Schwarzenegger says Marijuana not a drug

Dan says: "Here is a great story I found about Arnold Schwarzenegger telling a British journalist that marijuana is not a drug. He was trying to deflect suggestions that he had used drugs in the past by saying weed is 'not a drug. It's a leaf." Then the PR machine began, predictably, to crank into full gear."

Aaron McLear, Schwarzenegger's press secretary, said the governor made the comments in a lighthearted context, noting his interviewer was Piers Morgan, one of the judges on "America's Got Talent." Morgan is a former British newspaper editor.

"The governor was doing an interview with the host of 'America's Got Talent,' the newest version of the gong show," McLear said. "I think it's important to keep that quote in the context of the environment where it was said."

Link

• [TwoShort]

  Michael: Despite getting all the press, the Puritans were not “a lot” of even very early America. Furthermore, while we call them all “the Puritans”, they weren’t remotely one group, and were united chiefly by their desire that the state stay out of religion.
  They certainly can’t be blamed for current insane drug laws. Marijuana was made first made illegal in this country (in 1915) in Utah. So if you want to find pleasure-hating people using the law to push their religious agenda, it won’t be hard. But it ain’t the Puritans.

• [erissian]

  I’ll chip in. #3 and #4 have it right together. The bud is indeed the flower, but if it you let it blossom then it’s time to set that plant aside for breeding instead of smoking.

• [Miss Underestimated]

  Please do not lump all “Christians” together. So many of today’s “Christians” do not, in fact, follow the teachings of Christ — which call for LOVE, compassion, tolerance, etc.

  nfrtntly, th prdmnnt “Chrstn” grp wrldwd r th Rmn Cthlcs. Prsnlly, fl RCs r nt Chrstns. True Christians, myself included, actually follow the original teachings of Jesus Christ, and have no hangups about personal pleasure, pain control, etc., nor do we feel the need to evangelize. You believe what you want, and I’ll do the same. Thank you.

• [CharlesSpongeworth]

  Getting back to the topic… Piers Morgan was a tabloid newspaper editor, responsible for putting photographers outside celebrity’s houses 24 hours a day, among many other intrusive things. If I had been Arnold I wouldn’t even have told him my name.

• [Andrew]

  What if he believes all Christians should be lumped together? HMMM?

• [edgeways]

  Religion, including Christianity, is just a tabla rasa upon which people justify their worldview. There are compassionate, tolerant Christians, and there are small minded bigoted Buddhists, and vice-versa.

• [help i cant comfirm my username themelonbread]

  @ #10 posted by Miss Underestimated

  At least the Roman Catholics’ version of the bible wasn’t retconned to disclude anything that they didn’t agree with. The first counsel decided by consensus on what books went into the bible and what didn’t- mostly by aiming for some sort of theological consistency, and declared it all the word of God. For protestants to- hundrends of years later- say “No, these books aren’t the word of God, but everything else is” compromises the credibility of the Bible as any sort of authority.

  And Martin Luther was a anti-semitic, chauvinistic, explicitly logic-hating, and peasant-hating asshole who claimed certain countries were demonic. Although he did fight a good fight against corruption, and this is purely an ad hominen attack on protestantism, you cannot forget that Martin Luther was an asshole.

  In addition, although it was the Catholic church that came up with the 7 deadly sins (which are simply human drives- which, upon being labeled sins, would inevitably lead to alot of self-loathing and pyschic turmoil), it was Calvinists who founded Geneva, and Puritans who called card games and non-morality plays the devil, and so on and so forth.

  Although the Catholic tradition is bogged down by alot of strange and limiting dogma, I like how the church has mellowed alot since their Medieval heyday, and make good efforts at ecumenism and acceptance of Protestant Christians.

  My Presbyterian church, however, calls Catholics, Mormons, and Jehovah’s witnesses non-Christian cultists. Not Cool.

• [help i cant comfirm my username themelonbread]

  I just realized that I forgot to add stuff about anti-Catholic discrimination in the US (After all, Catholics were targeted by the KKK along with Jews and Blacks), but we really need to get back on subject.

  I see this as a win both against that GOP moob and for the legalization of Cannabis. Awesome.

• [trai_dep]

  Mighty ballsy of Arnold to admit what we already know. Outside of a minuscule group of Just Say No dead-enders, everyone knows weed ain’t that big a thing.

  Would have been impressed if Arnold DID anything about it, being governor and all. Pardons, sentence reductions, fighting to further decriminalize it, lobbying the evil Feds to, say, pick on terrorists and baby-killers rather than terminally ill cancer patients.

  Guess that’s the difference between screen heroes and real life ones.

• [Absent]

  “It’s a leaf”

  Well, I’d say a flower, unless you’re smoking some low grade s**t.

• [Kyle Armbruster]

  The central problem with Christianity is the Bible. Since the RC Church required people to accept the Bible — a document forged by the church for its understandable convenience — as the Word of God, that wholly unChristian idea has been passed down through the movement, even out to the evangelical fringes who otherwise condemn the RC church.

  What is the problem with the Bible?

  Well, you have the first half, which is Judaism. It’s there to inform the readings of the second half, but it’s full of all sorts of violence and intolerance that the philosopher and revolutionary Jesus of Nazareth was actually responding to in his public speaking career. It shouldn’t really apply to Christians, but including it means they can cherry-pick from it when they want to justify things that are unjustifiable in the Jesus worldview. Most Jews are smart enough to cherry pick the good parts and leave the bad there, but not so with Christians, historically.

  Then you have the 4 synoptic Gospels, which tell basically the same story of Jesus’ life, four times in a row. If you were going to pick a center for Christianity, this would be it. This is ostensibly what the fellow said and believed and it really does represent a very peaceful, hopeful worldview. Give it an objective read. Jesus was a pretty nice guy. A populist.

  Then you get Paul, who was basically an asshole. Now, in his defense, I doubt very much that when he was writing his letters to the various churches, he meant to be the center of the Christian canon, or that he was speaking for God. He was an early leader in the movement and a pretty good essayist, but I doubt very much that he thought he would or should be the central teacher for the rest of the history of the movement. When we talk about contradictions in the New Testament, it’s usually between Paul and Jesus, and it seems that if you were really a Christian, there would be no contradiction at all. Jesus is the center of the religion/philosophy/worldview, and if you’re a Christian you believe he’s the son of God, so I would expect his word to trump that of a reformed slavetrader.

  But it doesn’t.

  This policy of accepting the whole book as the word of God is why the movement is so bizarre. I don’t believe a spiritual word of anything, but I have great respect for the teachings of Jesus (as written–who knows what he actually said), and try to incorporate his philosophies into my daily life, along with those of Siddharta Gautama, his Eastern predecessor and possible influence.

  If Christians would simply free themselves from the imperial edicts of the RC church regarding the Bible and simply focus on the Gospels, you’d have a much kinder, gentler, freeing religion than you usually see.

  Jesus liked a good party. When the booze ran out, he whipped up some more with his Jesus-magic, even though everyone was too drunk to even appreciate his mad winemaking skillz.

• [mycophage]

  Cypherspace is wrong; Absent is right. The “buds” are the female flower of the Cannabis plant.

  Incidentally, here is some hilarious vintage Arnold.

• [mrfitz]

  Our country is so f’d-up. How dare you feel pleasure. How dare you ask for pain medication. How dare you ask for narcotics when you are terminally ill. How dare you ask to be put out of your misery. How did we get to the point of thinking that pleasure is morally wrong?

• [Cpt. Tim]

  “nfrtntly, th prdmnnt “Chrstn” grp wrldwd r th Rmn Cthlcs. Prsnlly, fl RCs r nt Chrstns. True Christians, myself included, actually follow the original teachings of Jesus Christ,”

  ahh. the never ending in-fighting over an ancient work of fiction.

• [stevew]

  Schwarzenegger’s quote is taken out of context. He goes on to say that weight lifting was his drug.

  Psychotropic plants came first then came humans who invented religion. It’s a pretty good bet that the dreams and visions that lead to religion came from “special” plants. There’s even a pretty good thesis that Christianity came out of mystic cults that intentionally took drugs, specifically Amanita Muscaria:

  The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East

• [sorcere]

  @mrfitz: Christians

• [Michael]

  Mrfitz, a lot of America started out thinking pleasure is morally wrong. The Puritans didn’t get their name from their weekly orgies, man! And they specifically came to an “empty” continent (except for natives, who didn’t count) in order to forge a new and pristine way of life away from the sinful cesspool of Europe.

• [Anonymous]

  Cocaine is derived from leaves, opium is derived from seed pods. Setting aside the arguments about the inherent goodness or badness of marijuana, the statement by the Governor is just dumb. It is akin to the attitude many folks have about herbal supplements being different from manufactured pharmaceuticals. Plants are packed with powerful stuff, use them wisely!