The total of rear only states is 19.
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.
Yes.
Ever since he left the magazine, it has been run by snooty I-am-so-much-smarter-than-you-unwashed-ignorant-tools wrapped in Buckely’s cloak.
My friend, who has a license to grow medical marijuana in WA, now says that she opposes full legalization. She now admits that regular marijuana use among teenagers causes permanent damage to cognitive thinking abilities. She knows that it is true because she has seen the results in her own family.
What she cannot see is that daily marijuana use causes the same damage to adult brains. It just isn’t permanent. The adult brain seems to be able to heal itself with 6 -8 weeks of abstention.
The effects of the marijuana use have made this person extremely unreasonable and argumentative. It is destroying her marriage and driving away her friends. She just blames everyone else. It is like her brain has just lost the filter that kept her from saying whatever popped into her mind.
Pot does not increase violence or crime(at least in the traditional sense).
The primary problem I see is just another way to lose the younger generations, allowing them to legally waste away.
I know a guy who, 15 years ago, had a bad opiate addiction and somehow maintained his job as a railroad engineer. I don’t know how he got away with it.
The story had a happy ending. He somehow got over it and is now working up the management ranks at the railroad.
They have a visual test they use on your eyes. If you flunk that, they can take you in for a blood test.
The visual test works quite well, the subject can’t pass it if stoned.
People forget that pot has been legal in Colorado for about 10 years. This is old hat.
Do you imagine that any kid anywhere in the country can’t get pot? The laws just aren’t effective in keeping it out of kids hands.
Have you ever known a pothead? Although I do not indulge myself, I've known many, and had many close friends who did/do over my whole life and I've seen them in many various stages of "high". They're biggest collective offenses are raiding the fridge, being a bit lethargic and not being overly punctual.
Alcohol is more dangerous and cigarettes are wayyyyy more addictive. The cost of prohibition is the heaviest burden on the rest of us in money and rights. d:^)
They have swabs that can detect MJ. But really they’ve faced all these challenges already with the drugs illegal, and with prescription drugs. None of this is really new territory, it just rearranged things a little.
Your problem was driving with no front license plate, which is against the law in almost every state.
Cops love burnt out lights, missing plates, etc. I got stopped and hassled in New Mexico for a cracked winshield (yep, that’s illegal there). Cops have to have probable cause to stop you, which then opens the floodgates to search the car, etc.
So, keep your car legal and you won’t get stopped unless you do something else illegal that can be observed.
The total of rear only states is 19.
The car is registered in NM, which does not issue a front license plate.
“The Herb doesn’t make people criminals.”
No, its the behaviors associated with it. A man’s penis does not make him a rapist, his actions do....
The people who pushed for legal pot in Colorado have said that they now want to legalize cocaine and heroin.
You think defective equipment qualifies as probable cause or reasonable suspicion that a crime is , has or is about to be taking place? Cops do not attain a search power because your taillight is out....
The poster who has to sit by the side of the road for hours may have given permission for a doggie search. Recently, the SCOTUS declared the presence of a dog a police search....
Just say no to any search w/o warrant. Make ‘em get the judge pout of bed. Now, if you have an extensive record, expect a bit more scrutiny, although that violates several enumerated rights as well.
Does that mean that all the “Mules” packing in MJ over the southern border need to do is to get an “Import License” and declare that they are taking it to Colorado? Will there be tariffs? /sarc Maybe the Kennedy family can replenish their fortune by getting out of “Scotch Whiskey” and into marijuana. America...the land of opportunity even for shanty Irish.
Anyone in the US who wants marijuana can already get it more easily than they can get a bottle of beer.
I personally had a (real) copper Arizona plate, but it corroded badly.
Sure there is, the saliva test. While not 100% accurate, it can pick up thc from 1-14 hours after the plant is ingested. Outside fourteen hours, the user isn't incapacitated anymore anyway.
Give up on enforcing drug laws so druggies are no longer looked upon as criminals. I suppose the thinking is that instead of treating drug purchases as illegal (kind of like gambling and the Mafia), we'll just get the state to sanction, tax and maybe even run pot sales, like they have the Lottery. Of course, they will need lots of PSAs to run on radio, tv and movie theaters, advertising for "drug treatment facility spas," of course paid for by the taxpayers. Now, how many other laws (sins) do we discount so they are no longer against the law (no longer "called" sins?)
Potheads now may be your law enforcement officers, teachers, Mayors, Governors, Senators, House members, lawyers, Supreme Court Justices, bosses, employees.
How 'bout pat heads as your school bus drivers, city transit drivers, rail road engineers, airline pilots, air traffic controllers, nurses, dentists, dental hygienists, doctors, cancer researchers, XRay techs, surgeons?
No thanks!
Give m on everything no longer being illegal or morally wrong, then nothing is "bad," except for tobacco, large soft drinks, trans-fat, light bulbs, etc. you fill in the blanks!
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