Testing Positive for Marijuana Doesn't Mean You're High
Sheriff: Driver in ATV fatality used marijuanaAgain and again, we're told about people testing positive for marijuana after accidents with no evidence whatsoever that anyone was high at the time of the accident. In this case, there's even evidence to the contrary:
CARROLLTON – Carroll County Sheriff Dale Williams revealed Monday that Dennis Garrison, 37, of Alliance tested positive for marijuana on the day his 6-year-old nephew was killed while riding an ATV with his uncle. [Times-Reporter]
The deputy at the accident scene reported that Dennis showed no obvious signs of being under the influence.Of course, this quite instructive fact is buried near the bottom of the story, while the completely meaningless urine test results are reported in the headline. It is simply bad reporting to link marijuana use to a horrible tragedy without noting that such use could likely have taken place weeks before the accident even occurred.
After all, you would never see this:
Sheriff: Driver in ATV fatality drank alcohol days before accidentThe fact here is that a young child was killed. To falsely attribute his death to irrelevant factors is not only shameful and dishonest, but also interferes with the important process of learning from the tragedy.
CARROLLTON – Carroll County Sheriff Dale Williams revealed Monday that Dennis Garrison, 37, of Alliance drank beer 5 days before his 6-year-old nephew was killed while riding an ATV with him.
Many of the most passionate appeals against marijuana use emerge from scenarios such as this in which the drug's role is, in fact, dubious or non-existent. Imagine the good that could be accomplished if well-meaning people stopped grasping at straws and finally put marijuana in perspective.
illegal for marijuana users to drive in 13 states
As of last word I've seen, 13 states consider it drugged driving if you test positive on a urine test for marijuana. The exact equivalent of saying you're DUI if you has a beer a few days ago. This is a monstrous and degenerate injustice, it's quite incredible that the courts have allowed these 'laws' to stand. I would think it has real potential to utterly enrage victims of the law, what they'll do with that rage remains to be seen.
legalization
People are so stuborn and ignorant that they will believe anything told to them without question. It's amazing that Marijuana (and to a lesser extent all drugs) are still illegal in 2007, lets get real folks drugs being illegal doesnt change a thing but the amount of harmless people in the prison system.
Helmet?
The problem was not cannabis, but rather the fact that the kid wasn't wearing a helmet. This was negligence by both the parents and the driver. Folks don't realize it, but a fall of 30 feet is the same as hitting a hard object at 30 mph. Don't let your kids ride without one!
duii - to wit: marijuana
Oregon will charge, pursue, and likely get a conviction of duii THC if a urinalysis comes back from the state crime lab with any shred of thc in the sample. there you go....... i defended a client in a trial less than 30 days ago and he was, in fact convicted. this in spite of the fact there was no "bad driving" or driving to support that defendant was under the influence of anything.
Witch Hunt 1950s-Present
This is really what it is. That a giant indignity takes place when a person is make to excrete anything for analysis seems to have been passed by the wayside. What is the right to privacy if not the retention of one's own bodily fluids and sera? Ok you can look in my pocket, in my car, in my house, up my ass. It's all cool.
Those who want marijuana legalized know it is events like this that are what the battle is really about. Whether a man or women can smoke something they grow with their own hands in their own house is secondary to this, the strains and injustices and unconstitutionalities that arise when you try to enforce a ridicuolus, feeble-minded law with no basis in scientific fact ot even probable reason.
Laws must be reflective of what the people want. A conservative estimate, based on the last "marijuana decriminalization" ballot in Colorado, is that at least 30% OF VOTERS find no problem with the end of this new Prohibition against marijuana, and would accept its becoming legal. This is a minority surely, but when you consider a different 30% would outlaw ALCOHOL again if they could, I think you are talking about a considerable numerical majority that has need of rights. Arrest and fines and threats of imprisonment are oppresive behavior perpetrated by the government and endured by those merely making a harmless lifestyle choice harming no one.
The result is that we are in the midst of a hunt and persecution that aims to punish people, plain and simple. Police have to enforce the law because it is a law, and they will often tell you this as if it supplies a valid reason for prohibiting what it is that you are "doing wrong." The judge will say you may be right but your behavior violates the statute, as if God Itself wrote that statute.
So the goal is to get the law changed, essentially the National Narcotics Act hyped up by the papers of William Randolph Hearst and the tirades of perhaps the authentic incarnation of the fire-breathing anti-Christ Anslinger, and passed over 50 years ago. But the prevention of use, the banning, the border patrols, the searches and road blocks, the police, the courts, they all rely on the money generated by the drug war. The lady who comes and eats in my restaurant runs the Drug-Awareness thingamajoo down the street (like DARE), and just got her 180,000 bucks of your tax money for another YEAR of putting up posters, invading the schools, frothing-up with lies the police and the city council. You see, this is BUSINESS now, truth and reason be damned. "It's bad because we say so tough guy, if you don't like it it's the slammer, up against the car." There is TOO much money to be made, the lady down the street loves to eat at my place and write a check from the "business!" No more DEA, no more border patrols, no more specualtive search and seizure and issuance of vague warrants...my God, where will those people work?
200,000 people a years' lives are disrupted, often ruined for their merely growing and/or smoking weed. This is a fact. These crimes such as those alluded to in this article, against the Constitution and human rights, exist because the government is trying to enforce a law it cannot enforce and should not be trying to enforce. A crime that involves no victim, no different than suddenly being told sex is to be limited to once a month, and the havoc the enforcers would necessarily have to wreak to accomplish, or try to accomplish, the goal of limiting something people want to do. You don't have to like it, but you have to live with it, if you truly have the American spirit.
It is the will of the people, probably 35-40% of American adults, to smoke grass. They will not tell you this, even an anonymous poll or survey, as they have been trained to lie to protect their livelihood. Likely, someone you talked with today smokes, and you do not know it. They have become afraid even of friendships, leary as to who is and is not a smoker, mistrusting of their government, looking at the police as the enemy, the government as the other.
My uncle told a story about how once he was drunk and high and the policeman made him park his car and then drove him home. I am afraid of drunk drivers as much as the next guy, but some of the acceptance and compassion and homage to reason like that, once again, if only at the enforcement level, would be nice.
The Magistrate
Divorcethefeds.com
[email protected]
U know u want it..
SMOKE WEED AS LONG U CAN ! ! !
throw the book at him!!
He was smoking it that day or at least the day before. He can't go w/out it. Isn't that right Dennis. He has gotten away with to much. Well, guess what, it's all come back and bite you in the butt. Just don't dropp the soap while your in there.
Im from Carrollton
* Just a note. I know the family of the little boy who died. The boys parents had no clue that the man had taken the little boy for the ride. The fault does not rest with them.
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