Forbes Magazine has an interview with Progressive Insurance chairman Peter Lewis.
Our marijuana laws are outdated, ineffective and stupid. I’m not alone in thinking this: Half of Americans believe we should stop punishing people for using marijuana. And not coincidentally, more than half of Americans have used marijuana themselves. I am one of those Americans, and I know firsthand that marijuana can be helpful and that it certainly isn’t cause for locking anyone up.
He goes on to say:
I’ve been conducting a great deal of research on public opinion on marijuana. Change in this area is inevitable, much like the movement toward equal rights for gays and lesbians. An ever shrinking fraction of the country resists changing marijuana laws, largely for moral reasons. But change is coming. It’s just a question of when and how we get there.
According to some of my commenters such moralists don’t exist. Some one is living in the wrong universe. It might even be me. But I doubt it.
H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
10 responses to “Progressives On The March”
Let me think.
Wasn’t the first person to head The Ministry of Drug War Propaganda, er, head the ONDCP, a Roman Catholic? I’m sure he was.
He even edited together a book of old stories and titled it “The Book of Virtues”. Pretty ironic given that he headed a department whose stated mission is to see that the WOD never ends.
Neverending war is a virtue I guess. Although that notion certainly doesn’t seem to jibe with anything that old hippie Jesus said about blessed are the peacemakers or some other such nonsense.
I think his name is Bill Bennett.
I wonder how he’s doing on the rubber chicken circuit these days?
I noticed recently that the argument “Marijuana is a threat to the moral fiber of our people” sounds very much like a (turn of the century) Progressive argument. They also engage in the “physical fitness = godliness” theme, also Progressive. To what extent have the religious of the US adopted Progressive themes and “morals” as religious morals? Would they be upset if they realized they had done this, since the whole package of Progressive values includes abortion, eugenics, and the elevation of “experts” above the laity.
President Nixon, wasn’t he a Quaker? He was at least nominally a Quaker from what I can gather. That’s a Christian sect, right?
If memory serves, he is credited with kicking off the current War on Drugs back in 1971. However, in fairness to him it actually started decades earlier. You know these politicians, they have to have something to run on to show the electorate their moral bona fides and the following year was an election year. I guess another war was as good as anything else to run on.
But it didn’t work! I recall the Christians down at my small church were just aghast at this new war we were embarking on. I remember seeing on the TV pronouncements and speeches from prominent Christians denouncing this intrusion into the people’s private lives. They warned about the unintended consequences of America’s latest crusade to make it the best place on Earth.
Oh, those were heady days. It felt good to be a Christian. We were more like Jesus than ever, what with Nixon standing in for the Pharisees and us ordinary Christians standing in for Jesus and the Disciples. We engaged in letter campaigns in order to voice our outrage to our representatives and senators. Millions of Christians across the nation cried out against this injustice. Oh, how it stirred my soul! We stopped the WOD before it got off the ground!
Wait a second. Sorry. Those last two paragraphs were from a really sweet dream I had some years ago. I was in junior high in 1971 and not very politically aware at the age of 13. But I certainly don’t recall any Christians making any noises against this escalation in the war on their neighbors. There were probably some that did, but not in any significant numbers I’m fairly certain.
Smoking pot has its costs – both personal and societal. Some are tangible and some are not.
But so does drinking, smoking, chasing loose women, reading too many romance novels, and telling bad puns.
It cost money and lives to suppress behaviors . So it is a trade off – costs of behavior vs. costs of suppression.
Can people do too much pot for their own good and at a cost to society? Of course. But most of such costs are in foregone productivity and creativity – slackers in other words.
Make it legal and not much will change. That argues for rescinding the laws since they are pointless.
Back at the turn of the 20th Century Progressives and a fairly large fraction of social conservatives were allied.
The alliance has since died. The statism they practiced together has not. Each applies it to a different realm and thus the claim of a two party system.
It is one Party with two factions.
mr simon start a petition:
“The White House Thursday, September 22, 2011
You’re the first to know
The White House has just launched We the People on WhiteHouse.gov and you’re the first to know.
We the People is a new way for Americans to create and sign petitions calling on the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues.”
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions
There is already one started. I got the news about 4 hours ago.
http://wh.gov/gZu
[…] have often said we have a one Party (statist) system in America with two factions. Commenter rustbelt makes the same point in a different way: I noticed recently that the argument “Marijuana is a […]
newrouter,
I got word yesterday that the petition has enough signers to have the President give it some attention. We shall see if he does what he did last time: pay it lip service and start a war on dispensaries.
[…] am so pumped up waiting for 2 Oct. BTW on the left I’m sure Peter Lewis is getting ready (a recent article in Forbes that was very understated re: numbers), George Soros and Mrs. Kerry […]