Hi Sue,

 

If teens are going to be pot heads now is the time. Legalization will help keep it away from them. When I was in HIGH school and went to buy my weed the dealer always had other products besides weed and he didn't ask for an ID.Hmmm! Tax and Regulate, this way we have a real reason to lock someone up and no one will complain. Why lock up non violent responsible adults. Anyway it is safer if your child ends up getting into your weed rather than your alcohol or prescription drugs, weed in non-toxic the other two KILL!!!

I live in a small one store town. Everyone knows everyone. My 17 year old son was at the store while I was home sick. I called the store, they know me and what brand I smoke. I asked if he could pick up a pack of smokes for me and said they had permission because it was for me. They said they couldn't do it because he was under 18. He could not purchase tobacco with my verbal permission.

My son has friends who smoke marijuana. I asked him how long it would take him to get it if he wanted it. He said at school he could get it in about 30 min. Regulations prevent the kids from getting alcohol and tobacco. That is a fact, but they have unhindered access to drugs right now. A lot of kids have better access to drugs than the adults do.

BETTER THAN A BUNCH OF GREEDY WALL STREET TYRANTS AND BANKERS! Sue.

Vote Ron Paul in 2012.

Sue Rusche is not being forthcoming here folks. One of the things she is really concerned about is massive  financial consequences that her crony law enforcement budgets will suffer if this would happen. Take the state of Georgia, where 1 out of 3 men are on probation, with the average probation monthly payment to the state of between 30 and 100 dollars, do the math. We are talking big bucks..Sue knows this. The escalating budgets would have to be slashed if the number one arrest factor was closed down. Follow the money. Sue's proponents have had 50 years, and still cant find one person who has died directly from marijuana. Not to mention the privatized jail systems need inmates. The most popular recreational and medicinal compound provides just the ticket for her friends in the legal and enforcement business to maintain profits. And business is good. 

The other factor is even more insidious...The power's that be won't even let any universities in the U.S. study the medicinal properties of the plant. Most of the groundbreaking studies are done in Israel and other countries. The reason for this is found in these studies..there are potent antioxidant and anti cancerous compounds found in the plant. Do we really want to believe that Sue might not have her retirement portfolio packed with pharmaceutical stocks??  And if hers aren't, many big players do..the kind of masters that she answers to. There is so much money involved here, not just the cottage industry of drug enforcement, but the entire pharmaceutical industry would loose tons of money if you could grow something in your own backyard that helped with pain and  depression, just to name 2 things.  

Sue is really lying to us all...all of us that have had real world experience know the truth. We all have learned what they have tried to hide, that it started with DuPont and his wife and their ties to washington..over the fibers. Our kids are the least of her concerns. She knows this, ad we know this..but until we take our country back, the dance will go on. And responsible people will continue being persecuted and branded as criminals which affect their ability to get jobs..and the cycle will continue. All to benefit the her and her crony companions that profit from this mess.

We all would respect you so much more Sue if you acted responsibly, and came out and acknowledged the truth, and focused and directed the funds towards the real drug dangers..Meth, heroin and crack. You've had your shot. Now give us liberty, it is our right.   

Sue Rusche is not being forthcoming here folks. One of the things she is really concerned about is massive  financial consequences that her crony law enforcement budgets will suffer if this would happen. Take the state of Georgia, where 1 out of 3 men are on probation, with the average probation monthly payment to the state of between 30 and 100 dollars, do the math. We are talking big bucks..Sue knows this. The escalating budgets would have to be slashed if the number one arrest factor was closed down. Follow the money. Sue's proponents have had 50 years, and still cant find one person who has died directly from marijuana. Not to mention the privatized jail systems need inmates. The most popular recreational and medicinal compound provides just the ticket for her friends in the legal and enforcement business to maintain profits. And business is good. 

The other factor is even more insidious...The power's that be won't even let any universities in the U.S. study the medicinal properties of the plant. Most of the groundbreaking studies are done in Israel and other countries. The reason for this is found in these studies..there are potent antioxidant and anti cancerous compounds found in the plant. Do we really want to believe that Sue might not have her retirement portfolio packed with pharmaceutical stocks??  And if hers aren't, many big players do..the kind of masters that she answers to. There is so much money involved here, not just the cottage industry of drug enforcement, but the entire pharmaceutical industry would loose tons of money if you could grow something in your own backyard that helped with pain and  depression, just to name 2 things.  

Sue is really lying to us all...all of us that have had real world experience know the truth. We all have learned what they have tried to hide, that it started with DuPont and his wife and their ties to washington..over the fibers. Our kids are the least of her concerns. She knows this, ad we know this..but until we take our country back, the dance will go on. And responsible people will continue being persecuted and branded as criminals which affect their ability to get jobs..and the cycle will continue. All to benefit the her and her crony companions that profit from this mess.

We all would respect you so much more Sue if you acted responsibly, and came out and acknowledged the truth, and focused and directed the funds towards the real drug dangers..Meth, heroin and crack. You've had your shot. Now give us liberty, it is our right.  

Susan Rusche worries that cannabis will affect the physical growth and mental development of children.  Her assumption is based on the fact that full physical maturity in humans doesn’t occur until roughly age 26, but that’s as far as she gets on the subject.  In that sense, Ms. Rusche is a lot like my elderly aunt who told me as a kid that I shouldn’t drink coffee because it stunts children’s growth. There is no evidence it does, of course.

Likewise, there is little evidence to indicate that moderate experimentation or use of tobacco, alcohol and caffeine by teenagers is going to have any effect on their physical maturation, although there may be other health concerns with persistent use. 

Parents groups of the type Ms. Rusche is affiliated with never speculate in this manner concerning legal drugs and potential lethal effects. Aspirin doesn’t rate a first glance. U.S. consumers even have off-the-shelf access to what they call ‘baby aspirin’.  Aspirin is classified as an NSAID.  NSAIDs (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs) “account for an estimated 7,600 deaths and 76,000 hospitalizations in the United States.  (NSAIDs include aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen, diclofenac, ketoprofen, and tiaprofenic acid)." Overdosing on marijuana has never killed anyone.

Susan Rusche offers the typical god-of-the-gaps argument.  Because she has no clue whether marijuana may affect human maturation, and she believes no one else does either, she wants to persecute people based on the assumption that marijuana is harmful.  This scale of ignorance is why prohibitionists like Susan Rusche are the real threat to our social health and well-being.

Giordano 

how many strangers she would be willing to kill to keep her kid from using drugs.  

Most of the people arrested and most of the people who are involved in violence on the street (because of prohibition) are young people, in their 20's. They're not kids, but still, anyone whose concerned about young people and the future of society should think about what effect it has on society for (tens of?) millions of people in their 20's to be made into criminals, many of which end up in jail or involved in violence. Think about what effect it has on teenagers for people in their 20's to be considered criminals. Plus, there's plenty of teenagers themselves involved in illegal drug dealing, something which would not be anywhere near as problematic if drugs were legal (there might still be a few kids selling to each other at school (and even that might be reduced with legalization), but they'll get it from the legal adult market and not from gangsters). 

And the concern about too many teenagers using marijuana is blown out of proportion. On the one hand there might be more teenagers smoking because it seems more socially acceptable (and that itself might not necessarily be the case), but on the other legal regulation means you can card people and not sell to kids, so if anything one thing balances the other out; if there is an increase in use of marijuana among teenagers it won't be large. And besides, who says that teenagers drinking alcohol isn't just as serious or worse? Plus, there might be a replacement effect. In the worst of cases, the aggregate of the two will be larger than it is now, but not by that much. I'd much rather take the benefit of people (young and old), growing up in a society where being a criminal is very unusual, and where teenagers look up to the the 23 year old with a minimum wage job going to school, who's never had to defend his business violently, never had trouble with the law, and who is enough a part of society to be able to himself dream of  cooperating on an even larger scale, whether or not he smokes (or sells) pot. This issue is hardly about whether young people will smoke pot; it's much more about whether they will be excluded from society and driven underground. 

I should NEVER have turned water into wine! I should have turned fig leaves into cannabis! Whenever I shall return to the earth (Gaia), don't forget to bring a towel!

I can't see why we should legalize weed or any other currently illegal drug now.

We, the people, make the laws of this land, by ourselves and through our elected officals. Some of our laws are impractical and unrealistic but we want them because our laws reflect our beliefs. For example, making sucide illegal is both impractical and unrealistic but we, as a society, generally abhor sucide.

For the same reasons, we collectively agree to keep weed and other recreational uses of narcotics and drugs illegal. We believe that recreational drug use is selfish, self-serving, and self destructive. We should never encourage recreational drug use. No one is a better person for getting high. No one will ever be a better person getting high. I am aware of a FEW individuals that can cite insight after using LSD - James Watson's discovery of the double helix of DNA, most notably. You could refute that other substances, now legal, like alcohol and tobacco are more damaging, and you're RIGHT. But that is a subterfuge - two wrongs still don't make a right. No one wants their children to  become junkies, hookers, crackheads, pin cushions,  or meth heads. Keeping drugs illegal won't stop that from happening, but legalizing any drug encourage use of any drug - and all the selfishness and self-destruction that is part of using drugs. No one wants to live in a world ruled by junkies.

From what I'm seeing it already is... it's an unfortunate situation

i am all for legalizing marijuana, all day everyday, but regulating marijuana is an absolutely horrible idea, this country needs de-regulation. if we regulate marijuana then the government will have their hands all over it and recieve all the profit and continue to use our tax dollars on whatever they please. the key to marijuana legalization is having a president that will make the changes, like R. Lee Wrights.