Alaska Ponders Pot Initiative

Fox News ^ | Friday, August 20, 2004 | Dan Springer

[Chemist_Geek]

My point is that people are not guided by morality -- they're guided by the law. Hence, the plethora of laws.

They used to be, but no longer.

I agree, BTW - I've yet to see a cogent argument for legalizing just dope. All the arguments I've seen from the stoners have been the start of a slippery slope to their drug "paradise".

If marijuana, why not LSD?

If marijuana, why not Ecstasy?

If marijuana, why not crack?

[BikerNYC]

If marijuana, why not LSD?

I'm sure those ladies in the 20's were saying:

If alcohol, why not marijuana.

[robertpaulsen]

"I've yet to see a cogent argument for legalizing just dope."

Exactly.

I've seen better arguments for legalizing all drugs -- The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 is unconstitutional (overextension of the Commerce Clause), the drug decision should be left to the states (10th amendment), people have a right to do drugs (9th amendment), we shouldn't legislate morality, drug use only harms the user, regulate drugs and tax them putting the dealers out of business, end the War on Drugs (thus ending abuses like no-knock and asset forfeiture), etc.

There's plenty of arguments to legalize all drugs. But the drug legalizers know that only about .1% of the U.S. is willing to do that.

So they start with marijuana. Which cannot be justified by itself, other than "because, dude".

[robertpaulsen]

What if, during Prohibition, the government legalized wine?

Any effect? Any benefit? Wouldn't the ladies in the 20's be saying, "If wine, why not beer?" or "If wine, why not brandy?".

That would be a better analogy.

[BikerNYC]

It wouldn't be a better analogy, as different drugs cause different effects in people. Alchohol is alcohol, it's just the amount in your body that matters. If there were different kinds of marijuana (stronger vs. weaker .. like whiskey vs. beer) and some wanted to legalize just one kind, then your analogy would be better.

[Conservative til I die]

Legalizing drugs incrementally is no different than pro-lifers illegalizing abortion incrementally, starting with the partial-birth abortion ban.

Politics is the art of the possible.

[robertpaulsen]

Yes, but pro-lifers are upfront and honest about their ultimate goal.

[TKDietz]

"Again, if these are the criteria, I can use them to make the case for a number of other drugs -- especially if alcohol is the gold standard. Maybe you don't care."

What should the criteria be?

"Also, I don't agree with your rosy scenario regarding distribution. I believe the traffickers would just concentrate on other drugs. Ending Prohibition didn't put an end to organized crime, neither will the legalization of marijuana."

I never said it would put an end to organized crime. I said it what put a huge dent in the illegal drugs industry. Marijuana is by far the most used illegal drug in this country. There is a massive infrastructure built up to produce, smuggle in, and distribute the product on out to the tens of millions of marijuana smokers in this country. Illegal drugs like cocaine, heroin, and increasingly methamphetamine are also originating south of the border have to be smuggled in and distributed much like marijuana and in many cases to the same customer base so naturally a large part of these hard drugs are going through the same distribution networks that marijuana is distributed through. Since the customer base for marijuana is in the tens of millions the hard drug sellers want to get their drugs in the hands of the several hundred thousand if not over a million or more people out there selling marijuana to the end consumers. If we take the lions share of the marijuana business out of the illegal drug market, infrastucure for moving drugs from producers south of the border on to end consumers in the states is going to be hit hard. Not only will they lose billions and billions worth of marijuana business, they're going to lose the easy access they once had to the tens of millions who smoke marijuana because these people are going to be buying their pot at the pot store and not from all of the little pot dealers out there that used to be at the bottom of the massive drug distribution networks. The loss of billions in marijuana business is going to hurt organized crime financially and make the job of moving hard drugs to end consumers harder.

"You're making a huge assumption that the rest of the world will follow our "lead". If they don't, organized crime will use the United States as a legal growing ground for their illegal exports. That's a nice thought, huh?"

Surely marijuana growing would be regulated. I doubt people will ever be able to just grow huge fields of the stuff without appropriate licences and accounting procedures. The goverment is going to want to collect their taxes and have some control over how marijuana is distributed. Who would buy our pot anyway, Mexico or some other third world country south of the border where they already produce the stuff cheaper than we ever will be able to produce it? Canada already grows way more pot than they could possibly consume. Europe already has cheap supplies from the Middle East and Africa and they already have their own thriving domestic production.

I do believe though that a lot of other countries would follow suit if we legalized. Countries that are already exporting to the U.S. would have major incentive to try to tap our legal market. And there are other countries out there where there is already much more support for legalizing marijuana than there is here. If we do it the treaties and international conventions would have to be rewritten to allow other countries to do it as well and without the fear of international sanctions some of them are going to do it.

"The Alaska experiment showed us that, with very limited legalization, teen use of marijuana will double. You can make all the theoretical claims you want, but you can't argue the facts."

What percentage of Alaskan teens smoked marijuana before this limited legalization and what percentage smoked after? Can you provide these facts so that I can verify your claim? I bet you can't. I do my best to verify my statistics before I use them and I try to always post links to the statistical data. You seem to just make yours up and call them facts.

[robertpaulsen]

"Marijuana is by far the most used illegal drug in this country."

"I do my best to verify my statistics before I use them and I try to always post links to the statistical data."

Drug	1988	1990	1992	1994	1996	1998
Cocaine	76.9	61.3	49.4	42.2	41.3	39.0
Heroin	21.8	17.6	10.9	10.5	11.7	11.6
Marijuana	11.3	13.5	12.5	11.4	9.0	10.7
Methamphetamines	2.4	2.4	1.6	2.1	2.1	1.5
Other Drugs	3.3	2.2	1.5	2.6	2.7	2.3
TOTAL	115.7	97.0	75.9	68.6	66.8	65.0

** Source: Abt Associates Inc., What America's Users Spend on Illegal Drugs, 1988-98
Amounts are in constant 1998 dollars.

Care to correct either one of your statements above? They can't both be true.

[Freebird Forever]

Think about it, if you could just grow yer buzz in the backyard garden, it's conceivable that you'd drink a lot less.

And Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, etc. sales would surely decrease.

[Mudboy Slim]

Zackley...it's Big Pharmaceutical, Big Liquor, Big Beer, and Big Tobacco who are leading the way in keeping pot illegal, imho.

FReegards...MUD

[Mudboy Slim]

Thanks fer that table...I hadn't seen that before.

FReegards...MUD

[Mudboy Slim]

In fairness to TK, the fact that less is spent on pot than on Heroin and Coke does not necessarily disprove TK's allegation that pot is the most-commonly used since pot is considerably cheaper than those other drugs on a per-buzz basis.

FReegards...MUD

[Mudboy Slim]

"The federal government spends about $20 billion annually on the WOD (<1% of the budget)."

When yer talkin' 'bout decreasing the size and scope of the Federal Leviathan, $20 Billion here, $20 Billion there and before you know it yer talkin' 'bout some real money...LOL!!

FReegards...MUD

[TKDietz]

Both statements are true. Marijuana is by far the most used drug in America and I do try to verify my statistics before posting them. The little chart you just posted is about the amount of money Americans spend on these drugs. It says nothing about the percentage of Americans using these drugs or the quantity of various drugs consumed in this country. I'm not even going to waste my time looking up the exact numbers on estimated quantity of the various drugs used in America, but I'll just tell you that thousands of tons of marijuana are consumed in this country every year and that Americans don't consume anywhere near as much of any one of those other listed illegal drugs. More money is spent on a drug like cocaine because cocaine is super expensive. Most of the pot consumed in this country is cheapo Mexican. A person might spend $100 on a single gram of coke but he could have gotten an ounce (28 grams) or more of Mexican pot for that much that would have lasted a lot longer. I don't know how much stock I put in those estimates about how much people are spending on drugs though because they are basically ballpark guess estimates based on estimates and they vary considerably depending on who is doing the estimating.

What I was really getting at when I was saying that marijuana is the most used drug in America though is the fact that many more Americans use marijuana than use any other drug. Note from Table 1.1B in the link I'll give you to data from the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use & Health that an estimated 6.2% of Americans 12 and older used marijuana in the month preceding the survey, yet less than one percent reported using any of the other specific drugs you listed. Cocaine was used by .9%, heroin by .2%, and meth by .3%. It looks like in 2002 there were over six times as many people who smoked marijuana in the month preceding the survey as there were people who used cocaine in the month preceding the survey. Cocaine is the second most popular illegal drug in this country, not counting illegally used prescription drugs.

Here's the link: http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/nhsda/2k2nsduh/html/Sect1peTabs1to110A.htm#tab1.1b

[robertpaulsen]

"What I was really getting at when I was saying that marijuana is the most used drug in America though is the fact that many more Americans use marijuana than use any other drug."

Well, I thought we all knew that. But it, in no way, supports your contention that legalizing marijuana (thereby closing that distribution path) will affect the distribution of other drugs.

As a percentage of the total drug market, marijuana is a paltry 20%. And, I'll wager that it represents even less of the total drug market profits.

Legalize marijuana, and the traffickers will focus on the remaining 80% -- I have no desire to return to the 1988 level, even though, according to you, a smaller number of individuals are involved in drugs other than marijuana.

If the solution to the obscene profits being made by these traffickers is legalization, then maybe we should be legalizing cocaine and heroin, thereby removing over 80% of their income. That would have a much larger impact.

Is this your focus? Removing profits? Or is it just a cover for your real reason?

[robertpaulsen]

"Surely marijuana growing would be regulated. I doubt people will ever be able to just grow huge fields of the stuff without appropriate licences and accounting procedures. The goverment is going to want to collect their taxes and have some control over how marijuana is distributed."

Basically you're saying that the DEA (or BATFM) would grow to the size and scope of the IRS.

Given the above scenario, I doubt marijuana legalization will reduce government intrusion. What have we solved here? Nothing.

[tacticalogic]

Basically you're saying that the DEA (or BATFM) would grow to the size and scope of the IRS.

Care to point out where he said that, or is that just an exercise in idle speculation?

[robertpaulsen]

Maybe you think marijuana regulation can be handled by just two guys -- Mr. Cheech and Mr. Chong?

[tacticalogic]

Maybe. Then again maybe not. Either way it doesn't answer the question.