Because People Smoking Dope are Dangerous
You’ll notice I don’t jump into the medical marijuana debate much. I generally think if pot helps someone feel better who is sick, it’s a lot less dangerous than other choices and let’s face it–stoned people aren’t exactly the biggest threat to anything other than a bag of cheetos.
On the other hand, I tend to find the loudest proponents people who think hemp will save the world and are generally trying to justify using dope a lot.
That said, we don’t need to be populating our federal prisons with people selling dope whether it is supposedly super pot or not. While this is obviously meant to target suburban voters–women especially who are worried about their kids–it’s stupid policy. It increases the number of people in prison for non-violent crime and it’s not going to stop anyone from getting high.
Drugs are a health care problem more than anything else. Treat them that way–especially things like dope, and we’ll reduce usage far faster.
June 17th, 2009 at
My perception is that Kirk is running against the tide on this one. There seems to be a growing tolerance of marijuana use in suburban areas — not enough to make it legal, but enough that any enhanced penalties are considered a gimmick at best. For example, the picture of Michael Phelps smoking dope seemed to engender as much sympathy for him as outrage.
This proposal would have had political traction ten or twenty years ago; today, I think a lot of suburban moms and dads will see it as another expensive, useless “war on drugs” program.
The Cheetos lobbyists will be livid.