Posted on 01/09/2019 10:03:03 AM PST by Kaslin
Ten states and Washington, D.C., have now legalized adult use of marijuana.
Supporters of America's long war on drugs said legalization would create disaster. Has it? No.
Colorado and Washington offer the longest points of comparison because weed has been legal in those states now for five years.
More people in Colorado tried marijuana after legalization, but that's not a surprise.
Colorado's crime rate did rise a bit. But many things influence crime rates. Washington state's violent crime rate rose a little but slightly less than the national average.
In California, people I interviewed said legalization made the streets safer. "It's cleaned up the corner," said one woman. Marijuana stores "have a lot of security (and) pay attention to who's on the sidewalk."
Sounds good to me.
But drug warriors are not convinced. Paul Chabot, a former anti-drug policy advisor for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, tells me that legalization has been a disaster.
"Colorado youth have an 85 percent higher marijuana use rate than the rest of the country," he says in my new video on marijuana legalization.
But he is wrong. Federal and state surveys and the New England Journal of Medicine report that teen marijuana use dropped a little in Colorado. Maybe there's something about legal businesses, with the dreary name "dispensaries," that makes weed less sexy to kids.
But there is bad news: The driving death rate increased in Colorado and Washington after legalization. But the data isn't clear -- driving deaths are up even more in some neighboring states like Idaho, where weed is still banned.
Chabot says, "Pot driving fatalities in Colorado are up 151 percent!"
That's true, but that statistic is misleading because traces of marijuana stay in a person's system for a long time. Some of those people may have used marijuana weeks before.
A more stringent measure that may indicate whether someone was actually high at the time of an accident suggests an increase of 84 percent.
That's terrible, but the numbers of accidents are so small -- 35 in all of Colorado in 2017, up from 19 in 2014 -- it's hard to draw conclusions. That deserves more study.
If anti-drug warriors like Chabot want to look seriously at the statistics, they should also include the harm done by drug prohibition itself.
It's nearly impossible to overdose on pot. But banning marijuana drives sales into the black market, where criminals do the selling. And criminals are more likely to settle their disagreements with guns.
They don't perform the reliable quality controls that legal drug sellers must do to please their customers.
On the black market, customers take their chances. Then, when things go wrong, anti-drug voices cry out: "See? Drug markets are inherently unsafe!"
Banning drugs doesn't stop teens or adults from using them. Anyone who wants the stuff knows how to get it. One survey found that teens said it's easier to buy weed than alcohol. Alcohol is rarely sold in schools, but banning marijuana creates fat profits that inspire dealers to recruit students to sell to their peers.
Then there are the billions of dollars spent by law enforcement -- $900 per second. (That's just the federal cost. Total spending is much higher.) And the million people arrested yearly for drug violations.
I suggest to Chabot that drug prohibition has worked out as badly as alcohol prohibition did nearly 100 years ago.
"Just because something doesn't work doesn't mean that we end it," he replies. "Doesn't mean we quit."
I say failure sometimes does mean you should quit, because you're doing more harm than good.
"No, because then we give up, and that's not American," Chabot says.
Well, today, two-thirds of Americans say marijuana should be legal. One state at a time, with New York and New Jersey about to join the list, Americans are giving up on marijuana prohibition.
Good. Adults should have the right to make their own decisions about what to put in their own bodies.
I agree
PS
How much time and effort was spent by how many “do-gooders” to get me and millions of other “recreational tobacco users” to quit for our health and their health and to save money in the health care system?
And these same BOZOS want us to smoke marijuana, containing even MORE harmful chemicals?
GEDOUTTAHERE!
Seriously?
The same people who argue pot is far less harmful than alcohol. If that is true, then by default - they argue that smoking pot around you children is OK.
Want to lower rampant drug use? Get rid of welfare including free medical care.
“Pot driving fatalities in Colorado are up 151 percent!”
We deal with this on a daily basis. Last night coming home, there was a car parked on the shoulder of the freeway. Just as we got up to it, they pulled out in front of us without signaling and I had to slam on the brakes to barely avoid hitting them. When I tried to go into the left lane to get around them, they pulled in front of us again without signaling. We then were going down a section of Hwy 18 called Peasley Canyon just before you go into Auburn, WA. They slowed to under 50mph and other cars were passing on the right, so we couldn’t safely get around them.
Our car was filled with the now familiar skunk like odor of marijuana. I was very happy when they went back into the right lane and exited the freeway in Auburn. In the years since marijuana was legalized here this type of thing happens all of the time.
The primary reason better statistics are not available about the hazards these idiots create is that the police do not have the tools necessary to determine how much pot is in these morons bloodstream without an arrest and an order from a higher authority to take their blood.
Weed hasn’t exactly been hard to get for the past 30 or so years, and I doubt we’ll see a huge spike in those things after legalization.
The taxes from it will help offset those social costs - which today are borne by taxpayers alone. It will also free up law enforcement and legal/prison resources to focus on bigger crimes.
We get the kind of laws we demand and regulation of alcohol is the closest model we have. Prohibition didn’t work.
As part of legalization, I’d like to see strict testing and heavy penalties for impaired driving, and mandatory screening for certain jobs. And significantly harsher penalties for more powerful drugs.
Denver was on the fast track to $h!thole status in the 70s and 80s. I dont think this has helped its trajectory.
Yea, and those ten states-— wonder if they would link Tobacco smoking with not owning a gun? Have been shot down several times by unbelieving FReepers that Big Tobacco is ALL OVER this legalization crapola— for an even worse carcinogen generating PLANT— (101 known carcinogens in pot, and counting— many at much higher doses than tobacco, with or without additives).
And WHO is behind cannabis lobbying-— that drunk moron, tavern owner’s punk (with a daughter married to a Jamaican Posse former (wink) member druggie)— RINO John Boehner— BOEHNER. That’s right!! What a jerk. Dino Rino. Not taking any information from the clinical professionals and plastering it over with “pots better than alcohol” argument. One could add to being a commode hugging drunk (or for the academes here- a 7 martini a night drunk)— being a stoner on pot “cigarettes”. All for the oh so needed “revenue” from our ever expanding government. No thanks.
And the same actors all the way from former DNC National Treasurer— Dick Reynolds (of RJ Reynolds— yes, that Dick Reynolds the original sin-tax marketer for our liberal dem pals and all they wrought from LBJ and before).
Big Tobacco:
April 2018, IBD: https://www.investors.com/news/marijuana-business-soars-big-tobacco-opportunities-vaping-cannabis-inhaler/
From 2014 (they’ve been at it awhile, as they are losing cigarette smokers and Zimbabwe imported tobacco instead of US grown): https://mic.com/articles/80067/did-phillip-morris-just-release-a-new-marlboro-marijuana-cigarette-here-s-the-full-story#.lPcqlXtJg
As part of legalization, I’d like to see strict testing and heavy penalties for impaired driving, and mandatory screening for certain jobs. And significantly harsher penalties for more powerful drugs.
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Great. I get your point. But just so ya know - the War on Drugs continues.
I know you were not making the point either for or against the WOD, but it bears mentioning that legal weed only adds to laws, taxes, regulations and penalties regarding marijuana.
Especially taxes. The primary reason for states to legalize pot is for more taxes. And we all know that more taxes equals more spending.
Again, who?
Name someone or an organization.
There is and will be an entire generation or two of kids who have their still developing brains stunted by pot. It’s why leftists ALWAYS push pot.
Pinging the usual suspects.
See my conversation with Sue.
Anyone claiming pot is less harmful than alcohol?
Sue here denies this is true.
pg. 189; para 2.: This calamity has a proximate cause: the addictions of twenty-five million Americans who buy $25-40 billion of illegal narcotics each year, most of it coming in through the southwestern border. Writer Charles Bowden has cleverly labeled this as a case of supply and demand. Every time someone in the United States snorts a line of coke, or courts the muse by smoking a joint, or a group of teens score meth on a dare--each one of these individual acts fuels the cartel machine and resonates back along the supply chain to the borderlands. From the Mexican perspective, America's insatiable demand carries a greater responsibility for the drug wars than Mexico's admittedly imperfect law enforcement and criminal justice systems. And they have a great deal of right on their side.
Actually, I simply questioned your assertion that people argue that it is okay to smoke pot around children.
Alex Berenson author.
Alcohol and marijuana react differently in the brains receptor center.
You don’t think it’s OK to smoke marijuana in fron of your children??
Why not? Is it OK to drink alcohol around children? Yes? Then if pot is safer than booze, then why not smoke it in front of your kids?
You don’t worry about second hand smoke and that stuff do you?
And you are an idiot!
I would not advise drinking or smoking of anything around children.
Pot makes POC rape white women too. I saw it on Reefer Madness.
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