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In 2012 Colorado voted to legalize marajuana. They also elected a legislature that passed the most vicious antigun legislation in the interior West. Washington voters did the same in 2012. That state just passed vicious antigun legislation. The sort of people who wish to live in sanctuary states for street drugs care nothing about fundamental rights. Drug addicts have only one interest: escape from reality. Anyone who doesn't believe that marajuana is an addictive drug is either a mental defective or an addict.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Happy in Wyoming
In 2012 Colorado voted to legalize marajuana. ... The sort of people who wish to live in sanctuary states for street drugs care nothing about fundamental rights. Drug addicts have only one interest: escape from reality. Anyone who doesn't believe that marajuana is an addictive drug is either a mental defective or an addict.
There are a LOT of people who want to legalize all 'recreation' drugs. It am really surprised at the number and demographic of such people. (many older people) Antique hippies?
[/quote] Anyone who doesn't believe that marajuana is an addictive drug is either a mental defective or an addict.[/quote]
Yes, cannabis IS an addictive drug. Feel better? It's about as addictive as coffee. Anybody who is concerned about ADDICTION (Oh My!) should really concentrate their horror on legal opiates and their illegal equivalents. Those drugs are actually killing people, cannabis is not.
The reason some people want all drugs legalized is because they realize that drug problems are fundamentally a health issue, not a law enforcement issue.
We've tried the law enforcement route for more than 40 years, it hasn't worked. Even the DEA has said that the drugs on the street are now more potent, and cheaper, as well as better quality, than at any other time in history. If that isn't a measure of the failure of the current policies I don't know what would be.
That you country boys and girls want to continue to support the drug cartels, and increase your taxes to support the incarceration of non violent drug addicts, instead of actually helping people with real drug addictions get off the drugs, is a pretty good definition of mentally defective.
That you country boys and girls want to continue to support the drug cartels, and increase your taxes to support the incarceration of non violent drug addicts, instead of actually helping people with real drug addictions get off the drugs, is a pretty good definition of mentally defective.
There's a fundamental disconnect in your outlook:
1) I don't want to support the drug cartels in any way. I don't buy their products, nor do I advocate that others do, either.
2) Contrary to your assertion, I don't want to increase the incarceration of non violent drug addicts.
You and I can agree that the current drug enforcement policies haven't been effective. There has to be a better way to deal with the real addictions and mental health issues. I don't have the answer to that ... and I suspect you don't, either. But making this drug readily available doesn't seem like a productive answer to the problem.
As one who has personally witnessed the effects of MJ upon a large group of people through the years (and, similarly, abuse of alcohol), it's not all "cut and dried" that everybody is able to handle their use with common sense. I've got friends with teen-age children, some with 20-somethings, who aren't living in the real world anymore. Sitting at their folk's homes, unemployed and unemployable, wasting away their lives being stoned every day, all day. I respect their decision to not want to work, but I don't wish to bear their costs of existence, either, through the assistance programs that they abuse so that they don't have to work.
As previously mentioned, I had employees who couldn't do their jobs safely under the influence. Sure, what they did on their own time was their decision, but when they showed up to work around our equipment and machinery and couldn't exercise good cognitive skills, they endangered me and the other co-workers. In my shop, showing up stinking of MJ was grounds for immediate dismissal and I required drug tests before hiring folk. A lot of folk couldn't pass that hurdle, and more than a few simply stopped the application process when I disclosed my workplace requirements.
For you folk who are so accepting of the stoner lifestyle ... let me ask you: "how would you react if I told you that your car was wrecked in my shop because my employee was stoned?" is that something you just pass on "Oh, you've got insurance for the damage, they'll pay for it? and a rental car while mines' getting fixed, right?" As a business owner, GKLL and General Coverages were a huge bite upon my business. Asking an insurance company to be on the hook for prospective damaged cars due to stoned workers would have been a prohibitive cost to me. In net effect, I'd have borne the cost of allowing my employees to be working under the influence, and my decision was to not take on that risk.
While I don't rely upon the MJ industry sources for crime reporting, it's interesting that an advocate for drug legalization, The Huffington Post had an article declaring that the crime rates in Colorado were up post legalization. You can read about it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-...b_5663046.html
PS: calling me a "hick" or other names isn't going to support your position or change my outlook. If that's the level you want to engage in a rational discussion, then you've lost your argument from the get-go.
Sunsprit I fully support your right to hire and fire anyone you see fit. Having said that all your arguments against mj could be applied to alcohol and I don't see you calling for a ban or locking up people that drink. Overall mj is far less harmful to your body than booze and most smoke use it in moderation. The legal industry cards and dosent sell to minors far safer than having unregulated street dealers selling to everyone. Legalization is the common sense approach to the issue.
Sunsprit I fully support your right to hire and fire anyone you see fit. Having said that all your arguments against mj could be applied to alcohol and I don't see you calling for a ban or locking up people that drink. Overall mj is far less harmful to your body than booze and most smoke use it in moderation. The legal industry cards and dosent sell to minors far safer than having unregulated street dealers selling to everyone. Legalization is the common sense approach to the issue.
Allow me to clarify a few concepts for you:
1) I don't approve of folk operating equipment, working in my shop, flying aircraft, driving motor vehicles, or any other behavior under the influence which endangers others. That includes alcohol. So yes, I call for "locking up people that drink", if that makes you feel any better about my position on substance abusers.
2) There are statutes on the books for abusing alcohol, being under the influence while performing certain tasks. Perhaps even you have heard of DUI or DWI statutes and penalties? And I support the enforcement, fines, and incarceration of those who are in violation of these statutes.
3) I'm not advocating prohibition of MJ in Colorado. You want to indulge there, knock yourself out. Wanna' head to WA and indulge, or in any of the other areas of the USA where local enforcement permits small "recreational" quantities, knock yourself out.
4) OTOH, I don't see a need for recreational MJ in Wyoming. Quite the contrary, my personal experience with folk in the stoner lifestyle in Colorado is enough reason for me to not want a similar experience here.
5) The Colorado "legal" program has been an epic fail as to eliminating "street dealers". Why? Because the legal side carries with it typical gov't sanctioned business costs which make their product far more expensive. So the "legal" industry has actually been a boon to the illicit side where buyers can save money, and the street dealer profits are stronger than ever. If anything, it makes it easier for the youngsters to claim that their buzz and stench wasn't theirs ... as in the article I posted earlier in this thread with the enforcement problems in the Grand Junction High School area.
Your observation that the street dealers are on the run because of the legal industry is completely false.
What legalization has done is simply put the social acceptability of MJ use into a different context making it a more favorable environment to abuse the substance. Teens can abuse it and now look forward to the day they're "legal" ... much like early alcohol users have done for a long time.
PS:
As an aside, I'm a survivor of a drunk Eastbound semi-truck driver that took a left turn across Hwy 52 just West of I-25 a number of years ago. He was aggressively driving in the IBM rush hour traffic that afternoon for DeQuasie Trucking, fully loaded with 80,000lbs of gravel. The driver in front of him "brake checked" him at 50 mph to get him off his rear bumper. The DeQuasie driver chose to turn left into the oncoming traffic where there was no place to turn rather than step on his brakes. I just happened to be the oncoming traffic in my 1982 MB 300Dt. The KW bumper fit exactly from the front wheel arch to the rear wheel arch on my car and crushed about 1/4 of the way into my car on the left side.
While sitting in my car, post collision and off-road excursion north of the roadway, the ba*stard driver had the audacity to come over to me and start screaming about how I'd forced him to hit me and his truck was damaged. He offered no help and no assistance to an obviously seriously injured person ... his fault ... at the scene. I had to crawl out of the right rear door of the car, which wasn't a pleasant experience.
That driver stole a year of my life recovering from my injuries, broken ribs, cognitive function losses, and the shut-down of my business which I could no longer operate. Suffice to say that my new job was to recover from the injuries and I aggressively sought to become whole again. If you haven't lost those essential living functions, such as flow of speech, comprehension, memory, and are in physical pain from broken bones, severe contusions ... then you don't know what a challenge and insult they represent to a person. It took me almost 5 years to be able to turn my head while driving without having the whiplash pain. I still have tinnitus symptoms from the head impact to the driver's door glass which I shattered with my noggin. This is a lifelong disability which grieves me greatly because I loved classical and ancient music on period instruments and I can never again hear and enjoy them as I did years ago. (my original profession was as a EE in consumer electronics ... I'd designed and built studio quality analogue recording and playback gear since I was a teenager. Under my Dad's guidance and an Uncle prominent in the sound editing biz in Hollywood I'd made suggestions to some of the top designers/manufacturers of audio gear and a couple of my circuits and tactics were incorporated into retail gear, not a bad accomplishment for a kid).
Worse still, DeQuasie Trucking fought me on the concept of my losses, replacement car, medical expenses, lost income, lost business assets, etc. It took 4 years before I saw them in court, and other than a settlement on my total'ed car, everything else in that 4 years was out of my pocket until the court judgment and payment by their insurance company. They even denied accepting responsibility for my medical expenses ... ambulance ride from the accident, e-room treatment for lacerations, x-rays of broken bones, subsequent treatments. Try that, buddy ... living on your savings, cashing out your retirement funds, and seeing just about everything you've ever worked for destroyed because it was more important to another person to have their little escape from reality via a substance.
DeQuasie's driver could not appear at my hearing. He was dead over a year, having been in 3 more drunk driving accidents while in their employ since hitting me. The last drunk truck driving crash he was in was fatal to him.
So, BornintheSprings ... you have a bit more insight into why I'm aggressively posting here as to why I don't believe it's appropriate for folk to have yet even more ways to be **ucked up while driving or operating equipment. And I'm death on alcohol abuse, too, make no mistake about that and attempt to equate that with a reason to accept recreational MJ.
If you haven't been touched in your life by such situations, they're purely academic to you. No doubt, the fodder for lengthy smoke-filled giggling discussions about the meaning of life as to why the rest of us who object to your ability to mess with your skills ... yeah, I know ... "you can handle it" ... is a personal affront to us who've been there.
Sorry, but this isn't academic for me anymore. It's real life and I'm not buying your BS.
PPS:
I don't know where you can come up with the assertion that users only use it "in moderation". The industry acknowledges that today's product is many times more potent than the crap that was sold in the '60's-80's, and it takes only a toke or two to really get messed up on the new stuff.
Again, my personal experience has been that a lot of folk aren't anywhere near as functional on this substance as they delude themselves into thinking. Decades ago, I was a volunteer on a Denver area University help group ... we were the on-call resource for students having "bad trips" or "substance problems" ... where landlords where dealing with freaked out people, or people destroying property, or hurting themselves. Rather than calling the cops, they were encouraged to call us and let a few of us amateurs deal with the situation to avoid the people from getting busted for the drugs. I've been out on over 100 of those calls ... and I've dealt with trying to calm folk down, talk them through their problems, physically restrain them when needed ... and sometimes, realizing that folk needed pro medical attention and taking them to Denver General E-room. More than a few of those folk were just stoned, although a dose of alcohol or two aggravated the situation. I got to meet a sizable number of folk in the Denver artist's community of the time ... poets, painters, performing artists ... and I got to watch some of them spiral down through the whole scene of substance abuse to their deaths. It wasn't a pretty sight.
Rescue3 thanks for coming on here and LYING . ."The governor of Colorado has come out and said it was a mistake to legalize pot"
, Really everyone can have an opinion for or against -that's what makes for a good discussion. Dishonesty however just destroys your credibility.
The Governor was against it all along -right from the start. Many Dems like the government to control everything .. Now the Governor is saying maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all. A huge switch
Rescue3 thanks for coming on here and LYING . ."The governor of Colorado has come out and said it was a mistake to legalize pot"
, Really everyone can have an opinion for or against -that's what makes for a good discussion. Dishonesty however just destroys your credibility.
The Governor was against it all along -right from the start. Many Dems like the government to control everything .. Now the Governor is saying maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all. A huge switch
Pothead bankers telling the Feds the banking system "needs to reflect reality" after being denied access to make electronic transfers. Yeah. What could go wrong? And what do dopers know about reality? They are seeking to escape from it.
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The HIcks in the sticks are at it again
