Posted on 02/03/2012 10:57:07 AM PST by gabriellah
In 2011, Gallup reported that 62% of 18-29 year olds and 50% of the general public supports the legalization of marijuana; 69% of liberals and even 34% of conservatives also support such measures. Obviously the pro-pot movement has taken root in the American populace and especially in the minds of Millennials (even managing to infiltrate the minds of the most conservative among us).
Myth #1: Legalization Would bring in Enormous Tax Revenues
The Heritage Foundation’s Charles Stimson published an extensive legal memorandum urging for the failure of the RCTC Act of 2010, which would have legalized pot in California. This memorandum debunks the myth that legalization would eliminate the black market for marijuana and would bring in enormous revenue, therefore stimulating the economy.
Dr. Rosalie Pacula, a drug policy expert at the RAND Corporation for over 15 years, testified that under the California law: “There would be tremendous profit motive for the existing black market providers to stay in the market. The only way California could effectively eliminate the black market for marijuana is to take away the substantial profits in the market and allow the price of marijuana to fall to an amount close to the cost of production. Doing so, however, will mean substantially smaller tax revenue”(Stimson 9).
In other words, simple economics expose the assumption that drug dealers would voluntarily enter the legal market, when the cost of production is virtually zero. In fact, it was calculated that “an individual will be able to produce 24,000 to 240,000 joints legally each year” (Stimson 9). This is more than any individual could possibly consume, and it is encouraging individuals to sell pot on the side, subverting taxation. Why would anyone buy marijuana legally when they would have to pay a higher price for it? It would be a much higher price considering California proposed a $50/ounce tax on top of the list price. Why would drug dealers leave the black market when they don’t have to?
Fiscal conservatives should not be lured into such intellectual inconsistency. We are not going to solve the budget crises and pay off our $15 trillion debt with whatever change is left from a feeble government attempt to tax the un-taxable.
Myth #2: Marijuana is a Victimless Drug
Marijuana has a history of being linked to crime in the United States and throughout the world. “60% of arrestees test positive for marijuana use in the United States, England, and Australia” (Stimson 6). And while many pro-legalization advocates argue that most of these marijuana users are people arrested for non-violent crimes, they fail to note that marijuana usage is strongly correlated with cocaine and other more serious drugs, as well as murder, assault, money laundering, and smuggling (Stimson 5-6). Surely, legalization advocates do not believe that all marijuana users are little angels?
In fact, in Amsterdam, one of Europe’s most violent cities, pot is legal and a prevalent aspect of society (Stimson 6). Heritage reports that “Officials are in the process of closing marijuana dispensaries, or ‘coffee shops,’ because of the crime associated with their operation” (Stimson 6).
California’s partial legalization via usage of “medical marijuana” is beginning to show the same effects. LAPD reports that areas surrounding cannabis clubs have seen a 200% increase in robberies and a 130.8% increase in aggravated assault (Stimson 6). A drug that increases crime doesn’t exactly qualify as “victimless.”
In addition to this, local communities where neighborhoods and residential housing are dominant will be adversely affected. Residents who live in areas with extensive marijuana usage have repeatedly complained about the incredible smell put off by the plants. Even worse than the smell though, is the growing crime rate in residential areas which is induced by theft of marijuana from yards where it is grown (Stimson 6).
It may be ideologically convenient for some to oversimplify the issue as a violation against individual liberty, but when all the facts are presented, it is obvious that the only liberty being violated is the blatant disregard for property rights, law, and order.
Myth #3: Marijuana = Alcohol
Legalization advocates link marijuana and alcohol as equally mild intoxicants, suggesting that they deserve equal treatment under the law. However, as the above research suggests, marijuana is more dangerous to the health and safety of society.
For better or for worse, alcohol as been part of human history for millennia. Typically, individuals responsibly self-monitor their consumption thereof. Alcohol has also been regulated by cultural norms rather than by government. Society, culture, and religion have proven to be the best regulators of alcoholic consumption. The same cannot be said of marijuana – as seen in the information presented earlier.
In addition to its lack of historical precedent in America’s historical experience, marijuana also has much more severe health effects than alcohol. 1) marijuana is far more likely than alcohol to be cause addiction, 2) it is usually consumed to the point of intoxication, 3) it has no known intrinsically healthful properties (it can only relieve pain –and artificially at that), 4) it has toxins that can result in birth defects, pain, respiratory damage, brain damage, and stroke, 5) it increases heart rate by 20% to 100% elevating the risk of heart attack (Stimson 4).
In relation to history, economics, and health, marijuana is nothing like alcohol.
Conclusion: Conservatives should not be afraid to combat the growing sentiment that supports the legalization of marijuana. Economics, historical precedent, and conservative principles are all on our side. It is up to unashamed, unapologetic young conservatives to articulate that message and continue to stand for ordered liberty.
I'm just calling you on it....
I'm not going to do your work for you...
I happen to have worked in many ER's....and I could surmise that someone somewhere has killed themselves somehow, someway...after smoking dope.
I dunno....how about wrecking their car? Doing something stupid, like smoking dope and shooting guns, riding motorcycles, ATV's, skateboards, surfboards, etc.....
If you are meaning OD'ing on pot...that's not how I read your initial statement..and the one I posted to.
FWIW-
Violent offenders love their pot. Non-violent offenders love their pot. It means nothing. It’s a distinction without a difference.
Symptoms of what substance causes the following:
headache
personality changes
changes in behavior
confusion
irritability
drowsiness
breathing during exertion
muscle weakness
twitching
cramping
nausea
vomiting
thirst
inability to perceive and interpret sensory information
Bradycardia abd widened pulse pressure can begin followed by cerebral edema that can lead to coma or death.
Water. Water intoxication can do all that.
The only dangerous side effect of marijuana is prison rape.
Ummmmmmm...well yes, really you can!!
Perfectly legal too!!!
“Heck, in Ohio you can have up to 100 grams personal possession and all you get is a minor misdemeanor (like a jaywalking ticket). Somehow, Ohio has not cracked to the point of falling into Lake Erie, though.”
Colorado has a pot law. So far, other than the pot shops themselves, no appearant increase in crime or wacked out people acting all weird.
This article is complete Bullsh*t, it’s been a while since I read an article with so many blatant falsehoods
Other than eliminating a huge revenue stream, legalization would have absolutely no effect on organized crime. And we all know how they still control the vast illegal moonshine industry o.0
“Yep. At least the ones (like Ron Paul) who use the Constitution as Toilet Paper.”
Can you name a single unconstitutional item Ron Paul has put forth? Just name one. Go ahead. We’ll wait.
Hear, hear.
As a police officer who has been neck deep in the WOD in the past, I am here to tell you that it is a HUGE waste of time and taxpayer money. The WOD has been the root cause of more challenges to the Fourth and by proxy, the 2nd Amendment than any other source.
There is no plan on ending or winning the WOD. It is a huge industry and it would put millions, from the street corner lookout to the trial judge, out of work.
The black market of narco-trafficking is getting tens of thousands killed a year in the name of profits. It has led to the creation of scores of SWAT teams who are kicking in doors of American citizens and not making one bit of difference other than to piss good people off. The madness has to stop and as distasteful as it may seem to some, we cannot legislate this morality and we cannot arrest our way out of it.
The money we have spent on the WOD since 1972 could have paid for Newt’s moon base.
“I work with the Children of all abusers. Alcohol, Drugs, Prescription, and street. Try and explain to them its okay for all the users and abusers to control their intake and not affect others. “
To that list you can add people with money spending issues, gambling problems, and a whole host of abusive behavior issues.
It isn’t the substance that is the problem, it is the person making the bad choices and those around them not holding them accountable.
Hell, you, yourself, just gave their behaviors a pass by saying the problem is with the substances and not them.
You sound like a liberal blaming guns for violent crime and demanding guns be banned.
The notion that moving inventory from some dealers house to a brick and mortar storefront, increases availability is nonsense. The only thing changes is broader variety and quality of a cleaner product.
’ “The urine test is based on detection of 11-nor-delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol-9-carboxylic acid (9-carboxy-THC), a metabolite of delta-9-THC”
- http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00000138.htm ‘
The test looks for a metabolite, an end product not the active THC. You lost that argument.
It is not illegal to grow one’s own tobacco or brew one’s own beer or distill one’s own whiskey. Keeping marijuana illegal feeds the cartels, criminalizes harmless people, and builds the tyrrany of government (think swat teams).
“Oh, you mean like William Randolf Hearst, who didn’t want hemp to compete with his paper mills?”
Not to mention drug companies. Pot was being made illegal worldwide during the late 1800’s because opium salesmen were wanted to rid themselves of a competitor, a cheap, make it yourself competitor. Anyone can grow pot like any flower and many in the pharm and chemical companies were thinking pot was taking the profit away from “regulated” drugs.
No it didn't.
The mob (in the sense of ethnically-based organized crime operations) was well-established by the 1820s in the US.
There were mob wars in New Orleans and New York by the middle of the nineteenth century.
The mob's business model is independent of narcotics, alcohol or any other product.
Its business model is to provide protection for criminal enterprises from other criminal enterprises.
Whether that criminal enterprise is manipulating prices, or gambling, or insurance fraud, or illegal drug trafficking, or prostitution, or smuggling illegals, or fraudulent union contracts, or embezzlement, or prescription drug fraud (an enormous business for the mob today and one that involves completely legal narcotics) it does not matter.
It is a myth that Prohibition "created" the mob. All Prohibition did was make the mob more visible - because average citizens were much more likely to visit a speakeasy in 1925 than they were to steal from cargo vessels or create mail fraud rings.
The Feds became aware in the 1920s of what the police of every major city in the US were well aware of in 1890.
’ Can you grow your own tobacco? Can you distill your own booze? ‘
Sure you can. Either as an individual (tobacco farmer, home-brew kits) or large company. What are you thinking?
Phillip Morris
R. J. Reynolds
Anheuser-Busch
Micro-breweries across the US
Do you need more examples of legal production of tobacco and alcohol?
Of Course its the user, but the effects of alllll abusers hurt innocent people and that is my point. Smoke Pot, take drugs, drink, Party, drive fast, raise hell, do whatever you want to the extreme, that is your right, but I gurantee some innocent person will pay for the results. What we do effects others.
BTW I am 50, all my smoking friends are my age or older, half of us have businesses, and we have a bunch of retired veterans, three who have permanent disabilities from being wounded in combat. Eight out of ten are conservative, but most couldn't care less about politics. Why participate in a system that has in so many words, declared "war" against you?
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