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.
"Repealing Prohibition Is Not the Same As Endorsing the Previously Prohibited Activity." ?
We’ve wasted far too much money trying to get people to not smoke a plant.
Treat it like booze in the eyes of the law and be done with it.
There are a number of “safety sensitive” positions in the railroad industry alone in which the use of marijuana is a huge no-no, by order of the federal government, courtesy of Ricky Gates and the 1987 AMTRAK/CONRAIL collision in Chase, MD.
This will be interesting to watch.
More deaths will occur on Colorado roads due to Marijuana intoxication, some will kill individuals and families in the other cars.
More families will break up in Colorado due to the increased use. More children, who are innocent, will have to be placed into foster care than before.
Crimes will increase in Colorado, especially robberies and break-ins. As time goes on more of these will increase in violence as the desire for higher highs consumes the perpetrators.
I wonder if the enrollment in the “agriculture” programs at state colleges is soaring?
We will simply have to wait and see if what Colorado has done is the right way to go. It was Colorado’s choice. Under our Constitution (as intended) other states could follow suit, go the exact opposite direction, or fall anywhere else on the issue. The results will be what they will be.
Blood tests at sobriety check points now?
“Repealing Prohibition Is Not the Same As Endorsing the Previously Prohibited Activity.” ?
I don’t know if its a Buckley quote, but it bears repeating.
The so-called ‘war on drugs’ has done much to erode our Fourth Amendment rights and has made criminals out of many otherwise productive citizens. I think fines, rather than prison time, are sufficient deterrent for marijuana use. Likewise society should not advocate destructive lifestyles such as homosexual behavior, promiscuous heterosexual behavior, drug or alcohol abuse, compulsive gambling, porn, street racing...the list goes on.
But the emphasis in these ‘no-victim’ crimes should be deterrence, rather than punishment.
The law does.
Won’t be any different than the alcohol prohibitions for safety sensitive jobs, something that’s been handled pretty smoothly for 6 or 7 decades.
For another point of view from National Review -http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlows-money-politics
I am really tired of the stupid argument about adults being arrested for mariuana offenses. We have drug courts to handle those. It is a lot simpler than legalizing the pot use.
The AMA now states that heavy cannabis use among teenagers causes decreased cognitive thinking ability - PERMANENT DAMAGE. The government is already in the process of dumbing down the public school systems, do we have to dumb down the students as well?
My prediction:
Any problems associated with marijuana will be ignored by the media.
Having had my car completely unloaded in a neighboring state and my family standing on the side of the road for 1.5 hours while we waited in freezing temps for a drug dog to arrive after a recent ski trip from Colorado -— where they found nothing and gave us a warning for no front license plate -— I see a problem with both drug laws and differing states having differing laws.
They left all our stuff on the side of the road — had to load it back with cars whizzing by at 75mph -— and left with not even an apology for wasting our time.
“something that’s been handled pretty smoothly for 6 or 7 decades.”
Using breathalyzers when necessary. But there is no marijuana breathalyzer yet.
Dope for the dopes.
If we self-appointed better people allow the commoners to smoke pot, every fender bender will be the result of toking and driving. The streets will run with blood.
Now we will get to see what happens with legal pot as we have a pilot program, a state with about million people.
It can always be delegalized again. The people who want to smoke will do so anyway, just as they were before it was legal.
I haven’t heard an argument against it yet that couldn’t apply to cigs and booze.
I’d be fine with making all three illegal, if that could ever be enforced. It should be one way or the other or the arguments make no sense.
Your same predictions were made about 10 years when Colorado legalized pot with the MM program, bringing growers out of the woodwork and increasing the availability and use of pot around the state.
The predictions haven’t come true, yet. We shall see what happens next.
There is nothing in the law that prohibits employers from firing people who use MJ outside the workplace.
yet.
Exactly, just as the Benghazi, IRS, NSA and Fast and Furious Scandals.
The media loves anything immoral or that increases immorality these days.
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