Chris Christie has lost my vote

Source: Wikipedia

Well, for the most part Christie has been doing the right things, but he has taken a turn for the worse. In today's news:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed into law on Monday legislation that bars licensed therapists from trying to turn gay teenagers straight, though the Republican said in a statement he did so "reluctantly."

and

Christie found middle ground on medical marijuana for children when he agreed Friday to allow growers to cultivate additional strains, and for marijuana to be made in an edible form for chronically ill children. But he would not lift an oversight provision that could require as many as three doctors to sign off on a prescription.

On the first issue, I think most people, even those who feel that one is "born gay" acknowledge that sometimes a person who has been "straight" for some time feels unhappy where they are and "discovers" they have homosexual tendencies. So why is it so hard to imagine that someone who is "gay" could be unhappy and discover they are straight? Why can a therapist help an unhappy straight person to be gay, but be forbidden by law to help an unhappy gay person to be straight? Why is the "discovery" a one way street?

As for parents making this decision for their children, why not? A child does not have any idea of right or wrong, or sexual identity except as it gets it from parents and peers. And in today's society, how many children are "faking" being gay to get the attention they crave? If a particular method of behavior modification is harmful, then ban that method of behavior modification for all behavior, but banning the end, not the means, strikes me as particularly biased against a given outcome.

As for the second, exactly why do we need state laws to put marijuana into the hands of children? There is a procedure in place to get drugs to patients, that's designed to make sure the drugs are effective safe and used properly. If there were a medical benefit to be had, don't you think drug companies would have jumped on it, gotten FDA approval, and be dispensing it already, at great profit? They've had years and years to study it. Now the typical argument is that the drug companies can't experiment with it because it is an illegal substance. Poppycock! So are all the controlled substances out there. They make morphine, opiates, barbiturates, all sorts of things, without having governors sign special laws.

The other argument I've heard is that drug companies know how wonderful marijuana is but are hiding it because there's no profit to be made since people can grow it themselves. Well, that can be said of most plant-derived drugs. What drug companies do is find the active ingredients and put them in an easier to use form, like a pill or inhaler, and work on eliminating side effects, etc. If marijuana was safe, effective, and useful, I'm sure someone would put it in pill form and charge an arm and a leg, and since it is illegal to grow it yourself, they could charge a ton of money for it.

The fact that nobody has gotten the marijuana inhaler or patch or pill or what have you through FDA approval is indication to me that such a drug would not pass muster in terms of safety or effectiveness. The real end game of this bill is to make money by selling tones of marijuana to people who want to use it for recreational purposes and will use medicine as an excuse.

Posted in: homosexuality,New Jersey,Politics