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I hate MIPS machines!
Ahem.
Anyway, since I last blogged, GNOME 2.4, and GNOME Office 1.0 have come out. Don't have the time or box to build GNOME 2.4 packages at the moment, but I have done a full set of GNOME Office 1.0 packages.
All views expressed on this site are my own. They do not necessarily reflect
those of the Parish of Bursledon, the Diocese of Winchester or the Church of
England. As such, I do not expect them all to be popular but you, the reader,
can certainly expect them to be honest.
Please stop the insanity.
This server, swamprat.homeunix.org should be slightly less flaky now, overnight I moved the partition upon which the web site is stored from ReiserFS to ext3, as the Reiser filesystem on it was seriously battered.
...is a somewhat strange blog title for a Christian you might think, but I've felt for sometime that marijuana should at least be de-criminalized, if not fully legalised (in the same way that alcohol and tobacco are).
The reason I'm posting this blog entry, is that a friend and I were discussing Georgy Russell, a fellow geek who's running for governor of California. One of her campaign positions is that she is for the legalisation of cannabis. I ought also to point out that I have never smoked cannabis, nor do I have any desire to do so.
Cannabis is no more harmful or addictive than alcohol, yet we live in a society where alcohol is an integral part of daily life, but if you smoke pot you risk a jail term. It is much less harmful than tobacco, yet the government make a fortune every year from the taxes it places on the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products. I feel there would be no threat to public health from the legalization of cannabis, and in fact, legal cannabis could (probably should) be taxed in the same way as alcohol and tobacco, money which could be used to fund the war against more serious drugs such as cocaine and heroin.
Which brings me to the second point. It is often said that cannabis use leads to hard drug use. If this is true, then it is due in a large part to the fact that under the current situation people who use cannabis are already being supplied by criminals, and so there is a direct link to harder drugs. With cannabis legalized, it's supply is taken out of the hands of criminals, and the link is broken. People who want to use harder drugs will irrespective of whether they use cannabis, and of whether cannabis is legal or not. But making it legal makes it less likely that those who just want to use cannabis will end up being drawn into harder drug use.
The reason I'm posting this blog entry, is that a friend and I were discussing Georgy Russell, a fellow geek who's running for governor of California. One of her campaign positions is that she is for the legalisation of cannabis. I ought also to point out that I have never smoked cannabis, nor do I have any desire to do so.
Cannabis is no more harmful or addictive than alcohol, yet we live in a society where alcohol is an integral part of daily life, but if you smoke pot you risk a jail term. It is much less harmful than tobacco, yet the government make a fortune every year from the taxes it places on the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products. I feel there would be no threat to public health from the legalization of cannabis, and in fact, legal cannabis could (probably should) be taxed in the same way as alcohol and tobacco, money which could be used to fund the war against more serious drugs such as cocaine and heroin.
Which brings me to the second point. It is often said that cannabis use leads to hard drug use. If this is true, then it is due in a large part to the fact that under the current situation people who use cannabis are already being supplied by criminals, and so there is a direct link to harder drugs. With cannabis legalized, it's supply is taken out of the hands of criminals, and the link is broken. People who want to use harder drugs will irrespective of whether they use cannabis, and of whether cannabis is legal or not. But making it legal makes it less likely that those who just want to use cannabis will end up being drawn into harder drug use.