Not All of Them are Dying

[MSimon]

Some are changing their minds.

Monthly Marijuana Use Up 3%, Nearly Half A Million Are AARP-Eligible

It looks like the minority position (prohibitionist) is getting smaller because even old people are changing their minds on the subject. It may have something to do with medicine.

...the growth in marijuana smoking appears to be solely dependent on the increased use of cannabis by older Americans. A gain of 409,000 new monthly marijuana smokers in the 18-29 age group was cancelled out by a decline of 409,000 in the 30-49 age group. The increase of 498,000 adult marijuana smokers comes from the age group 50+. Increases were also found at every sub-group of the 50+ cohort as well.

When old people get involved in something the politics changes because old people vote.

Georgaphically, monthly marijuana use seems to be increasing more in regions of the country without medical marijuana laws.

This follows the general trend noted in other countries:

Prohibition is a vector for the spread of drugs. What irony. The people most ardently against legalization are doing the most to spread the habit they fear. Too funny.

[ladajo]

Or it could be the baby boomers are getting old and since they came of age smoking and getting high, now they are more comfortable to admit it in blind surveys.
The entitlement culture comes of age as seniors.

[MSimon]

Or it could be the baby boomers are getting old and since they came of age smoking and getting high, now they are more comfortable to admit it in blind surveys.
The entitlement culture comes of age as seniors.

The number of boomers in the doper cohort has been greatly exaggerated. Just as now regular users never comprised more than 10% of the population.

But they are familiar with the weed and its medical properties. And old folks generally have more medical problems than the young. Familiarity and usefulness is breeding contempt for the law. And it always was a contemptible law.

Something like 70% to 80% of the American population favors med pot. The government crackdown on med pot is one of the things promoting the legalization efforts. The law of unintended consequences.

BTW the crackdown on med pot is promoting anti-Obama protests:

http://www.theweedblog.com/protest-obam ... ay-in-l-a/

[ladajo]

And as we discussed before, the national data says that there is a baby boomer "hump" in drug use reporting. There is also a corrosponding "hump" of users in the baby boomers children.

[MSimon]

And as we discussed before, the national data says that there is a baby boomer "hump" in drug use reporting. There is also a corrosponding "hump" of users in the baby boomers children.

Yes. The Hump. Going from 40+ % to 50+% "ever used in your lifetime".

The med pot states are a death blow to prohibition. Old people talk to each other. "It eased the pain of my ___ when nothing else worked."

The CB1 and CB2 systems are some of the most pervasive and yet least studied systems in the body. Why? Well the information might cut into the remnant of support for prohibition.

My mom (age 92 going on 93) used to be in the prohibitionists camp as were most of her relatives. That all changed when a member of the family got 10 to 20 for a few ounces of pot.

Prohibitions defeat themselves. If you enforce hard enough to make it sorta work you develop a LOT of bad will.

What amuses me is history. The left won the election of 1932 on a wave of anti-prohibition sentiment (among other things). I'm sure they will do it again in 2016 or 2020 if the prohibitionists don't see the light. "Conservatives" are their own worst enemy. Mainly because the have a limited time frame of observation. They want to preserve the "eternal" verities of 30 years ago forgetting that those verities are only 30 years old.

Like it or not prohibitions that affect more than 5% or so of the population (does 40% to 50% count?) last about 50 years. Nixon (one of the greatest American Presidents ever /sarc) declared a war on hippies and the left in 1972. Only he was going to go after something they commonly did rather that making their crime strictly political - clever that boy.

So if you add 50 to '72. You get 2022. Time is about up.

If legalization passes in one state in Nov there will be a push on for 2013 and 2014. If more than one state legalizes there will be a full court press. Especially given how faith in government solutions is declining.

I'm always amused at "Conservatives" who demand a government solution for _____. Typically - "I hate collectivism but without collective action on ...". Now I will admit that there are a few things that require collective action. But not near as many as conservatives and liberals think.

[ladajo]

Well, we will see. Or maybe just me, as statistically, you won't be around...

IN any event, I think that the demographic trend does play in all this, and the passing of the boomers, albiet drawn out and slow due to overlife quality of life trends, will bring impacts to opinon. The next wave will be the kids. It may be my kids that actually get a clean look at things. But I can tell you that as far as I can see, the "smokers" and predicted users in their peer groups are the ones with parents who smoke or use. But that said, especially in my daughter's grouping, there seems to be an anti-smoking/anti-drug opinion developing. But again, we will see, it is to early and too limited data set to tell yet.

If legalization passes in one state in Nov there will be a push on for 2013 and 2014. If more than one state legalizes there will be a full court press. Especially given how faith in government solutions is declining.

Bigger fight than you think. Also, it may be, but it does not make it right.

I have always agreed that the current approach has issues. But open legalization is not the right answer. I firmly believe some sort of regulation and control is mandatory, with severe penalty for violations. If we go the medical route, then it must be clear and brutal to "Doctors" that "prescribe" in order to supply "patients" that the behaviour wil no t be tolerated. Unfortunately, right now it is a mini industry that Hollywood idiots and other excessive money folks started where they pay rediculous sums to their "Doctors" to buy prescriptions for stuff they shouldn't have and don't need.

[MSimon]

Well, we will see. Or maybe just me, as statistically, you won't be around...;)

IN any event, I think that the demographic trend does play in all this, and the passing of the boomers, albiet drawn out and slow due to overlife quality of life trends, will bring impacts to opinon. The next wave will be the kids. It may be my kids that actually get a clean look at things. But I can tell you that as far as I can see, the "smokers" and predicted users in their peer groups are the ones with parents who smoke or use. But that said, especially in my daughter's grouping, there seems to be an anti-smoking/anti-drug opinion developing. But again, we will see, it is to early and too limited data set to tell yet.

If legalization passes in one state in Nov there will be a push on for 2013 and 2014. If more than one state legalizes there will be a full court press. Especially given how faith in government solutions is declining.

Bigger fight than you think. Also, it may be, but it does not make it right.

I have always agreed that the current approach has issues. But open legalization is not the right answer. I firmly believe some sort of regulation and control is mandatory, with severe penalty for violations. If we go the medical route, then it must be clear and brutal to "Doctors" that "prescribe" in order to supply "patients" that the behaviour wil no t be tolerated. Unfortunately, right now it is a mini industry that Hollywood idiots and other excessive money folks started where they pay rediculous sums to their "Doctors" to buy prescriptions for stuff they shouldn't have and don't need.

My odds are pretty good. I'm 68. The life expectancy of 68 year old males in the US is 78 years. However, my Dad lived to 84 and my mom is still alive at 93. So I expect to see it.

Well "right" is a not absolute. The conservatives of the 1914 era thought the idea of drug prohibition was a very radical idea. You should read the history. It was a radical notion in 1914. Pushed by Progressives. And now the Progressive notion is the "Conservative" position. And the Progressives have gone Conservative on the issue. So the "Conservatives" are conserving a Progressive idea. Too funny. Especially for the small government party. To maintain Prohibition you need big government. And secret police. And snitches. Welcome to the USSA comrade.

Which is what I mean about Conservatives are not truly Conservative. i.e. they have no consistent outlook. They just want to conserve the way it was when they were kids.

Me? I guess I'm a radical. I hold that the Conservative position of 1914 was the correct one.

What will put an end to it for quite some time is the fact that the corruptness of it all will come out with legalization. We will look back on it the same way we look back on alcohol prohibition. There is an alcohol problem and prohibition did not help. It did engender contempt for the law. And here is where I get truly radical. Contempt for the law is a good thing. In fact it is a core American value starting with 1776. See how Conservative (in the American sense) I am?

[Diogenes]

A Friend of mine was shot and killed this weekend. This is the same friend whom I had mentioned earlier I had given $200.00 to help him and his pregnant girlfriend move to another place. It turns out the place he moved to was where he was killed.

He wasn't a good friend, but he was a friend. He was deep in that drug culture, and I have little doubt that his shooting was the result of his drug habit. His girlfriend was shot in the arm. She survived, and will eventually have his child. He won't be there to take care of it.

I don't know that he would have made a good dad, but I suspect he would have been a great improvement over no dad. He was a cheerful and easygoing person, and I have little doubt that he would have loved his little one even though he wouldn't necessarily have been very responsible in seeing to it's needs.

It looks to me as though this child is going to be a victim of his father's drug use. You know, one of those victims that the drug proponents keep telling us doesn't exist. No doubt, everything that makes this child a victim is going to be the fault of the "War on Drugs" and none of it, of course, will be held to be the result of irresponsible decisions by the recreational drug user.

No matter. The State shall pay for the now fatherless child. It has become chic to resolve the consequences of one sort of bad decision with another sort of bad decision. This is the justifying principle behind all sorts of modern maladies in the same manner that Abortion is the solution to bad sexual decisions.

Apparently drug use does leave behind victims.

[93143]

...you do realize you've left yourself wide open to MSimon's main argument, right?

Or was that the idea?

[MSimon]

A Friend of mine was shot and killed this weekend. This is the same friend whom I had mentioned earlier I had given $200.00 to help him and his pregnant girlfriend move to another place. It turns out the place he moved to was where he was killed.

He wasn't a good friend, but he was a friend. He was deep in that drug culture, and I have little doubt that his shooting was the result of his drug habit. His girlfriend was shot in the arm. She survived, and will eventually have his child. He won't be there to take care of it.

I don't know that he would have made a good dad, but I suspect he would have been a great improvement over no dad. He was a cheerful and easygoing person, and I have little doubt that he would have loved his little one even though he wouldn't necessarily have been very responsible in seeing to it's needs.

It looks to me as though this child is going to be a victim of his father's drug use. You know, one of those victims that the drug proponents keep telling us doesn't exist. No doubt, everything that makes this child a victim is going to be the fault of the "War on Drugs" and none of it, of course, will be held to be the result of irresponsible decisions by the recreational drug user.

No matter. The State shall pay for the now fatherless child. It has become chic to resolve the consequences of one sort of bad decision with another sort of bad decision. This is the justifying principle behind all sorts of modern maladies in the same manner that Abortion is the solution to bad sexual decisions.

Apparently drug use does leave behind victims.

Too bad the stuff isn't legal he might have still be alive if he could have done the same deal for $5 at a drug or liquor store.

And that kind of killing is much closer to home for me. I lost my brother to some gangsters in '74. It is one of the big reasons I oppose prohibition.

Funny though. You blame drugs when the cause is prohibition. You don't see many shootings over alcohol since the stuff was legalized. There used to be a lot of killings over the stuff in the '20s when it was illegal. Odd how you fail to make the connection.

In fact the only drug that has a positive statistical correlation wit violence from use is alcohol. Funny how few want to ban the stuff though. Funnier is how some prefer to blame drugs when it is prohibition causing the trouble.

[MSimon]

...you do realize you've left yourself wide open to MSimon's main argument, right?

Or was that the idea?

The inability to separate cause and effect - or read history - is quite popular in some circles.

A LOT of people depend on prohibition directly or indirectly for their income.

When California was voting on legalization the stanchest supporters of prohibition lived in the Emerald Triangle region - the place where they grow the stuff. The reason is obvious. People directly and indirectly profiting from the business would be hurt severely by ending prohibition. Only prohibition can turn weeds into gold.

As Wm, Burroughs used to say (approximately): "Dealing is harder to kick than using." Think of all the people that make a living from prohibition and then check out their stance on legalization. The correlation will be no surprise.

The DEA
The ATF
The Prison guards (especially in California)
The police

Funny thing about the police - it is only after they retire that they become anti-prohibition. Look at the roster at LEAP - Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

http://www.leap.cc/cms/

All retired as far as I know.

A good friend of mine who is staunchly against prohibition is a RETIRED Detective.

Honor dies where interest lies.