you dispute something does not change the empirical evidence, you are speaking from OPINION.

Obviously your opinion has more validity than research by Psychiatrists, and MD's.

Not.

40 posted on 02/17/2014 5:50:50 PM PST by Ouderkirk (To the left, everything must evidence that this or that strand of leftist theory is true)
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