Let’s stay on track: Marijuana is an awesome drug, and more people should vote for it to be legal, or at least vote against the politicians who are against it.
Period.
I am, as noted yesterday, not a stoner, and I have very, very rarely partaken of it in the last decade. Usually a toke at a party when a joint is being passed around. Maybe a bong rip when someone is offering. Hell, I haven’t BOUGHT weed since 1996. At all. And I have no addiction to it, I don’t sit around with my tendons and veins standing out as I wait in anticipation for another headline about another state legalizing it. It’s just fun, like having a few beers with friends.
And if it was legal, yes, I would, absolutely would, buy some and have fun getting high when I had the time to do so.
The current political mood in the USA is moving toward the repeal of prohibition, and I am all for this. Let’s get Big Tobacco into the game. I wanna see joints sold in gas stations by Philip Morris. I want to be able to buy a pack of 10 joints for $20, and have half that money turned into state tax revenue. Watch state economies explode with surplus.
If you’re under the age of 60, I don’t care if you’re Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or one of those other strange third parties: You know what I’m saying is true. Weed should not be illegal. It should be something you can buy freely, and enjoy freely, at home or at a party. And we should provide amnesty to the non-violent weed offenders currently incarcerated. The millions incarcerated or on parole/probation for non-violent drug offenses, the majority of which are possession of marijuana.
The current prohibition is batshit fucking stupid and serves no purpose beyond incarcerating people who, in my view, did nothing wrong at all.
Let’s argue!
Why 60? I know a 93 y/o, hard core Republican who’s never had a toke in his life who voted for CO’s new law and 30 y/o acquaintances who voted against. Meddlesome officiousness, moral self-sanctification, and malicious Grundyism know no age limit.
“And we should provide amnesty to the non-violent weed offenders currently incarcerated.”
Yes, yes, and yes. Too many people are locked away for stupid reasons and too many violent offenders walk our streets. This is a major issue in our world.
No, think of the children of the prison industry employees. Do you want the children to go hungry?
Prisons are so far beyond proper capacity that we could probably release every marijuana offender and not lose one prison staff job.
Methinks you underestimate the number of people in for (nothing but) one or another marijuana-connected offense.
Yes but you see it brings in revenue for the prison system, we can’t have that can we? LOL
I have to say that I agree: I believe that the federal government has absolutely no right to dictate what people must or must not put in their bodies.
To be entirely clear: I don’t support heroin users any more than I support antivaxers, I just don’t believe the federal government has the authority to prohibit either behavior.
We have a lot of problems in this country, and I believe that many of them stem from government acting on the urge to “do something about X.” On the whole, I believe that acting on these urges is destructive to liberty, and that we would be far better off if it could be effectively restrained.
Blame the behavior. Not the product. That applies to drugs as much as guns and that is why both should be completely legal – all types, all kinds.
On the other hand, personal responsibility is everything. If you fuck up, you fucked up and you should be punished for it. Regardless of what tools or drugs are involved in the fucked up behavior.
If it means you have to spend some time in prison, then so shall it be, but restore all rights of former convicts as soon as they walk out. Otherwise, that implies they are not ready to return to society. Which means they should still be in prison.
Call me black-and-white, but this society and this justice system is far too gray and muddy.
“Blame the behavior. Not the product. That applies to drugs as much as guns and that is why both should be completely legal – all types, all kinds.”
Yes. All our current controls are nothing more than prior restraints. I do not believe that it is the government’s job to try to deprive us of our rights as a means of preventing us from causing tangible harm to others: deprivation of rights should only come after an individual causes tangible harm to another.
“On the other hand, personal responsibility is everything. If you fuck up, you fucked up and you should be punished for it. Regardless of what tools or drugs are involved in the fucked up behavior.”
Exactly: Rights come with responsibilities; Until an individual proves otherwise by causing tangible harm to another, society (and therefore government) has no legitimate interest in curtailing the liberties of that individual. The restraint should come after the crime, and not before it.
“If it means you have to spend some time in prison, then so shall it be, but restore all rights of former convicts as soon as they walk out. Otherwise, that implies they are not ready to return to society. Which means they should still be in prison.”
This is a general concept with which I agree. Still, I do believe that there is room for a wider array of legitimate forms of government restraint apart from simple incarceration. In other words, I believe that there should be a spectrum of forms of government stewardship with varying degrees of impact on the liberties of those adjudicated thereto. Just like weaning someone off a drug, we should wean people out of stewardship programs, and back into society. Gradually restore their ability to exercise their rights along the way, until the government is no longer supervising them, at which point their rights are fully restored to them.
If, at any point along the way either party believes that the original adjudication (setting out the prescribed time in each level of supervision) should be reconsidered, it should require either agreement from all involved parties (offender, victim, prosecuting authority, etc.) and/or further adjudication (wherein, the burden will rest on the side lobbying to change the timetable).
As far as the idea of amnesty for non-violent drug offenders goes, my view is a little more complicated…
On the whole, I believe that our penal system, and our society as a whole, effectively treats those with criminal records as second-class citizens. Crimes are are more likely to be prosecuted than they were in the past, and prosecutors today tend to use the shotgun approach (charge with everything possible, and try to make something hit). The cost of defense has also gone up tremendously, such that the accused are more likely to take a plea deal in order to avoid a trial (which can easily result in bankruptcy).
Then, those that are convicted of crimes have to carry that conviction around for the rest of their natural lives. This, in turn, often results in them being treated as second-class citizens: Convictions often make it hard to find a good/well-paying job.
In effect, we’re increasing the percentage of the population that has a record of felony convictions at an alarming rate, while at the same time relegating those with felony convictions to the worst jobs. In turn, this causes many of them to pursue lives of crime, because it has the potential for better remuneration than working at McDonald’s or Walmart.
In effect, we’ve set up a vicious cycle where we are treating a significant portion of the population as second-class citizens, and effectively dooming them to lives of poverty and/or crime.
We need to change this. To do so, we need to attack the problem from both ends: First, we need to end the policy of felony convictions being lifetime impediments; once someone has served their debt to society*, they should get their lives back. Second, we need to confront the problem of malicious prosecution, and ensure that there are tangible penalties for baselessly/maliciously pursuing prosecution against citizens.
*I go by a variant of the Codrea principle (Anyone who cannot be trusted with a gun cannot be trusted without a custodian): Once the state is no longer your custodian (prison, parole, etc.), you should have your rights, and your life, restored.
i’m 50 years old. i can honestly say that i’ve not ever done any drugs that were not doctor-prescribed.
i can also honestly say that i have medical conditions that are Not Happy Companions for me. i WISH tx would legalize, so that i could get that benefit. (i can also honestly say that while drinking probably does get me impaired, i no longer get a buzz. nor a hangover.) the last time i was medicated to the point that i had no pain (in hospital) i burst into tears. marijuana would be helpful in that regard.
we have more issues with people driving drunk than we do with people driving stoned. and alcohol is a legal drug. take from that what you will.
>the last time i was medicated to the point that i had no pain (in hospital)
Testify, sister.
$20 for 10 joints? Good luck with that……
Why not? Cannabis grows like a weed almost anywhere; tobacco takes comparatively careful cultivation, and yet tobacco cigarettes cost far less than $2 each. The big reason why marijuana is expensive now is because of how inefficient and risky the production, distribution, and sales processes are. Implement large and intensive farming operations to bring supply up and develop well-managed distribution channels, and overhead (and thus price) will come down dramatically.
Mind you, if Philip Morris is selling it, it’s going to be the worst form of chronic, matching the quality of their tobacco. $20 for a ten-pack should be easily achievable for them, though; it’ll just take a few years to bring production up.
“Why not? Cannabis grows like a weed almost anywhere; tobacco takes comparatively careful cultivation, and yet tobacco cigarettes cost far less than $2 each.”
Assuming we’re talking about equal quantities of plant matter, I think you just made his point: If tobacco is harder to cultivate, then why should it sell for less than cannabis?
I read Dogboy49’s point the other way around–that $20 was an unbelievably low price, not an unbelievably high one. As far as being a high price, I think that the present market would absolutely bear $2 per cigarette, since that’s still a small percentage of what they cost now. Like you implied, there’s huge profit margin there and prices will most likely come down dramatically over time, but to start with, I don’t think $2 per is unbelievable.
arguing seems futile when I pretty much totally agree with you. (And, um, live in Washington).
“At least you’re pretty”
HEY!! THAT’S MY LINE! (w/ Gordon)
I agree with you 100%. But as a separate matter, I don’t think it’s okay to smoke weed on the job, just like it’s generally not okay to drink on the job. Especially when it’s your first day of work at a friggin gun store.
While I agree with the concept you’ve outlined, there are practical considerations to be taken into account, for the sake of argument:
1: Taxing a plant that is, in essence, a weed is going to be a headache that cuts into the tax collected because that tax has to be enforced, which leads me to my next point:
2: Enforcement of that tax practically requires Uncle Sam getting (Or, rather, staying…) balls deep in your personal life. He doesn’t remember any other way to do enforcement.
3: Once it becomes legal across a majority of states, the tax revenue starts dropping. And I’ve seen how well state legislatures handle a surplus followed with a decline in revenue. They don’t handle it well, usually.
4: Pardoning the non-violent offenders is all well and good, but very, very, few are in prison for felony-level simple possession or “possession with intent to distribute” charges. The practical considerations here are that the act of pardoning the offenses necessitates quite a bit of work. For each inmate. That leaves an opportunity for mistakes to be made that result in lawsuits against the state government. Which brings up another point:
5: For those imprisoned for both marijuana and non-marijuana offenses, how would the pardon/amnesty/commutation be handled? commuting the sentence for the marijuana offense to time served still wouldn’t free them and restore their rights. Giving them a pardon won’t either. And that doesn’t include an answer to what exactly should be pardoned: felony possession with intent to distribute, but what about a charge for the possession of a firearm in the course of committing said felony? The tax evasion committed? How about if that person was involved in a fight inside the prison? Or possession of contraband? Mouthing off to a “corrections officer”?
6: Getting back to the monetary impact, Phillip Morris wouldn’t get into it for a simple reason: There’s no percentage in it. Too many people will have grown accustomed to the variety and selection available from local specialty shops or growing their own. Hobbyist beer/wine makers don’t buy beer or wine unless they’re not at home. Growing pot is easier than growing a lawn.
7: HSR47 gets at an important point that I’d like to get into:
The original intent of the Founding Fathers was that either what you’d done required death or incarceration until you were unable or unwilling to offend again, or that what you’d done was minor enough that remuneration would be sufficient to make the victim whole. We’ve gotten away from this. We need sentencing reform: Either apply the death penalty (which requires reform in its own right to make it faster and more accurate) or keep those in prison longer, before releasing them with intact rights. A lifetime taint serves little purpose other than smacking of pettiness. That’s not to say that if a former prisoner offends again after release that they shouldn’t hang by their neck as they’re lowered into a log chipper: After all, they’ve confirmed that they can’t act like a responsible adult like the rest of society.
1: The way to enforce the taxation of something like cannabis is to tax the commercial sale of it. Liquor laws may well be a good example of this, because they form a good framework of taxing commercial sale while also permitting untaxed personal manufacture.
It may or may not work, but it at least seems like the most logical place to start.
2: See above: If only the commercial sale of the product is taxed, then there’s no real reason the regulatory structure would need to be any more complicated than what is required to enforce liquor sale laws that exist in several states.
3: Yes and no. From what I’ve heard about the situation on the ground in Colorado, the black market hasn’t really been hit too hard: The taxes are almost prohibitively high, and many of the customers are new users and/or out-of-state buyers. Once more states adopt a similar policy of legalization, the number of out of state buyers will shrink, but the prices of black market product will rise (supply and demand*), which will in turn result in more people shifting from black/grey market sources to open market sources. Sure tax revenue will fall, but the costs associated with the black market (incarceration, enforcement, etc.) will also fall, and arguably enough to make up the difference.
4: This is an astute observation…. That being said, specific pardons wouldn’t be necessary if we could change the way we treat those who have been convicted of crimes; This leads nicely into #7.
5: I won’t touch on most of the specific cases you mention, but this is also largely content for #7.
6: Yes and no. Not everyone who drinks beer/wine really cares about the quality, nor do they all make their own. Do not assume that everyone shares your biases. While there is a significant number of people who *do* care about the quality of beer they drink, there are many who just want something to drink. In other words, all the various brandings of Budweiser, Coors, Miller, et. al. would not exist if there was not a significant market for them. Do not also discount the wide range of small-scale breweries: There are at least three restaurant chains in my area that brew their own beers, as well as a large regional brewery (that brews actual beer), and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I can go into my local supermarket and assemble a mixed sixpack from a wide selection of craft beers from the area, as well as the common national and imported brands.
In other words, don’t discount the people who just want to get drunk, and don’t discount the people who like good beer but don’t have the time/desire to brew their own. Both these markets would seem to exist for legal cannabis.
7: The big one.
Personally, I believe that our current system, whereby people convicted of crimes will have their rights (voting, owning guns, ever holding meaningful employment, etc.) stripped from them for life by the decision of a single judge/jury at a single point in their life to be fundamentally in opposition to the principles upon which this country was founded.
Frankly, I believe that there should be a process by which rights are restored, and one’s debt to society is considered to be “paid in full.” Furthermore, I believe that this result should be the default condition, and that any deviation from the restoration of rights should require adjudication, and not the other way around.
Thus the question becomes how such a system should be structured…. On the whole, I think the answer is, as I stated above, to apply a variation of what I call “The Codrea Principle**”: We structure the system around the gradual restoration of rights in concert with a gradual reduction of the degree of custodianship. Thus, the spectrum becomes full-time incarceration, Incarceration with work release (you live in jail, but get out to go to work and return when your shift is done), halfway house (like work release, but living in a halfway house instead of jail), parole/probation, and then finally to a state of full restoration of individual rights.
Under such a system, adjudication would result in the initial timetable for restoration of rights (how much time in each stage of the path above), and any deviation from that timetable would require additional adjudication, or mutual agreement between the state and the convict.
Such a system makes the full restoration of rights the rule rather than the exception, and shifts the monetary burden for deviation from this to the state (which is where it always should be: Any taking by the state, tangible or intangible, justly requires adjudication).
As far as your statement of original intent goes, It’s my understanding that the current concept of incarceration as punishment didn’t really exist before ~1810-1820; before then, incarceration was largely seen as simply a means of holding people until their case was adjudicated, or until their sentence was carried out. The concept of the rehabilitatory incarceration is historically a relatively new concept, and as a social policy it is largely a failure.
On the whole, I believe that we are both too soft on criminals (we make incarceration more pleasant than it should be), and too hard on them (we make it impossible for them to ever fully recover from a conviction). We need to make incarceration a step on the way towards turning convicts into functional members of society: we need to teach them to get up, go to work, go home, and not get in trouble along the way.
That being said, I believe STRONGLY that the most important step is to take the money out of crime; the most effective way to do this is to eliminate profitable black markets. Since the most profitable black markets are those selling intoxicants banned by the government, the OBVIOUS first step is to repeal those bans.
*While this may sound somewhat counter-intuative, since the number of users will expand, it’s important to remember why the number of users is going to expand: Because they can buy it legally in a nice clean shop without risk of criminal charges, rather than in some shady deal with shady characters that may well land them in jail. In other words, the new users are only going to purchase in a safe and sterile retail environment.
**”Anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun cannot be trusted without a custodian.” – David Codrea
My problem with this new hire chick has nothing to do with her drug of choice, and everything to do with the fact that she is putting other people at risk without their prior consent.
The wrong person walks in the door of that shop, and their license to operate is gone. Even if she is smoking fake pot or some kind of non-intoxicating strain or has a prescription or whatever. Even if it’s some 100% legal thing, it smells like lawbreaking, and it’s putting people and a business at risk of legal intervention.
It’s one thing if they are all cool with it, and know ahead of time. Then, they just have the liability of intoxication and firearms (which, while a bad idea, can be mitigated in many ways or addressed with moderation and consumption limits). They can CHOOSE to take that risk. But only if she tells them before it comes up.
Heh, I’m actually allergic to the stuff. Loads of fun finding that one out as I go into respiratory arrest after ONE toke.
BUT I vote for legalizing the stuff. I don’t drink, and just quit smoking only a few years ago. But if someone wants to partake in either of those I won’t stop them. And really, as long as you can maintain yourself, I got not problem with anything you want to do to yourself. The only issue is when you get behind the wheel, THEN you become my issue, because if you take it too far and get behind the wheel you’re a moron who is endangering others.
Even so…
I have a hard time agreeing with the legitimacy of bans on operating motor vehicles while intoxicated: It’s a prior restraint, and I fundamentally disagree with the concept of being restrained by the government before you cause a quantifiable harm to someone else (It just ends up being a way to strip us all of our rights: E.G. DUI checkpoints).
I have no problem with laws assigning statutory negligence (along with stiff penalties therefore) to those who operate vehicles while intoxicated AND cause quantifiable harm to others.
I don’t agree with calling DUI prior restraint. A person driving under the influence is posing a present risk to others, not a hypothetical future risk. Arresting somebody for driving drunk before they hit something is no different than arresting somebody for pointing a firearm at somebody rather than waiting until they’ve pulled the trigger.
Now, I would agree on open-intox laws counting as prior restraint; having an open bottle in the car, or even having the passengers swigging out of the bottle, doesn’t directly affect the driver’s ability to operate the vehicle. (No more than any other way of having rowdy passengers, at least.) It’s not until the driver starts imbibing it himself that he is causing a risk.
I am completely for legalizing not only MJ but every other recreational pharmaceutical, with the following public understanding: Drunkenness, intoxication or any other deliberately induced state of altered consciousness shall not be a defense for any crime committed, but rather a form of premediation. If you get high and kill a guy, it’s murder, not manslaughter. If you’re going to put yourself in a state of diminished mental capacity of any kind, it is your obligation to arrange things in advance so your fun doesn’t harsh any one else’s mellow.
Frankly, legalizing the stuff will open the use of drugs to be properly researched and accounted for in insurance. Right now, health insurance can’t adjust your rates for the use of cocaine, because nobody will admit to the use. Legalize it, and it would legitimately be something to factor in. OK, a cocaine rider on your health insurance costs $X per year, with a dosage and frequency limitation built in. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Rec Pharma (transferred to the FDA, Firearms being spun away to Treasury and Defense because today’s BATFE are total fuckwits at that responsibility) will make sure the suppliers are providing known, quality-controlled products.
That’s my general concept of the role of government: make sure the warning labels are accurate, legible and appropriate. After that, to quote one of the great cinematographic masterpieces of the last century: “They knew what they were getting into. I say, let ’em crash.”
Sounds about right to me.
It’s been over a dozen years since I’ve consumed any pot. And I go to Colorado on business all the time so this isn’t a question of legality… but “have half that money turned into state tax revenue”? My goodness, what have you been smoking?
You like a 100% tax on cannabis… because you believe in regressive taxes that disproportionately affect the young? Or because you think for some reason that cannabis ought to be taxed at a higher rate than distilled spirits (median state tax rate in the US is $5.50 per *gallon*)? Or maybe this is just a naked appeal to the greed of politicians? If you feel you don’t pay enough in taxes already, you can always just send more in or “forget” to take a deduction or exemption to which you’re entitled.
Just the savings to the state coffers from eliminating pissing away money on prohibition ought to be incentive enough.
“median state tax rate in the US is $5.50 per *gallon*”
That’s just at the point of sale. What about the costs of licensing/compliance along the entire supply chain from distillation to retail? To ignore the ancillary regulatory costs is to miss the point entirely: When the unregulated cost of a product would be x, and the cost *with* regulation is 3x, saying that the only tax is the moderate percentage of 3x levied at the point of sale misses the point that the cost of the product itself was artificially inflated such a large degree due to nothing more than government regulation.
Reading the OP, I don’t recall seeing him suggest how the costs/taxes should be structured: All I saw was a basic suggestion of a possible final price to the end-user.
Not sure what happened, but the comment above was supposed to be nested under AtomicPlayboy’s comment of 05:07 on July 2, 2014.