Did I see it here? Really, if everyone just decided to smoke marijuana openly, it wouldn’t be illegal, as evinced here:
The reason why it’s illegal is because you allow it to be illegal, with poor voter turnout to legalize it, and fearful refusals to disobey laws that you collectively believe are unjust. There’s no secret behind why something that shouldn’t be illegal remains illegal. The fact is that you individually fear punishment, but don’t actively organize to change anything in the face of it. Ubiquity and lack of enforceability will overturn any law, so if you really want change, even if you don’t smoke marijuana, just carry it on your person, and just make sure that everyone else does, and is willing to expose that fact to police officers en masse.
Or you need to vote more Libertarian, contrary to many of your political intuitions:
Well, in many countries the voting public’s majority seems to believe the propaganda about marijuana (much like other propaganda), and, anyway, i suspect most people don’t vote according to what is just or fair or logical but according to notions like “why worry about things that are not of my concern” and “what is in it for me” (this is admittedly a purely personal hunch, unsupported by scientific research)… i don’t expect much to change, especially not in the US, where a prospering incarceration industry has something to lose…
To be honest, if you go to California now, you can see the extent in which the legalization of weed has made it a full fledged business. It’s literally transformed from a secretive thing to a mix between the service and medical industry. Some of the high-end dispensaries have ‘bar’-like features for your perusal of weed choices; there is also someone called ‘Bud tender’ whom you can ask recommendations from. It’s like a weed spa.
This news was featured in CNN a few days ago: … Marijuana helps young girl who experience 300 seizures a week, to just one or zero.
Very nice story: edition.cnn.com/2013/08/07/healt … -marijuana
My 2 Cents:
It is absolutely absurd that marijuana remains classified on Schedule 1 along with heroin. ( I don’t know much about U.S Drug laws but here)
“Schedule I substances are those that have the following findings:
-The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
-The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
-There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.”
Marijuana does not even meet any one of the 3 required criteria. It clearly has accepted medical value and has for years even before it’s prohibition. It is clearly just as safe, if not safer than most pharmaceuticals. Alcohol has a far greater potential for abuse, yet isn’t even classified on any schedule. Here’s a thought,
Marijuana is classified in a more dangerous category than: PCP, cocaine, crack, crystal meth, opium, morphine, methadone, and other truly dangerous drugs.
Perhaps being an all round ‘good’ drug makes it even more dangerous to governments. After all, imagine everyone being high at the same time.
That may work in some areas, but surely you’ve seen the staggering statistics on weed related incarceration overall in the United States right? Are you honestly suggesting that people should just go ahead and break the law willingly and publicly and not fear being incarcerated for it? Like it will somehow eventually be a victory even though temporarily it may very well land you behind bars if you happen to catch the wrong cop on the wrong day? Hell no I’m not going to willingly and openly break the law. For me ( and I hope for the rest of the world ) being sent to prison, however unjust it may be, might just put a kink in my way of life. But hey, if you want to carry weed on your person even though you don’t smoke it as a statement to “stick it to the man” be my guest. I stopped smoking weed after college, so I’m sorry to say you won’t be able to count on me to be a pro weed foot soldier.
[quote]As i wrote: “why worry about things that are not of my concern” and “what is in it for me”
Nicely illustrated here…[/quote]
I sure hope I illustrated it perfectly because there’s a message in there Call me selfish if you like, but I tend to vote for candidates based on issues that actually matter in this world. Economic policy, foreign policy, immigration, stem cell research, climate change, gay rights, women’s rights, health care reform, secularism, and the list goes on and on.
Should marijuana be illegal? No of course not, that much seems painfully obvious. But do I care that it is? Meh, not really. At least not at this time. To me, it doesn’t even make my top 10 list of things that matter in this world. But leave it to pot heads to think that the legalization of marijuana is the great debate of our time.
We live in a world where it’s difficult to change the status quo for even the most vitally important things to humanities survival. And people want to waste even 1 second debating the legalization of marijuana? That just seems so…
[quote=“BrentGolf”] … To me, it doesn’t even make my top 10 list of things that matter in this world. But leave it to pot heads to think that the legalization of marijuana is the great debate of our time.
We live in a world where it’s difficult to change the status quo for even the most vitally important things to humanities survival. And people want to waste even 1 second debating the legalization of marijuana? That just seems so…[/quote]
I think that’s the key point for me. Who gives a flying shit? It’s so beyond irrelevant to anyone rational. If college kids and old men want to sit around playing Mario Cart and/or Pink Floyd, whatever, their neurons are their own to dispose of as they see fit, but it’s hardly an ‘Occupy Wallstreet’ level issue. Unless I end up downwind from a smoker or one of those nut sacks makes me listen to ‘Comfortably Numb’. Swift and direct civil disobedience will then ensue.
[quote=“BrentGolf”][quote]As i wrote: “why worry about things that are not of my concern” and “what is in it for me”
Nicely illustrated here…[/quote]
I sure hope I illustrated it perfectly because there’s a message in there Call me selfish if you like[/quote]
I think being selfish is natural and healthy, so calling someone selfish would be like calling someone human.
Why?
I’d say you’re selfish in a superficial way here, but not really selfish enough in a deeper way…
I meant in the public sphere of politics. Legalization of marijuana is a fine topic for individuals to be debating / making light of on a chat forum, but it doesn’t deserve one single second of public policy makers time at this juncture. Most politicians have their hands full walking and chewing gum at the same time let alone actually addressing two or more public policy topics during the same term. I prefer to let them stick to just the important ones…
Once there is a general medical consensus that it makes less than an insignificant contribution to mental illness, then I’ll support legalisation. It doesn’t look like that’s the case at the moment, and my own experience of users I know backs this up.
But campaigners are correct in assuming that Pink Floyd use is only going to develop in marijuana smokers if they already have an inherited disposition towards it, I believe?
I beg to differ I just ran 18 km with Pink Floyd The Wall pushing me through those last few km’s so I could get to the end of the album ( Once you hit play, you know you can’t stop until “outside the wall” ) And I haven’t smoked weed in nearly 15 years…
I think you can be excused from having any deeper concern, because where you are from things are different.
South of the border they have a track record of destroying human lives and social capital on a massive scale, by way of an ill-conceived but nevertheless fiercely executed “war on drugs” - the outgrowth of a 200-year long social engineering project born of puritanism that, after the humiliating failure of the prohibition, was helped to a new start by Hearst and Du Pont and that has been kept going thanks to decisive support from lawmakers bought by Mafia lobbyists or dulled by religion…
Be glad no friends of yours rot in jail for having enjoyed something that nature gives freely…
Call me selfish if you like, but I tend to vote for candidates based on issues that actually matter in this world. Economic policy, foreign policy, immigration, stem cell research, climate change, gay rights, women’s rights, health care reform, secularism, and the list goes on and on.
Call me selfish if you like[/quote]
I just ran 18 km with Pink Floyd The Wall pushing me through those last few km’s so I could get to the end of the album ( Once you hit play, you know you can’t stop until “outside the wall” ) And I haven’t smoked weed in nearly 15 years…