Cheeb vs. Stupid Oil

David Sirota via The Florida Times-Union:

Here’s a fact that even drug policy reform advocates can acknowledge: California’s 2010 ballot initiative to legalize marijuana does, indeed, pose a real threat, as conservative culture warriors insist.

But not to public health, as those conservatives claim.

So this ballot measure is no public health threat. If anything, it would give the millions of citizens who want to use inebriating substances a safer alternative to alcohol. Which, of course, gets to what this ballot initiative really endangers: alcohol industry profits.

That truth is underscored by news this week that the California Beer and Beverage Distributors is financing the campaign against the legalization initiative. This is the same group that bankrolled opposition to a 2008 ballot measure, which would have reduced penalties for marijuana possession.

We are asked to believe that people drinking a daily six-pack for a quarter-century is not a lamentable sign of a health crisis, but instead a “lifestyle” triumph worthy of flag-colored celebration -- and we are expected to think that legalizing a safer alternative to this “lifestyle” is dangerous.

Likewise, as laws obstruct veterans from obtaining doctor-prescribed marijuana for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, we are asked to believe that shotgunning cans of lager is the real way to “support our troops.”

These are the delusions that a liquor-drenched culture prevents us from reconsidering.

Mr. Sirota is right about this as far as he goes, and it's understandable that since he concentrated on only this aspect, he did not discuss the even larger reasons why legalized marijuana scares the crap outta the establishment/ruling elite - marijuana prohibition is both a tool of oppression and power and a grand way of fueling the Prison Industrial Complex (see this).

The War On Some Drugs will suffer from legal weed as well. See "oppression and power".

I won't even bother with the bluenose anti-fun puritanical attitude we suffer under from people who want you to have all the freedom you can handle as long as it's the freedom they tell you you can have.

Yes On 19. Hey, California led the nation on surf music and lakes pipes, let's show 'em the way on our No. 1 cash crop too!