Waves

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

from link: Try as they might, our country’s legislative bodies cannot seem to get on the same page. The very same week that legislator Barney Frank introduces a bill to protect medical marijuana dispensaries from undue and unjust prosecution, someone on the other side of the aisle wants to increase legal penalties on certain strains of it.

Illinois’ 10th District Representative, Mark Kirk, thinks it would be a wise idea to single out "kush" dealing and make it punishable by up to 25 years for a first offense. For the uninitiated, kush isn’t a new chemical weapon or a secret Satanic doctrine that causes its members to rape strangers uncontrollably. It’s simply a species of weed that contains 5 to 10% more THC than the usual stuff.

Disproportionate, you say? Yes, in the press circulating around Kirk’s new proposal, there don’t seem to be very many arguments for imposing such draconian penalties. A sheriff from Kirk’s home turf (Lake County, IL) offered this rationale:

"They are more dangerous behind the wheel of a vehicle. It’s not a good idea to have people that messed up"

Well that certainly makes sense. Isn’t that the reason why laws treating drunkenness from weak spirits and hard liquor are completely different? I mean, could you imagine if the same people with access to beer (5% alcohol) were allowed to access Bacardi 151 (75% alcohol)? It would be total anarchy. We would have people getting wildly messed up on some highly potent stuff. Hang on a moment... My intern here is telling me that we actually have no laws that distinguish beer from wine or from hard alcohol. No law distinguishes 5% alcohol by volume from 75%. In fact, we allow adults to use these substances responsibly, regardless of the volume they consume at all. And it’s only when they demonstrate a lack of responsibility (like getting behind the wheel, or making life difficult for someone else) that we see fit to punish them at all. How curious.

To be fair, we have yet to reach the real crux of the Kirk team’s argument for this new standard. To quote Lake County Sheriff, Mark Currand, once more,

"When you amplify the strength of it, you are increasing the harm to the system."

Ah, of course, harm to the system! Don’t you yokels get it? All of this THC is going to mess up THE SYSTEM! People are out of work, banks are going bust, Guantanamo inmates are being set free, dispensaries are popping up everywhere, dogs and cats are living together, it’s mass hysteria! And, apparently, it can all be traced back to the THC. The THC is the source, and it’s got to be stopped!

Well I, for one, would like to thank Representative Mark Kirk (who can be conveniently reached at 202 225-4835) and his intrepid staff for taking a pre-emptive strike against that vile kush-weed before it inevitably ruins our glorious society and systems at large. I can only hope that you will join me in showing him how well appreciated he is.

what a joke...

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Tricto

thanks for sharing, need as many sensible Illinois-ans as we can get
i wonder if he realizes that there's enough support in Illinois for medical that it passed the state senate

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Human rights went on vacation
Money took over a long time ago...

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pacman

dude that is a joke. how are you gonna single out a single strain of weed? send it in for testing? spend extra tax dollars on an already unwinnable war on drugs? this is beyond ridiculous.

congressmen should not be able to even think about starting initiatives without some sort of District Town Hall meeting or a popular vote/survey

seattle420lover

pacman is so RIGHT on this, this rep Kirk (asshole)
would bankrupt the nation testing my pot

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"The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining to an understanding of compassion" SOCRATES, 470-399 BC

zerodown

The question you should be asking is not how he plans on doing this, you should why is he doing this? Certainly the "citizens" didn't call him up and said hey you know we want kush out of the game, did they? Did any of you call him to ask him to ban kush? No? Then what motivated him to do that? call him up and ask him that...

John F. Kerry

the righteous absurdity with which prohibition proponents pursue their agenda is often shocking- my favorite for anyone who has seen grass narrated by woody harrelson is the scene where they show a police officer talking about "drug addicts" and he is clenching his fists and lamenting how much drug addicts piss him off and how he feels great satisfaction arresting them- the entire time the interview is taking place he is chain smoking cigarettes and clenching his fists in rage and anger about the evil pot smokers....


hypocrisy is the absolute most fundamental aspect of prohibition.


or how about reagans famous line "well some young people tell me that our generation had a martini after work so why cant we smoke pot?"- reagans 'answer' - "why doesnt your generation be the first to not need ANY crutch"

all these people should look in the bible and read the line LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN CAST THE FIRST STONE and tell me about your hypocritical bulshit war on pot some more.

~1~

Because if you take a stand against drugs, violence against women and children, predators, rapists, murderers, illegal immigrants and whip out your 'morality', you're sure to get re-elected for another term without really having to do anything...


You know, if politics didn't pay for shit, it'd be a very lonely field.

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