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Lothar121

A Time For Patriots to Rebel
John Calvin Webster | North County Times | 12/15/2005

San Diego, CA -- Today is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. In a legendary act of defiance, Massachusetts patriots donned feathers, blankets and face paint, and boarded a cargo ship in Boston Harbor loaded with 342 trunks of dried and processed leaves from the Camellia sinensus plant ---- British East India tea. In an act of defiance that was repeated in five other ports, they dumped the entire shipment into the harbor and helped spawn the revolution that founded our nation.

The tea parties were political protests, symbolic gestures against a British-imposed tax on tea and the tyranny of a distant government.

Two hundred thirty-two years later, folks living in the "Land of the Free" are still struggling with the tyranny of government controls, and once again a plant is at the center of the controversy. This time the plant is marijuana, and specifically its medicinal use. In 1996 our state's voters had their own "California-style" tea party. They passed Proposition 215, which threw federal marijuana laws overboard. The message that the federal ban on medicinal marijuana was unacceptable could not have been clearer.

However, San Diego County supervisors, who appear to be living on the other side of an ocean of public sentiment, elected last week to defy the will of their constituents, and are seeking to have Prop. 215 overturned by suing the state. Their position is that federal laws banning all use of marijuana are correct and supersede state law, and that allowing sick and dying patients to follow state law and use marijuana with a doctor's recommendation sends the wrong message to children.

Witch hunts like this don't protect children, they burn lives. It's a vicious way to practice one's ideology ---- evasive, cruel and vindictive.

The supervisors' decision to sue the state is based on irrational fears, political expediency and the faulty intelligence from a War on Drugs that America has waged against itself for more than 30 years. A war that we lost long ago.

Think I'm wrong? Watch the news this evening and count the drug ads. From toe fungus to erectile dysfunction, there isn't a problem that can't be solved by drugs. And it's not just on TV, it is everywhere we turn. We are bombarded with drug sales pitches day in and day out.

It is hard to imagine that America will ever be a drug-free society when one in 14 Americans is on anti-depressants and the hottest new job for college grads this year is a career as a pharmacist. Pharmaceutical companies are even hiring cheerleaders to push their products.

Drug manufacturers are major lobbyists and big political donors too. My congressman, Darrell Issa, doesn't want to talk about fixing the federal anti-marijuana laws, he wants to run seminars to explain the cornucopia of new Medicare drug plans available.

And then there are the true gateway drugs, alcohol and tobacco. In spite of limits on advertising, these two commodities are still heavily promoted to young adults. Between the Viagra and bikini-clad babes in beer ads, life looks pretty good on drugs. What message are our kids getting from all this?

San Diego County can't fix any drug problem by arresting medical marijuana users. The fact is, the supervisors' abstinence-or-else message will never reach the kids they fawn to protect. It will fade into the background noise of the pro-drug pitches that permeate daily life.

Our supervisors need to get on board with their constituents and stop the frivolous suit against Prop. 215. The time has come for citizens to sink the federal ban against medical marijuana ---- just like my ancestors sank the tea tax in 1773.

John Calvin Webster lives in Vista.

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TheNewGuy

So true, people these days can see ad after ad after ad for legal drugs and not think anything of it, but there would be a riot if someone had a pro-medical marijuana ad. This nation is one where the average person doesn't decide whats right and whats wrong for himself, he/she believes something is right or wrong purely dependant on its legality. Shameful.

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"Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power." ~P.J. O'Rourke

Buzzby

There have been pro-medical marijuana ads in print, on billboards, and in/on buses. No riots. There'd be a lot more of them if people would get off their butts, open their wallets, and fund the major pro-legalization organizations.

Advertising is expensive. The feds spend $120,000,000 a year on those stupid TV ads alone. The entire legalization movement subsists on $12,000,000 a year, and most of that comes from two billionaire contributors. More money would mean ad campaigns to counter those of the ONDCP and the ability to affect representation in Congress by lobbying our legislators (and contributing to the campaigns of those on our side).

National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)

Marijuana Policy Project (MPP)

Drug Policy Alliance (DPA)

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sammysamurai

buzzby, do you think the legalization effort has failed for so long because smoking cannabis makes people chilled out on their butts, with empty wallets, and completely un-aware of what they can do to help the legalization effort?

urania3

Are you suggesting marijuana makes people lazy, poor, and stupid?

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sammysamurai

not necesarily, but our laws do seem to allow a person like that access to cannabis

Higher Logic

That's a horrible correlation if I've ever heard one. Most people just don't care, that's why. They have no problem getting marijuana, and they have no problem paying the money for it (which is more than gold in terms of weight). People don't pay $300/ounce when they're poor either...you have to have some kind of money to be able to afford quality marijuana.

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Buzzby

The person you describe is a drug abuser, not a typical marijuana user. Yes, there are a small number of losers who fall into marijuana and completely neglect every other aspect of life. They are a tiny minority of the estimated 14,000,000 - 27,000,000 marijuana users in the United States.

I wouldn't say that the legalization effort has failed. We see progress all the time. The progress would be much much faster in coming if the movement had more resources with which to work. As HL said, people who can afford to drop $300 on an ounce of weed can afford to send $25 a year to NORML, MPP, and/or DPA. I'm retired and living off a very small fixed income, but I still manage to send NORML and MPP $10 each every month. For a year, that's less than the cost of an ounce of decent weed.

Why don't marijuana users contribute to the legalization movement? They're in denial. The bust always comes down on "someone else", just like with cigarette smokers and cancer. When they become one of the 700,000 marijuana users who get busted every year the story changes, but by then they're spending thousands of dollars on lawyers and fines so they can't afford to send $25 to NORML.

Besides being the right thing to do, supporting the marijuana legalization movement is a form of insurance: it costs a lot less to support legalization now than to pay the lawyers later.

killer12382

You're right....the legalization process hsn't failed, its just glacial. Oh I'm sure marijuana will be legal sometime in the distant future history. All kinds of other things will happen first.
Mankind will cure all forms of cancer.
Mankind will travel to the stars.
The lost city of Atlantis will be dicovered.
Computers will have human like personalities (they will be the ones to convince society to legalize marijuana).

troublemaker_42

LOL....yet another ray of optimistic sunshine from Killer, I see