Is it just me or does anyone else think that lobbying money could be put to better use on other topics?
Pot being illegal causes uncountable amounts of suffering and disadvantage, and it's not going to be federally legalized (descheduled) until enough states pass their own legalization.
However, I've always wondered about the inconsistency of saying it's harmless and non-addictive, but also talking about the devastating effects of prohibition.
If it's everything people say it is, why were people driven to use it anyway despite the draconian penalties?
I may be unusually risk averse, but I wouldn't risk prison for, say, consuming or selling chocolate if that was illegal.
Why not just stop testing? The only explanation I can muster is they want to sell it.
That seems a little inflammatory. It depends on the issue which subsets of the country are being dragged.
Nuclear energy and vaccines are the main things that comes to mind with the left, but lately I think both of those are more likely to be rejected by the American right than the left.
I think politicians in general have trouble with newer technologies and seems to have more to do with the age of the average person in Congress than political leanings (e.g.: Al Franken's questioning of Eric Schmidt years ago and not understanding how Amazon could run Android on their own devices without Google's input).
On a side note, why would proliferation of firearms be the opposite of modern society? There are other modern countries with firearms. And by proliferation do you mean simply higher total numbers or more widespread?
In the past, guns and weapons generally were required to survive for folks outside of cities. That is not the case today. I see this as a move towards the modern - a society that can solve problems without the use of guns.
I mean a combination of both higher numbers and how widespread guns are.
That said, I think the case law supporting the 2nd amendment to the level it is today is flawed, but I understand that given past rulings the only legal things to do are: a) allow basically any and all guns with no restrictions or b) overturn past decisions on the matter.
Even with all of that the cat is out of the bag in the US - there are too many guns to remove. Beyond the US, 3D printing will make creating a gun at home somewhat trivial in the near future. I don't know how we dig out of that hole societally.
For instance, I think that money spent on Porsche Panameras could be put to better use.
The fact that different groups have different preferences doesn’t seem all that interesting.