Opposing Prop 19 With Marijuana Scare Commercials

The real question is: What’s good about marijuana prohibition?

Answer: NOTHING

Fear is the real addiction -break the cycle.

I really hope people don’t believe this…

“The #1 addiction for 60% of teens in DRUG rehab”

The assertion that marijuana is addictive is false in the first place. Studies have shown marijuana is not physically addictive, any psychological addiction if present at all is very minor, especially when compared to most other illegal and legal drugs. But lets just say for the sake of argument that marijuana is addictive, just to give the argument its best light. Clearly making marijuana illegal and punishing those who suffer from addiction hasn’t worked if we take that percentage to be correct. We have been going that route and clearly that statistic is the result of that, making it illegal and punishing teens does not keep them from doing it if it is still such a problem obviously. Another approach is warranted and badly needed. If we want to reduce the percentage of teen use and “supposed” addiction and at the same time stop victimizing teens and disadvantaging them in life, which makes the possibility of recovery more difficult, we need to decriminalize marijuana. What? How’s that again? I will substantiate why I think that is so.

Everyone knows that marijuana is easier for teens to acquire than even cigarettes and alcohol today. That is why it is supposedly the #1 addiction among teens. That is because there are stiff penalties for store owners who sell cigarettes and alcohol to underage people. When you make something like marijuana illegal, you are only putting it beyond our ability to effectively control it. By decriminalizing you establish a retail market which can be effectively regulated as we do with alcohol and cigarettes, bringing the sale of marijuana within the purview of society with the ability to control who gets it more effectively. If you care about teen addiction and want to reduce it then you would vote for decriminalization so we can do something to prevent it. By regulating the sales of reputable retailers we can reduce the availability to minors as we do with other substances. Make it illegal and it will still be present and also It’s beyond your control.

You have to take into consideration also that when you criminalize something and put it outside the purview of society you create and facilitate criminal channels. At the same time we are facilitating these criminal subcultures making them more prevalent, we are facilitating opportunities and reasons for teens to come into contact with that criminal subculture. The goal is to reduce access to marijuana for teens and by dong that we also reduce the purpose and opportunity of exposing teens to this criminal subculture. By decriminalizing and making marijuana available to people through credible retail channels we drastically, if not almost completely, reduce the opportunity for criminal subculture to benefit from the sale of marijuana. Illegal dealers could not compete with lawful retailers and without the largest portion of their sale base will be relegated to the obscurity of bootleggers and rum runners. Which are perceived by society today as so inconsequential as a danger, it is actually “safe” to romanticize about that lawlessness.

To be sure this will not mean teens will not be able to get hold of marijuana at all. Nothing we ever do will stop that short of chaining all teens in the basement, and as nice as that sounds to all those who are parents of teens, it’s not really a tenable solution. It is about reducing the possibility as much as possible while at the same time trying to strategize and achieve the greatest beneficial potential effects for people that is possible. Decriminalization could accomplish that.

“A gateway drug to cocaine and meth”

The gateway myth says that correlation equals causation. You can make a statistical correlation between hard drug use and just about anything that is prevalent in society. Though that is a logical fallacy, correlation does not equal causation. Marijuana is the most popular illegal drug, it would actually be very surprising to find that many people who do other drugs like cocaine and meth haven’t done marijuana also. Just as it would be surprising to find that hard drug users don’t drive cars. That doesn’t mean driving cars makes one use hard drugs. In fact almost all marijuana users never use any other illegal drug. From what I have read there is more of a correlation between those who use alcohol, more so than anything else, and those who use harder drugs. But again correlation is not causation. It’s just a matter of alcohol being more prevalent in society than marijuana, therefore alcohol is more likely to come up in correlation with harder drugs statistically than even marijuana. Fact of the matter is that there has never been research done that indicates that there is a causation between alcohol and/or marijuana use and harder drugs. If anything, marijuana and alcohol are terminus drugs not gateway drugs, the greatest majority save a very small percentage of people stop at the use of alcohol and marijuana. So in essence the statistics say that almost all people who use marijuana don’t go on to use harder drugs. To frame flip that, holding that in the statistics, the small minority demographic of people who use marijuana go on to use harder drugs means that marijuana is a gateway drug is really counter intuitive. The greatest majority of people who use marijuana do not go on to use harder drugs.

“4 times more mind altering than the 70’s”

They’re pulling out every common myth it seems. Rather than go into this at length in my overly verbose and boring way here is a link that refutes that myth.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/factsmyths/#potent

“50 to 70% more cancer causing than cigarettes”

I think they just pulled that one out of their ass to be honest. There have been numerous studies that link cancer and cigarettes while I have never seen a study that links marijuana use and cancer. In fact “There have been no reports of lung cancer related solely to marijuana, and in a large study presented to the American Thoracic Society in 2006, even heavy users of smoked marijuana were found not to have any increased risk of lung cancer.”

“Marijuana what’s good about legalizing it?”

Well first let me say there is a distinction between “legalization” and “decriminalization” where the spirit of the law is concerned. I think the spirit and the interpretation of the wording makes a big difference in how marijuana use will be regulated in the future. Legalization denotes the authorization of use. Meaning that the use of marijuana is at the sufferance of some authority. The usage of the term “legalization” says that you have permission, which infers that that authorization may be withdrawn at a moments notice. Leaving the legalization of marijuana at the discretion of whomever happens to be the authority. Leading in the future to a “forever war” on marijuana use. The tactic being somewhat of a stalemate, which is as good as a win for any authoritative establishment, being very useful in political machinations at the continued expense of the people. The use of “decriminalization” on the other hand has the spirit and intent that the right is still inherently resting with people. Much more in line with constitutional principles if that sort of thing is of interest to you.

It is an interesting the train of thought, the wording in the video represents. The words we choose are indicative of our mindset and logical reasoning. The strict us of “legalization” rather than “decriminalization” in the video is very authoritarian. I’ll be honest, that’s something to which I often have a very knee jerk reaction to most of the time. It just rubs me the wrong way. Framing the whole issue as one of “legalization”, therefore, the freedom to do something only at the sufferance of some authority, is a very skewed and unfair perspective to begin with in my opinion. I think any legislation concerning strictly the legality of marijuana should entail “decriminalization”, the elimination of penalties. That way we are still working from the premise that the right is inherent in the people. Any regulation stemming from that, say for instance laws about contributing to the delinquency of a minor, will perhaps be more conducive and in the spirit of serving the needs of people and not just the needs of some authoritative state establishment. In that sense wording is very important and not just semantics.

What is exactly good about legalization of marijuana also. The whole idea of criminalizing marijuana seems ass backward to begin with. Victimizing and penalizing the general populace in such a way as to make the situation worse. I suppose in that way the war on drugs is not much different that any type of war, the total disregard for willful destruction and civilian casualties. There are many consequences to making people criminals in essence “your enemy”. Especially making whole swaths of the population criminals for nonviolent crimes. To begin with our prison populations are outrageous. The US has 5% of the worlds population and almost 25% of its prison population. True Americans are traditionally rogue badasses.(kidding). It’s not that were a nation of outlaws it’s just that we’ve made it against the law to do so many things. The war on drugs essentially sees these citizens as “the enemy”.

Where I live in Massachusetts we have somewhat reversed that trend, decriminalizing an ounce or less of marijuana. What that does is free law enforcement to concentrate on real crime. Also it breaks the circle of consequences so people have a better potential to actually do something for themselves. Previously in MA if you were arrested with marijuana there were many doors closed to you. The arrest went on your CORI criminal record which would effect your possibilities for employment, your eligibility for student loans, your availability for volunteer work and many other things. The arrest would essentially effect your ability to make something out of yourself. Since your CORI record effects the possibilities for employment and we get our health care through insurance from our jobs, then the arrest affects the possibility for better health care. I mean, the repercussions to ones life are like ripples on a pond. But inherently the criminalization of marijuana essentially makes life worse for everyone when it drags people down like that. We needed to break that cycle and try and give people the opportunity to better themselves.

The authoritarian mindset in this war strategy is quite clear on this. “We” are going to make it illegal and if you screw with us we are going to ruin your life in ways you can’t even imagine or can directly understand. This consequential mindset has actually little to do with making things better for people or society and more to do with some kind of screwed up retribution. I know, I hear the excuses from authoritarian types how this retribution mindset of punishing people for screwing with the establishment is going to be better for everyone by preventing people from stepping out of line. Clearly this is not working and honestly I haven’t seen any kind of benefit in the war on drugs except as an economic boon for some very specific industries and pointless bureaucracies which coincidentally have the largest lobbies for the war on drugs and by all accounts are needless expenditures to begin with.

Ok this only got me as far as 1:21 into the video. I know this is a long rant, if you’ve even got reading this far. Let me hit on one last aspect though real quick now that I let the video play for a few more seconds. It says;

“Marijuana could be sold in grocery stores”

With a picture of a mom and child. The child is reaching to put a piece of fruit on a scale. This is masterful propaganda in the way it tries to evoke certain thoughts from the imagery. First is the use of the child holding the produce. This is supposed to make you think that perhaps if this proposition passes then minors could easily walk into stores and buy marijuana. Nothing could be further from the truth, this is blatant propaganda. Nobody would suggest because cigarettes are legal that minors should have access to them. Just the opposite in fact. Decriminalization will result in better control, as I wrote earlier.

I’d love to go onto the rest of the claims like “skyrocketing usage among teens” and the like, such utter nonsense. As I said this is getting too long already and I probably lost the interest of about 99% of everyone who started to read this anyway.

Unfortunately it’s not that simple. 80+ years of cannabis demonization isn’t going to disappear by connecting it to the cause of smaller gubbermint. Conservatives are notoriously selective in their focus on downsizing government: the Pentagon, farm subsidies for Monsanto and Dubya’s Wall Street bail outs simply don’t count. If anything, they would steer the argument towards privatizing the DEA and other branches of law enforcement.

Im brown and illegal

Not that I wanna get anyone’s hopes up, but this document does look legit.

http://www.sfelections.org/results/20101102/

you getting high is like a controlled drunk.. yes i said “controlled”..the government uses our tax money to make these stupid commercials .if they legalized it..others will look at america as a bunch of pot head(like we already are).so we just say fuck them because our country is like no other..therefore we should make decisions on our own. and besides..it will soon become legal sooner or later because our government is a democracy,so we vote if we want it or now.so in no time there will be more people with it than against it.

Oh just imagine what the fear is! This is all the advertiser want you to act on. Do we not have enough people that will question the data? So much research (25,000 papers) have been done. Places that have loosened the laws have had results. Why not give the facts. Who is afraid now that has taken the time to study the facts? We can destroy our nation on ignorance alone.