Wow Homer, sure wish I had a mom like yours when I was growing up.
Because as we all know, you can only be outraged by one thing at a time. If a new outrageous thing comes up, you must decide whether to abandon your previous outrage and take on the new one, or keep your previous one and pass on the new one. It is unlawful to be outraged by multiple things at any given time, in addition to being humanly impossible.
Well, I’m still outraged about the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Bill working its way through Congress, so I can’t join you people in your outrage about this. For those that care, this bill included a provision allowing the police to perform searches without telling people, as well as making it illegal to provide information about how to use drugs.
Asset forfeiture laws still chap my ass as well. Those are the laws according to which your property can be seized if suspected of being used in the commission of a crime, and if you want to get it back, you have to prove that it wasn’t. I do believe that the abuse of this in the name of the insane War on Drugs is starting to piss property owners off. Oh, and the $1.3 billion pledged to help fight drugs in Colombia is pretty scary. The last thing this country needs is to get into another Vietnam over drugs.
I really hope the time is approaching when reasonable people let the government know that they do not support this mounting insanity. When we as a society realize that taking away basic Constitutional protections from drug users is taking them from all of us. We need to be able to be outraged at many things.
If we were to relax and realize that well, black people have it worse, all of our rights are in jeopardy. We should not be content with having more rights than others, but raise holy hell at each and every absurd increase in the power of the police state.
Amen to that
I don’t use pot and I do worry about my kid growing up and getting interest in it at an inappropriate age. But for god’s sake, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND the hysteria that the antidrug advocates are getting into over it. I don’t see marijuana as a threat to modern civilization or morality or Our Children’s Future or whatever else they think it’s menacing. It’s ridiculous the resources we spend on this sort of drug enforcement, and it’s a shame we’re treating users of marijuana like they’re dangerous criminals.
It’s an embarrassment. And these sorts of antics are what make me seriously consider backing the movement to legalize marijuana. It doesn’t matter to me personally as a user or hopeful user–I’d just like to see us stop blowing time, $$, and energy on this crap.
I gotta say, it is nice to hear this sentiment from a non-pot user. I agree 100%, but when I make these same statements (enjoying the devil-weed now and again as I do), they tend to have little to no impact.
You will likely never find someone more adamantly against the criminalization than I am (well, okay, there are some people), but I don’t smoke it. One doesn’t need to indulge to see that the current policy is clearly stupid and wrong.
Billyboy,
I see that I worded that post poorly. What I was trying to say was that I enjoy the show NYPD Blue despite the fact that some things that it depicts bother me.
This would be when they show suspects rights being violated. The show then makes it look like this rights violation is justified because the suspect was indeed guilty.
It is my opinion that rights violations are not OK even in this case. However, it may appear to the average viewer that this is so. In other words, Average Viewer watches NYPD Blue. Avearge Viewer sees rights violations of suspect. Average Viewer sees suspect is bad guy and is brought to justice by rights violations. Average Viewer thinks that rights violations are sometimes justifiable “good things.” Average Viewer becomes more complacent about this type of thing in the real world.
I was trying to say that I don’t like COPS because of the way it may have the effect of desensitizing people to police action. However, seemingly contradictorily I like NYPD Blue despite its flaws that may desensitize people to rights violations by law enforcement. I was expressing my opinion while showing that I can sometimes have conflicting views.
In brief:
- The show COPS may desensitize people to an aggressive police prescence.
- I don’t like the show COPS.
- The show NYPD BLUE may desensitize people to rights violations by law enforecement.
- I like the show NYPD BLUE.
- Sometimes I have conflicting opinions, views, etc. and may seem hypocritical. I prefer to think of myself as complex.
Hope that clears it up.
Count me in as another non-pot-smoker who is fully in favor of the legalization of drugs and and end to the War.
Of course, I’m outraged about most stuff most of the time, so one more outrage piled on is no big deal.
I’ve never understood why alcohol is legal and pot isn’t.
Gotcha. Figured I might have misread your meaning, hence the slap-me clause at the end of my post. Thanks for taking the time to clarify though.
And thanks for not actually slapping me
To add one more to the long list of outrages caused by the drug war. I have for you perusal the Higher Education Act among some of it’s provision is the denial of financial aid to persons convicted of drug crimes. Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense :rolleyes:, you’d almost think it was a pun.
Well if ya are smoking pot in yer car and get pulled over, whadda ya think. I’m a Canadian smoker and up here it’s pretty lax. If yer car smells like weed, yer toast.
Thought the states was worse, WAR ON DRUGS, and since we grow the best in the world, your gov. would rather sell cocaine and guns…
Oh btw if yer an ass when ya get pulled over the situation changes…So be cool and I bet they leave ya alone…
Sealemon,
The alcohol lobby has lots more money than the pot folks.
Vanilla is right. All the pot smokers spent their money on ice cream, cookies, and Visine. (sp?)
-N
There IS a plant out there that does smell like fresh cut (not smoke) bud! I’ve smelled it too, in the car, out walking etc. but after investigating thoroughly, found nada. Usually in the spring, like it’s a stage of development of a common plant. There is also a plant that has a smell similar to… uh… male… semen. Now THAT is something that I do NOT investigate.
But anyway… that old adage “Where there’s smoke there’s fire” thing should not apply here, because “I smelled it” is an unprovable (is that a word?) statement. It is just a way to excuse crawling around our cars and screw with our dwindling privacy.
(Assembles portable Soap Box, stands on it and clears throat)
short hijack!
Go to ecolution.com or hemptech.com to answer your question, and then some.
And yeah, alchohol money is bigger than pot money. Alchohol prohibition was stopped because it created the Italian and Irish Mob, and then they were making all the money… which is why it was stopped.
Tax my weed!! Go ahead! Grow it and Tax it, just stop making political and fiscal prisoners out of harmless stoners. Grrrr.
And BTW, Uncle Cecil, I have been sorely disappointed by your answers on this topic.
end of hijack
Hear that. Blowing time, $$ and energy -as well as the lives of young adults, sick adults and the families of same. It is exactly hysteria, and the hysteria is being funded by the biggest of the big money corporations, descendants of dead white men that eliminated a major cometitor, using propagandist journalism that manipulated the minds of Mr and Mrs Joe Middleamerica.
ecolution.com
Did I say that already?
Minor misunderstanding I might be having - can they stop your car if they smell pot, or, once stopped (presumably for some other violation) have the ability to search your car if they smell pot when they walk up or something?
Either way, though, I think it’s a fair waste of my tax dollars to be sending pot smokers, growers, and sellers to prison. It’s not much different than tobacco or alcohol. I say we make it legal and tax the shit out of it.
Side note - Cecil has spoken about the above-mentioned semen trees:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/961101.html
Spoo trees: read the link, found it en-grossing, but informative! Thank you, and my vote is for Tree of Heaven, of which there is one in my neighborhood and it could be the culprit.
Your question leads to mine…anyone:
can a friendly copper sidle up to your car at a park, and if s/he smells waftages, crawl about on your floorboards?