Make Peace With Pot

NY Times ^ | April 26, 2004 | ERIC SCHLOSSER

[robertpaulsen]

The price I saw in the article was for "Dutch Marijuana". It sold for 3 - 12 euros per gram. You can do the math.

$300. (U.S.) is the average. And that the retail price for legal marijuana, not the "it's expensive because it's illegal" price.

[robertpaulsen]

"Wouldn't you think it could be cheaper if large scale growing was allowed?"

Of course.

But you're ignoring the real world, and the restrictions that society may want to place on the product. Amsterdam is a case in point.

Why do they do it the way they do? It's an awkward set-up. Limited retail sales. Smoking in the shops. Back door wholesaling. Limited growing.

Reason? That's the limit that their society placed on them in exchange for what little is legal.

I would expect our country to do something similar if we ever "legalized". That's why I think it's a bit premature to say that, with legalization, the price of marijuana will drop dramatically.

[tpaine]

The 'retiree' is home, sports fans..

Tough commute, - more than an hour from clown central to bozos bunker. More like LA than FLA, isn't it? --

-- And the best he can do is whine about the old abusing 'abuse' BS. How FReaking pitiful.

[TKDietz]

Is it just their society that is placing limits on them? My guess is that if not for pressure from their neighbors and the U.S., it would be completely legal there. They actually signed off on many of the international anti-drug treaties and conventions. They stay just barely compliant, or at least they argue that they are staying within the rules.

Look at what is going on in Canada. Their senate did a study and recommended full legalization. The MP's weren't as gung ho for total legalization, partly because of fear of U.S. reprisals, but they were ready to go ahead and decriminalize. But our government has put out all sorts of signals showing their disapproval, and the Canadian government has been backing off and making concessions to appease us. Our government has gone so far as sending people up their to threaten trade penalties. Canada values our business too much to go very far in easing it's marijuana laws.

Look what's happening in the countries that want to become part of the European Union. Some of these countries had very lenient personal use drug laws. Those that want to get in the European Union are tightening up the laws somewhat to appease the European Union.

Now, if the U.S. wanted to ease marijuana laws, who would stop us? No one would. We're the 800 pound gorilla in the world. More likely what would happen is that other countries would follow suit, especially source countries who would be more than happy to legally export marijuana to the U.S..

Again though, I was not arguing that marijuana would be dirt cheap if it was legal. I was only arguing that it could be cheap to produce if it was legal and large scale commercial growing operations were allowed. Whether it gets much cheaper does not really concern me. It's already a pretty darned cheap buzz. And like you said, it's not like people are out there committing all sorts of crimes to get their next "marijuana fix." I suspect that prices would be kept fairly high with taxes and regulatory costs, which wouldn't be such a bad thing because we could use the revenues and the legitimate jobs it would create.

[William Terrell]

Do you have that program ready yet? It's been about 12 hours. You had originally said 30 minutes.

[xrp]

To: dorben
Are you not familiar with what ED is and how it is easily applied ?
Huh? Have you stopped beating your wife?


79 posted on 04/01/2004 10:39:14 AM PST by cinFLA

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[cinFLA]

List of posters that have falsely claimed that the MLDA in Florida in the sixties was 18:

ActionNewBill
philman_36
CSM
tdadams

List of posters that have failed to post proof of their false claim:

All of the above.

List of posters that have apologized for calling me a liar:

ActionNewsBill

[cinFLA]

When are you going to add statistics and correct your output error?

At least I have the source code to mine and can add functions and correct errors ...

[cinFLA]

Tpaine Removed by Moderator

[William Terrell]

The statistics are visual, like a graph. The other four dots are at the end of the line and don't affect the graph.

Let's see the output from your porgram. I don't care about the source code. But, come think of it, I can't be certain you wrote it even if I see the putput, or if the output came from a program.

Matter of a fact, I have no evidence you even know how to program in any language.

[Ken H]

From the US State Dept.--

The GOS[Government of Singapore] nonetheless is concerned about the increase in addiction rates and recidivism among drug offenders who have undergone treatment. There are currently about 9,000 addicts undergoing rehabilitation in Singapore treatment centers, the same number as in 1995.

Now for the Netherlands--

Demand Reduction. The Netherlands has extensive demand reduction programs and low­threshold medical services for addicts, who are also offered drug rehabilitation programs. Authorities believe such programs reach about 70­80 percent of the country's 25,000 hard­drug users (in a total population of 15.1 million).

http://www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law/1996_narc_report/index.html

Using a figure of 3 million for Singapore in 1996, that works out to an addiction rate of about 0.3%

Using the State Dept. figures for the Netherlands, the addiction rate is about 0.17.%

How do you explain this?

[xrp]

The AM said knock it off so knock it off.

[tpaine]

To: cinFLA; tpaine; ActionNewsBill

To: dorben
Are you not familiar with what ED is and how it is easily applied ?
Huh? Have you stopped beating your wife?
79 posted on 04/01/2004 10:39:14 AM PST by cinFLA

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1,266 posted on 04/30/2004 11:08:34 PM PDT by xrp - To 1259

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To: xrp
Tpaine Removed by Moderator
1,269 posted on 05/01/2004 1:24:51 PM PDT by cinFLA

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XRP; --- What thread are you two referring to in the "dorben" post?

[tpaine]

XRP; --- What thread are you two referring to in the "dorben" post?
-tpaine-

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Belay that question, as I found the thread.. -- Thanks for the heads up, as now we can see below just what a hypocritical clown our bozo is:

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To: Diva Betsy Ross

see that you will not answer my questions. That means that you, like AAA whose comments you have stated you agree with, are demonizing liars.

184 posted on 04/01/2004 8:05:08 PM PST by cinFLA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 148 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

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To: cinFLA; AAABEST; Jeff Head; dixie sass; All

cinFLA,
You've managed to waste this entire thread, taking any focus off the subject. Happy, now?

Please stop. It's not about you, or whoever you're having an ego war with, it's about "property rights".

It seems we all need to read again Jim Robinson's post on our FR home page. Here is an excerpt:

We aggressively defend our God-given and first amendment guaranteed rights to free speech, free press, free religion, and freedom of association, as well as our constitutional right to control the use and content of our own personal private property. Despite the wailing of the liberal trolls and other doom & gloom naysayers, we feel no compelling need to allow them a platform to promote their repugnant and obnoxious propaganda from our forum. Free Republic is not a liberal debating society. We are conservative activists dedicated to defending our rights, defending our constitution, defending our republic and defending our traditional American way of life.
Our God-given liberty and freedoms are not negotiable.

189 posted on 04/01/2004 8:21:42 PM PST by AuntB ("What if they find life on Mars and it's just more pissed off Muslims?"........Dennis Miller)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 185 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

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To: cinFLA

So here we go again... what have I lied about? And what is your Big truth about this case that you claim I don't see. You have again proven my point that you are here for no other reason than to try to insult people and disrupt action that others want to take. It is disgraceful behavior for a conservative.

190 posted on 04/01/2004 9:00:50 PM PST by Diva Betsy Ross (Every heart beats true for the red ,white and blue!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 184 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

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To: cinFLA

Knock it off.

191 posted on 04/01/2004 9:04:44 PM PST by Admin Moderator
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 185 |

[cinFLA]

Matter of a fact, I have no evidence you even know how to program in any language.

[cinFLA]

Despite the wailing of the liberal trolls and other doom & gloom naysayers, we feel no compelling need to allow them a platform to promote their repugnant and obnoxious propaganda from our forum.

I guess that is why they keep bouncing that pro-drug spammer MrLeroy off. Right?

[cinFLA]

Legalizing crack is not on the conservative agenda.

[cinFLA]

Saddam rules Iraq?

[cinFLA]

The statistics are visual, like a graph. The other four dots are at the end of the line and don't affect the graph.

Then it is misleading. Worse than an obvious error. If you had the source code and could program, you would fix it in a jiff!

[William Terrell]

Matter of a fact, I have no evidence you even know how to program in any language.

That's abolutely true. And I'm not going to show you my source code to prove it. What will you do?