Posted on 11/27/2015 12:01:54 PM PST by ConservingFreedom
[...] Last week a group of 12 House members led by Ted Lieu of California wrote to House leadership to push for a provision in the upcoming spending bill that would strip half of the funds away from the DEA's Cannabis Eradication Program, and put that money toward programs that "play a far more useful role in promoting the safety and economic prosperity of the American people:" domestic violence prevention and overall spending reduction efforts.
Each year the DEA spends about $18 million in efforts with state and local authorities to pull up marijuana plants being grown indoors and outdoors. The program has been plagued by scandal and controversy in recent years. In the mid-2000s it became clear that the overwhelming majority of "marijuana" plants netted by the program were actually "ditchweed," or the wild, non-cultivated, non-psychoactive cousin of the marijuana that people smoke.
More recently, overzealous marijuana eradicators have launched heavily-armed raids on okra plants, and warned the Utah legislature of the threat posed by rabbits who had "cultivated a taste for the marijuana." Last year the DEA spent an average of roughly $4.20 (yes, really) for each marijuana plant it successfully uprooted. In some states, the cost to taxpayers approached $60 per uprooted plant.
The program has also proven to be ineffective. The idea behind pulling up pot plants is to reduce the supply of marijuana, thereby reducing its use. In 1977, two years before the program's introduction, less than a quarter of Americans said they'd ever tried pot, according to Gallup. By 2015, after 36 years of federal marijuana eradication efforts, the share of Americans ever trying pot nearly doubled, to 44 percent. [...]
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Crime is crime because it’s been made illegal.
Ingesting various vegetation in the privacy of
one’s home should never have been made illegal in
the first place. Secondly, if it took an
amendment to the Constitution to criminalize
the use and distribution of alcohol, how was
it sufficient to do the same to marijuana without
another amendment?
Even the pro-druggie libs decry your chart and acknowledge, “There is a huge problem with the chart, in that 40 years of federal drug control spending does not add up to $1.5 trillion”
Personally, I think the blue line is significantly incorrect but I can’t prove that (I think the addicted community is higher than 1+%)
Big-government "conservatives" have signed on to the FDR court's perversion of the Commerce Clause via "substantial effects."
/johnny
The rest of the quote:
“While the $1.5 trillion figure doesn’t correspond to the numbers at right, it’s actually low. In 2010, the AP put the 40-year tab of federal drug control spending at $1 trillion. But the massive federal drug control budget—for fiscal year 2013, it’ll be $3.7 billion for interdiction, $9.4 billion for law enforcement, and $9.2 billion for early intervention—is actually a pretty small slice of the pie. States and municipalities have their own drug war expenses—investigating, trying, and locking up drug offenders—and those expenses actually dwarf what the federal government spends.
“According to The Economic Impact of Illicit Drug Use on American Society, last published by the Department of Justice in 2011, enforcing illegal drug laws imposes an annual cost on the American criminal justice system of $56 billion; while incarceration of drug offenders imposes an annual cost of $48 billion.
“That’s $104 billion spent annually by states and cities on two aspects of the drug war (and doesn’t include treatment, public assistance, and a slew of other costs), compared to roughly $21 billion spent by the federal government.”
“More freedom is always better. Less government is always better.”
Yep.
If you don’t want to drink beer, smoke cigarettes, or smoke the reefer, than don’t drink beer, smoke cigarettes, or smoke the reefer.
Defund the DEA and also, remove the welfare money from those that want to just sit around and get high!
Honestly I hope they stop funding it. Instead they should focus on crimes done while under the influence. And business should have the full right to not hire and then fire drug users.
If your gonna use drugs then it’s on you to suffer the consequences of your retardation. And Lord help you if you harm others while under the influence.
“I think the addicted community is higher than 1+%”
1.9% according to the feds: http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUH-DetTabs2014/NSDUH-DetTabs2014.htm#tab5-1b
The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 banned its use and sale.
Yet, as one might hope, the Tax Act was ruled unconstitutional a few years later. What followed in the 1970s was the Controlled Substances Act.
Marijuana was “temporarily” put under Schedule One of the CSA while Nixon had a committee study the issue.
“The Schafer Commission, as it was called, declared that marijuana should not be in Schedule I and even doubted its designation as an illicit substance. However, Nixon discounted the recommendations of the commission, and marijuana remains a Schedule I substance.”
http://www.drugpolicy.org/blog/how-did-marijuana-become-illegal-first-place
I fully agree with your comment about repealing the rights-raping legislation. All that ever did was punish the innocent and fill police coffers.
End the war on soft drugs...and the un-American confiscation laws that go along with it.
The irony is that they’re spending money to go out and destroy feral “ditch weed” hemp. Left alone, the pollen would get in the wind and pollute the genome of the cultivated marijuana that’s been bred for THC content.
>We haven’t stopped murder or robbery either. So?
One man’s Moonshine is another man’s weed grown out back.
I see no need to Judge. Remember, The movie “Refer Madness” was not a documentary.
When it affects society, society has every right to JUDGE.
>I really do not care about what people over 25 do with their bodies.
Best comment I’ve seen on the subject.
>I don’t need drugs to enjoy life or have a good time
Some people do need drugs...BP meds and other “life saving drugs.”
I’m sure you have the time to approve who and what drugs THEY need. Judgement has a heavy burden.
The color shirt I wear "affects society" - does that entitle them to choose my shirts?
In a free society, the justification for government force is violation of rights ... which growing, selling, and using pot are not.
LOL! Ditto for the industrial hemp that the Reefer Madness crowd so vigorously resists.
>When it affects society, society has every right to JUDGE.
Spoken as if Alcohol does not affect society.
The Puritan crap is no better than islamo 7th century dung.
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