Posted on 01/09/2019 10:03:03 AM PST by Kaslin
Ten states and Washington, D.C., have now legalized adult use of marijuana.
Supporters of America's long war on drugs said legalization would create disaster. Has it? No.
Colorado and Washington offer the longest points of comparison because weed has been legal in those states now for five years.
More people in Colorado tried marijuana after legalization, but that's not a surprise.
Colorado's crime rate did rise a bit. But many things influence crime rates. Washington state's violent crime rate rose a little but slightly less than the national average.
In California, people I interviewed said legalization made the streets safer. "It's cleaned up the corner," said one woman. Marijuana stores "have a lot of security (and) pay attention to who's on the sidewalk."
Sounds good to me.
But drug warriors are not convinced. Paul Chabot, a former anti-drug policy advisor for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, tells me that legalization has been a disaster.
"Colorado youth have an 85 percent higher marijuana use rate than the rest of the country," he says in my new video on marijuana legalization.
But he is wrong. Federal and state surveys and the New England Journal of Medicine report that teen marijuana use dropped a little in Colorado. Maybe there's something about legal businesses, with the dreary name "dispensaries," that makes weed less sexy to kids.
But there is bad news: The driving death rate increased in Colorado and Washington after legalization. But the data isn't clear -- driving deaths are up even more in some neighboring states like Idaho, where weed is still banned.
Chabot says, "Pot driving fatalities in Colorado are up 151 percent!"
That's true, but that statistic is misleading because traces of marijuana stay in a person's system for a long time. Some of those people may have used marijuana weeks before.
A more stringent measure that may indicate whether someone was actually high at the time of an accident suggests an increase of 84 percent.
That's terrible, but the numbers of accidents are so small -- 35 in all of Colorado in 2017, up from 19 in 2014 -- it's hard to draw conclusions. That deserves more study.
If anti-drug warriors like Chabot want to look seriously at the statistics, they should also include the harm done by drug prohibition itself.
It's nearly impossible to overdose on pot. But banning marijuana drives sales into the black market, where criminals do the selling. And criminals are more likely to settle their disagreements with guns.
They don't perform the reliable quality controls that legal drug sellers must do to please their customers.
On the black market, customers take their chances. Then, when things go wrong, anti-drug voices cry out: "See? Drug markets are inherently unsafe!"
Banning drugs doesn't stop teens or adults from using them. Anyone who wants the stuff knows how to get it. One survey found that teens said it's easier to buy weed than alcohol. Alcohol is rarely sold in schools, but banning marijuana creates fat profits that inspire dealers to recruit students to sell to their peers.
Then there are the billions of dollars spent by law enforcement -- $900 per second. (That's just the federal cost. Total spending is much higher.) And the million people arrested yearly for drug violations.
I suggest to Chabot that drug prohibition has worked out as badly as alcohol prohibition did nearly 100 years ago.
"Just because something doesn't work doesn't mean that we end it," he replies. "Doesn't mean we quit."
I say failure sometimes does mean you should quit, because you're doing more harm than good.
"No, because then we give up, and that's not American," Chabot says.
Well, today, two-thirds of Americans say marijuana should be legal. One state at a time, with New York and New Jersey about to join the list, Americans are giving up on marijuana prohibition.
Good. Adults should have the right to make their own decisions about what to put in their own bodies.
No problem. I see a lot more people smoking openly since legalization...mostly at a local fishing hole. Senior citizens, young adults, loggers, commercial fishermen. None of them started smoking weed after legalization, as far as I can tell.
Too many women have been getting high while pregnant. Their kids are really messed up, and those brain abnormalities are not autism as they claim. Beware, and get ready for the near future. It’s going to get a lot worse.
I respected Stossel until now. No more.
Freeze dried homegrown is awesome.
Not to mention the I-25 corridor between Ft. Collins and the Springs is a stoner driving nightmare. It’s white-knuckle driving the whole way... that is when you’re not at a complete stop for hours waiting for the latest victims of dope heads to be scraped up off the asphalt.
Totally agree-— see my post #28 here in re: something ive been saying on multiple pro-legalization sites. The lost revenues from reduced tobacco sales has to be made up (according to the finance people for the demonstrably destructive demorats who want more revenue for more government programs and constituencies they control).
Have been excoriated both for the clinical data (UK origin, and not faked up stuff about harm to developing brains up to age 24-26 and also frank schizophrenia from genetic marker studies on susceptible genetic inheritance people. It’s all there and this is not benign.
And Big Tobacco knows it is addictive in a “better” way, as they spent billions not to have cigarettes sold by prescription.
Agree with you totally— now the SOBs are doing it again.
Clinical Biochemistry background here... and a lot else.
See my post # 28. And elsewhere on this subject on FR.
Massive carcinogens of over 100 id’d compounds (seriously carcinogenic— which is ironic, considering manufacturers are forced by California stoner legislators to put “carcinogen labeling” on all kinds of products (so they can be sold in CA). Things like plastic baby car seats.
But there is zero labeling on a truly harmful “product”. Don’t care if people (older than 30 anyway) want to get stoned on stuff they grow— but they won’t be flying my plane or any other i’d get on.
this is massive democrat run, clinical and political fraud.
And LBJ’s big pal in fundraising, head of the DNC Finance for years.... Dick Reynolds (Mr. R.J. Reynolds, Big Tobacco). My point exactly.
If this is so benign then why have pot smoking interfere with 2nd Amendment rights? Regular tobacco smokers aren’t banned from firearms.... unless they’re a felon or some other.
Highly manipulative bull crap being spread... by none other than John Boehner chief lobbyist for Cannabis, Inc (so to speak). A true moron of the scotch soaked chain smoking variety— a useless turd.
A highly clinical and sober study of the addiction... LOL.
Been a lot more work done since the 40’s or 50’s. Chemistry and genetics and such.
We are not strong enough to call out evil? We caution against drinking too much alcohol - how much is too much marijuana?
Alcohol causes health and behavior problems, and tobacco at least the former - what do their say about our society? Should we make them illegal?
By all means, let's call out any evils in alcohol, tobacco, or pot use, and caution against their use; we don't need to make them illegal to do that.
We are not strong enough to call out evil? We caution against drinking too much alcohol - how much is too much marijuana?
Alcohol causes health and behavior problems, and tobacco at least the former - what do their say about our society? Should we make them illegal?
By all means, let's call out any evils in alcohol, tobacco, or pot use, and caution against their use; we don't need to make them illegal to do that.
So conservatives should favor banning everything that is or could be taxed?
I find it amazing (and typical double standard of the Left) that during their loud demands for legalization their previous concerns about the dangers of smoking and cancer and children inhaling second hand smoke evaporated.
“I find it amazing (and typical double standard of the Left) -————————————”
There are people right here on FR that feel the same way-——astonishing!
.
The problem isn’t people who have a doobie now and again.
It’s the people who smoke it dawn to dusk. They have to be high to go through life.
Right?! And they were just dying to have the government come in and tax it. Just so they could have their legal weed.
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