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The Free Thought Project reports
When Colorado took the historic step of restoring freedom by legalizing the recreational use of cannabis, [Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt did a survey of] law enforcement agencies and district attorneys across Kansas.
[...] The results are in, and it's unwelcome news for drug war fanatics. According to The Kansas City Star:
"The amount of marijuana being confiscated appears to be dropping quickly...
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported that the number of marijuana stops has gone down since marijuana was legalized in 2014. And the amount of marijuana seized has decreased by almost half." [...] "In some jurisdictions, law enforcement are no longer enforcing marijuana laws much, and even when they do, it has become difficult to win convictions. Users may receive a fine in one county, probation or jail in another, and told to move along in others.[...] "Some juries are refusing to hand out marijuana convictions [...] according to the district attorney in Labette County.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Z-A,z-a,01234 on Tuesday October 25 2016, @07:06AM
That is the only reason there are so many "wars": on drugs, on terrorism, to bring democracy, etc.
Since marijuana is one of the least harmful things you can have a good time on, it took only a couple of years for "normal" people to see the light. Who knows, maybe there is still hope for the human race.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NCommander on Tuesday October 25 2016, @08:43AM
I think a lot of it at the moment is distrust of the government is at an all-time high, and its having a collective effect of causing people to think more instead of listening to authority.
I don't want to call it groupthink per-say, but there is a tendency in humans that when you hear something from someone/something you trust, you're much more inclined to act in that way. If you're distrustful of a source of information, then it goes a long way in getting people to analyze and look at information.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @10:52AM
Heh. I'll bet aristarchus could tell you some great stories along those lines--maybe even the one about when Andrew Jackson was running for president.
[it's] having a collective effect of causing people to think more
I would hope so.
...then I see people getting behind 3 of the 4 leading presidential candidates and "think" doesn't seem quite the word.
.
per-say
I've seen you do that one before.
It's Latin: per se. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday October 25 2016, @07:12PM
Look again. NONE of the candidates running for President would make a good President. NONE of them. Some are worse than others. In my mind, Trump is the worst, but that doesn't make any of the others good.
The current selection of presidential hopefuls is a good argument for replacing elections with a lottery. It would be hard to do much worse than Trump, and he's currently one of the two most probable winners. (The difference from a standard lottery is that tickets would not be sold, and nobody would have more than one.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday October 25 2016, @07:54PM
Hell. anyone who wants the job shouldn't be allowed to have it. They should have to grab you kicking and screaming into the Oval Office. ...same for Senate and Representative positions, now I think of it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @08:56PM
NONE of the candidates running for President would make a good President
Green Party nominee Jill Stein has a platform that, in significant ways, is an update of FDR's New Deal.
FDR's plan was what got us out of the previous giant hole.
That is to say that it has a successful track record.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Troll) by linuxrocks123 on Wednesday October 26 2016, @12:10AM
Jill Stein is economically illiterate. Her campaign promise to order the Federal Reserve (which the President can't do) to "use quantitative easing to erase all student debt" (which is impossible, an absurd thing to even say, and shows she knows nothing about what quantitative easing even is) sufficiently demonstrates this. Her economic policy proposals are basically Trump's wall, but for liberals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @01:52AM
Hyperbole.
Now, she isn't quite as savvy as Ellen Brown, who ran on the Green Party ticket for California State Treasurer (and got my vote).
Ellen is a smart babe who knows how to save a state big bucks.
She talks up The Bank of North Dakota every chance she gets and notes that THAT is the way to do things. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [commondreams.org]
order the Federal Reserve (which the President can't do)
Yeah, that cartel of PRIVATE bankers is something we should abolish.
Go back to a PUBLIC Bank of the USA like we had before.
quantitative easing
Yeah, giving more money to the 1 Percent hasn't improved things so far.
We should stop doing that.
A better way would be to let the student loans default, have the gov't buy those up for pennies on the dollar, and sell them back to the students at that reduced cost.
Let the banksters eat it.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:18PM
I find people who need to use some substance to "have fun" defective in some way. Yes I realize Humans have a high defect rate, so maybe we have to play along till robots can do all the labor. After that I don't really care what happens to them.
(Score: 4, Informative) by jdavidb on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:40PM
I find people who need to use some substance to "have fun" defective in some way
I find that to be almost completely none of my business, unless say it happens to be my kid, at an early enough point in his life where I can still intervene successfully. If it causes the person involved to pose some sort of threat to me then I need to find a way to protect myself and possibly find a way to pass the costs of that protection onto him, and he can then decide if he wants to sober up or just leave people alone.
Whatever may or may not be wrong with drugs, whatever may or may not be wrong with the people who use drugs, it's completely orthogonal to the question of whether we should let people alone or not. I teach my children that it's wrong to try to straighten out other people with force.
I have never used drugs that are currently illegal and I can't envision ever using them even if they become legalized. But I see no reason to intervene in the business of other people.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 25 2016, @05:36PM
Considering it's a nearly universal trait that even extends to our primate cousins have you ever considered that you are the defective one? Have you ever truly evaluated this position in the light of evidence or do you just accept it as fact?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @06:24PM
Why be open minded when you can be smug?
I hope over the next few years he becomes severely depressed and kills himself.
I hate people who are naturally high and energetic.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Tuesday October 25 2016, @07:17PM
You might wonder then why many other animals have the same "defect". It's spread not only across species, but also across orders that are only vaguely related, so much so that one could easily conclude that it has a very long evolutionary history, and has not been selected out. If so, it's a very strange "defect" indeed. It's even present in birds, where it presents a clear survival danger. (Watch drunk birds flying some time.)
Given this wide spread, either it's evolved repeatedly, or it's survived since before the time of the dinosaurs without being pruned by evolution.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @11:56PM
You might wonder then why many other animals have the same "defect".
Whether it's a defect or not has nothing to do with popularity or how many species have the alleged defect. It may be possible that it is an evolutionary defect, but it's simply not enough of a negative trait to cause those who have it to be wiped out. Or, more likely, it's an entirely subjective matter.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @04:20AM
Over time (and there has been a lot) evolution optimizes very finely - specific shapes of bones, specific molecules, etc. - so something like "dies occasionally when drunk" would be pretty well optimized away unless it had some pretty strong plus side. Judging by responses thus far... you can speculate what the plus side might be.
(Score: 3, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday October 25 2016, @09:32PM
Hey-yo! I just found the life of the party! Wooooo hooooo!