Cannabis Issues Dominate Obama's "Open for Questions" Website

While I agree, Sputnic, that prison is not the answer, I would ask you why you

a.) Conflate highly addictive opium and cocaine drug abuse with cannabis use.

b.) Believe that “things got cleaned up.”

c.) Believe that keeping the sales of illicit drugs in the hands of criminals is a good thing.

d.) Believe that slave owners and highly leveraged multi-national corporations were and are on anything but greed and self-interest.

I'd ask what makes these dangerous illegal drugs so much more dangerous than nice safe legal alchohol. If you belive so strongly that " Same drug anytime same result - selfishness", it holds that you beleive the same of alchohol. Perhaps your time would be better spent going agaisnt this drug - not only ubiquitous but legal!- instead of kicking down drugs that, suwerwise, are inor in comparison.

Oh, wait, that would require unbiased rational thought.

And , frankly, I dont think all bad things ever were caused by druggies. Thats just fucking rabid.

Hitler???

Hitler never used drugs, except for a rarely pinch of beer.

Do you think that all "evil ones" are connected with "drugs"? Don't be naive.

I wish more people held your viewpoint. Even things like speeding laws don't work; People still speed. Marijuana laws don't work. People still smoke marijuana and the criminalization has caused more problems than the drug itself. The proper route to deter people from doing dangerous things is to educate them, not criminalize their actions.

Sputnic, you have a position, and I respect that, however, your facts are slightly skewed.

1. When the UK lowered the classification of cannabis from B to C, use went down.

2. Superskunk may be stronger, but when cannabis is stronger, people use less.

3. When the Dutch decriminalized cannabis, crime rates did not go up. The quasi-legal coffee shops have worked quite well in Dutch society, and there is a movement now to legalize and regulate the supplyside (which til now, had not been addressed).

4. It is the continued prohibition of cannabis in Europe that is the cause of the growth of drug cartels there, just as alcohol prohibition was the cause of the spread of speakeasies and reign of bootleggers in the United States.

5. Cannabis is not a gateway drug. If it was you would have millions of hard drug users, which is simply not the case. While some hard drug users may have started with weed, they also drank and smoked cigarettes, as does much of the population.

6. You implied that slave owners were on drugs, and that is why they were greedy. I disagreed.

By the way, I love your avatar. I believe it is a picture of a fellow from Egremont (where my granddad came from) one of the "ugly mug" winners.

Sputnic, I am not your enemy. I agree with you that there are many problems surrounding drugs. It's just that 40 years of the War on Drugs (at least in the US) has done nothing to combat the problem, and only forced the sale and distribution into the hands of the underworld. I believe drugs should be highly regulated and taxed, which would take the profit out of the hands of criminals.

I also do not believe that cannabis is a drug. It is an herb that produces a mild euphoric effect, and which has huge potential as a medicine. Treating it as a hard drug brings those who use it into the sphere of the underworld. Imagine if alcohol was prohibited, and you had to go to a local pusher to get a pint?

In any case, I am glad that you are interested in this subject, and willing to speak up on it. The question of morality is an interesting one. I personally believe that meditation, and education is the answer.

The issue of drugs and morality is indeed an interesting area of discussion.  Yes, Queen Victoria used many drugs, including cannabis for the alleviation of menstrual cramps, and I'm sure slave owners put many things into their bodies.  I believe it to be a horribly immoral act to possess another human being as property, but this clearly did not prevent people in the past.  Should slavery remain illegal?  Yes, but not because those who steak claim to other people lack the ability to employ judgment in accordance to what their neighbours believe to be "right", but because their actions have a directly negative impact on the lives of other people.  Slavery is not a moral crime as much as it is a crime against humanity.  Sputnic, if drug abuse was as rampant as you say it was (and I believe it was), then why did the Anerican north - who would have been consuming the same drugs from the same cartels - outlaw slavery before the south.  Social norms and the "moral centre" have more to do with culture and one's upbringing than a substance leading one's conscience to the brink of insanity.

A person does not need a substance to act in horrible ways, and I think it is dangerous to make an inpenetrable link between substance and the corrosion of morality.  Because someone acts in a way you disagree with does not mean they have a nasty drug habbit, just as having a nasty drug habbit does not mean they will act in ways you disagree with - with the exception of the use of the drug itself, assuming you disagree with that type of consumption.  Now, before I get into all the War on Drugs stuff, I don't mean to come across as pro-drug, especially with the harder stuff.  But what I mean to say is that it takes a lot more than drugs to corrode someone's morality.  Sputnic, you mentioned your drug dealer friend... There is a very big difference between a drug habbit, drug abuse, and drug dealing.  Someone taking a drug in a healthy manner because they are able to make that decision is very different from abusing a drug to the point of harming not only oneself, but those around them.  Enabling others to harm themselves and those around them through dealing drugs does not require the consumption of drugs, but it is probably the fastest way to corrode one's morality out of any of those options, just as being a slave owner would probably corrode one's morality faster than a drug habbit.

How is there justification in construction of a set of social standards - a set of morals - in law to which people must be in accordance?   Which substances are legal?  Those of choice for the "moral centre": those of the professional business classes, the police, politicians, etc.  Their drugs of choice, caffine, alcohol, tabbaco, etc., are not criminalized, and those who are seen as "morally susceptible" have their criminalized.  What we are really discussing is a "War on Ceremony".  Think about it... What's the difference between tap water and holy water?  Nothing.  There is no scientific evidence to suggest criminalized drugs are any more or less harmful than legal drugs.  As described by Dr. Ronald Siegel in "Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise", anthrolopoligists have yet to discover a society that has not featured the non-medical use of drugs.  The impulse to alter oneself is as natural as hunger, sex or thirst.  The War on Drugs is a war on the biological and social nature of our species, a civil war against those who do not use the "right" drugs.

With regards to the specifics of marijuana, I'm not too sure I can whole-heatedly comment on the situation of the United States, or make any solid reccomendations to Obama for how he should act.  Being a Canadian citizen, I can say that my country is in an unique situation with small marijuana possession (a situation not often spoken about, probably our best kept secret).  In 2000 the Ontario Court of Appeals ruled that barring the medical use of marijuana violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  The government was given a year by the courts to sort out the appropiate legisatlation to make it happen.  However, they only enacted policies permiting medical marijuana.  Now, since Canada has universal health care, all medical marijuana has to come from either the Canadian government or a personal supply.  Since the government only enacted medical marijuana policies and failed to pass any legistation making medical marijuana legal, the Ontario Court of Appeals ruled that Canada's current marijuana laws are invalid, therefore holding no power since the government is dealing marijuana in a dicsriminating manner.  That's not to say one cannot get arrested for posession, there is just a very solid defence and the case will be thrown out if it is seen as for personal use (though they still try trafficing cases). 

And with regards to the Dutch, they have half the per capita use of marijuana than both Canada and the US.  I believe they have a better approach to the area of drug abuse through designating it a health problem to be sorted out by those in public health, and not making it a responsibility of their criminal justice system.

Oftentimes, the ones you see abusing drugs are the same people that are genetically predisposed to developing addictions.  If it weren't serious drugs, it would be alcohol.  If it weren't alcohol, it would be something else, like exercising or caffeine.  So many people are susceptible to this addiction, but we so rarely acknowledge it. 

If the drug is legal, isn't there government control on it (sale, taxes, quality, etc?).  If there is government control, why is the mob and your drug dealer friend selling at all?  One argument for legalizing marijuana is that it would decrease the crime rate; because there would no longer be a demand for illegal, uncontrolled (and possibly dangerous) substances, there would be less people killed over them.  Also, with such a high percentage of our population in prison for marijuana crimes, it is costing us a fair amount of our tax money. 

Simply making something illegal does not completely erase the demand.  During our Prohibition, bootleggers made large amounts of money producing and distributing their homemade, illegal alcohol.  Today, record companies are catching more people every year who download music illegally.  And yet nearly all of us do it.  And millions of Americans smoke marijuana.  Illegally.  Breaking the law does not necessarily indicate a lack of morals, except in the eyes of the person who created the law.

Sputnik you poor soul, Drugs don't weaken Morality. People do ! The Bush admin. is gone, its time to become responsible for what you do and what you didn't do? Stop the blame game. You've got to have Morality to Start, that and you should find multi-points of reference for your facts , Because most of yours are morally wrong .

you're dumb

weed is not a gateway drug and it certainly doesn't suppress appetite.

"How can something be cool when your dad and his friend do it?"

My parents and I smoke weed together. I think that it's part of what makes it awesome. My dad and his friends play video games, too. That doesn't mean it's any less fun to me.