The Challenge for Truth - A Social Experiment(?)

[Seraphim]

Morning coffee and a bowl. Breakfast of champions. For me it wakes my mind up and today here is what I was thinking:

Most of us here are in favor of legalization. So talking about legalization here will be well received but its like shooting up into the air in your camp with your buddies.... you are just making noise and wasting ammo. The conflict is in the front line... where activist and prohibitionists come together and face each other.

Now: In order to make any progress.. one has to know their opponent. The better you know your opponent the better prepared you will be to meet them in battle.

So with that in mind I wrote the following challenge to prohibitionists. This is not a challenge to start an argument. Rather, it should start a mature discussion. In a perfect world anyway. I hope to understand the prohibitionists mind better. To understand their motivations is the key to ending this argument once and for all. We need to find out what the REAL reasons are that fuel their motivation to push forth against what most people see as the just and right course of action which is of course full legalization for everyone of legal age.

There are many local and national news web sites where marijuana stories come up daily. Most of these news reporting sites are general news and have the feature which allows readers to leave comments at the end of the article. I look at a lot of these and I am glad to see that favorable comments usually vastly outnumber negative ones. But that also has to do perhaps with the right or left lean on the news site itself, so just be aware of that. Point is this.. that is a place where one can easily find people who are not friendly to our cause.. you know.. the ones that have to be won over little by little. So that is where I plan to post this intellectual challenge repeatedly in hopes of harvesting responses and actually reading them without intent to argue but rather with intent to learn about the collective prohibitionist mindset.

Of course it could have been written better. Feel free to edit as you see fit. Maybe you have a comment or an idea of how this small effort to engage 'the other side' in a sincere yet non-confrontational way could be enhanced. Please share it with us all. We may not be able to do a lot for the effort, but a little is better than nothing and a little every day can add up to something over time.



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- THE CHALLENGE FOR TRUTH -

Have you ever asked yourself why marijuana is illegal? For decades the United States government has spent billions in law enforcement efforts directed against marijuana. A colossal effort by any standard. But make no mistake.. this is not a writing to talk about all the things we already know. Instead, I would like to talk a little bit about some things that I don't know but would really like to learn more about.

I would like to know the real reason(s) why some folks are so insistent on keeping marijuana illegal.

You see, the arguments given by folks against marijuana legalization ring hollow. I don't believe them. Not that I ever did, but at least I though they did. The difference is that I am beginning to think they (prohibitionists) don't really believe them either.

With medical marijuana laws active in fourteen states and many others with MMJ legislation in the pipeline; the American Medical Association (AMA) publicly calling for the reclassification of marijuana from its current schedule one status, with the NAACP endorsement.. hell, even Montel Williams is in favor of therapeutic cannabis applications. I simply can't understand how anyone with any level of mature objectivity could still find against marijuana legalization in the face of the surmounting new scientific and demographic evidence.

So you see, these arguments against legalization are dead in the water.

Or maybe they are more than that... maybe, they are decoys.

I remember as a child I never skipped class. At least not during the regular school year. However, I was busted for skipping summer school once.. When asked about it by my mother, who'd gotten the phone call from the school, I offered up having skipped that day but the truth is I had skipped school the last three days in a row to go play arcade games down the street. I offered up something bad enough to entice but not as bad (in my head) as the complete truth. I wanted to get out of skipping school. (It did not work.)

I am beginning to get the feeling that something similar is going on here at a larger scale. The folks who want to keep marijuana illegal are putting forth talking points which are politically acceptable to anyone who has not done some objective research on this matter (ie: the general public) and carry the same end that their true motives would carry (continued prohibition) Except that they are not the truth.

So, what I want to know from the folks trying to keep marijuana illegal is this: What is the real reason behind your overly enthusiastic push to keep marijuana illegal?. If you want to keep marijuana illegal then I challenge you to answer my question with truth. Does any prohibitionist have the back bone to answer that question with their heart in their hand?

I look forward to your reply.
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My response will always be a polite "Thank you for your feedback" as the intent is NOT to argue but precisely to collect such feedback and hopefully learn something from it that will help us better address the collective ignorance we still face every day. Notice I am not calling for a confrontation but rather for honesty and fairness.

Feel free to replicate my effort if you feel so inclined but remember: Our mission when engaging the other side is one of reconciliation and union and peacemaking. Not one to alienate. (IMHO)

We gain nothing by making our opponents into enemies. Enemies we are not, simply intellectual opponents. And victory comes from making opponents into new friends not into new enemies.

 

[Colum]

Good questions.

I see the reasons against legalization on two levels.

First, there are those that have always believed the propaganda against cannabis. We all know the reefer madness, DARE programs in public schools, etc. BS that has been progagated for decades now and these people never question authority. The truth of the good things that will come about with legalization does not fit their mental paradigm so it is rejected without any real thought. They do not want their thinking challenged so they simply are not going to engage in a discussion. I would say that these people only relate to the issue from a personal level.

The second level would be those that wield great financial power against legalization. These are the companies profiting from the so called drug war: suppliers of police equipment, paper companies that own large tracts of trees for paper(legalize pot, you have to legalize hemp), drug companies, cancer treatment centers (you don't really think they want to find a cure do you?), etc., etc. The forces on this level will fight it tooth and nail. They see it as a threat to their profits.

Where do we get the support from then? I think that every day there are people that are realizing the true amount of horseshit the 'authorities' have been feeding us, expecting us to continue to trust that they have our best interests at heart.

Allow me to give some personal examples:
1. I believed Dick Nixon when he said that he was not a crook. He lied.
2. We were lied into an unecessary war in Iraq. Our troops were undermanned, ill protected and ill supplied to do the fantastic job they have done.
3. I believed Ron Reagan when he said that de-regulation was best for the country. I was promptly de-regulated out of the best job I ever had.
4. Why is there always plenty of money to fight a war but never enough to take care of the poor, the unemployed, the sick, etc?
5. I was told in school that one puff could kill me or I could be addicted for life.
6. I was told in school that one drink could turn me into an alcoholic.
7. One lie after another, ad infinitum.

I think that when people get tired of being lied to enough, then they begin looking for the truth and that is when we need to be there with the truth about cannabis.

Just some of my thoughts. I am sure there are others that can add to this and I hope that they will.

 

[Propa Gator]

Why does whatever happen in America? Follow the money.
Only small business and individuals gain from hemp or cannabis.
A majority of big businesses could lose market share IMO.
Healthcare/drugs, energy, textile/paper, seed companys owned by huge mega corps, congressional profit-sharing business, and cops/courts citizen control business. All these and more are arrayed against the empowerment of individuals that cannabis offers.

Non-violent civil disobedience and boycott are the only tools at hand that can make a mark.
Gandhi fought similar oppression from the 'Raj', and left a lesson for us all.

 

[Seraphim]

Propa Gator: I am sure that is the case to some extent and in some context. But what about the individuals that have nothing to do with those interests who feverishly oppose legalization?

Some of these actually stand to gain if they did the numbers but for reasons of ignorance at best and ??? at worst they oppose MJ Legalization. This is the answer I seek. Money is too easy of an answer. I want to know with some degree of statistical certainty what truly drives the desire to keep MJ illegal in the minds of those individuals who oppose its use and have no financial interest in it otherwise.

What hides behind "concern for the good of society"? ... that is what I want to know. If this could be documented somehow.. hell.. I don't know you do the math.

 

[Seraphim]

Colum: I like your break down and I am looking in particular for the first group's motivations. I know some of it will be what I refer to as simple ignorance. When you simply believed the lies. But more importantly I believe that there are those in the opposition camp who know fully well that the benefits of cannabis are real and choose to ignore that .. what drives that?