The whole point of free speech is not to make ideas exempt from criticism but to expose them to it.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Measure 13, let me count the ways...

When you start with an absurd premise, like, say, prohibiting people from feeling better except with substances regulated, controlled and taxed by government, then everything done in pursuit of fulfillment of that premise is, by association, absurd.

If government wants to regulate, control and tax my sins, fine. I'll pay 'em off for leavin' me alone. That is one of the prices for being protected by the State.

But I am stunned by the adoption, if only by a few, of the position that a demonstrably safe and remarkably effective and cheap remedy for the suffering of tens of thousands of people remains on the "prohibited" side of a list whose "allowed" side doesn't really contain all that inspiring a list of associates.

There's no pain reliever on a list of prescribable drugs in South Dakota that won't kill you at about 7 or 8 times the prescribed level. Even Aspirin, which you can buy if you can carry money to the counter, kills about 2500 people a year. Cannabis has never been implicated in an overdose death. An "overdose" of cannabis requires maybe as long as two hours of walking and talking.

The paradox of current South Dakota cannabis laws is that they prevent the most vulnerable, the timid, the sick, the bed- or wheel-chair bound, from obtaining the safest medicine known while anyone who is mobile and social can buy cannabis virtually at will.

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

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