5th Circuit tells Gov. Stupid to remove his bouys

But marijuana doesn't do that... it just doesn't. Cigarettes do. So why are they legal? Oh yeah - everyone remembers the 18th Amendment ... Prohibition. One for cigarettes would probably work just as badly.

 

Banning cigarettes works pretty well where those bans are applied. Unlike alcohol (and marijuana), cigarettes are very difficult to bootleg because they require mass growing and production. No one grows tobacco on a window sill or in an attic under infrared lights. You can't.

When America decided to go after cigarette smoking, smoking was ingrained throughout our society. Ashtrays were everywhere, as was smoking. Yet, through advertising bans, increased taxation, and banning it from almost all public spaces, usage not only dropped, it became unsociable. With no underground market to compete, it withered.

But I don't think banning marijuana would work. The "war on drugs" was a complete failure in that regard. Society now sees it as even less harmful than alcohol, and no one is going to ban that again. And production on a micro level isn't very complicated.

If we want to ban something, I'd like to see sports gambling ads on TV banned. Together with ubiquitous phone apps facilitating gambling, they're a powerful force affecting people's lives and drawing a significant underage customer base. You'll know it's gotten out of hand when you see a commercial of Spuds McKenzie taking the Cardinals and the points.

 

Well, where do you think the funding for Marijuana legalization is coming from? Once Congress removes cannabis from the Schedules you will see national advertising.

 

We don't here. I'm guessing advertising is against the rules.

A quote: "The recreational use of cannabis (marijuana) is legal in Canada subject to provincial or territorial restrictions. The legal age varies between each province and territory. There is a strict legal framework around the use of cannabis, including but not limited to: possession, purchase, sharing and production."

I'm guessing "including but not limited to" includes media advertising. Shops have signs of course.

 

The marijuana the shops sell, where I live, they must buy from a Provincial Government Agency - Ontario Cannabis Shop. Licensed Weed Shops are complaining their margins are thin. Article here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-cannabis-500-million-sales-1.6596720

I looked up the advertising rules. heavy restrictions. What they can and cannot do is spelled out here.
https://adstandards.ca/resources/library/cannabis-advertising/#:~

A partial quote: "Unless otherwise authorized by law, it is prohibited to promote cannabis or a cannabis accessory or any service related to cannabis, including: (blah blah blah- J)

I guess the States need to roll out some precautions. Lots of work for lawyers @nosborne48 .

 

Removing the stupid bouys will cost Texas about $300,000. I don't know what it cost to install them or for legal fees.

 

Buoys will be buoys... and they're not bouys - they're buoys. I checked for acceptable alternate spellings. Nope.

 

How's it working for you, Bill?
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Hey, Bill! HOW IS IT WORKING?....
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I'd guess it does the job...

 

That's embarrassing!

 

Sorry. Didn't mean it to be. If there's a next time, for that sort of thing, I'll PM you - or anyone else in a similar circumstance.

 

Thank goodness that smoking in public is uncommon now. It is a really bad trigger for my asthma. Marijuana smoke or most any other kind of smoke doesn't seem to bother me but tobacco smoke does me in.

 

I think it worked for about 30 years. It became illegal sometime in the 1930s. I think that slowed things down a good deal. About the mid 1960s we saw an explosion. It never stopped.

Legality really has no effect here. Private dealers still flourish. I'm told their weed and their prices are better - plus, a lot of them deliver.
Same with cigarettes. "Runners" sell contraband, untaxed cigarettes at one-tenth of the retail, taxed price. Or less. There seems to be no interest by police in arresting or prosecuting the cigarette OR the unclicensed marijuana dealers. The Government of Ontario made over half a billion dollars on marijuana sales through licensed dealers last year. They obviously missed a LOT, that went through private and street dealers.

The smarter Ontario weed consumers roll home-grown. It's now legal - four plants each. Four well-tended plants is a whole lot of joints, come harvest time. "Thanksgiving 2.0." Free. I'd like to see illegal sales of marijuana and cigarettes stopped. It's money the Ontario Government has to make up by taxing us. Or by not spending it. Maybe the Health system would work better if it got some of that missing money. It's way overloaded.

As far as legality of marijuana goes - I don't have a horse in the race so I don't care. If it proves as harmful as cigarettes, I'd like them both stopped ENTIRELY, to preserve lives. But I'm wondering -- why? Why should I care if people I don't know wreck their health and lose their lives?

I REALLY don't know the answer to that. And the fact that I don't know -- and don't care, troubles me more than just about anything else on earth. I'll probably never know. I'm not sure there IS an answer.

 

I understand that, Bill. I'm told 3,000 people a year in Canada die of second-hand tobacco smoke. So, that number is probably 10 times greater in the US.

You're right. For lack of any other answer, I guess. Not a good reason. Come to think of it, even Mr. Duterte's extreme drug war did no good in the Philippines. Plus a lot of people who did nothing wrong at all were killed. The only reason I'd want any substance made illegal is if significant numbers people were making themselves seriously ill and losing their lives with it. And agreed, I don't know how to make that work. Plus, as I stated, i really don't care that strongly -- and am troubled by the fact I don't even know why I don't care about people who are voluntarily wrecking their lives and are causing their own deaths.

Looks like there are a whole lot of questions, lately, that I can't answer.

 

It works just okay for me. It works great for my wife.

 

Alcohol consumption dropped during Prohibition, too. But I think we can agree that Prohibition brought some pretty serious unintended side-effects, not the least of which was the huge rise in organized crime.

 

Alas, so did illegal Marijuana.

 

Somehow an Eliot Ness character in an Untouchables type show would seem to work much better than a show of the FBI fighting the War on Drugs. The show might be called the Unpuffables. Instead of fighting bad guys driving by shooting tommy guns from their car window. The bad guys would be sitting around all red eyed trying to chastise the Unpuffables for not being mellow enough.

 

"Unpuffables?" Oh man... way too much THC in those sleepytime gummies...