When I was in college lo those many years ago, we always felt it would be legal by the ’90s or so (if not earlier since there were states that did take steps to de-criminalize then).

then St Ronnie of Ray-gunz happened.

So an average of 50 and 1/2 percent are delusional enough to believe that prohibition works? Scary but not surprising.

Damn, I’m movin’ west!

Thanks Jon.

Typo in the second word, “honer” should be “honor.”

All the headlines I’ve seen today are emphasizing that according to the poll a MAJORITY of Americans oppose legalization, never mind that it is a slim majority.

Gee, I can get behind this weed exposure.

With booze ya lose
With dope there’s hope

*g*

Drugs Not Thugs !

That’s exactly why I support SMALLER FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. Let states and people live freely! That’s why I’ve become libertarian.

I kinda like “Yes We Cannabis” from the Michael Whitney diary.

See B.S. math day!

DEMOGRAPHICS: SHOULD THE USE OF MARIJUANA BE MADE LEGAL?
Yes No Don’t Know
Total 45% 51% 5%

(Their splash chart says 44% favor)

most excellent!

also:
Age 35 and Over 38% Y 55% N

wth ? really boomers ?!?!?

The West is the best. Get here, we’ll do the rest.

I had the same reaction when I heard that on the radio this morning. I’m thinkin’, Huh, WTFs that all about?

Pheneas T Freak of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers:

“Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.”

I am here to tell ya…

Having a teenager or two dilutes support for legalization, unfortunately.

Gosh, if my kids ever caught me…!

“Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.”

Awesome!

And so true. So very, very true. *g*

LOL,

My first exposure to it was a teenager when my father fired up one day after dinner. At the dinner table.

Right out of the blue, just, fffffttt, toked on up. My mom nearly had a cow. Me and my sister kept asking about the funny smell.

Meanwhile Dad just chilled and laughed.

Awesome memory man. I miss him.

Ah yes, the immortal words of Freewheeling Franklin.

Please. Boomers are the ones who have gotten so Jesus Nazi. So very disappointed in my generation…

(Actually, it was Freewheeling Franklin) Still have my Freak Brothers comics though a couple of them are falling apart.

I’d rather have kids smoking dope than poppin’ the myriad pills, real and homemade, floatin’ around.

At Sunflower House in Corvallis, OR in the late 70s we used to intervene in schools when teachers suspected students of smoking dope at school. We worked in male/female teams. Sheba and I would go into a classroom, do a little into, then I would say I was gonna go around the room and smell each student’s hair. You could see the blood drain from some faces. I’d go around and sniff everybody’s hair and say only that marijuana leaves a telltale odor on hair and clothes. We’d do a mini-seminar on drugs for the hour. Education is the key.

They’re gonna experiment with all sorts of things.

Damn. Memory ain’t what it used to be. At least I got the quote right. I had ‘em all until a roof leak in my old place turned ‘em to mush. Along with my National Lampoons with Cheech Wizard.

I like this line:

“While you’re out there smashing the state, don’t forget to keep a smile on your lips and a song in your heart!”

Right at the dinner table, eh? Maybe I should try that…

35 years ago, I lived in Oklahoma. (Think that is a red state, in the “heartland”?) Pot smoking was done by a LOT of people my age (in college). What happened to these people? They smoked a LOT of pot, yet now scream against it. I am not quite in the “over 65″ demographic, but I am close — I am 56. And I get so incredibly sick of these hypocrites. They KNOW marijuana isn’t harmful, yet they have to “be like everyone else” — or what the loudmouths scream. They literally have no minds of their own.

I have lived in CA the past 35 years — yes, 35 years ago, I moved out of Okieville and to CA. And I will say I don’t give a rat’s ass what OK does. I don’t like their style of living. Let them live in Hypocrite Hell. I only hope enough Californians show up to vote in Nov.

I truly don’t understand this habit of ignoring midterm elections — if voting is important to you, do it ALL THE TIME, not just for president!

I’ve even still got four or five of the Fat Freddy’s Cat comics.

I always liked the one where the mouse got into Fat Freddy’s coke so he could learn what made Fat Freddy so ‘smart’

One of the great lines from that was the mouse staring at his paws saying “I have hands, why aren’t I flying this space ship”

(or maybe ya just had to be there at the time)

Could be a new reality show… “Space Dads” sponsored by Spaced Ads(tm)…

A wine vendor on PO to the Nixon White House once mentioned going to DC to make a delivery to an address only to see punch bowls filled with cocaine.

Funny how it’s a “War on Drugs” if your not talking about the privileged.

uh nope. voice of experience here. keep it to yourself as long as you can, like til they’re 35, just sayin’ :D

The hypocrisy over this issue that always burned my ass (maybe because I was a bartender) was the self-righteous drunks talking about the evil goddammed hippies and others out there using DRUGS. After I’ve served them about their 8th serving of the liquid variety.

Assholes.

“Legalize” conjures the vision of kids buying cannabis at the 7-11 or out of vending machines even. Often it brings up “crack cocaine vending machines” in a particularly well manipulated demographic, even though the question is just about cannabis.

Prior polls compared responses to “end criminal penalties” – where a majority opposes legalize, a similar majority favors “end criminal penalties”. I believe NORML did this polling in 2005 or so. Paging Paul Armentano!

Gosh, another 20 yrs of “walks in the forest”?

Yeah, I can live with that…

I’ve used an analogy with younger people to show them always obeying the law isn’t always best. I bring up the Fugitive Slave Act and ask them to think about it.

Marsha Rosenbaum has done some really good writing on talking with young people about drug use, including one’s own use. Andrew Weil’s “From Chocolate to Morphine” is a very good text for drug education to keep in the home. It’s available for free download – just search for it as a pdf.

I think part of the reason is many of us “boomers” did smoke pot when we were in college and afterwards. I would garner the great majority of us though stopped at some pt. for many reasons and our experience with this has made us a bit more sober as to the supposed benefits and rewards of this or any drug , alcohol included. Call it maturity or realism for many of us the bloom is long off the rose of pot and it’s companion drugs. Personally, I think it all should be legal and controlled and that the so called War on drugs is just about $$ and keeping the prices high and law enforcement/prisons/lawyers fat fighting it.

oooh thankee for the link.

although the little hard ass didn’t talk to me for a week, it worked out well as it was occasion to talk about all of it with all of them.

“They KNOW marijuana isn’t harmful,” You know I wish this was true but honestly it’s not. Pot is bad for your lungs and your heart and it’s not great for your brain either. That said, it’s probably no worse then cigarettes and booze but that’s not exactly an endorsement considering the damage those two do to public health. So, lets not be so fast to give this weed such a clean bill of health. It has it’s downside and I don’t think encouraging people to use any of this shit is a good idea. Nevertheless, it should be legalized and controlled like the other two. People definitely shouldn’t be going to jail behind it’s use or even it’s abuse.

The tide turned when Peter Bourne was outed for using cocaine. Carter had been receptive to ending federal criminalization, and Jimmy’s son played tennis with NORML staff and shared in relaxing activities afterwards. That ended when Bourne was outed.

Shortly thereafter Sue Rushke found a bong in her suburban Atlanta teenagers room and the parent’s movement started scaring suburban america about the menace to youth.

Reagan grabbed onto that in a minor way, then ratcheted the drug war up after the death of Len Bias.

Kaiser Permanente did a 15 year longitudinal study of health of cannabis users. The only significant result was increased injury from accidents. No increase in cancers or heart disease. Slight increase in minor bronchitis incidence, but not statistically significant.

Cannabis is safe as aspirin. In medicine it should be “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS), and be available without a prescription.

Not unexpectedly, there is a serious age divide on the issue of legalization. 54% of American under 35 support legalization while only 29% of Americans over 65 share the same view.

What about that massive chunk of the population between the ages of 35 – 65?

Aspirin is not recommended for kids…

Reye’s syndrome is a potentially fatal disease that causes numerous detrimental effects to many organs, especially the brain and liver, as well as causing hypoglycemia.[1] The exact cause is unknown, and while it has been associated with aspirin consumption by children with viral illness, it also occurs in the absence of aspirin use.

Age 35 and Over 38% 55% 7%

Age 65 and Over 29% 61% 10%

They don’t break down responses for age 35-65. How’s your Bayesian analysis? As a EWAG I’d say 42%/52% is about right, but this isn’t based on doing the math.

Remember Jack Herer (the Emperor wears no Clothes) today.

RIP Jack.

I’m not religious myself, but I think I’ve been able to get thru to a few religious people with this:

Prohibition of marijuana in the US is based on two assertions:

1. God made a botanical mistake, and

2. Your state legislators have both the wisdom and the authority to correct that mistake.

I’ve come to terms with Mary after years of smoking. My experience has been that you’ll think differently as to it’s harmlessness when you have teens and young adults around. I don’t think there ever should be a day when weed should be legalized, which would lead to commercially available pot, I think calls for its legalization are shortsighted. All that needs to happen is that it be decriminalized and let me get it where I get it. I sincerely believe that weed isn’t for everyone and RJR/Nabisco putting out some NEW! IMPROVED! ‘marijuana cigarettes’ would mean I’d probably move on to something else. But, weed isn’t harmless at all-make sure your children grow into adulthood if you can before they get all off into weed.

This is exactly what I was talking about in this comment.

And excali2 – you really could stand to read “From Chocolate to Morphine”. Understanding that the drug doesn’t create the bad behaviors, it is how one relates to the drug. Sheckler and Block’s study (another longitudinal study!) showed better adjusted adults with some experimentation with cannabis in adolescence. Not problem use in adolescence, that led to much poorer outcomes in adulthood. Good parenting is the key.

My brother is a police officer. I don’t want to have to attend his funeral due to a stupid pothead shooting him in efforts to defend his weed stash. Put the drug dealers out of business and legalize it. It seems to be a logical and economical decision…so just get it done.

Weed helps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V1K9EfiJUk

This is interesting as I expect that in Utah and Nevada you’re likely to have a bunch of Mormons that would oppose legalization of tea because it’s too “stimulating”.

That means the West Coast odds are even higher. But I bet that unless there’s a campaign to register and get those that are pro-legalization out to vote that this will mean nothing. And I think that Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer should at least come out and say something to the effect that they will “support the will of the people on this issue” and try to limit Federal superiority doctrine on this. That might give them the advantage over Meg-omania and CarlyFornia or whoever the GOP puts forth.

Glad to see State’s are finally catching on to the true spirit of State Nullification. On my island, we have made it the lowest law enforcement priority and fund our police 0$ to arrest and prosecute people who have 24 or less plants on their property. Time to put the Federal government back in its box.

I always appreciate the referral to a book, that one seems informative and I have ordered it. I understand you point however without having to read the book, but I think that it’s all well and good to theorize about “if” one has a proper relationship with what one chooses for a “buzz”-for lack of a better word-but reality has shown me that the negative can creep in no matter the effort placed on “good parenting”. With a small amount of effort one can trace back the problems of the entire world to “parenting”. Weed in teens or young adults can more easily than not result in a depletion of initiative and ambition, in my experience of course.

It makes some sense to promote self-sufficiency in kids. Parents are tasked with that cultural imperative.

Since personalities vary, the abilities and proclivities of individuals, young or old, will also vary in ways that work against competitive success.

Those who value the rewards of competitive success will understand the trade-offs with risky behavior. So the risks all appear to be man-made.