âŚchecks to see if this is the Onion.
So, um, who did they find to take the âagainstâ side of this great deal of discussion?
Too high Maureen Dowd? (Who is directly responsible for more deaths than pot could ever hope to be)
This jackass:
Iâm not a partaker, but I think it is about time.
The cost savings from not having to enforce the prohibition may likely eclipse the tax revenue.
The cost savings from the law enforcement perspective will be exponentially greater than the tax revenue. And of course the less important issue of vastly reducing the numbers of people whose lives are destroyed for committing a crime with no victims will also be a good, um, result, as well.
God that is a fucking infuriating article by Brooks. Brooks basically admits that pot did no real harm to him, but that it got old and probably wasnât a great idea. Thus, we should impression millions of Americans, waste billions of dollars, fund criminals, and ruin lives for doing something that he admits he did (as did at least the last 3 US presidents). What a fucking worthless piece of shit. All the prohibitionist are, at best, ignorant shits who have not thought terribly hard on the consequences of prohibition. I can forgive those people for stupidity and/or ignorance. The people that understand the consequences of prohibition and the millions of wasted lives and are still for prohibition though? Those people are sociopathic scum. How you could wish such devastation and destruction on so many people is literally outside of my ability to comprehend.
Personally, if I was Obama, I would nearly suicidal. The idea that a policy action that I am taking could result in so much devastation, especially when I am fucking guilty of that crime, would drive me insane. Lucky(?) for us, politicians apparently come complete with a high functioning social disorder that lets them continue to exist through such contradictions.
Obama is such a colossal disappointment. Better than Romney, but a worthless waste of a human none the less. With a single executive order, no congressional input needed, he could reschedule marijuana to its proper classification. He doesnât because he is a worthless shit. Politics makes me glad I live in a state where my vote is literally worthless.
Ah yes. Dave âHumility 101â Brooks, with his much respected âEh, weed isnât really illegal if you had the good sense to be born as me, also being a pothead keeps you from studying the classics or somethingâ theory. What a guy.
I canât quite tell if itâs myopia indistinguishable from malice, or just plain Lawful Evil that makes him ignore the degree to which ye olde drug war is very much being fought, just against people who arenât him.
How did that guy ever become known as an âintellectualâ?
Her article was a funny thing. A hatchet job so artless that it wasnât even good at being evil. âMaureen Dowd decides to score some drugs while employing a level of common sense that would make it inadvisable for you to purchase even common over the counter drugsââŚ
aka: âNow that weâve fucked the entire world for about a century, wasted billions with the net effect of creating a subculture that is larger and more vibrant than ever, how about we rethink these stupid laws that were brought in without any consideration of harms/benefits and against the advice of the AMA?â
I reiterate my displeasure that the US fucked the entire world over on this issue for a century, and is now high-fiving itself for taking the first steps to fix the madness.
I donât know about you, but I recon the NYTâs new Robot Correspondent seems to be a winner.
Hereâs where you lost me:
⌠sounds like you need to drug to chill you out.
While totally agreeing that the drug war is full of fail, I am concerned that stupid stoners will see the overreaching quote
"Moderate use of marijuana does not appear to pose a risk for otherwise healthy adults. "
And forget this is an op ed not a science column. I think it is plenty obvious that moderate pot use has many risks even beyond being a drug war casualty.
For a moment there, I thought he was talking about booze.
Tens of millions of Americans have been imprisoned over the course of the drug war. The US now has the highest prison population not just per capita, but in terms of raw numbers. Land of the âfreeâ indeed. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a fruitless war. The secondary damage done in terms of funding gangs and wasting impoverished communities is probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, source of inequality in the US.
I am pretty sure now is precisely the time to not chill the fuck out. You should be pissed. The fact that someone can violate this stupid, destructive, and unjust law and rise to be president, and then turn around and brutalize others who have violated that same stupid and unjust law should make any sane person sick. If that massive miscarriage of justice doesnât piss you off, you need to stop smoking whatever it is you are smoking, because any human with an ounce of compassion should be sicked and pissed.
We seem to have a talent for that.
Wonât somebody think of the poor corporations running the private prison system? Without lots of soft inmates, the CEOs are going to struggle to reach their Christmas Bonuses. 
Even a tokinâ lift of the law could be beneficial.
@teapot Apparently the Bangladeshi government was encourage to destroy the nations vast wild hemp growth as part of the War on Drugs. Unfortunately the hemp was holding together the nations natural sea defences. With the hemp gone, the sand dunes blew away, and the result has been decades of cataclysmic flooding, starvation and disease. If only the world was not ruled by gormless psychopaths.
The truly dispiriting thing about watching this whole process unfold during my lifetime, is that all of the necessary evidence to reach this conclusion has been available for the last 50 years.
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We knew that prohibition of a relatively harmless substance would not work because of past experience.
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We knew that we were disproportionately penalizing certain classes (and races) of people.
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We knew that we were enabling and enriching a potentially violent and ruthless class of criminals.
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We knew that we were sowing disrespect for rule of law and government policy.
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We knew that we were wasting money trying to stem a tide that could not be stemmed.
And we did it anyway.
