MAPTalk-Digest Sunday, November 11 2012 Volume 12 : Number 015
001 rrr... US CO: GOP Mogul Behind Drug Rehab 'Torture' Centers Is Bankroll
From:
002 Restoring Trampled Rights
From: "Doug Snead" <>
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Subj: 001 rrr... US CO: GOP Mogul Behind Drug Rehab 'Torture' Centers Is Bankrolling Opposition to Pot Legalization in Colorado
From:
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 07:29:14 -0700
> GOP Mogul Behind Drug Rehab 'Torture' Centers Is Bankrolling Opposition to
> Pot Legalization in Colorado
> http://www.thenation.com/blog/170007/gop-mogul-behind-drug-rehab-tortu
>
>
>
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Subj: 002 Restoring Trampled Rights
From: "Doug Snead" <>
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2012 21:58:17 -0800
[Submitted as a possible op-ed.]
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2012/11/trampled-weeds
Meredith Berger, in her recent column ("Trampled Weeds"), asks the
following: "So I am curious as to why states are beginning to legalize the
drug. It seems to me that if recreational marijuana is not going to help
the economy, then what good is legalizing it?"
Meredith's question raises several points.
First off, the dictate of a politician proclaiming this or that is good or
bad for the "economy", is rightly taken with a small grain of salt by most
(to put it charitably).
But why are people starting to re-legalize marijuana? So that adults are
no longer subject to a violent arrest (shot dead if they run or otherwise
resist) and incarceration for pot, that's why.
People don't believe what government says about pot these days. People
just aren't buying government cries of, "Marijuana - Wolf!" like they once
did.
Maybe Meredith missed the news: prosecutors in Washington state dropped
pot charges for hundreds of people, and that is just two counties - in the
first week.
Arrest. Jail. Prison. Why are these topics ones that Meredith forgot to
mention? Arrest and imprisonment are somehow not relevant to legalizing
pot?
It is unjust to jail people for simply using or selling alcohol - or
marijuana. Unjust laws need to be changed. Government isn't infallible.
As Thomas Jefferson put it,
"Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies
would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic
was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of food.
Government is just as fallible, too, when it fixes systems in physics.
Galileo was sent to the Inquisition for affirming that the earth was a
sphere; the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and
Galileo was obliged to abjure his error"
- -- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on the State of Virginia," 1787
People don't like government to dictate what medicines they are forbidden
to take. They especially do not like being arrested, fined, dragged
through the court system, and jailed for using the plant. They don't like
having their houses "seized" by government using pot as the excuse. People
do not enjoy being made UNICOR or CCA twenty-five-cents-an-hour sweat-shop
slaves for the sake of pot, either. Meredith may not believe such happens;
or, on the other hand, she may think such punishment is justly meted to
cannabis-criminals. If so, Meredith should come out and proudly state
that. (She didn't.) But to answer Meredith's (rhetorical?) question, more
and more people - majorities in some states now - don't agree that people
should be jailed for pot.
So, that is why people are beginning to re-legalize cannabis. Juries are
nullifying pot cases more and more - even in Charlottesville, Virginia.
People don't think other people should be violently arrested (possibly
shot) and put in prison, for pot.
People are re-legalizing marijuana to re-establish traditional rights and
freedoms that all Americans once shared. Access to cannabis, medical and
otherwise, is one of those freedoms people want back, again.
Doug Snead
Drug Policy Analyst
mapinc.org
drugsense.org
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End of MAPTalk-Digest V12 #15
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