"Potheads" borrow a page from the "gay agenda"

I support marijuana legalization

 I do not use marijuana, haven't for years. However, I think its a fairly harmless activity. Perhaps the biggest parallel to the GLBT experience I see with marijuana users is that its not really the government's business what an adult chooses to do with their body. Unlike the GLBT experience, we're born this way, and pot use is a choice. Then again, religion's a choice too, so I don't see why we raise a hue and cry over things that are a choice being somehow unworthy of legal protections.

I'd treat it the same way we treat booze-many states have drunk in public laws; many have state-run shops that have exclusive rights to sell; there are age restrictions for purchase; driving under the influence is illegal; its illegal to give it to a child; crimes committed while under the influence often results in the perpetrator being remanded to medical treatment facilities.

The drug war itself is an exercise in hypocrisy; the drugs we like are legal-prescription drugs, alcohol, tobacco. Many of these are FAR more addictive than pot, and more physiologically dangerous. Yet, we have no problem with adults legally using these substances in controlled settings and circumstances where the use of these intoxicants will not harm other people. I do not favor the legalization of highly addictive substances-like coke or smack- but for pot? It's not harmful enough to be illegal.


My dad was a steelworker
My mom was a kitchen girl
and that's why
I'm a socialist.
-from an old song I used to hum to myself

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by: DaveB @ Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 13:32:16 PM CDT

Treat it like alcohol

That's what I've been saying for years.  If we can find a way to live with adults choosing to consume Bacardi 151, we can find a way to cope with them smoking a little grass.

"If people let government decide which foods they eat and medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny." -- Thomas Jefferson

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by: RadicalRuss @ Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 15:10:29 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

"Recruiting the children"?!

I think that "recruiting the children" line shows the Morality Police's own backruptcy of ideas more than anything - they're so desperate to find a winning issue, someone they can dump on with impunity, that they're transferring their gay memes wholesale onto an anti-pot crusade.

"Recruiting the children"?  Really?  Are they now going to argue that pot users are unnatural because they can't reproduce?

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by: popebuck1 @ Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 14:12:41 PM CDT

How dare you make this comparison!!

Marijuana use is a CHOICE. I can't wake up tomorrow and not be gay!

(tongue firmly in cheek, I assure you)

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by: Eshto @ Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 14:49:20 PM CDT

The worst thing you can say about cannabis

Is that, in excess, it makes you perfectly happy to sit about doing nothing but watching cult movies all day.

These people! Do they ever look at themselves, just listen to the hysterical nonsense, the apocalyptic hyperbole, the booming, shrieking, gibbering stream of mock-epic nonsense about safe-guarding the world frem Satanic evil and the terrible doomsday dangers and the hidden armies of darkness and the vast shadowy comspiracies and think...

...just think...

..MAN, I am just so jonesing to feel important in this vast and uncaring cosmos of ours. Maybe if I talk like a cross between Moses and Hitler all day on my blog, I won't feel so insignificant.

The last thing these people want to do is chill out. If they did, they might have to listen to that echoey noise inside themselves.

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by: steerpike66 @ Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 15:02:27 PM CDT

Well, if pot destroys ambition and motivation

Like most of the anti-marijuana folks seem to claim it does, I'm all for requiring them to partake in a joint or two.  They could do with a few days of watching spongebob and laughing their asses off.  They might even start acting like gasp rational people!

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by: sfalken @ Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 15:17:54 PM CDT

I know, right?

In any movie, they'd be the uptight parental/authority figure who inadvertently gets high, and thus takes the stick out of his/her ass and learns to cut loose.  We should be so lucky.

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by: popebuck1 @ Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 18:22:00 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Another example

The population is ahead of politicians on this issue. A majority of America supports decriminalizing pot. Massachusetts just passed a ballot question to decriminalize it, last November.

I've never actually smoked it in my life, shockingly enough, but it is absurdly rediculous that we waste so many resources targeting and imprisoning people for smoking pot. It's nearly as silly that we choose not to regulate it, making it safer and getting rid of the black market, as well as taxing it, bringing in a lot of new revenue (and actually jobs!).

The first step is the Massachusetts route, though. Decriminalize it so we're not turning good people into "criminals" and wasting tens of millions in state resources when extra money is so rare these days.  

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by: RyansTake @ Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 15:43:32 PM CDT

I'm one of those people

Pot does nothing for me. I don't get high, I just get tired and foggy-headed and hope that it wears off soon.

But, I think pot does wonders for a number of my friends. I like them better when they're high. Some are more creative and more interesting to talk to.

I'd rather be in a room full of potheads than drunks. You can't shut drunks up with a plate of nachos and a John Waters movie.

Legalize pot now!

When you look for the bad in mankind, expecting to find it, you surely will.

- Abraham Lincoln.

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by: Fritz @ Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 16:13:52 PM CDT