8 ms·

Veterans push for medical marijuana in conservative South

124 points by DocFeind 5y ago

sandworm101 5y ago
>> advocacy from cancer patients and parents whose children have epilepsy, lawmakers who see this as a states’ rights issue, a search for alternative pain relief amid the opioid epidemic and a push from industries seeking economic gains. >> a recently formed advocacy group called NC Families for Medical Cannabis. And what about the countless veterans who are currently incarcerated on marijuana charges? What about all those soldiers who have had careers damaged by petty pot charges? They are veterans too.
CalChris 5y ago
South Dakota voters passed medical marijuana, Measure 26. They are still a very red, conservative state. I think legalization is, if anything, overdue.
- Covzire 5y ago
  Recreational too by a narrow margin, was to be legal July 1st but it's stuck at the state supreme court on some procedural grounds that were allegedly violated to bring it on the ballot.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
Most of the people who are against marijuana distribution in the South are in the baby boomer crowd, who upon failing to live up to the standards of their parents decided that sophist puritanism was necessary in order to redeem themselves.
- tenfourwookie 5y ago
  Sophist puritanism and $1 million RVs big enough to house dozens of pot plants and Larry Ellison’s ego at the same time.
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    People usually don't buy $1M RVs to grow weed. You can buy used campers for $15K or less for that purpose. The two most underrated jobs in the US are boat and RV salesmen. Better percentage commissions at selling what amounts to house-level prices a lot of the time.
    - tenfourwookie 5y ago
      Fair enough. The $1M ones are for trafficking. But $15K for weed? That's contempt. That's a Jesse Pinkman meth RV low-ball.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    > RVs big enough to house ... Larry Ellison’s ego Come on, now you're just making things up.
- jacob2484 5y ago
  Baby boomers did better than their parents in general
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    I'm not really talking about their financial well-being. The "Greatest Generation" won a World War and built a great economy on the ruins of Europe and Japan while creating a very safe, very white, very Christian-friendly world of televised entertainment. Boomers questioned that authority, protested their wars, wanted sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and then suddenly middle age hit them and they yearned for the safety of the world their parents raised them in. Many of them even decided that their parents' houses of worship didn't go far enough, leaving moderate traditional churches for extreme and fundamentalist churches.
causasui 5y ago
Enough already. Just legalize it federally and pinch it off.
- tru3_power 5y ago
  I really don’t get why this hasn’t happened yet.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Politics. Representatives aren’t aging out/turning over as fast as the overall electorate, so you have popular support but reps who disagree and therefore won’t sponsor or vote for legalization. The perils of a representative democracy. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/marijuana-legalization-is-super-popular-why-hasnt-it-happened-nationally/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/marijuana-legalization-... https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/16/americans-overwhelmingly-say-marijuana-should-be-legal-for-recreational-or-medical-use/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/16/americans-o... https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/20/senate-democrats-weed-legalization-schumer-483747 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/20/senate-democrats-we...
    - hanniabu 5y ago
      Love it when representatives don't represent, such democracy
      - smt88 5y ago
        Voters don't represent. Young people are much less likely to vote, so of course their values aren't reflected in the electorate. And then you have unnecessary barriers to voting that further discourage young, transient, and lower-income from voting.
      - shapefrog 5y ago
        It is litterally the will of the people. The voters (*should) know what their representatives represent, if they didnt like it they wouldnt elecet them back with sweeping mandates.
dehrmann 5y ago
Heh. "Conservative South." I completely understand how arbitrary stances on drugs can be, but for a region with strong ties to alcohol production, someone without cultural context would be pretty confused that alcohol is celebrated[1], while cannabis is stigmatized. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKZqGJONH68 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKZqGJONH68
- sandworm101 5y ago
  Dot not underestimate religion in the south. Change comes from the pulpit, not the soapbox. Little can change until the local preachers speak out. And Reagan republicanism, which is basically a civic religion in the south. Its preachers, the talk radio crowd, have to change first too.
- adfm 5y ago
  My 70 y/o mother-in-law kicked a 9 pill/day habit and drastically reduced her alcohol intake by taking a trip to the dispensary. And she did it by herself! She reminds me of the person I first met years ago. It’s an amazing transformation. Divest yourself of anything related to the ATF and pay attention to the changes at the DEA.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- kodah 5y ago
  I don't think alcohol production correlates as much as you're alluding to. I lived in Texas and the state is highly unforgiving around alcohol. A first time drunk driving offense takes the better part of a decade to overcome. Bars and stores are constantly presented with tricks and arbitrary limits that make a job that averages $60k a year a legal minefield. We'd have massive grids around the city setup on holidays that were sobriety checkpoints. A lot of constituents in the south, from my experience, already use CBD, THC, or both. I'm not sure what actually holds the state back from legalizing it given that so many folks already support it.
  - 5y ago
joelbondurant 5y ago
Veterans fought hard for the extortion sector to have totalitarianism, now they are just being hippocrites.
0xTJ 5y ago
Here in Canada, weed's been fully legal for several years, and our society has yet to crumble. It's been legal for medical use since 2001. It's pretty similar to alcohol in regulation. More places (including the US federally) should get on board with allowing it recreationally, but doing it medically would be a good start.
- int_19h 5y ago
  At this point, the feds really just need to get out of it, and let the states do as they will. Curiously, this isn't even something that requires legislation! Existing federal drug laws already give DEA extremely broad latitude wrt re-scheduling drugs (which is generally problematic, but in this case it could be an advantage). So, DEA could just move cannabis off the schedule if they felt like it. But they'll never do it by themselves, because all the high-ranking officials in the agency literally made their careers fighting the "war on drugs". However, since this is purely an executive branch decision, the president could prod them with an executive order - much like Trump did to force ATF to reclassify bump stocks as machine guns. At that point, Congress could still override it by passing legislation to put it back on the schedule... but that would be political suicide for them, and they know it.
h2odragon 5y ago
The redneck veterans I've known have almost all been enthusiastically in favor of cannabis since the mid 70s or longer. Families who have run moonshine and tobacco and other farms are both untroubled by overbearing laws and likely to have a tradition of military service. I read a lot about "the South" that sounds like the closest anyone ever came to it was watching "Dukes of Hazard" while high on a bet.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Spooky23 5y ago
  The more reactionary elements who have traditionally controlled southern politics always have been enabled by the preachers. Hence the public lip service to conservatism in the state houses. I used to drive to Savannah from South Carolina semi regularly. I always found it amusing that crossing the state line you’d have machine gun shooting ranges and full nude strip clubs over the line. Massachusetts used to be similar (New Hampshire was home to fireworks, cheap booze, nunchucks, tattoos and dog racing), but everyone thought it was stupid there.
- CalChris 5y ago
  Kendall Martin is serving 60 years for possession in Mississippi. That's not a sentence from the 1950s. That's from 2015. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4435830/kendall-martin-v-state-of-mississippi/ https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4435830/kendall-martin...
s5300 5y ago
The fact that major conservative networks don't announce the daily suicide count of veterans that they claim to care for and respect so much and scream "why the fuck aren't we doing something meaningful about this" until something meaningful is done is a good indicator of just how much their populace actually cares and what their priorities are. Just like how the law enforcement beaten at the Capitol and those who have committed suicide afterwards (I think it's like 5 now?) are being called crisis actors. I have a slew of my own terrible health issues, but I can't imagine what it's like living as somebody with something like cerebral palsy, who has near remission of debilitating symptoms while using marijuana (for some currently unknown reason, some have great symptomatic relief and some absolutely none at all), and not being able to legally or accessibly use it because of these stupid, mostly racist laws. I can't think of many better ways for a person, already suffering, to be told "we literally give not the slightest shit about you" by their representatives than issues like this.
nimbius 5y ago
My theory is decriminalization of cannabis would deal a blow to the cheap supply of prison labor and hence, isn't frequently considered at any level
- manquer 5y ago
  Going by history they will find something else, prohibition convictions gave way to weed convictions after all.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
Maybe not as counterintuitive as it may seem. There's a long history of medical progress being closely tied to the military. Military service involves exposure to violence and people are routinely injured or even maimed in the course of doing their job.
rosimelonica 5y ago
The veterans need special help if they are drug addicted this is the way to get them rid off from this habit https://christmasassistancehelp.com/veterans-day-free-meals/ https://christmasassistancehelp.com/veterans-day-free-meals/ For those who are fighting with this issue
LatteLazy 5y ago
US Conservativism baffles me. It seems totally arbitrary what issues are personal freedom (guns, vaccination) and what are tightly socially controlled (drugs, abortion). I just don't get it. At least communists and libertarians are internally consistent.
- krapp 5y ago
  Conservative values are guided primarily by business interests, then traditional Christian dogma. The things they want to control and ban are contrary to one or the other.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    "Politics makes strange bedfellows" i guess. I guess you can make an alliance of single issue voters much more easily than an ideological one.
    - krapp 5y ago
      They've ended up with most of the Christians, most of the guns and most of the money on their side. I deplore everything else about them but I have to respect the effectiveness of their propaganda.
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  Well, on the other side of the political spectrum you also have arbitrary boundaries on which issues are pro-science (vaccinations) and which aren't (nuclear power).
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    No one is totally self consistent, but it seems weird to me: the dems can't quite manage it on nuclear power which is about 1% of their platform. The Reps can manage it on abortion, guns or the budget, which is aboht 95% of their platform...

124 points by DocFeind 5y ago

>> advocacy from cancer patients and parents whose children have epilepsy, lawmakers who see this as a states’ rights issue, a search for alternative pain relief amid the opioid epidemic and a push from industries seeking economic gains. >> a recently formed advocacy group called NC Families for Medical Cannabis. And what about the countless veterans who are currently incarcerated on marijuana charges? What about all those soldiers who have had careers damaged by petty pot charges? They are veterans too.

CalChris 5y ago

South Dakota voters passed medical marijuana, Measure 26. They are still a very red, conservative state. I think legalization is, if anything, overdue.

Covzire 5y ago
Recreational too by a narrow margin, was to be legal July 1st but it's stuck at the state supreme court on some procedural grounds that were allegedly violated to bring it on the ballot.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

Most of the people who are against marijuana distribution in the South are in the baby boomer crowd, who upon failing to live up to the standards of their parents decided that sophist puritanism was necessary in order to redeem themselves.

tenfourwookie 5y ago
Sophist puritanism and $1 million RVs big enough to house dozens of pot plants and Larry Ellison’s ego at the same time.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  People usually don't buy $1M RVs to grow weed. You can buy used campers for $15K or less for that purpose. The two most underrated jobs in the US are boat and RV salesmen. Better percentage commissions at selling what amounts to house-level prices a lot of the time.
  - tenfourwookie 5y ago
    Fair enough. The $1M ones are for trafficking. But $15K for weed? That's contempt. That's a Jesse Pinkman meth RV low-ball.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > RVs big enough to house ... Larry Ellison’s ego Come on, now you're just making things up.
jacob2484 5y ago
Baby boomers did better than their parents in general
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  I'm not really talking about their financial well-being. The "Greatest Generation" won a World War and built a great economy on the ruins of Europe and Japan while creating a very safe, very white, very Christian-friendly world of televised entertainment. Boomers questioned that authority, protested their wars, wanted sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and then suddenly middle age hit them and they yearned for the safety of the world their parents raised them in. Many of them even decided that their parents' houses of worship didn't go far enough, leaving moderate traditional churches for extreme and fundamentalist churches.

causasui 5y ago

Enough already. Just legalize it federally and pinch it off.

tru3_power 5y ago
I really don’t get why this hasn’t happened yet.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Politics. Representatives aren’t aging out/turning over as fast as the overall electorate, so you have popular support but reps who disagree and therefore won’t sponsor or vote for legalization. The perils of a representative democracy. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/marijuana-legalization-is-super-popular-why-hasnt-it-happened-nationally/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/marijuana-legalization-... https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/16/americans-overwhelmingly-say-marijuana-should-be-legal-for-recreational-or-medical-use/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/16/americans-o... https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/20/senate-democrats-weed-legalization-schumer-483747 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/20/senate-democrats-we...
  - hanniabu 5y ago
    Love it when representatives don't represent, such democracy
    - smt88 5y ago
      Voters don't represent. Young people are much less likely to vote, so of course their values aren't reflected in the electorate. And then you have unnecessary barriers to voting that further discourage young, transient, and lower-income from voting.
    - shapefrog 5y ago
      It is litterally the will of the people. The voters (*should) know what their representatives represent, if they didnt like it they wouldnt elecet them back with sweeping mandates.

dehrmann 5y ago

Heh. "Conservative South." I completely understand how arbitrary stances on drugs can be, but for a region with strong ties to alcohol production, someone without cultural context would be pretty confused that alcohol is celebrated[1], while cannabis is stigmatized. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKZqGJONH68 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKZqGJONH68

sandworm101 5y ago
Dot not underestimate religion in the south. Change comes from the pulpit, not the soapbox. Little can change until the local preachers speak out. And Reagan republicanism, which is basically a civic religion in the south. Its preachers, the talk radio crowd, have to change first too.
adfm 5y ago
My 70 y/o mother-in-law kicked a 9 pill/day habit and drastically reduced her alcohol intake by taking a trip to the dispensary. And she did it by herself! She reminds me of the person I first met years ago. It’s an amazing transformation. Divest yourself of anything related to the ATF and pay attention to the changes at the DEA.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kodah 5y ago
I don't think alcohol production correlates as much as you're alluding to. I lived in Texas and the state is highly unforgiving around alcohol. A first time drunk driving offense takes the better part of a decade to overcome. Bars and stores are constantly presented with tricks and arbitrary limits that make a job that averages $60k a year a legal minefield. We'd have massive grids around the city setup on holidays that were sobriety checkpoints. A lot of constituents in the south, from my experience, already use CBD, THC, or both. I'm not sure what actually holds the state back from legalizing it given that so many folks already support it.
- 5y ago

joelbondurant 5y ago

Veterans fought hard for the extortion sector to have totalitarianism, now they are just being hippocrites.

0xTJ 5y ago

Here in Canada, weed's been fully legal for several years, and our society has yet to crumble. It's been legal for medical use since 2001. It's pretty similar to alcohol in regulation. More places (including the US federally) should get on board with allowing it recreationally, but doing it medically would be a good start.

int_19h 5y ago
At this point, the feds really just need to get out of it, and let the states do as they will. Curiously, this isn't even something that requires legislation! Existing federal drug laws already give DEA extremely broad latitude wrt re-scheduling drugs (which is generally problematic, but in this case it could be an advantage). So, DEA could just move cannabis off the schedule if they felt like it. But they'll never do it by themselves, because all the high-ranking officials in the agency literally made their careers fighting the "war on drugs". However, since this is purely an executive branch decision, the president could prod them with an executive order - much like Trump did to force ATF to reclassify bump stocks as machine guns. At that point, Congress could still override it by passing legislation to put it back on the schedule... but that would be political suicide for them, and they know it.

h2odragon 5y ago

The redneck veterans I've known have almost all been enthusiastically in favor of cannabis since the mid 70s or longer. Families who have run moonshine and tobacco and other farms are both untroubled by overbearing laws and likely to have a tradition of military service. I read a lot about "the South" that sounds like the closest anyone ever came to it was watching "Dukes of Hazard" while high on a bet.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Spooky23 5y ago
The more reactionary elements who have traditionally controlled southern politics always have been enabled by the preachers. Hence the public lip service to conservatism in the state houses. I used to drive to Savannah from South Carolina semi regularly. I always found it amusing that crossing the state line you’d have machine gun shooting ranges and full nude strip clubs over the line. Massachusetts used to be similar (New Hampshire was home to fireworks, cheap booze, nunchucks, tattoos and dog racing), but everyone thought it was stupid there.
CalChris 5y ago
Kendall Martin is serving 60 years for possession in Mississippi. That's not a sentence from the 1950s. That's from 2015. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4435830/kendall-martin-v-state-of-mississippi/ https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4435830/kendall-martin...

s5300 5y ago

The fact that major conservative networks don't announce the daily suicide count of veterans that they claim to care for and respect so much and scream "why the fuck aren't we doing something meaningful about this" until something meaningful is done is a good indicator of just how much their populace actually cares and what their priorities are. Just like how the law enforcement beaten at the Capitol and those who have committed suicide afterwards (I think it's like 5 now?) are being called crisis actors. I have a slew of my own terrible health issues, but I can't imagine what it's like living as somebody with something like cerebral palsy, who has near remission of debilitating symptoms while using marijuana (for some currently unknown reason, some have great symptomatic relief and some absolutely none at all), and not being able to legally or accessibly use it because of these stupid, mostly racist laws. I can't think of many better ways for a person, already suffering, to be told "we literally give not the slightest shit about you" by their representatives than issues like this.

nimbius 5y ago

My theory is decriminalization of cannabis would deal a blow to the cheap supply of prison labor and hence, isn't frequently considered at any level

manquer 5y ago
Going by history they will find something else, prohibition convictions gave way to weed convictions after all.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

Maybe not as counterintuitive as it may seem. There's a long history of medical progress being closely tied to the military. Military service involves exposure to violence and people are routinely injured or even maimed in the course of doing their job.

rosimelonica 5y ago

The veterans need special help if they are drug addicted this is the way to get them rid off from this habit https://christmasassistancehelp.com/veterans-day-free-meals/ https://christmasassistancehelp.com/veterans-day-free-meals/ For those who are fighting with this issue

LatteLazy 5y ago

US Conservativism baffles me. It seems totally arbitrary what issues are personal freedom (guns, vaccination) and what are tightly socially controlled (drugs, abortion). I just don't get it. At least communists and libertarians are internally consistent.

krapp 5y ago
Conservative values are guided primarily by business interests, then traditional Christian dogma. The things they want to control and ban are contrary to one or the other.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  "Politics makes strange bedfellows" i guess. I guess you can make an alliance of single issue voters much more easily than an ideological one.
  - krapp 5y ago
    They've ended up with most of the Christians, most of the guns and most of the money on their side. I deplore everything else about them but I have to respect the effectiveness of their propaganda.
skocznymroczny 5y ago
Well, on the other side of the political spectrum you also have arbitrary boundaries on which issues are pro-science (vaccinations) and which aren't (nuclear power).
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  No one is totally self consistent, but it seems weird to me: the dems can't quite manage it on nuclear power which is about 1% of their platform. The Reps can manage it on abortion, guns or the budget, which is aboht 95% of their platform...