Interesting tweet from Team Rick Perry today:
“Science needs to be part of the conversation on decriminalization of drugs.” @GovernorPerry #WEF14 #health http://t.co/4FoLbhTRyj
— Team Rick Perry (@TeamRickPerry) January 23, 2014
Wait. Is this the same Rick Perry who says Texas public school science classes should teach creationism alongside evolution? Who, in fact, claimed in 2011 that the state’s public schools do teach creationism along side evolution?
Yeah. Same guy. Governor Science.
Funny that, too. I’m not so sure Perry and his bunch would be too crazy about the answers science has to offer on decriminalizing marijuana, at least.
The principal problem with marijuana is the same problem you have with tobacco. If you smoke it, it releases carcinogenic chemicals such as benzo(a)pyrene. Burning just about any everyday world thing that is organic will release these chemicals. Smoking Mary Jane would probably be about as dangerous as smoking cigarettes. Eating it might be another matter entirely.
Either way, I do not use it or any other kind of illicit drug. However, if you were to ask me today if it will ever be legalized, the answer is “yes” and probably a lot sooner than people think because it solves several problems:
1) Medicine for people who need it.
2) Government gets to tax it to make $$$ billions in cash and depopulate expensive prisons filled with users—not dealers—and this saves even more money.
3) The “Al Capone” factor will disappear along with the Mexican cartel violence worries because—like all Americans do—it will be grown here in such quality and quantity that the drug cartels will disappear. Most of the current cartel trade is marijuana.
4) Hemp rope will make a big comeback and the waste from the cannabis plants will be used in the energy industry.
5) The southern states will be the last to accept it, which means that the crime and cartel violence now seen along the Mexican border will increase greatly and be highly concenrated all over the American South—whereas it is diluted by the other states right now. No one’s children will be safe from Corpus Cristi all the way to Richmond, Virginia. Just wait until the cartel hit guy ‘pops’ little Cindy with the yellow bow in her hair as she walks home from 5th grade. Then watch 1000s of little Cindys get caught in the crossfire of the Southern Drug War.
“Weezuns is all some stripe of baptist down South. We put the lid on Sundee licker, and weezuns’ll put the lid on thisun too.”
Yeah. Keep telling yourself that after one of the cartels kills all your family members.
Charles, you’re right about smoking cigarettes/marijuana (or organic matter) releasing the carcinogen/mutagen BaP. But barbecue has much more BaP and is even detectable in the bloodstream after eating.
That should be the new slogan… “Marijuana, instead of BBQ”
But alas, it will probably be marijuana, then BBQ.
It would be interesting to know what Rick Perry thinks the word “science” means.
It would be interesting to know whether Rick Perry thinks at all.
I would get my hopes up to high. Think low bar—very low.
This is Pray-for-Rain Perry, right?
So the difference is what? Prior to this, he has been authentic – now he’s trying to position himself more moderately so he is acceptable as a national party champion? Or was he moderate all along (he did after all convert from Democrat when it was advantageous to do so), but he took hard positions because that’s what he saw was advantageous in the Texas Republican Party? Who is the real Rick Perry?
$cience is what Perry is interested in. He sees the money that the State of Colorado is raking in, and he wants some for Texas, too. Something else to remember: he went to Texas A&M. Maybe he thinks he can grow some of that stuff and make money for himself after he retires. All in the name of $cience, of course!