Poor Colorado is not going to get its new taxes
Oh, poor government babies. They legalize pot, not because it is harmless and there is no logical reason for it to be illegal, but so they can get new taxes. It looks like they might not get them. My heart bleeds for them. *snif snif*
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You really really think it's a coincidence that traditional vices are demonized at the same time new-age vices are introduced and allowed to run rampant? yes, "allowed". The war on drugs isn't a failure because of the popularity of using drugs, but because we failed to seal out southern border, when we could have.
I didn't say "secure", I said "seal".
Like every other war the progressives back us into, war on poverty, war on drugs, war on terror, they're not interested in winning this one, either.
Smoking tobacco is also harmful, I didn't say it wasn't. It's not the instant-cancer stick the fanatical left would have people believe, either, IMO.
It is naive to think that "a danger to the rights of others" is the only way to affect a society, particularly negatively. I submit that when an 18 year old kid staggers pink-eyed into a store, stinking of skunk, with a dopey grin on his face, mouthing off to his boss, interfering with his co-workers attempts to be productive.. that's a negative effect on society. Multiply it by tens of millions of potheads, and you have a degenerate society on its way to barbarism and conquest.
On the one hand, you want to defend the individual right to choose to use pot, on the other hand, you want to play the collectivist card and claim, quite wrongly, btw, that tobacco-related healthcare is a drain on society.
That's like saying house-related construction is a drain on society. Treating a smoker's cancer costs the smoker. If he can't afford it, you can let him die. Tobacco users are already charged extra by insurance companies, so it doesn't cost society extra in that sense, either. Not to mention how disproportionately tobacco is taxed.
Since the decline in tobacco use, healthcare costs have skyrocketed, not plummeted. We're sicklier now, it would seem from watching tv commercials and listening to political pundits, than we were in 1918.
Lessee... I get sick... I need treatment... someone has to do that treatment. They get paid. The treatment requires drugs and equipment... people manufacture and sell those things. They get paid. I'm waiting to see the drain on society? I guess it's a drain on society whenever someone buys a product or service.
Meanwhile, marijuana is equally a healthcare "drain" on society. That 15,000 year old iceman they found, had blackened lungs... not from tobacco, but from breathing campfire smoke. Boy, I bet his healthcare costs were a drain on society, huh? And you're going to pretend that marijuana is some kind of magic plant that doesn't put out soot like every other burned plant? FYI, it's neither healthy nor natural for the lungs to be blackened by camp fire smoke, tobacco smoke, or marijuana smoke.
Again, you're willing to go along with the demonization of a man's vice, and make ridiculous assumptions to defend an immature child's vice. Those men who smoked carved a civilization out of wilderness, brought down empires. I've yet to see the laurels of potheads.
If that passes for logic in your book, I'd suggest you come back later when you are thinking clearly.
FACT: marijuana, like all other recreational drugs inhibits mental clarity and brain function. What's worse, is that marijuana can stay in your system for a month.
You won't find the next Roark or Reardon high on drugs. You want to promote the market and the advancement of society yet you promote their enslavement to recreational drugs? Got a bit of a logical conundrum there...
Marijuana, like most drugs inhibits your ability to think clearly, to solve problems, and to rationally deal with reality. You are not free when taking drugs - you are voluntarily enslaving yourself to its influences and effects.
Doesn't matter whether it is legal or not: choose to use your brain - no destroy or delude it.
I am also not saying there is no issue with modern society, just that those issues are not caused by the question of pot being legal. They are caused by the Progressives attacking the family unit, the looters who tax the hell out of everything and everyone until a single person can hardly support their family, and the moochers supporting them.
My saying you should find a job other than WM was to say you should act for the preservation of your vision of man as a moral and upright being. Working in a place like WM will erode your faith in humanity almost as much as working in a prison.
You argue that smoking pot is "harmful" but smoking tobacco is "manly". Both are harmful to society in different ways, being high and participating in certain activities is mist certainly dangerous but only affects society when it becomes a danger to the rights of others. As for tobacco, it has no beneficial effects and is a drain on society in costs for tobacco-related healthcare.
You can't have it both ways...
As I understand history, there never was a massive drug problem in this country till after prohibition. Before that most drugs were available at the local drug store. And when a family walking down the street saw a homeless opium addict, dad would say , "See there Johnny? That's what can happen to you if you let a substance control your life." People saw real life repercussions of others actions. There was no media or government distortion or misrepresentation of the dangers of drugs, and there was no Hollywood glorification of the "pleasures" supposedly caused by drugs, to confuse the issue and muddy the waters.
The drug problem in this country currently has nothing to do with the availability of the drugs; that is only a symptom of the problem. A denial of reality and the 'need' to hide from it are the problem. People do drugs because they are unhappy and have been lead to believe that drugs can help. Pharmaceutical drugs are generally more dangerous, and available; and their use has skyrocketed in proportion to pot use in the last twenty years. It is NOT because of availability. It is because of the receding tide of the stability of man's mind. People are looking to self-medicate because they don't realize that the ability to change what's wrong in your life can only come through precise action; and they have been told their whole life that they incapable of doing such things on their own.(Alcoholics Anonymous)
If we banned every toxic product and bad behavior, every drug, liquor, fatty food, sugary junk, cigs, driving fast, risky sexual behavior, and anything else one can think of; and we banned it tomorrow, it would change nothing. Only when society is fixed from the ground up; by one mind at a time taking responsibility and finding the root of their unhappiness, will the problem of drugs go away.
Point of fact, sugar, in this case in the form of ice cream, does not "cause" diabetes...
Why does society have laws against murder, theft, rape, etc.? To legislate morality/character? No, they are for the protection of people's rights. So far as possible that a drug's use by one individual fails to impinge on another's right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", we should have not issue with that. It is not a question of whether an act is "moral", rather it is a question of what a "reasonable" society should do for the protection of the rights of all its members.
As has been pointed out; I wasn't born yesterday. I grew upon construction sites, so I'm not exactly a white collar elitist; more people have become much lower character than they were 30 years ago, let alone 50+.
You don't shrug and just write it of as "That's Walmart" when people poop in the urinal. To pretend that that has no relation to the decline of society in other areas is being willfully blind. At the very least it's a very obvious symptom.
The argument about self destructive personalities is, however, flawed. The old saw, "Your right to punch me ends at my nose", is applicable here. A person's right to be self-destructive ends at my right to avood them harming me or anyone else with their behavior. The rub is determining "how" they would be causing "harm". In the case of driving impaired, be it under the influence of some chemical or without corrective lens, etc., this is pretty straightforward but, taking the case of tobacco use, does "harm" come from secondhand smoke or the drain on our medical system from the care of tobacco-related health issues? These are the thorny problems that we, as an imperfect society, ask/demand/seek to resolve. This is not a moral or character, which by the way are one and the same thing (see my reply to the comment that attempts to separate them), but a question of where one's rights conflict with the well-being of society in general.
I, too, am a devoted believer in Jefferson's ideal, government is best which governs least. In any large, complex society there will always be the delicate tightrope walk between the individual's rights and the rights of the society as a whole.
I do not support 'legalization' for the sake of tax revenue. I support 'decriminalization' for the sake of personal liberty. If someone wants to smoke or drink themselves to a stupor, that is their decision and they must bear the consequences. That being said, as much as I support people's freedom of choice, I would not be opposed to people getting welfare money, having to take UA's. If you want the choice to smoke pot, cool; just don't expect the taxpayers to subsidize you to sit at home, smoke pot and pump out children.
I have met many people of all stripes that smoke, including doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and prominent, motivated, capable people in the community. They do not let it control them, it is merely something that they do, because they enjoy it and they feel that they have earned it.
Also, comparing pot to ANY other drug: coke, meth, heroin, pharmaceutical drugs, bath salts, pcp, or whatever; it just friggin' stupid. There is NO comparison. Pot is a flower from a plant that has numerous health benefits, for many people who have all sorts of problems.
I did a paper in college asking a number of law enforcement officers this question: If you were at a stoplight, and you *knew* that the car to your left had a guy with a pound of weed, with intent to distribute, even to schoolkids; and the car to your right had a guy that had had three or four beers, who would you consider to be the greater threat to the public and pull over, knowing that the other would go free? Every single officer out of about thirty, said that they would go for the drunk driver. Food for thought.
I'm particularly militant about modern society since Thursday night.
See, I was in the grocery side vestibule of the Walmart where I work, trying to clean it. I'd shut down the side entrance door while I polished it.
Two black guys, I would guess mid twenties, decently dressed (pants even fit) came walking down the hall to the exit, and I, simply and politely, told them the door was locked. They went back and exited the main doors.
A minute later, there was a tap on the glass of the door I was polishing. I looked up, and one of them was looking right at me. The phlegm he spat covered an area the size of a grapefruit on the glass opposite my face, after which he flipped me the bird and strode off. If I'd done anything to teach him the dangers of behaving like an animal around men, I'd have ended up in jail, even though he sorely needed the lesson.
Now, that was a result of ALL THE CHANGES you "moderns" made to society in the past 50+ years. And I've had enough of it.
People dress like pigs, they act like pigs, they think like pigs, because for 3 generations they were not taught, harshly, how civilized people behave.
'til two years ago, I had a fairly positive view of people. But, two years of being exposed to the kind of... creatures... that haunt this Walmart, and I'm convinced evolution works in reverse.
Roughly... 23164.
Before we have one single person sucking on a joint, yes, we should have everyone puffing away on 4 packs a day.
You have my sympathy for your father, you really do.
Mine died of colon cancer after a year of agony, at 75.
Every form of cancer is blamed on tobacco. I had multiple aunts on my mother's side who developed cancer, some died of it. None smoked. Their husbands didn't smoke. My mother neither developed cancer nor died of it; she died of a blood clot in her heart at 80.
If tobacco were as universally cancerous as they would have us believe, the boomer generation would never have been born; everyone would have died off from smoking.
I'm arguing two things here; culture and drug abuse. I will always argue that my pro-tobacco anti-pot culture is better than the pro-pot anti-tobacco culture of today; I have history on my side.
Maybe you're too young to remember the world before the war on tobacco was launched, but I'm not. Ask many of the oldster's here if I'm wrong about the progression of the war on tobacco.
I don't smoke; when I did smoke, I was one of those lucky ones who could take it or leave it; generally I smoked cigars and had a beautiful raw meerschaum pipe. I don't smoke because I don't like the yellow oily film it leaves on my computers. I don't like the smell that clings to clothes, and sofas and drapes. So I'm not a big advocate of smoking tobacco. But I am eternally and entirely opposed to a mutli-decade, multi-generational campaign to brainwash people against tobacco use. And then to add the hypocrisy of continuing to condemn smoking tobacco while advocating and promoting the use of marijuana... I know American minds are infinitely malleable, but that's no excuse for hammering them.
The purpose of the war on tobacco and the advocacy of marijuana is to destroy traditional American culture. It's just one of the many pronged attack.
Pot is not the cause of moral decay just as a gun is not the cause of a murder. Pot is something that never should have been illegal to begin with. It was picked up by the hippie crowd BECAUSE it was illegal. Making pot legal in all respects does not add to the moral decay of the country. It just sets aside the influence of those who wanted pot illegal because they felt threatened by the possible intrusion of hemp into their industry. It is the moochers and looters causing moral decay, not weed.
But, we really don't want to discuss the poppy fields that haven't been destroyed, do we?
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