Snus and Marijuana
I’ve been for legalization of marijuana for as long as I can remember. I’ve used it a dozen times or so, but not often and not regularly. In the past, I’ve heard tobacco rights proponents put down pot. Often, it’s in amazement to the potential legalization in face of continuing tobacco restrictions. That’s a misguided view. If these people knew what was good for them, they would support the hell out of pot legalization.
There are many, many reasons for this. From taking cash away from drug cartels to freeing up money from prisons and courts. But I’m not going to explain this from any of those typical angles. Let’s take a pro-snus look at what pot legalization could mean to us. Mostly it will make enemies of snus busy with something else.
First, it would provide another substance that governments could tax. That doesn’t mean our snus taxes would go down. It’s possible, however, that our snus taxes would go up less often. There are fewer pot smokers than tobacco users and even fewer of them vote. Easy fuckin’ target.
Second, it would give the “oh the children” fucktards another product to attack. Legal pot will get them spending more of their time and money on that demon.
And third, the pseudo-science douchebags might keep themselves busying making up lies about pot instead of tobacco.
I’m going to take this one step further. If you use tobacco and you’re anti-marijuana, you’re a hypocrite. They both fuck with your head a little and neither one makes you any more likely to rape, kill or steal. Can’t say that for drinking booze or watching Glen Beck.
After all, if it is legalized, we might one day see this:
General Green. I’d try it. Would you?
August 24th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
There are certain parallels between the two situations but the general public is still not particularly confident about legalization plus they are entirely ignorant of snus and it advantages. Small wonder considering the majority approval of the anti-tobacco jihad that is producing such irritation and expense for the snusing community. It is a heavy irony that Progressive polities, that supposedly worship at the altar of “choice”, look far more favorably on pot legalization than conservatives yet seem bound and determined to hound tobacco to extinction if at all possible. This contradiction doesn’t seem like it’s liable to disappear any time soon.
August 25th, 2010 at 10:28 am
You left out the main reason people are anti-pot- because it’s a “gateway drug.” Alcohol is not a gateway to anything, except as you pointed out, rape and murder. Tobacco is a gateway to…dunno, possible cancer I guess?
So all three harm only you, physically. Pot and alcohol’s effect on you could cause you to behave in a manner that negatively effects those around you. Tobacco does not. So tobacco seems the lesser of the three evils, yet is the most vilified.
August 25th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
They’ll fight tooth and nail to keep pot illegal. First of all, industrial hemp is an extremely useful crop that, if legal, would put a lot of powerful people out of business and make people generally more self reliant. Second, the war on drugs provides the pretext for vast infringements on our liberties. It saps our tax dollars, enables the police state, and fills the prisons, much to the delight of the elites. The CIA has been caught several times shipping drugs into the US, and part of the reason we occupy Afghanistan is to control the poppy fields. The whole thing is rotten.
Luckily, the tide is turning on this one.
August 25th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Dude, i am totally for the legalization of marijuana. it would provide a means to get out of the economic state were in if nothing else. i do however think that it isnt going to happen, atleast anytime soon. id love to be able to go to the corner store and buy some sticky buds like you can in denver, but unfortunately i live in alabama…. where i can still go to the cigar shop doen the road and buy snus.
September 24th, 2010 at 10:15 am
I’ll take it a step further, and say that if you are pro-marijuana and anti-tobacco, you are also a hypocrite.
Just like the pro-tobacco guys that bemoan the increased favor of marijuana legalization while tobacco use is becoming more prohibitive, many pro-marijuana groups are for increased tobacco taxation and regulation.
I find both outlooks a little flawed. I don’t think that either marijuana or tobacco is as harmful as it has been portrayed through the years, and I believe that both can be beneficial when used therapeutically. I also believe that like tobacco, marijuana can be harmful when abused or used immoderately.
I have absolutely no qualm in stating that alcohol, that “opiate of the masses”, has done far more harm than probably all other drug use combined, yet it still remains legal, and it still destroys millions of lives every year. Why then are we cracking down on tobacco and marijuana at all, when this very dangerous scourge of alcohol still remains easily accessible?
Simple: because they outlawed it once, and it didn’t work. The government, in banning alcohol, simply created a huge black market that gave birth to organized crime in this country. People kept drinking, whether the government wanted them to or not. They had no choice but to repeal prohibition.
And it’s the same with marijuana. People were using it in a limited capacity for hundreds of years before it was suddenly made illegal. When “hard” narcotics like heroin, morphine and cocaine were outlawed; the number of addictions, abuse and overdoses fell dramatically. The exact opposite happened when they outlawed marijuana; more people have smoked reefer in the last seventy years than in the thousand years that it was not controlled. It’s pretty telling when slightly less than half the American population has admitted to using marijuana, even in the face of increased penalization.
So, like prohibition, pot laws have never worked- nor have they curbed consumption at any time in history. Whether you are pro- or anti- marijuana, you have to admit that the law- as it stands- does not work.
I personally don’t care to be around marijuana smokers. I can literally hear the sound of lethargic uselessness setting in when someone lights up a doobie. I find that even the most intelligent thinkers I have ever known sound like moronic, childish retards while under the influence of pot. And for the love of God, if I hear even one more pseudo-hippy rambling about peace and love or war and Bush from some long-haired twit with a blacklight Bob Marley poster, I will personally kick said stoner douchebag in the teeth with a steel-toed boot.
But I find them no more or less annoying than your typical Saturday Night Drunk that’s puking on the gas station floor while his buddies are laughing it up and bumping into me while I pull a Sprite out of the drink cooler. Both are extreme, yet typical examples of what happens when you have too much to drink or when you romanticize the use of a common, mild hallucinogen.
And I have no problem with either, so long as it is kept to the privacy of one’s own home. I don’t want to walk into a public building and bump into a drunk any more than I would want to walk past a car in the Wal-Mart parking lot with six teenagers puffing on a blunt. Both activities are, and should still remain, illegal and enforceable by punishment of imprisonment.
But once you are a legal adult, and you walk into your home and close the door, the government’s authority should cease at your doorstep. No one has the right to tell you what you can smoke or drink in your living room, so long as you’re not bothering your neighbors with loud music or wifebeating.
So, while I won’t pretend to have all the answers, I will say that I don’t believe in gateway drugs, and I don’t think that tobacco, reefer or booze should be classed as such, nor should limits to their consumption be based on such a phony concept. But I do think that there should be limits to their use, and I do NOT class this type of regulation as anything even similar to tobacco prohibition.
Alcohol and marijuana are intoxicants. When you use these drugs in public, you have made yourself a nuisance as well as a safety hazard. Go home and do whatever you want, so long as you’re not hurting anyone, and no one should be able to tell you to stop.
Tobacco is not an intoxicant; at least, not on the same level as marijuana and alcohol. Public consumption of tobacco has been prohibited based on faulty studies that attempt to show health risks from secondhand smoke. Legally, we couldn’t outlaw public tobacco use because “it annoys me” isn’t good enough a reason- they had to make up a health risk for non-users that simply doesn’t exist. Once they got the people o.k. with the idea that tobacco use in public is wrong, then they started outlawing ALL forms of public tobacco use. “No smoking” signs on the subway were not enough; now the signs read “No tobacco”. As if seeing someone with a snus packet in their lip is going to harm a non-user in any way. But such is the society that “we” let “them” create.
So, to sum up my rambling:
1. Tobacco consumption should not be impugned when used by legal adults. Neither in public, nor private. Smoking bans are unconstitutional, and they should be left to the discretion of the business owner.
2. Alcohol and marijuana should be equally legal. However, public consumption of the two should be kept illegal on the grounds that a stoned or drunk person is a potential health risk to the safety of non-users.
3. Tobacco use does not pose a health risk to non-users, so it should not be compared to alcohol or marijuana when weighing the limit of public consumption. A tobacco user is not remotely in the same class as an intoxicated driver or a potentially violent person who is not “in their right mind” and may harm the well-being of the general public.
4. The government, your neighbors, your churches, and your employers should in no way interfere with your afterwork activities. It’s nobody’s business but your own if you have a beer with dinner or smoke a cigar in your off hours. However, if you get intoxicated while on the job, you should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, especially if your altered perception puts others in danger.
5. Taxing such substances mercilessly is both hypocritical an Un-American. Either ban it or allow it; don’t try to curb consumption by stuffing your pockets with the revenue of people’s vices.
6. Vote Libertarian!
-RR Hubbard