Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "NY Gov Candidate Cynthia Nixon NAILS Why Pot Must Be Legalized" video.

  1. If you look at the history of those drug laws, they were clearly crafted with racist intent. Dan Ehrlichman, a Nixon advisor, candidly confessed that they knew they were lying about the drugs (and consequently, the people using them) when they used anti-drug laws as a tool of political reprisal but did it anyway. https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html Anti-drug laws appear to apply universally, but in both their conception and enforcement they were targeted at specific oppositional groups. Combined with policing practices in the US, which tend to enforce certain laws in variance with the demographic, these laws can be called racist. The reformist notion of merely correctly enforcing existing laws entirely misses the point in this case. Should marijuana be legal or illegal? It's long been understood that marijuana poses none of the risks attributed to it, like violence, addiction, madness, or that it's a gateway drug. So long understood, in fact, that when Nixon appointed the Shafer Commission to recommend anti-drug legislation, the Commission, despite its members being hand-picked for their anti-drug stances, confronted with the facts about marijuana, could only recommend that it be decriminalized, much to Nixon's chagrin. Nixon opposed the commission's recommendation, and to this day marijuana remains a Schedule I drug. https://www.alternet.org/story/12666/once-secret_%22nixon_tapes%22_show_why_the_u.s._outlawed_pot Looking back, your first point doesn't make much sense. You admit that there is a racial disparity in drug enforcement but conclude that there's no point in legalization since racial disparities in enforcement may appear in other areas. Well, yeah, but one thing at a time. Acting like this is a technical matter to be solved by some police reform (a return to the law as it was meant to be enforced, which we've already shown means enforcing it along racial lines) is the best way to ensure that nothing changes. Legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana would instantly solve that problem. No kicking of cans. Instant. Done. If your only argument is, we should enforce the law and do what's "legal," without any consideration for what is and should be legal, you're just defending the status quo because it's the status quo, not because you have any good reason why that law should be enforced in the first place.
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  2. Ironically it was Richard Nixon (no relation) who started the war on pot as a way to persecute his opponents, the hippies, college kids, commies, blacks, and of course the Jews.
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