On the quiet, the US is legalising marijuana

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6897958.ece

by Flemlord • 17 years ago

32 33 17 years ago

timesonline.co.uk

wheels• 17 years ago

This seems to be basically a "legalize it!" bent to rehashing an earlier Fortune / CNN Money article:

http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/11/magazines/fortune/medical_ma...

auston• 17 years ago

I was approached by a friend who wanted to do a dispensary locator app for the iPhone and my thoughts were: "No way Apple will EVER let that through!" - he called me the other day to tell me about an app that got through...

rms2• 17 years ago

> In an online press conference with his younger supporters, the first question was about whether legalising and taxing pot would be a good thing to help raise revenues.

That was Reddit.

It seems insane that our last three presidents admitted to smoking weed yet thousands upon thousands of people are languishing in jail for doing the same thing. Cognitive dissonance much?

dtf3• 17 years ago

The Release charity in the UK has a campaign called "Nice People Take Drugs", which aims to change drug policy to harm reduction and remove the stigma associated with drug use. One of their promotional tools is a deck of cards, each featuring a politician known to be tough on drugs, subtitled with a confessional quote of drug use from their youth:

http://www.release.org.uk/nicepeopletakedrugs/deck-of-cards/

(you can click on each card to see the quote)

axod2• 17 years ago

I'm not sure that's an effective argument.

Politicians occasionally break the speed limit also, but it's not a great argument for increasing the speed limit.

bh23ha• 17 years ago

Wow: http://www.release.org.uk/nicepeopletakedrugs/deck-of-cards/...

ErrantX6• 17 years ago

This rot always annoys me :(

bbsabelli• 17 years ago

rot?

ErrantX6• 17 years ago

All the guff about having legit medical purposes makes it safe for legalisation :) (how many other drugs are used for medical purposes that are not legal generally; pain medication for example)

And the other thing about it being less harmful than alcohol (which is more of a case for banning alcohol really ;)).

Round and round we go :)

It's important to remember that by that Alcohol and Tobacco is NOT at all safe - it causes society and individuals no end of problems. Do we want to add another drug to that mess :P

It's important to consider everything in perspective rather than just go with either the govt. line or the supposed experts line (for example we have one here in the UK on record saying ecstasy is no more dangerous than horse riding - which might be statistically true but, as most here will appreciate, is just sensationalism that ignores the obvious problems :D)

EDIT: I should point out I am biased; one of my friends was killed after smoking marijuana and driving and another friend is now a dribbling wreck after 10 years regular smoking (one of the smartest people I know now has the intelligence of a 15 year old). I dont see how these problems wont be multiplied :)

dtf3• 17 years ago

Funny that The Times are running anti-prohibition articles during this whole furore about the sacking of David Nutt. They can't be a happy bunch at the Home Office this weekend.

steiger6• 17 years ago

Too bad Carl Sagan did not live enough to see it happen.

Goladus• 17 years ago

I don't think "decriminalize" really means what the article is trying to suggest it means. It can still be a misdemeanor.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

I support legalization of pot in the U.S., but I don't think it's going to happen like the article's title predicts.

What will happen, and the article alludes to it, is a mish-mash of conflicting state and local laws that legalize or decriminalize pot to various degrees. The federal government will continue to be a wild card. Wholesale legalization is not in the cards.

That's because the way pot was made illegal was illegal to begin with. When alcohol was made illegal, it took a constitutional amendment. Ever wonder why? After all, they tried making alcohol illegal other ways and the courts threw it out. The government got tired of all that constitutional stuff and decided that in the future substances would be regulated by administrative fiat. The DEA maintains a list which it adds and subtracts items whenever it feels like it. No president is going to completely pull something like pot from the list -- too much political hassle what with getting into why the list exists in the first place. Instead pot will be ignored to some degree, leaving the same big constitutional problem we had to start with to fester for decades.

So the real news is that the people are tired of pot criminal laws, state and local governments are responding to them, and the federal government, having taken on itself to tell people what they can ingest or not, is stuck with a big bag of laws that don't meet the people's needs any more. That could take 50 years or more to work out (if ever).

awolf• 17 years ago

The war on drugs has always been a failure: there has been no measureable decline in usage. Legalization will eliminate a dangerous black market and free our law enforcement to focus on more serious crime. Most importantly - legalization will no longer label hundreds of thousands of otherwise law abiding citizens "criminals" for enjoying a substance that humans have been using for as long as we can tell.

patrickgzill• 17 years ago

The reality is that states are going to be asserting their rights against Federal ability.

This is happening in gun-related issues as well, with Montana and Ohio, at the least, considering the passage of laws that ignore the BATF if the gun is produced in and sold in the state. This gets around the interstate commerce clause used by the Feds to claim jurisdiction.

stuartjmoore• 17 years ago

Let's not forget about Hemp: http://books.google.com/books?id=pkMEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA15&#...

On the quiet, the US is legalising marijuana

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