Gyroscopic Investing

I have a hard timing taking the anti-medical marijuana crowd seriously.

Care to elaborate?

I have a hard time taking the drug war seriously, period.

Have you read or heard Harry Browne on the subject?

What then is the relation of law to morality? Law cannot prescribe morality, it can prescribe only external actions and therefore it should prescribe only those actions whose mere fulfillment, from whatever motive, the state adjudges to be conducive to welfare. What actions are these? Obviously such actions as promote the physical and social conditions requisite for the expression and development of free—or moral—personality.... Law does not and cannot cover all the ground of morality. To turn all moral obligations into legal obligations would be to destroy morality. Happily it is impossible. No code of law can envisage the myriad changing situations that determine moral obligations. Moreover, there must be one legal code for all, but moral codes vary as much as the individual characters of which they are the expression. To legislate against the moral codes of one’s fellows is a very grave act, requiring for its justification the most indubitable and universally admitted of social gains, for it is to steal their moral codes, to suppress their characters.
ATTRIBUTION: R.M. MacIver (1882–1970), Scottish sociologist, educator. The Modern State, ch. 5, Oxford University Press (1926).

Coffee wrote: I have a hard timing taking the anti-medical marijuana crowd seriously.

I have a hard timing taking the anti-medicalmarijuana crowd seriously.

Pretty soon marijuana will be as legal as same-sex marriage!

MangoMan wrote:

jan van mourik wrote: Pretty soon marijuana will be as legal as same-sex marriage!

I know that was said in jest, but that is more prescient than you think. One by one, the states will legalize it. Ultimately, the feds will cave as well.

Does anyone besides me see a potential backlash on these issues?

I have no problem with legalization of medical MJ, but can't help but notiice the direction our society is taking e.g.

Just as the American psychiatric association at one point classified homosexuality as a disorder and then changed its mind, pedophilia was reclassified as a "sexual orientation", until there was a public outcry.

I've always thought that a world where alcohol was legal but pot was illegal was a strange world.

In almost any conceivable setting, I think that a person who is high is preferable to a person who is drunk.

Where politicians highlight how legalized marijuana has increased auto deaths, underage use, increased cancer and lung problems, schizophrenia, and decreased ambition, drive, employment. Where they use it as a political issue.

Reub wrote: Where politicians highlight how legalized marijuana has increased auto deaths, underage use, increased cancer and lung problems, schizophrenia, and decreased ambition, drive, employment.

You know what also creates a lot of those same problems (as well as a bunch of others)?  Spending time in prison because you enjoy smoking pot.

I would also say that all of the problems you cite above are general byproducts of living in an industrialized society.

Finally, I would say that the problems cited above are actually a more compelling argument for bringing back Prohibition than for continuing to criminalize marijuana use.

Remember, we are talking about burning a plant that grows in the wild and inhaling some of the smoke.

I always get a kick out of people (not you, Reub) who believe that there is a moral dimension to smoking pot.  Imagine if the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden was actually a big pot plant, and what God was trying to tell Adam and Eve was not to smoke pot because if they did they would see through all of the mysteries of life, and they would get so hungry that they would leave the Garden of Eden to drive through Taco Bell and when they returned God would be so disappointed that he wouldn't let them back in.

What if Cain and Abel's names were actually "Reefer" and "Smokey", but early biblical scribes changed them to help move the Old Testament narrative in a different direction.

You wrote that when you were high... didn't you?

MediumTex wrote: I've always thought that a world where alcohol was legal but pot was illegal was a strange world.

In almost any conceivable setting, I think that a person who is high is preferable to a person who is drunk.

I agree and it *is* ridiculous. From what I've read, legislators and police are scrambling to figure out how to handle things like driving while "in-POT-sicated." I think even they know alcohol is worse in many ways, from motor impairment to organ damage. But, they don't yet have a test for it that is as quick as an alcohol breathalyzer. And, I don't think they have something as discrete and measurable as blood alcohol level. I hate to sound like a broken record, but it won't be an issue with self-driving cars.

The first time I ever smoked a joint was in the town of Nha Be, just north of Saigon. I remember laying back and thinking to myself there really is a God in this hell-hole of a place and that I'd found a way that I can get through this after all. I will always have fond memories and if they ever make it legal here in Florida I will probably indulge. I hear it helps to prevent/treat Alzheimers and I'm guessing the temporary relief from arthritis would be even better than that of alcohol (which I've mostly had to stop using lately due to other undesirable side-effects).

ns3 wrote: The first time I ever smoked a joint was in the town of Nha Be, just north of Saigon. I remember laying back and thinking to myself there really is a God in this hell-hole of a place and that I'd found a way that I can get through this after all. I will always have fond memories and if they ever make it legal here in Florida I will probably indulge. I hear it helps to prevent/treat Alzheimers and I'm guessing the temporary relief from arthritis would be even better than that of alcohol (which I've mostly had to stop using lately due to other undesirable side-effects).

ns3 (and all who have served),

I can't even begin to imagine how awful some of the situations you who have served in the military have been in or seen.  Thank you, thank you, thank you for helping keep our country free so we can enjoy a forum like this.  Many of my family and friends who served in WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan could/can hardly even begin to discuss some of the horrible situations they were required to deal with.  From the bottom of my heart, thank you again. 

My wife and I were just discussing My Lai, and no matter how bad the attocity seemed to those sitting here in the US in comfort, I'm sure being in the local situation would have seemed so different.  It seems in hindsight so very hypocritical for the armchair leadership to put our people in that situation and then persecute them for exercising the skills for which they were trained ... when every child, woman and man could be harboring an explosive device and willing to use it, I expect the survival instinct is overwhelming.  Thanks be to God that you survived Viet Nam.

... Mountaineer

I don't know if a lot of U.S. military deployments in recent decades have had much effect on our freedom, but I nevertheless have nothing but respect for anyone willing to put himself in harm's way in order to be of service to his country.

Here is how I think of it: I can sit here on this forum all day long and talk about how stupid most government attempts to improve society are (including inflicting violence on others through military action), and yet if I found myself in a situation where tired U.S. troops were returning from being shot at and I could provide them with any help or comfort I would do anything I could to assist them.

MediumTex wrote: I don't know if a lot of U.S. military deployments in recent decades have had much effect on our freedom, but I nevertheless have nothing but respect for anyone willing to put himself in harm's way in order to be of service to his country.

Really?  I think the net effect is our freedom has decreased dramatically because of [fears of] intervention blowback.  The Orwellian state is just getting started.  Thank you, NeoCons.

You're welcome!

Reub wrote: You're welcome!

Damn you, Reub!  You make it hard to hate.

Quite unexpected...

Don't Giggle: A Sane Marijuana Law Really Passed in the House

Now we'll have to see if the senate and the president are as sane as the house on this... Who would have thunk?

jan van mourik wrote: Quite unexpected...

Don't Giggle: A Sane Marijuana Law Really Passed in the House

Now we'll have to see if the senate and the president are as sane as the house on this... Who would have thunk?

I'm now convinced it always takes 30-40 years of concerted effort to change society.  It took just as long for the civil rights movement to end Jim Crow, etc..  And just as long for the Abolitionists to reach their endgame with the Civil War.

Why would this be so?  Does it take that long for the oldest generation of creaky old farts to all die off?

MachineGhost wrote: I'm now convinced it always takes 30-40 years of concerted effort to change society.  It took just as long for the civil rights movement to end Jim Crow, etc..  And just as long for the Abolitionists to reach their endgame with the Civil War.

Why would this be so?  Does it take that long for the oldest generation of creaky old farts to all die off?

Pretty much. It's also the amount of time for a new generation to be born and begin to accumulate some real power (cultural, financial, political).

Pointedstick wrote:

MachineGhost wrote: I'm now convinced it always takes 30-40 years of concerted effort to change society.  It took just as long for the civil rights movement to end Jim Crow, etc..  And just as long for the Abolitionists to reach their endgame with the Civil War.

Why would this be so?  Does it take that long for the oldest generation of creaky old farts to all die off?

Pretty much. It's also the amount of time for a new generation to be born and begin to accumulate some real power (cultural, financial, political).

max planck said as much about professional science, so it stands to reason the same logic applies to other group endeavors like politics.

Max Planck wrote: A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

I have always heard the succincter version -- "Science advances one funeral at a time."