Pot

[matcat]

For those of you that support making POT legal. I know someone quite well, that has spent 8 years in prison because of drugs. For the past 24 years, he's been clean. I had him read this thread...

His reaction was: "At no time should they make POT legal. Not now, not ever. While there will be some people that only stay with POT, there will be others, like myself, that will experiment with more and find themselves out of control. As the habit gets bigger, it will lead to theft and violence in order to support a habit that they can not control. That's how I ended up in prison."

Today, he will not take prescription pain pills because it will start his past up, all over again. He does not have a problem with making POT legal for Gloucoma or Cancer, but that's the limit. They could not pin any firearms or shooting charges on him, but he got caught because he got shot, and at the time, he was shooting up on pure cocaine with a needle. (I didn't know you could do that.) He says it all started with POT. Today, he has no aversion at all to pick up the phone and call the law about anyone that he sees dealing anything.

So, while I have never experimented with any of it, he's been through it from one end to the other. And, that's his opinion.

I respect his opinion, but I disagree with it. His or anyone else's capacity for self control should have nothing to do with it, it is not, and never has been the governments job to help us to control ourselves, we are and should be responsible for ourselves and our actions and choices. He obviously made some bad choices, and obviously did the time the law required, and I am glad to hear 24 years clean! BUT the ultimate point is, it is not the governments job to protect the few from themselves. The constitution even STATES that the government shall impose no restrictions on what we may take, but they illegally bypassed that with the concept of the tax stamps before congress and the supreme court came up with the schedule system.