I always find it bizarre when people (with a straight face, no less) try to explain that marijuana should be kept illegal because it’s only about getting high, and alcohol is different because people drink that for the taste of it.
I wonder what those people make of the ubiquitous Corona Extra commercials…
Yeah. It’s about the taste.
The reality is that there’s nothing wrong with getting a little help in reaching a pleasant altered state of consciousness, whether it’s the orgiastic pleasures of chocolate or sex, the spiritual highs on ecstasy or religion, the peaceful glow from a one-hitter or a Corona Extra…
The reality is that there’s nothing wrong with getting a little help in reaching a pleasant altered state of consciousness
If only the body politic believed that, this would be over a whole lot sooner.
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My favorite is from the “drugs are illegal because they’re bad and that drugs are bad because they’re illegal, mmm-kay” file, when some of the Know Nothing prohibitionists try to explain why getting high should be illegal and they proceed to give a point by point, very comprehensive list of the elements of being high. A nice long winded way of saying that getting high should be illegal because that activity includes getting high. Sometimes I wonder if they think that people are gullible enough to buy such a bill of goods or just don’t have the native intelligence to be able to realize that it is what they’re doing.
Yep, everyone just loves the taste of beer the first time they try it. (That’s why they keep drinking it.) It’s also why non-alcoholic beer is such a huge seller compared to the drugged kind. Anyone have any stats for me? I’m guessing that N/A beer accounts for about 90% of U.S. beer sales.
Just for the taste
… or just as a little light refreshment while out logging
… maybe it’s a nice day and you’re going cycling?
Or maybe you just want to teach a little history.
I think this kind of comment also reveals just how little personal experience these guys typically have with drugs other than alcohol. The “high” of alcohol is familiar and thus feels “safe.” When people say that you can drink alcohol without getting “drunk,” they mean that in their experience, 1-2 beers don’t cause a person to become crazy off-the-wall impaired. They recognize that they might hold a conversation with someone who is simply a little “buzzed” without being able to detect that the other person has been drinking. And they recognize that many people who enjoy alcohol often do so without attempting to get completely sloshed. But the “high” of marijuana (for example) is completely unfamiliar and scary. Of course, the sames rules of dose and effect apply. But to the uninitiated, only two states are recognized as possible: “sober” and “high.” And these guys JUST KNOW (from TV and movies?) that EVERY TIME someone uses marijuana, their goal is to get completely baked out of their minds. I mean, you could NEVER hold a conversation with someone who has been smoking pot without being able to tell that they’re “on drugs.”
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We want beer!
http://blogs.sacurrent.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/we_want_beer-1.jpg
That picture of a protest action in the early 1930s is a little more supporting evidence for the assertion that prohibition today is similar/identical to drinking alcohol prohibition. One big difference is that those poor men really did have a hard time finding beer to drink. Plenty of high proof booze but rarely any beer.
One of the major reasons that drinking alcohol prohibition ended was because of Cowan’s Iron Law of Prohibition. On the opposite end of the scale from Francis’ submission WRT so called “near beer” (which was legal during DA prohibition) is 190 proof grain alcohol, or it was in the past. If we go to an A.A. meeting in localities where 190 proof is legal and poll the drunks we’d find nary a one who preferred 190 proof booze. But we’ll find a significant percentage were beer drinkers, whether also being hell raisers or not. We’d even find more drunks who prefer mouthwash as their drink of choice. Google “Listerine Lady” for examples.
190 proof is now illegal in several places due to the idiocy of the lawmakers in those places. After said morons learned that college students would drink themselves to fatal overdose drinking “grape & grain” (read Mad Dog 20/20) they made 190 proof booze illegal. College students weren’t impressed, and have continued to drink themselves into potentially fatal stupors using lesser potency drinking alcohol. A fifth of 80 proof is enough to kill most people if drunken too quickly. None of the lawmakers seemed to grasp the fact that the potency of “grape and grain” is around 10 proof.
Something I’ve wondered from time to time is where the heck did the “fifth” came from? I’m unaware of any other product using that measurement. I’ve speculated that it was a product of drinking alcohol prohibition. This speculation is based on my observation of so many black market cannabis vendors who somehow manage to get 5 1/4s out of an ounce of their product. So is it as simple as black market drinking alcohol vendors getting 5 quarts from a gallon? Did fifths of booze exist before 1920? Actually before 1933, because part of the speculation is that they were called quarts before the vendors were worried about truth in labeling laws.
How about A Fifth of Beethoven?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZIJwRkspPc
I gave up on alcohol but I miss puking,headaches,shakes and mostly seizures.
You may not have been doing it right.
Yeah, Pete. That stuff makes me wake up puking in a strange place with no memory of how I got there. I don’t understand how people do that.
Yup took a rare trip down that road over the weekend. Enjoyed every minute of the headaches,shaking , dry heaves, feeling like I was going to …DIE!! Yup enjoyed all that.
Man,I should have smoked a joint and watched everyone else get stupid assed drunk.
They don’t think their consciousness is being altered, but it is. A guy who just has a drink or two to “take the edge off” is a drug user.
Drinking alcohol causes me color blindness,,,I end up giving something green to someone black for something that is pink.
Dude, that was either very wrong or I just grew up on the wrong side of town.
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I doubt Clay meant that with malice. Some guys dig black chicks. My dick wants what it wants and I’ll betcha Clay’s does the same thing to him. It sure doesn’t worry about being PC.
Hey, wait a second, I don’t recall Clay sharing the color temperature of the tanning of his hide. For all we know he could be purple with pink polka dots.
Racism is not about having a particular preference for your own partner, it’s trying to force others to do it the way that you like and/or approve that’s a bad thing.
“People use marijuana “to get high” while “a person drinks to have fun.”
~ Richard M Nixon
Twenty Three Million Marijuana Arrests Since 1937: We Reap What We Sow
Nixon lied to schedule Ganja #1
Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.
– Richard Milhouse Nixon
If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.
President Bill Clinton, August 12, 1993
“You can’t depend on the man who made the mess to clean it up.”
– Richard Nixon
The ‘Virtues’ of Ganja
“Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing”
Federal Bureau of Narcotics Chief Harry J. Anslinger, 1948
* Fans Too Relaxed for Fights
* Cannabis Helps Keep Fans Calm
* Basketball Riots in L.A., Soccer Thugs in Europe
* Euro 2000 Soccer Violence Could Vanish in a Puff
* California Cops Go To Pot
Marijuana has been used in one form or another across many different cultures as an
aphrodisiac for thousands of years. Marijuana has been used in India for at least 3,000 years to increase libido and conquer impotence.
The Politics of Pot
“Cannabis can be used on an episodic but continual basis without evidence of social or psychic dysfunction. In many users the term dependence with its obvious connotations, probably is mis-applied… The chief opposition to the drug rests on a moral and political, and not toxicologic, foundation”
The USA Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy 1987
The Ganjawar Fraud…
* Drug czars failing grades
It may be a surprise to some people born in, say, the last thirty years to know that major drug abuse is a relatively new problem. It’s a product of drug prohibition and punitive enforcement.
“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. We want them broken”. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against – then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now, that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
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“People use marijuana “to get high†while “a person drinks to have fun.â€
~ Art Linkletter, and repeated verbatim by Tricky Dick.
It sure looks like Dick was drinking again when this conversation took place. See if you can find the clues to his inebriation:.