The majority of Americans say that “the use of marijuana should be made legal,” according to nationwide polling data provided by the General Social Survey. The GSS is a bi-annual scientific survey that collects data on social trends within the United States.
Fifty-two percent of respondents endorsed legalizing marijuana – an increase of nine percentage points since GSS pollsters asked the question in 2012. Forty-two percent of respondents said that they opposed the idea.
GSS pollsters have been tracking Americans’ views regarding marijuana legalization since the early 1970s. In 1990, only 16 percent of respondents backed legalizing the plant. The just-reported 2014 survey data marks the first time that the General Social Survey has ever reported majority support for legalizing cannabis.
Separate national surveys by both Gallup and the Pew Research Center, among others, have previously documented that most Americans now favor legalizing the plant.
Can the Governor of Pennsylvania issue and executive order making cannabis legal? I vaguely recall Ken Krawchuk, once upon a time Libertarian gubernatorial candidate, talking about just that.
New Governor unveiled his budget proposal this week, which will tax Marcellus Shale extraction and better fund social services, public education, etc. Then I hear on the Philadelphia news that Mayor Nutter wants to raise property taxes by 9%. Ouch! It’s necessary, he says, in order to fund Philadelphia public schools sufficiently. If Philly legalized weed for adult recreational, that would be a great, steady revenue stream that could offset those property tax increases. What would Governor Wolf do? I’m hoping he would just let the city do it, and not interfere. It would be a poke in the eye of cannabis prohibition on the I 95 corridor, and become the place to go buy it and bring it back, especially since DC is in a holding pattern and de Blasio S T I L L hasn’t legalized in NYC. Cuomo and Christie, that will be cannabis money that’s LEGAL that your states WON’T be getting. Better jump on the cannabis train. Choo! Choo! Choom Gang!
our government needs to start listening to Americans, not American corporations. at least one of the two political parties are listening to the people and not the big business lobbyists and their, so called, think tanks. it doesn’t require a genius to figure out which party is against legalization.
Now let’s see how long it takes congress to catch up with the public.
Last survey in Texas was “%68” in favor of marijuana legalization.
Is that sweat I see on Governor Abbot’s brow? He looks nervous… Somethin wrong Governor? You look PALE! Somebody get the governor a vaporizer!!
Just legalize it! That’s enough of the legislation. Let’s see how fast we can get this (Washington, D.C. concept)of legalization on the national ballot for the voters to decide. Three cheers for Mayor Bowser of D.C. “We the people wish we had more good politicians like Mayor Bowser that cares about what “We the People” vote for!!!
I think the courts and President Obama should just go ahead and save time by going ahead and nationally televising that cannabis is no longer illegal, that no more tax dollars will be wasted on this foolish, greedy victimization of the fine American citizens that deserve to have this natural medicine without ANY MORE HASSELES fro the government. No selling, but you can grow your own if you wish and if a friend, neighbor is in need of some good natural medicine or herbals, then we the people are hereby granted full right to give away freely to someone in need for no compensation. This will stop those cartels dead in their tracks!!! No more government sponsored drug dealing police protected informants on every street corner. And no more of government creating prisoners, stealing pride and building prisons to house victims of government pre-meditated crimes.
“LET FREEDOM RING” “END CANNABIS PROHIBITION TODAY!!!!!
52% of the population. I assume that’s the adult population.
More than half of the adults in America. Considering the punishment for the crime, how many favor legalized homicide, rape, assault, burglary, child abuse – all which carry penalties ranking marijuana use just as dangerous to society.
52%… and it’s still like a major crime in most states. That’s wrong.
@Oracle, thanx for reminding me of Choo Choo Choomette!
What’s in a word? Barry might not have known it 3 decades ago but “choom-” is a pretty good reduction of “chillum” and accordingly a “choomette” is a pretty good name for a flexdrawtube one-hitter which has a chillum-like piece (maybe with a 5.5-mm-diam. screened crater created by cramming a properly sized socket wrench into the top end of a properly drilled & decorated woodpiece about the size of a typical chillum and attaching a flexible (usually pvc) drawtube to the butt end.
I have long felt the choo choo train was the most sublime modern invention along with the bicycle and the symphony since Joe Haydn. The smooth forward progress of the mind (LEAP Long-term Episodic Associative Performance stream of preciousness/precociousness) inventing ideas as fast as you can type or draw is what leads me to the comparison of cannabis or its empowerment to a choo choo train.
To see readable scores of “railroad” symphonies go to IMSLP International Music Scores Library Project. Read while listening, while your finger moves across the page keeping up with the music. Try Dvorak “New World” (“Here’s a choo choo, first comes the engine, and then a car, and then a car, and then a car, toot toot!”), Sibelius 3 (finale: “a big new choo choo train!”), Tchaik. 5 finale, Nielsen 5 finale, last 100 seconds of Beethoven 7 (prophetic), last 2 minutes of Brahms 1.
Score-reading while listening is co-ordination-educational for everybody, especially children, but even more so after a couple of tokes.
If the gov takes m.j. off schedule 1 then take a nation wide vote ,,ill bet you its over 75% will vote yes for total legalization ,,for sure medical will pass …,
Better yet; Let’s see what SAM’s spin on this poll will be. This will be very entertaining.
Out of the 42% that oppose legalisation I wonder how many would really do anything about it or complain. I think most would accept it even if they did not think it was the right thing to do.
Nixon went after cannabis to jail his political enemies. The essence of Stalinism.
“Look, we understood we couldn’t make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue…that we couldn’t resist it.” – John Ehrlichman, White House counsel to President Nixon on the rationale of the War on Drugs.
lets hope this is the last time there’s a poll taken on this.We the people have spoke.now lets just get it done.
It seems like almost everyone except for those that have been profiting from prohibition are on board for legalization. It is becoming ever more clear who has been profiting from the pain inflicted on prohibition victims. From what I see, those profiteers include: politicians (mostly Republicans), law enforcement, DEA, private prisons, addiction clinics (Kevin Sabet of SAM), and I would guess quite a lot of lawyers…
“Separate national surveys by both Gallup and the Pew Research Center, among others, have previously documented that most Americans now favor legalizing the plant.”
Reproducible results!
A follow up question should have been “if other recent polls have shown about 42% to 52% against, would you still be in favour of Prohibition?” That’s a trick question because by answering “yes” you would be saying an Orwellian government should be cherished above democracy, which seems like a stretch seeing how all of us said the Pledge of Allegiance every day for years. Therefore, I claim those 42% don’t even remember what marijuana is or are not following the news about it. The Bill of Rights promises, in writing, redressing grievances.
It’s just so ironic that our Nation’s capitol has legalized cannabis but the vast majority of the Nation’s citizens cannot.
In fact, as a resident of D.C., the President of the United States can legally grow six plants, and when he harvest it, he can pass an ounce over to his Vice President without any fear of persecution or prosecution.
This cannabis issue is the biggest IRONY that I think we have ever experienced.
@Miles:
And the drug testing industry! Why does everyone leave those fascists out when tallying drug war profiteers who are politically influencing prohibition? 98 percent of all positive drug tests are for mj, giving them the illusion of efficacy and a valuable scare tactic. How will they fare when they have to exclude 98 out of every 100 of their results in their scaremongering sales pitch?
Not to mention one of the first if not the first, to challenge the CO law in 2012 was an ex-dea agent who . . . just so happened to own a drug testing company. They are on the front lines of the enemy and have the most to lose, because they’re selling snake oil, an entirely worthless product that is only lent the illusion of value by irrational drug war fear. There will always be prisons and rehabs even without the drug war, just less powerful and with less revenue, but drug testing survives entirely on the drug war and esp. mj prohibition. We ignore them to our own detriment.
http://Www.freemonty.com
please help..
Of course we live in a statist police state. How many county sheriffs still think that they are required to enforce federal drug laws. If they can actually read then let them read Title 21 (subchapter 1) It is quite clear to anyone with a 6th grade education that states are free to experiment with their own drug policies barring positive conflict with another states.
Also Title 21 and drug convention treaties allow for schedule maintainance.. Leaders in Washington can end all arguments by doing what Holder has refused to do: Deschedule cannabis.
Cannabis is awesome at phytoremediation. I don’t think I would smoke it after it grows around contaminated sites to naturally clean the environment.
What I would like to know out of the 52% that said yes to legalization how many actually vote in state and federal elections? This is a number that politicians will truly listen to.
Drug testing tests the submissiveness of the person being “tested”.
I teach my canine friends to urinate, on command, twice a day…I am a benevolent tyrant…but… nevertheless…still a tyrant.
I own my dogs.
Q.Who owns you?
A. Whoever can force you to urinate on command
Demonhype hit the nail on the head, drug testing and especially Reagan (random) drug testing is still the the meat hook we are all impaled on. Until they get rid of the metabolite method of drug testing we have nothing.If it wasn’t for metabolite drug testing the facists would have little to nothing in their commy box .Look at Rick Scott down here in Florida, him and his wife are in the business of drug testing, their commy ship would sink without drug testing marijuana enthusiasts.He is still pushing all kinds of people for random drug testing: all state employees,welfare recipients, I’m sure he’s considered testing anyone who has a drivers license.Yeah, Demonhype without their extraction of urine they would have no power what so ever to keep us bent over the log…
“…most Americans now favor legalizing the plant.”
The plant already has a well known name – it is cannabis. The plant, the whole plant, and the sum of all of its parts are cannabis. Cannabis should be re-legalized.
The government, the DEA, and that Representative from Texas want to call the plant either their invented term “marihuana”, or marijuana.
Do people smoke cannabis, or do they smoke marijuana? (wait – what…?)
The current federal definition of marihuana is explicitly derived from cannabis. It is a racist political definition which should be
replaced with this scientifically verifiable and well understood meaning of the term which conforms to the CSA’s meaning of “other
substance”:
The term “marijuana” means all parts of the smoke produced by the combustion of the plant Cannabis sativa L.
This definition is not confusing, but the current federal definition is. This definition conforms to the standards established by the Constitution, but the current federal definition does not. As well,
this definition will re-legalize the cannabis plant. Then decriminalizing marijuana would make sense.
This year is a good time to call for this reform to the current federal definition of “marihuana”.
@Demonhype and Nickelback,
Some good news for us is the recent endorsement of marijuana safety while driving by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration. Thanks to studies that exclude alcohol for 30 days prior to driving while under the influence of marijuana, the NHTSA can finally look at other risk factors such as young men who are more dangerous drivers regardless of marijuana consumption. If we want to keep the government and private business out of the drug testing industry we need to crowd source more scientific studies that prescreen for alcohol and prescription medications before testing the cognitive capacity of marijuana consumers.
As marijuana continues to legalize, companies and corporations will have to create new incentives when writing company drug policy. Larger groups of employees can threaten to quit en mass. Employers may reserve the right to test for any drug impairment, but employees reserve the right to walk and find work elsewhere. Law suits can defend patients with medical marijuana licenses from employer discrimination. Keep records of your own daily performance and employer evaluations.
With a majority of Americans pro-marijuana, industries need to calculate the image they’re conveying to the general public. Instead of joining a law suit in Colorado to prohibit a popular effective marijuana policy and get boycotted like the Holiday Inn, (Im on a road trip to DC and Holiday Inn gets NONE of my money), Why not get proactive and sell vaporizers in the lobby if the problem is reducing smoke in hotel rooms? Aren’t hotels for relaxing?
As the commercial casualties of prohibitionist policies increases we will see a paradigm shift in drug testing regulations. But it wont happen unless we fund and support scientific marijuana studies that isolate the epidemic of prescription meds and alcohol for at least 30 days prior to conducting a survey, test or study, for which Mr. Armentano here at NORML deserves great credit for emphasizing every time the propaganda machine starts spinning its fake wheels again.
Thanx @Miles and @Demonhype for listing those high profit prohibiteers. Like Kevin Sabet of SAM– does that stand for Save Addiction Management (their clinic bizne$$)?
It’s getting to where an EDUCATED cannabis user can learn how to cure ANY addiction (your own or anyone’s) without paying a penny to any clinic– and increasingly the public knows that. This Poll is more bad news for Big 2WackGo, no. 1 addiction profiteer worldwide, paying GOP Pols to prohibit cannabis in US.
Reviewing the Three Substitutions:
1. Substitute dry/cut/sifted cannabis, alfalfa, basil, catnip, damiana, eucalyptus, OREGANO etc. for tobacco
2. Substitute vaping (THC: 385F/195C) for $moking
3. Substitute 25-mg single toke device (STD) for 700-mg $igarette, 500-mg Joint, Spliff, Blunt, Beedi, Kretek etc.
cat; You are so misguided in your comparison. Your comparison equating cannabis usage with murder, rape, child abuse is just silly. I guess that’s all prohibitionists have left.
When I ask most people I know that don’t smoke weed and are against it(Which isn’t many) why they are against it, almost all of them say that it’s because it’s illegal, not because it’s harmful or negative in any other way. I wonder what the polls in legal states would say.
Alcohol and Tobacco are not regulated under the Controlled Substances Act and neither should Cannabis be.
De-Schedule Cannabis.
http://online.fliphtml5.com/wixy/rdyn/#p=39
Cannabis and Neurogenesis
http://planet.infowars.com/uncategorized/cannabis-and-neurogenesis
Why Cannabis is Illegal and Medical Marijuana Laws are Not real freedom
http://planet.infowars.com/activism/why-cannabis-is-illegal
Revolution of the Mind
http://planet.infowars.com/activism/revolution-of-the-mind
@Raven I think BobKat was just saying the punishment for marijuana is on par with all those truly heinous crimes and that it, obviously, shouldn’t be.
I know I should not post this here but my friend needs help, she is almost 80 years old and is facing years in prison. This is the one place I knew there would be people that understand, so please help if you can.
I live in Montana and I’m waiting on Texas to legalize marijuana so I can go home. I have Multiple Sclerosis and I have used every pain and sleeping pill there is and none work so I smoke marijuana. I do not smoke and drive because to me that is the same as drinking and driving. So come on Texas, make it legal.
I was restudying @Julian’s points on March 7,
A. Employers may reserve the right to test for any drug impairment, but employees reserve the right to walk and find work elsewhere.
B. Why not get proactive and sell vaporizers in the lobby if the problem is reducing smoke in hotel rooms?
B could be one of numerous part-time ad-hoc jobs you do, and learn from, after ditching that straight (hic) job (A).
In the realm oops sorry forest of work to do converting 1.2 billion tobacco AND cannabis users away from H-ot B-urning O-verdose M-onoxide $moking, besides retailing excellent but expensive vaporizers, there’s handmaking one-hitter utensils which while not 100% vaporific are ALMOST as good as a vaporizer, meanwhile– important for the sake of democracy– drasticly less pricey!
Seems like fuel- or battery-operated vaporizers start around $40? But a flexdrawstube one-hitter can be made from $1.29 worth of parts left lying around in your garage plus some #40 screen.
There are some in-between ($$) products on sale like “Vapor Genie” and “Ubie” which claim to be vaporizers, and I do think they are truly DIY vaporizers. The point I realized recently was that you can learn how to DIY vaporize just about as good with the $1.29 one-hitter as with those products though of their kind they are excellent.
The advantage of adding a long flexible DRAWTUBE to your device is that you can perform the carefully watched delicate precise heat-not-burn operation far enough from your eyes to attend competently and know what (degrees) you’re doing/sucking. And the tube provides a long travelspace for vapors to cool down before reaching your trachea!
Also to any commercially bought E-cig or PenVape, you can first:
a. slip on a two-inch 3/8″-o.d. pvc tube segment over the butt end of the piece, then
b. cram a twenty-inch 1/4″-o.d. tube snugly into that, then maybe
c. add at sucking end a two-inch x 3/16″ stiff plastic or bamboo mouthpiece.
d. With braided phonewire extensions you can attach handy accessories, such as a 2-inch safety pin (Screen Maintenance Utensil), 2-inch Emergency pencil (to write down brilliant idea or phone number before you forget it) etc. Good luck, happy productivity.
@Viv,
It’s going to be hard for Texas to legalize when too few Texans write or meet their Congressman. Senator Cornyn just wrote me a response to the Carers Act stating “I support the 2001 Supreme Court Ruling that the use of medical marijuana is not a defense under Federal law.” With responses like that, it’s time to take a phone recording to his office. “In that case Senator, do you believe that an epileptic child should be left to die under currently legal prescription drugs without legally regulating safe canbabis treatment?”
Texas is facing some serious medicinal marijuana lobbying, and I commend whoever has epilepsy to greet their Congressman on camera! It’s working!
I would love to see what the figures are over here in the UK. Unfortunately our government is several decades behind the US on this particular issue
Apology, in my March 11 message the advice (d) to add the wirebraid-tethered Maintenance Utensil applies to a flexdrawtube one-hitter but not to an e-$ig or penvape. However, the E-pencil remains pertinent to the latter devices. Also consider tethering on a little tinkerglocken (jinglebell), or a paper clip to post a cue card like a billboard in the sky.
Thanks @Julian for good activist advice, as Texas goes, so goes the Taxes!
In recent years, there has been tremendous progress being made in the field of medicine. One of the main controversies that is currently taking place in our government is the legalization of marijuana. The government remains torn between two questions. First, should marijuana be completely legal to all—not only for recreational use but for medicine as well. And second, should the drug be made completely illegal—including marijuana already used for medicinal purposes. Over the past few years, this argument has been something the United States public is set on perfecting. As those for and against come forward with their research and opinions, this issue lives on the forefront of the public agenda. We have already seen the drug become available to those for medical issues, and within the past year, some states have made it legal recreationally. The real question is: will marijuana be made fully legal within the next few years or will the drug become completely illegal once again.
Curt, I operator under the logic that marijuana has been legal since 1972 when the Shafer Commission recommended marijuana be legalized. And Judge Francis Young confirmed their conclusion in 1988. Also, the stated reason for including marijuana in the War on Drugs was a scam so police could arrest and harass innocent people. I.e. to give the police illegal powers so they could target people without needing to follow laws; by using the excuse of “but we are following the law”. Yeah, illegal laws.
Anything built on such a flimsy house of cards is not legal, and I wish this country would collectively take its head out of its own asshole already! A law just for Crackers is s sick joke.
Every so often, President Obama is confronted with young Americans who favor legalizing marijuana. He typically treats their enthusiasm for the issue as a joke, despite the fact that he almost certainly wouldn’t be a successful politician today if he’d been arrested and convicted for smoking marijuana with The Choom Gang in his youth. Obama fleshed out his belief that young voters care too much about legalization in a sit-down that Vice published this week. The interviewer revealed that marijuana is the subject that online readers most wanted the president to address.
The Drug-Warrior-in-Chief’s reply:
It shouldn’t be young people’s biggest priority.
Let’s put it in perspective. Young people, I understand this is important to you. But you should be thinking about climate change, the economy, jobs, war and peace.
Maybe way at the bottom you should be thinking about marijuana. – President Obama
…at the bottom?…perhaps?…unless you or your child is behind bars for consuming cannabis…which the Hypocrite in chief admitted was a safer choice for himself!
President Obama links cannabis with “coke”, crack cocaine, methamphetamine, and of course heroin…which have as much to do with cannabis as…well…a Choomwagon full of smoke…filled with deceitful mirrors!
Mr. President, Hypocrisy thou art you!
Light up another cigarette and remember how low priority addiction remains?
unless you or your child is behind bars – E.K.J.
That should read …unless you and your child are behind bars…and they are!
Eric, Obama doesn’t seem to understand that legalizing marijuana will positively affect all of things he lists as being more important. So, like with Nixon that started a War on Cancer and made marijuana illegal even though it kills cancer; Obama says economy, environment, jobs and War and Peace. So Obrainer, how will legal marijuana not help the economy? How will legal marijuana not help the environment?? How will legal marijuana not create more jobs??? How will it contribute to War and degrade Peace???? And how will it not help Healthcare when people can take fewer pills by replacing them with non-toxic marijuana?????
Really Obama, this is a no-brainer! So smart guy why aren’t you making the mental connections on this subject??? Were you the twerp getting high and making fun of people that think _Cannabis_ is a useful plant?
The problem is narcissists just suck. They don’t learn, but want to teach. But what? How to be an arrogant douche?
There is no reason to wait for legislators or the executive branch to do this on their own, because that will never happen.
It doesn’t even matter who gets elected into the Oval Office, the president is a figurehead, and every election produces the same thing–no change and constant warfare, a permanent and deepening cycle of poverty passed to each generation–regardless of party or affiliation, or the personal pick of the candidate who they root for, as done with sports teams.
And as rights are taken away, like the dissolution of Homeland security, invasive breaches of the privacy of citizens (under the guise of security), as other rights are simply taken away. Our rights are taken away as big brother (Orwell was right) keeps intruding into our lives. The govt organizations who tap into phones and observe the internet, pre-emptively shattering our ideals of free speech, are to be feared more than the “terror” they claim to fight. They are just as terror-producing, or worse, as radical foreigners who would seek to harm us.
The 3rd central bank of the US controls everything, their highest priority is ever-greater deficit spending, and war and “defense” racks up the debt faster than anything else. Congress and only congress should control the money supply; congress should never have been given the “power” to borrow money.
Support the MONETARY REFORM ACT. US NOTES, not ‘federal reserve notes.’ A single act of congress could repeal the 1913 Fed Reserve Act and return POWER to our representative government.
Doing so would more likely lead to *real change* that would result naturally when the people could relieved of the crushing debt, of which the interest alone cannot be paid despite all the tax revenues. The return of power away from private bankers would lead to the ability of the citizenry to decide for themselves, to have a real say about what is of benefit to us, or mere detriment and decline.
The resolutions to serious, severe social problems caused by poor public policy itself would occur naturally because people have a good will and seek betterment and desire that which considers all our interests, because that is morality itself, the effort to guide one’s conduct in ways that consider the interests of all those affected by what one does.
The POTUS is a figure-head. “Change” is now a trite cliche or campaign slogan. JFK tried to affect real change and things ended tragically, just like for every president who dared challenge the private bankers, Jackson, Lincoln, Garfield, Kennedy, Reagan, for example.
The two-party system has become a show, and a sham that simply polarizes people in self-delusion that being on one side and not the other, actually makes a difference, when things change little if it all. Every election, attention is directed toward emotional issues (gay marriage, abortion, etc) as November approaches, a big distraction.
I’ve heard that the head of the Nobel committee was forced from his position because of the token handout of the Nobel Peace Prize, when there was nothing done to merit the granting of the award.
The executive and legislative have less control than those from whom they crawl to, in order to borrow money. The lender is more powerful than the borrower, that is unmistakeable, and it is just tragic, the situation which has greatly damaged the promise and future of the American experiment.
State by state is how it will happen, that is just plain, and has been. The continuing momentum, the emergence of legalization in more states, demonstrates that the citizenry can still affect change through their own channels. Gradually so but thankfully still possible albeit slowly, by resisting the poor public policy of the CSA.
Poor, because the CSA directly causes social problems on the largest scale including human rights violations, and the abuse of power toward the citizenry which gives the govt. legitimacy in the first place.
Policy that causes problems, policy that *is* the problem, instead of policy promoting the utilitarian, greater good, is poor policy. Decades of tragically poor policy, crimes against our humanity, and the racking up of debt created without actually improving things (which would seem the POINT of paying taxes)like people’s well-being, having a government that can actually LIVE and LET LIVE.
Politicos don’t have the power to affect real change, or stand up for what the US and its Constitution represent, but that’s simply how it is. Thankfully some part of the electoral process leaves the citizenry with some amount of power to fix the problems caused by the govt. we maintain to DO THAT FOR US.
The Monetary Reform Act.
-would replace every fed reserve note with a US NOTE, controlled by the Congress and backed not by some metal, but the authority of Congress.
-would stabilize the monetary system and boom and bust cycles of the markets.
-would simultaneously eliminate the national debt, the greatest threat to the future of the US.
-would end association with the international financiers who seek world domination and have
We must fight for our rights, every day, relentlessly, and that is more true today than ever before
Cannabis was the first plant cultivated, the agrarian revolution, with us through our evolution and we have relied on it to support endocannabinoid deficiencies for as long as history has described anything else in our past. And that, a plant, is used to manipulate and terrorize people, the citizenry itself. That, is a sign that things have really gone astray.
“They are just as terror-producing, or worse, as radical foreigners who would seek to harm us.”
And when are we going to start punishing these shitheads? Right now, we just funnel money to them without just cause.
The problem is narcissists just suck. They don’t learn, but want to teach – Dave
You must be good with a hammer, Dave!…you hit the head on the head.
Narcissists and those who carry their water (in submit$$ion) are the biggest threat to the rest of us who still believe in Democracy and Justice.
They are Wolves salivating over trembling Sheep…more’s the pity.
If only we could realize ,We are many, They are few…they work for us?…and WE tell Them what to do?…wasn’t that the original deal?
Putting millions of citizens in cages for consuming a beneficial plant is a “deal buster”?
Cannabis has never been the actual issue.
The actual issue is power…the power of free choice or submissive compliance?
“Justice delayed is justice denied”
– William E. Gladstone
Try to imagine being in a cage for years on end for a cannabis “crime” (hopefully, a future oxymoron).
Millions of Americans do not need to imagine that terrible scenario…due to their personal knowledge.
There are thousands of cannabis criminals imprisoned in every State in our Country…right now!
If you want to get the “feel” of being in prison…go to your smallest bathroom…cut a small slot in the door…and stay there for a few years…and remember the importance of keeping a positive attitude!…Now, imagine your cellmate?…Don’t worry about the effects or consequences on the Human Mind/Body/Soul… after years of trying to survive in a hostile ,often violent, atmosphere inhabited by murderers, rapists, sexual predators, and other assorted miscreants…especially if you were the kid who committed the “cannabis crime”?
I say minority whip and get it all over with “sheesh” ,why not it’s about time for it any way.
“If only we could realize ,We are many, They are few…they work for us?…and WE tell Them what to do?…wasn’t that the original deal?”
Yes it is. But when you declare some of your neighbors as non-human (like they did to blacks), then you don’t own them any respect. “But I thought you wanted US to beat up on the minorities?” After all, the police did get that message and did go out and target minorities, but now we want to be all, “why are there so many brown people in prison? Its not right!”
But we’ve all been watching this endless train wreck happening for decades. I’d really like judges to explain themselves as they continue to be annoyed marijuana is still illegal (they already view these cases as worthless) but at the same time will not put a stop to the abuse they know is wrong and illegal. WFT, Judges???
Richard A. Posner is a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.
Anyone that has gone through law school recently is certainly familiar with Mr. Posner as he is one of the most influential legal minds in the country.
He recently stated the following in an article he wrote@ New Reblublic
“The sale and possession of marijuana are en route to being decriminalized; and I am inclined to think that cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, LSD, and the rest of the illegal drugs should be decriminalized as well—though not deregulated. They should be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration for safety, like other drugs, and they should be taxed heavily, like alcohol and cigarettes. Alcohol and cigarettes are “recreational” drugs, too—and quite possibly more destructive of the users than the illegal drugs are, and, in the case of alcohol, also of acquaintances, family members, drivers, and pedestrians. The revenue from a sales tax on marijuana alone would pay for a substantial chunk of the cost of our prison system. ( Richard Posner)
Richard Posner (polymath) is considered by many legal scholars, Worldwide, as America’s leading “Constitutional Authority”.
I argued with him for two years …He won!
…but…he argued my “Sixth Amendment” violation claim (inherent throughout The Federal Sentencing Guidelines) in the case of Booker VS. U.S. @SCOTUS…where I “won” !