Quote from Virtuoso:
Mav,
The depths of your ignorance and your amazing way of spinning, ducking, weaving and talking out of the side of your mouth has rendered me completely speechless. I have nothing more to say to you other than if this trading thing doesn't work out for you then you should most def go into politix, sadly your exactly the type of didlo that thrives in that arena.
Hey hey hey! Calm down. Maverick has a point. I know plenty of people who smoke in moderation. In fact, I don't smoke, but if I go out drinking, I might have one or two cigarettes. This doesn't cause me to go out and buy a pack and start a habit, though.
When it comes to weed, I can't think of one person in my life who hasn't tried it at least once. I know plenty of people who do it somewhat regularly, including people who are productive.
It really amazes me how our government can spend millions and millions of dollars on an anti-drug campaign targeting weed, yet they just let the tobacco industry have at it. Well, it doesn't amaze me because the all-mighty dollar is behind it.
Instead of paying $50 for an eighth, they could legalize it, sell it in a controlled fashion like they do cigarettes, and collect an amazing amount of taxes from it.
Have you seen some of the pathetic PSA (public service announcements) our government has done for weed? They made one commercial that portrayed weed as a date-rape drug where the woman can't say no because she's too high. Give me a break! If you want to go down *that* road, then surely alcohol has been used in that fashion much more effectively since the Greek civilization.
The war on drugs is bullshit. You have an act of government criminalizing a substance that naturally causes that substance's price to increase due to supply/demand. Since that substance now costs much more, it is harder to obtain and guess what -- crime increases! So now we have more crime!
The government is under the mistaken idea that by legalizing soft-drugs, that everyone is suddenly going to run out, get high and sit around all day eating cheesie-puffs while watching simpson re-runs. It doesn't quite work like that. cigarettes are legal, but does everyone smoke them? Alcohol is legal, but is everyone getting drunk all the time?
The biggest problem with the drug war is simply put like this -- the government doesn't trust you to make responsible decisions and therefore makes the decisions for you.
I don't think there is anything morally reprehensible when someone on a Friday night decides to smoke a bowl. In fact, if you're in the privacy of your own house and you aren't affecting anyone else's life, you should be able to pop any pill under the sun or smoke any kind of weed, plant, shroom your heart desires because it is *your* life.
There are a growing number of people who want weed legalized and it is not because they are pot-heads. Simply, it is because the more intelligent people realize that the amount of money we piss away in our current system chasing users is a complete waste.
I don't have any cold hard facts and I hate to make numbers up, but I easily bet that over 10% of our prison population could be released right now without any severe consequence to our society because they were simply non-violent offenders that got caught up in a bullshit war to help make our streets safer from people high on weed in search of cheesie-puffs.