Journal mcgrew's Journal: Legalize Marijuana! 16
I just got a text from my daughter Patty that says CNN is polling (or trolling) for legalization of pot. She doesn't smoke it, but she knows I do and she, like many nonsmokers, think its illegality is incredibly stupid. She writes:
Please vote 2 legalize marijuana. On CNN today, Obama will consider w/ 1 million votes. Call 973-409-3274 listen and press #. Pass it on!
I clicked on the number (not noticing it's a 900 number, but nobody at the number said anything about a cost, and I'm on a prepaid no-minutes Boost Mobile phone).
A woman's voice came on and explained how bad our economy is, how expensive tying up police and courts to catch dopers, growers, and dealers is, that we could tax it like alcohol and cigarettes, and that we would save n billion dollars by $date (I don't remember the dollar figures but I did remember it was billions), and if a million people press # it will be presented to President Obama.
Of course, being fond of doobage since 1971 I pressed it, but when Obama had his first online "town hall meeting" about the economy most of the responses were along the lines of "legalize and tax pot", and Obama attributed it to pranksters.
Plus, the President doesn't write or repeal laws, he enforces them.
Should I be hopeful? We went through this in the 1970s when pot was going to be legal "any day now", right before Reagan's war on drug. They said "drugs" but it was only one drug -- marijuana. Reagan was trying to wage a war in South America that Congress had stopped funds for, and speculation (tinfoil conspiracies) was that he was funding this war with cocaine sales. Black militants wearing tinfoil speculated that he wanted to decimate the black population with cocaine; there certainly was a lot of it. I distinctly remember it being dry -- I'd go to my dope dealer looking for weed. All of them would say "Man, there ain't none, it's dry. Want some coke?"
Crack came about shortly later.
Anyway, I encourage you to call and vote. And pass it on to your friends. It probably won't amount to anything, but it sure as hell won't hurt.
loving it (Score:1, Interesting)
a 900 number that makes you listen to someone tell you what you already know before they let you "vote"
profit!
of course O has to say it was pranksters, otherwise the liquor lobby or the company that makes oxycodone or any other one of many would have him whacked
same old same old
if it was legal, the only traffic would be in seeds, (unless it was taxed) and then:
no profit!
at least a bootlegger can be caught as they buy sugar or other large volumes to make small volumes of high taxable value
sorry, pot will nev
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As bigstrat2003 pointed out, and I surmised, it isn't a "pay to call" number. I'd guessed that since I doubt I could call a 900 number from my phone, as it's a pre-paid no minutes plan with no way for them to collect the 900 fee.
if it was legal, the only traffic would be in seeds, (unless it was taxed) and then no profit!
Lots of people grow tomatos; I won't buy those cardboard store bought tomatos. But there is still lots of profit selling tomatos in the grocery store, even in the summer when tomatos are u
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Good points. I hope it does get to be legal, whenever I am not feeling hopeless. I guess I feel hopeless about this because I was there at the time when NORML came into being, and that was pretty long ago. So, I have to ask myself, why?
I have made my own beer, and I do mostly buy it. Have enjoyed many a garden grown tomato, and also eaten the red spheres you can buy in the grocery store.
I suppose we can get to a state where Panama Red has a tax stamp sticker on the pack, and my neighbor has a plant in th
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The problem I see with the current arrangement is that it doesn't solve the larger problem of criminal involvement in drug dealing. Distribution, regardless of quantity, is still criminal, and ultimately money still flows to crime syndicates. Legal use deserves a legal market.
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Agred. As alcohol prohibition showed, prohibition causes far worse problems than any prohibited substance, so you're right -- decriminalization is better than criminalization, but the best thing would be to legalize and tax it and sell it where alcohol and tobacco are sold now.
Another drawback of criminalization is that you can't regulate an illegal product. The regulations of alcohol and tobacco seem to be working well.
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Not a 900 number (Score:3, Informative)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_code_973 [wikipedia.org]
973 is somewhere in New Jersey.
There ARE area codes that are not 900 that you can get dinged for, like Canada or the Dominican Republic [att.com], mostly for international call costs.
Yo! (Score:2, Insightful)
Roll it, lite it, pass it around! (Score:1)
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And I dunno, couldn't this be some sort of sting-like op?
Doubtful, for several reasons, the best one being you don't have to smoke pot to want it legalized, you simply have to not be an idiot. Having the number come from CNN makes me think it's not a sting; what would they have to gain? And in any case, many dopers and most dealers use prepaid phones like Net-10 so they can't be traced at any rate. And it would be a tiny payoff cor the cops at huge expense.
There are way too many people sitting rotting in pr
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Well, sure, smoke is going to irritate the lungs, but in pot's case that may actually be beneficial. There was a study last year that looked at boomers, broken into 4 groups: long term cigarette smokers, long ternm pot smokers, people who smoked both long term, and nonsmokers. They were actually trying to prove that pot causes cancer, and thought it did because pot does have carcinogens.
What they found was that cigarette smokers had a high rate of cancers, those who smoked both pot and cigs had a far lower
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Hard to find; I saw it at New Scientist last year, and someone else linked from a regular newspaper. Here's one I found Googling; it's a Fox reprint of a WebMD article [foxnews.com]. This appears to be a different study than the one I saw at New Scientist and Boston Globe, but the results are the same.
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