Colorado, the state with the highest per capita nutcases and highest per capita teenage drug abuse, votes to increase the problem.
No On 64 Concedes, Colorado Votes In Favor Of Pot Legalization « CBS Denver
The amendment was intentionally worded to be very confusing, and I suspect that many of the voters thought they were voting the opposite of what they did.
In one respect money will be saved on law enforcement for what is primarily a ‘petty’ crime. On the other hand, making a drug more readily available in the community will have consequences for traffic accidents. I don’t know if Colorado law enforcement permits drivers to be pulled over for random checks (this is what happens in Australia now), but if not, it may now be needed.
But, like, the consensus says it’s safe! 97% of scientists agree! MEDICAL MARIJUANA, GUISE
Legalise & tax all drugs. It’d save a lot of trouble.
People who want to do it do it regardless of legality from what I have seen from friends, etc who have done it. As for driving, ditto. Its not going to change much in terms of who does it and who does not.
As for anything else, instead of having a black market that is large and unregulated you could have regulation combined with taxes that actually do create jobs unlike most of the liberal agenda. In the end, its about free choice regardless. Someone who wants to do something will find a way. Whether its wrong or right is not something the state should be dictating “for our own good.” Just my two cents on that issue.
Colorado is already full of stoned, psychotic children. Making drugs more readily available will be a big help, no doubt.
It’s a plant, Steve. There are not one but two major South American biblical churches that ingest shamanic brew, whose members are less neurotic than the general population. The conservative war on neuroscience prevents hoards of unemployed chemists from discovering real solutions to your Colorado mad house. Chronic alcohol and marijuana use do not promote new silicon vallies, like LSD did, supplied in ultra-pure form. The club drugs kids down mostly contain hard rude crazy making potions, not real ecstasy or the non-neurotoxic version of it that street chemists don’t bother providing. It was exactly the war on popular drug use that created the radical left out of tree hugging hippies. Oops!
One of my best friend’s son dropped out of CSU this semester to try to get his life back together after a four month marijuana binge, but thanks for the theory.
Right, blame the plant, not the lazy undisciplined kid. You went to school. You saw it. Some kids just slacked off and had to hit the reset button. Many of them blamed a substance too.
There are many studies that show a child’s mind is not fully-formed until almost age 22. Just like ethanol is harmful to the growth processes in the brain, cannabis can be similarly counter-productive. That’s why this amendment is sensible. Children need to be protected from substances that can slow their brains’ development. That can only be held to the parent.
The level of irrational comments here is beyond my pain threshold.
IMHO, this is akin to gun control. It is more of a cultural problem than a drug problem. I did not believe it could be true until I looked into it, but virtually every country that has legalized drugs has seen usage of hard drugs go way down,ergo many fewer overdoses and addictions, and a reduction in crime as well.
One more reason why I am a Libertarian.
Gator, I completely agree with you. Sorry Steve, on this one I have to disagree with you. As Gator points out, in various countries around the world where they have legalized drugs, in every case that I have seen written about, drug use DECLINED. One of the big reasons for this is that the underground markets collapsed. Drugs are becoming like cigarettes, legal but socially unacceptable. Don’t get me wrong, drug use has not stopped, but countries that have legalized have seen a sharp drop in crime and a drop in drug use in general, even for pot. I contend that you cannot mandate human behavior with much success, and drug use is a good example. How’s that multi-trillion dollar war on drugs working out for ya?
Larimer county (where I live) legalized marijuana a couple of years ago and usage greatly increased. I’m not much into BS theory.
Have you ever considered that one reason why Larimer county usage increased is because it became and island and simply drew in people from other places to take advantage? I would be willing to be if you REALLY analyzed it Steve, you would find that much of the supposed increase is from people outside of the county being counted in that statistic. Unlike the Greenhouse Effect, this is no BS theory, there are hard cold statistical facts to back it.
Colorado has the worst teen drug abuse problem in the country and it is going to get worse.
To libertarians in the audience,
Your freedom to swing your fist stops at my face, yes?
And therefore by extension, your freedom to poison your own body with hallucinogenic drugs for recreational purposes stops with putting said drugs into the air I have to breathe. Therefore, law or no law, such behavior is a physical violation of others and is morally wrong. As such, it should be illegal.[1]
Furthermore, I agree with Steven that with the current massive culture of recreational drug abuse (which is morally degenerate and is helping to destroy the economy of the U.S. and Europe), legalization sends the wrong message to children and young adults. The message that many will receive is, “There’s nothing wrong with it.” Conclusion: you will see more of this economically and spiritually destructive behavior.
RTF
[1] Having stated this, I hasten to add that I am not happy with many elements of the U.S. “war on drugs”, since I have seen many examples of counterproductive results from it. Also, too much is being spent on it.
And as for the “Libertarian”, I’m with you there, and certainly in mourning today after the horrible re-election of the POS occupying our white house.
Thanks Squid! I’m identifying, counting, and clinging to my remaining liberties this morning. I don’t know my countrymen anymore, so good to hear from another liberty loving American right now.
My entire family and friends are mortified today. We could not believe what was happening last night. This is not the country I was born in to. I no longer recognize it. My daughters future just went down the toilet. At least with Romney she stood a fighting chance. That little glimmer of hope was summarily nuked last night.
Did you catch the Asian markets early this morning? I suspect that particular tsunami is headed this way today. I could be wrong, for I am no market analyst, but my gut tells me that Wall Street is in for a rough week. Good thing I cashed in my 401k last month so I could survive, because at least it was worth something then (very little, averaged 1.7% yield .. whoopie!). Now I am struggling to find another job. Never thought a 25yr computer programmer/research expert would be in the position I am in today, and now I fear it is going to get much worse.
All the best with the job hunt. I myself took a 40% cut in pay thanks to the Dodd Frank Act, and I am one of the lucky ones. My employer fired so many of my coworkers that about a year ago they started trying to starve the rest of us out. I, like a number of others have too many years/benefits to just jump ship (and I am financially stable), so now they just screw with me constantly. I had hoped that a Romney admin would roll some of this ridiculous legislation back and save my job, but this morning it does not look good.
I saw this coming when Bush was in office and prepared for it, my money has been out of the market for years.
Live free or die.
Sadly, this country has much, much bigger problems than pot. I’m quite sure weed isn’t the reason the majority of Americans are so delusional they re-elected the redistributor in chief.
“To libertarians in the audience,
Your freedom to swing your fist stops at my face, yes?
And therefore by extension, your freedom to poison your own body with hallucinogenic drugs for recreational purposes stops with putting said drugs into the air I have to breathe.”
Please, no strawmen. Noone is swinging fists.
Your very same argument lead to prohibition, which was as big a fiasco as our cuurent war on drugs. Alcohol is just the “legal” drug, even though it is far more dangerous than pot.
I also advocate for equal rights for everyone, even though I do not always share their lifestyle or values. Love being attacked as a druggie, just because I believe in individual freedoms. Nice.
The tent is getting smaller…
Further, I can give you a list, a mile long list, of “legal” drugs that are bought and sold everyday that are as much or more dangerous than most any “recreational” drug.
You know what the worst drug problem today is? Oxycontin and derivatives. That’s right! .. one of our biggest drug problems is one of those “LEGAL” drugs that is sold at your local drug store.
Sheeesh, and this goes out to Steve as well. And Steve, you are SO good at putting weather and climate into historical perspective. Please, do the same with this drug issue. Just because you don’t like something, doesn’t mean you can turn your back on the truth. So far, I have had three of my relatives die from addictions to “legal” prescription drugs (my Aunt just last weekend), I have had NONE die from “illegal” drugs. For every sad story from “illegal” drugs that you can present, I can probably present to you 4 other sad cases produced by “legal” drugs.
My only neighbor out here lost his mother to an overdose of prescription pain killers two months ago.
“My only neighbor out here lost his mother to an overdose of prescription pain killers two months ago.”
That is tragic. Clearly, the best solution is to totally de-control them so that people will not want to abuse them as much? (Not!)
RTF
How many pot overdoses do you hear about Richard? The point is that there are dangerous substances all around us that anyone can abuse, and prohibition makes things worse. Why is it so hard for you to accept facts? Is this an agenda of yours?
The tent is too small already.
I don’t accept your “fact” that prohibition, of any kind or degree, always makes things worse. Sometimes it may, sometimes it may not. My “agenda” (if you want to call it that)with this line of reasoning, is to test statements for truth, rationality, and morality. If you don’t like it, well I guess I was about done. I reserve the right to reply to comments directed at me or my words.
I don’t know why you can’t see that the “free drugs” movement philosophy has done immeasurable damage to the causes of economic conservatism. To me it’s obvious.
RTF
Facts RTF, Facts. Virtually every country that has legalized drugs WITHIN REASON has seen improvements in sobriety and civility. We overturned prohibition once before because it was a massive failure, and made things worse. What is your argument again?
“…the “free drugs” movement philosophy has done immeasurable damage to the causes of economic conservatism.”
… the skeptic movement has done immeasurable damage to the “causes” of economic marxism.
Yes. it is obvious.
Glad you said “WITHIN REASON” which you did not say before. We agree on that.
RTF
“The tent is too small already.”
Then stop trying to throw me (and/or yourself) out of it!
If your tent is too small for your liking, that means you have you have to compromise more! Not dig your heels in and call for more ideological purity.
RTF
“If your tent is too small for your liking, that means you have you have to compromise more! Not dig your heels in and call for more ideological purity.”
I’m not the one advocating for “causes’, hypocrite. The truth has NO agenda Richard.
You call me a hypocrite because I admit I have an agenda for the truth, but also advocate political compromise under certain circumstances.
You won’t win many battles with that kind of approach.
I try very hard not to commit hypocrisy. I don’t believe I’ve done so in this thread.
An example of compromise in this case might be, “We disagree on drugs. All right then, let’s not advocate a policy of liberalization. After all, we have more important fish to fry.”
But, that shouldn’t mean we can’t have a spirited debate about it. But ultimately, whoever tries to force the policy change on the other side is the one breaking unity.
RTF
Wow, all right. First, I didn’t call you a “druggie”, nor was I thinking about whether you were. I was stating my reasons for opposition to a policy of total legalization of smoking marijuana. So the charge that you were being “attacked as a druggie” is a strawman.
Now you say that my argument contained a strawman because I mentioned swinging fists. Any act of poisoning someone is a physical attack on the person, whether or not it was intended as such. It is just as much a physical attack as a swung fist. I mentioned fists because this is the prototypical libertarian argument regarding what should be considered illegal behavior. It wasn’t my invention; it is a creature of libertarian theory — many elements of which I agree with, though I do not presently consider myself to be a libertarian.
My argument was addressed more toward Squid’s statements than yours, but partly to yours. How you can characterize my statements of opinion as attacks because you disagree with them, I don’t know. I notice that you didn’t say Steven was attacking you because he disagreed with you. But you said that about me. I was not attacking you. So if the tent feels smaller because of my comment, it can only be because you don’t want me there.
Now regarding alcohol, let’s be serious here: surely the only reason we don’t have as massive problem with teenage hard liquor consumption as we do with pot is because it’s not as easy to get? I am sure that if we said tomorrow to kids: here, have at it, no ID, no threat of prosecution, there would be almost overnight a massive increase in the consumption of hard liquor by kids. Perhaps that would not have been the case in the 1930s, but it would surely be the case now. Kids are more brainwashed than ever to believe that drugs and alcohol are good for them. (!?!)
I’ll say it again, a different way: individual freedom is nice, but my freedom stops at your body, and yours at mine. All civilized people should be able to agree on this.
RTF
Yes, and that means YOUR freedom STOPS at telling me what I can do with MY body!
If you want to smoke, I don’t seek to stop you from that … as long as you don’t dump it into the air others have to breathe. That would be an example of doing something to me. Thus it would be contrary to libertarian nonaggression. So it sounds like we are in agreement: smoking inside of a sealed bubble, which is attached to a device to remove the smoke from the air, should be legal, and smoking in the open atmosphere should be illegal, because it would be asking others to smoke with you.
RTF
As a cyclist, I have to deal every day with drivers who are obviously stoned and not aware of their surroundings. They threaten my health every single day.
Simple. Outlaw bicycles and you will be safe.
“To libertarians in the audience,
Your freedom to swing your fist stops at my face, yes?
And therefore by extension, your freedom to poison your own body…”
Whose body?
Look, I’m not going to tit for tat with you like these alarmists, the fact is that countries who legalize have fewer problems. Your feelings and anecdotes do not change that.
Who ever said we should serve minors. More strawmen?
This tent is too small to ever win again. Squid! Time for a new party.
Everyone has the freedom. That was not addressed specifically at you, but at all who disagreed with me. And it in no way implies that you are doing it. So I wasn’t calling you a “druggie” or anything like that. Chill out.
I agree with the “new party” for sure….
I see the same problems with the drug issue as I do with the climate issue. Just as CO2 doesn’t heat the Earth, availability does not dictate drug use. As with each, LOOK AT THE DATA!
I can buy rat poison at any hardware store, doesn’t mean I’m going to eat it, unless I have a reason!
“I can buy rat poison at any hardware store, doesn’t mean I’m going to eat it, unless I have a reason!”
If, er, ONE were in possession of rat poison for the sole reason of conveying it to one or more minors, for the reason that ONE has already TOLD said minors that the said poison is A) safe and B) fun to eat, and that said minors had resultantly expressed an interesting in eating it …
that possession should be illegal, no? Why, well of course because the rat poison is not safe for the minors, in fact it could destroy their lives in multiple ways that they may know nothing about.
We have a responsibility to the young and the cognitively disabled that exceeds our responsibility to others. There is nothing anti-libertarian about acknowledging this, both in theory and in our laws.
RTF
BTW, you should also go take a look at just how easy and how much kids obtain Alcohol. Alcohol, beer AND hard liquor is an even BIGGER problem than drugs (drug use has actually been declining among youth), and not because alcohol is “legal” I might add. Liquor laws have progressively become tighter and tighter, penalties more and more aggressive, and yet the problem gets worse. Why is that? I would submit to you that it has NOTHING to do with the laws and/or penalties and/or accessibility, and EVERYTHING to do with condition of society. That is the ROOT problem, the drugs are simply the symptom. It is the same story as it has always been.
“As a cyclist, I have to deal every day with drivers who are obviously stoned and not aware of their surroundings. They threaten my health every single day.”
And abolishing all drugs on the planet, will, unfortunately, NOT change that!
Be safe Steve! .. we need you and your blog! … but, life is dangerous and only leads to death…
Alcohol impairs driving capacities far greater than pot. Studies in Britain have found stoned drivers actually took greater care and drove safer, than when they were sober.
It all gets back to the stats, countries who legalize do better overall. Then there is that border issue we have…
Studies show that global warming is going to kill us all.
All right then, I anxiously await your argument that we need to legalize DUI, so that the incidence of DUI can go down dramatically. After all, people only want to get behind the wheel because it’s illegal, right??
RTF
You are mixing apples and oranges. DUI is an irresponsible action, just like speeding (which kills more people btw). Having a gun doesn’t make me a murderer. Shooting someone with it does.
Steven, I lead with the fact that backed my original argument, legalizing works virtually evrytime. As I told RTF, I do not wish to tit for tat. it is pontless.
Prohibition is a massive failure on mutiple fronts.
Look, we just got our asses kicked in what should have been an easy win. It is hard to argue with or dislike someone who offers you more freedoms, no matter what they may be, within REASON. Stats formed and back my reasoning. Time to put on our big boy pants and get a party started.
Live free or die.
Yes, RTF, another DUI strawman to distract from the facts. Is this your agenda? Should we bring back prohibition on alcohol again? Apples to apples RTF.
Didn’t you say that legalizing drugs makes them get used less? Doesn’t that imply that people do it more because it’s illegal?
I’m not playing word gammes with you RTF. Facts please.
I don’t have to breathe people’s alcohol like I do their smoke.
I know for a fact that people don’t choose to smoke more of something if it’s made illegal.
Can we please be done with this now? Thank you.
RTF
Steve, the proper frame with respect to ‘recreational drugs’ is intoxication. Attack them by that route. America started going down hill in the 1890s when the ‘Progressives’ brought about the drug war and took over both the ‘Slavery Party’ and the ‘Stupid Party’. All of these chemicals were legal prior to the Harrison Narcotic Act. Drug prohibition does not work and is anti-liberty at its core. By the way, Steve, how do you know that these drivers are ‘stoned and not aware of their surroundings’. They certainly may be unaware of their surroundings, but without blood level testing you don’t know if they are stoned. Benadryl is just as powerful an intoxicant as THC. Dose and route make the medicine, dose and route make the poison, Dose and route make the intoxicant.
As for automobiles, I believe cell phones and texting are as lethal.
And passing laws based on dose and route is a type of prohibition. Should we then conclude that you are anti-liberty, because you do not want to allow people to do whatever they want to, whenever they want to, regardless of its effect on others? Or can you advocate limits, without being anti-liberty?
FYI, I do not support federal (or UN) regulation of drugs in any way shape or form. This should be exclusively a state issue.
RTF
“This should be exclusively a state issue”
According to our Constitution it is. At least it is “supposed” to be. Our Constitution expressly prohibits the federal government involvement in this matter, but they have used loopholes and skewed “interpretations” to get around that inconvenient fact.
That’s right!
Liberty is ordered. You can get as intoxicated as you want, inside your home. In public, you can’t do so. You do not have the right to cause actual or demonstrable harm to others. Absolutely, prohibition of sale, use, manufacture, or possession of an intoxicant is anti-liberty. Sure a state or states can and should make public intoxication a misdemeanor, and it should not discriminate based upon the type of intoxicant. Addiction is overblown. Most users will never become addicts. Some addicts will never become users. The liberty maximizing solution is to eschew prohibition (in the sense noted above, such as it was done with the Harrison Narcotic Act, Alcohol Prohibition, and all of the subsequent ‘Drug War’ laws) and use public intoxication measures.
I think we need to rid this nation of morons and that should take care of all the rest of you WTF!!