Obama!!!

Ahh, just what we need--another regulatory government agency!!! After all, government bureaucrats are always fair and efficient. But what happens to the marijuana after the sale is made and it leaves government supervision? Think maybe some buyers might cut it to sell it to kids too young for the "legal" pot trade? And that still doesn't address what to do about meth and heroin and other hard drugs. Folks advocating legalization of drugs seem always to picture some perfect world where everyone abides by the rules, but I've been around too long and seen too much to believe in fairy tales.

Another idealized vision, Dexter. But getting prostitutes off the street and into some ratty crib so the general populace don't have to see them is not the major concern. Are you advocating that the government run whorehouses? Or just a government health service where doctors come around occasionally to make sure the whores don't have sexually transmitted diseases? What if there is no STD, but the whore has some other contagious disease like TB--does the government doctor check for that and treat it, too? Will the minimum wage laws apply to whores? Can they organize and strike against the pimp management or will they be like air traffic controllers, not allowed to walk off the job? Of course, that won't stop the underage runaways who on their own or because they got hooked up with a pimp, would still be out there selling it on the street. And are we looking at a federal law requiring the use of condoms, or is that counter your vision of "consenting adults engaged in behavior behind closed doors? How would stand on the issue of whorehouses being forbidden within certain distances of schools, churches, and other public buildings as they do now with beer joints, adult media stores, and strip joints?

You say you don't believe it's the Government's job to legislate the moral behavior of its citizens. Well, I don't think it's the government's job to aid and encourage immoral behavior of a minority of citizens and taxing me for the money to fund it. I don't even like state lotteries.

Shylock? I know Mel Gibson is anti-semantic, but is it rampant in all the Commonwealth? If you think Wells Fargo is the same as some knee-buster loan shark who charges 50% interest on a 2-week loan, then you don't know much about banking or loan sharking. I suspect from your rose-colored view of how the world would work if only unregulated, you must be relatively young and inexperienced.

And yet President Truman quickly integrated blacks into the US Army in the early 1950s--a time of deep prejudice and strong military opposition--simply by issuing an order as commander in chief. He didn't outlaw prejudice, didn't order the blacks and whites to suddenly love each other--he simply said there will no longer be all white or all black units in any of the military and that service, training, rank, and promotion would be based on merit, not color. Obama could do the same about homosexuals in the military--if he wanted to.

I've never expected much out of any winning politician, not even those I voted for. I've also never put a political sticker for a candidate or a party on my bumper, knowing that in a few months at most I'd be ashamed to be identified with them. I've known some politicians--traveled with some during their campaigns, interviewed others. Most of them I liked personally--being likeable is a politician's stock in trade. But I've never believed any of them. Instead of voting "for" some candidate, I usually vote against the one I dislike most, if I vote at all.

Like my hero H.L. Mencken once said, "The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down."

Ahh, just what we need--another regulatory government agency!!! After all, government bureaucrats are always fair and efficient. But what happens to the marijuana after the sale is made and it leaves government supervision? Think maybe some buyers might cut it to sell it to kids too young for the "legal" pot trade? And that still doesn't address what to do about meth and heroin and other hard drugs. Folks advocating legalization of drugs seem always to picture some perfect world where everyone abides by the rules, but I've been around too long and seen too much to believe in fairy tales.

Is that what happens at the Bacardi plant?


Speaking of fairytales, what has done more damage : Booze and Cigarettes or the narcotics currently illegal?

Add up the deaths, and harm to families and get back to me. Who is living in a fairy tale land now?

What do you suppose Big Pharma does exactly? Is the bottles of Oxycontin in my medicine cabinet ok with you?


Another idealized vision, Dexter. But getting prostitutes off the street and into some ratty crib so the general populace don't have to see them is not the major concern. Are you advocating that the government run whorehouses?

No , the Government doesn't operate strip joints, or fast food joints or any number of private businesses open to teh public that clearly are against their best interests.

Or just a government health service where doctors come around occasionally to make sure the whores don't have sexually transmitted diseases? What if there is no STD, but the whore has some other contagious disease like TB--does the government doctor check for that and treat it, too? Will the minimum wage laws apply to whores?

Can they organize and strike against the pimp management or will they be like air traffic controllers, not allowed to walk off the job?

I don't believe Whoren is an essential service, so yes they may strike.


Of course, that won't stop the underage runaways who on their own or because they got hooked up with a pimp, would still be out there selling it on the street.

Nope it surely won't stop that. but then again we agree not to live in a fairy tale world right? Is there one magic solution? nope, there surely isn't. The current way of doing things is clearly not working though yes?

Change. Real Change isn't a slogan.

And are we looking at a federal law requiring the use of condoms,

When visiting a prostitute the answer is yes, absolutely. Surely you agree on this. The law though should be left to the states. The Feds should decriminalize and let the states run their own affairs.

You still live in a Republic don't you?


or is that counter your vision of "consenting adults engaged in behavior behind closed doors?

How would stand on the issue of whorehouses being forbidden within certain distances of schools, churches, and other public buildings as they do now with beer joints, adult media stores, and strip joints?

I would advocate that whole-heartedly.
You say you don't believe it's the Government's job to legislate the moral behavior of its citizens. Well, I don't think it's the government's job to aid and encourage immoral behavior of a minority of citizens and taxing me for the money to fund it. I don't even like state lotteries.


Thats fine. thats what is great about living in a free society. You can choose what is best for you, where you live, where you work and so forth. Partake if you wish, absain if you wish.


Shylock? I know Mel Gibson is anti-semantic, but is it rampant in all the Commonwealth? If you think Wells Fargo is the same as some knee-buster loan shark who charges 50% interest on a 2-week loan, then you don't know much about banking or loan sharking. I suspect from your rose-colored view of how the world would work if only unregulated, you must be relatively young and inexperienced.

nice ad hominem at the end

__________________
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

Is what what happens at a Bacardi plant?

lol, i wish i could positive rep myself.

Right now you have zero nada zilch control over the manufacture and sale of narcotics.

This includes but is not limited to, the minimum age required to purchase, the minimum age required to sell it, the contents, if in fact pesticides were used, or the plant has been in any way genetically modified.

These are all things that Consumers i believe would apprecciate.

Say you put up all these safety measures on legal marijuana, and it's made legally available to anyone over age 21. I know people who would go buy that clean unadulterated pot, step it down with grass and weed clippings or anything they find that look something like marijuana, repackage and sell the product for more money to kids under the legal age.

My point is no matter how you clean up and legalize one drug, there will always be an illegal market for that very same drug and people to illegally supply it, so the problem doesn't disappear. There are still people today who illegally make and bootleg booze because they can sell it cheaper than the legal stuff especially since they pay no tax on it. It's especially poplular in what we call in the South "dry" areas where the church leaders and the bootleggers have worked together to get folks to vote against the sale of booze within that county. Usually there is a "suicide" highway leading out to the beer joints and liquor stores just over the line in the neighboring "wet" county and there are private clubs in the dry county where members join for a fee and have private bars, getting around the "public" sales ban. But there are also bootleggers who illegally truck in and sale booze from outside sources or make and sell their own booze at a lower price for those who can't or won't pay for a club membership. They usually are the ones who supply underage drinkers. Since your blood alcohol level is about as high on one beer as on one shot of whiskey, there's not that big a step up between types of booze. However, going from pot to meth or cocaine or heroin is a major jump. While people may be dumb enough some day to legalize marijuana, the "starter" drug, there's no way in hell they're going to legalize recreational use of coke and heroin and other hard drugs.

So legalizing pot wouldn't get us very far since it would just push dealers into a younger market with harder drugs. Statistics show that as the population ages, the "drug problem" becomes getting your doctor to change your blood pressure prescription. Outside of California, people usually cut back on their recreational drug use as they get older, say over 40, which would leave the legal market to the 20-30 set, leaving teens and tweens as the market for illegal recreational drugs, which tells me the drug problem would more likely increase than decrease.

My students in Santa Ana are all 18 and younger. Of course, it's a continuation school, so they do have some problems with fulfilling what's expected of them - for example, going to school and doing any school work. However, I'd say that about 50% of them smoke pot every day and maybe about 95% do pot, booze and other drugs on the weekend. They have absolutely no problem finding it. Then again, a large percentage of them are gangbangers and sell drugs. Now, it's not my job to narc on every single person who talks about this because if I do it, then eventually there will be no students left at the school, and there are always some who see the light and graduate and go on to get out of the hood. But whatever is happening now could scarcely ever get worse through legalization of one form or another, unless you think the gangs are going to shoot up the "legit sellers" too. They own a lot of weapons too, but they are perpetuating what their families have been doing for generations, no matter how many of their brothers, uncles and cousins get killed or locked up in jail for life. Teaching is a lot more complicated when you have to try to deal with somebody who has been basically trained their entire life to do the wrong thing and then passed along by the system, which obviously includes the schools themselves.

I believe that kids should be kids until they have to become adults. The problem where my students live is that they seem to become wrong-headed "adults" at about six years old. If they want to smoke pot as an adult, so be it, but most of them have no choice in the decision-making process.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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my point is, mj is not a dangerous flower. There is not a single case in the annals of recorded medicine of a person young or old dying as a result if injesting weed. Not from smoking it, not from eating it.

Rufnek, Why is Alcohol legal? Take all your arguments and apply them to alcohol, and please explain how the heck it is legal.

Can it be addictive? yup
can one get alcohol poisening simply my consuming a quantity sold in a bottle approved for sale?

yup

Does the injesting of alcohol due damage to internal organs?

yup

Do some health professionals consider Alcohol to be a "Gateway Drug"?

Yup


Now kindly explain to me how it is that Alcohol is perfectly legal, and Mariguana is not.

Except for saving a couple hundered Million dollars a year, every year you mean?

Whether marijuana is legal or illegal has nothing to do with it effects or its health benefits or detriments. As with most other things, it's to do with money, votes and fear.

No, I don't think marijuana is dangerous. Never said I did. Certainly not as dangerous as alcohol can be when mis-used by some people. However, alcohol has a long, long history of being socially acceptable. They say Christ's first miracle was turning water to wine, effective providing Heavenly endorsement of alcohol consumption. I don't recall any accounts of him rolling a joint for somebody, however. I understand the Catholic and maybe other churches still use wine in their services (I was raised a Baptist, so all I got was grape juice).

Alcohol was around long before the USA was born and taxes on its manufacture was a source of income for this young republic, leading to one of the early challenges of federal authority thru Shay's rebellion. I'm sure marijuana was around then, too, and likely in use by someone, but its history is more vague and therefore it has no tradition in Anglo-American society.

Also, alcohol is acceptable as part of one's dining pleasure. There are some who put great store in knowing which wine goes with which course, and probably most people have enjoyed a burger and beer on a 4th of July cookout. But I've never heard anyone say, "I bet this would taste better with a hit of Aztec gold." Usually it's smoke first, eat later just anything you can find.

It has never been illegal to have or consume alcohol in this country; Prohibition prohibited only the sale of it. Even today it's illegal to sell alcohol without getting a stamp that shows federal taxes have been paid on the brew. There are still places where they make illegal moonshine and there are those who are willing to sell it to minors at an inflated price, but mostly the sale and distribution is tightly policed and limited. Most sales are through legitimate business that must obey certain rules. As I've said before, marijuana gets stepped down at each stop in the transport line with whatever they have at hand that looks anything like marijuana. It's illegal to posses, illegal to have, illegal to smoke.

Marijuana didn't use to be illegal in this country back when it was smoked mostly by young Mexican men. But then "reefers" made the cultural jump from Hispanics to the growing black urban population and gained the reputation--wrongly, I think--of driving "those people" wild. At any rate, it was in that period that laws were passed outlawing marijuana, with some pretty stiff penalties that would take blacks and hispanics caught in possession off the streets for a long, long time. In short, it was one of many means of controlling "colored" minorities. It became a "problem" in the 1960s when it made another cultural jump to the "white" suburbs.

For better or worse, marijuana has acquired the reputation of being a drug, something pedaled in back alleys. And I think that is part of MJ's attraction, the idea of doing something illegal, running a risk, thumbing your nose in society's face. I remember back when I used to smoke it, I often had the feeling I was the smartest SOB on the street, really putting something over on the rest of the world. But I've occasionally felt that way, too, when stone cold sober!

That said, I think legalizing marijuana would not solve the problem--not even if you sold it small quantities like a joint at a time and required that it be consumed only on the premises. If you let anyone buy a pound or more at a time, they'll take it home, cut it and resell it at a higher price to folks who don't want to take the time or be seen going into a marijuana outlet. I'm firmly convinced too that legalizing marijuana along the basis of legalizing the sale of booze would focus street sales of the weed solely on those who are too young to buy marijuana legally. The trouble with street dealers is that marijuana is an entry-level drug. "this is some good chit, kid, but if you really want to get high, let me lay some of this coke on you!" On the other hand, I've never gone into a liquior store for six-pack of beer and had the salesman try to get me to take a gallon of rum instead.

Plus the government supposedly is going to start putting pictures of stiffs and cancered lungs on cigarette packages. If they're working so hard to prevent kids and adults from smoking, are they going to be anxious to encourage them to smoke pot?

So for these and various other reasons, I don't think they're ever going to legalize marijuana or other drugs, at least not in my lifetime.

I've tried both and much prefer booze. I quit smoking cigarettes years ago so last time I had a joint, I coughed it all away. On the other hand, I can drink booze without immediately throwing up. And I've never burned a hole in my suit while consuming booze.

I think you and I earlier had a little tate-a-tate over the different way people see these things at a younger age vs. an older age. The biggest difference is when you have kids of your own--you're far less likely to speed down residential streets, you become more observant of school crossings, and you think to yourself what if your kid sees you going into a marijuana dispensary or smoking or drinking at home. It never works to say don't do what I'm doing.

So I hardly ever drank in front of my kids, and I would never do pot in front them (that was mostly in my Army days). Today they're all grown but I've got grandkids. Still, with just me and the wife around the house most evenings, I'll bet I haven't made a mixed drink for 6 months or more. I did drink some wine with Italian food one night.

So they could outlaw both pot and booze and it wouldn't bother me so much, except like I've been in Muslim countries where I couldn't get a drink and then I wanted one so bad! It was like when I get hungry for Mexican food everytime I go overseas. First thing I do when I get back is go to some Tex-Mex joint and load up. Then I know I'm really home.

Didn't hit the bar and drink myself silly when I got back from Saudi Arabia or Jordan, however. Soon as I was someplace I could get a drink, I no longer wanted it.

You know, Dexter, in this discussion and your comparison of marijuana to booze, you remind me a whole lot of my youngest son Mark who has a well developed--maybe even overdeveloped--sense of right and wrong. Like you, he wants a just world where things and people are always treated on their merits. And like I keep telling him, this is not a just world--chit happens, and we have to live with it. So the legalization of booze and the illegalization of marijuana may not be fair, but it's the real world, and I don't see it changing anytime soon.

Now that the dust has settled from the US elections, were any of our overseas participants surprised at how adverse voter reaction was to Obamacare? I told you lots of US voters hate that program

But the discussion is about what would, in fact, be fair, not whether or not the law will reflect it.

You and I butted heads in a similar way in a discussion about polygamy and same-sex marriage, where I made the case that a certain piece of rhetoric about same-sex marriage should logically include polygamy, and you dismissed this on the grounds that polygamy would never be allowed, anyway. But back then, as now, the question of what will happen is different from the question of what should, and discussing what's fair, right, or logical, has inherent value even if it might not happen any time soon. This is already assuming that any of us can truly say with authority what will or will not take place, too.

I think we can assume that anyone over the age of, say, 12, has come to the realization that life isn't always fair. We can factor that into the discussion already. That doesn't invalidate discussions about what would be fair, or what ought to be. Indeed, seeing beyond what probably will be into what ought to be is probably where all real progress starts.

Sure, the haters are the ones that can afford to have good health insurance.

Based on the numbers, it seems to be more people than that. Though really, wouldn't that be just as much an indictment of the program as the people opposing it? That the only people supporting it are those that benefit from it? It wouldn't reflect well on a "Give People Money" bill if you pointed out that the people who'd be receiving the money loved it, either. Benefits legislation is always popular with the people who benefit from it.

the obamacare legislation was so watered-down i was embarassed for America.

Obama= a well spoken George W.Bush.

the special interest groups own him just as much, if not more-so than Dubya ever was.

Heh. I was proud at how watered down the legislation was. I guess we're both in the right country, then.