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 will be unintended consequences, of that I’m sure. ANd the most likely of these is more, not less, government intrusion into your life and abridgement of rights. For instance, does the use of a legal product act as a hammer in the hands of government should you exercise your 2nd Amendment rights? In Colorado the answer would have to be yes based on recent legislation.
We’re next. Yesterday the Everett Herald published a combination spreadsheet-map indicating where licensed retailers, producers will be in Snohomish co. I know I’m out of touch, but to me it’s kind of sad. A lot of Sno. Co. that used to grow strawberries, corn, dairy cows, etc. were developed into housing tracts and shopping complexes. Now were having some new agriculture, but it’s not corn, strawberries or dairy cows. I know, progress. Don’t know if these new pot growers will be “family farms” of the kind celebrated by the farmers market and CO-OP, or agribusiness, and don’t really care.
Another of my friends is a high school vice principal. She says that they now send home at least one kid every day for being high in class, since the legalization of medical marijuana in WA.
I wouldn't support that. Those two drugs are a result of manufacture. Marijuana is just a plant, not taking one form of it and turning it into something else entirely.
“The poster who has to sit by the side of the road for hours may have given permission for a doggie search”
Nope. We were told to get out of the car and he “noticed something” -— what he “noticed” I have no idea. A dad, mom, and four girls. Not exactly drug dealer material.
I think the real issue was my Israeli accent.
Does the new law at least require that buyers must be 21 years of age as we do with alcohol or tobacco use?
Montana and WA were both sold a bill of goods with MM. I voted for it out of compassion—it seemed like a no brainer. What a joke. They should have just gone for the whole enchilada then, and been honest.
Why couldn’t people just get it from a pharmacy with a prescription? Why did all these trashy little eyesore shops have to spring up? In Seattle you notice that they aren’t on “Pill Hill” and other neighborhoods with lots of medical facilities, old a d disabled people, etc. No, they’re in the low income, highly transient( read University) nightlife neighborhoods. Huh.
How many states have MM anyway? My recommendation is to keep your bullshit detectors turned on when its proposed in your state.
” I got stopped and hassled in New Mexico for a cracked winshield.”
You got off easily. The drug warriors here in New Mexico will pull you out of the car after rolling a stop sign and subject you to illegal anal probes in fruitless drug searches.
Seriously:
“New Mexico man sues over repeated anal probes by police”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/07/us-usa-newmexico-lawsuit-idUSBRE9A603N20131107
And, sadly, this was not an isolated incident.
Doesn’t surprise me. People are also getting a lot more brazen about smoking in public places in Seattle.
And of course there are many other legal snarls, such as the one about financial institutions not being able to finance pot businesses because of fed regulation. I don’t know how CO is handling this stuff.
At least half of the country had enough sense to not use marijuana.
I don't know your friend, but it's likely that he's not really "over it." The truest thing anyone ever said is that that, "All drug addicts lie. Every last one." Most of them become quite expert at it, too.
They can legalize it, but what they can’t control is the fact it can be grown in your back yard, no way for them to tax it like they do cigs or booze. No one is talking about the dangers of it, being higher than cigs in causing lung cancer.
The pot heads know they can get scripts for it easily. And I don’t want to be on the road with a person high on pot any more than I want to be with one drunk on booze. Both are dangerous!
I agree. Punish people for bad behavior. If someone decided to get drunk or stoned, and winds up hurting someone, it's their behavior that's at fault.
Same deal with guns. Someone robs a bank with a gun, or murders someone... punish them for those acts... it's not the gun's fault.
You haven't gone to enough Wymyns Studies classes.
Everyone in CO who has wanted to get stoned has been doing so... it's been that way for decades. In fact, the illegality of it probably makes it that much more enticing to adolescents.
One of the benefits in legalizing marijuana is limiting the reach of the government’s confiscation of property.
Many, many people have been jailed for marijuana possession and have their homes seized as a result. When they have served their time, the struggle to regain their homes, cars, or any property is horrendous, very long-lasting, and expensive.
Besides taxes, confiscation of property is the government’s main source of income.
Exactly. That's why we can't waiver from the concept of punishing bad behavior instead of blaming bad behavior on things like booze, drugs, guns.
Colorado has about 5 million people. It’s not that dinky population wise (that’s Wyoming or something).
So if someone has an accident and they get tested, they can get a DUI for smoking dope 14 hours earlier?
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