by attempting to belittle cause of Cannabis Legalization;
ignoring its relevance to human rights, the environment, energy security, and health care

reported at Drug War Rant

http://www.drugwarrant.com/2015/03/why-marijuana-isnt-at-the-bottom-of-the-list/

Why marijuana isn’t at the bottom of the list

President Obama:

“Let’s put it in perspective,” Obama said in response. “Young people, I understand this is important to you, but you should be thinking about climate change, the economy, jobs, war and peace, maybe way at the bottom you should be thinking about marijuana.”

That, of course, completely misses the point regarding what “thinking about marijuana” actually is about.

Tom Angell:

“But he should think again about how important this issue is. On average, there’s a marijuana possession arrest in the U.S. about every minute. Billions of dollars are wasted on enforcing prohibition laws that don’t stop anyone from using marijuana but do ruin people’s lives with damaging criminal records.”

Lee Rosenberg (via Twitter):

No, marijuana legalization is not the most important issue for young people to care about, but government incompetence on the issue has a very negative and very real impact on the perception that government is capable of solving more serious problems.

“Thinking about marijuana” is about more than getting high.

It’s about systemic police corruption. It’s about a failed criminal justice system that fuels situations like Ferguson. It’s about tens of thousands dead in Mexico. It’s about failed foreign policy. It’s about using bad laws to control a population and deny them basic rights. It’s about perversion of our Constitution. It’s about financial self-interest trumping science and reason.
Marijuana most definitely isn’t at the bottom of the list.

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- - Common Science
    
    March 17, 2015 at 1:55 pm · Reply
    
    “From time to time, I say that the suppression of medical marijuana is murder. This is not quite correct. It is actually mass murder. It has caused the deaths of countless thousands of people.”
    ~ the Financial Times Limited, 1998
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- free radical
  
  March 17, 2015 at 3:12 pm · Reply
  Hemp, as we all know, grows at a phenomenal rate and is an excellent carbon and radiation sink. It removes carbon from the atmosphere, as well as radiation!
  So yeah, legalization is part of stopping climate change and other man-made environmental disasters.
  Jobs and the economy? Colorado is booming with thousands of new jobs and 70 billion+ in tax revenue that they now have to figure out how to spend.
  War and peace? Well it’s been mentioned above but I second that: cannabis makes one peaceful. Prohibition is responsible for widespread violence and wars.
  Does Obama presume to tell others what they should be thinking about? President of our minds he is not!
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DonDig

March 17, 2015 at 9:24 am · Reply

.
And regarding marijuana and consequently some very basic human rights, (like being allowed to ingest a non-toxic substance without them freaking out and making us war criminals), there is this very real thing called, if they can’t get this right, (and everyone knows they can’t get it right, and they’ve been showing us so expertly that they can’t or won’t get it right for most of our lifetimes), and really, it is a relatively simple concept that they are completely mismangling; how on earth are we expected to think they are going to be getting any of these more complicated things right, … ever.

That’s why this is a big important question. It you screw up so grandly on some really pretty simple things, making them as bad as possible, how are we expected to believe that anything else that matters can be handled with our, the people’s, best interests in mind?
And they mostly don’t get it. They don’t want to get it. Obama doesn’t get it, and he most of all should get it, because he’s lived it. (palm to forehead) Duuuuhhhh.
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