By ReasonTV
During the “Just Say No!” years of the 1980s, less than a quarter of Americans supported the legalization of marijuana. Today, even presidential candidates are relaxing their views on prohibition.
“When they repealed alcohol prohibition, it was left up to the states what to do with alcohol,” says ReasonTV senior editor Jacob Sullum. “And so you have most of the Republican presidential candidates saying the federal government should not interfere if the states want to legalize. That’s really an amazing development.”
In 2016, recreational marijuana reform may be on the ballot in nearly a dozen states.. With support for recreational marijuana polling at a record-high 58 percent, it’s only a question of how many states legalize in next year’s elections.
Sullum believes that California, the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, is the best bet for passage and the most influential state in play. “There’s a good shot it’s going to pass. It’s kind of surprising that California has not legalized marijuana by now,” says Sullum, who is also the author of Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use, a nationally syndicated columnist, a drug-policy blogger at Forbes.
It was be engineered pot. But more importantly, if they legalize it, the purpose will be keep the public pacified.
No, it needs to be legal because it’s immoral to destroy someone’s life (and their family) because they smoked a plant.
there is some truth to that but people smoke it anyway even though it’s illegal….if they made heroin legal would you do it? I sure wouldn’t. I think the people who will smoke legal pot are the same ones now that are smoking it illegally
just in case – move to Colorado now and imbibe all day long.
It should be legalized….more importantly medical research has been stymied all these years
We have to import hemp which isn’t hallucinagenic….STUPID
I encourage those of you that are ignorant to the healing properties of cannabis to get educated. Your ignorance is embarrassing . Knowledge is power so empower yourself think for yourself educate yourself. Quit waiting for the “expert” talking head on the TV to tell you what to think.
Cannabis has been for hundreds, if not thousands, of years used as a cure-all by physician-types around the world. This includes, especially, the original indigenous of what are now the “American continents.” Only when the senior Rockefeller began to buy up medical colleges in the US and establish the pharmacy industry with its artificial medications was the clamp placed on cannabis. When whisky was made legal, the USGov needed something to replace alcohol, increasing the clamp on cannabis. Cannabis was cheap and distracted from pharmacy profits. Additionally and basically, it worked for a broad range of illnesses, to include cancer. It still works, and should not be called a drug. Cannabis was always and continues to be a healing herb. Nor should it be called “marijuana,” which is an insulting term derived from a foreign language. Cannabis is cannabis, a member of the hemp family. Hemp, more durable, longer lasting and cheaper than cotton to process for clothing and paper goods, and leaves no after-pollution such as the oil and plastic industry. It interferes with oil profits and is suppressed in the U.S.
The patents held on cannabis, as a healing medication, by the USGov reflect the hypocrisy of both the USGov and the medical-pharmaceutical industries. “Medical cannabis” outlets are fraudulent controls by the pharma industry and the USGov working in collusion against Americans. How many cannabis plantations have pharmacy companies maintained in South America for 30 years? I wonder how many thousand tons of dried cannabis are stashed in pharma company warehouses around the world, in hopes of being used to supplant the loss of pharma profits that will result from cannabis revival ?
ANY person who says that ANY drug should be ILLEGAL , is nothing more then a SLAVE, especially spiritually and emotionally and intellectually !! Seriously , how can ANYONE believe that a group of scumbags (police and politicians) have the right to tell YOU what you can or cannot put into your own body!!!! Seriously !!! Seriously !!! I mean if you think a gang of rotating criminally insane demons have the RIGHT to dictate to YOU what you are allowed to ingest , then you are nothing more then flotsam, useless, servile sludge which has no moral authority or RIGHT to voice your opinions, anymore then you have a right to take whatever substance you wish to as a sovereign being alive in this reality!!! Drug laws!! HA! Alcohol prohibition HA!! The entire episode was a JOKE which did nothing but create criminal empires , make the rich richer , and teach the intelligence agencies HOW to create a DRUG EMPIRE!! The entire construct of our civilization is based on LIES told by psychopaths/sociopaths and we normal loving people just fritter away our lives, too scared to try to REALLY makes things better
Money…it’s all about the money. There was a point where there was more money to be made by the govt. if pot was illegal, but as with all criminal enterprises, sooner or later, when the wheel spins and stops on the tab where there is more money to be made by legalizing it and taxing it, then ‘suddenly’ it becomes okay and legal. Look at Utah and their monopolistic control of liquor. At this point, there are so many laws in place to fill the prisons with cheap labour for the corporations, that they no longer need the pot heads making the widgets…that spot on the bench can be filled by any number of other lawbreakers. The gov will reap hundreds of millions in taxes with the legalization of pot, so it will happen to all states eventually. CO and WA were the beta tests, and they were successful results by those doing the monitoring.