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 ...
There was a time when I could say that too.
It was a very, very, humbling experience to find out that my quality of life was suddenly dependent on drugs. I resisted for a very long time, and had to be reminded daily to take them, I hated it so.
the second blow had the decency to wait a decade before I found out that my very ability to stay alive was suddenly dependent on drugs.
Pray you never have to face that.
With year over year budget increases, despite their failure to have any impact, the last thing they want to do is report positive outcomes. Congress would start to cut their budget.
Oh please. Pot is a pleasure drug.
I refuse to debate someone who still lives in the 60's.
Get to the root of it. The only accurate metric is the street price of drugs. From what I read, marijuana is stronger than ever, and the price hasn’t budged.
I have to agree with you there. It’s been
45 years since I smoked any weed, and I’ve
not missed it. What is under discussion
is lifestyle choices, for which, like taste,
there is no accounting. It’s a foolish
debate. Live your life as you see fit and
accord the next dude the same.
Have a nice evening.
Pot is an excellent example where government was being used to enforce a moral issue that did not directly endanger the lives of others. Government has no more business attempting to outlaw pot smoking than it has in outlawing overeating.
>I refuse to debate someone who still lives in the 60’s.
There is no debate when you are the Judge.
I have no respect for someone that whines they need a pleasure drug in order to live.
Who here said they need a pleasure drug in order to live?
Pot users are as whiny and selfish as the SJW's.
Who here is a pot user - and how do you know them to be pot users?
Are those who defend the right to use the pleasure drugs alcohol and tobacco also "as whiny and selfish as the SJW's"?
I refuse to debate someone who still lives in the 60's.
Who here still lives in the 60's - and how do you know them to still live in the 60's?
A MUCH broader standard than the one you quote on your home page:
A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity. Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address.
I am not a libertarian and I think smoking pot is foolish. It is simply that I also think that cops enforcing laws against it are more of a threat to my welfare and civil liberties than potheads are.
Thanks. In a sense that 1.9% is low too. The charts indicate the total number is over 21 million Americans that have significant substance abuse issues. Again, without knowing our census numbers that seems to me to be in the 10% range.
What charts indicate that? The chart in post #11 has only percentages.
Ditch weed has medical value.
anti seizure cannabis created specifically for children utilized ditch and hemp strains so as to decrease the THC and increase the CBD.
the result is zero THC but lots of CBD.
The one chart stated 1.9% further down the page listed numbers, which indicated over 21 million Americans had substance abuse issues. Obviously the numbers don’t jive.
For abuse/dependence on illicit drugs only.
further down the page listed numbers, which indicated over 21 million Americans had substance abuse issues.
For both alcohol and illicit drugs.
The number for illicit drugs is 5 million, which divided by 1.9% gives a total 12-and-older population of 260 million.
Correct and which also means over 8% of Americans over age 12 suffer from the disease of substance abuse regardless of the substance - a huge number given that gays are something like 1-4%, Blacks 12%, Hispanics 14% (again, I don’t claim to have the exact census percentages - I only use the numbers for rough correlations.)
Right ... but while the 6% addicted to the legal drug alcohol are well worth keeping in mind, they have no direct bearing on the chart in post #11 (on whose figures you commented). U.S. drug control spending wouldn't be expected to have an effect on a non-'controlled' (albeit regulated) drug's addiction rates.
The "finding" that cannabis has no medicinal value was specious from the outset. Cannabis tincture was part of western pharmacology when the first federal regulation was enacted during FDRs administration. It was declared to have no medicinal value in the 70's based when the Controlled Substances Act was passed, based on testimony that there were no ailments that it was prescribed for. But the reason it wasn't prescribed is that the Marijuana Tax act had made it effectively unobtainable for the last 30 years.
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