What's the conceivable scenario where even heightened levels of "fear and uncertainty" lead to the collapse of the USA? Also keep in mind that people are already extraordinarily pessimistic and unconfident about the country.
How do you define "collapse of the USA"? Dissolution? Fall of the government? Effective dictatorship? Widespread police state? Something else?
I'd say the end to constitutional governance would be a good definition. That'd be included in all your scenarios except the police state.
As much as I'd hate to live in a police state, I don't think you can call that the "collapse of the USA." China is very much alive.
How do you define "collapse of the USA"? Dissolution? Fall of the government? Effective dictatorship? Widespread police state? Something else?
I'd say the end to constitutional governance would be a good definition. That'd be included in all your scenarios except the police state. As much as I'd hate to live in a police state, I don't think you can call that the "collapse of the USA." China is very much alive.
I think many Americans would no longer consider the USA the same country if it were a police state. It would be the US in name only.
I can't believe no-one in the comments here or the original article suggest growing their own. It takes 10 square feet of space, about $500 one-time investment, a day or two to build and about an hour per week of maintenance. It can be done safely, discreetly and odor-free. Sure, it would be illegal, but the chances of getting caught are pretty miniscule. Although I don't know how severe penalties are in place where…
I believe everything except odor free. Got a link to evidence?
I'm for the legalization of marijuana, but I really hate the arguments these articles present in favor of it; I'm sure your raging 9-year-old kid would chill out on a strong dose of heroin, too. We should not falsely elevate marijuana as some wonder drug. Surely, there's a better argument that can be presented for legalization?
This article is propaganda. It doesn't contain any interesting data, just a rehash of the policy landscape and a single, heart string-tugging anecdote.
I think your dismissal of the article as "propaganda" is nothing but trolling. Why do you think Cannabis should be illegal? Countless anecdotes have shown that cannabis works where other medicines don't. At what point should we drop this charade of a "war on drugs" and just accept that this plant has medicinal properties like no other?
I recall in 70s/80s Denmark and Netherlands made pot legal in parts of Amsterdam and Copenhagen. The areas quickly turned into dumps. I'm fine with Slab City but do we wan't this for all of US?
Colorado has has it legal for a couple of years now. Is it a dump?
I recall in 70s/80s Denmark and Netherlands made pot legal in parts of Amsterdam and Copenhagen. The areas quickly turned into dumps. I'm fine with Slab City but do we wan't this for all of US?
Yes, yes we do. We want to be able to fund our schools, or fix our roads, or simply avoid the cost of incarcerating people who possess it while hurting no one but themselves (if you demand to buy into reefer madness).
I was a little brat as well. Lot's of tantrums. My parents punished me (probably not enough). My grandma once said: "how old are you?" This works. Nobody ever gave me drugs. I don't think it is ideal to give kids weed (I'm an adult who can barely handle weed). It is linked with psychiatric problems. That's not anti-drug propaganda, that's a fact. All that said, I don't think this is any worse than giving a kid ritali…
> It is linked with psychiatric problems.
Causation or correlation? Are people with psychiatric problems more likely to self-medicate with MJ? The conclusions drawn from the facts you mention are dubious at best.
A great article. There is one thing the author got wrong. Pot IS addictive. My brother can't go more than 3 hours w/o smoking it. If he does, he starts to sweat like crazy. He once went an entire weekend without it and he had a very rough time.
Pot isn't physically addictive, though. Those things are his brain causing the symptoms. Seriously. I've smoked heavily for years, with sudden breaks, and at most I get a couple days of off appetite and bad sleep. No big deal. I've met exactly one person that had withdrawals from pot: In his case, he was self-medicating with it. It wasn't that he got withdrawals from pot, but that mental illness simply reared its hea…
TBH I never understood this "it's not physical" subtlety. Last time I checked, the brain was a physical entity with physical processes running around in it.
If it looks like addiction, walks like addiction and quacks like addiction, then it is addiction. And it exists in marijuana users.
Then add people whose life was ruined by addiction, as producers refined their wares to maximize that side-effect, and by getting caught in the prison system - then died of the effects of poverty, homelessness and emargination that result from those conditions. It's hard to keep stats on that, but you'd easily run in the millions.
Are we still talking about drugs? Or obesity? Or internet addiction? We're talking billions by now. An no war was ever waged on those things. The 'war on drugs' has not been shown responsible for addiction, addiction-related crime and related social ills.
By forcing producers underground rather than regulating their wares, WOD in practice pushed markets towards the worst possible products and the most harmful situations. We have entire bureaucracies dedicated to ensuring the food you eat is not harmful to you, balancing the profit motive with considerations regarding public health (which become more and more precise as science advances); imagine if all that was taken away - how many people would die or suffer from terrible food, even more than they do now? This is what the drug market has been like for more than 40 years. People got damaged by shit product devised by criminals to maximize their profit. And that's the WOD's fault, entirely.
> Give me a break. I've never heard a more hyperbolic statement even from diehard warmongers. There are sizable portions of the US and Europe that believe muslims are terrorist sympathizers who want to enact Sharia law. To them terrorists, immigrants and muslims are existential threats: they want to blow them up, take their jobs and run their lives and government. > There is no conceivable way that terrorists threate…
> There are sizable portions of the US and Europe that believe muslims are terrorist sympathizers who want to enact Sharia law. Sure, and there are millions of people who believe all sorts of nutty things. Millions of people believe that stars predict the future or that aliens regularly abduct people. That doesn't mean we should legitimize these beliefs.
Acknowledging that a bogeyman exists as a bogeyman doesn't legitimize the belief that a bogeyman is real.