Laurel,

The fact that alcohol and marijuana are both drugs is what complicates the issue.  Most people just keep their drug use simple and stick to marijuana, but it is becoming more and more a gateway drug.  I don’t know if banning something makes it more enticing or not.  People liked to drink, man evolved from early times with some kind of fermented brew that was imbibed, so they had the habit and wanted to continue it.  I grew up in the 60’s and certainly had my share of fun, but I saw many of my friends that got paranoid when they smoked weed.  My husband didn’t smoke it because it always made him anxious.  So it affects many people in different ways.  I have a friend that has smoked for the last 40 years.  I don’t judge him, but he isn’t a very productive person.  He was obese for a long time, cut back his weed use to lose weight, but said he couldn’t get off of it and doesn’t try anymore.  It is his life, he can do whatever he wants to.  He has a right to choose what he wants to do with his body. 

I believe people have a right to choose and make decisions about their own lives, but many meth users were weed users first, and meth is a scourge and is destroying families and children in those families.   They are starved and neglected for their parent’s habits.  They steal to keep using.  Look what happened in the Netherlands, crime increased dramatically in those towns with the marijuana cafes.  

Some people are responsible users as my friend is, but his doctors want him off the stuff because what it is doing to his lungs and arteries.  He doesn’t like to drink or eat it, so habit wins out.

Isn’t the type of hemp that is smoked a different type of hemp that is used in other products?  There are several varieties of the plant.  I would agree that other products should be made out of it.  Why not?  It would also be a great alternative fuel.

As for politically incorrect?   Ask the Hispanics south of the border how many family members or members of their government, police force, special agents, soldiers etc, have gotten killed so that the flow of marijuana to the US and Canada does not stop?  Hispanics die so America can get high?  It is a $60 billion dollar industry in the US that the cartels control.  I live in California and have been going to Yosemite for 30 years and now those forests are riddled with Mexican drug cartel operations to supply America’s habit.  They bring workers in - and if they leave are hunted down and disposed of so that they don’t reveal where the growing sites are.  

Isn’t it politically incorrect to ostensibly fund corruption in another country?  If Americans did not keep the drug lords so rich which supplies them with the cash to bribe government officials and essentially create a narco-state within Mexico.  This resulting in a government unable to help the poorest of their population, reducing them to have to leave their families to come to the US just to get work to be able to feed their children?  Isn’t that politically incorrect?  I ask the question because when someone wants to light up do they ever consider the unintended consequences of getting high?  Do they really need to get high?  How important is it really?  More important than the lives of all people that have been killed over it?

If someone could prove to me that the Cartels would be "legal" and could be taxed - and taxed richly because of the health and social problems that drugs create, then I would go for it.  But after watching 60 MInutes the other night and seeing that our government can’t even control Medicare Fraud - even after it was reported for 6 years - it leads me to believe that they will not have much control over the cartels.

If you can guarantee that no Hispanics will die so others can get high, then I will retract my statement about political correctness.

Let me ask you - has it ever occurred to you that if all the weed smokers boycotted it for a month or two in an effort to stop the drug lords, wouldn’t that make it a little easier to get it legalized?  The smokers can control the cartels - all they have to do is stop.  But they don’t - or is it that they can’t?  Would it help Mexico be able to clean up it’s corruption enough to putting the money towards building industry so that their citizens have jobs?

I know.  It made me laugh as well, knowing her aunt who was very conservative and particular about all of her arrangements.

F P

I am with you.  Cremation is the only thing that makes sense to me.  I mean, like I am going to know?  

The funny thing about cremation is they put more than one body in at a time  and they divide the ashes up in equal amounts, so the family doesn’t really know who they got.  You could get some odd character’s ashes and think they were you family member’s.  My cousin in Nevada found out that two prostitutes had been cremated at the same time as her aunt. Oh well.   

Yes Sibelle

I have done a little research because many times when I post the way I see this issue I get challenged that it is not harmful for you.  It is usually by someone who then goes on to defend what a great thing marijuana use is.  It always amazes me how politically incorrect it is to smoke marijuana for so many reasons, especially that it is destroying Mexicans, but the smoking crowd is just too far removed from seeing all the unintended consequences of imbibing.  Alcohol is a dangerous drug as well but it is legal so it just complicates the issue.  

I guess people have a right to do what they want with their body, but I think one of the big arguments going on within the healthcare debate is lifestyle choices and how it affects the cost of medicine.  So if smoking, drinking, using hard drugs, overeating and lack of exercise cause health problems wouldn’t smoking dope do the same?  If we legalize it are we agreeing to pay the costs for healthcare that it will incur?

Thanks Sibelle

I just think that no one asks the intelligent common sense questions anymore.   It is just ideology based on more ideology.  It is obvious the entitlement headset from the politically correct quadrant of our society has driven this issue.  I used to be among them thinking just legalize it and everything will be better.  I am not so sure anymore.  I have posted before that I believed prostitution should be legal to take it out of the hand of men and let the women run their own businesses.  I viewed it as a "pro choice" issue that a woman has the right to choose what to do with her body, but I think many of the reasons young women go into prostitution is to support drug addiction.  So what is the answer?

Andy

Speaking from experience, marijuana does help relieve the nausea of chemotherapy.  I think legalization will not solve the health issues that marijuana causes down the road from constant use.  Some of the chemicals in it are toxic and will it be another area that raises taxes in order to pay for those who decided to use instead of live clean? 

Cigarettes and alcohol have been legal for a long time but the mafia continues to undermine that market by stealing shipments and then selling it cheaper.  The drug cartels are big business in Mexico and are protected by many corrupt government officials, they already have a firmly established foothold in the US and Canada, they will just figure out a way to sell it cheaper.  I don’t think they are that willing to give up their control of the market.  

Several "pot clinics" have opened up in Los Angeles, there are so many it is troubling the authorities because there are not that many legal growers - legal meaning government regulated, so where is the marijuana coming from?  They know it is coming from the cartels.  So it seems to me there is a big disconnect.

It has always been my contention that if Americans stopped getting high so much and making the drug lords prosperous, Mexico would have a better economy and the government would put more resources towards their people.  Mexican citizens that have to leave their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, husbands and children to come to America to find work.  If the Mexican government weren’t laced with corrupt officials that are in the pocket of the drug lords it might be a very different world.

As for the Netherlands, they have had a tremendous problem with their pot cafes.  Since drugs are illegal in the surrounding countries many of the addicts as well as casual users come to the "legal towns" to imbibe.  When they run out of money, they steal and turn to prostitution.  Many are homeless which is another unhappy situation for all, the users and the residents.  The cities that have hosted the drug cafes have closed many of them and have requested that those drug businesses move closer to the border to keep crime at a minimum in their areas, because it was decreasing traffic to their non-drug businesses and some were having to close down.  

There have been several articles written in international newspapers on the subject.  It seems to me the experiment didn’t work.  In our border towns were the cartels operate crime is up as well as kidnappings for ransom.  This has also been in the news lately.  

I used to believe that legalization was a good idea, but, as many of my friends have told me who had trouble getting off of it, it was addicting to them, and they laugh at anyone who says it isn’t.  The chemicals that are used on the plants in the form of pesticides and other things used in the processing are not too healthy and will cause a health risk down the road.

At one time I looked up the statistics of people who were dying from drug overdoses  or drug related diseases, and it surprised me to learn that the highest rate of mortality was ages 45 and above.  Drugs wear the lungs and liver down - so if they are legalized - in the long run will it further run up the cost of health care in the country?  I think there are more questions to be asked before we take on more.

Mr. Wow

It sounds like a lot of people on here watch Beck.  I read his viewers are increasing.  Why would the opposition watch?  The more numbers he gets, the longer he stays on.  I don’t get that.  Even if he has 5 million viewers - there are still 300 million people that don’t watch him.  Ever since the WH has gone after Fox News, more people are watching.  Silly. 

camb

I am all for volunteerism and I am grateful that the administration is encouraging it, but when I checked out some of the sites to do something they were all backed by the 6 groups that have the 8:45 am call into the WH in order to press their agendas.  Then - going to a questionaire you have to give them all sorts of info, and you can sign up to be paid by funds from the stimulus package, but you then work for like moveon.org, Center for American Progress, other George Soros groups, so the money funnels through them - they get paid and then the volunteers get paid.  So I don’t think it is volunteerism so much as ways to expand the base with money we have borrowed from China and possibly Saudi Arabia that we will be in hock to for the rest of our lives.  Volunteerism or indentured servitude? 

Mr. Wow

Great article, I agree with you on many points.  I kind of turned Rachel off because she got so snarky.  I thought she was belittling herself and if MSNBC was pushing for that to gain the 20-30 something snark audience - I felt it was a stupid move. I never saw her on Olbermann because I tired of him long ago, but I used to watch her on Tucker Carlson and I liked her very much, I didn’t agree with some of her thinking, but she always held her own with Tucker and could "turn" the focus on issues that were being overlooked.  She was intelligent and well informed so I was impressed.  As I said, I don’t always agree with the line of thinking, but she wasn’t snarky on that show and made great sense about certain issues.

After your article, I will give her another try.  I have recently turned most of it off.  I watch Greta Van Susteran occasionally, Whoopi was on the other night and it was a great conversation, I wish Greta would get more women legislators on her show from both sides of the aisle, and not have so many republican men on.  A few months back Greta had Rosie O’Donnell and a legislator from Louisiana on her show who had formed a group to help at risk kids.  Politics in Washington are fodder for the cable shows, but I like it when they get down with the "real" people and what we are doing.  It seems like the disconnect is getting wider and wider between Washington and the peeps.  Such a shame and it is pitiful.

The best thing that the cosmetic companies can do is to stop using chemicals that end up in the environment that are carcinogenic.  It is not always the product, but the byproduct in production if cosmetics that is the culprit.  Many companies have changed their ways, and I hope Estee Lauder is one of them, but many have not.  There is a lot of pollution generated in the production of cosmetics, so for me, the really "advanced" companies are the ones that direct their research and development to prevent harm to women.  Donating money after women have breast cancer is wonderful, but why not prevent breast cancer right from the start.

My favorite perfume is Spellbound by Estee Lauder.  I always get compliments when I wear it, so I hope they are in the forefront of running a "clean environment" company.