cannabisnews.com: A Question of Possession










  A Question of Possession

Posted by CN Staff on September 16, 2008 at 05:51:16 PT
By Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist 
Source: Boston Globe  

Boston, MA -- What's wrong with a few joints? Nothing, if you ask the proponents of one of the worst ideas on the ballot this year.Question 2 would make possession of up to an ounce of marijuana a civil offense, punishable by a $100 fine. A recent poll suggests that the question will win easily. Over 70 percent of voters in the poll backed it in a Channel 7/Suffolk University survey.
That isn't a huge surprise. Public attitudes about marijuana use have clearly relaxed, to the point where a presidential candidate's youthful dalliances with it have been a nonissue in the campaign. That doesn't mean this should pass.Money has poured in to support it, much of it from out of state. Billionaire George Soros, who has led the charge to decriminalize marijuana possession nationwide, has donated at least $400,000.The major argument of the proponents is that enforcing marijuana laws is a waste of time and public resources. They have produced a report arguing, absurdly, that Massachusetts would save $29.5 million a year, if only cops would stop chasing pot smokers around.They might have a point, if police officers were really doing that. But in fact, marijuana possession charges are almost always tacked onto more serious offenses. In 2007, not one person went to jail in Suffolk or Middlesex counties for marijuana possession alone. First offenders, by statute, get six months' probation, after which the charge is dropped. "The well-financed proponents got a jump on providing misinformation to the public ranging from public health issues to law enforcement," Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone said last week.Prosecutors and police are up in arms about Question 2, and they are not alone. The Rev. Jeffrey Brown of the Boston TenPoint Coalition, who has spent years dealing with crime issues that spring from drug use, castigated the backers of Question 2 as out-of-touch suburbanites who have no clue about the drug problems in the neighborhoods he works in."I've heard that the legalization lobby has targeted Massachusetts because this is a liberal state," Brown said. "What I need is someone to help me in the street, helping these young men and women get jobs and educations and rebuilding families. I don't need a bunch of suburban folks asking what's wrong with a little marijuana. It's amazing that anyone would consider this."Does the average suburban person even know how many blunts you can get from an ounce? Twenty-eight - we're not talking about a thimbleful."Whitney Taylor is running the campaign for Question 2. She argues that 7,500 people a year get criminal records because of marijuana possession."We're not saying that people are going to jail for this," she said. "We're saying that arrests and bookings are a drain" on public resources. She said 11 states have passed similar laws, with no increase in drug use.The arguments in favor of Question 2 are weak. If people are not going to jail for possession, what is the argument for making the law even weaker? Turning marijuana possession into a lesser offense than speeding will only encourage and embolden drug pushers and their customers. Why, exactly, is that a good idea? This is a bad solution to something that isn't even a problem.There will be a range of opinion on this, but I don't like the fact that this campaign is being bankrolled and run by people who will never to have to deal with its consequences. Soros and his organization are based in New York; one of the biggest individual contributors locally is Woody Kaplan ($10,000, according to campaign finance records) of fashionable Commonwealth Avenue. It's no accident that you won't see many people in neighborhoods ravaged by drugs signing up for this cause. This is a classic limousine liberal movement.The public pays so little attention to ballot questions that they have become the vehicle of choice for ideas that would never pass in the Legislature. This is one that should not fly under the radar.Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. Source: Boston Globe (MA)Author:  Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist Published: September 16, 2008 Copyright: 2008 Globe Newspaper CompanyContact: letter globe.comWebsite: http://www.boston.com/globe/CannabisNews -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml

Home    Comment    Email    Register    Recent Comments    Help





Comment #27 posted by museman on September 18, 2008 at 10:45:26 PT
afterburner
Because I am so often thought to be attacking someone, when I am merely rejecting ideology, I felt maybe I needed to clarify my reaction to those links."The agent of change here is that composite of all the world's exchanges that relentlessly shove resources this way and that way..."That 'composite' being vaguely represented in this statement, is none other than the banking institutions, and their pocket politics looking out for their own interests. If 'change' is to come about, the entire false system of values is going to have to change first -and I will be the first one to admit that it will be far from easy. So I percieve this statement as a couched, embedded support and validation for a failed system, that is the weights and measures of 'economic values.'"No one person is in charge. Layers upon layers of decisions by millions and billions of people are the essential mechanism that makes the process move forward. All these decisions and choices and guesses come to be aggregated in a single number called the price, and that price can then be used in that simple calculation that indicates success or failure. Every instant of time all around the world that calculation is made, and it results in shifts and movement and progress."Quite frankly I find that to be not only a misleading statement -as if it were fact- but a pure speculation based on the desire to believe in falsehoods. It iso not 'the price' that is dictating these 'movements' but the carefully orchestrated schemes and plans of the leaders of the world, and their financial backers.The current bailout of fannie is a perfect example of governmental priorities.
To say that the consumers drive the market is either very naive, or deliberately misleading. The consumers are driven by their choice of lifestyles, which is handed to them in carefully prepared package starting in Kindergarten. -which is equal to no choice at all for those humans who don't intend to rape and pillage the earth, or support such activities."what really inspires are the massive acts of creative destruction such as when old-line firms like Lehman and Merrill melt before our eyes, their good assets transferred to more competent hands and their bad liabilities banished from the face of the earth." -And I am often accused of 'wishful thinking' and 'unrealistic prespective!'Those 'more competent hands' are whom? Prove to me that they are anyone other than the very 'hands' that now actually posess more than 90% of the false wealth known as money, who are responsible for consciously directing the destruction of planet earth and all its people, for their own profit and comfort."Inspiration" literally means (in its orignal conception) "Filled with Spirit." How these shallow, materialistioc perspectives of 'gains and losses' can even be compared to Spirit is to me an affront. I understand that ignorance is rampant, and stupidiy can be forgiven, but not ignored by those who know better.The collapse of the (not) free market would be one of the biggest blessings to come on us since we discovered freedom was more than a concept 2,000 years ago, but just replacing the 'old' money holders with a 'new' generation of money holders (the carefully picked successors to the thrones) is no change at all.FREE MARIJANA FOR EVERYONE
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #26 posted by museman on September 18, 2008 at 09:29:32 PT
afterburner
Thanks for the consideration...Those articles offended me. They are rooted in a belief system that is abhorrent to me. I cannot express enough of adamant rejection of everything that bases its perception of reality on status quo standards.I am kind of wondering at the blatant hipocrisy of relating those subject matters to the word and meaning of 'natural.' I do not live in that 'financial' reality, and I am pretty sure I wouldn't want to even if I could.I am not offended that you put them for me to see. I will always consider what is presented.I know that I am a small minority, in terms of what I believe, and how I see things, but I didn't come by my views arbitrarily on a whim, I have lived a life so far, and it is by direct experience, observation and witness that I draw my conclusions. If my experience finds parallel in written word -expression of someone elses experience- all the better, but when it comes to establishmentarianisms, I reject them 100%.Cash is trash.FREE MARIJUANA FOR EVERYONE
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #25 posted by afterburner on September 17, 2008 at 19:46:53 PT
museman #15
"1. A major shift in the consciousness paradigm towards actual focus on good things instead of the continuing putrid compromises with the status quo."The Glories of Change: Why Financial Institution Failures Spell Good News For All. 
Tuesday, September 16, 2008 by: Jeffrey A Tucker.
Key concepts: Good news, Natural health and Renewable energy 
http://www.naturalnews.com/024220.htmlHealth Ranger Hosts LIVE Audio Event on Health Preparedness and Financial Protection. 
Tuesday, September 16, 2008 by: Mike Adams (see all articles by this author).
Key concepts: Health, Preparedness and Health Ranger 
http://www.naturalnews.com/024221.html
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #24 posted by FoM on September 17, 2008 at 13:02:34 PT
Stock Market
What an interesting day. I kept reloading the business page on Google the last half an hour and at 4 it was down 452. 
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #23 posted by FoM on September 17, 2008 at 11:13:54 PT
museman
It did have shock value back then. I am so glad that I was part of that special time in history.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #22 posted by museman on September 17, 2008 at 10:59:33 PT
That was my favorite song
to crank up the volume, open the doors and windows and gift the neighborhood with, before the republicans passed noise ordinances all over the country to stop the spread of rock 'n roll.My next favorite was John Lennons "Working Class Hero"Back when the 'f' word still had some shock value.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #21 posted by FoM on September 17, 2008 at 10:50:26 PT
museman
That song is what woke me up.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #20 posted by museman on September 17, 2008 at 10:46:13 PT
gimme an "F"
"Whats that spell?"FISH?"...be the first one on your block, to have your boy come home in a box!"
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #19 posted by FoM on September 17, 2008 at 10:42:34 PT
museman
This is how I see it mostly.Come on wall street don't be slowwhy man this war is a go-gothere's plenty good money to be made bysupplying the army with the tools of its tradelet's hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,they drop it on the Viet Cong***Country Joe McDonald - I Feel Like (Woodstock 1969)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5btZWbViPALyrics: http://www.ocap.ca/songs/vietnam.html
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #18 posted by museman on September 17, 2008 at 10:33:10 PT
FoM
"Who are the middle class?"Well, I guess that depends on who you ask. My opinion and observation is certainly not the popular, prevailing belief.The middle class, in my opinion, is nothing more than a contrived illusion of the ruling class. The economic status of what is usually referred to as the middle class in America has been completely dependent on the whims and designs of the ruling class. Our 'middle class' actually really didn't exist until after WWII, and the scheme of the 'American Dream' handed out to the 'returning heroes' as the spoils of war. Our middle class is about the same as the Romans elevating their Centurians and Legions slightly above the plebians.Without war, in the current scheme of things, there would never have been a 'middle class' and as easily as they are manipulated and brought into the great compromise of the status quo, they don't really know just how tenuous their make-believe world actually is.My son has a song called "Comfort Prison" that kind of says it all;"We must escape from our comfort prison that we're livin in.."The middle class lives in a comfort prison, and as long as they believe they are 'comfortable' they will continue to support their masters, and be slaves, whether they admit it or not.I've been an unwilling slave many times, but I am under no illusions as to what the difference between slavery and freedom truly is. And though I must tolerate some aspects of the system in order to survive, I do not pretend to agree with Rome, or Roman ways and means.The current 'credit' debacle that the middle class has been enticed into is designed to create a 'legal' condition of default that inevitably puts all the wealth back into tbhe pockets of its inventors. As long as people believe in money as some kind of valid resource, they will be beholden to the perpetrators of the illusion.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #17 posted by FoM on September 17, 2008 at 09:59:25 PT
museman
I have to go and start bringing in firewood but I'll leave you with a question. Who are the middle class? That's a point to ponder.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #16 posted by FoM on September 17, 2008 at 09:50:55 PT
museman
I don't know about divine intervention since people need to learn from their mistakes and that includes countries too I believe. I think the system might just collapse and bartering and real goods are all that will keep people going if the worst case scenario happens.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #15 posted by museman on September 17, 2008 at 09:42:37 PT
FoM
I know that some will cringe at this, but without one of two things happening, the bailout of the rich, by the rich lackies (politicians and government) will/would only result in the total collapse of the middle class, which ultimately would provide the justification for the final and permanent establishment of the Amerikan police state...1. A major shift in the consciousness paradigm towards actual focus on good things instead of the continuing putrid compromises with the status quo.2. Divine intervention.Which of those is going to be the most prevalent actions pretty much rests on the choices of the next generation. If they choose to follow the footsteps of their immediate progenitors, Divine Intervention is our only hope.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #14 posted by FoM on September 17, 2008 at 09:18:48 PT
museman
I like watching the stock market these days. The tax payers bailed out another company for 85b and as of now the Market is down over 300 points. I wonder how much more of free market failures we will have to absorb before the Republicans are out of power. I read yesterday that GM thinks it will get 25b from us too.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #13 posted by museman on September 17, 2008 at 09:09:33 PT
FoM
Exactly.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #12 posted by FoM on September 17, 2008 at 09:07:01 PT
museman
Thank you. It worked this time. That sound seems to represent chaos to me. 
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #11 posted by museman on September 17, 2008 at 09:01:27 PT
FoM -the link
Sorry. I copied the ftp address instead of the http...Let me try again....
Republican Conscience
[ Post Comment ]

 


Comment #10 posted by FoM on September 17, 2008 at 08:48:01 PT

museman
My early education was based on our family's religion which was catholic as you know. My mother told me it was our responsibility to help those less fortunate and then God will bless us. I agree that the more we do for others the better our own lives are. When I think of the republican philosophy I think of how Hitler wanted to make a perfect race of people and that turns my stomach.PS: Your song link didn't work for me.
[ Post Comment ]


 


Comment #9 posted by museman on September 17, 2008 at 08:31:35 PT

survival of the fittest
Was, as everyone knows, a fact of life amongst the animmals in nature. It is ironic that a culture that holds much contempt for the natural reality that is the real foundation for all the inventions man has put upon it, including social concepts, and their attending urban sprawl, would adapt such a philosophy into their mix.In less elite-dominated cultures from the past-where there wasn't a controlling faction manipulating definition and meaning at breakneck speed - changing words so fast to back up their various stories, that words have changed meanings more than twice in one generation - the word 'base' in reference to such things as the instinct for survival (that we share with the animals) meant 'small-minded' (as in using only the reptilian anterior brain function) and uncultured, and in many ancient philosophies and scriptures (originally referred to as 'books of knowlege') 'base' was synonymous with 'evil.'To say that the Republic of America is built on any foundation other than that base, primitive, reptilian (cold-blooded) consciousness is tantamount to that 'blind loyalty' Overwhelmsam is referring to. I am not discounting the brave souls throughout history who foolishly gave their lives for the concepts they believed in, such as 'liberty and justice for all'- their honor is fixed even though they died for falsehoods, for it is the intention in the heart that is the qualifier of honor, not whether the action succeeds or not.It is a Republic modelled so closely on Roman standards, our government buildings were originally designed to appear like Roman architecture. It is a ruthless, dog-eat-dog (no puns intended FoM) society that bears no resemblance to the 'Christian philosophy' (falsely claimed to be part of their 'agendas') of compassion, love, forgiveness, and the support of the weak by the strong. Those attributes exist within the people, but though they may be on the lips of the politicians (who are all republicans at this point because they serve only the republican ideologies of conquest, aquisition, posession, domination, control, master-slave, inferior-superior, judgement, condemnation, and survival of the 'fittest') those prime attributes of goodness are nowhere near their hearts.Of course the 'fittest' in their realm includes such things as inbreeding, -perpetuating genetic corruption- and most importantly; posession of land and moneys. The fact that they are all insane from hundreds of generations of unnatural selection, though becoming quite apparent to us normal humans, it is beyond their 'base' of understanding.Here's a little musical interpertation of 'Republican Idiocy'
Republican Conscience
[ Post Comment ]


 


Comment #8 posted by FoM on September 17, 2008 at 06:53:38 PT

museman
When I think of the republican philosophy I think of puppies. I know that's weird but I raised dogs for years. We had Weimaraners and Rottweilers that had very large litters. Some people kill off the weaker pups to keep the price up and make the breed stronger. I always tried to save every puppy in the litter and some of the weakest ones became the best dogs. I don't like survival of the fitest for humanity as a political belief.
[ Post Comment ]


 


Comment #7 posted by OverwhelmSam on September 17, 2008 at 06:38:41 PT

Museman on Idiot Loyalists
Just like going gay, they usually get sucked into it. The Republican born children are forced to subscribe to the establishment's ideological doctrine, or face excommunication, humilation and failure. That's their way, they even eat their own. Loyalty to a party is okay, blind loyalty to any person or idea is a mental disorder, relieved coincidentally by cannabis. 
[ Post Comment ]


 


Comment #6 posted by Yanxor on September 16, 2008 at 19:23:53 PT

Foot in mouth
"This is a bad solution to something that isn't even a problem." Haha. The guy thinks cannabis possession is not even a problem.
[ Post Comment ]


 


Comment #5 posted by museman on September 16, 2008 at 11:31:10 PT

where do they get these guys
Is there a special class in the yellow building at the journalism school?Or is the grey and black one at seminary school?Is it an Amerikan Axiom to point, accuse, mock, belittle, and then criminalize everything that doesn't move in a straight line down the highway of bullshit?Why is it that the 'republican consiousness' (if there is any consiousness there) is always negative, and their 'greatness' is always determined by the amount of conquest and aquisition they have under their belt. They get praised for 'saving the baby' even though they are the ones who threw the baby up into the air to begin with. And of course if they miss the baby and it isn't caught, they've got a national data-base to draw their scapegoats from, and to cast their well orchestrated blame.Education comes from many sources, not just academia, and if more reality is actually learned 'out of the classroom' than in it (even though many who have labored within those institutions for years will condemn and make war on those who put their limmited scope to shame with wisdom, knowlege and experience only found in living, not in their academic propaganda funded by the republican state) Knowing is not qualified by certification, but by the actual possession of the right knowlege. Maybe its because the elite like to believe that everyone except themselves are stupid and unable to function without being led around by the nose, and the wanna-be elites are all stumbling over each other to 'look good' in the eyes of their masters. Ignorance is bliss, so they say, and 'what they don't know won't hurt us.'I've wondered how one would deal with infiltrators and instigators, whose 'cover story' seems plausible, there is no outstanding evidence (in the status quo type standards of 'documented proof') and yet the gut just wants to vomit everything coming from those people.When the plattitudinal, shallow perception of the corporate, nine-to-five, institutionalized status-quo mentality is held ignorantly by a significant pecentage of the population, getting the truth across that barrier is a real labor.Fortunately, the blind do not see, so they cannot see what is happening all around them. They cannot see that all around the world people are becoming aware, that there is a new generation that, though it has a handful of unfortunates who were enticed into war, many more aren't buying into the bill of goods being shoved down our throats than the comfortably endowed are willing to admit. Their denial results in smaller and smaller cyclical ideologies, until one day they will wake up and find that the world has literally left them behind.The knights of the round table of global conquest cannot see their false kingdom crumbling away, they sit in opulence and comfort that is an indecent contast to the majority of humanity suffering around them. The 'middle-class' america is cascading into serfdom, but they still got their SUVs, wide-screen, and suburban homes, for the moment, so they are still a resource for the controlling factions to garner 'support' for their agenda.Its only a matter of time however, as all the truths are out of the box and circulating. They couldn't put Yashua back in the box 2,000 years ago, they can't stop what is happening now either.
[ Post Comment ]


 


Comment #4 posted by dongenero on September 16, 2008 at 10:17:17 PT

flawed logic
Don't you love it when prohibitionists argue that the laws are not really being enforced so there is no need to weaken the law. 
Hey, if that's the case, forget decrim, just take the laws of the books completely.Oh and the poor stupid voters! Were in not for being misled by George Soros, more reasonable prohibitionist ideology would prevail. The prohibitionists just can't get their reasoned message across. Right.It's the damned liberals. Damned bogeymen! Got...to...have...more....buzzwords! Limousine Liberals! There ya go....the elite liberals. They're the bogeymen to blame.Lets face it. It is the elite, 1% tax cut beneficiary, limousine conservative, deregulating so the greedy can steal, Republicans that set the policies that are bringing our country down today. From financial to security to foreign policy. You name it, they've screwed it. Keep your manufactured culture war Mr. Walker.I can see why the Boston Globe doesn't have a comments section after the article. The author would be ripped to shreds 
[ Post Comment ]


 


Comment #3 posted by fight_4_freedom on September 16, 2008 at 09:34:30 PT

This guy doesn't have a clue
"The arguments in favor of Question 2 are weak."Really? And where are these brilliant arguments against Question 2?You certainly don't have any listed in this column. 
[ Post Comment ]


 


Comment #2 posted by Commonsense on September 16, 2008 at 06:35:33 PT

Jail
If you get arrested and booked, you're going to jail. That's where they book you at least everywhere I've been. If you can't make bond, you're staying in jail unless the judge grants a signature bond. If you don't get a signature bond and you don't have the money to bond out, you are sitting in jail until your trial. Then the judge may not order a jail sentence, but that doesn't mean you didn't do any jail time. Then if you can't get a ride to your marijuana class or you can't make your fine payments, guess what is going to happen to you? You're going to jail again. On the books it won't look like jail for a marijuana possession offense, but in real terms that's what it will be.
[ Post Comment ]


 


Comment #1 posted by runruff on September 16, 2008 at 06:03:44 PT

Who da boss,
the people or the politicians?"The public pays so little attention to ballot questions that they have become the vehicle of choice for ideas that would never pass in the Legislature."The politicians are puppets. If they were voting in line with the people they represent they would be in line with the 70%. This guy is a twit. I'm sure 70% polled understood the question.
[ Post Comment ]





  Post Comment