Posted on 10/26/2010 6:28:08 PM PDT by prairiebreeze
Our marijuana laws are clearly doing more harm than good. The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.
Law enforcement agencies today spend many billions of taxpayer dollars annually trying to enforce this unenforceable prohibition. The roughly 750,000 arrests they make each year for possession of small amounts of marijuana represent more than 40% of all drug arrests.
Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually. It also would reduce the crime, violence and corruption associated with drug markets, and the violations of civil liberties and human rights that occur when large numbers of otherwise law-abiding citizens are subject to arrest. Police could focus on serious crime instead.
The racial inequities that are part and parcel of marijuana enforcement policies cannot be ignored. African-Americans are no more likely than other Americans to use marijuana but they are three, five or even 10 times more likelydepending on the cityto be arrested for possessing marijuana. I agree with Alice Huffman, president of the California NAACP, when she says that being caught up in the criminal justice system does more harm to young people than marijuana itself. Giving millions of young Americans a permanent drug arrest record that may follow them for life serves no one's interests.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I recall reading a few years ago that he owns a lot of drug-producing land in South America (I seem to recall this had to do mainly with Bolivia).
Soros doesn’t give a damn about people... he’s in it for the profit (his).
I agree with him although I want comprehensive drug reform. Legalize it. Don’t tax it. Then abolish welfare. If you smoke yourself jobless then don’t expect the taxpayers to help you out with welfare. Simple.
It’s not that I agree with Soros, who is nothing to me, it’s that I agree with the idea that marijuana should be legalized.
I’ll go the liquor store to pick up a sixpack of beer, and I see people with a couple of quart bottles of Jack Daniel’s. And I can promise you that smoking a joint does not impair a person anywhere near the impairment of a person who’s been knocking back shots of hard liquor, there’s no comparison.
If marijuana did all the bad things that anti-legalization adherents say it does, this country would be in a much worse state than it is right now.
No matter how you slice it drinking is a much worse problem in this country than smoking marijuana is.
Ping for later
Well said and absolutely correct.
I agree with his conclusion. I’m not going to bother reading his reasons.
And as a former Police Officer in the Air Force and Reserves nd with many State and Local Police department friends I can say they mostly agree- they have never had to break up a domestic with pot-heads...The mosney we waste with police fighting this...
Here is a mental exercise for you. If policing marijuana usage is so expensive, go the way of the city of Oakland declaring certain crimes and felonies to not be worthy of police investigation. That is, make as policy a virtual "sanctuary city" for pot-heads in the same way cities decline to enforce immigration laws by making "sanctuary cities" for illegal aliens.
If it is so damned expensive, then surely not enforcing marijuana laws by ignoring possession and flagrant use will be a boon to city coffers and increase the quality of life in that city in the same way ignoring the teeming hordes of illegal aliens have made our urban centers such utopian centers of social and fiscal bliss.
Somehow, even the most profligate wasters of public money and caterers to the lowest common denominator of mankind know that a sanctuary city for dope smokers is one of the fastest ways to guarantee instant sub-Detroit status.
The “Brave New World” drugged population voting for free gubmint cheetos theory is the only rational explanation I’ve heard as to why libs love people smoking weed but hate tobacco smokers.
That plus that there is not billions for grant junkie scientists to be made in taking on Big Weed.
That and maybe the thought of some big company making money selling it legally bothers them.
I’m in favor of legalization and leaving everyone the hell alone. Prohibition is not a legitimate gubmint function.
He believes in it because it breaks down society which he is a big supporter of.
Civility... Much appreciated!
I so detest Soros and everything he stands for!!!
I was neutral on the Pot issue, but if George wants it I’m bitterly opposed!
Youtube has great videos on cultural Marxism and about how Marcuse integrated Marx and Freud. I’ve read the Long March by Roger Kimball and the Closing of the American Mind by Bloom which goes into most philosophy—esp. the post modern German philosophy.
Kimball’s book really states all the garbage that the Beats injected into the culture in the 50’s also....to know that English professors lauded such cr*p is right out of Marcuse’s playbook....glorify trashy sexual perversion and awful art.
If you read what Ginsberg and Burroughs wrote—it is so vile and disgusting and sick...about sodomizing anything and everything and even hanging boys while doing it—made me ill that those “men” were promoted by the elite and they wanted to put into the healthy minds of vulnerable teenagers, sick de Sade type thinking.
The professors that glorify this work and promote it in the Universities as they shove out Milton, Dickens and Aristotle, and true art should be thrown in hell because they have destroyed and killed so many young, naive kids, including my sister, by promoting and glorifying filth and nihilism to the young and impressionable. They are evil, evil people as are all Marxists.
Ideas kill and destroy lives. The ideas our universities (except a few private ones like Hillsdale) are forcing into the heads of our young adults are criminal. They indoctrinate and brainwash and seduce them into a world of drugs, sex and Marxism. Destructive godless hellhole which will destroy their lives and give them no future.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html
They went much farther than what is being proposed here, but take a look at their results and give a fair opinion on them.
So by that splendid logic you used to decide on an issue, if Soros was against illegal immigration you would be for it?
I support it too. We waste spectacular amounts of money trying to stamp out pot and trample civil liberties to do it. As a libertarian i’d love to see this epic big government waste of money stop.
Post # 13 can be easily written off as sarcasm. So if you're looking to rally a big IBTZ crowd, I think you might be disappointed
Sorry to burst your bubble. 8^)
Victim? I have a degree in Chemical Engineering and an MBA, Im 28 and working as a process engineer as well as being a part owner of a business. I dont smoke pot currently, but I used to in college if you would like to know. I dont understand where you developped the idea im victimizing myself, did Soros say that “potheads” dont victimize themsselves making you decide that they do?
I like to decide on issues using my own mind and not simply go against something because someone, no matter who, says.
My goodness you must write articles. Please! I’m begging, crawling on my hands and knees! Really!
I saw a headline on FR today about how the disgusting Dept of Education wants to control higher education as well as K-12. Our country is doomed unless the leftists are destroyed.
Hardly anyone knows all the stuff you do or can put it together in such clear manner.
People NEED to know this stuff!
(Sorry about whatever happened to your sister. Almost my entire family are ultra avowed leftists and none of them communicate with me except one.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.