Changing opinions on marijuana legalization

It can take a lot, sometimes entire generations to dramatically shift the country’s views, and this is dramatic.

Pew Research Center: Support for marijuana legalization continues to rise

The share of Americans who favor legalizing the use of marijuana continues to increase. Today, 57% of U.S. adults say the use of marijuana should be made legal, while 37% say it should be illegal. A decade ago, opinion on legalizing marijuana was nearly the reverse – just 32% favored legalization, while 60% were opposed.

That’s incredible, and a testament to the amazing work done by so many people, who chose not to let the government and prevailing views silence them, and instead wrote letters to the editor, or talked to the local Kiwanis club, or brought up legalization at Thanksgiving dinner, or campaigned for a medical marijuana law, or made comments on internet fora.

When you look at the breakdown, there are very few demographics left to conquer.

ft_16-10-11_marijuanalegal_table

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50 Responses to Changing opinions on marijuana legalization

  1. Servetus says:

    The Conservative Republican demographic still has one in three people deciding in favor of legalization. The one-third favoring changes in the drug laws are likely millennials, while the remaining two-thirds are probably authoritarians, perhaps those profiting in some way from drug enforcement.

    Drug war authoritarians find themselves in the same demographic as climate deniers. Strangely enough, the climate deniers don’t necessarily deny all the sciences, just environmental science–and scientists. The reasons? At least one reason is because their image of climate scientists is that of dope-smoking hippies – hippies, of course, having been very active in the early beginnings of the environmental movement.

    To counter this nonsense, experts are studying the climate deniers, people who suspiciously resemble prohibitionists:

    4-OCT-2016–The results show that climate change denial correlates with political orientation, authoritarian attitudes and endorsement of the status quo. It also correlates with a tough-minded personality (low empathy and high dominance), closed-mindedness (low openness to experience), predisposition to avoid experiencing negative emotions, and with the male sex, importantly, one variable, named social dominance orientation (SDO), helped explain all these correlations, either entirely or partially.

    Social dominance orientation is a measure of the acceptance and advocating of hierarchical and dominant relations between social groups. This acceptance of hierarchies also extends to accepting human dominance over nature. The correlation between SDO and climate change denial can perhaps be explained by considering the many injustices of climate change. Our current wealthy lifestyles are the primary cause of climate change, but the most serious consequences are affecting mainly poor countries and people, as well as animals and future generations of humans.

    According to Kirsti Jylhä, it is possible that individuals who accept the unequal distribution of the risks and benefits of climate change, more easily can keep demanding more evidence for climate change before admitting and addressing it.

    The question then is how the issue of climate change can best be presented to people with a high SDO to convince them of the need for action.

    AAAS Public News Release: “The psychology behind climate change denial”–Uppsala University

    • Daniel Williams says:

      Can the same not be said of the Liberal Democratic demographic? And if their ratio skews greater than 1/3, which would be a fair assumption, why has that not translated into action by the Democrats? Especially led by the most candid president on personal drug use in all of history, a use, it must be noted, he gleefully recounted.

      To paint climate skeptics, like myself, with the same flat-earthers brush is a bit rich. Yes, there are those in complete denial (and not just about the climate), but they are few in number – and not all are Republicans. How many times, just in our own little orbit of interest, have we heard ‘settled science’ used to end the debate? Skeptics don’t deny man has an impact on the environment. We do, however, find it odd and rather ironic that hardcore climate believers seek to punish/prohibit dissenting views. How very authoritarian of them…

      And I gotta say, all that SDO nonsense is just that: nonsense. And dollars-to-doughnuts it sprang from within the Liberal Democratic demographic.

      • DdC says:

        Oh shit Danial. 97% of scientist state the obvious Denialists hide from as they do the safe and medicinal use of Ganja. Simple answer is CO2 retains heat longer than O2. Heat expands matter, including oceans. Flooding coastal areas and islands. Heat creates more forest fires and drought. Whoring for the fossil fools emitting CO2 is insane since they too live on the planet. Cutting down trees that remove CO2 is a for profit selfish scam with no regards for the people living in the area or in general. Profits over people, the most cowardly abuse of the citizenry.

        Hemp could replace many fossil fools products, including plastic made from OPECkerheads crud. Profit is why the greed junkies maintain the bullshit denialists spew. But the real cause is from Clinical Endocannabinoid Deficiency and over the generations of prohibition it has caused Conservatives to Have Larger ‘Fear Centers’ in Their Brains. More paranoid of climate change taking their off shore rig jobs and fracking clean water into a chemical waste dump… and legal Hemp infringing on their big ag profits.

        Conservatudes are more apt to follow orders blindly without question. The way they were taught about being a good obedient lapdog child. Like gathering around Trump when they claim they can’t stand him. Oh he’s a sexual predator but better than Hilary? Who people hate for her husband, who isn’t running. Or caging people for relieving symptoms without fat pharma profits. Just because “Liberals” consider people over profits. Seems you were obviously traumatized as a child when the redneck bullies took your lemonade stand profits and the Liberals said turn the other cheek. Doesn’t mean Conservatives aren’t sheep. Don’t you know bullies are cowards?

        • Daniel Williams says:

          Obviously you’re an idiot.

        • primus says:

          Ah, yes the ad hominem attack which signifies that the attacker has lost the argument.

        • DdC says:

          Seriously Donald, I mean Daniel. Typical. How the hell else would a Denialist reply? Careful, your head has been exposed from the sand its been buried in. Your brain might boil. The heat released from it is measured in calories. Not a great threat to climate change. btw LSD is manufactured by humans, so it is not a natural substance like Ganja or Hemp, and is subject to regulation and prohibition. Even draconian illogical sentencing based on the weight of the paper is done without objection, wrongly, but its humans regulating human inventions without objection, Not banning nature.

          Outlawing nature for profits is done by the same corporate clown denialists afraid their fossil fools crud will be replaced. Same Wall St backing the drug war. Any fool can just say no daniel. Calling people names like I said, is more the norm than the fringe of “those people”. From this time forward you shall be known as Denial Williams.

          Also like exporting the drug war the US industrialists have exported their filthy profits over people. Thailand not only created thousands of slave laborers with the drug war cages. Now they are burning down rain forest to graze cattle. Protecting practices that do harm to your own families is the mark of an idiot. Telling someone about it is a public service announcement.

          Lay off the man made substances a while. Humans were not designed to consume human products. Not booze or big pharma and certainly not fossil fool based big ag poisons. Your liver wasn’t created for such a job. The results of which are similar to the results of the prohibition of Ganja. ECS deficiency and organ damage. Nature is also exempt from being taxed but you’ll never hear it from the money sluts.

          The downfall of America by the selfish boomer brats me me me legislations. RIP necessity, profits are the new mother of invention. Treating misery they create. Isn’t it obvious? Idiots protest clean air and water, peace, living wages, affordable housing. alternative resources to what makes us sick so the Koch’s can get richer. If carbon emissions are so clean and CO2 benign. Wrap your lips around a tail pipe for 10 minutes and prove its safe. Like the Butt Probbies denying the chemical additions to cigarettes doing the damage, not the tobacco. Raising prices driving the poor to buy cheaper generic with even more chemicals. Sicker quicker. Same as the hypocrite’s Bible Belt abortions from spraying 90 million pounds of Monsanto on the US cotton crops, never mentioned by the anti-choice.

          The more times change the more they stay the same. Modern day Mussolini’s. “All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it.”

          When it comes to climate change or the medicinal benefits of Ganja the Neocon’s cheer for their lemmings in tow is Just say no eh?

        • Daniel Williams says:

          primus: Just fighting fire with fire. DdC commented that “obviously you were traumatized as a child when the redneck bullies took your lemonade profits…”

        • Daniel Williams says:

          Oh, I see what you did there, DdC: attaching me to Donald and lumping me in with the flat-earthers. So clever.

          Your rant lacks cohesion, but that’s not a surprise. Neither is the continuation of disparaging remarks tossed my way. And as primus stated: ad hominens are the last (and sometimes first) response of those lacking an effective argument.

          I take no pharmaceutical drugs. So there’s nothing to lay off. And I’m a lifelong teetotaler, so my liver loves me.

          Perhaps you’d benefit from anger management classes, and to help minimize your ramble, maybe a course in effective writing too.

      • Servetus says:

        There is a difference in the way you and I view the world, Daniel. Your ideas on climate science fall within a certain set of beliefs, whereas what I know about climate change and CO2 contamination comes from spending thousands of hours studying physics and mathematics. For most of my professional life I’ve been an applied physicist. Largely due to that, I do not consider myself a part of any belief culture, a trap which even liberals or Democrats fall into. To summarize, I do not believe, I think.

        The laws of thermodynamics, wave propagation, heat transfer, mathematics, etc., have nothing to do with what you and I might believe. Radiation can still cook our bones and bleach our skulls after we’re dead, believe it or not. There exists a well-worked-out set of climate change equations, complete with physical variables and mathematical models built and tested on supercomputers, which can very nearly predict, without bothering with ultra-minor variables, what is going to occur in the near future (also minus something big such as a caldera explosion of Yellowstone Park). When you start to get these kinds of numbers, that’s when you really know something, and that’s when you can start to worry. Note the models are based on the amount of CO2 accumulating on this planet due to industrialization from the year 1870, not just recent decades.

        Action by Democrats does occur, but their work is spread thin. Not all Democrats are activists. Discussion by Democrats regarding climate change is getting drowned out by 2016 election politics. I tend not to hold too much optimism for groups or political parties and their actions, which probably means I’m more anarchist than liberal or Democrat. Individuals within groups are the ones who ultimately accomplish what needs to be done. Ordinary individuals, those not part of organizations, can make a cumulative difference in climate change with just simple acts of recycling, or using less water.

        In my case, two months of sub-contractor consulting I did as an environmental technologist involving a tech transfer for the DoE in 2000 became an essential business link in the chain of events reducing worldwide industrial and commercial outputs of nitrous-oxides (NO, NO2, NO3 or just NOx), thereby giving further scientific justification to moving away from burning coal and lignite to burning natural gas for power generation—still a temporary solution, but better than coal. Yes, you and I and every other living, breathing creature on earth are now sucking down fewer nitrous oxides with every breath (or hit of weed) we take. Nitrous oxides are a greenhouse gas with five-times the greenhouse effect of CO2. You can thank me later. So, although I regard some climate deniers as flat-earthers, I’m especially upset if they’re in a position of political power. For instance, there could be politicians who don’t even believe in their own climate change denials. For them, the denials would end up merely a useful tool to profit politically based on their own sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences, as it is with many sadomoralist prohibitches, and with drug prohibition itself. That said, the situation would make such political leaders social dominance oriented climate bitches.

        • DdC says:

          I don’t even think CO2 is the primary reason to find alternatives to fossil fools. The sulfur and dioxides and PCB’s in transformers are probably more directly harmful to our health. Sulfur and rain makes sulfuric acid the same as in batteries. The pipelines leaking into water supplies. 15,000 gallons of crude mixed bilge flushed by oil tankers each year. Tanker truck emissions. Native American water supplies on reservations supposedly with sovereignty from corporate pillaging.

          But then the Neocons never rely on fact, just hate. pitting one group against the other and then stealing their wallets while they battle each other. Outlawing competition is a Neocon practice the same as undercutting or outsourcing labor or importing labor with TPP. Prison slave labor using drug users to fill the cages. Their example of equality is to level the numbers by caging caucasians at equal rates. Women are less work to arrest than men and their rising numbers prove it.

          Threats, BS and now GOPer legislation to arrest protesters. Even journalists. Right under the noses of Congress or most likely in front of their eyes. Half too afraid to fight and half to inculcated to resist. We end up with CARER Acts giving fat pharma monopolies and Koch fracking immunity from the Clean Air and Water Acts. More blatant acts of violence against humanity unchecked or not dealt with by politicians paid to legislate their fake version of morality.

          ☛ “Journalist Amy Goodman Shouldn’t Be Arrested for Covering Dakota Pipeline Story”
          ROLLING STONE’S TAIBBI: October 13, 2016

          PS. Thermodynamic laws also include the freezing of Europe by US fossil fools. Since another law is that heat travels to cold, wind for example. Also the greater difference in temps the faster the heat will travel. Melting the Arctic is heating the area making the entity temps difference less or the movement slower. Air or water, whatever is heated. Meaning the Gulf Stream bringing warm water to the Mediterranean Sea is slowing down. Brexit was nothing compared to an ice age.

        • Daniel Williams says:

          Not so sure we view the world all that differently – maybe just the weather.

          Climate scientists have made extraordinary claims since the first Earth Day, and many have not come to fruition. When confronted with these wildly miscalculated ‘settled science’ prognostications, their defense has been to obsfucate and muddy the water even more.

          Global climate change is just that: global. China and India have no desire to restrict their growing economies, and will continue to burn fossil fuels until the cows come home (and even the accords agreed to allow China to go full bore until nearly 2030, and then, maybe, start to draw down). Even if the climate scientists are correct, which is a very big if, nothing of any consequence will happen until China and India get onboard.

          The US says we must lead by example, but we are cannot afford to be the only baler in the boat (just as we can no longer be the world’s policemen). It will imperial our economy at the expense of letting everyone else catch up.

        • jean valjean says:

          Brian Cox shuts down a climate denier:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxEGHW6Lbu8

        • Servetus says:

          China is working on reducing climate affecting emissions, and has been for some time. Rumors are the only car you will buy in China in the near future will be electric:

          GHG Emissions – China has been the world’s largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter since 2006. Under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, China pledged to reduce its emissions intensity by 40-45 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. In a joint announcement with the United States in Beijing in November 2014, China announced two new goals: peaking greenhouse gas emissions by around 2030, and increasing non-fossil sources to 20 percent of total energy by 2030. China later included these two goals in its intended nationally determined contribution (INDC) to the new international climate agreement to be concluded in Paris in December 2015, along with a goal of reducing carbon intensity 60-65 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
          http://www.c2es.org/international/key-country-policies/china

          And India just ratified the Paris Agreement:

          October 2, 2016 — The third largest emitter of greenhouse gases agrees to fight global warming.
          India, the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, formally joined the Paris agreement on tackling climate change on Sunday, taking the global pact a step nearer its enactment.

          “India has deposited its instrument of ratification of the Paris Agreement with the United Nations,” the U.N. said in a statement on Sunday.

          The deal, agreed by nearly 200 countries in Paris last December, aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions by shifting away from fossil fuels to limit global warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times.
          http://fortune.com/2016/10/02/india-paris-climate-change/

          China and India aren’t stupid. Both countries are capable of producing an atomic bomb, which means they’re both capable of understanding the climate change equations and the problems associated with dumping industrial-sourced carbon into the atmosphere.

        • tensity1 says:

          Good man, Servetus.

          Effin hear, hear.

          Daniel, climate science supporters aren’t so much punishing/prohibiting dissenting views as they are surprised by denialists’ attitudes, thus responding with derision, mockery, and other such attitudes. Because, you know, facts and science and physics and shit.

        • jean valjean says:

          Servetus: just to add that both India and China will be hugely affected by the earliest effects of run-away warming as most of their water supplies comes from (rapidly) melting Himalayan glaciers. Once they’re gone so are Indian and Chinese industry and agriculture.

        • Daniel Williams says:

          jean valjean; Servetus; tensity1: You guys are making my point that climate skeptics are considered climate deniers, subject and deserved of all the derision tossed our way by you ‘settled science’ superiors – not to mention you make no mention of all the crazy claims made over the decades that have not only not come to fruition, but, in some instances, actually improved.

          You guys share more with religious fundamentalists than you may want to acknowledge. All your “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” hand-wringing smacks of the same “Repent! Repent, you sinners!” religious crazies spout.

        • jean valjean says:

          Daniel: go back and watch the the link I posted to Brian Cox. Your denial of facts is making you ridiculous.

        • Daniel Williams says:

          jean valjean: And your blind acceptance of questionable ‘settled science’ makes you pretty ridiculous, and little different from religious fundamentalists.

          I find it particularly absurd that, after years of drug propaganda ‘settled science’ has been debunked, you and others so blithely accept climate ‘settled science’ as fact.

        • Servetus says:

          Equating drug propaganda with settled climate science is a false equivalence. The settled part of climate science is basic physics—in case you want to question gravity, or the second law of thermodynamics.

          Real scientists have looked at the drug propaganda funded by the NIDA, and have judged it to be 94% useless banter from which no scientific conclusions can be drawn. Press releases issued by NIDA researchers are often mere bait for unwary journalists who incorrectly report research results made deliberately vague or misleading. Regardless of how much you might love to hate scientists who might piss on your religion, climate science is settled enough to take it seriously.

          In these cases, two moral imperatives are at work. United States NIDA funded research is obviously designed to dumb down the public about drugs. It is not science. Whereas climate science is a multinational effort, ongoing since climate records were being kept. Mariners had a need for climate information. Knowing it was important to them and everyone else. Climate is not a topic people, or a government, normally have any reason to lie to each other about, unless they’re an oil company exec. Whereas drug control, a perverse and toxic aspect of social control, requires the government and prohibitionists to lie all the time.

        • Atrocity says:

          Climate scientists have made extraordinary claims since the first Earth Day, and many have not come to fruition.

          Many of the doomsday scenarios didn’t happen because humanity changed its behavior and prevented the disasters. Sufficient numbers of people didn’t sit back and pretend it wasn’t happening, instead they worked to reduce the amount of shit pouring into the water and air.

          I saw the same denial post-Y2K: Nothing blew up, so obviously there was never a problem in the first place. It’s kinda like saying measles doesn’t really exist because your vaccine worked.

          I find it particularly absurd that, after years of drug propaganda ‘settled science’ has been debunked, you and others so blithely accept climate ‘settled science’ as fact.

          Drug propaganda was never settled science. In fact, drug prohibition has endured in the face of multiple scientific studies showing it to be bullshit. Climate change deniers and prohibitionists have both engaged in the same tactic of simply ignoring the studies they didn’t like. (This, of course, is not a behavior limited to those two groups.)

      • Daniel Williams says:

        To all you replying to me: Do you know the difference between a skeptic and a denier?

        You all keep beating me with that cudgel but remain mute on all the many ‘settled science’ claims that did not come to fruition. A number of respectable individuals, some of whom you may have trusted in the past, have become skeptics – not only of the ‘settled science’ but of the remedies as well. Do these learned skeptics now fall into to your disfavored or, dare I say, deplorable, basket?

        And I guess that because China and India are now giving little more than lip service to the issue, you trust them to follow through? Not a skeptic among you? Certainty is the folly of fools, they say. Wear that badge proudly.

        • Windy says:

          http://www.technocracy.news/index.php/2015/10/30/former-president-of-greenpeace-scientifically-rips-climate-change-to-shreds/

          The contention that human emissions are now the dominant influence on climate is simply a hypothesis, rather than a universally accepted scientific theory. It is therefore correct, indeed verging on compulsory in the scientific tradition, to be skeptical of those who express certainty that “the science is settled” and “the debate is over”.

          But there is certainty beyond any doubt that CO2 is the building block for all life on Earth and that without its presence in the global atmosphere at a sufficient concentration this would be a dead planet. Yet today our children and our publics are taught that CO2 is a toxic pollutant that will destroy life and bring civilization to its knees. Tonight I hope to turn this dangerous human-caused propaganda on its head. Tonight I will demonstrate that human emissions of CO2 have already saved life on our planet from a very untimely end. That in the absence of our emitting some of the carbon back into the atmosphere from whence it came in the first place, most or perhaps all life on Earth would begin to die less than two million years from today.

          http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/lawrence-solomon/global-cooling_b_4413833.html

          These scientists and others who are now warning of global cooling have something basic in common — unlike scientists who warn of global warming, who often rely on the Earth sciences and blame climatic change on man-made carbon dioxide, the global cooling scientists more often rely on meteorology, solar science and other disciplines that view the Sun, cosmic rays and Earth’s orbit as the dominant factors in our climate.

          “The Sun, not man, warms the Earth,” an earlier article by Lüdecke, concisely expresses the emergent view that humans play an inconsequential role in climate change. The accumulation of evidence from scientists relying on celestial rather than man-made explanations for changes to the global climate has led even the BBC, an ardent advocate of the man-made global warming theory, to credit the Sun.

          “Real risk of a Maunder Minimum ‘Little Ice Age,'” stated a BBC headline in October, in reporting the view of Mike Lockwood, Professor of Space Environment Physics at Reading University’s Meteorology Department, that “solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.”

          http://yournewswire.com/tens-of-thousands-of-scientists-declare-climate-change-a-hoax/

          A staggering 30,000 scientists have come forward confirming that man-made climate change is a hoax perpetuated by the elite in order to make money.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiIPBnZCmVk

          Exact Dates Given for Grand Solar Minimum Cooling commencing Globally in a paper by Zharkova, Shepherd, Popova and Zharkov, then the IPCC Tried to Suppress Research by asking the Royal Astronomical Society to remove the findings through the groups of scientific organizations associated with the IPCC.

      • Windy says:

        42% of Americans claim to be part of no party (independents), while 19% self identify as libertarian, another percentage (I have no idea exactly how many) favor one or another of the other 3rd parties, that leaves less than 39% divided between the Ds and the Rs. So why should we Americans continue to be subjected to the constant refrain from the MSM and the duopoly that our only choices (in any election for any office at any level of government) are either the D or the R? And why do Americans let them get away with that Bull Shit lie?

  2. Frank W. says:

    Thanks, makes me a hero for my all my sad-sack bellyachin on this forum.

  3. Mike says:

    Just heard great interview of Author and new book.
    On Fresh Air– NPR radio transcript not yet up.

    https://www.brookings.edu/book/marijuana-a-short-history/

  4. DdC says:

    MJ Arrests Outnumber Those for Violent Crimeshttp://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread28934.shtml

  5. Spirit Wave says:

    Considering that cannabis is a psychedelic, I wonder if constantly publicly expressing that fact helps massage society to expand their dominating judicial tolerance (i.e. reduce hypocritical mass rights infringement) to encompass other non-toxic psychedelics such as ‘Hoffman grade’ LSD, DMT, and MDMA.

    The fact is prohibitionists literally cannot sustain a single point in their favor (at least due to a demonstrably complete ineffectiveness towards a “drug free” society), so ending Certain Drug Prohibition (if you will) should be a slam-dunk (like the celebrated fall of the Berlin Wall).

    Some progress is better than no progress, but the sooner that drug abuse is publicly understood to be clearly distinct from drug use, such understanding extends to acknowledge that drug abuse encompasses the overwhelming minority of drug instances, and drug abuse is sensibly a health (not criminal) issue, the less number of lives ruined to varying degrees by the real drug epidemic — ‘certain drug’ prohibitionists lying and in effect stealing to hypocritically get their prohibition fix via flagrant law abuse (the worst form of abuse due to its mainly broad scope of destruction, and the form of abuse that our nation was supposed to be established primarily against).

    • Daniel Williams says:

      It’s Hofmann – not Hoffman. And it’s not really nitpicking. Incorrectly spelling Albert’s last name, and it happens far too often, does a disservice to the man’s memory. And it impacts the credibility of the author’s view, fairly or not.

  6. Duncan20903 says:

    .
    .

    As of today the fans of cannabis can add a Nobel Prize winner to their numbers. Now I’m not referring to just any standard issue fan of cannabis. This is the man who is also believed by many to be the catalyst of the modern era of cannabis in America when he introduced the Beatles to cannabis enjoyment in 1964. Yep, you guessed it, I’m talking about Bob Dylan.
    Cannabis Icon Bob Dylan Is Now A Nobel Laureate

    • Servetus says:

      Bob Dylan isn’t the only drug-inspired creative person to win a Nobel. Kary Mullis, (Chemistry Nobel — 1993), inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the essential tool in identifying and reproducing segments of the genetic code, attributes his creative potential to prior acid trips. Francis Crick (Chemistry Nobel – 1962) who co-discovered the structure of the DNA, noted his prior experiments with LSD.

      It makes sense that people with the courage and curiosity to learn, experiment, or write, would be attracted to the enabling intellectual features offered by drugs associated with creativity. It makes one wonder how many people with the potential to win a Nobel Prize had their careers and lives cut short by a drug arrest.

  7. Hephzibar Loompha says:

    The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch have called for the decriminalization of personal drug use in America.

    Care to vote on it?

    http://preview.tinyurl.com/DoesYourBodyBelongToTheState

  8. EricSugmunstein says:

    A certain Montana car salesman has been having a rather bad day.

    Motl also ruled that Safe Montana was not properly set up to support it’s own initiative, I-176, and oppose I-182.

    Safe Montana first introduced I-176 to repeal the state’s medical marijuana program but failed to collect enough signatures to reach the ballot. It then pivoted to actively oppose I-182.

    Motl cited state law that defines a ballot committee as a group set up to support or oppose one issue. He ruled that Safe Montana should have set up another committee to oppose I-182.

    He also cited Safe Montana for three late reports, as well as vague expense descriptions.

    Motl said that a punishment will be determined at a later time.

    Happy times ,.,*

    http://tinyurl.com/DeathOfACarsalesman

  9. DdC says:

    SAM phone bots are calling people in CA and totally fabricating reefer mad fear mongering in a poll they are taking on Prop 64. Two questions come with a paragraph of hysteria about advertising commercials for Ganja products which was dispelled as false but not enough to the pollsters apparently. Then the signature SAM bs about gummy bears and the explosion of cases of kids going to emergency rooms in Colorado. Will they ever understand that if you have to lie about the dangers to perpetuate your own profit and agenda. Sooner or later someone might ask where are the actual victims? We don’t seem to have that problem with people mistakenly saying heroin is killing people, even if its a concoction with heroin and not straight up heroin. They are actually dead people as the result. You can see them and weigh them. They have substance and once were breathing air. All of the decades of potential maybies and who could possibly be harmed by Ganja are without birth certificates or flesh and blood as real victims of fossil fools or big pharma with 3/4th of the commercial stating potential debilitating side effects. Hypocrites to a new level.

  10. DdC says:

    Marijuana was placed in Schedule I in 1971 provisionally, until the science could be assessed. But Pres. Richard Nixon saw pot prohibition as a way to destroy the antiwar left, according to clandestine recordings made by Nixon in the White House as well as statements from his staff to the press.

    The Science behind the DEA’s Long War on Marijuana
    Scientific American By David Downs on April 19, 2016 Policy & Ethics

    Experts say listing cannabis among the world’s deadliest drugs ignores decades of scientific and medical data. But attempts to delist it have met with decades of bureaucratic inertia and political distortion

    “As of today, marijuana has never been determined to be medicine,” says Russ Baer, staff coordinator in the Office of Congressional and Public Affairs at the DEA. “There’s no safe, effective medical use, and a high abuse potential, and it can’t be used in medical settings.” This determination has come to be insulated by a byzantine, Kafkaesque bureaucratic process now impervious to the opinion of the majority of U.S. doctors—and to a vast body of scientific knowledge—many experts say.

    Why Do Democrats Defend Nixon’s Drug War?
    http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1760

  11. Mike says:

    Gee the leader of the Grand ol party talken smaller
    gov.t and less regs asken for bein drug tested befor
    next debate.

    • Servetus says:

      GOP now stands for “Grab Our Pussies”. Trump going after Hillary’s urine for a drug test is par for the course. After Trump loses the election, he will want Hillary to have his baby.

      • Duncan20903 says:

        .
        .

        I don’t know what the frack Mr. Trump is doing but I feel confident that he isn’t trying to win the election. Heck, I’ve even entertained the notion that it’s all orchestrated to give the citizenry a more favorable impression of Ms. Clinton. It also explains why the equities markets aren’t showing any fear at the thought of a Trump administration.

        It was a terrible idea to publicize his genitalia groping. His male supporters are much more likely to admire and cheer such antics “Yeah…grope her one time for me Donald!” and the women will say “boys will be boys! How do you think I met my husband?”
        —————————–
        Were I getting ready to mark my ballot at this very moment I believe I’d cast for Hillary. Now everyone who knows me knows that I’ve never in my life subscribed to the lesser of two evils claptrap. But this year I think that I don’t just want Mr.Trump lose, I want him to be thoroughly humiliated. It’s the voting spread between the so called “major parties” which will decide that.

        I’m very serious about this. It’s even not about personal animus although that obviously in the mix. His platform is the epitome of public policies built on hysterical fear. Reject him and doesn’t get elected. Humiliate him with less than 30% of the popular vote and we reject those public policy positions as well.

        • Servetus says:

          Less than 30% of the popular vote and Trump will claim the election was rigged worse than he predicted earlier – “I was right, ya know I was right! – D.T. ” — Trump won’t accept defeat. He won’t give a concession speech, nor call Hillary to concede the election. Instead, a new public ceremony will be required to officially oust der Drumpf from presumed power, along with his Trumpzie followers. I recommend a truly conservative approach, one right out of the 14th century—used for lepers.

          In the bad old days, lepers were formally separated from society in a humiliating public ceremony, then forced to ring a bell that warned women or anyone else of their close approach. If a public water well was found to be contaminated, most likely due to an open sewage leak, lepers became the perfect scapegoat to blame for what was seen as a deliberate poisoning catastrophe. A few lepers would be burned at the stake to assuage public fear, outrage, and the usual calls for justice. If some Jews were available, they might get burned along with the lepers. Strangely, in the public accusations, it was always the Jews who somehow persuaded the lepers to poison the wells, not the reverse (i.e., “What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? ” – Richard Nixon)

          The medieval mind was a strange thing, as it is no different from the modern mind. For conservatives experiencing a bad case of the D.T.s, and who really want to conserve, this is their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The USA needs to bell Donald Trump.

        • NorCalNative says:

          Duncan, I’ve got my absentee ballot in front of me as I type this. And, I’m looking at paragraph 3 of your comment and I’m thinking of stealing your idea and claiming it as my own.

          Would you be kind enough to pen a sweet letter to my ex-honey Dr. Jill for me? I had this fantasy of her and me in cannabis heaven. Tell her I still hate the idea of American Empire and will do everything I can to stymie the KORPorate assholes behind TPP.

          I might be forced into doing the lesser-of-two-evils’ thingy, but at least I can hold my head up high in the knowledge I’m not a brain-dead climate denier.

          Thanks for shaking me out of my political fantasy, I guess.

        • Servetus says:

          Trump has taken time over the weekend to say he would “block drugs from coming into the U.S. by…building a wall on the Mexican border. He would also seek to tighten restrictions on the prescribing of opioids and he would reinstitute mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders.” Coincidently, what Donald Trump has said and done comes with a word description:

          From Webster’s Definition: trumpery (archaic [but not for long])

          [mass noun] Attractive articles of little value or use.

          ‘None of your woollen drapery, nor linen drapery, nor any of your frippery or trumpery. I hate ostentation’

          Practices or beliefs that are superficially or visually appealing but have little real value or worth: ‘he exposed their ideals as trumpery’, ‘theatrical trumpery’

          [as modifier] ‘that trumpery hope which lets us dupe ourselves’

          ADJECTIVE: (archaic)

          Showy but worthless: ‘trumpery jewelry’

          Delusive or shallow. [as modifier] ‘that trumpery hope which lets us dupe ourselves’

          Origin: Late Middle English (denoting trickery): from Old French tromperie, from tromper, deceive.

          Pronunciation: trumpery/ˈtrʌmp(ə)ri/

      • Windy says:

        The answer is to NOT vote for EITHER Trump OR Hillary (she’s a horrid person, in addition to being a criminal and committing treason to the Constitution, America and the people). Either do NOT vote at all, or mark your ballot for Gary Johnson (best choice, he really COULD win and he favors legal cannabis, nationally) or Jill Stein (she can’t win, she’s not on all 51 ballots, but vote your conscience if freedom is not your thing).

    • jean valjean says:

      Servetus: Don’t forget “Trumped Up.”

      adjective. 1. spuriously devised; fraudulent; fabricated: He was arrested on some trumped-up charge.

  12. EricSugmunstein says:

    All good men and women should push for Duterte’s immediate resignation. But be prepared to be labeled and maybe even falsely charged as traitors and subversives. In the end, our commitment to God’s truth and genuine concern and love for our fellowmen will bear much fruit.

    If 16 million Filipinos voted for Duterte, 25 million did not. Of the 16 million, so many have now realized that they voted for a monster and regret their vote. His present popularity is an illusion – which will quickly vanish like smoke when more people suffer because of his unpredictable depravity. The economy will spiral downward as investors are fast exiting. More poverty and hunger will take place.

    >>

    Let us fight evil with prayers to our Lord Jesus Christ and to our Blessed Mother – and with every other moral justifiable means available to us. Filipinos have fought long and hard for their freedom and dignity. We cannot now allow one man who serves the forces of evil – to take control of our lives and the nation.

    Because I am a Catholic, a human being, a Filipino American and a global citizen involved in creating a better world, I have expressed my thoughts and feelings that concern the well-being and future of all Filipinos – including Duterte himself. His soul needs salvation.

    http://tinyurl.com/demonicForcesDuterteResign

  13. The New Mexico Daily Lobo has served as the independent newspaper at the University of New Mexico:

    Letter: Cannabis’ Schedule 1 status is unacceptable
    By Daily Lobo Readers http://tinyurl.com/jhfoa8u

    A very refreshing letter worth a read.

  14. Duncan20903 says:

    .
    .

    From the cognitive dissonance zone:

    Kansas Attorney General makes stunning marijuana discovery

    Marijuana is having a major impact on Kansas, according to a new survey of law enforcement agencies by the Kansas attorney general. But the impacts may not be all bad, it acknowledges.

    Attorney General Derek Schmidt has released responses from 390 district attorneys and law enforcement agencies in the state of Kansas that indicate that there is less marijuana being confiscated, and that the potency of the drugs that they’re seeing has been rising, according to a statement from his office.

    The survey also indicates that the jurisdictions aren’t enforcing the pot laws that remain on the books, and even when they do it’s a lot harder to win convictions.
    /snip/

    Who the heck could have seen that one coming? I’ll bet that all the other jack booted thugs and sycophantic stooges aren’t going to be nice to him at the annual Prohibitionist picnic.

  15. Windy says:

    So they didn’t poll either libertarians or greens, both of which are probably 100% for legalization, probably because the pollsters knew it would skew the results from what they actually wanted the results to be. Also as far as Silents, I’m in that group and ALL my peers, whom I know personally (my entire HS class, or those who are still with us, that is and some from other schools in my county), all support legal for recreational and medical use, but maybe that is because we live in WA State where it is nominally legal (prohibition lite). So their Silent sample must have been all in States where it is NOT nominally legal.

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