Posted on 04/03/2009 5:15:06 PM PDT by sdcraigo
For the past several years, I've been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life's exit ramp...I even have a slogan for the campaign: "Tune in, turn on, drop dead." A fantasy, I suppose. But, beneath the furious roil of the economic crisis, a national conversation has quietly begun about the irrationality of our drug laws. It is going on in state legislatures, like New York's, where the draconian Rockefeller drug laws are up for review; in other states, from California to Massachusetts, various forms of marijuana decriminalization are being enacted. And it has reached the floor of Congress, where Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter have proposed a major prison-reform package, which would directly address drug-sentencing policy. ...The hypocrisy inherent in the American conversation about stimulants is staggering. But there are big issues here, issues of economy and simple justice, especially on the sentencing side. As Webb pointed out in a cover story in Parade magazine, the U.S. is, by far, the most "criminal" country in the world, with 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
When you toss out terms like anarchist, do you actually know what the term means? I am serious. If you do know what it means, what part of my discourse has indicated anarchism?
I am also curious on your credentials. Degrees? Positions? Papers?
I didn’t exactly see anything about you that impressed me. I did a cursory google check like you said, and.. well.. I can see why you stand up for pot like it’s your life.
Yet you, didn’t say who you were and haven’t answered a single question.
I’ll stand by who I am and not worry about your anonymous opinion. Just another post on the web with a poster that hides in the shadows.
I forget, are you trying to prove pot is a good drug for people to use? What is your agenda again?
Meanwhile, drug warriors don’t give a CRAP about anything besides the fact that they’ve achieved the world’s number-one per capita prison state — and it’s not even primarily at the expense of the growers, distributors, and consumers of the herb itself: it’s at your expense. Call it the moral outrage tax. You sad, sad little government tool.
While I can’t speak for anyone else, my agenda is for my government to arrive at a drug policy that does not actively damage public health, nor incarcerate non-violent drug offenders at my expense.
Jefferson wrote, “If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls who live under tyranny.” He obviously wasn’t attempting to “prove pot is a good drug for people to use.” He was merely being a responsible conservative and asking you to think twice before paying your government to lock up your neighbor.
That's because it's illegal and successful people who smoke pot are rarely going to broadcast the fact that they smoke it, unless they can do so anonymously. But there are plenty of people who do quite well financially who smoke marijuana. It's a vice and doing it all the time certainly doesn't tend to help people succeed in life, but of course drinking alcohol morning, noon and night doesn't usually help people out much in that regard either. There are plenty of people though who smoke marijuana in moderation who do very well. The vast majority of adult pot smokers work. The statistics bear that out. Some are quite successful. I know several people who do it who are extremely productive high earners. You would never even guess that they smoke pot though if you dealt with them.
Sooo, what am I looking at there?
Look how the Mexican cartels have taken over the the meth market which used to be small and localized.
I can't really speak for anyone else about why they argue that it should be legal. I believe it should be legal because I think that we are causing enormous harm trying in vain to keep up the ban on pot. We are causing far more harm than good. Most American adults under 60 have tried it. More than 100 million Americans have tried it. Tens of thousands of metric tons of marijuana are available in this country every year despite all our efforts to stop the trade in marijuana. Organized crime, especially these Mexican drug cartels causing so many problems today, are making an absolute fortune from it. They make most of their income from marijuana sales, even though they bring in and distribute most all the cocaine, meth and heroin consumed in this country and only part of the pot. The fact is that more marijuana is consumed here than all other illegal drugs combined. It is super easy to find anywhere in this country and it's cheaper than beer on a per use basis in most cases.
We are completely failing on the “war on marijuana.” All we are doing is enriching organized crime to the tune of many billions of dollars a year and making it easier for them to get their other far more dangerous drugs out to the masses because they just piggy back those substances in on top of the marijuana and push it all through the same channels and it ends up being sold in many cases by the same people selling their marijuana to consumers. We're spending a fortune fighting against marijuana. We're wasting man hours and resources that could be put to much more effective use. We've created an unnecessary rift between a significant portion of our society and law enforcement. So many people are breaking these laws that it can only erode respect for the rule of law in general. We are causing so much harm in so many ways and accomplishing very little in the way of good.
Do you really think there are a millions and millions of people out there who want to smoke pot but won't just because it is illegal? Most people don't smoke pot. They don't smoke it because there are good reasons not to smoke it, and most all of those reasons would still exist even if it was legal and regulated similar to alcohol. The very slight chance that someone will get caught and get what in most cases will be not much more than a slap on the wrist is not deterring many folks. Since the late Sixties the percentage of people in this country who smoke pot has always been one of the highest in the world, if not the highest, even though there are several countries now that basically allow it. Even in the Netherlands where they allow possession and small scale growing and openly sell marijuana from shops they have a smaller percentage of their people smoking marijuana than we have here. It is ingrained in our society and the only way we will ever have dramatically cut into the marijuana trade and per capita use in this country is if we go all out like Chairman Mao did with opium in China, and that will never happen. It's not worth it to throw the Constitution out the window, turn our society into a society of informants, start shooting people in the back the head without trials and become tyrannical totalitarian police state, just to get rid of marijuana.
Marijuana is not completely harmless. It's not good for people, except perhaps in some limited circumstances where it's being used for medicinal purposes. Recreational use of marijuana is not good for society. But clearly marijuana is not as bad as drugs like meth or heroin or cocaine. People aren't out there selling their bodies or stealing to get marijuana like we will often see with these other drugs. Marijuana use does not tend to lead to violent behavior. The illegal trade in marijuana does, but I'm in court all the time and I have never once heard someone say, “he never beats me up unless he smokes marijuana,” and I've heard that countless times when they were talking about alcohol, and sometimes about meth or cocaine. Heavy use can make people pretty lazy but we aren't having just a whole lot of problems from people because of marijuana use. Most who smoke it aren't bothering anyone. I wouldn't say this about a drug like meth, but it is just not worth it to keep trying in vain to keep up the ban on marijuana, not when so many people are using it and our efforts are causing so much more harm than good. In fact it's not only not worth it to try to keep the ban going, it is stupid and counterproductive.
So if you were to ask me what my agenda is on this issue, I'd tell you it is to get these stupid laws changed as quickly as possible. The tide is turning. Polls are now showing 40% or more support legalizing and regulating marijuana similar to alcohol. The percentage for legalization is slowly but surely increasing and has been for many years now. It's only a matter of time before it happens, and I say the quicker it happens the better. People who think like you do will go into panic mode when it happens. But within a few years you will see that the sky is not going to fall in, and before long most everyone will be wondering why we didn't do it a long time ago.
Peter Lewis, CEO of Progressive Insurance, is a “pothead.”
You may not like his politics, but the man is a self made billionaire and his business success speaks for itself.
Do you know why the Mexicans were so easily able to take over the meth market? It's because of they already had smuggling routes and huge marijuana distribution network they could run the meth through. Mexico has always been a marijuana producing country and even before the Sixties they were growing marijuana and it was being smuggled into this country. We used to get marijuana from all over though, from Jamaica, Panama and other countries in Central and South America, from Asia, etc. We used to get a lot of Middle Eastern and African hash too. The Mexicans took almost all that business though. They were uniquely situated on our Southern border such that they had easy access to this country and all drugs coming from below Mexico had to come through Mexico if they went by land. At first much of not most of the pot coming from Mexico was grown their and picked up and brought in by people in this country. Slowly but surely they took over smuggling and distribution up to the point now that they are often selling to the person selling to retailers or are only a level or two above that. They also produced and smuggled a small amount of heroin in and were making inroads in cocaine smuggling and distribution and eventually took over most all the cocaine smuggling and distribution business and completely edged the Colombians out of the US pot business. Now the Colombians sell their pot in their region mostly and they sell most all their cocaine bound for the U.S. to the Mexicans and let them worry about smuggling and distributing it.
The Mexicans have been involved with meth for a long time though and took over the meth market long before you might think. Even before the controls on pseudoephedrine were put in place here the Mexicans were supplying almost all the meth in this country. Little kitchen meth labs usually produced only a few grams at a time most of what they produced was consumed by the cooks and all their little helpers. They'd sell a little a little but it was a drop in the bucket compared to the big amounts being brought in by the Mexicans. For decades most of the meth available on the market has come from big labs. These “superlabs” produce batches of 10 pounds or more and they keep these places running day and night turning out batch after batch. Mexicans have been producing tons and tons of this stuff for a long time now, and just running through their existing distribution networks.
Marijuana is the most popular illegal drug. Far more people use it than any other illegal drug. Cocaine is the second most used illegal drug in this country but total demand for all the cocaine, meth and heroin consumed here is in the hundreds of tons compared to many thousands of tons of marijuana. It is their most profitable drug, and it is the one that they are able to reach the most people with. When we take it from them, the black market for illegal drugs will shrink to something much smaller with far fewer participants, users and sellers. When we take marijuana from Mexican organized crime, they are no longer going to have access to most of these former participants in the black market for illegal drugs. Licensed pot stores aren't going to sell their cocaine and meth for them. Taking marijuana is going to hurt them not only by depriving them of most of their income, but it's also going to make it harder for them to move their other far more dangerous drugs.
These organizations have already branched out into other criminal activities and will no doubt try to do more of that if we take marijuana from them. But their not going to be able to replace these billions and billions of dollars in annual income they'll lose. There will not be enough money to support such big and powerful organizations and they will shrink and become less powerful and less of a threat. And fewer people are going to be attracted to that lifestyle to begin with because there won't be nearly as much money to go around. In the end there should be less crime and less corruption for us to deal with.
They will continue to smuggle heroin, cocaine and illegals into the US. With the new tobacco taxes cigarette smuggling will skyrocket. The islamonazis have long been involved in it in this country. "Zero's" administration has no plans to improve border security.
The criminal enterprises in the US will turn to other lucrative endeavors to make up the cash flow that they had from pot. As I said before, a criminal with a felony record, no skills or education is not going to turn to a legal, low paying job if pot becomes illegal.
I don’t hear about or see in the news reports about police responding to domestic disputes between potheads.
Maybe it is just me, but after hearing this argument many times, I just don't quite understand the logic. Of course the hard core dealers/cartels will not just start flipping burgers. But why does that mean that decrim is incorrect? They do what they do because it is very lucrative and relatively simple. Taking the profit motive out of it will end their participation in it. Which by definition means less violence on the supply side. They will have a much harder time when their activities have actual victims who will actively help law enforcement to catch them. It would seem to me that if we really wanted to deal with these "monsters", we would be happy to make their lives more difficult and therefore make it more likely that they would be caught.
What I am missing?
So a well known liberal moron is your example? Nice. I hear Soros is big into pot too, another fine person to model yourself on?
One of my grandfathers and his brother had a still in the woods to get free booze and supplement their income from the carpentry business. After prohibition they went on to build houses and later entire subdivisions. They didn't deal drugs or rob people or any of that kind of crap when the Prohibition was over. Joe Kennedy made millions in the illegal alcohol trade. Countless people made beer or wine or liquor to sell, others ran liquor in souped up cars, others operated or worked at speakeasies, or acted as lookouts or worked in some other capacity in that illegal industry, and when Prohibition was over most of them didn't continue in a life of crime.
Yes, hardcore criminals will remain criminals, but a whole lot of the people involved in the illegal marijuana industry are going to end up just working regular jobs. For most people involved in that industry it's just a little side business anyway. The easy money attracts people, and it is more attractive than a lot of other criminal activity because it doesn't involve robbing and stealing and hurting people and all that, or at least the majority of involvement in that industry doesn't involve any of that. Most of the people involved don't feel like they are hurting anyone and they believe that if they don't do whatever it is they are doing someone else will just do it.
I'm not saying there aren't some very bad people involved in that industry but just like during alcohol Prohibition there are an awful lot that aren't exactly hardened criminals. Most are actually temporarily involved and they get out anyway as they get older. The vast majority of the people I knew who sold pot when I was smoking it as a teen and young adult in the late Seventies and early Eighties don't sell any drugs any more and a lot of them don't even smoke pot anymore.
Prohibition causes crime. The illegal drug trade is an attractive nuisance. Many young people are sucked in by the temptation of free partying and a little easy money. For many it's a passing phase they'll go through. For some it will become a way of life. Most of the illegal drug trade centers around marijuana, far and away the most popular illegal drug. This is just one more good reason to legalize it, so that fewer people will be attracted to criminal activity in the first place. We can't do that much about the hardened criminals that have already been created except root them out and lock them up, but we can reduce the number of people who will be sucked into a life of crime in the future.
“I don’t hear about or see in the news reports about police responding to domestic disputes between potheads.”
That’s because it almost never happens. I’ve prosecuted. I’ve defended. I’ve handled well over a thousand criminal cases, countless little misdemeanor domestic battery type cases and all sorts of felony violent crimes and I’ve never seen a case where someone got violent because he smoked pot. I hear all the time about how some guy is just as nice as can be until starts drinking and gets mean and beats on people in his family. But I never hear that about pot from victims, witnesses or anyone involved in these proceedings. It just doesn’t do that to people. It makes them sit on the couch and stare at the TV. I’ll sometimes hear a wife complaining that her useless husband smokes pot all the time and never gets things done, but I don’t hear about her husband getting mean and beating on her when he smokes pot because that’s just not what that stuff does to people. Don Corleone here doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s just got an active imagination.
“Joe Biden is a drug warrior.
So I guess you can “model yourself on” him.”
Nice one.
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