NEWS: Barney Frank and Ron Paul have common sense.

Can't say as much for the DEA.

Legislators aim to snuff out penalties for pot use

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/30/frank.marijuana/



My favorite part, "Smoked marijuana has not withstood the rigors of science -- it is not medicine and it is not safe," the DEA states on its Web site.

Then I'm baking brownies and eating it! (drum roll!) Thank you, thank you.

Not medicine. Not safe.

Viagra, which is "medicine", has withstood the "rigors of science", as every other FDA-approved pill with 10 side effects...some life-threatening. You can legally take an erection pill and if you are still "feeling it" in 4 hours you have to call your doctor. Because you heart might explode.

Last time I checked, no one has to call a doctor, at any point, for side effects of their medical marijuana. "Doctor, Doctor...Thank the heavens you answered....Have you ever watched Wizard of Oz and listened to Dark Side of the Moon. Holy shit!"

But really, isn't everyone passed the whole "gateway drug" thing? Don't most people have enough common sense these days to know there must be something deeper keeping pot illegal? Alcohol is the gateway drug that leads to pot, that is the gateway drug that leads to _______. So why isn't alcohol illegal? Alcohol and cigarettes are not medicine, and are not safe. They are downright dangerous. It seems like an old high-school argument, yet the same B.S. gets regurgitated over and over again. I suppose nothing will happen until people care on principle, even if they don't care about legally smoking pot.

Which leads me to my 1 explanation. I think about laws quite a bit. Many laws are in place to prevent things from getting out of control. But responsible people that are able to safely, and smartly, break laws can do so with little or no punishment. The speed limit on I-95 is 70mph. That is to prevent total chaos and set a guideline for a safe speed. But many people know you can go 80mph with minimal risk of getting ticketed. So safe, defensive drivers can disobey that law within reason. And police officers know that going with the flow of traffic is safer than blocking traffic.

With marijuana, there is a "system" in place where responsible people can smoke it in the privacy of their own home and not worry about the penalty. Like the DEA states in the article, people are rarely sentenced to jail time for possession (some "stat-splits" on that would be nice). If you think about it, there is a lot of marijuana consumed in this country that generally goes on without a hitch. It's almost like someone wants it that way (the Prison Industrial Complex?). But I suppose the law is to prevent it from getting out of control. To keep in check the irresponsiblity of the irresponsible. Sure, most high schoolers party and smoke pot anyways...but can you imagine if it were legal? Would anyone be sober at school? That is definitely not desired by parents and faculty. You wouldn't even be able to enforce it. So the illegality isolates it to a smaller group of kids that want to do it, and most of them won't get caught. Just like the law isolates adult usage to the people that really want to smoke it. Just a thought...

But the illegality is still principally wrong. I can see protecting people from themselves, but there is nothing to protect them from...at least relative to dangerous substances that are legal. I think people currently do a good job of not drinking out of a flask at the office. I don't think pot would be much different.