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Evening Open Thread: Science Gives Common Sense a Break and Punks the War on Drugs |
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Continuing with the theme of our afternoon open thread, here’s a choice bit from a Washington Post article:
The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.
The new findings “were against our expectations,” said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.
“We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use,” he said. “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”
Herb has less deleterious effects on one’s health than alcohol and nicotine, and yet we lock up thousands every year for its mere possession. Those possession arrests cost taxpayers an estimated $4 billion a year.
Are we doing this because politicians legitimately believe that keeping marijuana illegal, thereby pushing its sale outside the government’s reach and enriching dealers and growers both here and abroad, is the smartest policy? Or are we doing it because the government needs bodies to legitimize the tragedy that is our prison-industrial complex?
Cigs. cause cancer but they fill cancer wards$$$$..pot fill$$$ prisons..and booz is an all time money maker from dui’s to undertakers..it rules the cash cow roost it fill$ every coffer from small time towns to big citys..its win-win for every one but the user…legalize what?..casa and dare did there jobs on a new generation..i predict the u.s. will run out of toilet paper before they change any drug laws.
There are many reasons cited for the continuation of the war on drugs, but one you rarely ever hear about is fund raising. Certain institutions and agencies use the war as a means of profit protection and avoiding taxes. Not everything that our shady ‘government’ does can be funded with tax payer dollars. Sometimes there is too much of a paper trail to use tax dollars and the shadow gov’t uses its exclusive position to acquire and sell huge quantities of narcotics so it can afford to do other things. I guess an example is in line: http://www.narconews.com/Issue49/article2989.html
America is pathetic…
The Washington post article is from 2006. While I agree with you, you may want to use more up to date material.
It’s a shame that our dangerously lax laws have done little to curb the demand in the marketplace of kicking the peoples’ asses. In the parlance of the ubiquitous counseling industrial complex, our legislators have been systemic ‘enablers’ of brute force thugs and their addiction to inflicting misery on easy targets.
The “Costumed Violence Addict”, as we have come to recognize the nature of the moral hazard, is only satisfied by an ever more dangerous escalation in his “thug-seeking behavior”. One more hit is all he needs, he tells himself. Just one more life ruined and I can reach that bacchanalian plateau of self-righteous blood-lust stirred effervescently with a dizzying dopamine reward center release. Amidst the auto-erotic echo of the safety hand applauding the morality hand, the “Costumed Violence Addict” lacks the will power to resist peer pressure and is sadly lost.
Or, it could just be about all the money.