My heart goes out to you and your kids!

Pot might make you giggle at a song lyric while you’re sitting in someone’s car as a passenger, and your giggle might distract them and cause them to look away from the road just long enought to prevent taking an evasive maneuver to avoid getting hit by a drunk driver. So, the drunk driver hits the car with the sober driver because the sober driver’s passenger had smoked pot a few hours before. That’s a “marijuana related accident” and that is why pot should never be legal, so sayeth the prohibitionist as they suck down their 3rd martini of the morning.

Agree, were I defined what is ‘not safe’ for me. Prohibition is not safe for me because, the laws imposed to enforce it not only effect those who use drugs but those who dont(myself). Therefore I deem prohibition not safe for me, society will have to make a determination on that in that respect eventually, for its self.

I look at prohibition like spraying bugs. Just because mesquitoes carry a desease, do we spray a chemical over all of us that causes health problems worse that the bugs carries? Just to kill the bug? Well we have, DDT. We dont anymore right?

Hopefully the pubic will see this oneday too.

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A vote for cannabis legalization only is a vote for partial freedom only.

“That’s like saying beer is different from vodka and should be treated differently under alcohol prohibition.”

No, I didn’t say kind bud is different from schwagg what I said was more like Alcohol and Cigarettes are different substances, which clearly they are, and must be dealt with independently.

“But if you’re going to start out by saying it’s different from the other drugs,”

No, I said ALL substances are different, not that marijuana is the one exception. The fact that law enforcement treats all drugs the same, save in ridiculous “schedules” is murderously stupid. The CSA must be repealed and drugs must cease to be a law enforcement issue. But people aren’t asking questions about the CSA these days, the debate is centering on marijuana specifically.

My point was that the public discussion now centers on marijuana, so instead of ridiculing the newly informed calling them “hypocrites”, “pot people”, and throwing out inflammatory remarks, just explain your position coherently and accept that they are on your side but might need more info. Name-calling achieves nothing and is counterproductive.

Jesper: Good points. Clearly the right of a person to determine what is “safe” for himself trumps any arguments about what is “safe for society”. People’s misinformation runs so deep, it is difficult to get all the points in. When someone says, for instance, “but Marijuana is dangerous!” I DO tend to reply with “No it isn’t….” rather than the more important “Why would that even matter?….” I’ll definitely keep that in mind.

Prohibitionists will always turn things into a “drugs discussion”. War on Drugs, Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, yada yada …

I recognize, however, the vulnerability you mention here. I will maintain that it’s a particular vulnerability that the cannabis reform advocates’ arguments are open to, because they simply do not seem to have a very coherent theory going for them (see below).

A. Prohibitionists have always screamed “drugs are dangerous, hence should be made illegal”. As such they seem to indicate that “if only a drug WASN’T dangerous it would be legal”.

B. Way too many cannabis reformers have swallowed that bait hook line and sinker, so they have incessantly tried to REDUCE the question of Cannabis’s legal status to a question of drug safety. I’m as pissed as the next guy regarding the hypocrisy of Prohibitionists here. Nothing is more hypocritical than with cannabis. Yet *I* think the framing is entirely wrong. Whether some Nanny State “prohibits something because it’s dangerous”, or “allows it because it’s safe” rests on the same wrong premise that State has any business interfering like that and that dangers have anything to do with making good policy. It’s a red heering, a shallow grave for us to waste away in.

C. The dear cannabis plant just so happens to actually, truly be the safest psychoactive substances known to man. But let’s face it: SOME drug would have to hold this position. That it happens to be cannabis is just coincidence, but cannabis is still a drug just like alcohol is. However, it’s my contention that cannabis activists place far too much importance of this crandom throw of the dice. Tenable? I don’t think so. Next year some guys finds two plants and three new synthetic drugs that are proven scientifically to be safer than pot. Should we then Legalize the Five, and move to a ban on pot and alcohol? Oops, huh?

Prohibitionists have drawn a chalk outline on the pavement. They’re just waiting for someone i cannabis reform to lie down willingly inside the chalk outline and play his part.

So while Prohibitionists and Pot Legalizers are playing their symbiotic game the latter, which is the largest and most powerful group of drug reformers, seem unable to work out a coherent “theory of dealing effectively with risky behavior (drugs)”. They just want to move pot into the same grouping as alcohol and have Prohibition continue unabated – or with increased fury – for the rest of us.

That’s making EVERYTHING much harder for those of us who do not believe in the very similar lies told about other drugs like LSD, MDMA, psilocybin, 2C-B, methylone, and well … even meth. Did I mention I know people who use meth occasionally and are leading good, productive lives?

What? Government can’t lie about other drugs too?

It’s so very hard to watch the struggle of our brethren knowing that while they most certainly will achieve success, they’re not just “not lifting a finger to help us” (which would be OK), but their approach WILL cause even more years by me and my friends to waste away in drug policy reform when we try to correct the faulty theory of cannabis legalization (which is not OK).

Hence my frequent remark that if this was about racism, we’d have one group just wanting to have one, naturally growing, totally nice race be exempt from Apartheid racism while not giving a flying frak about any other race. (No, I’m not saying that. I’m pointing out the apparent lack of theory on the subject of drugs behind the struggle to rehabilitate cannabis.)

BTW, I absolutely adore cannabis in all it’s forms. Who’d have known.

Stick to the truth and your hardly ever wrong.

Perhaps some of the cannabis-centric readers would tell us what they would do about drugs of addiction and the poly-drugs? Under your benevolent dictatorship how would we deal with these drugs?

See now , this is what is so screwed up! ALL the things you listed there Bruce, Please someone tell me, All the carnage and our leaders refuse to change this law. Its just criminal to allow this to happen to America.

We have had our rights stripped for the supposed purpose of fighting terrorists, to keep us safe. Our lives are and maynever be the same. Now suppose for one minute that if our leaders didint do something to keep terrorists from destroying our country. The outrage would be MASSIVE !!

Back to your list Bruce. All that caranage is just as bad. Wheres the outrage? Why do our leaders think its “ok” to let this continue? How insane are these people whom we supposedly trust to lead this country. ITS CRIMINAL TO LET THIS CONTINUE ! THIS IS NOT PROTECTING OUR COUNTRY OR HELPING THE KIDS!

We are all sinners and imperfect and have our short comings, but we all need to cut each other some slack because there is enough pain in this life to go around, if you have to use something to help you cope or get by, then God bless you. If you have a reason to party and let your hair down and responsibly use an intoxicant of your choice, then God bless you too. No one should be locked up for playing a part, whether seller or buyer be.

If I told you I believe George Washington was really a large goldfish who breathed on land by wearing a water tank on his back and spoke via telepathy, you would discount everything I said, and rightfully so. Replacing Washington with Jesus and calling it “my religion” shouldn’t change that one bit.