Sensible pot a half-baked policy, dude

Sensible pot a half-baked policy, dude – BostonHerald.com
Marijuana makes you stupid. It’s as simple as that.

And now in Massachusetts, we are going to have a ballot question that asks the following: Do you really want to make it even easier than it already is to get stupid, and stay stupid?

Yes, the Bong Brigade is on the march again. They want to put the high back into high school, the truckin’ back in truck stops, the joint back in all those joint legislative committees. Stand by to see stoners at the Stone Zoo, potheads in Marblehead. The grass is always greener in Greenfield, dude.

If you liked HempFest on the Boston Common every September, you’re going to love legalized marijuana.

This one’s, like, totally for Jerry Garcia!

Wow.  Five paragraphs of ad hominem attacks before even a description of what the ballot proposal actually is!  I really wish Carl Sagan were still alive to respond to how “marijuana makes you stupid”.  Maybe I should just go through my Rolodex of attorneys and physicians who are all very intelligent people who managed to get through law or med school even while a part of the “bong brigade”.

This year, the front group is something called the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy, and it’s pushing a Sensible State Marijuana Policy. Its flacks are available for media interviews to discuss their “sensible policy.”

…Pot charges are usually meaningless add-ons, like piling a driving-to-endanger on top on an OUI…. The potheads say 7,500 marijuana citations make it onto the CORI system every year. But how many of those Class B controlled-substance convictions are added to someone’s CORI record along with more serious raps like, say, for possession of Class D controlled substances (cocaine) with intent to distribute?

If the charges are so meaningless, then why add them on?  And you admit by implication that not 100% of the 7,500 marijuana citations are “add-ons”, so how do you defend a CORI entry for the less than 7,500 citizens for nothing more than smoking pot?  Oh, right, because it makes you stupid, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is now in the business of policing stupidity.

The ganja-guys then cite the alleged “collateral damage” of this CORI indignity: “inability to find employment, obtain housing and receive a college loan.”

Please. The reason stoners can’t find employment is because they’re too wasted. They forgot to turn on the alarm clock. They went out for a smoke break and never returned. They missed the bus, man. They can’t “obtain housing” because they can’t get it together to ever leave mom’s rent-free basement.

And what about the college loan?  Let me guess, “too blazed to fill out the paperwork,” right?

Somebody has been watching too much Stoners in the Mist.  Most marijuana users are just like most beer drinkers – productive, law-abiding citizens who responsibly use a recreational intoxicant.

Decriminalizing pot doesn’t seem like a big deal, I’ll grant you. After the courts decreed Adam and Eve are going to be Adam and Steve, bringing Cheech & Chong along for the ride amounts to little more than a footnote.

Nice of Howie to take a little detour from maligning marijuana users by dragging out a little bigoted homophobia.

The fact is, once you make something legal, even if it’s just de facto, it’s easier to get.

I’ve got news for you, Howie – everyone who wants to smoke marijuana already is, and nobody who doesn’t smoke marijuana is suddenly going to want to now that it will get them a fine rather than an arrest.  Is that all that’s stopping you from toking up, Howie, the fact that it is illegal?

And the statement is demonstrably false.  The United States has some of the most punitive laws regarding marijuana, yet we lead the world in marijuana use.  83.9% of 12th graders say marijuana is “fairly easy” or “very easy” to get, and 42% of them have tried it.  So you think turning marijuana from an arrest to a fine is going to make things worse than that?

Well, according to the recent WHO survey, in countries where marijuana use is more tolerated, they have lower rates of use and teen availability.  In the Netherlands, where any adult can walk into a coffeeshop and buy and smoke up to five grams of some of the most potent pot on the planet, teen and adult use is half that of America and teens find it much harder to get.

Marijuana does not make you stupid, but writing hysterical attacks against it can make you appear stupid.