Groups Lobbying To Keep Marijuana Illegal

[hilbert]

The Top Five Special Interest Groups Lobbying To Keep Marijuana Illegal | AlterNet

 

[whitehall]

I bet the PTA isn't too crazy about an army of pot-heads selling drugs to their kids either. The dirty little secret is that marijuana is a weed. You can get a couple of seeds and grow it in your basement or your porch and suck the smoke until your brain explodes in the privacy of your own home but that ain't what they want. The so-called alternate-culture is just a bunch of good old capitalists like Wall Street bankers. They want to make a buck by selling the stuff to your kids. It ain't the nicotine in cigarettes that kills you, it's all the other stuff contained in the smoke you inhale into your lungs. If you think inhaling the smoke from burning weeds is healthy you need to put down the joint for a while.

 

[Wry Catcher]

I bet the PTA isn't too crazy about an army of pot-heads selling drugs to their kids either. The dirty little secret is that marijuana is a weed. You can get a couple of seeds and grow it in your basement or your porch and suck the smoke until your brain explodes in the privacy of your own home but that ain't what they want. The so-called alternate-culture is just a bunch of good old capitalists like Wall Street bankers. They want to make a buck by selling the stuff to your kids. It ain't the nicotine in cigarettes that kills you, it's all the other stuff contained in the smoke you inhale into your lungs. If you think inhaling the smoke from burning weeds is healthy you need to put down the joint for a while.

You're absolutely correct, anyone can grow MJ. However, making beer, wine or ethanol is not so easy and only the industry can produce benzodiazpines (i.e. Xanax, Valium, Ativan) and other psychoactive drugs.

Prohibition never works; it creates a black market, organized criminal activity and makes the activity prohibited attractive to the curious. In the case of MJ a multi- billion dollar industry exists depriving government of tax revenue, producing a product which cannot be controlled - as is alcohol and Rx medicines - and costs government at all levels for enforcement, prosecution, and incarceration for the non violent offender.

Inhaling anything other than pure air is suspect and usually not healthful. Yet, people continue to use tobacco without fear of arrest or (it seems) considering the inevitable health crisis (unless they are lucky enough to be killed by some other means).

Ask any cop if s/he would rather deal with a drunk or someone high on MJ. The answer will always be MJ. So I doubt police agencies covet government grants over other more serious issues; the DOJ offers RFP's (Auto Theft, Domestic Violence and Child Abuse, Identity Theft and Gang Interventions) issues of greater concern than enforcing MJ laws.

Today people are driving motor vehicles under the influence of alcohol, Rx drugs and MJ. To argue the decriminalization of MJ would make our roads less save is ridiculous. People who drive under the influence will continue to do so and use both legal and illegal substances.

Kids use pot. By making it only available via a connection to a criminal enterprise seems stupid. Kids get tobacco products which is regulated as well as alcohol but the kids are not put into the criminal culture by doing so.

 

[Ariux]

You're absolutely correct, anyone can grow MJ. However, making beer, wine or ethanol is not so easy

You've been smoking too much crack. Ethanol can be easily produced by dropping some bread yeast into sugar water, in the privacy of a closet, then distilling it. Everything you need is at the local store, even under the strictest prohibition. But, MJ is a different matter. You can't legally buy the seeds. You have to nurture the plant for months, either outside where it's easily seen, or inside where it'll take expensive equipment and may be otherwise hard to get without raising suspicion if there were ever strict prohibition. Another difference, it's viable to drug test for MJ usage, but not for alcohol usage.

 

[whitehall]

You're absolutely correct, anyone can grow MJ. However, making beer, wine or ethanol is not so easy [/quoted]

You've been smoking too much crack. Ethanol can be easily produced by dropping some bread yeast into sugar water, in the privacy of a closet, then distilling it. Everything you need is at the local store, even under the strictest prohibition. But, MJ is a different matter. You can't legally buy the seeds. You have to nurture the plant for months, either outside where it's easily seen, or inside where it'll take expensive equipment and may be otherwise hard to get without raising suspicion if there were ever strict prohibition. Another difference, it's viable to drug test for MJ usage, but not for alcohol usage.

We need to make the assumption that the people who are promoting the "legal" sale of marijuana already have access to the seeds. The argument that marijuana is difficult to grow doesn't work. They have forests of the stuff growing in California and a standing joke is that marijuana is the state weed of West Virginia which has a harsher climate. Police agencies have scientific ways of spotting groves of marijuana from the air but plants in windowsill boxes are ignored by city police and in rural areas it should be easy to grow a Christmas tree sized plant so that every day is Christmas for a lazy brain deformed nut case pot head. The point is that the counter culture has become mainstream capitalists and they want to sell the stuff openly.