Posted on 05/13/2015 11:22:41 AM PDT by Olog-hai
MPs from the Green Party and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) have joined forces to say that cannabis should be regulated and legalized.
Economic policy spokespeople Joachim Pfeiffer of the CDU and Dieter Janecek of the Greens told broadcaster ARD that they thought it no longer made sense to criminalize possession of or trading in the drug.
“Every year we spend between one and two billion euros to punish consumers, although real organized crime should be the focus of our efforts,” they wrote in a position paper.
The pair believe that a state-regulated cannabis market would bring in between one and two billion euros of tax revenue annually, based on the examples of countries that have successfully liberalized their rules. …
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.de ...
They also knew that government couldn't make people fit for freedom.
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites—in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity;—in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption;—in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere: and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds can not be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” — Edmund Burke
She’s a drug addict. Look at her eyes.
“The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.” —Fisher Ames
People imagine enumerations of power in the strangest places.
“Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.” —Joseph Story
"The question comes to this, whether a power, exclusively for the regulation of commerce, is a power for the regulation of manufactures? The statement of such a question would seem to involve its own answer. Can a power, granted for one purpose, be transferred to another? If it can, where is the limitation in the constitution? Are not commerce and manufactures as distinct, as commerce and agriculture? If they are, how can a power to regulate one arise from a power to regulate the other? It is true, that commerce and manufactures are, or may be, intimately connected with each other. A regulation of one may injuriously or beneficially affect the other. But that is not the point in controversy. It is, whether congress has a right to regulate that, which is not committed to it, under a power, which is committed to it, simply because there is, or may be an intimate connexion between the powers. If this were admitted, the enumeration of the powers of congress would be wholly unnecessary and nugatory. Agriculture, colonies, capital, machinery, the wages of labour, the profits of stock, the rents of land, the punctual performance of contracts, and the diffusion of knowledge would all be within the scope of the power; for all of them bear an intimate relation to commerce. The result would be, that the powers of congress would embrace the widest extent of legislative functions, to the utter demolition of all constitutional boundaries between the state and national governments."
It is not commerce. It’s crime. Do you think robbery is commerce? The drugs that are commerce are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Is that what you want to get rid of? Besides, even on that you are talking about closing the barn door after the horse is stolen just so you won’t go to jail for hanging out near schools and peddling crack cocaine or whatever else might bring you a buck. Tell me. Should those who do such “commerce” be sued for wasting the public education funds? The drugs will destroy the minds all the rest of us have paid dearly to educate.
Time has come to re-examine cannabis prohibition, Israel's police chief says
Changes are a-coming, citizens. Best that you prepare for them.
Describe a “right-wing authoritarian”.
I’ve seen lots of people who tried cocaine and heroin just one time and, by their behavior, were instant addicts. Those are foul drugs.
If it's going to be a crime, then under the original intent of the Constitution it is a State crime.
From George Washington's Farewell Address
"It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield."
She’s a drug addict. Look at her eyes.
Actually, she's a model and the photo is staged.
But yes, many smokers are addicted - hence my question which you haven't answered: So you want a War on Tobacco, too?
“The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.” —Fisher Ames
That doesn't address much less rebut my point.
Since we've moved from exchanging images to exchanging quotations, here are a few:
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” — William Pitt
“The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.” - G. K. Chesterton
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