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Marijuana should remain illegal
Letter to the Editor | The Miami Herald | 8/28/2005

Re the Aug. 23 Readers' Forum letter Legalize marijuana, about Randy Moss' arrest: It's outrageous that so many people continue to see marijuana use as harmless. To dismiss a professional athlete's use of marijuana is equally disturbing.

How many children and young adults look up to these personalities and find justification for the use of marijuana?

Explain why my neighborhood has had no less than six illegal hydroponics labs busted in less than three years. Explain why I should not worry when my children ride their bikes down the same streets on which ''law-abiding, productive and taxpaying adults'' stop to buy bags of dope from these homes? Explain to my family why we should rush out and legalize this drug. Explain this to the law-enforcement officers who battle violent drug gangs who sell the illicit drug on the street corners, in neighborhoods and around our schools; or to the family of Enrique ''Kiki'' Camarena, the undercover DEA agent killed by Mexican drug cartels whose major export to this nation was marijuana.

Laws against marijuana are not an infringement on freedom. They are a matter of law and common sense. The marijuana trade is brutal. Marijuana contributes to violence, dwindling property values and a criminal influence in our neighborhoods. These sound like great reasons to educate our children and keep marijuana illegal.

--Joseph Mosca

__________________
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
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SacredJellybean

Boy, for such a proponent of common sense, Mr. Mosca here sure doesn't practice it.


Because marijuana is illegal.

Because marijuana is illegal.

If marijuana weren't illegal, its trade would be handled by nonviolent corporations, not organized crime looking for financial gain! If it were regulated and taxed by honest merchants, then it wouldn't be sold around schools and the children that you seek to protect so dearly!

Because marijuana is illegal.

Because marijuana is illegal. Noticing a pattern yet, Mr. Mosca? Try coming up with REAL arguments to keep marijuana illegal, other than harms associated with the fact that it's already illegal. Try using logic, instead of appealing to people's emotions.

Really? To me, all of this is just more reason to legalize an otherwise relatively harmless plant.

__________________
"Every age has its peculiar folly and if Charles Mackay, the author of the 19th century classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds were alive today he would surely see 'cannabinophobia' as a popular delusion along with the 'tulipmania' and 'witch hunts' of earlier ages. ... I also believe that future historians will look at this epoch and recognize it as another instance of the 'madness of crowds.'"
~Dr. Lester Grinspoon

Lothar121

It's not that many of us see it as harmless, we should see it for what it is. It is less harmful than alcohol, tobacco, or other illegal drugs. Yes, we should recognize that marijuana is harmful, but it's the degree of harm that it causes that many people are referring to when they say marijuana is "harmless". It should be implicit that they mean it is "relatively harmless". This is not mentioning for some patients, marijuana is actually beneficial.

Sure I can explain why there are hydroponics labs in your neighborhood. It's called prohibition, a public policy we have in place that pushes the market for marijuana underground. The reasoning they exist even when it is illegal is because a huge demand for marijuana exists and is not going away. Your children would not have to see that if you would allow a regulated product under guidelines like the Nevada initiative. All of those law enforcement agents were killed over the violence that prohibition breaths into the environment, not because of marijuana. According to British government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and the Canadian Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, unlike alcohol, marijuana use is not generally a cause of violence or aggressive behavior and in fact tends to reduce violence and aggression. You are associating the marijuana with the violence, but there is no causal relationship between the two. Your anger should be directed towards the policy, not the plant material.

No prohibiton defies common sense on so many levels. The marijuana trade is only brutal with violence and the like because it is an illegal trade without any ability to settle conflicts in the court of law, instead resorting to brute force. A legal marijuana market would be peaceful consumers buying their products from a licensed vendor, most likely in a zoned area of a city. Why is it illegal? Because people like you want this violence to exist for no good reason. By educate do you mean brainwash? Honestly, this was one of the worst letters I have read in a while. Essentially he is saying, "hey all this violence and drug peddling right now is horrible, so because of that let's just keep marijuana illegal so this can continue" I wish I could have a conversation with this person and ask them how they got the nerve to use the word "sense" in such an emotional and ill-thought out letter.

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reggie_the_dog

At one point in the article the guy suggests that it is wrong to look to a cannabis user as a role model. Well, my father was a cannabis smoker when I was a kid, I looked up to him. He set an allright example. He always managed to find a job as a mechanic, he is a union representative, he was respectful to his wife (my mother) and he spent a lot of time with me and my brother and sister.

RL in IL

I can feel the sentiment about wanting to be safe and living in safe neighborhoods where one can trust their children are safe to go out and bike ride and have fun, without having to live in such fear.

I agree, though, that the degree of illegality/prohibition contributes to the menace spoken of.. but I am not totally sure.

The answer to all the concerns and to create the best atmosphere at this point in time may be to keep marijuana (the "drug" portion) illegal to buy, sell, and advertise for any commercial purpose, yet allow it to be possessed, grown and used for private non-public use under certain conditions. I'd like to see how that would work out. Would anyone accept this proposal if it was put up for a vote where they live? Or would you be stubborn and demand more.


When you get down to the nitty gritty details, is it all possible to peaceably allow it? I'm suggesting taking the commerce out of it so that any profitability in manufacturing it is nullified.

Would that upset a balance of above ground and underground activities?

 

BC.Buddy

That's basically decriminalization. Decriminilization doesn't really solve anything, besides us putting away so many people for possession. The black market might still exist. This is because not every marijuana user is going to grow their own, so someone's going to have to do it for them. If it's not legal for commercial distribution, that would be illegal cultivators.

I completely agree with the prohibition of advertising for the drug in a legalized, regulated distribution system. I don't like the advertising that's going on with alcohol and I think it should follow suit with the tobacco industry or greater.

Well, Canada's parliament is going to be looking into decriminalization very soon here (fall), and we'll see what happens. I'll tell you though, that both sides of the marijuana policy debate, generally, both oppose decriminalization and would rather have one of the two extremes.

Maybe this is because no one wants to compromise? I don't think so.

There are a lot of arguments against decriminalization from both sides.

I'm not sure, time will tell I suppose. But there's gotta be someone making money off of it. Whether that be organized crime, or organized government. Either way, someone will be making the money from it.

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lilgrasshoppah

sure. Okay.

I am quite certain, if you sat him down, and carefully explained all of the truths we hold self evident... you would get no where. You would succeed in giving yourself a migraine, and possibly a dent in your brick wall. But a moron of this magnitude is unreachable.

STOP PANDERING TO THE IDIOT BLATHERINGS OF MORONS!

__________________
I got soul, But i'm not a soldier - The Killers

BC.Buddy

Who are you talking about?

lilgrasshoppah

the simpletons who have hindered freedom since 1937. You aren't going to convince a guy who'a reward for "fighting drugs" is a pint of Guinness of the truth... or this simp, either.


I don't get sacrificing our brothers to people who won't understand, appreciate, or even make use of the sacrifice.

The asshole actually used the phrase "hydroponics labs"

I mean, jesus, how indoctrinated can a person be!!!? You don't GARDEN in a lab, you nitwit!!!

king cola

"Explain why my neighborhood has had no less than six illegal hydroponics labs busted in less than three years. Explain why I should not worry when my children ride their bikes down the same streets on which ''law-abiding, productive and taxpaying adults'' stop to buy bags of dope from these homes? Explain to my family why we should rush out and legalize this drug. Explain this to the law-enforcement officers who battle violent drug gangs who sell the illicit drug on the street corners, in neighborhoods and around our schools; or to the family of Enrique ''Kiki'' Camarena, the undercover DEA agent killed by Mexican drug cartels whose major export to this nation was marijuana."

I will explain for this guy in order as best as i can.

1.The prohibition of marijuana is no different than the prohibition of alcohol in which people were brewing it in their basements to make a profit. Until it's regulated people will get their pot elsewhere instead of in a store.

2. The kids aren't exactly in danger by riding their bikes down the street and someone is inside a house making a purchase, the only thing to worry about is the fact that prohibition does create violence from time to time but not every drug dealer or customer carries a gun, no matter how much of the substance they might have in their possession.

3. That is exactly why we should rush to legalize pot.

4. I will explain to the law enforcement agents that prohibition is causing the violence, they mention cartels in this article. Cartels are big drug suppliers who obviously don't f*ck around when you talk of major shippments of a product and millions and millions of dollars at stake. During exportation they don't want anything to go wrong, it's an illegal buisness. The amount of marijuana that gets smuggled into this country, not to mention the amount of people in this country who grow it themselves proves that there are too many people that like to use marijuana. If marijuana became legalized the value of the product decreases because people no longer have to look for it from certain people, the government would be in control. I'm sure some people would grow it themselves rather than pay the tax dollars but that's beside the point, they still wouldn't be able to make a living selling it because again, it would be legal and the prices would drop rapidly.

5. You have gangs and violence, some gangs fight with other gangs over competition, when theres a lot of money to be made they don't want anyone else cutting in on their buisness. Prohibition creates money, large amounts of money, that then leads to corrutpion along with violence.

6. Again remember alcohol prohibition, gangs were involved in that trade until it became legalized, but before that there was alcohol being shipped in from Canada, much like how today with marijuana it gets shipped in from Mexico or Canada, but even with alcohol, it wasn't always smuggled in, people brewed it themselves, as for marijuana, some people grow it themselves. If people can't see through any of this then i don't know, it's not hard to figure out, everything stopped after legalization. It didn't stop entirely though, unlike marijuana i've seen people get drunk off alcohol and get into fights, i've seen those same people smoke pot and not get into any fights at all.

7. In conclusion legalization is the only way those problems will be solved. Legalization of marijuana would also allow people to have clean marijuana, there would be no worries, someday when your kids get older and if they decide to try it, they might get a bad batch, you can say well they shouldn't smoke pot anyway! Do you know how many parents say that and how many teens don't listen? My parents generation didn't listen and i sure as hell am not gonna listen either except when it comes to hard drugs which i stay away from. Pot is there, i've smoked it, and so will millions of others. People running our country or who have run it before have smoked it in the past too. I trust something that grows in the dirt over something the pharmacutical makes in a lab which has killed more American citizens than marijuana ever will, because non laced pot has to this day killed zero people.