Legalize Marijuana?

The movement to legalize marijuana is picking up steam.  In this country, anyone 21 or over living in Colorado and Washington State can have 1 ounce of weed for personal use.  I’m not sure who measures if the total reaches 2 ounces.  Probably no one.

At least 12 other states have decriminalized marijuana or allowed its use for specified purposes, such as healthcare.

National leaders have called for legalization, citing the appalling arrest figures.  In 2010 alone, close to 750,000 people were arrested on marijuana-related charges, mostly for possession.  The FBI indicates that a marijuana smoker is hauled into court every 45 seconds.  Arrest for marijuana easily outstrips arrests for such crimes as violent crimes, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

Some of that explains why such a larger percentage of Americans are in jail, more inmates than in any other country. 

That’s happening although no one has died from using marijuana.  Few have even gotten sick: long-term effects of smoking on lungs appear to be minimal.  Smoke can be eliminated by eating marijuana in the proverbial brownies or through other means rather than inhaling anyway.

So, what’s the problem?  Why are people like me opposed to legalizing marijuana?

I have only one reason, but, to me, it easily balances any of the strong arguments in favor of legalization.  Marijuana affects the part of the brain involved in making critical decisions.  It does not make a person violent; it doesn’t necessarily lead to other drugs.  It simply prevents a user from thinking.  Studies found marijuana “disrupts the brain function critical to motivation, memory, learning, judgment and behavior control.”

That’s why police invariably check for marijuana use whenever an accident occurs: when a subway car conductor fails to heed a red light; when a ferry boat operator runs aground; whenever someone makes a really bad decision affecting the lives of many people.  In a world where few people think clearly about the effects of their actions, legalizing marijuana and increasing its use will only make matters worse.

One person who disagreed with me said there was no spike in car accidents after marijuana use was legalized in Washington State.  I would have been surprised if there was.  After all, the state has long

been lenient with marijuana users.  As a result, people have been smoking with impunity for a long time there.  Obviously, a change in law would not affect the statistics.

I wonder what would happen in Texas, a state notorious not just for inflicting the last Bush on the country but for Draconian drug laws.  Legalizing marijuana there would probably be a truer test of its impact.

On the other hand, a small sampling has little meaning.  Any study of the impact of marijuana on the population would take years.  Snapshots in time rarely reveal true conditions.  Consider global warming, where a single cold winter convinces some deniers that the condition is not real.  If they would bother to look at longitudinal evidence, they would realize their mistake.

The inability to make critical decisions affects more than just driving skills.  The annual national survey of drug use and health conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that in 2012:

“Youth with an average grade of D or below were more than four times as likely to have used marijuana in the past year than youth with an average grade of A.”

“Youth who initiate marijuana use by age 13 usually do not go to college, while those who have abstained from marijuana use, on average, complete almost three years of college.”

 It can also be addictive, although less additive than many legal and illegal drugs, according to Scientific America.  People start smoking at a young age, and studies have shown that teens who start smoking marijuana prior to age 14 are five times more likely to abuse other drugs as they get older. 

The impact of marijuana is even greater in youth because the effects are “more detrimental and longer-lasting in youth,” the National Institute on Drug Addiction found.  That’s because marijuana “profoundly affects the frontal cortex, the last part of the brain to develop and has not fully matured in adolescence.”

I’m not arguing that marijuana doesn’t have benefits: it apparently reduces chronic pain and may have a place in medical treatment, although some studies have found that marijuana usage actually lowers the immune system.  I just want tight controls to reduce the problems proven to be associated with marijuana use.

On the other hand, I recognize that it’s impossible to legislate morality.  Society changes.  What was considered immoral (hence illegal) by one generation may become legal and even encouraged in another.   We’ve all seen how smoking tobacco was once encouraged and is now an anathema.  Drinking, too, has gone through a similar cycle.  No one wants to return to Prohibition days.

Still, I’m not willing to add another legal drug alongside alcohol and prescription medicine to the laundry-list of causes for dangerous behavior.

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  He can also be followed on Twitter.

You can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1

Debating the Holocaust?

A recent series of Facebook comments focused on the Holocaust, including the suggestion that no law should exist to prevent someone from denying the Holocaust.  That was prompted by yet another country making denial of the Holocaust illegal.

According to one colleague, the law prevents the free flow of ideas and a healthy debate.  

That argument is, of course, hogwash.

A debate requires two sides.  There isn’t any in this case.  The Nazis kept meticulous records that provide the details necessary to prove the Holocaust took place.  The mass graves, eyewitness accounts, photographs and more supply all the additional evidence anyone could ever use.

Defendants in Nuremberg

What’s to debate?  What can someone use as evidence that the Holocaust never happened? Deny forensic evidence that fills warehouses?  Pretend eyewitness accounts were faked?  Ignore reams of testimony and evidence presented at the Nuremberg trials?

That’s not a debate.  That’s a sham.

I’m all for discussing the Holocaust: How did it happen? Why? How can something like that be prevented? Why would anyone believe it didn’t happen?  Or, a question that arose during the Facebook give-and-take: Why is the Holocaust terminology limited to Jewish victims? 

After all, an estimated 12 million people died in Nazi concentration camps, from slave labor and other atrocities.  They included Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, intellectuals, religious leaders and more.

The Nazis were equal-opportunity killers. 

After Krystallnacht

In this case, as with the actual event itself, there’s a clear answer: The term Holocaust has become reserved for the Jews mainly because they were the largest, single target of Nazi outrages, from early anti-Semitic tirades to Krystallnacht and then the camps.  An estimated 6 million Jews died simply because of their religious affiliation.  They didn’t have to be practicing Jews either.  Having a grandparent who was Jewish was enough to earn a death sentence. 

Under the circumstances, as poster children for genocide, Jews have a right to label this 12-year horror anything they want.  The word "Holocaust" fits perfectly.

The bigger question is why anyone who consider this worthy of a debate.  Who cares what it is called?  Murder is murder; there’s no disguising that under some alternative title.

I have no problem with investigating and examining the Nazi reign of terror.  It’s been done many times since the war ended in 1945 and is perfectly legal even in countries that refuse to allow deniers access to public airwaves. 

Besides, historians love to debunk myths.  I have no doubt someone will discover some fact that upsets current thinking, such as Hitler really was part Jewish or that his Vienna paintings really were masterpieces; or that propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels really didn’t kill his wife and children.

Debunk away.  Everyone needs something to write about, even historians.

The Holocaust isn’t above such fact checking; it’s just not going to be affected by any new research.   It happened, and it was as awful as can be imagined.

As a result, Germany, among other countries, has banned deniers simply because they are continuing the same kind of hatred that prompted the Holocaust in the first place.  By denying what evidence clearly shows, they are trying to subvert history.

Not that’s it’s anything new.  Scholarship throughout history has supported phrenology, the use of animal testicles to improve virility and lots of other dubious subjects.  None of it changed reality that astrology is fake; so is looking in crystal balls or turning over tarot cards.

I’m not willing to lump that Holocaust in that category or to allow deniers equal status with real facts.

There’s precedent: schools cannot teach creationism in schools.  Why?  To do so, would give that pseudo-science equal credibility with evolution.  Instead, creationists can teach whatever they want in their churches, but not in a public school

The same is true with the Holocaust.  Anti-Semites can mutter all they want in the back alleys of academia, but their unsupported claims cannot be given credence on par with the extensive research on the subject.

There isn’t any debate about that.

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  He can also be followed on Twitter.

You can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1

Israel Remains Constant Target of Criticism

Little Israel, a land smaller than New Jersey, remains an international lightening rod.  The country, voted into existence by the United Nations in 1947 and born in April 1948, continues to be battered by criticism from every direction.

For example, a friend and colleague posted this on Facebook: 

How can Israel speak of self-defense when it does not grant equal rights to all citizens of the region and international aid workers?!

The second half of the post about international aid workers refers to an incident when Israeli troops intercepted and roughly treated diplomats who were part of a caravan delivering food to Khirbet Al-Makhul, a West Bank village with about  120 residents.  A Reuters story said that the Israeli army “demolished … ramshackle houses, stables and a kindergarten … after Israel's high court ruled that (the residents) did not have proper building permits.  Despite losing their property, the inhabitants have refused to leave the land, where, they say, their families have lived for generations along with their flocks of sheep.”

In essence, the army was enforcing a Supreme Court ruling.  Have we seen that before?  How about in Louisiana and Alabama, among other places, after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the “separate but equal” racial doctrine?  Our troops didn’t demolish homes, but then, Southern racists weren’t building them.  However, they did toss a few bombs into the homes of black activists.

It seems hypocritical to criticize Israel for enforcing a court ruling when we have done the same thing.  I’m not in agreement with manhandling diplomats, however.  That seems like a case of an inappropriate, overzealous response.

The other half of the posted comment calls on Israel to grant civil rights to people of the region.   In short, my friend is criticizing Israel for not ensuring equal rights to people not living in Israel.  In fact, he specifically wants Israel to grant equal rights to residents of Gaza, which is not under Israeli control.

Gaza is a strip of land along the Red Sea that's a self-governing entity once controlled by Egypt, seized by Israel and then released and now run by Hamas.  To my friend, it’s actually “a humongous refugee camp of people driven out of villages in Israel.”

That’s not quite true: some people living there were driven out; others chose to leave the newly created state based on promises by their Arab neighbors that Israel would be destroyed.  The neighbors were wrong and then compounded their foolhardy claims by refusing to accept their Arab brethren.  That’s why there are seemingly permanent refugee camps.

It could be worse.  In the Middle Ages, armies besieging towns often refused to allow citizens not wanting to fight to come through their lines.  The poor people then were trapped between the besieged and besiegers, starving to death in no-man’s land.  For example, that’s what happened in Munster, a famed 1524-25 battleground between attacking Catholics and defending Protestants.

Regardless, Israel has no authority to grant equal rights to anyone living in Gaza.  Its responsibility is only to Israelis, all of who have equal rights.  In fact, Israel is as close to an American clone in the Middle East as we are likely to ever see.

Israel has the right to defend itself against neighbors like Iran, Syria and the Palestinians, who are determined to destroy it.  That’s no different than our right in the U.S. to defend ourselves against anyone seeking our destruction. 

On the other hand, no one is suggesting we should make sure Mexicans have equal rights or Cubans or others within our region.

Some Americans opposed independence 

Only Israel is condemned for not doing so.

Some of that criticism arises from disgust with the United Nations’ decision to create the country.  After all, residents there were not consulted, nor were provisions made to protect people who disagreed with the decision.  The same thing happened in this country, when Tories who opposed American independence were harassed and often forced to leave the new country. American children usually aren’t taught that tidbit in American history classes.    

The Tories were not compensated for their losses, any more than Arabs who chose to flee or were forced out of Israel received compensation. However, Tories found new homes largely in Canada.  They were not kept in refugee camps.  If they had, their descendants no doubt would be launching clandestine attacks on Americans just as Palestinians are doing now.

I also doubt my friend would have been calling for the U.S. to grant equal rights to those people in Canada.

Some of the opposition to Israel comes from inbred hatred of Jews.  Antisemitism is a convenient charge – and often erroneous one – filed against people who choose to criticize Israel.  I know fully well that’s not my friend’s motive.  However, that’s not true for others.

Being the long-time opponents of Christians placed Jews in a precarious position in many countries for long centuries.  That’s why Israel was created in the first place – to provide a homeland for persecuted people who suffered tremendously in World War II and needed a place of refuge.

Israelis cannot be responsible for how their nation was created.  They didn't ask for the vote -- Britain proposed a partition of the land into Jewish and Arab units.  They didn’t seize the ancient land then called Southern Syria.  They didn’t buy it.  They didn’t force it to surrender.  They were granted the land by an overwhelming vote of the world’s nations (33-13). 

Since then, they have developed a barren land and created a modern nation amid often-backward surrounding societies.  Israeli residents enjoy all the freedoms that Americans do.  No one has to be Jewish to be a resident, for example.

Israeli response to provocation has often been direct and, occasionally, brutal.  Life and death situations aren’t always pretty or tiptoe along legal lines.  However, they are understandable, even by people safely cocooned in the U.S., far from the realities of constant war and cheerfully tossing unwarranted criticisms.

Israel deserves to be criticized for any inappropriate actions, but that doesn’t include upholding a court decision and not granting equal rights to non-citizens. 

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  He can also be followed on Twitter.

You can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1