(04-10-2017 06:57 PM)vabearcat Wrote: I don't have any difficulty with any of our drug laws. They are on the books following the careful consideration of democratically-elected members of state legislatures, both Republicans and Democrats alike, who have seen the carnage of broken homes, broken lives, dependency and crime that are so closely associated with the sale and distribution of illegal drugs.
I wonder if your specificity in saying that drug laws have been crafted by state legislatures, rather than simply saying "members of government", exhibits some tacit allowance and acceptance that the legislatures of more than half of the United States have chosen to defy the existing, superseding laws of the federal government. Or perhaps the reference to states was made in the knowledge that at the federal level, the cannabis prohibition that began in the 30's carried on for a generation in a regulatory purgatory in which it was not exactly illegal. Rather, it was only explicitly legal when specific tax stamps had been purchased from the federal government. In a Kafka-esque flourish, the idea was that the IRS would simply refused to sell the tax stamps to anyone. It's also worth pointing out that this original act was not carefully considered. From the Senate transcript, via Wikipedia:
The bill was passed over the last-minute objections of the American Medical Association. Dr. William Creighton Woodward, legislative counsel for the AMA objected to the bill on the grounds that the bill had been prepared in secret without giving proper time to prepare their opposition to the bill.
The medical community, in other words, was aghast that a medicine they had success in administering, had been caught up in a law they had been led to believe was aimed at abuse - a cause they had supported.
When the effective ban was challenged at the height of Nixon's drug/culture war, the solution was to roll the plant into the larger controlled substances act. That act created a new absurdity. In it, Marijuana was placed in the "Schedule I" group - drugs that were said to have "no known" medicinal value, alongside a long list of opioids (such as heroin) and psychedelics (mushrooms, LSD, peyote, etc). This schedule also sanctifies that the drugs listed cannot safely be used even with a doctor's supervision. Many opioids are still being administered, obviously, but we'll sidestep that matter, and the incumbent problems of its current epidemic, as we will the issue of Cocaine and Methamphetamine being on a lower, "less dangerous" schedule.
Schedule I means that it's almost impossible to carry out any medical studies on a drug that is so listed. That means that when your state legislatures are charged with reconsidering laws or policies, they cannot possibly do so with careful consideration. They are left with what they know best, political consideration. Which is how the 1930's tax act came to be in the first place. There was no epidemic, there were no broken homes (those are what occur when users are incarcerated), there was no dependency. Marijuana does not cause physical dependency. The number of fatal overdoses it has caused throughout human history remains at zero. As for crime, again, that became a function of the illicitness itself - it became connected with criminality only when it was made criminal - see Capone, Al.
The groups that were using it recreationally in the 1930's were, nearly exclusively, Black people and domestic aliens. In the late 1960's, it was used recreationally by Black people, and the counterculture - mutual enemies of Richard M. Nixon, author of the modern drug war.
So what changed? Why have more than half the States passed laws allowing medical use (including, relevantly, Ohio and Indiana), and even recreational use? You can ascribe that to a confluence of factors.
In the past quarter century, illicit use swelled in ranks that would have at one time constituted the political base of someone like Nixon. Unlike other dalliances with illicit substances these groups have undertaken - cocaine in the 70's and 80's, or opioids today, they've discovered that they were being sold a bill of goods. They didn't become addicted, and thus were not driven to crime or destitution to maintenance a habit. They were not incapacitated, or driven mad. Meanwhile, the medical community rediscovered a safe and effective treatment for a wide variety of serious conditions, from epilepsy, to cancer, to PTSD. Politically, demonizing the murderous local vice lord, or even the discomforting, homeless street addict is easy. Demonizing the little girl finding relief from life endangering grand mal seizures is much harder.
Lacking the further scientific, medical evidence that might result from clinical study should cannabis be removed from schedule I (efforts have denied twice in recent years), we're left with these cumulatively accruing medical anecdotes. For recreational use and its supposed association with criminality, we now have a large amount of empirical evidence. Marijuana has been decriminalized medicinally in states for over a decade, and is now legal to use recreationally in nine states plus the District of Columbia, and has been for years in many of those places. Death and destruction has not befallen them. If damning statistics could even be plausibly faked from these states, they would be cited by opponents ad hominem. They are not. Nor are opponents likely to cite statistics that
are available. The federal government itself finds that marijuana use among high schoolers is
lower now than it was twenty years ago, in the height of the drug war policy enforcement era.
And thus, the invective evoked by opponents of decriminalization these days now gets ever broader, as it has to manage without the old, discredited standbys about the nature of its users, and its inherent dangers. The rhetoric is about "drugs" - because it is far easier to debate *all* drugs than it is the one drug in question. Of course it is. Most drugs are dangerous, and often offer no benefit to mankind. Jeff Sessions now says "Good people don't smoke Marijuana". Because saying that people with epilepsy, cancer patients, Soldiers with PTSD, half-broken NFL players, or suburban soccer moms are bad people, is a political loser.
I don't invoke Mr. Sessions just because he now wields the instruments that could result in the destruction of changes made in the States' "labratories of democracy". I do so because he is the embodiment of the resurgence of the old lies told by drug warriors. A common logical, and policy inconsistency pointed out to Marijuana prohibitionists is that of alcohol. Why is alcohol legal, when it is addictive, debilitating, and directly responsible for 88,000 deaths a year, when cannabis is none of these things? Jeff Sessions was asked such a question in his confirmation hearing. How he could deny it was a less dangerous substance than alcohol? Here's what he said, and I swear to god I am not making this up:
"Lady Gaga says she's addicted to it and it is not harmless."
Completely sidestepped the question of alcohol, and then bowed to the medical wisdom of Lady. Ga. Ga.
Now, to bring this back, finally, to Mr. Bluett. I don't smoke. I don't even drink. I do think there is value in sobriety. I'm against any black market run as a murderous and corrupting criminal enterprise, as springs up around most forms of contraband. And I ****** loathe Xavier, and Trayvon Friggin Bluett. But if you're ready to condemn him merely for breaking a statute, a case in which he has done no supposed harm to anyone but himself, then you must also stand ready to disavow yourself of any claim to libertarianism, and to likewise impugn and denounce your own father or grandfather, mother or grandmother, and almost any American alive for having taken a drink in the years 1920 to 1933. Which they most certainly did. In fact, you could get a prescription for booze.
Far better you should come over to the join more than 60% of Americans that understand that they were misled. Preaching abstinence from marijuana, and practicing it, is not illogical, or wrong. Legislating it is.
I hope that Bluett finds his way back to Xavier unpunished. Both because it's right, and so that we might beat the hell out of him and his team next year. At full strength.
/
Xavier's Trevon Bluiett Arrested
![[Image: bd6f06b71bb103bb736f6900d4a36558_drugs-a...0-450.jpeg]](https://img.memesuper.com/bd6f06b71bb103bb736f6900d4a36558_drugs-are-bad-mkay-drugs-r-bad-meme_700-450.jpeg)