Legalizing Pot: Staunch Supporter Turns Opponent
April 3, 2007 · By Shane Edwards
No, we are not talking about some individual who saw the light. We are talking about a major UK newspaper, not just backing away from pushing to legalizing pot, but coming out dead set against it.
Note, to Canadian Cannabis supporters, I said UK, NOT US.
Entitled, “Cannabis: An Apology”, the opening line of the article demonstrates the seriousness of their turning, and their earnestness in getting the word out. Cannabis is not a toy, nor is it innocuous.
 In 1997, this newspaper launched a campaign to decriminalise the drug. If only we had known then what we can reveal today…
The article speaks for itself.
A decade after this newspaper’s stance culminated in a 16,000-strong pro-cannabis march to London’s Hyde Park - and was credited with forcing the Government to downgrade the legal status of cannabis to class C - an IoS editorial states that there is growing proof that skunk causes mental illness and psychosis.
Read the rest. Check out Lifesite News’s coverage as well, which goes a little deeper.
I live in Vancouver, pot smoking out here is darn near ubiquitous. And so are the results. Canadians need to take a long hard look at the data before we enter into these debates again.
IMO the article has pointed out a goodly number of reasons why pot should have been decriminalized years ago - had that happened the “skunk” we see today would be just about as popular as “shine” was after prohibition ended.
Because alcohol doesn’t cause mental illness or psychosis, right?
Prohibition. Always a good idea.
Hey Stagey!
If you believe that nobody would have engineered pot to make it stronger if only we had legalized it, I’ve got some land to sell you in the everglades.
The fact is that cigarettes have been made progressively more addictive over time by the legalized producers themselves. Why would that have not happened with cannabis?
Surecure, “this makes you go insane and it is legal too” doesn’t mean we should just crack open pandora’s box, because the world is already a rotten place. About the same reason as “Well, that bird just crapped on your head, so that dog might as well piss on your leg too.” Think before you type.
Shane, Shane, Shane… like we really need big government with big intrusive powers and big laws that protect ourselves from ourselves.
I support the Conservatives because I don’t want big government in terms of a government with their fingers in too many pies to take care of anything effectively. I support the Conservatives because they recognize the value of parents taking care of their children, and then children taking care of and taking responsibility for themselves when they become adults.
Unfortunately, Conservatives like any other political slant sometimes like to deny their own hypocrisies. I don’t have a problem with alcohol because I know in moderation it is relatively harmless. The same goes with marijuana (which I don’t smoke BTW). Of course there are nasty side effects to both of them. But do we want a nanny state?
Pandora’s box? I don’t think so. If somebody wants to be an idiot, that’s their own business until it effects me. Then it becomes my business. But I don’t believe in forcing a moral will on free peoples.
I am thinking before I type, but unlike you I don’t need a babysitter government.
“If somebody wants to be an idiot, that’s their own business until it effects me. Then it becomes my business. But I don’t believe in forcing a moral will on free peoples.”
You’ve just hit the nail on the head man! The fact is, widespread pot use does affect you. It affects you when people around you are not acting predictably because they are high. It affects you when these people are smoking up in public places and you are sucking their second hand smoke. It is all the same issues as cigarette smoking, and we are one step away from making that illegal, but I don’t hear all the pot lobbyists fighting for smokers.
“The fact is, widespread pot use does affect you. It affects you when people around you are not acting predictably because they are high.”
Are you suggesting that humans are predictable creatures at any other time?
As for where people can smoke, I believe I have already stated that I support it so long as it doesn’t effect me, so I don’t support allowing it to be smoked in public places.
As for not knowing whether pot lobbyists not fighting for smokers, I would love to see the data that coincides those two groups if you have it available. I’ve never seen any indication of how much one supports the other or vice versa.
Heh… I think you know what I mean. Nobody is completely predictable, but people who are not hopped up on drugs can generally be interacted with normally, hence the reason why we encourage people to not take them by laws making their possession and use illegal.
Moreover, there is precedent in many regards for the government’s responsibility to safeguard public health. You don’t question the ability for government to control pollution, food quality, water quality, why do you question the right and need for government to control mind-altering substances?
Because, controlling pollution, food quality, water control and anything like that is all a question of safeguarding one person’s actions (the polluter, food provider, water polluter) from another. It has nothing to do with safeguarding somebody from themselves.
If pot were legal, it would have to regulated just like water, food or anything else. But there’s a gulf between safe monitoring to ensure quality control and banning something outright.
And I disagree that people who are not hopped up on drugs can be interacted with normally. Ever talk to a supporter of the Liberal party?
Marijuana has its risks just like any other drug. Moderation is key, otherwise people will find themselves dependent on it.
Nothing good comes from the prohibition of the (nearly?) harmless things that humans enjoy. Laws like medicine should perhaps “First. Do no harm!” I’ve always found it enlightening that gays with less than 5% of the population tend to get their way but pot smokers with perhaps an even bigger percentage, get penalized. Better lobbyists? Sodomy, it seems, is a basic human right but burning leaves and inhaling them is not?
To quote “Underwear Goes Inside the Pants”:
Why is marijuana not legal? Why is marijuana not legal?
It’s a natural plant that grows in the dirt.
Do you know what’s not natural?
80 year old dudes with hard-ons. That’s not natural.
But we got pills for that.
We’re dedicating all our medical resources to keeping the old guys erect,
but we’re putting people in jail for something that grows in the dirt?
Prohibition creates more violence, misery and kills far more people on earth than the few junkies lives it pretends to save.
-Afghanistan: Our soldiers would be home if all opiates were legal.
-Gun smuggling and youth dying on our city streets would be almost non existant
-South American farmers would not be threatened at gun point to grow coca leaves to support terrorists
- Some little kid might have something to eat tonight if drugs weren’t so damn expensive and of lower quality because of prohibition
- Hells Angels, mafias, terrorists…Seriously reduced powers if legal
- Full scale funding on R&D to find the addictive propreties that acts on the brain in efforts to genetically modify them
But wait!…Drug prohibition is now a massive industry on itself employing thousands: Police, lawyers, prison guards, social workers etc…Lots of unemployment if made legal.
Legalising would also mean less revenues for the tobacco and alcool industries (Powerful lobbyists) which are also taxable.(Government returns)
So why not just legalise and tax marihuana then?
Because unlike tobacco and alcool which needs special processes to make it consumable, pot can be grown in any backyard, dried and smoked = No tax returns for governments.
So, how do you spell hypocrisy?
Check this out:
http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
Could’nt we find better uses for our tax dollars?
You know what? Lots and lots of “natural” substances are controlled by the government to prevent their abuse, which can be very harmful.
Would it be ok then for the government to just make cannabis a drug by prescription only, because of its dangerous effects? That would be the only way to make such substances sufficiently controlled.
There’s lots of things that grow in dirt that are dangerous to the public. Doesn’t mean we should all grow them in our gardens.
-Afghanistan: Our soldiers would be home if all opiates were legal.
You’ve got a hole in your head if you think the reason Canada has troops in Afghanistan is because of drugs. Ever heard of the Taliban? You know, those misogynist fascists who trample on human rights and sponsor terrorism? Did you know that one of the reasons Islamic extremists hate the west is because of our decadent view of drugs? We might be safer if we fought the war on drugs with more seriousness.
-Gun smuggling and youth dying on our city streets would be almost non existant
Got news for ya: youth were forming gangs and fighting long before drugs were an issue and will long after they are no longer. Get off the stuff man and give your head a shake.
-South American farmers would not be threatened at gun point to grow coca leaves to support terrorists
Right. The world will be such a happy place if terrorists couldn’t make money off illegal drug trafficking. We’d be too stoned to defend ourselves, and they’d have taken over already.
- Some little kid might have something to eat tonight if drugs weren’t so damn expensive and of lower quality because of prohibition
Correction: mom and(or) dad would be too stoned to bother feeding said starving child. Dead kid.
- Hells Angels, mafias, terrorists…Seriously reduced powers if legal
Really? Have they significantly weakened since alcohol was prohibited? Or did they just find new illicit activities to monopolize? Your solution would be to legalize EVERYTHING so that they would have no power at all. Glad you aren’t in charge of this man’s country.
- Full scale funding on R&D to find the addictive propreties that acts on the brain in efforts to genetically modify them
Funny, it didn’t work with cigarettes.
Are you suggesting it would make sense to enact legislation requiring alcohol to be prescription only?
As for the Afghanistan comment, no, we wouldn’t be home from there if Heroin were legal. But, Shane, you obviously haven’t thought hard about the poppy industry in Afghanistan with that “decadent view of drugs” in the West statement. If that were true, why is it that poppy growth didn’t disappear under Taliban rule?
As for the Hell’s Angels and mafia comment, metalguru is right about their powers weakening. Criminal enterprises need criminal products to survive. When gambling becomes legal and watched by the government, illegal gambling organizations disappear. When prostitution becomes legal, pimps disappear. This is fact; just look at Las Vegas where there is not prostitute violence and mafia control over gambling has disappeared.
It’s the same thing with gun control, which I do not support. Whenever guns have become illegal, crime has gone up and criminal gun sales increase exponentially. Look at England. Look at Australia.
I’ll repeat it: criminal enterprises need criminal products to survive. When a product isn’t illegal and is readily available, it becomes cheap and unprofitable to criminals looking for big bucks with little effort. And the competition becomes so vast that they have no targets for violence because there are just too many.
Ask yourself… do you see the Hell’s Angels or the mafia selling alcohol still? No. Do you see them gunning each other down on the streets over alcohol running? No. Did we see that kind of violence and that kind of crime during Prohibition? Yes.
Just do the math.
Shane,
You are either 90 years old and totally disconnected with modern realities/ill informed by MSM and government propaganda or a naive kid still in grade school…You are such a riot with your simplistic replies:
“We might be safer if we fought the war on drugs with more seriousness.”
How would you do that smart ass?…More money? Did you click on the link I
provided? The war on drugs is an abysmal failure, worldwide. Billions are wasted, harmless people incarcerated.
“Correction: mom and(or) dad would be too stoned to bother feeding said starving child. Dead kid.”
Earth to shane: Drugs are already among us and many drug using/abusing parents have kids…Using drugs is’nt instant to being a mindless monster. Which planet are you from man? Is your knowledge on the subject limited to the movie: “Reefer Madness”?
“Got news for ya: youth were forming gangs and fighting long before drugs were an issue and will long after they are no longer.”
Really?…Funny, most experts state that guns and violence by youth in big city cores are almost all due to the lucrative drug trade…BTW, were talking guns violence here, not slingshots.
“We’d be too stoned to defend ourselves, and they’d have taken over already.”
You got to be kidding, right?
How come we are not all dying drunks with syrosis of the liver? booze is legal, we are not all alcoolics….YOU’RE THE ONE THAT NEEDS A SERIOUS HEAD SHAKE!
“Have they significantly weakened since alcohol was prohibited? Or did they just find new illicit activities to monopolize? Your solution would be to legalize EVERYTHING so that they would have no power at all.”
Yes, I would and it will happen some day when most people realise that you cannot control everything. When naivety is replaced by responsability for ones action.
This is definitely not your field of expertise. Comedy might be a better subject for you.
BTW: I am a true blue Conservative with a Libertarian penchant. Just in case you might want to label me a lefty hippy.
The bottom line is that pot is no more harmless than alcohol or tobacco is especially when abused.
The reason it didn’t disappear under Taliban rule wasn’t because the Taliban wasn’t trying. Heck, when the west first sent troops into Afghanistan, naysayers said it was to re-establish the old opium warlords that had been usurped by the Taliban.
You are right, Hell’s Angels don’t gun each other down over over alcohol anymore. Did this reduce their activity? I haven’t seen it. They are still gunning people down. You can point out Vegas if you want - yes, the mafia don’t run the gambling so much anymore, but you can’t tell me they aren’t still there. I hear from friends all the time who go there - they don’t call it Sin City for nothing. They haven’t left - they have just switched trades to other vague or illegal enterprises. This is how it goes. The only way to eradicate the mafia is to make everything legal, and you really wouldn’t want to live in anarchy.
It is a liberal pipe dream that the legalization of whatever crime du jour will miraculously reduce crime. It never works. It only moves the crime to something else. Legalize porn -> the criminals move on to child porn. Legalize prostitution -> the criminals move into pedophilia. Legalize alcohol -> criminals take up drug trade. Legalize guns -> you can bet the criminals will get the bigger, illegal ones. And so it goes… except in liberal dreamland.
RC - if that was true, what made that major newspaper change their mind about promoting its legality? Think about it.
Exactly Real Conservative. And unless you are willing to ban cigarettes, alcohol, pain killers, Doritos, Coca Cola, McDonald’s french fries and anything else that is self-destructive without moderation, then there is no point in banning marijuana, prostitution, or any other self-serving activity that only effects me when I have tax dollars taken out of my pocket to fight a war that will never be won.
Just because I don’t like something that somebody does to themselves, doesn’t mean I should be able to control that activity. Shane, I don’t understand why you care. All the reasons you’ve put up (afraid of people on drugs is the only one that seems even real) don’t really make for a good strong argument about why we should spend billions of dollars every year to ban a substance that is no more harmful than alcohol.
Metal, to be honest, I have had many chats with libertarians, and used to consider myself a bit of one, but ultimately, I have found that one must turn off one’s heart to be a true libertarian. As long as I have concern for the well-being of my fellow man, I cannot in good conscience support the tenets of libertarianism. It requires me to abandon all feeling and sensitivity for the consequences of people’s actions. Humanity needs structure, laws to govern itself. If they are not moral laws then they need to be governmental laws. If society continues to abandon moral laws, then it will need more stringent governmental laws. Sad but true.
“You are right, Hell’s Angels don’t gun each other down over over alcohol anymore. Did this reduce their activity?”
Are you suggesting that the Hell’s Angels had a lot of chapters during Prohibition? I can’t help notice you chose Hell’s Angels over the mafia, so I’ll reverse that question on you… did the end of Prohibition reduce mafia related violence?
Kind of revealed your cards on that one, didn’t ya?
as for:
“Legalize porn -> the criminals move on to child porn. Legalize prostitution -> the criminals move into pedophilia. Legalize alcohol -> criminals take up drug trade. Legalize guns -> you can bet the criminals will get the bigger, illegal ones.”
Showing a serious lack of education on this one Shane:
a) porn has never been illegal
b) child porn is no more prevalent in Las Vegas than anywhere else
c) exactly… you just proved my point
d) criminals only get guns to commit crimes, but crime is reduced when criminals have to wonder if somebody in the crowd has a gun (something they don’t worry about so much when guns are illegal)
Think about it.
“if that was true, what made that major newspaper change their mind about promoting its legality? Think about it.”
Shane
Just last week, I read a newspaper article stating: “Massive research concludes alcool and tobacco more harmful than marihuana and extacy”
Western governments and their many “supporters” (Industry lobbyists) might have ‘reasons’ to keep drugs illegal. The USA are the champions and they will bully anyone that might not agree with them and their ‘friends’. OPEN YOUR EYES!
Can you understand this?……………….Or do you need a sketch?:
Drug prohibition is now a massive industry on itself employing thousands: Police, lawyers, prison guards, social workers etc…Lots of unemployment if made legal.
Legalising would also mean less revenues for the tobacco and alcool industries (Powerful lobbyists) which are also taxable.(Government returns)
So why not just legalise and tax marihuana then?
Because unlike tobacco and alcool which needs special processes to make it consumable, pot can be grown in any backyard, dried and smoked = No tax returns for governments.
So, how do you spell hypocrisy?
“I have found that one must turn off one’s heart to be a true libertarian. As long as I have concern for the well-being of my fellow man, I cannot in good conscience support the tenets of libertarianism. It requires me to abandon all feeling and sensitivity for the consequences of people’s actions.”
That is absolute BS. I care as much about people as the next person, more than you. You don’t care about enforcing laws that nobody wants and putting people in jail for something they are only doing to themselves. Do you think it’s a sign of caring to lock somebody in jail for the rest of their lives for doing something that only concerned themselves?
Talk about callous.
“Humanity needs structure, laws to govern itself.”
Therein lies your problem. You are mistaking structure and laws to govern with overreaching control and lack of free will. Structure is created as a social agreement amongst free individuals, not as an enforced requirement of slaves to the state. And laws are part of that social agreement to protect individuals from those who would do harm to another, not to protect individuals from whatever choices they would make freely.
Do we not allow people to choose their occupation? One could argue that sports offers no benefit to society and is a distraction from “structure” and does not benefit individuals who partake in it. Why not ban professional sports as a self-serving recreation that does nothing for society and force athletes to take up science or engineering or some other occupation that serves a true benefit to society? And if we remove professional sports, people will stop wasting their time watching it or reading about it or spending their money on going to sporting events.
So, why ban marijuana? It is a form or recreation that provide no “structure”. If you don’t want to take part in it, fine. Nobody is forcing you. Of course it offers no huge benefit apart from feeding itself as an industry or a recreation. But, where do you get the God-complex to think that you have the right to decide whether another person’s interests have value or purpose.
If something does absolutely no direct harm to other people, can it really be a crime?
Papers print “massive research indicates…” this and that and the other thing, usually contradictory, usually within days of each other.
If you start in on the “Americans are behind it all - they are keeping us down man… ya gotta fight the power by smoking up!” … I will have nothing else to say but to suggest if you have to resort to conspiracy theories you have lost the argument. Especially since it is known that pot causes paranoia.
The article above is actually one of 5 parts, a total recantation on the part of a major UK newspaper. You’d think if “America” were behind this they’d start on their own rags, not crazy british papers. We are talking about a newspaper that has spent 16 years lobbying for pot’s legalization. We are talking about an organization whose job it is to collect information on subjects and discern the truth (not saying that papers always succeed, but this is what they’re supposed to do.) If they have read all these reports, that like you said say “pot is no worse than alcohol or tobacco”, then WHY DID THEY CHANGE THEIR MIND?
Your only effective argument to this point is “the Americans GOT to them!”
That’s it.
You’re going to have to do better than that.
Surecure: In the end, this comes down to you believing that pot does no direct harm to other people. I think it does. My experience bears this out. When I read about people who were former staunch supporters of legalization (just like yourself), suddenly change their mind, I believe this validates my position. You have yet to convince me there is any other way to see this development.
Besides, as far as callousness, I do not believe it is callous to see people suffer the consequences of their actions. If people choose to do drugs, and they get caught, REGARDLESS of whether or not the substance should be banned, they CHOSE to break the law. They SHOULD go to jail. End of story.
Shane: I am saying that pot does no more direct harm other people than alcohol. My experience bears this out. As for people who have changed their minds, I am one. I changed from being for pot being illegal to believing that it should be legalized. Which, according to your math, validates my position.
As for your position on callousness, it is circular. You believe that a person doing no harm to anybody else should be harmed, and thus, that validates the action of harming the person. There is no logic to it whatsoever.
You have not shown a single instance on this entire page where the action of smoking dope itself causes any harm to any other person. Not once. Crime surrounding dope has been talked about, but once again, if dope was legal there would be no crime. If you could demonstrate that the action itself of smoking pot causes any more harm than drinking alcohol, then I might support your position.
But, if you believe that pot causes enough harm that it should be illegal, then why aren’t you fighting to ban alcohol? If you don’t, you are a hypocrite, plain and simple.
The main reason I stopped supporting the idea that pot should be illegal is because I saw the hypocrisy in believing it should be illegal if alcohol isn’t. People who drink cause more crime, violence, accidents, intrusive actions and psychotic behavior than pot. That is fact.
If you can’t be honest with yourself, I feel sorry for you.
Shane:
I’m going to make it simple, since there is some issue with your whole point about putting a guy in jail simply because there is a law regardless of whether the law is designed to save other people from harm. I’ll give you a scenario…
Joe goes camping one weekend in the deep woods by himself. He has some marijuana. He smokes that marijuana. He comes home a few days later.
Now, under your point of view, Joe has harmed somebody by smoking pot. What I want you to explain is, given that situation, what harm did Joe cause another person?
Once more into the breach…
Surecure, your former comment attempts to hold me to account on something I never set out to prove. I never once in this entire thread attempted to prove anything about the harm pot does to others. This thread started about a newspaper, which I have referred to many times in these comments, which did the exact opposite of what you have done - moved from a position supporting legalization to being adamantly opposed.
I had hoped that this thread would address people’s opinions of that paper’s decision, not a bunch of pot legalization supporters bashing me for not convincing them that legalization is a bad idea. I did not and never intended to put forth reasons for keeping it illegal. You insist on treating me like I have. Please address the issue - that an organization of some influence who formerly agreed with you now disagrees. You need to ask yourself why. You need to ask yourself what they saw that so thoroughly convinced them that to support its legalization was not only wrong but so worth fighting for that they would risk a front page retraction and comprehensive series of articles on the subject, trying to change people’s minds back again. The paper didn’t change ownership. The paper changed facts. What about those facts were so alarming?
I will answer that question fully (I’ve actually already answered it) if you answer my last question regarding that hypothetical situation.
I’m just curious about your opinion seeing as you did mention looking into the data before entering into debates. This is the one thing I’m really curious about seeing as you did say that pot harms other people. Since you said that, I am trying to clarify your own statement since you haven’t really shown any way that any one person smoking pot harms other people.
So, in regards to the hypothetical situation I put forward, what harm did Joe do to another person?
Who is Joe’s family? What is his history with drug use? When was the last time he smoked up? Was it his first time or his last time? What does he do for a living?
Assuming he is single, and this was the first and last time he ever smoked pot, the person he hurts is himself. He did something he did not need to do. He will question himself forever about this event, the reasons he did it, and so on. When he gets into a relationship with someone, when he has kids, his kids may one day be in a position to make a choice. They may ask him for his advice. He will either tell them the truth and risk them doing something stupid and/or dangerous, perhaps with a more high risk drug, or he can lie to them about it, and hurt himself, and ultimately, their relationship if they ever find out about his lie.
But even asking this kind of question is ridiculous, because setting up an exceptional scenario is not a valid test of the best course of action. Just because in some kind of contrived circumstance, you can semi-rationalize a behaviour, does not justify its applicability. It is the same as pro-abortionists saying that no abortion law is necessary because any abortion law might interfere with that one woman in a million, who has found out she is pregnant, by a rapist, and will die in a month unless the baby is aborted. It is contrived and meaningless, and does nothing to advance the argument of either side.
Now, your turn.
What do you mean “now, your turn”? You didn’t answer my question.
Who did he harm? You said that when somebody smokes pot, they cause harm to people. You haven’t identified who Joe harmed. So, once again, who did Joe harm?
The fact that you don’t think I answered the question tells me one of two things about you: either 1. you don’t want to answer my question and are stalling, or 2. you do not think that anything I mentioned in my response constitutes “harm”.
Unfortunately, that is all you are going to get out of me.
What are you talking about? You gave a long winded response about possible future events, deep psychological issues, etc., but you never actually pointed out a single person that was harmed when Joe smoked the pot.
My question was in regards to your position that the action of smoking pot harms other people. But throughout that entire response you didn’t once talk about the action of him smoking. Everything you talked about was in regards to things that happened before or will happen much later on. But not once did you talk about somebody being harmed at the time as a result of him being high.
Or did I miss that?
I would just like to throw out the fact that NOBODY has ever overdosed on marijuana.