Speaking of William F. Buckley, Denver listened to his argument about legalization of marijuana:
Denver gives adults loophole on marijuana
Denver on Tuesday became the first city in the United States to wipe out all criminal and civil penalties for adults caught possessing a small amount of marijuana. About 54 percent of voters supported a ballot measure legalizing possession of less than an ounce by individuals 21 and over. The ordinance is more sweeping than similar measures approved over the years in San Francisco, Berkeley, Calif., Oakland and a half-dozen college towns around the country. Most of those initiatives decriminalized marijuana for medical use or replaced criminal penalties with small fines or directed police to make enforcement of marijuana laws a low priority. Denver, by contrast, erased adult possession as an offense entirely.
I didn't see any of these ads, but if you recall, during a recent World Cup, Portugal banned alcohol at the stadium, but allowed marijuana, because the Portuguese officials believed there would be less violence. They were right.
In large part, that's because of the tactics activists used to promote the measure. The marijuana-liberalization group SAFER ran a provocative...campaign to cast the measure as vital for public safety.On yard signs and billboards, online and in voter forums, campaign director Mason Tvert, 23, tried to convince voters that marijuana is a safer alternative to alcohol. He argued that street crime and domestic violence would drop if residents legally were allowed to smoke marijuana rather than down a six-pack of beer. College campuses, too, would be safer, he said, if joints replaced kegs at parties.
But of course, the government believes in legislation for everything:
City officials reacted angrily to such tactics, warning that marijuana is a “gateway” to more dangerous drugs.
I hate this argument - one could argue that alcohol is a 'gateway' to domestic abuse, or that voting for Republicans is a “gateway” to destroying ones country. Well, those might actually be true, but we'll discuss that later. Ahem.
Tags: drinking, /drugs, /Know your rights, /NORML
