Posted on 07/28/2010 8:42:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
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A group called Public Safety First warns that "the pre-tax price of marijuana could substantially decline" and "consumption of marijuana would increase" if Californians vote to legalize the drug in November. Well, yes, that's sort of the idea.
Proposition 19, a California ballot initiative that would legalize cultivation and possession of cannabis for personal use while authorizing local governments to allow commercial production and sale, would move marijuana into a legal, regulated market, transforming criminals into consumers. Lower prices and increased use mean greater consumer satisfaction, something that should be welcomed rather than feared.
But Public Safety First, which is running the campaign against Proposition 19, is all about fear. Its website features photos of a doctor, a teacher, a judge and a cop with joints dangling ridiculously from their mouths, suggesting prohibition is the only thing that prevents people from getting stoned at work. It says "bus drivers, forklift operators, hospital technicians, crossing guards who might be stoned could be coming to your community."
Yes, these people might be stoned, but that is true whether or not Proposition 19 passes. And even if marijuana disappeared tomorrow, all of these people could come to work drunk. Yet Public Safety First is not campaigning for a return to alcohol prohibition, because it understands that workplace intoxication can be addressed through less sweeping measures that do not penalize responsible consumers for the sins of a reckless minority.
If we remove the terror-tinted lenses of Proposition 19's opponents, we start to see the benefits of treating marijuana more like alcohol. A recent RAND Corp. study estimates that the retail price of legal marijuana would be less than one-fifth the black-market price. Based on numbers in the RAND report, that translates into annual savings of $5 billion or so for current consumers -- money that would be available for other uses.
Some of those savings would be sucked up by sales and excise taxes on newly legal marijuana. The California Legislative Analyst's Office recently projected that "state and local governments could eventually collect hundreds of millions of dollars annually in additional revenues" as a result of Proposition 19.
Lower prices, greater convenience and the elimination of legal risk can be expected to boost marijuana consumption. RAND considers it plausible that the number of current users would double, to about 4 million, or 14 percent of California's adult population. These new users also would receive a big consumer benefit, enjoying a wide variety of cannabis products that are worth as much to them as they are willing to pay -- on the order of $1 billion a year.
Continuing to look at this from a consumer's perspective, we need to consider not just the law enforcement money saved by the state of California (around $300 million a year, according to RAND), but the arrest-related costs that pot smokers no longer have to bear. About 75,000 people are arrested on marijuana charges in California each year, the vast majority for simple possession. While they typically do not spend much time behind bars, they face legal expenses and the lifelong handicap of a criminal record, costs that may dwarf the money spent on enforcement.
Those costs fall disproportionately on black people. A recent study by Queens College sociologist Harry Levine found that blacks in California's 25 largest counties are two to four times as likely as whites to be busted for marijuana possession, even though survey data indicate they are no more likely to smoke pot. The California NAACP cited these racially skewed numbers when it endorsed Proposition 19.
Public Safety First, of course, does not care what happens to pot smokers, whom it depicts as public menaces. But since research indicates that marijuana does not impair driving ability nearly as much as alcohol does, more pot smoking, if accompanied by less drinking, could actually improve public safety. The legal availability of a less dangerous intoxicant would benefit the general public as well as consumers.
“LOSERTARIAN DOPE FIEND” post in 3...2...1...
““LOSERTARIAN DOPE FIEND” post in 3...2...1...”
Nice try at discouraging viewpoints contrary to your own but I’d be surprised if it works. FReepers generally aren’t that easily intimidated.
>>>But since research indicates that marijuana does not impair driving ability nearly as much as alcohol does, more pot smoking, if accompanied by less drinking, could actually improve public safety. The legal availability of a less dangerous intoxicant would benefit the general public as well as consumers.<<<
This is a sentence which will be used in scholarly papers 100 years from now about the delusional thinking revolving around the whole issue of personal intoxication.
Sad to say, several decades ago I smoked prodigious amounts of weed. Maybe I’m a freak of nature, but none of the statements made in these sentences are true, at least according to my own experience and observations.
These statements remind me a lot of Carrie Nation and the Prohibitionists and their predictions about banning the sale and use of alcohol. In both cases, the proponents predict many good things once their point of view becomes the law.
No doubt they’ll legalize weed. For all intents and purposes, it is legal anyway, laws notwithstanding; it is just hard to get sometimes, especially if you’re not in the loop. After it is legal, though, then we’ll see what really happens to folks who like to get high have unlimited access to cheap marijuana and witness the improved public safety ourselves.
I haven’t smoked dope in 25 years; and I wouldn’t now even if it were legal.
However, the costs of prohibition to society are far greater than the costs of legalization/regulation.
I say that if you are foolish enough to live your live in a drug-induced haze, then I am foolish enough to let you.
Call me whatever you wish.
Classic pretzel logic...we already have 50K dead a year because of booze, pot will probably only add, what, 20K?
Oh, and good thinking on giving these aholes in DC another revenue stream and blessing the people with REAL opiates for the masses...lemmings, ho! cliff, dead ahead...
So are they going to bring back smoking in bars? Not cigarettes, of course.
“Call me whatever you wish.”
Well, when the moron next to you or coming at you on the highway gets a little too stoned, sticking you into a lamppost...we can call you an ambulance...or maybe we can call you “the “late” Clee1. It ain’t just the drunks and idiots we have to dodge anymore, right? Not that stoners aren’t included in those august bodies...
And if we are gonna give up entirely on keeping a reasonably sane or safe society based on cost, we can save a shipload of money by getting rid of all those people and lawyers and others trying to suppress heroin, meth, kiddie porn, prostitution and giving tickets to people who are doing 120 on the highway, too...let it rip!
YEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW.
Like a little hyperbole with you lunch, FRiend?
No, I say you treat stoned drivers just as you would treat drunk ones: lock ‘em up and pull their ticket.
As to all the others... quit being silly.
All you so-called conservatives who simply love the fact that militarized police forces can kick your door in at 3:00am, taze your grandma and shoot your dog with a warrant based on an anonymous phone call are just going to have to contain your rage that one state might reduce the reach of Big Brother (accidentally, as most lefties who will vote for this are not exactly Constitutionalists) and see what happens along with the rest of us. I’m glad this thing is on the ballot because I want to see what happens. My guess is not much, except that a lot less people will be chucked into overcrowded prisons in California for minor drug offenses, and the Mexican Mafia will have to find other ways to supplement their income.
For those who think that decriminalization of marijuana will lead to wholesale public intoxication complete with uncontrolled hootin’ and hollerin’ in the streets and dogs and cats sodomizing each other, you obviously aren’t aware of the pervasiveness of marijuana usage among people who are otherwise pillars of society. The oldtimers’ outdated view that only filthy communist hippies smoke pot as a way to crap on the US flag is just one of the many ridiculous misconceptions about our current drug climate. The truth is that anyone who is inclined to get high is doing so NOW, and that includes a lot of people that you wouldn’t expect.
Whats it do anyway ? It makes you sleepy,hungry and slower reacting i know some people who could use all 3 of those side effects ,
It’s beemn at least 25 years for me as well i have no desire to get high i find it stunts my artistic imagination as well making me to lazy to give a crap about anything .
I don’t care if grown people smoke it but if they introduce it to children they should go to jail for a very very long time .
Sarcasm impaired, or was I too subtle?
I’m actually surprized nobody has yet posted the typical “libertarians only want to take dope” response. Normally the drug warriors are all over articles like this one, telling the world how eeeeeevil they FEEEL smoking pot is.
Personally I don’t have a dog in this fight, but the WOSD is still a mistake.
You hit the nail on the head, dead center!
“No, I say you treat stoned drivers just as you would treat drunk ones: lock ‘em up and pull their ticket.”
Yeah...got a field sobriety test for that? Silly? Why...you are the one advocating “saving big money” by feeding the tax coffers and eliminating certain policing functions...good luck with dismissing that with don’t be silly...isn’t that what the Greeks said?
“Whats it do anyway ? It makes you sleepy,hungry and slower reacting i know some people who could use all 3 of those side effects”
All VERY desirable traits when you spark one up on the way home from work while driving down the highway...oh wait, that won’t happen, will it? Good grief.
“You hit the nail on the head, dead center!”
Yeah...that’s using your head. Keep hittin them nails.
“Sarcasm impaired, or was I too subtle?”
I’d like to think you were too subtle. I’ve seen posts just like yours from idjits who were’t being sarcastic.
“Personally I don’t have a dog in this fight, but the WOSD is still a mistake.”
Likewise...except to the extent we all are affected by the waste of time/resources and infringement on rights that the “WOSD” creates.
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