Sorry I just couldn't help myself. :)
I love that CNN is stirring the debate about cannabis legalization but Ruben Navarrette Jr.'s OP-ED piece "Legal pot in California a big mistake" is wrong, misinformed and to be honest at times, a bit scary.
I'm glad to see mainstream media outlets giving more exposure to the topic of ending cannabis prohibition. CNN along with other outlets such as CNBC and the WSJ have been giving a good amount of air time recently to the topic and I think that's exactly what needs to happen if this country is ever going to come to it's senses.
I believe nationally syndicated columnist, NPR commentator and regular contributor to CNN.com, Ruben Navarrette Jr. to be...one of the senseless.
Ruben starts off with the elegant idea that
California's most valuable export isn't fine wine, agricultural products or motion pictures.
What California offers is ideas. Political movements and cultural trends start here and sweep across the country. Some ideas are born of genius, and they're priceless. But others come from hubris, and they're dangerous.
I quite agree, California is home to some of the most brilliant and creative minds on the planet. Genius does flow from California, ideas that have revolutionized the world time and time again as Ruben suggests but apparently he fails to consider just how many of those very priceless ideas have actually been fueled by cannabis.
Think about it Ruben. Potheads are strange in that they don't really like going to jail just for using some cannabis. Because of this odd trait, it seems that many are reluctant to be seen publicly as 'breakers of the law'.
Any given year 20 million or so Americans admit to using marijuana. Millions of Americans use cannabis every day without ever being a nuisance to society. The closet tokers, a true 'silent majority'(minority) if there ever was one. Intelligent people who use cannabis because, they know it's not the harmful monster your fathers government said it was. Why else would so many people, intelligent to stay out of trouble for the most part, do something you seem to think is such a stupid idea? They have been in the middle of the war on cannabis for 40 years and they know the truth because they have lived it. Prohibition is what hurts cannabis users NOT cannabis!
Do you have any idea how many brilliant, creative and prolific people have been regular cannabis users for decades of their lives? I'm not just talking about music, artists, film/television. No I mean many of the brain-parents of some of the very ideas you mention are stoners.
Nice for me eh, a theory that I claim people are too paranoid to confirm...muhuwahahaha!
But no, how about for proof of this claim I offer up the PPP poll where you say
A recent survey by Public Policy Polling indicates that the majority of California voters support the proposition, called the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, by 47 percent to 38 percent.
A majority of the very intelligent Californians you speak of support Prop 19 Do you really think 'the smart ones' haven't considered the issue over the last 40 years? Are you naive enough to believe that the majority of supporters of this legalization (a majority of California's voters mind you) have not had enough experience with cannabis use, either personal use or friends/family to be able to make a truly informed decision on the safety of cannabis use?
Wake up Ruby Tuesday, it's time to face the fact that more and more Americans know from experience that their opinions are indeed correct and that you have no idea what you're talking about. I'd imagine you've either never used cannabis or you didn't like it which is fine either way but please don't try to sell this lame load of crap you wrote as an informed decision.
When you don't have a valid point toss up some fear!
It's official. The country's most populous state is nibbling at poison.A spokesman for the pro-legalization group Drug Policy Alliance boasted, "What's interesting here is that [Parker] is a member of the generation that really gets it."
What do supporters of Proposition 19 supposedly "get" that the rest of us are missing?
They insist that marijuana isn't as dangerous as other products that are legal, such as alcohol and tobacco. They point to the benefits of medicinal marijuana to alleviate pain and suffering for cancer patients. And, with a drug war raging south of the border, they say the most effective way to combat the Mexican drug cartels that bring their illicit cargo into the United State is to legalize the substance, undercut the profit and put the cartels out of business.
These are all perfectly fine arguments that are, to some of us, completely unconvincing.
If you decide that exposure to a given substance -- particularly the kind of consistent and sustained exposure that comes from a product being made readily available -- is harmful to individuals and the rest of society, then you will naturally put in place laws that make it illegal to possess the product.
That makes sense. So does this: If you legalize any kind of undesirable behavior -- from vagrancy to prostitution to identity theft -- you'll remove the stigma and get more of that behavior.
Are you kidding? Do you realize how many people die each year from doing nothing more then ingesting legal substances such as alcohol, prescription drugs, OTC medications and you want to talk about how "it makes sense to make it illegal"?
News flash genius those laws HAVE existed for 40 years now and all they have done is ruin peoples lives by making criminals out of those who would otherwise not be breaking any laws if cannabis was legal.
It's true that alcohol and tobacco are legal, but it's also true that we restrict the use of such products and levy high taxes on them to discourage people from abusing them. Why?
Because we recognize the harm these products cause and the damage they do. We're especially aware of this with alcohol, which, like marijuana, has the effect of relieving people of control over their faculties, impairing their judgment and dulling their sense of right and wrong. None of that is good for the rest of us.
The use of medical marijuana is a far cry from making the herb readily available to anyone who can purchase it.
In fact, medical marijuana dispensaries are concerned that they could be put out of business by competition with liquor stores selling the same product without the kind of regulation with which they must contend.
Under the current system -- established in 2003 by state law and in 1996 by a proposition -- you need a doctor's note to buy marijuana for medicinal use. The requirement could soon go out the window.
Why is a good question indeed because history shows that substances still get abused. Criminalizing the users is not stopping them from doing it it's just ruining their lives doing way more damage than cannabis use itself.
This is the best part here...
As for the drug war, I defer to the expert -- the person who has put his life and the lives of his family in danger to take the fight to drug traffickers: Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
He has strongly condemned Proposition 19, saying that it reflects lax attitudes toward drug consumption in the United States, which is the life's blood of the drug trade.
Calling the growing acceptance of marijuana use by the American public absurd, Calderon warns that should the measure be adopted. it would only drive up demand and undercut joint efforts by the United States and Mexico to combat the drug cartels. It's a subject he knows well.
"Drugs kill in production," Calderon said. "Drugs kill in distribution, as is the case in the violence in Mexico, and drugs kill in consumption."
In this case, we should listen to our neighbor. Recently, when a Mexican newspaper essentially handed over its coverage to the drug cartels, asking them what it could publish and what it couldn't, reasonable people in both countries condemned the decision to do so as a cowardly act of surrender.
But capitulation comes in many forms, and Proposition 19 is one of them. If you legalize drug use, you will get more drug use, with all the nasty side effects. It's that simple.
Again are you serious? Mexican President Felipe Calderon is who you think we should listen to? ABOUT ANYTHING?!?
You mean the same Mexican President Felipe Calderon who according to The New York Times article Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession enacted a law in 2009 decriminalizing less than 5 grams of marijuana, half a gram of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin, 40mg of methamphetamine and 0.015mg of LSD for personal use in Mexico? You do mean that Mexican President Felipe Calderon right? The same guy who has blasted the U.S. and Arizona for its immigration laws while he does nothing to improve conditions in his country and has some of the harshest immigrations laws in the Americas...yeah lets listen to what this clown thinks is best for America. Sure Ruben let Felipe be your guide here, don't bother to listen to people like Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Cesar Gaviria and Eernesto Zedillo the former Presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico respectively in their OP-ED in the Wall Street Journal.
The War on Drugs Is a Failure
We should focus instead on reducing harm to users and on tackling organized crime.
That's scary Ruben, that you would allow someone like this to influence your opinion. I like how at one point your argument seems to be that legal cannabis would kill the medical MJ industry like you're actually concerned about them. Sad but scary
Let me ask you this Mr. Navarrette Jr. Are you a religious person? What if I said that I believe religions to be a danger to myself, my family and others. More people have been killed in the name of "God" than for any other reason right. More money stolen in the name of "God". So it's not really that far a reach for someone to come to the conclusion that religion is a dangerous thing that needs regulation or prohibition. The very fact that religious freedom is part of the very FIRST amendment of our Constitution tells us that the founding fathers KNEW from experience the kind of persecution that can be unleashed if this right is not protected.(persecution generally unleashed in the name of someone elses 'God' btw) They knew from history that if they did not explicitly protect this right that tyrants would eventually legislate some out of existence.
Well for many of us cannabis IS our religion. It's the higher power we turn to when life says "HA...guess what sucker..." and we need patience and understanding in a crazy world. It's the stress relief after a 14 hour "9-5" and you just want to hurt somebody. It's who we ask to help us forgive and forget, to help us laugh and love and to help us contemplate and create.
You claim my cannabis use is a danger to you Mr. Navarrette I do wonder how though. Cannabis users are all around you Ruben how many of them have impacted your life in a negative way?
The time for the United States to legalize cannabis is now. Study after study show cannabis is safe. It's had a documented history of usage by humans for over 7000 years and what the facts show are cannabis use is safe and humans will continue to use it no matter what the laws are. It makes no sense to keep harming users and allow criminals profit from the black market that always exists for prohibited items. Legalizing and regulating is the only answer that does make sense.
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