Doobies for Donner?
By Shaun Kenney | Saturday, December 17th, 2011 | Politics, Videos, Virginia…or is that Donner for doobies?
While Donner doesn’t come out and argue for straight up legalization, he does argue for decriminalization of marijuana… and an “de-escalation” of the Drug War.
Tags:
Contribute for Conservatism!
Share this post
About the author
Shaun Kenney
Shaun Kenney is the Chairman of the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors, former Communications Director for the Republican Party of Virginia, and an active blogger since 2002. Shaun lives in Thomas Jefferson's backyard with his wife, six children, and a modest attempt at a farm in Kents Store, Virginia.
We're 75% there! Thank you to everyone who has so far contributed! Just $2000 to go!
Comments
17 Responses to "Doobies for Donner?"
So a campaign that hasn’t managed to get any traction starts pandering to the PaulBot crowd in hopes that will breathe some life here? I’d say this one is over. Donner isn’t a bad guy and I’ve liked quite a bit of what I read from him and about him but this just reinforces my impression that this guy just doesn’t know how to campaign for office.
On a related note, I’ve been struck by just how bad his campaign videos are. It’s as if his campaign is operating in the 1990s with low definition quality, tacky green screen drudgery. For someone whose claim to fame has been building a TV production company to turn out such poor quality work, it makes me wonder if this dedication to excellence would carry over into governance. If the campaign is this poor, can Donner as a Senator be much better?
I can’t believe this! Marijuana is responsible for so much evil in this country, who cares how many people we have to imprison or how many billions we spend on prohibition – we’re on the right track and we’re gonna win this drug war very soon.
We’ve only been fighting the war on drugs in earnest for 38 years. Sure, drugs have gotten cheaper and more widely available with every passing year and our fourth amendment protections have been eviscerated, but hey its a small price to pay.
I know when I hear about some college kids smoking weed – I can’t wait to see them lose financial aid, go to jail, and spend thousands on lawyers. I’m sure a guy like Donner would just let scum like this free – disgusting.
Sometimes to save the village you just have to burn it down right?
Greg is right. Donner is taking a page from Ron Paul almost verbatim, apparently believing that Paul’s surge in the Iowa polls represents a message that somehow will resonate with Virginia voters. However, his argument against the criminalization of marijuana is a strawman. By his reasoning, that we should not criminalize personal behavior that is prevalent despite the law, then we should also decriminalize child pornography, drunk driving, and prostitution. After all, these are prevalent behaviors that are largely victimless crimes. Denying that habitual marijuana use has no lasting medical or social consequences is no less specious than denying that child porn involves exploitation of minors, that drunk driving causes fatal accidents, or that prostitution is sexual exploitation .
“Pandering” is the operative word here and the last thing that we need in the US Senate is another pandering politician who will say anything to get elected.
Not very subtle, Abby. “…our fourth amendment protections have been eviscerated?” Really? Then I suppose that you think that the First Amendment protects the right of a newspaper or TV station to publish false and libelous stories about political figures they disagree with? (“Jamie Radtke had a sexual affair with a teenage girl in her Bible class. Details at 11.”) Or that the Second Amendment protects the right of mentally ill people to own firearms? (“Court rules that John Hinckley can buy an AK-47.”) Or that the Fourth Amendment protects your right to serve alcohol to minors? (“Your child is cordially invited to a keg party at our home to celebrate our daughter’s 14th birthday.”)
You see, Abby, none of the civil liberties contained in the Bill of Rights are absolute or without restriction.
Donner and Pat Robertson agree with Ron Paul.. Ha.. Go figure
Anyone want to guess where the majority of Europe’s heroin trade exists?
The Netherlands.
Tell me again how marijuana isn’t a gateway drug?
Revelation 9:21 speaks of sorceries. The word used is that for pharmacology. The passage speaks to murders (slaughter), sorceries (use or the administering of drugs), Fornications (adultery, incest, homosexuality, beastiality), and thefts (things stolen). These are all things that proceed out of the heart.
There is nothing new here, mankind has been engaged in this form of illicit behavior over the ages. The thing we must recognize is that it shall become more and more prevalent. It is a hallmark of the last days.
I anticipate that drugs shall be legalized. Every other form of abberant behavior is being done so, so I may only believe drugs also shall enter the mix.
Psalm 92 speaks to this very thing.
As we see more and more corruption in high places, as we see more and more murder of the unborn, as we see more and more inordinate behavior being practiced on every side, as we see more and more violation of children, and the despising not only of God but our very souls, it should be enough for considered introspection.
Why do you think these things are part of our national conversation?
Marijuana is not only a gateway drug, it is a curse for the unwary and all who are deceived by it including our national leaders. Too, the laws regulating the possession of drugs, are not equally applied. Young people are abusing all manner of drugs today and are the frequent targets of the dealer. Never forget also that alcohol is a drug.
It does not matter that youngsters who abuse both alcohol and drugs are immature or foolish. The devastating consequences so many of our children suffer, and their families, is enough to take this very seriously.
JG, you are so right.
“A report in Saudi Arabia has warned that if Saudi women were given the right to drive, it would spell the end of virginity in the country.
The report was prepared for Saudi Arabia’s legislative assembly, the Shura Council, by a well-known conservative academic.
The issue has received huge international attention.
Some Saudi women feel it has attracted too much interest, obscuring other equally important issues.
The report contains graphic warnings that letting women drive would increase prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce.”
What are we going to do? The world is going crazy.
legalize it, tax it, educate about it and let the irs do the rest. The irs will go after the tax evaders and generate the motherload of revenue.
@Sean.
Drinking is far worse of habit then smoking pot is.
If pot is so bad, then we should also ban booze.
No, it isn’t Tyler.
Unlike weed, alcohol has been a socially acceptable intoxicant for centuries. We have two major ones – alcohol and tobacco. We don’t need any more.
As for all the stuff Abby points out – boo hoo. Folks have a choice – they can use the stuff that’s legal, or they can run the risk of all the bad things that can happen to them if they get caught with weed. It still amazes me that so many people are willing to risk so much for entertainment.
I agree with Turbo. Will wonders never cease.
What am I right about Sarah?
JG
I’m kinda being facetious.
Seriously though. I’m not a pot smoker, never have been; unfortunately the way things go is that when you take the position Donner has, or support it, you automatically get lumped as a pothead – or now it seems, someone who is helping to usher in the end times.
What Donner is saying is this:
“By almost any standard the federal goverment’s drug war, especially against marijuana, has ben an abject failure. Marijuana is more widely available, more widely used, more potent, and cheaper than it was when the drug war started. If that’s not a complete and total failure, I don’t know what is. My conservative principles lead me to conclude that a drug which is responsible for a relatively small amount of societal harm should not be enforced at any cost. Right now the costs are stratospheric and the benefits are simply not there.”
He is talking about the cost of enforcement – which is rising, along with the use of marijuana. It’s a valid subject, worth addressing, without having to bring up abortion and pedophilia.
The idea that marijuana may be the first step in a longer career of drug use seems plausible at first: when addicts tell their histories, many begin with a story about marijuana. And there’s a strong correlation between marijuana use and other drug use: a person who smokes marijuana is more than 104 times more likely to use cocaine than a person who never tries pot, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. (More on Time.com: 7 Tips for California: How to Make Legalizing Marijuana Smart)
The problem here is that correlation isn’t cause. Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang members are probably more 104 times more likely to have ridden a bicycle as a kid than those who don’t become Hell’s Angels, but that doesn’t mean that riding a two-wheeler is a “gateway” to joining a motorcycle gang. It simply means that most people ride bikes and the kind of people who don’t are highly unlikely to ever ride a motorcycle.
Scientists long ago abandoned the idea that marijuana causes users to try other drugs: as far back as 1999, in a report commissioned by Congress to look at the possible dangers of medical marijuana, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences wrote:
Patterns in progression of drug use from adolescence to adulthood are strikingly regular. Because it is the most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is predictably the first illicit drug most people encounter. Not surprisingly, most users of other illicit drugs have used marijuana first. In fact, most drug users begin with alcohol and nicotine before marijuana — usually before they are of legal age.
In the sense that marijuana use typically precedes rather than follows initiation of other illicit drug use, it is indeed a “gateway” drug. But because underage smoking and alcohol use typically precede marijuana use, marijuana is not the most common, and is rarely the first, “gateway” to illicit drug use. There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.
Since then, numerous other studies have failed to support the gateway idea. Every year, the federal government funds two huge surveys on drug use in the population. Over and over they find that the number of people who try marijuana dwarfs that for cocaine or heroin. For example, in 2009, 2.3 million people reported trying pot — compared with 617,000 who tried cocaine and 180,000 who tried heroin. (More on Time.com: See photos of cannabis conventions)
So what accounts for the massive correlation between marijuana use and use of other drugs? One key factor is taste. People who are extremely interested in altering their consciousness are likely to want to try more than one way of doing it. If you are a true music fan, you probably won’t stick to listening to just one band or even a single genre —this doesn’t make lullabies a gateway to the Grateful Dead, it means that people who really like music probably like many different songs and groups.
Second is marijuana’s illegality: you aren’t likely to be able to find a heroin dealer if you can’t even score weed. Compared with pot dealers, sellers of hard drugs tend to be even less trusting of customers they don’t know, in part because they face greater penalties. But if you’ve proved yourself by regularly purchasing marijuana, dealers will happily introduce to you to their harder product lines if you express interest, or help you find a friend of theirs who can.
Holland began liberalizing its marijuana laws in part to close this particular gateway — and indeed now the country has slightly fewer young pot-smokers who move on to harder drugs compared with other nations, including the U.S. A 2010 Rand Institute report titled “What Can We Learn from the Dutch Cannabis Coffeeshop Experience?” found that there was “some evidence” for a “weakened gateway” in The Netherlands, and concluded that the data “clearly challenge any claim that the Dutch have strengthened the gateway to hard drug use.” (More on Time.com: Is Marijuana Addictive? It Depends How You Define Addiction)
Of course, that’s not the gateway argument favored by supporters of our current drug policy — but it is the one supported by science.
http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/29/marijuna-as-a-gateway-drug-the-myth-that-will-not-die/
I knew that Sarah. I am not a pot smoker either. I am not a true liberal, because I believe there is a time for regulatory practices. Most of us are that way.
I am probably more in the character of the father of the prodigal son. No parent would encourage their young people to waste themselves as that young man did. That is to say if they loved them. And, when he gave the son his inheritance, I am certain he did so understanding the son could waste it, but I am assured that was not his desire.
I always said to my children, “Be care you do not destroy that which you should desire the most”. We are all capable of that very thing. I had a number of children over the size of the “average” American family. That does not make my family more important than anyone elses, but under the circumstances I felt I had greater opportunity to lose more.
Marijuana is more potent than it has been in the past. It is a gateway drug. But, the right of the user should be able to be governed by the community at large, as far unregulated use of it may go, I am opposed to it.
Saudi Arabia and other islamic countries are by far the extreme. I have a daughter who is a licensed pilot and I imagine that would really put them into a tail spin. She also drinks beer.
The bad guys are always going to advantage themselves of the opportunities that pay them most. That is the way it is throughout all society. “The love of money is the root of all evil”, as has been said.
But, evil is not deterred either by law or the relinquishing of responsibility to one another in a kind of societal free for all. I am opposed to making less regulated use of marijuana for the following reasons.
In Mexico, the horribly mutilated, dismembered, and beheaded bodies are to be found in almost every “municipio” along the border separating our two countries. Huge sums of money, and control of the drug trade are what fuels this violence, both in Mexico and only too frequently in the states.
But let’s say, we just made drugs of every conceivable type free, without restriction. Put dispensaries in our schools, and had street fairs promoting them, and allowed our supermarkets to provide them to the public as an incentive to shop at their stores.
The bad guys would yet be bad guys, the means of acquiring money by other than legal means would follow a different track, and what might be necessary to be done by those who prey on the weaknesses of others would yet be crafted to achieve the highest rate of return.
I have been fortunate that my family is well and safe though my gray hairs attest to the fact that I have had my share of challenges. At the same time, we have suffered loss because of unfortunate and untimely deaths of youngsters close to us because of drugs, so it is a particularly sensitive subject for me. I don’t even like to see young people smoking, but it is something that is present in our lives everyday. And, I certainly am not pleased about alcohol getting into the hands of youngsters.
You just can’t be with them all the time.
You can only hope your young people are careful enought to avoid the pitfalls of life, and the dangers present.
There are many voices in the world, not all of them good.
Ah yes, illicit drugs and illegal behavior. That is precisely the point. “For out of the heart…” Do you believe that legalizing drug use will stem illicit or “illegal” behavior or make its prevalence less.
Who is it to choose to what level of legalization should go? What amounts of possession should be understood to be appropriate for personal use? What age of the user should constitute a need for regulatory controls or none at all. What should be done in the case of persons who choose to ignore those controls?
There are those of us now who know of dealers that don’t use drugs themselves. They are actually better disciplined than their customers. You may have seen them on Americas Most Wanted.
What say should parents have? I know that may sound like a foolish question, how many young people listen to their parents?
I see more danger in such proposed legislation than is readily apparent. The remark made in the video about the street cop is questionable. Are you going to say that people use either alcohol or drugs exclusively? It is by far the more reasonable to believe that in the case of drug use, alcohol enters the picture also, being used concurrently. Have you ever looked to see what is being posted on Myspace or Facebook accounts where the users are careless about controls and their activities are open to the whole world? If that is the case for those you may view, what exactly do you think is going on Mom and Dad, when their accounts are private. Every movie or television program I have ever seen shows drugs and alcohol being used together and not exclusively, so I find that remark unfounded.
But folks will follow after that which they desire until they find it by one means or another. Consequences are not often a consideration.
It could be that Archie is just a very unique person, the type who would never do anything foolish or encourage others to do something that might have unanticipated results?
Leave your response