How dry are we?

[hrmjustin]

Terry Golway

As governor of New York in the 1920s, Al Smith not only opposed Prohibition, he held it in contempt. The moral crusaders of the age, he once warned, would stop at nothing in their attempts to regulate personal behavior. It was just a matter of time, he said in 1929, before the blue noses made it impossible to light up a cigar at the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway.

It was hardly a secret that Smith and others like him—city dwellers, immigrants—did not share the obsession with vice that animated so many upstaters, Republicans, and evangelical Protestants. Smith was among the millions who saw no reason to go dry just because the law of the land prohibited the sale and consumption of liquor. His second-floor office in the Capitol occasionally had all the trappings of a speakeasy, to the horror of law-and-order politicians and moral crusaders from less urban portions of the state.

If this sounds just a little familiar, it should. Though the geographic and ethnic lines may be less neat, the combatants in today’s debate over legalization of marijuana look and sound somewhat similar. Downstate Democrats in the Assembly tend to support a loosening of marijuana prohibitions. To the extent that there is an organized opposition to liberalization of marijuana laws, it is largely among suburban and upstate Republicans in the State Senate.

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/magazine/2014/05/8544638/how-dry-are-we

[liberal N proud]

1. This country is still full of moral crusaders

They are still trying to regulate personal behavior while attempting to deregulate that of the corporations.

It's not just marijuana either.

[hrmjustin]

2. True. They want people using prescription drugs so their buddies can make money off of it.

[abelenkpe]

3. OT but every time I go to my doc

there are more pharmaceutical reps in the waiting room than patients. I only go when suffering from a respiratory infection. She'll offer pain meds easy, but antibiotics? No way. Gotta have the infection for over a month before she'll break down and prescribe those. Isn't addiction to prescription pain relievers a bigger problem than overuse of antibiotics?

[hrmjustin]

4. Yes and unfortunately FL has very poor regulations on pain meds so the dealers go down there to

get the drugs. But it is a problem Nationwide.

Your doctor seems cruel.