Yes on 19

[tsunamisama]

I support Proposition 19, and legalization of marijuana in general. There are several reasons why:

• Marijuana has a wider range of therapeutic applications than legal drugs like alcohol or tobacco, it has low addictive potential (unlike alcohol and tobacco), and it's one of the safest drugs known to man, literally impossible to overdose on, with

Comments

[tobie_rosemary]

I respect most of these reasons (though I would qualify most of them) with the exception of the last. Any sensitivity and fellowship induced by marijuana is artificial. I mean, there are certain people who I get along pretty well when we've all had a drink or two; but without any alcohol in our bloodstreams, it's another story. And that simply isn't real companionship.

[tsunamisama]

I don't take that to have been Sagan's reasoning, which you rightly reject. Instead, and speaking also personally, I believe Sagan meant: the intensified awareness and shifting of perspective which are part of the experience, are conducive to the philosophia (in the sense of the Greek Fathers) which leads an individual to greater empathy and love for others. I respect your perspective, but I also believe you might be persuaded otherwise had you more first-person experience.

[tobie_rosemary]

That's what people used to tell me in college when I told them I didn't, on principle, get drunk. :-P

[tsunamisama]

I've never heard anyone say that being drunk makes you think about things differently in such a way that you're a better person to people when you're not drunk. But okay. :P