Posted on 03/28/2022 4:24:10 AM PDT by RandFan
The House is poised to pass legislation this week that would legalize marijuana, just the latest example of the swiftly changing attitudes on drug laws that marks a near reversal from the Reagan-era “war on drugs” that also reverberated through the 1990s.
The bill legalizing marijuana has near-uniform support among Democrats and a top ally in Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.), who has been aiming to introduce a similar measure this spring.
And it’s just one of several pieces of legislation that underlines the shift in Congress’s attitude — a change that has come about in part because of the way past drug laws have disproportionately hit minority communities.
At least 37 states, four territories and the District of Columbia allow cannabis products for medical use, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Cannabis is also allowed for nonmedical use in 18 states, two territories and the nation’s capital.
Schumer has also been soliciting input from colleagues ahead of introducing a marijuana legalization bill, which he previously said could come this spring.
Cannabis industry advocates, meanwhile, have been urging lawmakers to pass the SAFE Banking Act to allow marijuana businesses to use banking services, since it is more likely to secure bipartisan support.
The legislation set for a House vote, titled the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, would eliminate criminal penalties associated with marijuana.
It would further establish a process to expunge the convictions of nonviolent marijuana offenders and fund programs to help communities negatively impacted by the war on drugs by imposing a federal tax on marijuana sales.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
lack of control in ANYTHING in life will cost a person in end.
Gambling is legal as well.
Prostitution is legal in some States.
Alcohol is legal.
Vaping pure nicotine is legal.
Viagra is legal.
Get the US Government OUT of your house and your personal business.
I’m 59.
I don’t need a babysitter anymore.
They’ll “legalize” weed the way they “legalized” alcohol. The crooks and international speculators will get rich along with dishonest politicians.
One thing to think about prohibition: Before that, a lot of people had their home booze operations.
Booze is pretty hard and expensive to produce. If you want to make money from it, you have to invest in a large facility. A lot of plantations, farms, ranches made their own and when you DO make your own, you learn to love and value it. It takes about a bushel of some vegetable to produce a couple of bottles of decent wine - and a lot of time and careful monitoring. If you’re talking distillates, it’s a lot more stuff to make about an ounce or less of product.
In other words, it’s a labor of love. You and your household and servants are not going to just drink it all up as soon as it hits the bricks.
Once the government gets involved - wanting in on the potential racket and its potentially insane profits, since almost everybody likes booze, even non-drunks who only drink once in a great, great while, and of course some folks can never get enough of it - expect for everything to get jacked up. First they will prohibit alcohol (and blame women, right? almost everyone who campaigned against alcohol in the old days was a woman) and make everyone miserable (or dead).
THEN they bring it back, except with licensing, fees, regulations, and taxes.
Now that is happening with pot.
Haha, I’m waiting for the same with opiates. That will be a party, won’t it?
The fentanyl that’s pouring in from Chin’s is making some reconsider about legal marijuana. Going to an approved distributor would leave the Chinese out of it plus all the money the government would collect from the sales tax.
The booze breath that comes out of drunks that show up in my hospitals ER would knock a buzzard off a s**t wagon.
Or from a compost heap.
You anti-marijuana types are such hypocrites. How much fertilizer do you suppose it takes to grow the grains that produce alcohol?
Would you feeling any better if they were getting drunk on their ass every night?
Really genius?
How much fertilizer do you suppose it takes to grow the grains that produce alcohol?
And how many drunken drivers are arrested every day, every week by plowing into somebody?
For God’s sake do people ever listen to yourselves?
It doesn't contain nicotine,, tobacco does.
And while heavy cannabis use can cause respiratory problems it doesn't not cause the type of dependency tobacco does.
Marijuana has medicinal uses.
Alcohol has none.
And I'm a recovering alcoholic who has no problem with others drinking.
My drinking was my problem, not society's and as far as marijuana it's high time adults were allowed to smoke it the same way adults are allowed to drink and gamble legally.
I agree.
The bill will pass on 20 April 2022.
Interesting...
5.56mm
He did a good stretch in jail for that and attended AA while in the joint. Never was the same guy after what he'd done. He left my AA group some years ago and we never heard from him again.
Boy, Harry J. Anslinger would be proud of you.
I don’t think you can compare weed to booze, although that’s the common argument. It’s not as easy to control and it has completely different effects. I understand the libertarian point of view, but I also think there are some things that government should actively discourage as much as encourage. Right now it’s doing both to all the wrong things.
Give em a break. They were high when they wrote this.
Unless medically supervised (as it was with me years ago) alcohol withdrawal can be fatal.
If indeed the anti drug warriors are so hot against marijuana
legalization then let's go whole hog. Bring back alcohol prohibition and let's get rid of tobacco and all tobacco products.
Eh not exactly, ever hear of the ATF?
Feds went after the minority’s drugs when prohibition was repealed. Maybe some FReeper has a list of how many laws we’d have to remove to restore our full constitutional rights.
A very eye-openingly long list...
The “barrier to entry” in the pot world, is exceedingly low.
Once legal, everyone and his brother will be growing it in their back yard. There will be no more “marijuana industry”.
Nothing to tax, anymore than they tax the tomatoes grown in my garden.
This should be fun to watch.
Invest in hydroponics and grow lights.
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