I don’t expect my DA to be a drug-legalization advocate, but I expect a certain amount of honesty, logic, and reliance on evidence. Leone’s statements on marijuana are void of those. He’s just demonstrating that he is an aggressive drug warrior and will use fear and propaganda to pursue that agenda.
I’m embarrassed to say that I voted for Leone a couple weeks ago – I just checked the box for him in that uncontested election. I won’t make that mistake again.
The problem isn’t decriminalization, the problem is that many of us, but especially our law enforcement officials, refuse to be adults and conclude that our War on Drugs has been a miserable failure and react accordingly.
Please share widely!
The DAs have a divide and conquer misinformation campaign going on. I thought better of Gerry Leone than these outright distortions if not lies; the Globe published my rebuttal
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p>I thought Leone was a believer in the rule of law, and the 6th Amendment. Instead, I find him in lockstep with the Law and Order society – and no believer in zealous indigent defense of “innocent until proven guilty.”
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p>I left his name blank on my ballot. Until he shows that he is a true custodian of justice and not a DA clone – no more votes or support from ME for Gerry Leone.
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p>He brushed me off rather than having an equal-to-equal discussion at the Annual Middlesex County Bar Association Banquet this month, as well. I was not pleased.
I’ll start with I do not agree with decriminalizing pot. I believe it has led, already, to increased use at lower age levels as there is a greater acceptance in elementary school and middle school. Where you would not have students dare to drink a beer in front of a teacher of school administrator during the school day, there are growing numbers of children, yes they are children, who will smoke a joint in front of them. Even more worrisome though, is the results of student health surveys (I don’t have links) where students say that they feel that they are more violent when high than when they are sober. This cannot be good for school achievement, anti-bullying efforts and reducing violence amongst teens.
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p>However, if we are to have this argument it is necessary to do so with facts and not hyperbole. Even I knew that 1 once does not even come close to 1,000 joints. I actually heard 80 in a neighborhood police meeting which might be a smidge high (or maybe frugal) but far closer than 1,000. I am troubled by the lengths the DAs seem to be willing to go to “win” an argument, change a law or increase their budgets. And, while that troubles me, what is exponentially more troubling is the possibility that this same “win at all costs” attitude regardless of facts enters into how they prosecute their cases. I don’t know, but the possibility concerns me and its not like we have not seen a DA undertake political prosecutions, facts be damned.
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p>So no voting for Leone now or probably never. Guess I will write Amber’s name in next time.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever smoked weed? It’s been almost ten years since I last partook, and certainly it might affect others a little differently than it did me. I remember it making me more placid, passive, lethargic, and sometimes a little paranoid, but the absolute last thing I wanted to do when stoned was to start a fight. Alcohol is far, far more likely to provoke aggression than weed, IMO.
but not in over a decade and like yourself I was very relaxed.
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p>However, I was repeating what I heard reported from administrators of an urban school system when they surveyed high school students. So how pot affected you or I does not have much to do with this. The results they presented had students saying that they felt more violent when high on pot.
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p>I think that type of survey results is important to be aware of to see if they repeat in other surveys. It may be different from how you, I or others experienced pot, but it is something that we need to be watching for, not because it fits or doesn’t fit into our own notions of the impacts of pot smoke, but, because, if it is true is something that could have a detrimental impact on teens in our schools.
and need to see the numbers for me to take what you have to say as credible. Administrators at schools are about as reliable on the subject as are DAs… in other words, they’re almost universally against it and will make up silly arguments to be against it. I remember being told that people who use marijuana are pretty much one step away from being heroin addicts in health classes, pretty much year after year, in k-12…
The references I made to hearing / reading about increased violend comes from a Cambridge City Council Public Safety Committee meeting.
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p>Report is here: http://www2.cambridgema.gov/ci…
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p>Here is a couple of key excerpts:
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p>From Lt. DiPietro
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p>From MassCan/NORML’s President:
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p>From MassCan/NORML’s Founder:
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p>So there are differing opinions, but the self reported and comments indicate a heightened level of concern.
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p>Whether these concerns would be alleviated by legalization or stricter laws and penalties is uncertain, but definitely something that needs to be discussed with all the facts and options on the table. Unfortunately, our DA does not seem to be willing to do that which only serves to make progress that much more difficult.
Is the headline, though it should “Stupid comment by the DA”. But decriminalization without legalization is very dangerous. I would never vote from decriminalization but I would vote for legalization. We just created a huge unregulated market for pot in Massachusetts. It took the US 70 years to get over the gang violence created by prohibition and we are creating the same nightmare.
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p>Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
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Why is that more dangerous than an outright ban?
‘Decrimnalization’ is an invitation to selective enforcement. Be it based on color, gender, class or attitude – there is virtually no enforcement action that cannot be questioned. Police don’t like it for that reason. Who decides the threshhold for personal use or distribution?
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p>Medical marijuana is different in that there is a bona fide medical benefit, and from the plant – extracted THC doesn’t have the same effect. Oxycontin, etc., are legal for medical use but illegal without a prescription. It’s a good template for marijuana use.
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p>Of course, it’s all hypothetical until Federal law changes.
I feel like selective enforcement occurred before the law, and continues. But I definitely agree that the law is too ambiguous.
As a consumer you aren’t worried about buying or possessing pot so the demand goes up – and who supplies this demand – organized crime.
I’m thinking about cancer, etc. I’m not interested in anecdotes or attempting to apply engineering or mathematical logic to physiology. I’m looking for medical studies, etc.
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p>Anybody know? I’m skeptical about the claim that “marijuana has been proven to be safer than alcohol and basically every other drug.” I’d like more info.
It’s hard to look for research because on marijuana there is so much tainted, awful, politically-funded “research” that lots of places have quoted over and over and over. So you’re likely to get conflicting results, even though there’s actually no valid evidence that smoking marijuana is unsafe. So, just giving you the warning to beware – don’t just read some summaries of what some research supposedly said; research the research. And don’t take it at face value when you see quotations from some valid authority figure, either, because there are plenty of cases of tainted marijuana research that has such quotations to go with it.
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p>While there’s plenty of speculation that marijuana smoke should increase risk of cancer, it’s extrapolation from tobacco – it’s not based on actually seeing a higher cancer risk among marijuana smokers. There are competing theories about why tobacco increases your risk of cancer, in ways that wouldn’t apply to marijuana. Keep in mind, also, that although tobacco has other health risks, the cancer risk only comes in when you smoke a lot, over a long time. If you smoke a few cigarettes a week, that won’t affect your risk for cancer. So even if marijuana worked the same way, hardly anyone smokes enough of it to worry about. But there’s also the theory that the main cancer risk from tobacco comes from tobacco leaves’ tendency to grab radioactive bits from the air and concentrate them in the leaves, something hemp doesn’t do.
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p>The biggest major study of the effects of marijuana use is Ganja in Jamaica, which was a long term part-anthropological part-medical study project.
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p>Even if marijuana weren’t completely safe, “safer than alcohol” is of course a very easy bar. But marijuana is also safer than aspirin and tylenol, which are known to cause harm in excessive doses; marijuana is not know to cause harm directly, in any dose, AFAIK (Though there was that study that caused brain damage in monkeys through forcing them to inhale marijuana – so much of it, in fact, that they were denied enough oxygen, and the brain damage was caused by asphyxiation. This was published as a serious study! And quoted by government officials. So, you can cause indirect damage with marijuana, if you design your procedures appropriately :/)
“District attorneys are a necessary part of public safety, but they are hardly the office-holders that excite me or inspire me the way other public servants sometimes do.”
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p>Now, think about that statement and reflect back on the kind of candidate Martha Coakley was for senator, or for the matter, the statewide races run by Frank Bellotti, Scott Harshbarger and Tom Reilly. It’s just the nature of the beast. What makes a successful ADA, DA, or AG, just doesn’t seem to translate to the other big seats. People are willing to overlook a lot of flaws in them when hiring them for those legal jobs, but not the others.
Interesting UK study on the relative dangerousness of different narcotic substances, from The Economist: http://www.economist.com/blogs…
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p>In terms of dangerousness, pot is unique among substances that can be abused in that it is virtually impossible to OD on. The War on Drugs is a total failure and actually counter-productive. It is also an enormous cash cow for law enforcement at all levels…hence the adamant defense from most in that business.