Criminal Behavior

[gtclark]

Read an interesting article today about what is otherwise a legal activity in this state - in your mind, replace "marijuana" with "tobacco" and you'll find the legal implications are interesting (at least for Oregonians): http://www.policeone.com/legal/articles/9501678-Court-answers-burning-Fourth-Amendment-question-on-pot/

 

[mso489]

This highlights the forever creepy aspect of regulating small details of peoples' lives. You look at the entirely incongruent history of tobacco and pot. When I was growing up you could never raise any comment or complaint about tobacco smoking for any reason. I once took the bus from Chicago to Fort Myers and had to walk two or three miles when I arrived to walk out the nicotine. I was pickled. Whereas until recently, homes and vehicles could be confiscated for the owners' possession of not much pot. I'm not sure I can jump totally on the Libertarian bandwagon, but I can see that fiddling with other peoples' lives, except for major infractions, usually has bad results, for the individual and the community. The law is profoundly ham handed and often wrong the more micro-managing it does. As Dickens said in disgust, through one of his characters in Bleak House (I believe it was) "The law is an ass." An indispensable ass, but often an ass all the same.

 

[mcitinner1]

I just love the way our man MSO thinks and writes about experiences from his life.

 

[tuold]

Seems to me laws are used to protect life and property, not to keep people from being offended. If that were not so I would have had my father in law arrested a long time ago from frying beef kidneys.

 

[jparker]

"The court issues a warrant and your subsequent search discovers cans of spray paint and stencils that had been used to make graffiti around town."
When they end up outlawing tobacco we better watch out all the pipe smoking degenerates are gonna be in soooooo much trouble!
But seriously this is awful! Sorry we cant bust you for this so we're gonna get you on a bunch of other stuff based on what your neighbor said. Here you can have the tattered remains of my rights I dont think I'll need them more anyway.

 

[prairiedruid]

Any chance we could get MSO nominated for the next Supreme Court opening?

 

[gloucesterman]

I second the nomination.

 

[deathmetal]

I can see that fiddling with other peoples' lives, except for major infractions, usually has bad results, for the individual and the community.

It seems to me we are fiddling with the wrong stuff to avoid looking too deeply at important issues. Smokers are a scapegoat.

 

[snagstangl]

Replace "marijuana" with "tobacco" and we get that tobacco smoke is not a basis for getting a search warrant. Just because its legal doesn't mean it won't have a cost. I agree that micro management of peoples lives is overstepping and it is done anyway.

 

[shroedingerscat]

I guess I am little dense. I don't see what marijuana has to do with pipe smoking. At any rate, if we are talking about odors, the people in the Middle unit pay their rent to live there, same as everyone else. Unless there is a smoking prohibition in the lease, they they have every right to smoke in their own residence,as long as what they are smoking is legal. Instead of bothering the police (who should have better things to do), the neighbors should have called whoever manages the property and complained to them. Then something could've been worked out that would not take up valuable police and court time over a very minor issue.
I find the way a lot of people cook to be extremely offensive (I am a chef). Should I be able to call the police every time they boil cabbage and ham hocks? After all, I am a recovering Food-Abuser (on a diet), and the smell triggers a desire for me to eat. I think you can see how ridiculous this line of legalese can become.

 

[deathmetal]

Human groups always need an enemy. We've run out of politically incorrect ones, but it's still OK to bash smokers because "smoke EQUALS cancer" in the eye of the public. Next I think more ideological enemies, Stalin or Hitler types. Every human group becomes more unified when it has someone else to murder.

 

[stanlaurel]

We already have cases where someone calls the police when they see someone carrying a rifle even though open carry is legal and the person is arrested anyway.
There are also cases when a repairman comes into a house but then sees a gun-rack and calls the police and the person who has broken no laws is arrested and has their guns confiscated.
My point is that even if your behavior is "legal", you are not safe in this society. Maybe next week a furnace repairman will see my pipe-rack and call the police.

 

[deathmetal]

My point is that even if your behavior is "legal", you are not safe in this society.

We've got a new generation of Good Soviets who will report someone else if they think it will bring them some white knight points.

 

[blendtobac]

We've got a new generation of Good Soviets who will report someone else if they think it will bring them some white knight points.

Please don't bring WhiteKnight into this. I get in enough trouble already.

 

[disinformatique]

The only White Knight I am interested in is the one the man above my comment makes.

 

[iamn8]

The legalization of consensual crimes. In the societal effort to protect those who can't help themselves, we've lost track of what being an adult means. We should all make our own choices and live with the consequences, but when those consequences involve prison, we've lost our freedom. We've made ourselves wards of the state and lost our right to make choices. In an effort to help adults we've criminalizes certain choices and helped nobody along the way. Freedom to live and die has come to carry with it quite the list of disclaimers and compromises. There was a time, as I'm told, that it was enough to live your life so long as you didn't directly harm anyone else. At some point we decided to "help", by making it our legal obligation to prevent you from harming yourself. Here is where freedom took a turn, a nasty one at that. Freedom stopped being freedom long before any of us were born and all because people are too dumb and can't be trusted with to make good choices... Not without the threat of legal reprocessions. We created a legal framework to remove our own choice. Pathetic and sad, we get not only what we deserve, we get what we asked for. This bell can't ever be unrung and it will only get worse over our lifetimes... and all under the guise of saving us from ourselves.

 

[brian64]

A great irony is that you have a very large percentage of the population that are on powerful drugs, some of the mind-altering kind, 24/7, but because these particular substances are pushed by the pharmaceutical industry with government approval and protection, they are deemed safe and acceptable...even though they have a long track record of horrendous side-effects in a large number of people who use them.
Then there is an even greater portion of the population who are under the influence of the most powerful mind-altering force in history, the almighty TV, and it's endless stream of propaganda and brainwashing.
I'm reminded of the following Aldous Huxley quotes:
"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude."
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution” - Aldous Huxley

 

[stanlaurel]

I agree with Nate and brian64 100%.
The sad part is that both Huxley quotes are already true.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

 

[Chasing Embers]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCuaPUVFbzg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

[iamn8]

Well said Metallica and nice ref CM!