My home state of New Jersey–you know: that state that everybody makes jokes about, and rude noises–is scurrying around, trying to get pot legalized in a vote this coming Monday in the legislature. Because–wait for it–legalizing marijuana is “a civil rights imperative” (https://www.nj.com/politics/2019/03/legalizing-weed-will-put-nj-on-the-right-side-of-civil-rights-history-murphy-says.html)
See, not legalizing marijuana–why, that’s just like slavery! And legalizing it, sez our governor, will get “all the bad guys” out of the pot business. And net the state scads and scads of revenue so they can pay those teacher union pensions.
(Why is smoking pot good, but smoking tobacco bad? The same leftids who dump all over you for smoking tobacco want to canonize you for smoking pot.)
Believe it or not, this is actually a worse idea than it was 50 years ago. According to Alex Berenson, in a recent speech at Hillsdale College reported in “Imprimis,” Hillsdale’s newsletter (Jan. 2019, Vol. 48, No. 1), the chemical in pot that gets you high is ten times stronger, or even more, than it was in the 1970s–better living through chemistry.
Just what our country needs. More drugs. Stronger drugs.
Liberals have reached a point in their development where they actively seek out and strive for whatever is evil, foolish, wasteful, wrong, stupid, or contemptible. That makes it easy for the rest of us: whatever a Democrat is for, oppose it, because you know it’s bad.
My pot-head friends in the 1970s were boring and silly. Now, with the drug ten times stronger, users are leaving boring and silly behind and venturing into paranoia, violence, and depression.
Civil rights imperative. Hot dog.
They confuse rights with desires.
Your civil right to get high!
Since I’m personally familiar with the effects of smoking marijuana (I wasn’t a saint all my life), I am strongly opposed to legalizing marijuana. Over time and with continuous use it messes with your short term memory and dulls you. Yes, being in the stupor of a marijuana cloud is a lighter feeling than being drunk with alcohol but it also gives you a feeling that you can do it — whatever it is that you have in your mind. Drawing was enhanced but I couldn’t read anything; I couldn’t focus my eyes on the words. So, this is not the memory lane I like to go down but it is what I remember of indulging in weed. And with it now being stronger? No. It needs no legalization. Eradication would be better but that would take an overarching and incredible revival in following the Lord.
In spite of incessant nagging by my pot-smoking friends, the whole thing didn’t appeal to me at all and I never attempted to smoke it myself. Not because I was a saint; I’m just stubborn.
I’ve never understood the appeal of getting wasted, on booze, pot, or whatever. I can understand the moderate use of alcohol, but getting drunk makes no sense at all. IMO, Pot makes even less sense.
I’ve had a few surgeries and have been prescribed pain meds on several occasions. When you are in a great deal of pain, those medications have little psychogenic effect, but when the pain abates, those same medications start to make you feel a bit out of it; and I don’t like that at all. So I usually quit taking pain meds about 2 days after surgery. I’d rather deal with a little pain that walk around half out of it. Like I said, I just don’t see the appeal of being wasted.
I drank a lot of beer in my twenties. People tend to be stupid in their twenties. I still like a beer on a holiday–my brother brings these real nice craft beers–but very shortly after I married, I stopped drinking. It wasn’t hard at all. Just tapered off. Of course, coming down with gout might’ve had something to do with it, too.
I admit I liked getting a buzz on. And maybe more than a buzz. I think I must’ve been a very unhappy person in my twenties. Lost my religion, for one thing.
Well, it’s been a very long time since I drank enough to get tipsy. We change, by God’s grace. I look back on myself at 25 and shudder.
The Bible condemns being a drunkard, and sadly, that describes an awful lot of people in our modern day. When I was in high school, I was invited to parties where he booze flowed freely. I reasoned that the difference between some old drunk leading an unpleasant, if not miserable existence, and a high school kid tying one on at a Friday night party, was mostly a matter of age, so I declined. I’d seen enough people who’s lives had been ruined by alcohol that I didn’t want to go that route.
It’s not that I was smarter than my peers, but my parents prepared me from an early age and explained that alcohol and drug abuse were present in this fallen world and must be avoided. That made it a lot easier for me, especially considering that I came of age during a time when drug abuse had increased in prevalence, during the hippie era.
What astounds me, is that the drug problem has gone way over the top since then. Doctors have to be ultra careful in prescribing pain control medications, because the abuse of prescription drugs has soared. When I was a young fellow, most people were not at all interested in opioid drugs, because they knew that the potential for serious addiction was too much of a risk. These days, there’s an “opioid crisis”, or so I hear. That’s really sad. I’d like to think that most, of not all, of my high school peers would have known better than to get involved in such a thing.
God gave us many fine gifts, which we can use to His glory. Alcohol has been part of life for a long time, including as part of the Last Supper. God doesn’t want us to abuse this gift.
Alcohol in moderation is sanctioned in the Bible (our church uses wine every Sunday in the Communion Service), but drug use is condemned except for medical purposes. If people can benefit from medical marijuana, then okay. But legalization for recreational purposes is very foolish, especially when the potency content can’t be easily determined. Isn’t our society schizophrenic enough without a bunch of people high on drugs? Maybe the people in Newark, N.J, are high on pot for advocating everyone get $1,000 a month for free (but as we know, there is no “free”).
At the outset, in no way do I advocate the smoking of marijuana for any purpose.
There are components of marijuana which are felt to have medicinal value, but to the best of my understanding, this is not the Tetrahydrocannabinol that makes people high. IOW, they could extract the medicinal element of marijuana and make it into a medication, probably much like many other medications. For example, cocaine was very commonly used as a medication starting in the late 1800s, but then they learned to synthesize the useful effects without the addictive aspect and created products such as Lidocaine, which is used for medical and dental treatments. However, medications, such as Lidocaine, do not have the psychogenic effects of cocaine itself so they are much safer for routine treatment. Anyone that has ever had dental work has probably had a drug of this nature to numb the pain, but these drugs don’t alter your mood in any way.
If the true motive was to exploit the medicinal aspects of marijuana, there would be greater support for creating drugs which use the effects of the medicinally effecacious elements in marijuana without the mood altering effects. But the true motive of most people pushing for changes to marijuana law is to get wasted by smoking pot, at least that’s how it looks to me.
I once met a man that smoked marijuana to counteract the effects of chemotherapy. He had cancer and it is well known that marijuana can help to decrease the negative effects of chemotherapy. When I asked this man why he didn’t obtain a prescription, he said that was “no fun”. He enjoyed that fact that his marijuana use was against the law. Personally, that sort of says it all; with all of the hype, it’s a movement to try and make drug abound a part of everyday life. I’m against it, 100%.
Now that they’ve made pot ten times stronger than it was in the 1970s, I can only think the current drive to legalize it is powered by the most unworthy motives.
Good point, I hadn’t even factored that into my thinking. Smoking pot was never a good thing, IMO, but higher THC content has made it even worse.