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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLet's Jail People For Being Fat
JOSH BARRO
David Brooks, Ruth Marcus, and Tina Brown want to keep laws against marijuana. They're aiming at the wrong target. Really, we should legalize marijuana and throw people in jail for being fat.
By Brooks' and Marcus' own admission, marijuana itself doesn't necessarily have such bad effects. They both smoked quite a bit of it back in the day and still managed highly successful careers as national opinion columnists. Really, they are worried about marijuana's negative second-order effects when other people smoke it.
Marcus worries about effects on IQ. Brooks says weed makes people unambitious and distracts them from "the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature." Brown is the most blunt, tweeting that "legal weed contributes to us being a fatter, dumber, sleepier nation even less able to compete with the Chinese."
Brooks, Marcus, and Brown want to address these negative effects through a regime of criminal penalties that imprisons at least some subset of the people involved in cultivating, distributing and consuming the marijuana that Brooks and Marcus enjoyed so much in the 1970s. (Brown didn't answer my Twitter question about whether she's ever smoked marijuana but, well, she works in publishing, so we can all hazard a guess.)
But why go after marijuana for its second-order effects? Why not just ban stupidity, laziness, obesity, unambitious taste, or whatever social ills are of concern to national opinion columnists? As Brooks asks, "Laws profoundly mold culture, so what sort of community do we want our laws to nurture?" If the answer is "one where people are thin," the obvious answer is to ban fatness.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-not-throw-people-in-jail-for-being-fat-2014-1
NutmegYankee
(16,199 posts)Speaking of, where are my Baby back ribs?
OKNancy
(41,832 posts)I really enjoy following him. He actively engages the kooks. @jbarro
last1standing
(11,709 posts)I've known several republicans through the years who have railed against drugs, gambling, drinking, etc... but only for others. These same 'conservatives' did all those things but thought that they were exempt from the laws they foisted on "regular" people.
KG
(28,751 posts)anybody mock the second-oder effects of weed?
bluedigger
(17,085 posts)Some people like the smell of skunk...
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)giftedgirl77
(4,713 posts)Like a dog tracking a scent. Good times, good times.
NCarolinawoman
(2,825 posts)I never smoked it, but I certainly went to enough parties in the 70's and remember there was often a group off in the corner taking part. I thought it smelled a lot better (like autumn leaves burning) than tobacco smoke with all those pesticide additives.
By the way, that group in the corner was usually composed of medical students, young doctors, nurses, and I don't remember any of them being carted off to jail.
Skidmore
(37,364 posts)and gain revenue from them, the wealthy in office will make poverty a crime punishable by imprisonment again. When you have people being herded around because they lack homes, what better way to make them useful if you don't want to create jobs but to imprison them and use their labor that way.
We need to change congress from a country club to a working body.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)LWolf
(46,179 posts)I think I remember a bit about my experience with weed and with the people I enjoyed it with.
I don't think it distracted us from enjoyment of nature or the arts; the opposite, in fact. Unambitious? Maybe, if "ambition" is about making your mark or place in an aggressive, competitive, capitalistic society. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing, though. It could be our culture would be a lot healthier if we dialed way down on those characteristics.
Brooks may be right about laws molding culture. I think we just have profoundly different visions for the culture we'd like to see.
What laws might I enact to "mold" the culture I'd like to see? To start with:
1. A carbon tax or deduction. Produce zero biological children? A great big deduction. One child? A moderate deduction. Two kids? No deduction, no tax. More than two biological kids? A carbon tax for every child over two, increasing with each addition.
2. A socialized national health CARE program, guaranteeing physical and mental health care, vision, dental, hospice, home care, prescriptions, and alternative care to every person, free at point of service.
3. A truly 100% public, 100% FREE at point of service education, pre-school through trade school or university, at any point in life, for every person. No privatization, no high-stakes testing, the public education system designed and managed by actual EDUCATORS.
4. Expanded social security, starting earlier and paying more.
5. Guaranteed clean, safe shelter and minimal income to every person, regardless of circumstance.
6. A restorative justice system, offering re-training and rehabilitation to all offenders, and long-term or permanent incarceration only for those who pose a danger to others. All those incarcerated, long or short term, treated with dignity and humanity, and guaranteed safety, healthy food, and whatever other services they need to learn to function well with others. Corporate criminals required to use their assets to restore the lives of those they damaged.
7. Energy production and distribution all public, not-for-profit.
8. Free, fully-funded and developed, easy and convenient public transportation systems everywhere.
9. A guaranteed LIVING wage.
10. Labor unions required for all jobs; strict, and strictly enforced, labor regulations.
11. Strict, and strictly enforced, environmental regulations.
12. The end of "free" trade; a trade system based on strict labor and environmental standards.
That's a start.
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)SummerSnow
(12,608 posts)progressoid
(49,933 posts)NaturalHigh
(12,778 posts)I might be willing to give it a try.
LittleBlue
(10,362 posts)Matariki
(18,775 posts)instead of 'compete'. You know, all working together to solve the world's problems and such.
yuiyoshida
(41,818 posts)If we sold pot to the Chinese? You know who really needs it, its North Korea!
Response to yuiyoshida (Reply #17)
Warren DeMontague This message was self-deleted by its author.
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)Initech
(100,029 posts)One cannot live off Fritos, Oreos, Pringles, and Cheetos for eternity!
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)DemLife
(33 posts)All will be fine. And worse during the days when reefer madness came out.
madinmaryland
(64,931 posts)spanone
(135,781 posts)In_The_Wind
(72,300 posts)Response to n2doc (Original post)
Warren DeMontague This message was self-deleted by its author.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)FarPoint
(12,276 posts)Have you ever reviewed the meal choices in jail? The calorie count is the meal planning goal...thus almost all carbohydrates and the protein is almost always turkey....made to look like another protein.
Then...limited physical activity....essentially sedimentary activity compounded with boredom. Jail is stressful too....ultimately many choose to by commissary food items that are high in empty, fattening calories....to feel better from the stress.
Jailhouse weight gain is inevitable.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)I have a family member who went to jail for a year. Lost 40 pounds. I would not recommend it as a diet plan.
FarPoint
(12,276 posts)Warpy
(111,123 posts)Remember the munchies?
mike_c
(36,267 posts)I'm a reasonably fit (for 60-ish, ok) academic research scientist, builder, and artist. Some of those conservatives who fear the personal effects of legal cannabis send their kids to me for a university education.
I'm a lifelong stoner, too. Started smoking cannabis when I was 15 years old, in 1970. Although I've certainly learned the truth of the old saying over the years that "pot will get you through times with no money better than money will get you through times with no pot," by and large I've used cannabis nearly daily for almost 45 years. That is certainly true of the past 25 years, when I've had the means to keep myself in good stash while working in a profession that has utter disdain for things like drug testing. (At this point in my career I don't have any currently open federal grants, so nah nah about all those Reaganesque "drug free workplace" pledges .)
The point is that I'm not fat, I'm not stupid, I'm not without personal ambition, and I'm not "sleepy." I don't remember the last time I was actually bored because, in spite of what Mr. Brown might think, I always have half a dozen NEW projects underway simultaneously because I LOVE new challenges. I've been a productive academic and scientist, an innovative teacher whose contributions to the profession are recognized institutionally, a labor activist and officer in my faculty union, and I've had a kick-ass good time doing it, too. I'm not an occasional cannabis user by anyone's definition.
Every. Day. For decades.
Get used to it, America. We're here. We're the drug criminals who give the lie to every half-baked uninformed nonsensical pronouncement about the "moral landscape" of prohibition and the intellectual desert of stonerdom.
I live in California's Emerald Triangle, where obtaining cannabis is trivial, but it is still nominally illegal absent a Prop. 215 certification. That will change very soon. Prohibition is ending, and unlike the repeal of short lived alcohol prohibition, the repeal of cannabis prohibition will do FAR more good than harm.
mythology
(9,527 posts)gives me yet another reason to not smoke pot. Most of the people I've known who have smoked pot regularly weren't the sort of people I wanted to emulate because of the fact that most of them were lazy, unmotivated and wasted their potential. Similarly, the people I've known who drink regularly are much the same. So I don't hang out with them.
That said, it's more than silly that pot is classified alongside heroin. It should be legal because as long as it doesn't harm others directly and isn't dangerous like heroin, cocaine or meth, then there's no reason for it to be illegal.