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Comment by pachydermic | Hacker News Reader

Dude what are you talking about? Honestly, are you trolling?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/in-major-shi...

Turns out that old white dudes - which I think would most clearly fit your label of "squares" (please) - are actually not the ones who strongly oppose legalization. True, this is just DC proper and not Virginia/Maryland, but given that Maryland has had votes to decriminalize it and such I don't think it's absurd to apply some general lessons from this to other parts of the area. Really, the only people who reliably oppose legalization seem to be older black women and republicans - which is kinda funny if you ask me.

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No, not "old white dudes." The Wikipedia page is decent on the topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_%28slang%29

Also, when analyzing the forces resistant to legalization you should account for the allegiances and power dynamics, particularly as applies to the information channels that communicate crime and other social costs upward to the actual policymakers. You're painting a caricature of a flattened hierarchy of federal policy and politics that simply doesn't exist.

Obviously the DEA doesn't support legalization.

But I think that the DOJ has established that they're going to legitimately and honestly let the experiments in Colorado and Washington play out by themselves. Despite what they've done in the past and what they've done in other areas, I think they deserve credit for that at least.

At the end of the day, the people who work at these places are real human beings just like you and me. I think your caricature of these organizations is silly and slightly (and only slightly) offensive or off-putting.

What we're seeing now is that public opinion has changed and official policies are quickly changing to match - for as many problems as US democracy has faced lately, I think this is a pretty good example of it working. Simply put, I don't think it's fair to say that people in DC are trying to keep pot illegal or keep people down more than anyone else in this country.

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