Marijuana Majority Website Highlights Celebs And Tech Leaders Who Support Pot

I saw on the news in Seattle some interviews with people on both sides of Washington's marijuana initiative, which is basically a full legalization initiative.<p>There was strong opposition from a group I had not expected to be against it: medical marijuana advocates. They had two interesting arguments against full legalization.<p>1. They believe that it is going to raise prices compared to current medical marijuana prices, and<p>2. They are worried that the limit it sets for blood THC levels for DUI is below the level found in the blood of medical marijuana users. Many medical users would basically be unable to legally drive. (I've read that when one is using marijuana medically, the intoxicating effects of a given dose or much lower than when it is used by a healthy person, and so medical users driving while on medical marijuana are not actually driving intoxicated, but the proposed law does not recognize the distinction).

I looked through the comments and was surprised that mostly there seems to be a discussion on if we should legalize it or not...<p>I was mostly intrigued by the principle and the layout of the site.<p>In todays time it seems like an awesome principle to just make a collection of noteworthy people and get people to twitter (generally: contact) them to get their point of view in order to use this quote for your cause.<p>Combined with a nice layout, catchy URL and clever use of social media, seems like things like this could be done with more causes than just this one.<p>While i know that most of you will think <i>"Well, not really a revolution, it has been done before. Where have you lived the last few years of your life to be intrigued by something like that"</i> I personally never saw it in such a well executed form and manner.<p>How about doing the same with gay marriage.<p>FEEDBACK:<p>-) group feature is awesome<p>-&#62; how about additionally making groups for the parties (e.g. "Republican Party Member"), guess that would be nice feature<p>-) how about a search function for looking up specific persons

People that want to smoke pot, can easily get it, legally, or illegally. But it's much better to offer a controlled environment for the users, instead of 'making' people go to dealers. This part is the biggest reason why Mary Jane is a gateway drug, which lots of people use as an argument why pot shouldn't be made illegal.. Think of how much money could be going to tax instead of 'criminals' abroad.<p>In the Netherlands, they have started requiring users to register for a weed card, which has been enforced in multiple provinces. Foreigners are no longer able to use coffeeshops. Just Dutch nationals that choose to be registered at a shop. The effects? More dealing on the street. People don't like being registered. Slowly but surely more and more people are registering, and the rest are getting it through their friends, or illegal dealers which is the worst situation.<p>Open it up as much as possible. No registrations, just show your ID, if asked, when buying at 'coffee shops'. Governments will be able to educate the users more. Grow it as a government, allow 'farmers' to grow too. Tax it.

I'll let onlookers decide whether this is a discussion of politics on Hacker News (disfavored by many of the users who have been here longer than I have) or a discussion of something else. On my part, I'm curious about one empirical question: Richard Branson claimed in his blog post on the current law in Portugal (which "decriminalizes" marijuana but still treats marijuana possession and use as an administrative offense)<p><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana-myths-and-facts-20120822/myth-holland-and-portugal-have-legalized-marijuana-19691231" rel="nofollow">http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana-m...</a><p>that marijuana used had declined since Portugal changed its law. That's an interesting claim. Do we have strong evidence from before-and-after policy comparisons in other countries that use of marijuana declines if use of marijuana is responded to by administrative sanctions rather than criminal penalties? If so, that would be food for thought for people like me (a generation older than most HN participants) who have seen a lot of promising young people in two generations "burn out" from marijuana use. Criminal approaches to social problems are harsh and expensive. If they are also less effective in dealing with reducing marijuana use than administrative approaches, and voters can be convinced of that, perhaps there is a path forward toward reforming marijuana laws on the basis that marijuana should be neither casually used nor a ground for imprisonment. (I think the actual enforcement practice in my state, Minnesota, largely is of the form of diverting users of marijuana to drug treatment programs.)

The difference between the TechCrunch article headline and the HN headline is curious (the word "legalization" is left off of the HN headline, at least in its current form). I wonder whether this was deliberate, or just random chopping to some arbitrary character limit.<p>Regardless, the change is important. There is a big difference between "supporting pot legalization" and "supporting pot". I often wonder whether efforts toward the former are hampered by the fact that all sides in the debate tend to think of it in terms of the latter.

Where I live in Mi there are billboards that say, "WE GROW THE BST OG!" All over the radio are ads to get your marijuana scripts. The biggest problem we are having here is the law left the question of dispensing medicine to each individual charter. So most around the state have passed 'moratoriums' waiting for a bigger rule to follow behind. But there are plenty of places dispensing medicine. Its amazing to me that a few states can legalize gay marriage and the democrats will put it on the ticket, but 17 states and the district of Colombia go medical and there is no discussion about it.

Shame half of the list is obscured on my 13" thanks to a massive fixed header.

For those who would like to explore potential ramifications of legalization, consider <a href="http://the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1316" rel="nofollow">http://the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1316</a>

"We need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts, and if somebody's gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else any harm, then perhaps there are other things that our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems that we have in society that are appropriate for law enforcement to do."<p>Guess which (former) political figure summoned this wonderful word storm :)

The website on topic is <a href="http://marijuanamajority.com/" rel="nofollow">http://marijuanamajority.com/</a>

The website is marijuanamajority.com.<p>Do we really need techcrunch to interpret for us? Who's idea was that?

On a somewhat related note, my `fortune` for today was<p><pre><code> Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves. -- Lenny Bruce</code></pre>

I don't care if people smoke in their homes, but tell me how you are going to stop people from driving stoned and killing me.<p>Because people are arrogant about it and think they are perfectly fine and that it's not like alcohol - right now the fear of being caught with it in the car slows down that arrogance, once it's legal it's going to happen all the time.<p>Also there has to be some severe penalty for public smoking because I don't want you smoking it next to the playground just because you are now allowed to.

So we have pro-piracy and pro-marijuana on the front page... all we're missing now is MrBabyMan.

How about a web site that shows celebs and tech leaders who support a woman's right to choose? Who are against it? For gun control laws? How about a web site against Italy's "articolo 18", which is much more relevant to startups than pot is?<p>Please, take the politics elsewhere. There are tons of sites for discussing politics. This is one of the few really good places for hacking and startups, so please let's keep it free of flame-bait.<p>It's in the guidelines, too, for what it's worth:<p>" Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. "