Oh there’s evidence that marijauna can harm people, but it doesn’t have to. Much like alcohol or tobacco.
Everyone knows at least one elderly person who smoked and drank too much their whole life and is still in the best of health with lots of loving friends, a close family and a good work record behind them. Same for pot, everyone knows some stoner who ended up psychotic, or just wasting their life blazing in a basement 24/7, but most other people know someone who gets stoned on a regular basis and still manage to do well at their day jobs and private lives.
For example, the fact that someone of my close aquaintance who gets stoned every night and still managed to get better results in his professional exams than any other employee at his company.
Still, I think the kid was nuts to let the paper use his name. Not smart buddy, not smart at all.
I agree that commission of a misdemeanor is not definitively probable cause to suspect a felony – although it could be, depending on the facts of the specific case. But what ever gave you the idea that a felony is required for a search warrant to issue? A search warrant may be issued to search for the fruits of a misdemeanor.
I must say, as a 17 year-old drug user (not abuser - I did them properly) accepted to Edinburgh University, I could easily have been as naive as this chap. Indeed, the Milwaukee newspaper should really have granted him anonymity as a matter of course given that he might well be unaware just how negative the consequences might be. At that age, I thought the illegality of pot so preposterous that I genuinely had trouble believing that people really were so bothered about it that I might end up in any real trouble, or even inconvenience. And I’d certainly admire him if he deliberately used his name despite being aware of all the silly consequences I was unaware of at his age in honest civil disobedience of a law which is an ass. (Futile? Maybe, but if enough people bash their head against a wall, eventually it might come down.)
And, I might add, if my ma had pulled this home-testing stunt (after, having found my bong, I told them gently but firmly that I simply would not stop because I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong), I’d have suggested alternative housing until university given the certainty of failure of said tests.
In places that aren’t West Allis, Wisconsin – where cops routinely have more serious crimes to worry about. Here in New York, cops will often arrest you for possession, but it’s frequently a pretense for some other bad act, and they just as often will tell you not to smoke on the street and send you on your way.
Most cops realize that pot laws are for the most part STUPID laws (right up there with laws against homosexuality and (shudder!) shacking up. They don’t stop most people from using. It’s not a dangerous substance. It doesn’t hamper a person’s ability to be a productive member of society any more than booze, ativan, or zoloft do. I mean, when you take into consideration that the president of the most powerful country in the world smoked it, the argument pretty much starts to fall apart.
If governments were smart, they’d decriminalize it and start taxing it. After nearly five decades of open, regular use of pot, it’s pretty apparent the people have it right and Reefer Madness had it wrong.
These are parents who are misinformed and freaked out. Anyone who’s attending Tough Love meetings because of POT use needs to understand that pot is not the problem. Disobedience, maybe. Disrespect for stupid laws, sure. But pot, in and of itself, is usually not the problem.
This is true of any activity which involves physical or monetary risk. Skydiving, kayaking, canoeing, bungee-jumping, snorboarding, surfing, gambling, playing the stock market, mountain climbing, paintball…
If anyone were to lose their savings, home, ability to work, health, or life from any of these their families would be just as badly damaged. Only difference is, someone whose husband spends thousands of dollars on his ski vacation, misjudges that last jump and ends up disabled will get sympathy; someone whose husband blows $50 on a quarter ounce of marijuana and is arrested for smoking a joint will get derision.
If it’s only the illegality of the substance which makes it bad, mmkay, then I submit that its illegality is fucking ridiculous when compared with other substances with similar effects, and shouldn’t be an objective consideration when discussing the morality of the situation in question.
I know this is a little beyond where the conversation has gone, but couldn’t it be possible that he used a fabricated name knowing of the possible consequences?
Most cops in Chicago and the surrounding vicinity couldn’t give a flying fuck if a guy is smoking a joint. They have scheduled and announced smoke days and no one out of the thousands who show up gets arrested. Most cops realize that it’s a pointless battle.
No, not bullshit. You should talk to the parents/spouses of people who smoke pot every single day, even multiple times a day.
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Most of the relationships in my life have been with regular (multiple times per day) smokers. The reason those relationships failed had nothing to do with pot.
I do think that a lot of people on this board underestimate the potential harm of marijuana use – some people really do become psychologically addicted to it, and it can cause problems in their jobs, schools, and personal lives.
However, cases like that are undoubtedly the exception and not the rule. As Nancarrow pointed out, your experiences as a cop and with your Tough Love meetings lead to a selection bias. That is, your opinions are largely shaped by your experiences, and your experiences are with marijuana users who are having trouble with it. People for whom marijuana use doesn’t cause any problems tend not to wind up in Tough Love meetings or to get arrested. Travelling in the circles that you do, you’ll tend to run into problem users.
I went through period in college where I was smoking pretty much every day, and it didn’t affect my grades (which, for unrelated reasons, were higher during that period than when I wasn’t smoking), and caused no long-term or short-term problems for me. I knew several people with similar experiences, and only one whose use caused him difficulties.
Somewhat off-topic, but it is undeniable that marijuana is less harmful in nearly every way than alcohol or nicotine (excepting the threat of prosecution, of course).
What about the parents of alcoholics, or the families of people dying of lung cancer?
The question is not really whether pot can do any harm at all—most people concede that it can—but whether its levels of harm (both to the user and to friends and family members) are substantively different from drugs that millions of Americans use legally every day.
I’ve never heard of anyone beating his wife unconscious after too many joints.
You know what’s both witty and clever? When duffer backpedals without admitting it, and then implies that other posters are children because they were foolish enough to expect he’d have the balls to stand behind what he said.
It certainly reminds one that duffer is one of the smartest, most cogent, and all around most useful people on the SDMB. And funny - when he claims he didn’t say http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=7170842#
Increase Sizewhat he clearly did, somehow that doesn’t make him a liar, even though it would if someone else did it.
I agree, but I wouldn’t use the plural here. duffer is the only person who has suggested that about the kid.
I think this is a good analogy, but I’d like to point out that discrimination against gay people on the job market is not illegal in most of the United States. I could be fired for being gay here in Michigan, for example.
A minor has no real choice but to live with their parents. It’s true that he potentially could get a job and be emancipated, but it would be incredibly difficult and likely involve compromising his future. Since he is not really choosing to live under his parents’ roof by any reasonable definition, it’s not logical to suggest he’s honor-bound in accepting his parents’ authority as absolute. It might be best for him to accept their rules, but it’s not dishonorable for him not to. It would be stupid of him to treat his parents’ rules as absolute - following your logic to its end, it seems like it would be dishonorable for a young girl not to cooperate if her father molests her, since it’s under his roof. Not that his parents’ actions are comparable, but they are indefensible in my opinion. Being a parent does not give you the right - not morally, anyway - to disrespect a child’s autonomy as a person in that way. It’s just my opinion, of course, but I can’t imagine how you could possible ascribe “honor” to this child cooperating with his invasive, overbearing parents.
The bottom line is that it’s illegal because it’s was and still is a politically viable strategy to stir up the public’s fear over drugs, even if it involves grossly exaggerating the risks of drug use. This is something common to both major political parties in the United States, and it makes a rational public discussion of the nature of drug use and the (admittedly real) dangers it poses impossible.
Marijuana is addictive, despite all the success of the marijuana crowd in convincing many people otherwise. But lots of substances are addictive. You’re claiming, essentially, that marijuana laws are okay because some people become addicted to it and hurt themselves or others. If you believe that’s a fair argument, you need to actually make the argument. After all, alcohol is not illegal, so it certainly is not the case that all dangerous, addictive drugs of abuse are outlawed. Why do you think marijuana should be? For bonus points, do you think alcohol should be illegal? If not, how can you reconcile that with your opinion about marijuana?