The 8 Most Absurd Reasons For Trying To Defeat Prop 19
Joe | Aug 19, 2010 | Comments 5
Russ Belville from NORML posted a great article today detailing the eight craziest things he’s heard from those against CA Prop 19. It’s well worth a read, but for those who don’t have that kind of time, I’ll comment on a couple of his points.
The one that tends to annoy me the most is his number 4, the “gateway drug” theory. The theory says that legal marijuana will lead to more marijuana users, and since cannabis is a “gateway drug,” all those new marijuana users will move on to harder drugs and society as we know it will collapse.
Credit Los Angeles Bishop Ron Allen for this bit of reefer madness. “It’s going to cause crime to go up. There will be more drug babies,” he warned the LA Times. The New York Times reported on Allen describing marijuana as “the most sinister drug,” and asking that “the demonic spirits be cast back into hell.” The good Bishop should know, because he was a former crack addict and the first illegal drug he used was marijuana.
The logical problem with Bishop Allen’s gateway theory is that while nearly all crack addicts have smoked pot, very few pot smokers have ever smoked crack. The only commonality between marijuana and crack is that they are both illegal drugs (even then, marijuana is more illegal; it is in Schedule I while cocaine is in Schedule II). Marijuana doesn’t make people smoke crack any more than alcohol or tobacco makes people smoke crack, at least according to the US Institute of Medicine.
The fact is that every statistic you can find says that most marijuana users never go on to “harder drugs.” Why people like Bishop Allen still get airtime in the media is beyond me. He may have good intentions, but the fact remains that his opinion is misinformed.
Russ’s number 6 also “sticks in my crawl,” as the saying goes. It’s the theory that the taxes collected from legal cannabis will be outweighed by increased social costs, like more trips to the emergency room and rising health care costs in general, as has happened with tobacco and alcohol. There’s just one problem: marijuana is much safer than either alcohol or tobacco.
This is one of the instances where figures don’t lie, but liars figure. Indeed, the taxes we collect from alcohol and tobacco don’t come close to covering the social costs from those substances. Lung cancer, cirrhosis, emphysema, drunk driving, cigarette breaks, domestic violence, after a while the costs of smoking and drinking add up… because smoking and drinking are toxic and addictive.
Marijuana is neither toxic nor addictive. A Canadian study found that a tobacco smoker cost the country $800 per year, each drinker cost $165, and each toker cost $20, and half of that was laundry costs for Cheetos stains (I kid!). Also, it is not as if nobody is smoking pot now and post Prop-19 we’ll be overrun with tokers. People are smoking pot now and we’re taking in zero dollars in taxes and we’re spending a billion dollars in California failing to stop it.
If your opponents feel a need to lie and fear-monger to defeat you, it means you are on the right track. Truth is a beautiful thing, but only when you have it on your side.
I’m more convinced than ever that not only should Prop 19 pass, it will pass. Our opponents are flailing. It’s is up to us to finish them off (in the political sense) this November. We must not let up in the next two and a half months. The biggest event in the history of the cannabis law reform movement is upon us. We can’t let it pass us by.
Filed Under: Activism • Best Of The Best • Exclusive Web Content • Politics • The War On Drugs
In a way, weed was one of my gateway drugs, though I had already started with cigarettes and alcohol by the time I had my first joint (age 16). Why? Because after I smoked the joint I realized just how much (actually it was just the tip of the iceberg, but the lying was so very obvious at the time) the state was lying to us about it. I didn’t turn into a werewolf and I didn’t commit random murders and rapes. I tried LSD, coke, meth (snorted in those days), and a few others because I had no real authority I could trust to educate me on whether they truly were harmful or not. In other words, the lies of prohibition are the real gateway drug. Today? Weed, beer, cigs, and the occasional mushroom. That’s it. However, it is sad that I had to research it all without anyone I could trust before this. All because prohibition is such an obvious lie.
[...] The 8 Most Absurd Reasons For Trying To Defeat Prop 19The 420 TimesRuss Belville from NORML posted a great article today detailing the eight craziest things he's heard from those against CA Prop 19. It's well worth a read, …"8 Most Absurd Excuses for Trying to Defeat Legal Pot"Opposing Viewsall 2 news articles » [...]
Pragmatic libertarians (minimal-statists) and “true” Conservatives agree that many, if not most, of society’s problems are caused by government usurping choices that could better be made by individuals and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. Where libertarianism normally parts company with “fake” conservatism is over moral issues. But a true conservative would have no problem with agreeing, that what people do with their own bodies, and especially in the privacy of their own home, should be supremely their business, and that anything else would entail ignoring the basic tenet of limited government.
Fake-Conservatism on the other hand has much in common with socialism; Both Leftists and Fake-Conservatives appear to harbor the belief that nature does not exist and that any human can be anything he wants to be, or can for the “greater good”, be “re-educated” into being. Leftists therefore think little boys can be conditioned into preferring dolls over toy soldiers, and similarly Fake-conservatives believe that adults can be coerced into choosing alcohol over marijuana. A true conservative, just like a pragmatic libertarian, would immediately reject both ideas as nonsense.
First of all, it still blows me away that marijuana is a class I while cocaine is a class II drug, but I digress.
One argument I heard also was that marijuana will make people more stupid and more lazy. Problem though is many people are already both stupid and lazy, and mj will just become the new scapegoat for why there is a new generation of stupid and lazy. Some people cannot handle their every day issues and will hide behind mj, but some already hide behind other addictions, like cross dressing, S&M or porn. It is a diversion from the everyday, and people need that diversion or we turn into the crazed, killers psychos that Reefer Madness said we would become. Blaming stupid, crazy, idiotic behavior on ganja is just wrong. Blame it on the stupid, crazy, moronic idiot
[...] Everyone say it with me: cannabis is much safer than alcohol or tobacco. This theory that marijuana will lead to the same health problems as alcohol or tobacco is a fantasy that has been proven wrong. [...]