Police, DAs speak out against marijuana ballot question

legalize it, dont critize it, and i will advertise it...

my sister has had altogether a year and a half of probation because of pot laws and then she got caught with an open container and she only got community service and a fine

now she is an alcoholic

so i defiantly think pot should be decriminalized

Mean while there is another article talking about a kid actually dying from consuming too much Alcohol. I swear if you keep it illegal only scum bags will get to reap the benefits. TAX MY WEED AND LET ME BE!!!!!!

Propaganda at its finest. I'm sure all of the departments represented here receive some nice funding for their marijuana arrests and convictions.

Only poll I've seen puts this passing with 71% support.

Actually I just found another one that said 72%.

decriminalize it!

Bullshit!

Don't these folks realize that there would still be large penalties for dealing, and I image even greater if you get caught in a school zone dealing?

They are just bitching because they are going to be put out of the business of ruining peoples lives. After the layoffs I would imagine the city will be racking in the dough (and dope if you consider weed as falling under that category).

Of course they're opposed...look at how old they are.

Besides if theres anyone out there that knows the tendencies of high school kids its the police, they hang out together all the time...

Everyone knows the current laws are keeping "drug dealers" out of highschools...the laws are protecting highschools so well I'm sure theres NO highschool kids who've even tried pot. Thank goodness too their lives would probably be ruined...

I can just see it now, this law get passed and there'll be joints blazin in high school parking lots and preschools...I mean if there ONLY an hundred dollar fine for having it...then there will be a pot explosion!! Cops will be overrun with tie dyed clad kids, and many good and decent people will be lost in the process...

Now let all drink until we can't stand up, smoke our ciggarettes, and just wait for the economy to collapse while the police protect us from the ensuing appocolypse. They have OUR best intrests at heart right?

It won't work, even if it passes. States can't decriminalize something the fed says is illegal. It's been tried, passed & shut down before. Remember Denver?

Concern for kids is very real & well founded. A nice buzz is enjoyable w/few side effects. But kids don't have their personalities set yet. Pot use makes it a small step to conclude I'd rather have a buzz than not. THIS is the danger. It creates addictive personalities. And our society has no social tabos in place that can deal with that.
Personally, and overall, I think it preferable to alcohol. But decriminalization is not the way to go. We're either going to accept it, or we're not. Making it practically legal to just have a little bit while throwing the person that sold it to you in the slammer is ludricous. Maybe the time will come when society as a whole would come to accept it. But I wouldn't count on it.

pass all these kinds of laws. surprised they aren't all over the potential profits yet, they seem to be pretty interested in making money through every other means.

Pot is less addictive than alcohol.

Colin Blakemore, PhD, Chair of the Department of Physiology at Oxford University, and Leslie Iversen, PhD, Professor of Pharmacology at Oxford University, wrote in their editorial "Cannabis, Why It Is Safe," published in The Times [United Kingdom] on Aug. 6, 2001:

"For some users, perhaps as many as 10 per cent, cannabis leads to psychological dependence, but there is scant evidence that it carries a risk of true addiction. Unlike cigarette smokers, most users do not take the drug on a daily basis, and usually abandon it in their twenties or thirties.

Unlike for nicotine, alcohol and hard drugs, there is no clearly defined withdrawal syndrome, the hallmark of true addiction, when use is stopped."

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The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy stated in Section 15, "Psychiatric Disorders," Chapter 195, "Drug Use and Dependence" and published on its website (accessed Nov. 20, 2002):

"Any drug that causes euphoria and diminishes anxiety can cause dependence, and cannabis is no exception. However, heavy use and complaints of inability to stop are unusual.

Cannabis can be used episodically without evidence of social or psychological dysfunction.
The term dependence probably is misapplied to many users. No withdrawal syndrome occurs when the drug is discontinued, but some heavy users report disrupted sleep and nervousness when they stop."

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John Cloud, Staff Writer for Time magazine, stated in his Nov. 4, 2002 article "Is Pot Good For You?":

"Those who believe you can't become physically or psychologically dependent on marijuana are wrong. At least three recent studies have demonstrated that heavy pot smokers who quit can experience such withdrawal symptoms as anxiety, difficulty sleeping and stomach pain.

On the other hand, the risk of becoming dependent on marijuana is comparatively low. Just 9% of those who have used the drug develop dependence. By comparison, 15% of drinkers become dependent on alcohol, 23% of heroin users get hooked, and a third of tobacco smokers become slaves to cigarettes."

Someone needs to point out to these morons that regulation and decrim would take profits away from dealers and in turn hurt their ability to sell to children. Especially if parents explain that POT is OK, drug dealers are NOT. Leave the responsibility in the hands of the parents and people not the morons that enforce it.

It's decriminalized in CA. No one ever targeted me with weed in high school. I always had to look for them.

oh the only reason they are doing this is because there isn't much crime in western mass (except for Springfield)
but there are a lot of potheads
so if pot were decriminalized they would have a lot less arrests

We should all grow Marijuana and sell it to the cops, DA's, ...Republicans in-general. They would chill out and we could recover finanancially. Economic crisis solved!!!!

I wish they would legalize it. Not because I think it should be legal, but so that potheads won't have anything to talk about anymore.

Personally, I can't see any reasonable objections not to legalize it. It IS less addicitive than alcohol. I maintain that kids need to be kept away from it, but that should be a family matter, along with the schools, but not a matter of the law.
While pot isn't "harmless", the fact that it IS illegal is causing a number of problems and solving none. I haven't noticed that it's gone away - in spite of the best efforts of our officials to make it do so. Through our taxes, we're paying to keep I don't know how many of our promising young people incarcerated to the detrement of everyone. This for participating in a victimless crime.

Most of the arguments against it have been proven to be ill informed, or just plain wrong. You can throw statistics out the window; there are too many folks that wouldn't be truthful in a survey to come up with anything that resembles accurate. My point being that we truly don't know what kind of nationwide support could be found in 2008. But it may be more than we think.

I believe I'd be willing to bet that if a nationwide ballot was taken to legalize pot, that the majority of Americans would either vote for it, or refrain from voting against it. But our system doesn't work that way. Our Congressmen & Senators are the only ones with the power to change it. So to make the law change, enough of them need to be convinced that their constituents want this to happen and to make them believe this is something they need to do.

Do you think there are enough of us to accomplish this?

The world would be a better place if people can smoke what they want to smoke to deal with this corrupt world we live in created buy the government.