Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I too,Rodman, have noticed that Harrison Ford seems to have a hard time gathering his thoughts or putting them into words. He speaks just like George W. Bush.
Maybe that is what happened. A lot of artist types, comedians, writers
seem to be users. I remember hearing George Carlin stating in an interview that he always kept a joint handy for when he encountered writers bloc.
Yeah, I think he was on Conan the first night the show started on TBS. We were watching and I asked my gf, "What's wrong with him? He seems different". We were thinking maybe he had suffered a mild stroke or something along those lines.
If the affluent have the ability or not to change laws for all illicit drugs to legitimize anyone's use of them. I hope not. Hard drugs are already a scourge on the land, maybe so, I hope not. The drug war, from all rational accounts of people involved in marijuana eradication, say it is a gigantic waste of resources that should be used to combat instead- the really bad stuff. I believe I heard that from the Head of the National Association of the Chiefs of Police, A California Chief, At the Washington Post Website.
In Texas it used to be a felony to be caught with even the smallest amount with most cases ending up in prison time. Under the governorship of Dolph Briscoe in 1973 the Texas legislature changed the law to include making possession of smaller amounts a misdemeanor.
Here is why.
Quote:
There was even a problem back in Texas. Stroup had gone there several times in the spring of 1973 as hearings were held on a reform bill. He arranged for testimony by John Finlator and also by Richard Cowan, the young Texas conservative who'd written the National Review article. He put together a group called Concerned Parents for Marijuana Reform, made up of people whose children were imprisoned, and its officers testified. The new law, which passed on May 29, reduced possession of marijuana from a felony to a low misdemeanor, which carried up to six months imprisonment for possession of up to two ounces, up to a year's imprisonment for possession of up to four ounces, and continued felony penalties for larger amounts. Sale of marijuana was reduced to a two-to-ten-year offense, and the law provided for persons imprisoned to apply for re-sentencing under the new, lower penalties.
Demolli was not one of the All-American boys whom Stroup from time to time uncovered and publicized—the student-body president who got two years for one joint.
Note: The usual faces for publicizing reform were "All-American boys" though Demolli, a hippie, enrolled at UT at the time of his arrest, whose father was an NCO in the Air Force, was one of the exceptions.
Quote:
The National Education Association, the National Council for Churches, and the Central Conference for American Rabbis, for example, all called for decriminalization. The two most important endorsements, however, came from Consumers' Union and the American Bar Association.
There were many organizations who also led to some of the reform but most importantly it was the faces of All-American boys in prison and their parents who led the change in Texas.
While there are other ways to view how norms and deviance are developed this is the view as stated in the social-conflict theory:
Quote:
Bag ladies (not tax evaders) and unemployed men on street corners (not those who profit from wars) carry the tag of deviance. Americans tend to define the peer groups of poor youths as "street gangs," while those of affluent young people are simply called "cliques."
Social-conflict theory explains this pattern in three ways. First, the norms—including laws—of any society generally reflect the interests of the rich and powerful...
...Second, even if their behavior is called into question, the powerful have the resources to resist deviant labels. Corporate executive who order or condone the dumping of hazardous wastes are rarely held personally accountable for these acts. While such mischief poses dangers for all of society, it is not necessarily viewed as criminal.
Macionis, John J. "Society: The Basics" Prentice Hall, 1992. p 135
Spoiler
This is from another Sociology text book.
Quote:
Why are certain people and acts rather than others labeled as deviant? Several sociologist have argued that the answer is to be found in the conflict of values and interests between those who have the power to label and those who are powerless to reject the label (for example, Liazos, 1972; Lemert, 1974; Chambliss and Mankoff, 1976). As Edwin Schur (1965) points out, people with high social, economic, and political resources have a high ability to resist charges of deviance; a high ability to resist sanctions such as arrest, conviction, and imprisonment; and a high ability to impose the actual rules that define deviance.
Conversely, those with lesser resources have a lower ability to achieve these things. Alexander Liazos (1972) notes that the label of deviance is rarely applied to the politician who starts a war or the corporate executive whose decisions lead to environmental pollution. These acts have far more serious social consequences than those of the person who steals bicylces or never washes, but the latter offenders, not the former, attract the stigma of deviance...
...Jock Young (1971) uses a similar argument to explain the social reaction to different forms of drug use. The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (1972) reported that alcohol abuse "is without question the most serious drug problem in the country today." Between 5 million and 9 million Americans are alcoholics, and about a third of the crimes recorded each year by the FBI are alcohol-related. Yet the commission found that only 7 percent of American adults consider alcohol abuse a problem, and less than 40 percent even regard alcohol as a "drug" at all.
Tobacco is casually linked to lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. It is also highly habit-forming: of those who smoke more than one cigarette in adolescence, 70 percent continue smoking for the next forty eyars (Russel, 1971).
Yet both these drugs are accepted in the most respected circles and are manufactured, advertised, and distributed by large and legitimate corporations.
Marijuana use, on the other hand, is generally illegal, and hundreds of thousands of young people are arrested each year for smoking or possession it...
...How can these different attitudes toward various forms of drug use be explained? For one thing, of course, alcohol and tobacco use is already entrenched in the culture, but Young suggests that the real explanation lied deeper. The social reaction to drug use, he argues, has little or nothing to do with the pharmacological characteristics of the drug in question: it has to do with social characteristics of the people who use it. Marijuana was associated in the past with such "disreputable" groups as blacks, jazz musicians, "hippies", and the rebellious young. Society identifies the drug with the people who use it, and if the people are disapproved, so is the drug.
Robertson, Ian. "Sociology" Worth Publishes, Inc., 1981. p 189-90'
These are a few reasons why it was made illegal to begin with in Texas in 1919 and nationally in 1937.
Quote:
The first group of states to have marijuana laws in that part of the century were Rocky Mountain and southwestern states. By that, I mean Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana. You didn't have to go anywhere but to the legislative records to find out what had motivated those marijuana laws. The only thing you need to know to understand the early marijuana laws in the southwest and Rocky Mountain areas of this country is to know, that in the period just after 1914, into all of those areas was a substantial migration of Mexicans. They had come across the border in search of better economic conditions, they worked heavily as rural laborers, beet field workers, cotton pickers, things of that sort. And with them, they had brought marijuana.
Basically, none of the white people in these states knew anything about marijuana, and I make a distinction between white people and Mexicans to reflect a distinction that any legislator in one of these states at the time would have made. And all you had to do to find out what motivated the marijuana laws in the Rocky mountain and southwestern states was to go to the legislative records themselves. Probably the best single statement was the statement of a proponent of Texas first marijuana law. He said on the floor of the Texas Senate, and I quote, "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff (referring to marijuana) is what makes them crazy." Or, as the proponent of Montana's first marijuana law said, (and imagine this on the floor of the state legislature) and I quote, "Give one of these Mexican beet field workers a couple of puffs on a marijuana cigarette and he thinks he is in the bullring at Barcelona."
Well, there it was, you didn't have to look another foot as you went from state to state right on the floor of the state legislature. And so what was the genesis for the early state marijuana laws in the Rocky Mountain and southwestern areas of this country? It wasn't hostility to the drug, it was hostility to the newly arrived Mexican community that used it.
enough sites that'll inform you enough about other celebs as well:
Every celeb in the world can advocate this issue but it will not change a thing since most celebs come from and appeal to the classes who are not affluent. As a matter of fact even some non-affluent, who support certain key issues of the affluent class, view actors and California in general in not the most positive light.
When enough of the affluent, or their sons and daughters begin to use more openly, when Hearts newspapers begin to call for legalization, then the laws will change. That is just the way society works and there is really nothing negative or positive about it, it just is.
The drug war, from all rational accounts of people involved in marijuana eradication, say it is a gigantic waste of resources that should be used to combat instead- the really bad stuff.
That is all. The reduction of legal penalties for small amounts of weed posession was way overdue and it was common knowledge that this was the case particularly in Texas, where overly stiff prison sentences dealt out by judges had caught even national attention. The laws were absurd and antiquated.
When you have an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it is best to let him run.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Merovee
In Texas it used to be a felony to be caught with even the smallest amount with most cases ending up in prison time. Under the governorship of Dolph Briscoe in 1973 the Texas legislature changed the law to include making possession of smaller amounts a misdemeanor.
Note: The usual faces for publicizing reform were "All-American boys" though Demolli, a hippie, enrolled at UT at the time of his arrest, whose father was an NCO in the Air Force, was one of the exceptions.
There were many organizations who also led to some of the reform but most importantly it was the faces of All-American boys in prison and their parents who led the change in Texas.
While there are other ways to view how norms and deviance are developed this is the view as stated in the social-conflict theory:
Macionis, John J. "Society: The Basics" Prentice Hall, 1992. p 135
Spoiler
This is from another Sociology text book.
Robertson, Ian. "Sociology" Worth Publishes, Inc., 1981. p 189-90'
These are a few reasons why it was made illegal to begin with in Texas in 1919 and nationally in 1937.
Every celeb in the world can advocate this issue but it will not change a thing since most celebs come from and appeal to the classes who are not affluent. As a matter of fact even some non-affluent, who support certain key issues of the affluent class, view actors and California in general in not the most positive light.
When enough of the affluent, or their sons and daughters begin to use more openly, when Hearts newspapers begin to call for legalization, then the laws will change. That is just the way society works and there is really nothing negative or positive about it, it just is.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It was just about the timing,
