Veterans push for medical marijuana in conservative South

https://www.stripes.com/veterans/2021-08-15/veterans-push-medical-marijuana-us-south-2563514.html

by DocFeind • 5 years ago

124 78 5 years ago

> advocacy from cancer patients and parents whose children have epilepsy, lawmakers who see this as a states’ rights issue, a search for alternative pain relief amid the opioid epidemic and a push from industries seeking economic gains.
> a recently formed advocacy group called NC Families for Medical Cannabis.

And what about the countless veterans who are currently incarcerated on marijuana charges? What about all those soldiers who have had careers damaged by petty pot charges? They are veterans too.

CalChris2• 5 years ago

South Dakota voters passed medical marijuana, Measure 26. They are still a very red, conservative state. I think legalization is, if anything, overdue.

Covzire• 5 years ago

Recreational too by a narrow margin, was to be legal July 1st but it's stuck at the state supreme court on some procedural grounds that were allegedly violated to bring it on the ballot.

MisterBastahrd3• 5 years ago

Most of the people who are against marijuana distribution in the South are in the baby boomer crowd, who upon failing to live up to the standards of their parents decided that sophist puritanism was necessary in order to redeem themselves.

tenfourwookie2• 5 years ago

Sophist puritanism and $1 million RVs big enough to house dozens of pot plants and Larry Ellison’s ego at the same time.

MisterBastahrd3• 5 years ago

People usually don't buy $1M RVs to grow weed. You can buy used campers for $15K or less for that purpose.

The two most underrated jobs in the US are boat and RV salesmen. Better percentage commissions at selling what amounts to house-level prices a lot of the time.

jhgb• 5 years ago

RVs big enough to house ... Larry Ellison’s ego

Come on, now you're just making things up.

jacob24842• 5 years ago

Baby boomers did better than their parents in general

MisterBastahrd3• 5 years ago

I'm not really talking about their financial well-being. The "Greatest Generation" won a World War and built a great economy on the ruins of Europe and Japan while creating a very safe, very white, very Christian-friendly world of televised entertainment.

Boomers questioned that authority, protested their wars, wanted sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and then suddenly middle age hit them and they yearned for the safety of the world their parents raised them in. Many of them even decided that their parents' houses of worship didn't go far enough, leaving moderate traditional churches for extreme and fundamentalist churches.

causasui• 5 years ago

Enough already. Just legalize it federally and pinch it off.

tru3_power• 5 years ago

I really don’t get why this hasn’t happened yet.

toomuchtodo• 5 years ago

Politics. Representatives aren’t aging out/turning over as fast as the overall electorate, so you have popular support but reps who disagree and therefore won’t sponsor or vote for legalization. The perils of a representative democracy.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/marijuana-legalization-...

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/16/americans-o...

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/20/senate-democrats-we...

beebeepka• 5 years ago

Money. It's about who makes/takes the money.

Generally, any mass scale stupidity that seemingly makes zero sense boils down to specific people making money. Bigger stupidity equals big financial gains

jimbob45• 5 years ago

Slow change is better for stability and avoiding regression.

If you jam something through, it will never achieve 100% buy-in. If you let it progress naturally, the naysayers will eventually come around organically.

Granted that’s not why we’re moving at this glacial pace but the benefits certainly don’t hurt.

buu700• 5 years ago

The real answer as of today: it's coming soon (as per the demand of Chuck Schumer, Senate majority leader), but isn't the top legislative priority.

At a minimum, I'd say we won't have a bill on the Senate floor until after the after the reconciliation infrastructure bill and debt ceiling increase are passed. Most likely it'll take until after a voting rights bill is passed as well.

My prediction is 4/20 of next year, both for the obvious symbolic reason and because the timing means that the law could go into effect shortly before midterm elections.

int_19h3• 5 years ago

It's the dark side of representative democracy. Because, in practice, the representatives tend to be career politicians, often from long-running political dynasties, they effectively are - and, more importantly, consider themselves to be - distinct from the electorate at large. And this elitism often comes with a very paternalistic attitude - "the people might want it, but the people don't know what's good for them".

FWIW this is not at all unique to right wing politics, or to the US in general. For another example, consider how UK censors porn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_the_United_King...

heavyset_go• 5 years ago

Look at what organizations lobby against legalization in the states that have legalized it. PBAs and police unions are often the top spenders against legalization.

Marijuana convictions generate a lot of revenue, and in some places marijuana arrests are a significant chunk of all arrests.

dekhn• 5 years ago

the old guard (long-time senators and reps) perceived it as a way to lose long-term older constituents. that changed in the past 5-10 years as the long-term older constituents are now pro-pot.

JohnWhigham• 5 years ago

Because a massive federal agency (DEA) exists as a protector of drug cartel monopolies and assures they'll never be out of a job.

nsizx• 5 years ago

I'd rather states legislate themselves any way they want.

smt882• 5 years ago

That means you support an end to the federal "War on Drugs". States are still free to legislate however they want after that.

seanmcdirmid• 5 years ago

The federal government can legalize it without the states doing the same, it’s still up to the states as an and rather than an or.

chmod6002• 5 years ago

It matters quite a lot what the federal government does. As long as it's federally illegal, it creates a weird shadow no matter what the state law says.

dehrmann• 5 years ago

Heh. "Conservative South." I completely understand how arbitrary stances on drugs can be, but for a region with strong ties to alcohol production, someone without cultural context would be pretty confused that alcohol is celebrated[1], while cannabis is stigmatized.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKZqGJONH68

sandworm1014• 5 years ago

Dot not underestimate religion in the south. Change comes from the pulpit, not the soapbox. Little can change until the local preachers speak out. And Reagan republicanism, which is basically a civic religion in the south. Its preachers, the talk radio crowd, have to change first too.

adfm• 5 years ago

My 70 y/o mother-in-law kicked a 9 pill/day habit and drastically reduced her alcohol intake by taking a trip to the dispensary. And she did it by herself! She reminds me of the person I first met years ago. It’s an amazing transformation.

Divest yourself of anything related to the ATF and pay attention to the changes at the DEA.

_ktx22• 5 years ago

I don't think alcohol production correlates as much as you're alluding to. I lived in Texas and the state is highly unforgiving around alcohol. A first time drunk driving offense takes the better part of a decade to overcome. Bars and stores are constantly presented with tricks and arbitrary limits that make a job that averages $60k a year a legal minefield. We'd have massive grids around the city setup on holidays that were sobriety checkpoints.

A lot of constituents in the south, from my experience, already use CBD, THC, or both. I'm not sure what actually holds the state back from legalizing it given that so many folks already support it.

throwaway0a5e• 5 years ago

Texas is weird. They definitely talk the talk with regard to freedom but when you take a closer look they're highly authoritarian.

dghlsakjg2• 5 years ago

To be fair. Texas is Texas; not the south.

At least that’s what my Texas History teacher told me in the state mandated class.

conductr2• 5 years ago

I've lived in Texas a good while. I think alcohol is completely celebrated here. People consume a lot of alcohol [0]. It's a massive part of every social function and many peoples daily home life. Many have drinking problems.

I remember when it was a big problem in terms of the combination of Texas roads & drunk driving. And people carried shotguns & rifles in their vehicles (on display).

Now, at that time, we also had a bunch of marijuana and "illegals" from South (which were associated, at least in our minds). We also had a national/universal war on drugs and cartels. Reefer madness was in full effect during my teen years, but as teens, we smoked Mexican brick weed mostly. This, this is the mentality that continues to shape our marijuana policies. Also, Fox News.

In good news, Gov. Greg Abbott has recently said he would sign the bill to broaden medical marijuana usage [1]; including for veterans.

[0] https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/annual/measur...

[1] https://twitter.com/gregabbott_tx/status/1403188569817161730...

Fezzik• 5 years ago

What takes a decade to overcome? That seems like a gross exaggeration - from reading the Texas penal code it looks like your first DWI conviction is a class A misdemeanor and the license suspension period is 90 days to a year… that’s rather standard in the USA. Texas also allows you to petition the court for an occupational driver's license that allows you to drive to perform essential functions even while your license is suspended, which is definitely not an option in all states.

kortilla3• 5 years ago

A huge push for checkpoints means drinking is so common that drinking and driving is a major problem.

arminiusreturns• 5 years ago

Don't forget the intelligence agency off book guns, drugs, money triangle. I've thought for a while as a border state, thats the primary thing exerting influence over the state congress. One of Columbias most famous hitmen said it, if the US legalizes it would change a lot of Mexico for the better, and ironically would be bad for Columbia since they are the upstream supplier. AZ went legal and I can't wait to see how it has impacted the peripherial black markets like human trafficking. If a state on the border like AZ can do it well and reduce over the border criminal activity then I think Texas will start catching up.

porknubbins• 5 years ago

Bourbon/whiskey tradition or not a lot of the South has this very moralistic relationship with alcohol where because of Baptist and similarly strict religious traditions casual alcohol use was forbidden or looked down on, so even today in a lot of less urban places you wouldn’t see adults having a beer or glass of wine with lunch. They kind of conceptualize drinking as an all or nothing thing where college students or alcoholics binge and respectable adults abstain. Of course its changing quickly but its always weird coming back here and being constantly hassled for id instead of having wine pushed on you by a server as you have in other places.

newbamboo• 5 years ago

There are many dry counties in the south. In many places “beer drinker” is used a pejorative. The north and west, generally more urban places, consume most alcohol.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/442848/per-capita-alcoho...

This is an important thing to understand. Pills prescribed by trusted medical professionals in these places were destined to be a kill shot because there were no “cultural antibodies” against them. Weed, alcohol and other potentially damaging habits are kept in check by religion. Opiates and bad diet are the big killers in the south because there are no religious restrictions to moderate. The notion that southerners are drunks is a myth, as are many negative stereotypes of the south.

0xTJ• 5 years ago

Here in Canada, weed's been fully legal for several years, and our society has yet to crumble. It's been legal for medical use since 2001. It's pretty similar to alcohol in regulation. More places (including the US federally) should get on board with allowing it recreationally, but doing it medically would be a good start.

int_19h3• 5 years ago

At this point, the feds really just need to get out of it, and let the states do as they will.

Curiously, this isn't even something that requires legislation! Existing federal drug laws already give DEA extremely broad latitude wrt re-scheduling drugs (which is generally problematic, but in this case it could be an advantage). So, DEA could just move cannabis off the schedule if they felt like it. But they'll never do it by themselves, because all the high-ranking officials in the agency literally made their careers fighting the "war on drugs".

However, since this is purely an executive branch decision, the president could prod them with an executive order - much like Trump did to force ATF to reclassify bump stocks as machine guns. At that point, Congress could still override it by passing legislation to put it back on the schedule... but that would be political suicide for them, and they know it.

h2odragon• 5 years ago

The redneck veterans I've known have almost all been enthusiastically in favor of cannabis since the mid 70s or longer. Families who have run moonshine and tobacco and other farms are both untroubled by overbearing laws and likely to have a tradition of military service.

I read a lot about "the South" that sounds like the closest anyone ever came to it was watching "Dukes of Hazard" while high on a bet.

Spooky23• 5 years ago

The more reactionary elements who have traditionally controlled southern politics always have been enabled by the preachers. Hence the public lip service to conservatism in the state houses.

I used to drive to Savannah from South Carolina semi regularly. I always found it amusing that crossing the state line you’d have machine gun shooting ranges and full nude strip clubs over the line. Massachusetts used to be similar (New Hampshire was home to fireworks, cheap booze, nunchucks, tattoos and dog racing), but everyone thought it was stupid there.

CalChris2• 5 years ago

Kendall Martin is serving 60 years for possession in Mississippi. That's not a sentence from the 1950s. That's from 2015.

https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4435830/kendall-martin...

s5300• 5 years ago

The fact that major conservative networks don't announce the daily suicide count of veterans that they claim to care for and respect so much and scream "why the fuck aren't we doing something meaningful about this" until something meaningful is done is a good indicator of just how much their populace actually cares and what their priorities are.

Just like how the law enforcement beaten at the Capitol and those who have committed suicide afterwards (I think it's like 5 now?) are being called crisis actors.

I have a slew of my own terrible health issues, but I can't imagine what it's like living as somebody with something like cerebral palsy, who has near remission of debilitating symptoms while using marijuana (for some currently unknown reason, some have great symptomatic relief and some absolutely none at all), and not being able to legally or accessibly use it because of these stupid, mostly racist laws. I can't think of many better ways for a person, already suffering, to be told "we literally give not the slightest shit about you" by their representatives than issues like this.

nimbius• 5 years ago

My theory is decriminalization of cannabis would deal a blow to the cheap supply of prison labor and hence, isn't frequently considered at any level

manquer• 5 years ago

Going by history they will find something else, prohibition convictions gave way to weed convictions after all.

DoreenMichele2• 5 years ago

Maybe not as counterintuitive as it may seem.

There's a long history of medical progress being closely tied to the military. Military service involves exposure to violence and people are routinely injured or even maimed in the course of doing their job.

LatteLazy3• 5 years ago

US Conservativism baffles me. It seems totally arbitrary what issues are personal freedom (guns, vaccination) and what are tightly socially controlled (drugs, abortion). I just don't get it. At least communists and libertarians are internally consistent.

krapp2• 5 years ago

Conservative values are guided primarily by business interests, then traditional Christian dogma. The things they want to control and ban are contrary to one or the other.

LatteLazy3• 5 years ago

"Politics makes strange bedfellows" i guess. I guess you can make an alliance of single issue voters much more easily than an ideological one.

skocznymroczny• 5 years ago

Well, on the other side of the political spectrum you also have arbitrary boundaries on which issues are pro-science (vaccinations) and which aren't (nuclear power).

LatteLazy3• 5 years ago

No one is totally self consistent, but it seems weird to me: the dems can't quite manage it on nuclear power which is about 1% of their platform. The Reps can manage it on abortion, guns or the budget, which is aboht 95% of their platform...

triceratops• 5 years ago

Is being anti-nuclear necessarily "anti-science"? How much have Chernobyl and Fukushima cost to clean up? Are there a lot of private insurers lining up to underwrite new plants?

Even if nuclear is perfectly safe (which it largely is), and waste disposal is a perfectly solved problem (which it's not), economically there's a big question mark over it. I don't understand why conservatives are so hot about something so fiscally reckless.

Veterans push for medical marijuana in conservative South

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