Posted on 01/06/2014 8:16:32 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Launching 17 million “Rocky Mountain High” jokes, Colorado has become the first state to make the prudent choice of legalizing the consumption and sale of marijuana, thus dispensing with the charade of medical restrictions and recognizing the fact that, while some people smoke marijuana to counter the effects of chemotherapy, most people smoke marijuana to get high — and that is not the worst thing in the world.
Regardless of whether one accepts the individual-liberty case for legalizing marijuana, the consequentialist case is convincing. That is because the history of marijuana prohibition is a catalogue of unprofitable tradeoffs: billions in enforcement costs, and hundreds of thousands of arrests each year, in a fruitless attempt to control a mostly benign drug the use of which remains widespread despite our energetic attempts at prohibition. We make a lot of criminals while preventing very little crime, and do a great deal of harm in the course of trying to prevent an activity that presents little if any harm in and of itself.
Marijuana is a drug, as abusable as any intoxicant is, and its long-term use is in some people associated with undesirable effects. But its effects are relatively mild, and while nearly half of American adults have smoked marijuana, few develop habits, much less habits that are lifelong (in another context, we might write “chronic”). Compared to binge drinking or alcohol addiction, marijuana use is a minor public-health concern. All that being the case, the price of prohibition is relatively high, whether measured in police and penal expenses or in liberty lost. The popularity of marijuana may not be the most admirable social trend of our time, but it simply is not worth suppressing.
One of the worst consequences of marijuana use is the development of saucer-eyed arguments about the benefits of legalizing it. Colorado, and other states that may follow its example, should go into this with realistic expectations. If the Dutch example is any guide, then Colorado can probably expect to see higher rates of marijuana use and the use of other drugs, though not dramatically so. As with the case of Amsterdam, Colorado already is developing a marijuana-tourism industry — some hotels are considering offering designated marijuana-smoking rooms, even while smoking tobacco outdoors is banned in parts of Boulder — which brings problems of its own, among them opportunistic property crime and public intoxication. Colorado’s legal drug dealers inevitably will end up supplying black markets in neighboring prohibition states. Expected tax revenues from marijuana sales will amount to a mere three-tenths of 1 percent of the state’s budget.
The payoff is not in tax revenue gained but in losses avoided. A great many people will avoid being convicted of crimes for a relatively benign recreational indulgence — and those criminal convictions often have much more severe long-term consequences on pot-smokers’ lives than marijuana does. The business of policing covert marijuana dealers has been replaced with the relatively straightforward business of regulating them in the open. A large and fairly nasty criminal enterprise has lost its raison d’être, at least so far as the Colorado market is concerned.
Perhaps most important, the legalization of marijuana in Colorado — and the push for its legalization elsewhere — is a sign that Americans still recognize some limitations on the reach of the state and its stable of nannies-in-arms. The desire to discourage is all too easily transmuted into the desire to criminalize, just as the desire to encourage metastasizes into the desire to mandate. It is perhaps a little dispiriting that of all the abusive overreaches of government to choose from, it is weed that has the nation’s attention, but it is a victory nonetheless. Unfortunately, it is probably too much to hope that Colorado’s recognition of this individual liberty might inspire some popular reconsideration of other individual liberties, for instance that of a working man to decide for himself whether he wants to join a union, or for Catholic nuns to decide for themselves whether they want to purchase drugs that may work as abortifacients — higher liberties, if you will.
There seems to be an attitude of being above the law.
Why not? Not much difference and booze and pot. I am tired of this police/ prison/ union tax payer money laundering crap.
Gun owners are required to keep them out of the hands of kids.
True.
Well, so are pot smokers.
In short, the “but the children might get pot” argument is silly.
Of course it is silly. “Might” needs to be replaced with “should” because pot-heads are definitely going to share it with the kids, theirs and others kids too.
It’s a self-inflicted mental illness
We already have drug court. We don’t need any other system. No one goes to jail in WA for minor drug crimes and haven’t for about 15 years.
The problem is that not enough places of employment drug test. I have never heard of a hospital that drug tested their employees, but they should. No one should be working with patients that uses drugs, including marijuana.
No drug users should be working in banking, not with my money. There is very little that I would trust a drug user to do, even a marijuana user.
What we should be doing is finding more and better ways to enforce laws against underage drinking rather than working to legalize more intoxicants.
It is illegal in Colorado to smoke pot in public. Employers can still fire people who are on drugs. You cannot take pot out of state. You can’t buy more than an ounce. A non Colorado resident can’t buy more than a quarter of an ounce.
There are probably more rules and regulations to violate the law.
Big bucks for all.
And, if true, how will it be any different from now?
I’m sorry, but standing for 1.5 hours on the side of the road with my family, getting my skis and my luggage dumped out on the side of the highway because some cop decided I have a funny accent and wanted to get a drug dog to go through everything has made me realize that the drug warriors are just thugs with badges.
They are Obama’s private army, ready and willing.
What I am saying is where are we going to get a responsible work force if everyone is blowing weed?
A marijuana user is not a responsible worker. That’t the reason that anyone who works for in any job that is covered by the dept of transportation is drug tested often. The same should be done by a lot of other industries.
None of that is new.
Some people drive over the speed limit and don’t kill anybody. Does that mean we should abolish speed limits entirely?
There are behaviors that are corrosive and destructive to other people when openly engaged in with no legal restrictions by the population as a whole. That doesn’t mean every time an individual does the behavior, that a disaster instantly happens. But you are still allowed to make a law against it to benefit society as a whole.
and if that is supposed to represent all people who oppose drugs then I guess those who get kids high and molest them represent all drug users too
You could have used the event as a way to teach your kids a valuable lesson that marijuana is illegal and will get them into trouble if they have it or use it.
I don’t think so, many pot smokers have a cult like devotion to the weed and are not within the realm of reason.
“You could have used the event as a way to teach your kids a valuable lesson that marijuana is illegal and will get them into trouble if they have it or use it.”
Since I don’t use MJ, and had nothing, I used the event to teach them about the Shoa and how it started to be implemented with police over-reach.
It’s pretty typical of drug warriors, actually.
And, no, I don’t use drugs, never have, teach my children they are bad, and don’t need proto-Nazis to instill values into my children or to keep me safe from Reefer Madness.
Of course. Not wanting kids to have drugs makes one a NAZI
Oh that makes perfect sense.
lol
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