It's time to legalize marijuana. Let the druggies switch to marijuana and tax it. Let Philip Morris, et al, put the cartels out of business. Let North Carolina tobacco farmers boost their incomes.
Win the war on drugs, put the cartels out of business, create more legal N.C. jobs, boost N.C. farm incomes and balance the U.S. budget: Legalization is a win, win, win, win, win solution.
— Paul King
Asheville
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Some politicians agree; HR 2306, co-sponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Tx) and Barney Frank (D-Mass) would “remove it from the list of federally controlled substances while allowing states to decide how they will regulate it.”
In addition, more and more we’re seeing law enforcement come out in support of either decriminalization or outright legalization. They realize the folly of this trumped-up and failed ‘war on drugs’ and see the connection between allowing the Mexican drug cartels and independent drug cultivators to control the market, thus subsidizing their other illegal activities (hard drugs, gun-running, smuggling illegals, etc.). As the group notes on their website home page:
“On June 23, 2011 the “Ending Federal Prohibition of Marijuana Act of 2011? was introduced in Congress. If passed, this bill would remove marijuana from federal scheduling and enable states to pass their own laws, regulations and taxes regarding marijuana.Please write to your representatives now and urge them to support this historic legislation!”
http://www.leap.cc/
Those who have a financial stake in the burgeoning private prison ‘industry’, as well as the more authoritarian minded among us, will continue to throw out meaningless platitudes and cite nonsense to support this massive waste of taxpayer dollars, but the trend is inexorable.
Jesus said to do unto others as we would have them to do unto us. None of us would want our child thrown in jail with the sexual predators over marijuana. None of us would want to see an older family member’s home confiscated and sold by the police for growing a couple of marijuana plants for their aches and pains. It’s time to stop putting our own family members in jail over marijuana.
The current proposal before Congress, bill HR 2306, will allow states to decide how they will regulate marijuana. Email your Congressperson and Senators at http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml and ask them to sign on as a CO-SPONSOR of HR 2306.
For more info, here’s the USA Today article
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2011/06/ron-paul-barney-frank-marijuana-/1
And a big THANK YOU to the courageous, freedom-loving legislators, governors, and countless others who are working so hard to bring this through! You’re doing a great patriotic service for all of America!
I dont follow jesus but I agree with you … legalize pot!!
On June 17, 1971, President Nixon told Congress that “if we cannot destroy the drug menace in America, then it will surely destroy us.” After forty years of trying to destroy “the drug menace in America” we still *haven’t* been able to destroy it and it still *hasn’t* destroyed us. Four decades is long enough to realize that on this important issue, President Nixon was wrong! All actions taken as a result of his invalid and paranoid assumptions (e.g. the federal marijuana prohibition) should be ended immediately!
It makes no sense for taxpayers to fund the federal marijuana prohibition when it *doesn’t* prevent people from using marijuana and it *does* make criminals incredibly wealthy and incite the Mexican drug cartels to murder thousands of people every year.
We need legal adult marijuana sales in supermarkets, gas stations and pharmacies for exactly the same reason that we need legal alcohol and tobacco sales – to keep unscrupulous black-market criminals out of our neighborhoods and away from our children. Marijuana must be made legal to sell to adults everywhere that alcohol and tobacco are sold.
“There’s something extraordinarily perverse when we’re so concerned about preventing addicts from having access to drugs that we destroy the lives of many times more people, either through untreated pain or other drug war damage”.
Just recently in North Carolina House Bill 577 never made it out of committee. Word is the legislators that are for it are mostly afraid to come out of the closet and say so. They’re afraid of being lambasted by their peers and the voters even tho polls clearly show voters here are in favor of medical marijuana by a 2 to 1 factor. The few in true control are to conservative to even look at the facts. North Carolina will get MMJ when we make our demands known and vote these narrow minded politicians out of office.
Law enforcement loses revenue from property seizures, courts lose 50% of their cases, defense attorneys lose business, Crime is cut because it’s no longer crime, Law enforcement and court systems have to layoff due to being overstaffed. It’s a lose, lose for them.
I feel this would be a step in the right direction toward making Pot work to help our damaged economies. Marijuana is the safest drug with actual benefits for the user as opposed to alcohol which is dangerous, causes addiction, birth defects, and affects literally every organ in the body. Groups are organizing all over the country to speak their minds on reforming pot laws. I drew up a very cool poster for the cause which you can check out on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/01/vote-teapot-2011.html Drop in and let me know what you think!
*Legalization* still gives oversight to the government. #Decriminalization# is the process of REMOVING government oversight.
Do we really need the Federal Government telling us its okay to grow a plant. A PLANT
nope, we do not! But I will still smoke it anyway regardless of the laws!!!