Comments on: How Times Change…. http://harlotofthearts.org/blog/2009/03/13/how-times-change/ Wed, 07 Jul 2010 04:21:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Kate http://harlotofthearts.org/blog/2009/03/13/how-times-change/comment-page-1/#comment-675 Kate Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:30:52 +0000 http://harlotofthearts.org/blog/?p=821#comment-675 Did anyone else notice the less-than-subtle rhetoric of the links in this article?! --After the quotation on Ammiano's logical argument, there's a link to "See pictures of stoner cinema." (Way to undermine!) --After a quotation from Professor Hay about potential *personal* problems, there's a link to "See pictures of Mexico's drug wars." (Way to overstate!) It seems somewhat problematic that (in this article as elsewhere) the rhetoric over legalizing marijuana is conflated with its medical use: "A few days after he introduced the bill, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that states should be able to make their own rules for medical marijuana and that federal raids on pot dispensaries in California would cease. The move signaled a softening of the hard-line approach to medicinal pot use previous Administrations have taken." As anyone who's watched friends or family suffer through chemo, etc. knows, there's a world of difference between regulating and dispensing a medicinal substance and legalizing a recreational substance -- a distinction that seems to have become muddled in these economic debates. Interesting that this is coming up (yet again) on the 10th anniversary of the landmark medical study about the benefits of cannabis. (See norml.org for further coverage.) Did anyone else notice the less-than-subtle rhetoric of the links in this article?!
–After the quotation on Ammiano’s logical argument, there’s a link to “See pictures of stoner cinema.” (Way to undermine!)
–After a quotation from Professor Hay about potential *personal* problems, there’s a link to “See pictures of Mexico’s drug wars.” (Way to overstate!)

It seems somewhat problematic that (in this article as elsewhere) the rhetoric over legalizing marijuana is conflated with its medical use:

“A few days after he introduced the bill, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that states should be able to make their own rules for medical marijuana and that federal raids on pot dispensaries in California would cease. The move signaled a softening of the hard-line approach to medicinal pot use previous Administrations have taken.”

As anyone who’s watched friends or family suffer through chemo, etc. knows, there’s a world of difference between regulating and dispensing a medicinal substance and legalizing a recreational substance — a distinction that seems to have become muddled in these economic debates.

Interesting that this is coming up (yet again) on the 10th anniversary of the landmark medical study about the benefits of cannabis. (See norml.org for further coverage.)

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