NEWT GINGRICH, MARIJUANA AND THE DODO - POLITICS 2012 - PART 2

Imagine... there are no predators. You have wings, but it becomes unnecessary to fly. Your wings slowly disappear, to make you flightless. That is the Dodo bird.

Source: Wikipedia

A "chicken" that stood there to let you kill it... that was the Dodo.

First discovered by Dutch sailors in 1598, by 1681 the Dodo was hunted to extinction.

That is the inconceivable wish that the Federal government has with regards to users/affectionatoes of cannabis/aka marijuana. Eradicate marijuana users, as the theory goes, and you erraticate all "illegal drug users".

If you ask newt Gingrich, illegal drug users are users of cocaine and heroin. If you ask him if cannabis users should be arrested and jailed, he'd say "no". He has absolutely no cognizance of the average cannabis user. He firmly believes that not only are cannabis users unable to provide to a society, but they ultimately go onto harder drugs. Not true. It's all a boogeyman to him.

Hate to tell you Newt, a little late with the sermon... people have been using, what you call "drugs", for millennia. And, cannabis is not a "gateway-drug", so you can forget that line of drivel. Cannabis users, like the Dodo, feel safe in the USA.

You make clear they're not. And they're not. But do you expect to get elected having threatened a good 50% of the population with your "death-threats"???

Cannabis users aren't Dodos... they've been under attack since 1937... and are now victims of a undeclared war. The difference is... cannabis users statistically are well educated. Not stupid by any stretch!

Question for Newt (January 4, 2012 at Concord, NH Town Hall Meeting):

“I’m a recreational drug user, should I arrested?"

Gingrich: "No you shouldn’t be arrested, but you also shouldn’t do it.”

Newt's another one of these "born again politicians" that used to use cannabis and other "drugs", and has reformed their ways.

“Gingrich’s response to questions about his youthful drug experimentation (“That was a sign we were alive and in graduate school in that era”) was uncharacteristically graceful and in perspective and mature… ”

1 May 1995, New York Magazine, page 42: SOURCE:

Initially, in Newt's early years, during the 1980's he was pro-legalization, at least for medicinal purposes. In the 1990's he did a reversal... sponsoring a bill that would make marijuana smuggling a felony with a sentence of death.

H.R. 4170 (Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996) to the House of Representatives, which sought to “provide a sentence of death for certain importations of significant quantities of controlled substances”.

Section 2: Increased Penalties For International Drug Trafficking

Section 1010 of the Controlled Substances Import and Export Act (21 U.S.C. 960) is amended by adding at the end the following:

(e)(1) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the court shall sentence a person convicted of a violation of subsection (a), consisting of bringing into the United States a mixture or substance--

(A) which is described in subsection (b)(1); and

(B) in an amount the Attorney General by rule has determined is equal to 100 usual dosage amounts of such mixture or substance;

to imprisonment for life without possibility of release. If the defendant has violated this subsection on more than one occasion and the requirements of chapter 228 of title 18, United States Code, are satisfied, the court shall sentence the defendant to death.

(2) The maximum fine that otherwise may be imposed, but for this subsection, shall not be reduced by operation of this subsection.'

September 25, 1996, 104th Congress (1995 - 1996), H.R.4170

So How did Newt go from supporting legalization of cannabis to outright hostility?

"See, when I smoked pot it was illegal," he reportedly told the Wall Street Journal's Hilary Stout in 1996, "but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn’t change, only the morality... That's why you get to go to jail and I don't." reportedly Newt said.

So, okay, change of morality. But is Newt God? I guess in a way the way I read him he thinks he is. He implies, marijuana use is now a violation of morals? Holy Batman on that one... how does he validate that statement???

Several quotes summarize his position, courtesy of NORML:

“If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs… it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children. I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this.”

August 27, 1995, New York Times, Gingrich Suggests Tough Drug Measure

“I don’t have a comprehensive view. My general belief is that we ought to be much more aggressive about drug policy. And that we should recognize that the Mexican cartels are funded by Americans. In my mind it means having steeper economic penalties and it means having a willingness to do more drug testing.”

(Yahoo! News Interview, November 28th, 2011

“I think that we need to consider taking more explicit steps to make it expensive to be a drug user. It could be through testing before you get any kind of federal aid. Unemployment compensation, food stamps, you name it.

It has always struck me that if you’re serious about trying to stop drug use, then you need to find a way to have a fairly easy approach to it and you need to find a way to be pretty aggressive about insisting–I don’t think actually locking up users is a very good thing. I think finding ways to sanction them and to give them medical help and to get them to detox is a more logical long-term policy.”

(Yahoo! News Interview, November 28th, 2011

So, if you like to use marijuana, newt mandates detox...

He would like to see an increase in enforcing the War on Drugs.

Much like Mitt Romney, he's another "prehistoric thinker..." but what really gets to me is this quote:

“I think Jefferson or George Washington would have rather strongly discouraged you from growing marijuana and their techniques with dealing with it would have been rather more violent than our current government.”

(New Hampshire Voter Event, January 2012

I don't think so Newt! Especially Thomas Jefferson. Both probably even used it... it was a common herb and medicine even back then - far from being illegal, immoral, or discouraged.

Neither President believed infringing on the rights of adult individuals was good governing. But somehow Newt, you believe otherwise. Maybe that's why the Dodo bird appears in Lewis Carroll's - "Alice In Wonderland". Newt's in his own wonderland.

Think the casual cannabis user, generally with a college degree, is going to listen to Newt? Not likely.

Sorry Newt... but you're also a prehistoric thinker, like Mitt Romney.

Prohibition doesn't protect children. It endangers them.