I knew this was coming. Only a matter of when.
After horrific shootings, we hear calls for stricter regulation of guns. The Tucson shooting should remind us why we regulate marijuana.
Jared Lee Loughner, the man held as the Tucson shooter, has been described by those who know as a “pot smoking loner.â€
He had two encounters with the law, one for possession of drug paraphanalia. […]
After the Tucson shooting, there may be renewed pressure to control the weapons that committed the crime. But what about the drugs that may have aggravated the killer’s mental disease? The trend these days seems toward a more casual attitude and easier access to those drugs. Among the things we should be discussing in the aftermath of this horror is the accumulating evidence of those drugs’ potential contribution to making some dangerous people even more dangerous than they might otherwise have been.
Over 100,000 100 million Americans have smoked pot. Coincidentally, among that many people, there are some wackos.
Serial killer Ted Bundy started as a paper boy. Maybe we should look into outlawing that. John Wayne Gacy dressed as a clown. Now that’s enough to turn anyone into a serial killer. Adolph Hitler was a vegetarian. Hmmm…
I wonder if Jared Loughner eats Twinkies.
Lee Oswald was in the marine corps, where he trained to be a proficient marksman.
Timothy McVeigh was in the US Army where he studied explosives (among many other things)
Maybe we should outlaw the US military.
Never let a good crisis go to waste. Look for military discipline to commence where everyone gets punished for something some lone creep, fruitcake did.
Wow, I used to think David Frum wasn’t that retarded. Clearly I was wrong. “Regulate marijuana.” Are you fucking kidding me.
The thing about David Frum is that he is so consistently wrong on so many issues, we can almost use his positions as a weathervane as to what NOT to believe in. Frum lands on the side of the government or the status quo in virtually every situation.
The same Canuck traitor Frum who wrote GWB’s speeches resulting in the murders of a gazillion Iraqi’s???
WTF
Snitching pig-state Canada just dragged an innocent man from his truck in Kelowna and kicked ‘im in the head.
Don’t blither blather on the evil of the Potheads, Frummy, you demonic reptilian scum.
My grandfather fully explained the reasons for his enlisting to fight at Vimy 1918. You fascist fuckheads are the very entity he went to fight against. Get back under your rock, Serpent.
I knew another of these types who went south and went hard right. He lost his mother early too.
They can demonize pot smokers all they want. It won’t matter one bit. This country is in a mountain of debt we need to cut back on wasteful spending. 40 years or more of a draconian drug war that has seen no fruit of its labor isn’t my idea of responsible spending.
You can argue about pot all you want, i.e. it makes you lazy yadd a yadda. But they still can’t answer the question which ask how on earth is it worth it to spend all this money? 1 trillion or more over 40 years, because you think cannabis turns you into a Jared Loughner violent and insane? Cannabis makes one calm and introspective. If anything. It doesn’t make you violent.
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The BTK serial killer was a church going man and did considerable work for his church. He was a member of Christ Lutheran Church, a Lutheran congregation of about 200 people. He had been a member for about 30 years and had been elected president of the Congregation Council.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Rader
Doesn’t this prove that religion leads to crime? You know, when you’re booked into jail they ask you what your religious preference is. Can we get hold of those statistics to determine what percentage of criminals are also members of various religions? I’ll bet dollars to dirt that more than 90% of the prison population in the US claims membership in one religion or the other.
Duncan20903, you win your bet.
The actual number I’ve read is that 99-percent of those incarcerated in the U.S. identify with some kind of religion.
The number probably isn’t that surprising given that roughly a third of U.S. prisoners fit a psychopathic personality profile. Since a psychopath doesn’t have a conscience, they will often imitate having one, as they’re always seeking to maintain a socially superior public front. The best way for psychopaths to achieve their façade is to purchase their moral certitude on the open religion market. A wide selection is available.
Plenty of religious groups believe they’re morally superior to every other religious group—because they don’t do drugs, don’t think for themselves, etc. Thus we see Ted Bundy joining the Mormon Church to give himself moral credibility; Newt Gingrich joining the Catholic Church to jumpstart his political career, and so forth.
As William S. Burroughs would say, “And if you’re doing a deal with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing.â€
Wow Pete! That is the most disturbingly idiotic post I believe I have ever seen. It shows you that not using drugs can cause mental retardation. Cause and effect.
Even more interesting is the Time article he linked as citation. Here are a couple of quotes:
Emphasis added by me.
Are we not supposed to click through and read what the linked articles have to say? HuffPost tried the same darn trick. It’s just the last few months that I’ve discovered that if you click through, often the research is being willfully misrepresented and says the diametric opposite of what is claimed. I guess that they have found adding links increases their perceived credibility and that their target audience is too stupid to actually verify by clicking through. Yes I confess I’ve been that person, perhaps my perception is biased because of that.
Oh, dear, you just leaked the secret of academia 🙂
In Frum’s case I suspect it’s a lot stupider, like that MMR vaccine scandal in Britain with Andrew Wakefield: he picked some autistic kids, then looked for similarities and found … OMFG … that they were all VACCINED. Add scary music. Wakefield registers single-prick vaccine, figures it really doesn’t look so good with the science. Then he doctors the results.
It’s a good thing if they’re starting to play our game. People don’t have to see too many posts citing verbatim the referenced article to stop having any faith in these intellectually dishonest morons.
Got this in an email. Cool.
Dana Larson for BC Premier.
Sounds awesome. Light beckons at the exit of the BC Liberal sewer decade.
A salute to you Tommy Chong.
You can walk the plank, Neocon Frum.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzawp2RpJ0Y
Yes! The solution is to enforce prohibition EVEN HARDER! Then, no one will be able to find weed!
I think David Frum meant paraphernalia.
And Pete, I think you didn’t really mean “100,000 million” Americans have smoked pot, did you? That’s a lot.
And it’s interesting to hear that we regulate cannabis, I thought it was just prohibited!
Thanks, Matthew. Got a little carried away with my numerical structure there. I knew what I meant…
I’m sorry, but I still can’t get over the “weapons that committed a crime” part… dang those weapons going out willy nilly and committing shootings…
I’m sorry, but it takes a special kind of special to say that we need to control marijuana because someone went out and shot someone and they used it when alcohol is legal, and certainly has more correlation to violence.
It’s okay if he was a drunk loner, just not a stoned one.
Right, Ziggy. Frum is freaking out. “Weapons that committed the crime”?
And “Regulated”?
Prohibition is not regulation. Far from it.
Damn, I hate sites that make you sign in before commenting.
Personally I don’t think the Twinkie comparison is totally fair in this case. There may be SOME type of possible relationship between marijuana and certain people predisposed to mental illness such as schizophrenia. I haven’t seen any studies that led me to believe that’s a ridiculous notion. Though you could probably say the same about any drug.
I think the more important point is Frum’s quote, “The Tucson shooting should remind us why we regulate marijuana.” Um, we don’t regulate marijuana. But I almost agree with him – this should remind us why we SHOULD [legalize and] regulate marijuana [and other drugs]. People with mental illness might have better access to treatment and whatever drugs work for them – they would be less likely to self-medicate blindly as they often do now.
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I sure haven’t seen any studies that make a rational case that cannabis is a causal factor in anything schizophrenic. Schizophrenics also use more drinking alcohol and smoke cigarettes at significantly higher rates than those who don’t suffer from the disease.
They’ve been using this same propaganda trick since the 1930s, it’s just polished and repackaged. A polished turd is still a turd.
FYI:
Mother Jones interview with one of gunman’s friends
Victims of Teabog rhetoric?
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a memo linking Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shooter Jared Lee Loughner with the anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, white supremacist hate group American Renaissance.
Drugwar Lies Linked to Schizophrenia
I choke a lot of chickens would I be in danger of becoming a killer?
Schizophrenics also abuse coffee. The single significant trait here is the desire to self medicate. Their brains are constantly off-balance physiologically. There are notable differences in both the serotonin and dopamine systems of schizophrenic individuals, and they are constantly seeking anything that changes these system’s performance.
None of the evidence can be construed as pointing to causative factors. In fact, these studies could probably done with Coffee and schizophrenics with similar results.
Who Cares if Arizona Shooter Jared Loughner Used Marijuana?
By NORML – Monday, January 10 2011
So Loughner was one of the 1-in-3 people his age who use marijuana? I wonder if he ever drank beer, too?
VOTE DANA:
Join the BC NDP Today and Help Legalize Marijuana
CANNABIS CULTURE – Now is our best chance in a generation to legalize marijuana in British Columbia. Join the BC NDP before January 16 and support Dana Larsen’s campaign for leadership.
Surprise –
Drug War Now Killing More People Than War in Afghanistan
More people were killed in prohibition-related violence in Mexico last year than died in the war in Afghanistan, according to year-end reports from both countries.
And ignorant blowhards in 3-2-1 Drug WarRant That is great to know, you gave me some thing to think about on drive to house from my grandfather. Will you be writing more about this topic? FYI I tried your rss button and it didnt work. I will try again in a few hours.
HITLER WASN’T A VEGETARIAN.