Sorry Ms. Raich, the drug war is more important than your life

When the reasons for the law being upheld are as inhumane as they are unjustified by a heavily skewed sense of capitalism, THAT is ridiculous.

I think it could be easily proven just within the short history of our beloved United States that there is a vast difference between what is law and what can be considered "valid" law. Underlying what is supposed to be a basis of law is the understanding of the supporting ethics--something that seems to be missing from the equation more and more these days.

I'm almost getting the impression you're supporting the law on this just BECAUSE it's a law--regardless of how right or wrong the issues surrounding it might be. I will be honest in saying that kind of logic really scares me...
 
I've got to admit I find it amusing to see so many pro-pot discussions on a gun forum! But I also have to admit that I am with most of you. Legalize the stuff and stop wasting time and money on such a non-issue.
 
Because the little old lady from pasadena has cancer doesn't mean we bend the law.
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Stage, I hope you never have need for the benefits that others have gotten from pot, but if you do I pray those around you are as sympathetic to your needs as you are to others!
 
STAGE 2, please answer for me, why tobacco is legal, and pot is illegal. "Because it is." doesn't cut it. You will find the answer to be quite disturbing and unjust.
 
I've got to admit I find it amusing to see so many pro-pot discussions on a gun forum!
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I will have to add to my argument that I am only a proponent of medical use marijuana. Every major medical institution recognizes the immense value of marijuana as a valid medical treatment. The only real opposition comes from the far right religious interests (which have no place making medical decisions) and pharmaceutical companies that cannot find a way to make money off of it.

As far as personal/recreational use goes, I am opposed to drugs. I am, however, pro personal choice. So if someone wants to do drugs and does not cause harm to anyone else by doing so I am all for letting them do it. If we feel the need to protect people from every bad choice they could make we would have to ban alcohol, illegalize underage sex, outlaw fatty foods, etc.

And no I am not a hypocrite...I do not do drugs. I do not smoke and I do not drink alcohol. My only addiction (unless guns or questionable internet content counts) is caffeine (just soda, no coffee). :)
 
America could learn a lot from several places, were it not for the arrogance of our leadership, greed of too many influential entities, and apathy of the general public...

Or maybe I'm just overly cranky and skeptical this morning?
 
American could learn something from Holland in this regard.
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Might want to rethink that....

Scan the forum for a post by someone that actually lives there.
He's quite distraught by the state of affairs, rising crime and overall degeneration of his homeland.
 
No the issue is the misleading rhetoric in this thread. Because a court upholds valid law somehow this is a horrible decision. Thats simply ridiculous.
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Well, Justices O'Connor, Rhenquist, and Thomas seemed to think it was a pretty bad decision, and they also thought it had implications for Section 922 (q) of the current law, and some of us don't think they were being ridiculous. "Valid" my ass. Usurpation is all I see, and you know how I feel about that.
Federalist 33 - Hamilton:
If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.
...
If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter may enact, pursuant to the powers intrusted to it by its constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies, and the individuals of whom they are composed. It would otherwise be a mere treaty, dependent on the good faith of the parties, and not a goverment, which is only another word for POLITICAL POWER AND SUPREMACY. But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the large society which are NOT PURSUANT to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such.
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A ferrari is completely different than an AMC gremlin. However, they both will do the same thing. Get it.
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The "valid" law upon which you rest your case classifies cannabis as a schedule 1 drug. I'm told that means no known medical benefits and a high potential for abuse. In fact, one of the longest-running hypocrisies of the drug war is the federal government's refusal to acknowledge any benefits from cannabis, while at the same time certifying Marinol and supplying cannabis to Irvin Rosenfeld and a few others for over 20 years.
 
But just like a conservative is a liberal who got mugged, old WA is a drug libertarian who just lost someone from an OD...
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This type of argument is the same type of tactic that antis use when they want to read out the 2nd amendment. They take some sympathetic character, throw them in the spotlight and then say "see, look at how bad guns are." This is no different.
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Couldn't agree more, and I wish both sides would cut it out and focus on how the LEGAL issues are the same when it comes to homegrown cannabis, homegrown machine guns, and guns carried too close to a school.
 
For everybody saying that a majority of people want marijuana illegal, could you explain to me why in several of the states that passed laws legalizing medical marijuana use it was done by ballot initiative? We could go 'round and 'round on recreational use I suppose, but it appears that a majority favors medicinal use. Is there some reason we couldn't simply treat this like oxycontin or vicodin or many other drugs that have the potential for abuse but also potential for medical use?
 
STAGE 2, please consider the decision in Raich. Now consider the decision in Oregon.

Since we all know, you can't have your cake and eat it too (one of those platitudes that are resoundingly true), which decision was wrong?

Both decisions cannot be correct (see Thomas, dissent, both). If Raich is the holding precedent, then Oregon must fail. However, if Oregon prevails, then Raich was wrongly decided.

The illogic and duplicity in these two cases are astounding. Yet the legal community simply nods its collective head and pronounces, "Thus the Supreme Court has spoken." Astounding. Simply astounding.

If a simpleton, such as myself, can see the illogic of the Court, what does that say about the legal community?

Bottom line. MJ is illegal, not because "the people" want it that way. It was made an unlawful substance because of another wrongly decided case, Wickard. The feds have no business in purely intrastate matters. Full Stop.

Should we get to the core reasons way MJ was made unlawful?

Harry J. Anslinger was convinced by newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst (who owned what is now Kimberley-Clarke) and Lammont Du Pont (pulp paper magnate), and wrote the legislation that went on to pass as the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.

Hearst, who controlled 800,000 acres of forest, supplied a large portion of wood pulp to the paper industry. Du Pont controlled the sulphur dioxide industry that was used to process the pulp into paper. Paper that was largely used by ... hold onto it ... The newspaper industry! Hearst owned a lot of newspapers and magazines (King Features Syndicate).

Add to this mix, that a new water-bath process of producing hemp cloth had been recently patented (such cloth was stronger and more durable than cotton. It also held color better) and we have another major industry that was lobbying for protection against hemp.

Everyone is aware that Henry Ford designed his internal combustion engine to run on bio-diesel? (true) What was the cheapest, easiest and highest quality of vegetable oil that produced a high-grade bio-diesel? Hemp oil.

And I haven't even mentioned the medicinal benefits, that were widely known at the time.


So we have some very important monied interests, all lined to pressure the feds to protect them against hemp manufacture.

1. Forestry products that produced pulp for the paper mills.
2. Chemical processors that supplied the necessary ingredients to process pulp.
3. Cotton growers who supplied the raw material for cloth.
4. Oil producers that supplied the growing motoring industry.
5. Petrochemical industry (bankrolled by the oil industry) that were using oil to produce a new and revolutionary product: Plastic (which hemp oil would do, through a slightly different process).

Fact is, hemp growers were on the rise, as hemp was discovered to have many more beneficial uses than conventional rope and sail making. But it was not yet a powerful monied interest.

With the stroke of a pen, hemp production in the US was halted.

In my earlier treatise on the Raich decision, I have detailed how MJ moved from a (highly) taxed item to a schedule I drug.

Bottom line here. Follow the money.
 
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Cancer eats people down to the bone. My mom died from cancer and had three yrs worth of chemotherapy. The chemo would make her nasuous (sp) and inhibit her ability to eat without throwing up. She asked me to go get her some MJ cause she heard it would take away the nasua and stimulate her appetite. She cried and said she was so hungry but couldn't eat because it hurt her to have to get up and go throw it all back up again. I love my mom so she had MJ all the way up until she died. She had a prognosis of 1 1/2 yrs to live and actually lived for about three years. MJ didn't save her life but very probably extended it and also made it so she could eat and feel well enough for her to get up and putter around the house and socialize instead of just laying in bed waiting to die. I'm proud to have been able to do that for my mom.

You people who are sticking by the letter of the law are being short-sighted. When it comes to one of your loved ones, you will change your tune. I guarentee it.

Who would side with the letter of the law against their mom? You might posture that you would but when you see them withering away to skin & bones the law stops having meaning and you do what you can for your family and wont give a rats ass what people think. God, how I miss my mom. She was a shooter and had a nice 357 Highway Patrolman model and could shoot better than anyone else in the family...
 
Oh boy! Antipitas has arrived, and we can get into the history of cannabis prohibition. :D

If "the people wanted it that way" then how is it that when the fedgov first outlawed cannabis, the Speaker of the House did not know exactly what it was? I mean, the House is the branch which is supposed to be closest to the people, right? And the Speaker should probably know if there is an issue of urgent concern among the people, right? Yet he did not know what marijuana was, and the Congressional record says so straight out. How is it possible that this was a movement by "the people" which completely escaped the attention of the Speaker of the House?
 
Antipitas,,

Excellent post the best I have ever heard it put.
Isn't it also true that at about the same time Prohibition had just or was ending and there was quite a few Federal employees whose agency needed something to do too.

My wife is a pharmacy tech. they sell Marinol which is a pill and is sold as a schedule 5 controlled substance just downgraded from a schedule 2, this is for patients needing MJ for nausea.

IMHO the present so called war on drugs and what is happening is still as you said " follow the money".

My God man if your a simpleton I am a complete idiot.
 
Since we all know, you can't have your cake and eat it too
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Okay, I am going to be nit-picky here for a minute. This is one of the phrases that people so often misquote that drives me battie. The old proverb that this saying comes from actually translates into "you can't EAT your cake and HAVE it too." Not the other way around. You can have your cake, then also eat it. But you can't eat it and then still have it. I learned that in a logical theory class in college. See book learnin' is good for something :D
 
I learned that in a logical theory class in college.
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In which you also learned that "and" is commutative, so it breaks down the same in either order ;)

Let me be the first to paraphrase Stage2's response on this topic:
b-b-b-b-b-but it's illegal. You have to go through your representative to change the law
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Playboypenquin said:
See book learnin' is good for something :D
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Um, what's a book? :rolleyes:

Besides, "and" is a logical operator. It necessarily assumes both statements, on either side of the operator, to be true at the same time.

You nit and I'll perl.... :D
 
Anti- Good post. Hemp is legal in France and constitutes a big money crop. I've driven by the fields and have been told it is so low grade in THC that it just gives you a headache if smoked. Outlawing MJ hurts us in many ways besides overwhelming our court system and denying a really effective drug to terminal patients.

Outlawing tobacco would be helpful for our nation, lowering our Health care costs and improving quality of life for many many people. Tobacco is highly addictive and lethal. Still, I don't think outlawing it is the way to go.

Education is the right answer for pot, tobacco, and booze, IMO. Getting the word out to the public, with anti-tobacco adds, and ads on how pot and booze can hurt your life if abused is a much better way to go than making/keeping them illegal. Treatment centers and public support would be much cheaper than our current solution of filling our prisons with pot smokers and our hospitals and graveyards with the victims of booze and tobacco.
 
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