Wendy Introwitz Pareene
Tue, 29 Oct 2002 06:31:55 -0800
If marijuana was decriminalized as it is in several European nations, soft drug users wouldn't be exposed to hard-core drug dealers, which would reduce the number of thugs selling drugs at Franklin and Chicago to I-35 . Young adults curious about trying marijuana wouldn't be exposed to hard-core drugs and thugs if they could buy a joint at a local coffee shop and quietly smoke it there. We visited several European nations last summer and were impressed while biking around Haarlem, Netherlands, to talk to residents and find that marijuana coffee shops are low-key places with no smarmy, rowdy, dangerous characters as U.S. anti-drug proponents might want you to think (whereas bars in the U.S. are often rowdy places where fights and other dangers lurk). I did smoke... it is not illegal there... and while I could care less about getting high (I also don't care to get drunk), I can't see any reason to make marijuana illegal when booze here is okay??? How confusing. I don't understand why we in the U.S. are actually CREATING a crime underworld for ourselves by making something so inane illegal. In the Netherlands, 20% of high school students say they have used drugs. In the U.S. that number is 39%. I have a theory: When the cold war ended, they didn't know what to do with all those highly trained agents... so President Reagan invented a "War on Drugs" to give the agents jobs and keep that part of the military-industrial economy going. How many billions of dollars have we spent in the past 20 years... and the drug use rates in the United States have not dropped even a sliver. In 1980 roughly 10% of Americans said they used drugs... and in 2000 the numbers are basically the same (I believe it is actually a tiny fraction higher, now)! Theory II: I really believe that marijuana is illegal in the U.S. because it is a natural, easily grown weed that the big drug companies cannot patent. If marijuana was decriminalized, anyone could grow it cheaply in their back yard and the big guys who profit from selling designer (prescription) drugs to stressed out Americans couldn't make any money off it... and might even cost them money because people would use a backyard plant instead of an expensive prescription to help them relax a little. Same laws should apply to marijuana as apply to booze... minimum age, no 'open containers" ... oh... and a new study out of Britain a couple months ago showed that people who smoke marijuana and drive actually were BETTER drivers! The authors of the study said they were stunned and did not expect such results. They theorized that the marijuana relaxed people so there was less tendency for stress and road rage! In the Netherlands, smoking marijuana is no big deal... so people who wish to do it can go down to a local coffee shop and do so without running into Mafioso thugs with much more dangerous hard drugs to offer... and no street corners were inhabited by scary people ruining neighborhoods (we have em here in Lyndale, too... we find used condoms and beer cans and liquor bottles along the curb on Saturday and Sunday mornings). Wendy Introwitz Pareene Lyndale Neighborhood _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:mpls@;mnforum.org Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls