The RPs Debate Legalizing Marijuana: Jason Atkinson Rebuts

Jason Atkinson: Rebuttal #1

[Read The RP’s Provocation]

Pot is already legal, or at least hard to enforce beyond medical cardholders, in Oregon.  I used to joke in my state camouflaged PVC pipe was sold in local hardware stores.  (For those of you who don’t watch “Moonshiners” camo PVC is harder to see from the air.)  Sadly though, when the voter’s legalized marijuana has almost become more than jokes.

Massive greenhouses have popped up across the landscape like a teenagers first outbreak of acne.   What is not seen everyday is the hundreds of plants being grown with a single marijuana medical card or the thousands of plants being grown illegally by the cartels in the forests.

I understand the arguments from pain-management and from the economics of cutting the profit motive out, however those positions are too narrow for the reality of the modern herb industry:

• Marijuana is a gateway drug.  Ask anyone in recovery.
• People on drugs, legal or illegal, should not be driving.  From the highway to a forklift:  Society pays the price.
• Medical cards are easier to get than fake ids. The ease of getting medical cards is the biggest problem and the hardest to get under control.
• People with grow cards can grow anywhere.
• Mexican drug cartels are using the illegal system to grow and distribute.  (Do you think the cartel’s care about your Grandma’s glaucoma?  Me neither.)

My local Sherriff does not have jurisdiction, or the manpower to even cruse the legal grow sites, let alone the illegal ones seen from air.  Moreover, local law enforcement has no idea when they check on a complaint if they are walking into drug-induced hostility.   DEA is trying to crack down, however every instance of a pot bust is with someone who has a card.  Citizens call me daily complaining about the rental house in their neighborhood being used as a grow site and distribution.

Every one of these issues we’ve tried to change the law, but to not avail.  The pot lobby is strong, well funded, and makes an emotional case for chronic pain.  If it were only limited to chronic pain, needing a doctors prescription and manufactured like the drug that it is.

Look man, the Dude Abided- without a card.  Lenny Kravitz confessed to Piers Morgan last month he walked around in “wall of fuzz” before he took action to get off the stuff. True the cat is out of the bag.  Governments on the left coast need to step in.

However, I am hard pressed to call it a moral choice when the societal consequences are so overwhelming.  This debate is akin to state’s getting into, then addicted to gambling.  When morality comes crashing in that gambling hurts the poor, government’s answer is “gambling addiction help awareness TV commercials” paid for by lottery revenues.