Nation Going To Pot by Guest Writer TJ • Part 2

The United States continues down the Romans 1 path as the nation is going to pot.

Here are some evidences of some of the dire consequences to the course we're on:

A) Fatal crashes - a major increase:

https://newsroom.aaa.com/2016/05/fatal-road-crashes-involving-marijuana-double-state-legalizes-drug/

B) Children adversely affected:

     1. Daughter and son die in hot car while Mom does dope:

https://www.newsweek.com/mother-who-smoked-marijuana-watched-kuwtk-while-kids-died-hot-car-sentenced-20-907823

     2. Child nearly dies from marijuana in candy:

https://www.wisn.com/article/child-almost-dies-from-marijuana-laced-candy/6249011

     3. It started with weed and wound up with child abandonment:

https://www.wjhl.com/local/grandparents-raising-grandchildren-caregivers-behind-the-opioid-crisis/1306482973

     4. Four-year-old boy found wandering alone while elementary school teacher had gone out to get dope:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-teacher-arrested-marijuana-child-neglect-20180319-story.html

     5. "Until recently, it was rare for children to have major symptoms from swallowing marijuana.
It might be that they didn't swallow much and so didn't get very sick.  This has changed with medical marijuana." *

"Young children have been poisoned by swallowing medical marijuana.  Some have needed treatment in an intensive care unit."

https://www.poison.org/articles/2013-dec/medical-marijuana

     6. "The 2017 report said marijuana was the most-used substance connected to child abuse and neglect deaths, followed by alcohol, cocaine and methamphetamine — and sometimes a combination of substances." *

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/03/20/texas-drugs-alcohol-child-abuse-deaths/

C) Study has demonstrated a link between ongoing use of cannabis and violence.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-new-brain/201603/marijuana-use-increases-violent-behavior

A Reagan era study examined multiple convicts in the state of New York. "..one-third of respondents who had ever used marijuana used the drug in the 24-hour period before the homicide; and that almost three-quarters of those respondents were experiencing some type of effect from the drug when the homicide occurred."  Some of them claimed the homicide was related to their cannabis use.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8144275

D) Dogs getting stoned accidentally, including an example of one who licked up "medical" marijuana: 

E) Often, cannabis is a gateway entry to other harmful drugs:

1.  "As more U.S. states legalize the use of marijuana, Mexico's violent drug cartels are turning to the basic law of supply and demand."

"Laws allowing marijuana in states like Colorado, Washington and California are causing shifts in the Mexican underworld that have also led to increased violence as the cartels move away from its cash cow of marijuana to traffic more heroin and methamphetamines."

"..the cartels 'saw a lot more demand for heroin (in the United States) and responded.'"

See source of quotes in the following link:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/02/20/mexican-cartels-switch-gears-after-u-s-states-relax-u-s-states-legalize-marijuana-mexicos-cartels-sw/343389002/

For more on the subject:
https://www.businessinsider.com/sinaloa-cartel-sending-mexican-herion-to-the-us-2017-11

     2. Gateway Drug studies:

          a)  Based on a National Survey on Drug Use and Health from 2011-2013, those using cannabis were three times more likely to be addicted to heroin:
https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/heroin/infographic.html

More: https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUHresultsPDFWHTML2013/Web/NSDUHresults2013.pdf#page=45

          b)  "The CASA study also links the use of gateway drugs by children with subsequent regular use of illicit substances as adults:

Adults who used marijuana as children are 17 times more likely to be regular cocaine users. (Ninety-one percent of adults who used marijuana as children smoked or drank first.)"

Source:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol20/vol20_iss10/record2010.24.html

     3. Examples of multiple types of drugs display that things don't always stop with marijuana:

          a)  A man who used both pot & heroin hit six other vehicles with his truck:

https://www.wpxi.com/news/top-stories/tractor-trailer-driver-admits-to-using-heroin-marijuana-before-crash/646672076

          b)  Parents arrested, toddler hospitalized with cannabis & cocaine in his system:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/florida/articles/2018-06-01/toddler-hospitalized-with-marijuana-cocaine-in-system

          c) Mother abandons her son, leaves grandma to raise him.

Grandma says:

"It was marijuana but that lead to opiate abuse, my daughter was actually shooting up Opana," a tearful Martin recently told WJHL.  "She took off up north to avoid child support...she's abandoned her child, just like his biological father abandoned him at the age of two...I'm angry at her for what she and his father have put him through.” *

See full article the above quote came from linked below.
https://www.wjhl.com/local/grandparents-raising-grandchildren-caregivers-behind-the-opioid-crisis/1306482973

          d) Babysitter warned by mother not to let five-year-old girl go near pool because she couldn't swim.  The babysitter does marijuana and meth. & allows child to drown.

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/palm-bay-babysitter-arrested-in-5-year-olds-drowning-police-say

*Emphasis Added (italics &/or bold).

Duped by Dope by Guest Writer TJ • Part 1

I was a kid during the Reagan era, when the Just Say No to drugs was in full swing.
I don't remember the campaign continuing under the 1st Bush presidency. By the time Clinton, "I did not inhale," was in office I noticed a shift about drugs.
While Joe Camel was attacked and alcohol ads were banned in certain instances, illegal drugs seemed to gain some ascendancy, prompting me in part of a poem I wrote to say:

Strained out is the Camel; let in is drugs, the charging bull,

While the matador is smiling since Joe's no longer cool.

The 2nd Bush did not make the war on drugs an issue and when Obama got in, he didn't want the government to bother enforcing federal laws on marijuana as states began to legalize the drug.

Meanwhile, Libertarians are libertines when it comes to the federal government's right to restrain people from certain immoral behaviors which are detrimental to society.
They think it is the states' rights to forbid or allow murder by abortion or to outlaw or permit harmful drugs (if people so desire).  I wonder if they ever asked themselves - should I not take this same states' rights position on theft, other murders, fraud, etc.?

Homosexual activists took incremental immoral steps regarding benefits.
Some opposed homosexuals' radical demands to receive special rights not afforded to other singles. Some people fought against demands to accept deviant sexual behavior as normal by acknowledging in state constitutions the definition of marriage - that being as the Author of marriage defined it.
Judges over-ruled the will of these people in various states.

But later, Christians overall seemed to have given up when the Supreme Court made the outrageous immoral ruling that sexual immorality should be permitted to be called marriage, which in truth is an institution God invented and defined as only being between a man and a woman.

And now, on another immoral front, while the goal of many people in this country is to legalize recreational marijuana, using the incrementalism of "medical" marijuana as a springboard, some Christians are actually being sucked into accepting marijuana (now said to be even stronger than the detrimental dope of old) legalization.

Is marijuana a sin?  Here is where some Theologians answered:

From The Shepherds' Conference Q & A On Marijuana

Christians need to be sharing the Gospel with people who are thinking about/are turning to dope a road which can have dire consequences.

Part 2 will deal with specific consequences of marijuana.