Hoo boy. California just might Legalize It. (The other It)
By birdmojo Posted in Culture — Comments (148) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
So I was clicking around, as is my nighttime wont, and stumbled across this (watch out, salty language). It's a report about an initiative coming up in California that does a lot of stuff... first and foremost, it legalizes pot. Not in a "with a note from your doctor and $100, you can buy a bag from a dispensary" kind of way, but in a "if you sell alcohol, you can sell weed" kind of way.
Read a quick summary of the initiative here and read all 11 pages of the initiative itself here.
This initiative does a lot of stuff. Not only does it legalize pot, it sets up social services to help with drug addiction (paid for, of course, by marijuana taxes), "Prohibits most marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco advertisements", and all kinds of wacky stuff.
This isn't really a Libertarian's dream initiative... it's not even really close. Even as it legalizes this thing, it builds up government power elsewhere to an insane degree... but it is exceptionally interesting. Especially because it just might pass.
(Well, not with the "never smoked it" part... I spent most of 1993 in a haze) but it strikes me as something similar to a good triple scotch and a good cigar.
Every day? Oh yeah, that's a good way to screw up your life.
Every Friday night? Well... so long as it's at your house, on your porch...
Every few months, like on a camping trip, say? Hey... I can make rice krispy treats and throw together some steaks in a delightful orange marinade...
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
if ever you smoke just one joint, only one puff, the VERY next day you will have a heroin needle hanging out of your neck.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
Pot doesn't kill people. It certainly inhibits their motivation to do things other than eat, but if that's the standard, then alcohol shouldn't be permitted either.
You're right. Pot doesn't kill people. On the other hand, smoking pot can lead to things like this:
And of course, things like that will definitely kill you.
Hang all traitors and secessionists! Hang them high!
- Me
Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - The Chief Justice
Let's just skip over the parts about all the positive arguments for medical marijuana and the supremacy of federal law over state law. If government gets into the business of providing medical marijuana, they'll do that badly, too.
It's about doobage. Unadulterated doobage.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
and strain on the infrastructure, if nothing else, except when poor-quality state-issued pot drives people to search for something good.
No more than legalized beer put a strain on cops in the wake of prohibition ending.
I see a lot more freed manhours than exist now... even taking boxed sets of Quantum Leap into account.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
if more of their competitors waste more of their time idling after getting high.
The federal government has been in the business of providing medical marijuana since 1976. Bush Sr. closed the program to new entrants in 1991.
---
Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.
Thank you. I'll be here all week.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
I dunno what is.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
You know, Federal preemption and all that...
On the other hand, the Feds might have a hard time enforcing this in locales where the local police don't assist them.
Don't think the California voters will pass this, though. The DUI ads (if the opponents are at all creative) should should nail the initiative to the wall.
And seeing as it is regulated under the interstate commerce clause. I would like to see that abuse of power struck down.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
We might see a 5-4 ruling again.
The Pinkos and Thomas against Kennedy and the Righties.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
of an otherwise persuasive argument for decriminalizing marijuana. There just isn't any great way to measure and correlate very recent cause-and-effect relationships to the mishaps of the stoned driver. Even if you grant cases where excessive overindulgence is tragicomically obvious to a blameless peace officer, there's no more fair way to handle the middle ground than for users to accept a tradeoff, that because those metabolites might stay in your body upwards of 30 days, no one should expect any civil or criminal jury to acquit a driver who tests positive.
What if this, of all the dumb things a state could do, were the policy that made someone go Andy Jackson on the courts, and start fighting back?
Only *ONCE* were they used.
Yep.
To overturn the 18th Amendment.
It doesn't strike me as ridiculous exactly... what's the saying? "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
That, of all things. Funny that the larger states' rights arguments remain sound on that one.
If you agree that laughter is the best medicine, then maybe MM would further supplement the effectiveness of this, for convalescent viewing:
Even if it passes, I think it's instantly overturned. IANAL but I don't see this raising any issues that would make the Supreme Court revisit the precedent set in the medical marijuana case. If the "interstate commerce" impact of medical marijuana is enough to give the feds power to overrule state laws allowing such, there's nothing about recreational use that wouldn't also be covered by the same reasoning.
I believe that court decision was wrong, but I don't see it changing.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
This is one that kinda strikes me as a losing proposition (no pun intended) on the part of the Feds.
Assuming it passes in the first place, of course.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
If the proposition passes, the feds still have the power to go bust anybody in California for smoking a joint on their porch.
But if the effect of the proposition is to take all state and local police in California out of the business of impeding marijuana commerce, I doubt the feds could spare enough FBI & U.S. Marshalls to spend their days busting enough pot dealers/users to make a dent. It might be as good as legal no matter what the courts say.
Good. Marijuana being illegal is ridiculous. No conservative can talk about how the government should leave us alone while supporting the outright banning of a mild stimulant like marijuana. It's certainly no worse than alcohol or cigarettes.
If this passes, then when California's crime rate drops by 30% and use of hard drugs drops or stays the same hopefully it will be legalized in many other states as well. I'm not a big fan myself, but if I ever decided to smoke up with friends one night I don't think that would merit being thrown in jail.
I would like to see a Venn diagram of conservatives who agree that pot should made illegal by the government, and conservatives who will be complaining this weekend about government restrictions of outright bans on fireworks in their state (because after all, its common sense that fireworks are dangerous and people should take responsibility for their actions when using them).
Have you added to the population of the McCain 2008 minicity yet today?
I drive a car powered by hydrogen - C8H18 to be exact.
de jure in the 1st Judicial District, Southeast Alaska. AKSC said private personal use was legal back in the '70s. A citizen's initiative recriminalized it. 1st District Superior Ct. said the initiative was unconstitutional and the State just sheathed its sword on the issue, so there really is no enforcement directed towards personal use statewide.
Alaska has way too many stoners, but probably would whether or not it was legal and it does save a lot of cop and corrections resources for dealers and distributors. The Feds don't recognize the State's action, but they don't do anything to enforce against small time users.
In Vino Veritas
I'm glad to see the support here at RS for decriminalizing marijuana. If we do have a problem with activist government and the notion of a Nanny State, then this issue should follow suit. The drug war in many instances has been a fine example of Big Government run amok. I don't care if the drug warriors are Joseph Califano or Bill Bennett. My message is: you may be right about 'Just Say No', but please get out of our lives.
Carrie
When discussing the legalization of marijuana it is always important to put public safety first, which of course means pot must be legalized. Prohibition does nothing but add a major profit incentive to criminal activity. This is exactly why alcohol prohibition was lifted and why the War on Drugs is not even remotely winnable at all.
How many people here have ever heard of someone being killed by pot? What's that, no hands? How about anybody here ever heard of someone killing someone in an accident while high on pot? Once again, crickets.
There is no plausible argument available to a logical mind that could possibly lead to the conclusion that marijuana should be illegal. Period.
Right now, pot-related accidents are swamped by alcohol-related accidents, but they do occur. However, since cannabis testing is not routine after accidents or other erratic driving behavior, statistics are hard to come by.
What we do know is that alcohol is legal in almost all localities and is a major cause of accidents. I think that you have to accept that legalizing marijuana is going to increase the rate of marijuana-related accidents - though we have no way of predicting how much since there's no way to study this before the fact.
Even worse, whereas alcohol washes out of the body after a few hours, marijuana effects on the body last much longer, as I recall reporting on an article years ago about 24-hr plus impairments on airplane pilots. Thus is would be much more difficult to medically and legally define impairment.
What would be more honest would be to make an argument that the trade-off is worthwhile rather than to simply wave-off the DUI argument, since that is the strongest argument against legalization - since that's the domain where the actions of a smoker goes beyond that individual and does affect others.
of marijuana will still remain, whether it is legal or not. Right now, I think the people who want to smoke it, do. Of the 15 people that I work with, only 4 us don't smoke it. The other 10 or so see in the same way as they do alcohol, and don't have any problems using it (aka, they all show up on time, do their job, pay their bills, the ones who are college students do fine in school).
In fact, it is alcohol that we have a problem with. There is one guy who is chronic alcoholic who works for us on and off and basically sucks at life who will start his shift sober, and then he will stop at the liquor store when has about 2 hours left and start drinking - on a job where is driving his car all day.
I am hesitant to call the police for several reasons. a) He seems to only get buzzed, and it is only noticed as he is on his way out. b) If I am wrong, and he passes a breathalyzer, I could possibly be in trouble for making an accusation. c)The last thing we need is for the local police to think all of our drivers are impaired.
Have you added to the population of the McCain 2008 minicity yet today?
I drive a car powered by hydrogen - C8H18 to be exact.
"Prohibition does nothing but add a major profit incentive to criminal activity."
Does *nothing*? There's no disincentive, no taboo effect, no lesson taught to people at all?
That's a ridiculous statement.
When's the last time you heard of someone paying someone to rape someone else for them?
As far as other effects of prohibition, there are plenty, the vast majority of them bad (corruption of the police force and of neighborhoods controlled by gangs fueled by drug profits, the death of innocents from gang warfare and botched police raids, deaths of users from tainted supplies thanks to lack of regulation, the vast sums spent enforcing drug laws, overcrowding of prisons with non-violent offenders leading to violent offenders being released early, prosecution of medical marijuana users, weakening of civil liberties to enforce drug laws, etc).
---
Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.
Heh. Just heh.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
We're supposedly having an argument about whether or not to impose the state in banning street drugs, and in a defense of legalization, we go right back to putting the state in ... to ban street drugs.
Sorry, replacing the DEA with the FDA doesn't really win the argument, Finrod.
I mean, honestly. Do you think that aspirin would make it past the FDA today? The only reason we have it available is because it was grandfathered in.
I suppose there might also be the issue of "smoking weed that you grew on your own windowsill" but that's about as likely to happen as people brewing their own beer, so we really probably shouldn't include such things.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
I also mock the people who claim we need to "legalize it so we can tax it." :-)
But if I had to pick between what we have now and government regulation of Bayer's Ganjahin quality control methodology, I'd take the latter.
Not because I think it's a good in and of itself. Far from it!
Just that it's better, by inches, than what we have now.
(I'm pretty sure that I said, in the original post, that this proposal is *NOT* particularly Libertarian... despite the doobage.)
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
you can't exactly have you product tested Lab ABC so you can advertise that it meets industry standard XYZ, or that the other guys stuff has 4 times toxin QRS are yours.
I have always thought private testing of all drugs (both the Rx and recreational kind) would result in safer stuff on the market. Independent labs (such as Underwriters Laboratories) have their own reputation to uphold, and putting their stamp of approval on an unsafe drug that then killed a dozen people would severely diminish the value of that seal, and drug manufactures would then go to another lab with higher standards. When the FDA drops the ball, what happens? Its not like we can get medicine that was tested by someone else. We can only hope that the next dose of prescription DEF is safe.
But I am preaching to the choir here.
Have you added to the population of the McCain 2008 minicity yet today?
I drive a car powered by hydrogen - C8H18 to be exact.
---
Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.
corruption of the police force and of neighborhoods controlled by gangs fueled by drug profits
So, if we legalize all drugs, the gangs that break into homes in my area and steal electronics equipment and guns will just go away?
How are you at getting healing the blind?
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
I think the onus is upon you drug warriors to try and explain support for a horribly failed program.
We have a few ideas for reforms, but you guys fight tooth and nail against ANY reform, even when we could have fifty different experiments in fifty states. But the feds wont allow it.
So what is your bright Idea? More of the same? even harsher rules and sentences when we already have more people in prison than anyone but china?
The ball is in your court, why don't you guys make an intellectual case why some sort of reform of drug laws in impossible?
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
You know, it is interesting.
At no point did you actually answer my question.
Instead, you just poked a finger at my chest and demanded I answer your charges, not without a little bit of ad hominem.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
You're just mad because I called you on not answering some basic and simple questions yesterday.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
I am mad that knowledge of how to drive a car seems to be water soluble.
I am mad that parts vendors make a nasty habit of shipping product without the proper cabling.
I am mad that gas stations in my area have started playing the game of guess how much gas you want to buy.
You don't signify compared to those.
And you should ask questions that actually are questions. What you did was try to set up a false dichotomy and then ask a question that could only have one answer. After it was given you would have crowed that your point was made.
The answer to your question is not relevant. For it to be relevant you would need solving all the worlds problems to be standard.
SO YOU WIN THE HR PUFFNSTUFF AWARD
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Well, maybe if we passed laws making gangs illegal and making handguns illegal, we would have fewer guns and gangs.
Surely a larger dose would cure the patient.
Also, there is no reason to believe that History (namely Prohibition) has anything to teach us about what will happen when gangs start breaking into houses to get money to buy whiskey once it became legal again.
"How are you at getting healing the blind?"
There's a funny thing. I've never heard of anyone on the pro-legalization side saying that stuff will be great once drugs are legalized. They say that it will free up some things (law enforcement hours, for example), how quality control will go up, and how things will be better by inches. Things won't be great, but they will be better.
And yet people always take the attitude that our argument is similar to that of the Temperance Movement. Let's go to the wikipedia page on the Temperance Movement, shall we?
"The famous evangelist Billy Sunday staged a mock funeral for John Barleycorn and then preached on the benefits of prohibition. "The reign of tears is over," he asserted. "The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs.""
Yeah.
The people who argue that the reign of tears is over and that society will be perfect are folks like the famous evangelist Billy Sunday. The ones who call for more laws and better enforcement of them.
Perhaps, if we had more laws and better enforcement of them, we could finally outlaw blindness, no?
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
No, my question was that Finrod claimed that gangs being here were because of drugs (as a negative consequence of prohibition on illegal drugs)
So, I asked if they were really suggesting that if we just legalize drugs that the gangs in my area, which break into homes and steal electronics and guns, would just go away.
Neither you nor Kyle actually addressed my question.
See, when I read their post that I quoted from, the voice I heard was John Edwards talking about how if we just elected John Kerry, Christopher Reeve would walk again.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
That money that used to end up in the hands of gangs would henceforth end up in the hands of Bayer.
Thuggin', like any enterprise, requires capitalization.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
I guess I'll be more clear.
I wholly doubt that gangs will suddenly disappear if drugs are made legal.
I also doubt that possible government/police corruption will disappear if drugs are legal.
I doubt it so much that if those two things where to happen (gangs were to disappear and corruption were to end) I'd be just as suprised as if I woke up with my hair stapled to the wall.
Yes, there will be a reduction of income if people do not need to illegally buy drugs... that is simple logic.
But to extend that to any sort of elimination of the mafia, gangs or corruption is kind of silly, just as to suggest that it is the prohibition on drugs that causes the gangs and mafia and corruption.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
It is my opinion that The Drug War is similar to prohibition.
Crime did not go away after alcohol was legalized. Police corruption did not go away after alcohol was legalized.
And yet... crime did go down. As did police corruption.
And, surprisingly, we went from a situation where folks were drinking gin in speakeasies (operated by organized crime) to drinking beer or wine in their own homes (where they didn't have to hang with criminals to buy it or drink it).
Things were better for Prohibition having been repealed.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
it was so silly we thought it was rhetorical.
NO the gangs will not magically disappear, but human beings, even violent ones react to incentives. It you take away the incentive so profits the criminals will turn to other things.
Furthermore, there will be less incentive for future criminal gangs to spring up.
Now you might not believe this will happen, but it has teh virtue of not being the same policy we have seen failing for the last seventy or so years.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
Imagine, for a moment, that you are trying to get people to vote a certain way. Imagine that we are not sitting around having an argument where there will be a winner (and a loser) but that we are trying to get someone who is going to walk into a voting booth to pull the level for Proposition A rather than against Proposition A.
How would you phrase your arguments if you wanted to change the minds of people in general? Please start phrasing your arguments like that.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
thank you bird.
Though we disagree on drugs, and likely will for quite some time, you at least have a level of maturity when it comes to those with which you disagree.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
I want you to vote pro-Liberty.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
It isn't ABOUT maturity, but it is still a sign of it.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
I realized some time ago I would never live long enough to see any sort of sanity prevail about this issue. Too many people have been brainwashed. We are cutting our own throats and only a handful of people can see it, or be bothered enough to really look closely at the problem.
You know as well as I do that the likely responses to even the mildest questioning of the War on Drugs is "You damn pothead, you just want to smoke your pot. You don't care about the children!"
It is so disheartening.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
One gets one's jollies where one finds them.
But I think that goals such as ending the War on Drugs are, in fact, attainable.
But people being jerky about it makes them less so.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
No, given that my entire post was a question, you were not ignoring my question.
If you were ignoring it, you wouldn't have replied to it with your unrelated rant.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
WRT gangs disappearing when marijuana is legalized...
I think pot is the old reliable when it comes to black market (read that as gang related) revenue. So if we legalized marijuana we would reduce the amount of revenue generated by the black market. Would this decrease gang violence? I don't know and really it is not quantifiable at this point.
All that being said...lets look at this in a way that I know you very knowledgeable.
In your concealed carry piece yesterday, your main argument for concealed carry was that it would reduce the number of potential victims for the criminals to choose from. Wouldn't the legalization of marijuana also do this? If your standard pot smoker is currently buying their product from a gang related distributor doesn't that increase the risk of violence to the purchaser? Would the potential for that violence be less if that same pot smoker got his pot from Walmart? I know you may think this is a non-sequitur but I am just trying to make you think about this a little deeper than what I see as a stand on moral grounds.
Let me know what you think.
"Land of the Free and Home of da Whopper" Peter Griffin...Family Guy
conform and celebrate diversity....or else!!!
Steel-Belted Radial Right Winger
To make a realistic dent in the 'drug money', we would need to legalize all drugs.
The face given to the 'legalize' argument is pot. A fairly harmless substance on its own, mostly capable of causing people to become slugs on the couch and generally useless members of society (at least until it wears off)
however, for the "It'll cut into the profits, man!" argument to work, we would also need to legalize cocaine, heroin, lsd, and a plethora of other drugs.
The case isn't a cut and dried once you start to look at the situation in that light.
While one may not have an issue with pot being legal, per se, they likely wouldn't want to see their wife or children or coworkers shooting heroin on break, or watching those people as they go through withdrawl. (At least with cigs, you just get crankly for a while and sometimes dizzy. With heroin, you tend to shake and vomit and writhe in pain)
I understand the point, and I don't want to get into another all afternoon mudfest on drugs.... but we need to look at things realistically.
Of course, some people have no problem with heroin being legal.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
Why would you need to legalize all drugs just to make a dent? That makes no sense. Now I don't have any stats to back me up but I am pretty sure there is a larger quantity of pot being sold on the streets than there is either heroin or coke...but that isn't even the point. No one on this board is asking for complete legalization so your argument ends up being a strawman. I know you are better than that. Just like you weren't advocating for guns in the terminal. You see where I am going here. I know you have a moral objection to all drugs and that is ok, in fact you are probably making the right choice as far as morality, but that should not be your basis for deciding whether or not pot should be illegal because free people get to choose for themselves what is and is not moral...at least as long as it does not effect the rights of other individuals.
I am going to leave it at that.
"Land of the Free and Home of da Whopper" Peter Griffin...Family Guy
conform and celebrate diversity....or else!!!
Steel-Belted Radial Right Winger
I did answer your question. You asked if the legalization of pot would help reduce crime by putting a dent in the money criminals get from pot (At least, that is what I got from your question)
My answer was that for that argument to work, you'd have to legalize all drugs, or else they'd just move from pushing pot to redouble efforts on other drugs, like X.
I think one thing that regularly bothers me with the "Let's legalize pot" idea is that they're holding up california as a model of what to do.
The rabidly liberal left finds common ground with libertarians on the legalization of drugs and expects me, a conservative, to go along with it.
I don't know.
I will be honest though, since the last big blowout on this issue I have been rethinking and reanalyzing my stances and their basis, when it comes to drugs.
Is the same thing to be said of those who want it legalized? Doesn't it bother them just a TINY bit that they have to side with the American Left when it comes to drugs?
Or are they employing the "Enemy of my enemy is my friend" mentality?
Legalization of drugs like heroin and acid really keeps me from accepting the Libertarian party.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
N/t
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Yes, much better to give in and make it all legal. That's not like giving up at all.
Seriously. Did you just come here to take pot shots at me?
Still nursing yourself from yesterday?
Grow up a bit.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
As to giving in, I see it as winning.
This is an issue that the government should have never gotten involved in. It cedes power to the federal government that does not belong there.
If this passes it will be a great victory for conservatism.
Not the kind of conservatism that is the you have the right to do as I say conservatism. No this is a victory for conservatism that believes people have a right to make their own choices.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I was talking about the second major question which was not about the money but the physical presence in a dangerous area in order to acquire the product. If you didn't have to go to a criminal to get your pot wouldn't that make you more safe because you aren't involved with criminals? There are many fine upstanding citizens who other than buying pot have never been involved in a crime or trucked (thanks EPU) with criminals.
Now as far as people on my side or your side rethinking their positions...I can't speak for the rest but that is the primary reason I interact in any debate. If I am not willing to parse my own thoughts based on evidence provided whether it be factual or anecdotal then what is the point of the debate in the first place.
To me the debate is trivial except at the point that conservatives endorse mandating criminality on something that should be a personal choice with respect to ones own morality and health. Now before anyone ask how this jives(is this still ok to say) with my feelings about abortion, I will point out that I believe abortion infringes on the rights of the unborn so lets not try to compare the two.
"Land of the Free and Home of da Whopper" Peter Griffin...Family Guy
conform and celebrate diversity....or else!!!
Steel-Belted Radial Right Winger
William F. Buckley (certainly no liberal). To any rational observer, it is patently clear that our war on drugs has been a collosal failure, which our experience with Prohibiton should have taught us. I think it's time we tried another tactic. I think we seriously need to look at decriminalizing use of any drugs (short of DUI involvement) and move more to address the problems through education and treatment. It certainly couldn't work any worse than our current methods of enforcement and incarceration. And as far as seeing my wife and kids mainlining heroin, get real. My kids have been educated on the problems of drug use and abstain, although my eldest son does still like to go drinking with his friends (as did I). Undoubtedly, he'll eventually grow out of that as well, since hang overs are no fun as you get older, especially once yuo have to deal with your own children.
Bringing reason to this debate sir, Just who do you thin you are?
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
Well, estimates really, but from the Office of National Drug Control Policy:
* $39 billion on cocaine
* $12 billion on heroin
* $2.2 billion on methamphetamine
* $11 billion on marijuana
* $2.3 billion on other illegal drugs
I believe these are retail estimates, and they're for 1998, but the rough figure probably holds -- marijuana represents about 1/6 of total drug money.
I would make a separate point about how pot works as a "gateway drug". First, if someone tries pot, likes it, and finds that it doesn't wreck their life (and it doesn't for the vast majority), that person is likely to lose trust in the government that spewed misleading PSAs at them, cops that endanger them rather than protect them, and a criminal justice system that seems perverse. That distrust will carry over to not believing the warnings/threats about other drugs.
Second, if a person is smoking pot, almost by definition they know a drug dealer. Chances are fairly good that the dealer can hook them up with something else if they feel like experimenting. If pot were legal, most young adults would try it, most would either decide it wasn't for them or use it responsibly, and a much greater number than currently would never meet a drug dealer. Hence there would be reduced avenues to other illegal drugs.
I would make a separate point about how pot works as a "gateway drug". First, if someone tries pot, likes it, and finds that it doesn't wreck their life (and it doesn't for the vast majority), that person is likely to lose trust in the government that spewed misleading PSAs at them, cops that endanger them rather than protect them, and a criminal justice system that seems perverse. That distrust will carry over to not believing the warnings/threats about other drugs.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
No one said that police corruption will end. No one. What we are saying in that this another way that corrupt government officials can exploit their monopoly on force for their own gain, at our expense. By taking away their power over our lives, you increase our freedom.
I can't believe that we have to spell this out to a fellow conservative.
If the government didn't have a monopoly on education, we wouldn't have corrupt union leaders using their power to keep bad teachers in classrooms, or ideologues using their position to indoctrinate kids. If the government was so involved with bailing every one out, it wouldn't matter who Country Wide gave preferential treatment to. If the government wasn't forcing us to use and fund ethanol, Obama's ties to bigAg wouldn't matter.
California's ban on cell phones while driving has just taken effect, and I'm sure it will be just as selectively enforced as every other traffic in existence.
I could go on an on.
The bottom line is that you are again reverting back to liberal arguments. Just because there will always be corruption among government officials, no matter the size or scope of government, doesn't mean that we should just throw our hands up say "I give up, just go after those nasty drugs users I don't care about first"
Have you added to the population of the McCain 2008 minicity yet today?
I drive a car powered by hydrogen - C8H18 to be exact.
birdmojo has it, mostly, but I'll clarify: drug money fuels gangs.
A kid growing up in the projects or in the barrio or anywhere where there's not a lot of opportunities has basically three choices for what to do with his life: work a McJob, go on welfare, or work for a drug dealer. Only one of these pays well, and that's because of the criminal penalties involved. If drugs were legal, working for a drug dealer would just be another McJob, and gangs would have to find something else to make them money.
---
Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.
Working for drugs dealers is a McJob.
You should read Freakonomics if you haven't. The whole point of the book was to prove that legalized abortion leads to lower crime (something that could be achieved by birth control or better education), but a large part of it is about the time he spent with a high level drug dealer in Chicago(?) who kept very detailed records of his "business." Basically, he was able to use violence to establish an organization where only the people on the top made any money, and the people only bottom, who risked death to actually sell the drugs, barley made more then minimum wage.
Because the people on top were rolling in dough, there was an unlimited number of men from poor families willing to risk death in order to make it to the top.
Have you added to the population of the McCain 2008 minicity yet today?
I drive a car powered by hydrogen - C8H18 to be exact.
Removing the federal ban on all controlled substances would absolutely destroy the black market from Columbia to Mexico to the streets of your town. Organized crime is a business that can only operate under certain legal conditions. Ending prohibition would remove the legal condition that allows them to make profits therefore their income would dry up quickly and desertion of members would be inevitable.
Organized crime engages in violence and thuggery as a means to an end. Without a profit being possible, there is no longer an end for their means. I truly believe that ending the federal ban on all controlled substances would reduce overall crime, violent and non-violent alike, in such a way as to create a new chapter in the Freakonomics book.
I do not believe Prohibition provides a disincentive from using drugs since the odds of any one individual getting arrested for drug possession are very low. It's not quite lightning strike low in terms of probability, but still, it's way down there. Besides people who engage in risky behavior either don't weigh the odds or simply refuse to believe they will ever get caught.
As we've all heard a thousand times from anti-death penalty advocates: punishment is not a deterrent. The overall goal of criminal law is more to punish than to deter anyway. We don't execute people to deter other criminals; we do it because that scumbag owes the reaper and justice demands satisfaction.
In terms of the War on Drugs, you must ask yourself, "what exactly are we punishing since we clearly not deterring people?" Since Prohibition has been in effect, drug use has gone nowhere but up. Where is the harm to the public welfare we are punishing and imprisoning these people for? I'm not saying drugs are harmless; they clearly aren't, but is the harm done by drug use higher than the harm created by the government's War on Drugs? No one who has any capacity for rational thought can argue that the War on Drugs has increased public safety as it was intended to do. In fact, the opposite is true since drugs fund organized crime.
In regards to the other drugs, people who use them had what we might call a pre-existing condition that drugs only worsened. I actually worked in a evidence storage facility for a summer in Memphis, which has a very high crime rate and a significant presence of organized crime. The pot we had could fill a small barn, while all the other drugs combined wouldn't fill up a five-gallon bucket. I don't think the other drugs are as big a concern.
Or how about other crimes? If making something illegal makes it more prevalent, should we just eliminate the whole criminal justice system?
Please explain to me who the victim is with drug crimes. No, the user doesn't count, they voluntarily chose to buy and consume the drugs-- unless, of course, an enemy planted the drugs on them. And no, society doesn't count, either, because that means you'd no longer be able to laugh at the silly liberals that want to prosecute fast food purveyors and the like, because they use your exact same rationale.
---
Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.
The little girl sitting on a porch who takes a bullet to the head when drug dealers have a shoot-out over the corner her house happens to be on.
It's neat how oragnized crime never existed before prohibition, and certainly never after.
And how Las Vegas was the one city wihtout any Mafia-infiltrated gambling because it's the one city where it was legal.
So sure, let's legalize dope, because then the gangsters will stop running it across our borders and selling it to their allies in the US on the streets.
The casinos are owned by publicly traded companies and have been for some time. The days of the Chicago Outfit or New York Families having any influence in Vegas are long gone.
Legalization did nothing to stop mob infiltration of an industry they wanted to be in.
It shoots down the whole Prohibition created Gangsters theory nicely.
But, making illegal those things that adult human beings want to do in great numbers, makes it easy for the mob and other criminals to make a lot of money providing those services that the government forbids the free market from providing.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
That's the one thing that mafia types talk about doing.
Vegas, for example, went legit. The mafia was there... for a while. Then, surprisingly, it turned out that they weren't good for business. When they were no longer good for business... they went away.
When it comes to illegal drugs, gangs are good for business.
How much bootlegging goes on now? Surely you agree that there must be money in moonshining to be made...
How much mafia involvement is there in Vegas now? Surely you agree that there must be money in running numbers, say...
If one were to argue that the gangs and whatnot might be involved in the early days of the enterprise (Vegas was, indeed, started by Bugsy Siegel (The Flamingo has the best prime rib on the strip. The horseradish will make you snort like you're going to die. It's heavenly!)) but, as time went on, there was far, far more money to be made in going legit than in being a criminal.
Vegas was created by a gangster but eventually turned into a family-friendly town (visit the M&M Pavilion!). Running booze was something that only organized crime did but once Repeal Day hit... well, the Kennedys were bootleggers... but to argue that the 21st Amendment didn't reduce organized crime... or legalized gambling didn't reduce organized crime in Vegas...
Well. It's an ideology that likely won't be swayed by any amount of data.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
So is the cigarette smuggling and the forging of tax stamps. Its one of those things about setting your sin taxes too high.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Whiskey rebellion, anyone?
I even have friends that brew their own beer. (They're totally nuts about it too. "Let me tell you about this nut brown I'm working on!")
But something tells me that this is more of a hobbyist situation than something that relies upon organized crime to any serious degree.
My goodness, you can get a bottle of..., I don't know what it's a bottle of. I have a bottle of it upstairs for marinades. It's, like, 1.5 liters for 7 bucks. Appropriate for soaking chicken and not much else.
But if it ain't the journey but the destination, I'm sure you could get 750ml for, like, 4.
There can't be *THAT* much money in bootlegging.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire
Moonshining is profitable and big business.
It keeps the ATF* busy.
*that really should be a store not a government agency.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American
Having known more than a few people who were stoned out of their minds but never went on to harder drugs, I simply don't understand why we treat this stuff like it's evil.
I have never smoked pot in my life and I intend to go to my grave never having done so. I think its boneheaded and can ruin careers. But so can alcohol (which I do enjoy, in moderation), and we do all the things you just mentioned in regards to its sale.
Pot doesn't kill people. It certainly inhibits their motivation to do things other than eat, but if that's the standard, then alcohol shouldn't be permitted either.
There are people doing hard time for growing or selling a plant who's effects are not lethal and not all that harmful. I'd never let my own kids use it, but I really couldn't care less if the neighbours smoked it.