I am of the opinion that the punishment should be about equal to the crime possibly just a bit worse, but when we get to the point of putting people in prison for long sentences for minor MJ offenses I have a problem with that.
The criminal justice system in the US is not too terrible, but they still wrongfully convict people all the time. Especially for low level crimes. Many innocent people take plea deals because they don’t have enough resources to fight the state. I am against the death penalty because we have already executed people, then later went oh shit it looks like they were innocent.
Just a thought. With all this talk we do, no matter what kind or laws we want or what kind of society we want, in the end it simply comes down to forcing will on other people. That’s it! So with all this talk about what we see as progressive or fair but not wanted by others still comes down to force or threat of violence in the end, to varying degrees.
Mao said “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” And it’s true.
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In the case of drugs being illegal someone is forcing will.
In the case of legalization someone is not forcing will. Legalization does not mean everyone has to take them. You are just as free not to use them.
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Actually I believe Brickhead stated he doesn’t mind marijauna being legalised. As to the above quote… We haven’t trialled “less severe” means in the US. In the ACT (the ONE place in Aus considered progressive) we’ve just recently implemented pill testing, the trials came out showcasing it saved a lives… people were more readily willing to throw out their drugs when they knew exactly what was in them… numerous batches had potentially lethal contaminants. We’ve just legalised cannabis in the ACT (sort of… the law is murky)… I suppose we will see what statistics showcase a year or two down the line… within Australian society does a more lenient approach lead to less detriment?
I’d bet my bottom dollar it’s more effective comparative to what we have now.
I don’t know anyone who was hospitalized due to alcohol. Back in high school I knew several people who were messed up from too much acid, a couple had regular flashbacks. Would you want people like that driving cars?
But we aren’t talking about medical uses, opiates are used for medical purposes but are still a problem.
I never said that, it’s not the same thing at all.
It doesn’t even seem like there is a large demand for LSD nowadays, I don’t hear of anyone using it around here, never see anything in the news about cops busting people with it either. You can actually buy it online “legally” here from sites that sell it for supposed research purposes. There are a lot of unapproved or illegal drugs that sell like that, and it doesn’t appear to be a major problem as far as I can tell. But legalizing or decriminalizing drugs is in effect encouraging use because you are telling people that this drug isn’t dangerous and it’s ok to try it out. Weed was already everywhere for a long time and there were illegal weed dispensaries openly operating out of store fronts before it was legalized so there was nothing preventing people from smoking before, if anything it’s harder to get now.
I saw a documentary about this. It was about these half witted criminals in Nova Scotia who are always doing grow ops (they end up in prison a few times during the documentary), eventually they set up a dispensary in the trailer park in which they live.
It’s forcing you to accept and tolerate people around you using drugs. Just like with the gay stuff, before sodomy was illegal and they put people in jail for it, now you can get in all sorts of trouble for discriminating against them. If drugs were all legalized and you found out a guy who applied for a job with your business was an addict you wouldn’t be able to use that as a reason not to hire him.
No it is not. You can still have whatever thoughts you want about them.
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It wasn’t Nova Scotia, and it wasn’t just half witted criminals. All over Ottawa, as well as Toronto and most other cities you had a whole bunch of stores openly advertising and selling weed and related products. There was one around the corner from my house and one beside my work, that one got busted for also selling mushrooms and ecstasy.
Cops busted them now and then, but they opened right back up most of the time and a lot of the owners of those are now getting into the legal weed business. There are still websites that will ship weed, hash,etc. by mail and charge less than the legal stores.
Yeah but you can’t act upon those thoughts or use it against them in any way.
That one was a joke. It was a mockumentary. The Trailer Park Boys. It is actually quite funny IMO. On Netflix too.
I am unsure about Canada, but in the US even in legal states, employers can deny employment based on MJ showing up in a piss test.
Additionally, we get to choose who we associate with. Don’t like them (pot heads, homosexuals, trans) don’t hang with them.
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Yeah, I know that show, I haven’t seen it in about 15 years though so it didn’t come to mind.
It would mean sharing a public space with drug users whether one wants to or not.
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In the US public consumption is illegal.
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That’s fucked up, I don’t like the idea of having to do piss tests for work. There is nowhere that does that here except maybe police or military, no normal jobs.
They recently made new episodes. The original series from ~2000 - 2007 was funnier though.
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Employers in the US are slowly moving away from it. Could be that there is a shortage of workers. I didn’t get drug screened for my current job.
Here you can smoke weed anywhere that you can smoke cigarettes. You could go stand in front of the police station and smoke a joint, they won’t do a thing unless it’s a designated non-smoking area. Oddly enough, I don’t really see any more people smokiing in public now than before it was legal.