i have to agree with the "grow your own" folks here.
its a natural plant, has medicinal and oft times psychological relief.. it shows no real harmful effects that you wont find in your average micropop kitchen appliance, cancery cellphone or the black dioxide soup of automobile emission.
unfortunately, the debate often comes down to a character issue rather than an issue of freedom. all too often there is a public perception about those who would serve as the advocates for legalization as being the ones in dreadlocks, living the unshowered life and following phish around the world.
im pretty sure that legalization wont occur until some real weight gets put behind the issue.
we also have to consider that before it really became a national passtime like booze, it was already outlawed. unlike prohibition, it would not have the same "you took this away from us" effect.
for me it IS an issue concerned with freedom, but its not a freedom that any of us have ever had.
we allow for violence in our living rooms, a bourgening fat cow of a pharmacutical industry and wars. yet we can't quite seem to let go of the reigns in this day and age to add a freedom rather than subtract it. to strike a law rather than write one.
as many of us agree, there are places that the government seems to be comfortable acting as a daddy when it only serves to make the problem worse.
i just dont happen to agree that it is fundementally good for the government to tell me what i can or can not ingest. rather, i think that it should be allowed but talked about openly...i dont neccessarilly think that we should manufacture it, at least not immediately, but i am not oppossed to it in a future scene either. grow your own for now...like a spice...treat it as such.
imagine if we did that for thirty years...and that when they actually did manufacture it we may have enough of a grip on it that we could absorb it. it might even appear with little fanfare if the experiment goes well.
if we spent more time talking with our kids...educating them...saying ya, i did some drugs, i got over. do your thing if you must...take the coyote path to the desert...but be careful. this is what can happen....and show them. everyone has the right to determine how to be an adult for themselves as long as they arent hurting anybody but i think that as adults we have the responsibility to communicate truthfully to our youth and allow them to make decisions on thier own.
i supose im a bit extreme in that way sometimes...i think that kids should be required to take field trips to methadone clinics or halfway houses to show them what the consequances of thier actions might be.
then, let them be.
americans, for all of thier purported freedoms can really be one big gigantic tightass.
i think that the aggregate result of this is actually the opposite of the intended effect. like catholic shool girls who got put in the box on day one...man when they got out of that box! WOOOHOO!
of all people, i think that government is the worst teacher. it deals in its own form of speak that runs so counter to reality sometimes that i have to laugh.
the founding fathers must have felt that way too. social law is much more powerful in my opinion that government law.
it always wins in the end.
