weed and sane country related
tripledouble
7,636 Posts
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051202/ap_on_re_eu/netherlands_marijuanacould this ever get passed under any democrat/republican administration?was talking to my pop the other day and he was very very cynical about this country's future. siting the man ymany examples of how republican controlled government is passing legislatin to consolidate and cement their political dominance well into the future. ladies and gentlemen, what do you think this future will look like?be well,t
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cue Philahobo skimask pic
if you think democrates are gonna change pot laws anytime in the near future your bound for disappointment. the drug laws have less to do with the effects of drugs and more to do with law enforcement, local, state, and the federal government feeds on catching and convicting drug criminals and crimes, do you know how many law enforcement officers would be out of a job if pot was legalised? my guess is shit loads and thats why both parties have no intention of changing these laws. democrates and republicans are two heads of the same ugly beast
The law inforcers that would lose there jobs, could apply for a job as pot growers and make a shitload of cash
That said, many sages of the enlightment--Huxley comes to mind--have argued that governments will seek to opiate the masses. Drug legalization in this respect could lead down a slippery slope. This is already happening. Just look at how many children are diagnosed today as ADD in public schools, how often ritalin and prozac make their way back on to the streets because they are overprescribed at the schools. What can be sold today as the freedom to get high, tomorrow could lead to a further fogging of the collective consciousness. So beware your wish, young revolutionaries.
I agree that drug legalization is not likely in the short term. However, defunding the drug war is very likely as the war for Iraq saps more blood and treasure. A side note. the national security adviser to the Kerry campaign was Rand Beers, who ran the drug war when he was at the state department.
i agree. there is way too much money caught up in the marijuana apprehension business. i personally lost $2000 out of pocket in court costs,etc for having 1/100th of a gram of erb in my car in jersey. crooks. there are many other vested interests on the industry side of things keeping criminalization in place. idiots. the government should pressure them to reorient their profit making to profit off weed.
there is some overlap, but this is a gross exaggeration. republicans will sell the country out 100% to the exploiters of the earth. (democrats would still sell us out an unacceptable percentage of the time too)
you dont think television, consumerism, alcohol, sports, music industry are opiates enough already? vitamin, this is a vastly uneducated, uninformed and overindulged population...it shows all the signs of being heavily opiated. anyone who wants to smoke weed or oversmoke weed is already doing so anyway, despite the laws against it. You think the government is going to be selling joints in school cafeterias? so you beware about your boys chipping away at habeas corpus and other rights, young right winger. Put your drug hysteria back in the closet.
That is weakest argument I've ever heard for the regulation of drugs. To suggest that the use or overuse of prescription drugs is a manifestation of a "freedom to get high" is absurd and denies the very troubling issues that contribute to these drugs' prevelance. Moreover, comparing the use of anti-depressants with pot betrays a fundamental ignorence about the nature of both. Huxley would not have been impressed.
Okay. Here goes my argument: I say people should be allowed to hit bongs if they want to. I mean seriously, what the fuck?
Actually the administration is all good with the opiating the masses plan anyways. Im always hearing bush talking about making prescription drugs more affordable and available. Weed is only threatening to them because it is something that they cant monopolize and control. It grows from the fucking soil. Therefore they decided instead to declare the whole plant illegal.
Plus, who the fuck sells prozac on the streets?
I wrote everything I did in the first paragraph because at the end of the day I think the government does not have the right to tell you what you can put in your body; that the drug war has criminalized innocent people; and that its effect on poor neighborhoods has been devastating. That said, there is nothing revolutionary about advocating the legalization of pot. I have some experience with weed. High people can barely get organized to order pizza, let alone a strike. Marijuana is great fun, it has medicinal benefits for people suffering from cancer, etc... That said, it also saps mental clarity, motivation and the very mental qualities necessary for an informed populace. I think social engineers of the future will encourage marijuana use for potentially violent segments of the citizenry. It is a drug that has a way of making one content with things as they are. Now if you want to start a revolution, get some of that PCP. I smoked that once by accident in the 1980s and I felt like frickin Mr. Roboto.
And Danno, I've also had some experience with anti-depressants as well. And in my case they definitely curbed the highs as well as lows. I've been more productive off of it than on it.
Vitamin
i see your point, but i dont remember anyone tying legalization with "revolutionary" behavior. I just saw you cart that overused word to try to be condescending.
and for the record, your diagnosis of marijuana's effects is a generalization. depends what you smoke, how much you smoke, when you smoke, what you are trying to do when you smoke. i know plenty of people who can function and think in highly productive ways after getting high (not stoned). but i am not advocating its use to help productivity or "revolutionary thought", just commenting on obnoxious, expolitative and backwards thinking drug policies.
Tripledouble,
Along those same lines, I never said I was in favor of the suspension of the writ of habeus corpus. But I'm very skeptical of this argument about getting high versus getting stoned. I understand the difference between canniboids and setiva. But I think people who think they are being productive when under the influence of either are fooling themselves. It's a drug. It's not evil. But it's also not inherently good either. And many, many talented people waste their talents because they smoke a lot of ism and think they are being creative. And while some people can handle smoking it in moderation, a lot of people cannot. As for the revolutionary angle, it comes from my experience with legalization advocates. When I lived in DC, a guy who was a big legalization organizer lived around the corner from my house. He was also one of the big anti-war, anti-globalization dudes as well. I smoked with him and we hung out a bit. And I don't think his politics are an exception to the legalization crowd. Here's my point, this person's pro-marijuana position undercuts his anti-war position if he wants to energize local communities to sustain resistance to the war. While I completely disagree with the anti-war movement on many levels, I also study nonviolent political movements and know that it's extremely hard work. If your target group is smoking weed, it's much harder to get them to follow through on the best of their intentions.
Vitamn
1.tobacco, alcohol, sugar, caffeine can all be looked at as drugs that do not enhance people's focus and productivity. i am not championing weed as inherently good...i have great respect for it, but i feel it is often overused. but its a whole other debate whether legalization will usher in widespread marijuana use. if anything, we will get accurate statistics about its prevalent use.
2.your argument is based on anecdotes and your own opinions. i agree that if a prerequisite of "revolutionaries" was to smoke an L a day, things would be sloppy. but its silly to equate legalization efforts with a rise in revolutionary consciousness.
my opinion: moderate weed smoke does promote cynicism and skepticism toward conventional wisdom and status quo culture and politics.
i gotta go play ball now. peace
Sellout!
You have some experience with weed? Oh cool; I have a gay friend. Now let me tell you about the gays...
Seriously, you have be a serious abuser of pot before it's going to undermine your ability to meet your goals.
You would benefit from taxes.
You are rediculous. So your saying if I smoke pot I cant really be against the war? O.K., I would argue that more war hawk paranoid americans need to smoke weed and CHILL THE FUCK OUT! Smoking weed and violent conflict dont really go together all that naturally.
No I'm saying that if you are against the war and you'd like to be effective in your opposition, you should would be wise to drop the pro-marijuana agenda as smoking weed saps motivation and mental clarity. I have long favored air drops of weed to terrorist strongholds like Kashmir or Fallujah in an effort to fog the minds of our enemies. This is not a particularly hard concept. Weed makes you giddy, easily amused, content and lethargic. Political opposition, whether violent or nonviolent, requires a sharp, hungry and energetic mind. Follow?
Vitamin, did your "experience with weed" deter you from attaining any of your goals?
I don't know which people exactly are our enemies in Kashmir and I don't want to get into that, but dropping weed there would be absurd. I've never seen more people getting stoned than in Pakistan, for real.
Okay, let me concede the following reasonable point made by some of you. I never said if you ever smoke weed you will not achieve your goals. In moderation, weed does not ruin your life. In answer to your question, wholewheat, about my experience with weed, the answer is yes and no. When I was using it heavily, I wrote less. Since using it sparingly I have written more. When I was in college I tried writing my philosophy thesis high and it was handed back with a comment from the professor asking me if I was high when I wrote it. So I stopped smoking weed for three weeks and wrote it.
But my point is that those engaged in allegedly revolutionary politics in America often smoke weed regularly. And revolution, social change, opposition etc.. is hard work, and regular marijuana use hinders this work. Now I'm only speaking empirically here. I don't know of studies that have charted membership in the anti-war movement with marijuana smoking. But in my experience covering these protests, hanging out with said protestors and on four ocassions allowing a cousin and a gaggle of Wesleyan University activists sleep in my apartment, I conclude that weed smoking is part of that culture. I didn't say that using this drug contradicts their social positions, only that its use undermines their efficacy.
Now as someone who thinks the anti-war movement is deeply reactionary and a force in American politics I would like to see stifled, I suppose I am pleased that so many of its members are hindered by their habbits.
this is all kind of goofy. i can imagine a bunch of bathists (those dudes who they had on video tearing apart the live dogwolf and eating it) saying, "yo, what did the american pigs just drop out of their planes? a QP of purple haze? men, lay down your mortars and landmines, we are having a week long smoke break!!"
vitamin, one can be pro marijuana legalization and not be a smoker. one can be in favor of legalization and still agree that one shouldn't get high every single day. similar to being against prohibition and still in favor of people drinking alcohol in moderation, not at work, not while driving, not while preagnant, and not in public. you (and i guess your token revolutionary friend) somehow equated pro legalization with storming the bastille, blunts-a-blazing. read up on your movement history notes and check if the rank and file did not go out and get drunk once in a while.
since you are siting anecdotal evidence, i will counter with my buddy john, who at a prestegious liberal arts school managed to stay high off the strongest ganja for four years and also never failed to get anything less than As in his courses. How he did it, i'm not sure. i vividly remember him blowing smoke from bigspliffs into his computer screens as he banged out 20 page papers. that is my extreme example that in no way proves anything other than your examples and experience ammounts to a weak argument.
bottom line: there is a wide spectrum of people who smoke weed and are affected differently by it.
Yes people in Pakistan get high. But the Islamofascists that bomb local parliaments in India eschew all forms of intoxicants. And the plotters of suicide murder are those enemies whose minds I would like fogged. I think it would be impossible to arrange these martyrdom operations under the influence of quality blueberry.