Opposition to marijuana up in smoke

[Al B. Fuct]

Opposition to marijuana up in smoke

 

January 30, 2008

 

A few years ago, US politicians who dared to suggest anything

other than jail time for marijuana users were considered pro-drug

fringe candidates.

 

Not anymore. Now all the major Democratic presidential

candidates are offering more lenient stands on medical marijuana,

and White House hopeful Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, has made

ending the federal drug war a centrepiece of his campaign.

 

"There has definitely been a change in the political climate for

liberalisation," says Tim Lynch, a criminal justice expert at the

Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank. "I think the people

are ahead of the politicians, especially of the Washington, DC,

politicians, on this issue."

 

Polls have consistently shown that Americans support marijuana

for medicinal purposes: a whopping 80 per cent said so in a 2002

Time/ CNN survey. In the same poll, about a third approved total

legalisation, but 72 per cent said recreational users should be

fined, not incarcerated.

 

Even in Texas, where medical marijuana legislation has never got

off the ground, the legislature recently passed a law that allows

prosecutors to bypass the jail booking process for certain

marijuana offenses. It doesn't change the penalty, but the

legislation marks Texas' first lenient approach to marijuana in

years.

 

Experts say the more tolerant approach has its origins in

California, where in 1996 voters made it legal for people to smoke

marijuana with a doctor's recommendation.

 

More than a decade later, 12 states permit some use of medical

marijuana, and several others, including Michigan, Arizona, New

York and Illinois, are likely to consider initiatives in 2008, says

Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project.

 

A ballot initiative in Massachusetts aims to go further by

decriminalising possession of small amounts of marijuana, making it

similar to a traffic ticket.

 

"I think in 10 years, people will look back at the laws that

prevented people from using marijuana as a medicine and say, 'What

the hell were they thinking?"' Mirken says.

 

Of course, not everybody is leaping on the bandwagon. All of the

top Republican presidential candidates have expressed opposition to

the use of medical marijuana, and the White House drug czar

continues to sound the alarm about making it legal under any

circumstance, much as it was before California voters approved the

landmark referendum.

 

Research has shown that teen drug use has declined steeply

nationwide. A study released in December showed that illicit teen

drug use has dropped sharply from levels a decade earlier, with

marijuana use in particular showing steep declines.

 

In testimony before Congress last year, Dr David Murray, chief

scientist in the White House Office of National Drug Control

Policy, hailed the positive trends among teens but said medical

marijuana had sparked violence and robberies in California. He also

warned about the negative health effects from inhaling smoked

marijuana.

 

Murray described marijuana as "a substance without medical

utility" and expressed concern about the wave of state referenda

allowing its use.

 

"The medical marijuana movement is at best a mistake, at worst,

a deception," Murray said. "The people pushing for this are

cynically manipulating tragic tales of suffering."

 

Don't tell that to Tim Timmons. The Garland, Texas, resident,

who has multiple sclerosis, says politicians are the ones

manipulating the marijuana issue to appear tough on crime.

 

Though he takes $US3,000 ($A3,380) worth of prescription drugs a

month - between 18 and 23 pills a day - he says marijuana is the

only thing that calms the debilitating spasms in his legs and lets

him sleep at night.

 

Timmons has sent scores of letters to state lawmakers, inviting

them to see for themselves how marijuana visibly calms his

spasms.

 

Otherwise, he has repeatedly issued this public challenge to

state lawmakers who oppose medical marijuana: take him to jail

themselves if they think what he's doing is wrong.

 

"Come arrest me. I'm here waiting for you," Timmons says, after

smoking marijuana from a pipe at his home. "You can put the

handcuffs on me."

[SukonmiSkunk]

has any one else noticed the TOTAL media black out of Ron Paul in Australia?

 

i mean every presidential update.. even when hes broken records of money raised .. and the extensive internet following... and yet in our media.. we dont hear a thing about this guy... its a disgrace..

 

media reporting should remain neutral.. but its anything but neutral in our country... its a shame.. our news media is now a propaganda tool for the worlds elite... we will never hear anything important on world affairs .. unless they wish us to hear it...

 

dont watch the news.. and if you do.. dont take anything said as a true... for the real story get online and search.. youll find it eventually..

 

all channels now only repeat news other channels report on.. word for word.. yes.. even our ABC and SBS.. which at one time would report real news.. but now.. they just copy and paste what other stations.. namely FOX... have reported on.. and we all know FOX news reports for their own agenda.. and the sheeple will soak it up.. and beleive whats reported like good little party wanna bes. its a shame that the majority of Australians cant see the forest for all the trees in the way...

 

i wonder when our gutless pollies will realize a medicinal marijuana program in our country??

 

good post AlB... we know the wool cant be pulled over your roaming eyes...

[Indycar]

A nice read there Al, cheers

 

Long time overdue that some common sense made an appearance in the western world politics. Let's just hope it keep's heading in the right direction...

 

[67Special]

Yeah and let's hope that direction is here

[blackheartedprofit]

firstly, i wonder if anyone is aware of Senator Ron Paul's religious leanings ?, as it turns out he is what is called a "Creationist" which means the he firmly believes that "god" created the universe as written in Genesis,as in 7 "days" , now i don't know about anyone else but to the rational mind this is completely absurd, this being the case i think this guy can not be trusted at all, i firmly believe he is using this as a political ploy to garner the pro marijuana vote, which is rather large in the states, also, as far as this seperation of medical and recreational marijuana use i think is the wrong approach, i agree people should be free to use marijuana for medical reasons but i do not agree that medical use should be given any higher priority than recreational use, i use it because i like getting bent and it also helps with aches and pains but be fucked if i will let them "register" me, it's just another thing to gather all the "bad" elements of society when it goes to shit and we see the true agendas of our draconian overlord societies, we already have police like fuckin gestapo and SS, how much worse is it going to be allowed to get?,

back to Ron Paul, can anyone imagine what would happen in the schools ?, there are big mutterings already from the religitards to teach creationism in the US, personally i think the less is heard of SenRon the better, he can possibly be applauded for his stance on drugs but i feel that it's all smoke and mirrors and he has a completely different agenda than his public stance !!!

rant over, lmao

[WantDaChronic]

i agree with ss and bhp, ron paul has had an almost total media block out not only in australia, but also in america which is suprising considering thats where the election is being held i think the media is owned by a select few who are in the pockets of the world's elite so like ss said, we are only fed information they want us to know

 

ron paul is a bit of a nutter though, he believes in creationism which in itself is a little crazy, but the one thing that turned me off him is the fact he basically wants to put an end to funding the public education system in favour of giving parent a $5000 tax break to help fund their childs education while it has been proven that home schooled children far exceed their public school counterparts in almost every subject, eliminating funding to the public schools will make the next generation of americans even stupidier than the current

[Al B. Fuct]

I can understand why Paul wasn't heavily covered in Aus media... MOST Australians ('cept me) won't be casting a vote for US president. Not exactly huge public interest here. US politics in general are fairly irrelevant to Australians, until they start sucking Aus into their wars.

 

And if the Paul guy's a creationist who wants to destroy public education, I don't give a motherless fuck if he promises to give away free, legal buds by the bale. He's a right-wing nutjob moron and doesn't have any business on so much as a tour of the White House, much less occupying it. We already HAVE one creationist who wants to destroy public education in that joint we're tryin' to get rid of!

[torture]

I think you will find that no matter of his religion or beliefs, he genuinely believes in the constitution and that the STATES should have the last say of whats taught in schools. He doesn't want to destroy education, he just doesn't want the federal government involved. His whole message is pretty much about taking all the power from the federal government and giving it back to the states where it belongs.

 

Now for you guys to miss this point makes me laugh. I really think he couldn't give two shits about what your taught or what you want to put in your bodies. He just wants the constitution followed. Freedom of religion is a right over there. It ain't here. In fact we have pretty much no rights in Australia.

 

At the end of the day it comes down to one thing really.... freedom of choice.

 

A couple of links I've come across for anyone interested in Australia's constitution:

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~hubbca/aust_govt.htm

http://www.rightsandwrong.com.au/index.html

[Al B. Fuct]

I didn't miss a thing, torture.

 

School vouchers ARE all about destroying public education. The state doesn't have as much curricular control over home and parochial schooling, leading to generally poorer educational outcomes, inclusive of limitations in socialisation and education about social and civil responsibility. When you take kids out of the public schools and hand the money to any old schmoe who wants to run a school, you're reducing the amount of funding to public schools. This has massive detrimental effects on both the schools and the kids. In the USA, there's a traditional separation between church and state, meaning voucher systems which pay parochial schools are in violation of that separation.

 

Mandatory, free, public primary and secondary education is what gives you the literacy levels you see in the US and Aus. Destroy the free public schools and watch literacy rates drop like a rock.

 

Sometimes state and other local boards of education make lousy decisions, too, in case you have forgotten Daisy Bates and the Little Rock 9 in 1957, where assistance of the feds (read: the US Army) was required to even get black students in the front door. Having some measure of federal influence in schools is a good thing. However, it would NOT be a good thing if the feds were in total control of primary and secondary curriculae.

 

You don't have to go back to 1957 to find examples of bad state-level school board decisions, either. Remember the Kansas state board's 2005 decision to include utter superstitious crap about 'Intelligent Design' in high school science curriculae?

 

School vouchers and 'charter' schools are failed policies before they even get out of the planning stages.

 

If I sound like a public school teacher, there may be some reason for that. It's one of the things on my CV.

[pipeman]

You claim that home schooling leads to poorer literacy rates? bullshit IMO. Literacy is very easy to teach most children, it requires little more than the presence of someone willing to teach. And I don't necessarily think the "socialisation" experience of most school environments is a positive one for a lot of kids.

 

Two of the most intelligent and well adjusted kids I know have/are being homeschooled.