Posted on 07/02/2014 11:27:52 AM PDT by Rebelbase
$19 million in new tax revenue.
Marijuana-related arrests, which make up 50% of all drug-related crimes, have plummeted in Colorado, freeing up law enforcement to focus on other criminal activity. By removing marijuana penalties, the state saved somewhere between $12 million and $40 million in 2012, according to the Colorado Center on Law and Policy.
According to government data, the Denver city- and county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% since recreational marijuana use was legalized in January. This is compared to the same period last year, a time frame encompassing Jan. 1 through April 30.
(Excerpt) Read more at mic.com ...
You posted that Marijuana was not used by humans until recently, I corrected you.
58% of Americans say marijuana should be legalized.
Efforts to slowly strangle off tobacco usage (and thereby produce a defacto "prohibition") are showing more promise.
Education works - coercion fails.
As do I, but current standards are too lax in my opinion.
Cigarette usage is being assaulted from every direction. It is being heavily regulated, Taxed and maligned with it's own money. The status of cigarette usage and the various and diverse effort to eradicate it ought to be a case study for how any sort of prohibition might be enacted with minimal backlash.
Had the Alcohol prohibitionists followed a similar route they may have eventually achieved their objective. They made the mistake of pushing too hard and too fast. The Backlash did them in.
But the effort to eradicate cigarettes will not likely work with stronger drugs. While the cravings of cigarette smokers are persistent, they are nothing as compared to the cravings of a crack head or heroin user.
As for the drop in Alcohol usage, (assuming your numbers are correct) I can only surmise that those users substituted other things.
I am claiming that a majority of Americans are too disconnected from the COST of the things for which they vote. We are 100 trillion in debt if you count the Social Security and Medicaid projected spending. We have been living on a credit card since the 1960s. (When tax paying ceased to be a requirement for voting.)
So you have no evidence and you hope enough huffing and puffing will obscure that fact.
Are you freaking kidding me? Do you KNOW any pot heads? I can show you a dozen of the worthless bums. The worthless ones are common place, at least around where I live. The vaunted ones who supposedly can indulge their weed and keep a job? I don't know any of those.
The ones I know are on Welfare or some other form of government assistance. (I know quite a few "disabled" vets (really people who just figured out how to play the system)) who spend their entire check on drinking and toking.
You're funny.
Sure thing. You know where the door is.
Oh I haven't lost patience about arguing with drug boosters, i've just lost patience with looking at their endless supply of made up crap and propaganda.
It isn't worth the brain strain to debunk their "research." Tired of going down that road.
No, You just aren't keeping up with the discussion and took isolated words out of context. As far as the United States was concerned, Marijuana is a recent addition to the available pharmacopeia. I don't care that China knew about it five thousand years ago, that has nothing to do with why it was banned here, and the reason it was banned here was because the Population of the United States had little experience with it. (As a drug anyway.) To them it was recent.
After the bad experiences with cocaine and heroin, the Authorities were not in the mood to put up with a new drug, even one as relatively harmless as Marijuana appears to be. Had it been part of European culture it might have gotten a pass, but as it was relatively NEW to American/European culture, it didn't. So they banned it.
As for your epidemiological model: Your second chart and the "casual user" curve on your last chart don't fit the curve, and the second chart shows that the third chart appears to fit only because it's conveniently cut off after about 1960. Thanks for disproving your epidemiological theory of drug use.
Surmising, imagining, and assuming are staples of the pro-drug-war position.
I do not so chose. It is the nature of what our system has become to allow the fools and parasites to have equal say as the contributors, and they have come to outnumber us.
Are you claiming that a majority of Americans are too drunk or drugged to pay their own bills?
I am claiming that a majority of Americans are too disconnected from the COST of the things for which they vote.
But many of those disconnected are contributors - so you haven't supported your claim that taxpayers/contributors are outnumbered.
The vaunted ones who supposedly can indulge their weed and keep a job? I don't know any of those.
You wouldn't - the self-discipline that allows them to keep a job also allows them to not let you know they indulge their weed.
So you have the patience to keep posting baseless dismissals, but not the patience to post responses that might persuade an honest undecided lurker. Whatever floats your boat, I guess ...
With all the rampant propaganda going on, 52% thought Barack Obama was the answer too.
Not that i'm buying your study anyway.
Education works - coercion fails.
You haven't seen any of the anti-smoking ads have you? Tobacco is being heavily maligned (and paying for it with their own money) taxed and regulated out of existence.
What you are calling "education" is pretty much just blatant propaganda designed to instill hate, and does not in any way resemble "education." The taxes and Regulation are just a form of coercion.
So "Prohibition" against tobacco is working because they are slowly squeezing the life out of it with a combination of propaganda and coercion.
Not that i'll be sad to see it go. I detest tobacco. Still, I can see what's happening.
Yeah, access to it by problem drinkers. I think you ought to have to have a license (a checkbox on your drivers license will do) that allows you to buy it.
You get caught abusing it, and they revoke your ability to legally purchase it. The same system would work for Marijuana.
There are enough sensible drinkers to keep the market focused on them rather than chase after the smaller number of problem drinkers.
If the black market isn't worth the trouble, people won't bother feeding it.
Hey now thar ain't nothing wrong with a little chewing and spitting
(that was sarcasm)
A quick comment: pot enforcement in my rural part of Virginia is close to zero. They might use it as a secondary offense if they are particularly upset at your reckless driving. Dealers will still mostly get busted and charged. But among the kids it is well known that the cops will give you your paraphernalia back or not confiscate it at all. They might confiscate the pot, or might not, or allegedly might snoke it themselves. Among adults there is a widespread social acceptance of smoking pot. I would say the war is over by default.
Of course not - you've concocted a self-contained reality where all evidence presented against the drug war is deemed unreliable because it's been presented as evidence against the drug war.
Tobacco is being heavily maligned (and paying for it with their own money) taxed and regulated out of existence.
Maligning, regulating, and taxing (though not to the point NYC is doing with tobacco, which has created a local black market) drugs would be far preferable to the criminal-enriching status quo.
Surmising, imagining, and assuming are staples of the pro-drug-war position.
Your surmise is incorrect: http://www.samhsa.gov/data/nhsda/1997main/nhsda1997mfWeb-15.htm#Table2.4.
Yeah, I think this is pretty much a dead thread, so i’m not interested in looking at your assertions.
I think i’ll find something more interesting so you can declare “Victory!” or something.
Cop 1:
Hey like, would you want to run down to Main St and check out the reported bank robbery, like, soon man?
Cop 2:
Here, hit it again, hit it like a man, yeah, yeah, yeah...
You want to go where man?
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.