Posted on 12/23/2008 10:20:03 AM PST by kennedy
So the Mexicans who sell marijuana today will NOT be selling marijuana through legal channels tomorrow?
And the Mexicans who sell cocaine (because they also sell marijuana) will stop selling cocaine tomorrow or suddenly forget how their distribution network works?
What are you smoking?
And if we “tax the hell out of it”, the ATF will become the ATMF as they go “revenuing” to knock on your door and make sure that you are up on your tax stamps for pot seeds.
So are you saying that pot is a gateway drug? Or that the dealers have all the influence on these kids?
LSD made a big comeback in the 1990s. Different things have different results. Someone that wants a steak isn't going to be satisfied by chicken nuggets.
There will still be drug crime, smuggling, turf war, and juvenile abuse.
Even legal but controlled (by prescription) drugs like zanex are abused nationally.
I see more coke heads in bars starting fights than drunks.
Don’t know if is the drug or the glamor that Scarface gave it, but coke heads are jerks.
New York is showing the way with new sin taxes on tv, soda pop, fast food, radio, etc.
I think all drugs are gateway drugs, including cigarettes and alcohol. If a teenagers hangs out with the rough kids who smoke and drink he's going to be exposed to all the other stuff too. And if you look at the statistics young people who smoke and drink are many more times likely to use a drug like cocaine than straight laced kids who won't even drink or smoke a cigarette. I don't know that using one drug necessarily makes you want to use another. I don't think there is any physical property of marijuana that makes it such that people who use marijuana want to stick needles in their arms or anything like that. But if people use intoxicants, especially young people, they're going to be exposed to other intoxicants and that increases the chance they'll use these substances.
Some people are just inclined to use intoxicants though and some aren't. Some are a lot more inclined to get high than others. It may be that they are miserable people with deep psychological issues who are self medicating. It may be that they just have a wild reckless streak. Maybe they are just really curious types who want to experience everything. There are all sorts of reasons why people might be inclined to get high, but a lot of people are so inclined some percentage of them will take just about anything.
“Or that the dealers have all the influence on these kids?”
Sure dealers have influence over kids. Most kids are probably getting their drugs from other kids though who are sometimes dealers but often just other kids who party whop either got their drugs from another kid who parties or maybe a dealer.I don't think drugs are actually “pushed” on people very much, even teens. Those that do drugs in most every case want to do drugs and will actively seek them out or will jump on any opportunity that comes along. It is not so much that teens are influenced to do drugs by those who sell them, it's just that a lot of kids are on that trajectory and quite a few of them will take whatever they can get. Most who use drugs just smoke marijuana. More marijuana is consumed in this country than all other illegal drugs combined. The other drugs flow through the same channels as marijuana though and because of that kids who use marijuana are far more likely to be exposed to other more dangerous illegal drugs than a kid who only drinks alcohol. Teens don't tend to get their alcohol from drug dealers.
“LSD made a big comeback in the 1990s. Different things have different results. Someone that wants a steak isn't going to be satisfied by chicken nuggets.”
I'm not really sure what you are saying here. LSD is is actually way down from peak levels. Only a very tiny minority of young people have taken it. It is not a very common drug anymore. The last survey results show less than 3% of all high school seniors having used LSD within the last year and less than 30% say LSD is “fairly easy” or “very easy” to get. The percentages are lower for younger kids. LSD is not really a huge problem for us.
http://monitoringthefuture.org/data/08data/fig08_6.pdf
“There will still be drug crime, smuggling, turf war, and juvenile abuse.”
If we legalized marijuana I don't think we would have much in the way of marijuana related drug crime. Marijuana doesn't lead to much crime. Most of the marijuana drug crime we see today is related to the fact that it is illegal, dealing, turf wars and all that. If it was legal most of that would go away. It would be produced on farms by companies with permits who have regulations they have to follow and sold through licensed shops that only sell to adults. Teens would still get it, but they'd get it like they get their alcohol today and not from drug dealers who sell other drugs. Do teens buy their alcohol from drug dealers who also sell them meth and cocaine and LSD and so on? The criminal element would lose out on many billions of dollars a year. According to the ONDCP Mexican organized crime gross nearly $8.6 billion a year selling marijuana to Americans. They'd lose that and these organizations would become far smaller and less powerful and less of a threat to the Mexican government and to us. That money would instead go to law abiding tax paying Americans who won't need to have bloody turf wars and all that with one another because they can resolve their differences in the courts.
The marijuana industry today is a huge multibillion dollar industry that is entirely unregulated. They can sell to kids. They can sell product treated with toxic chemicals that will hurt our youth who smoke it. They can steal from each other and their customers. They can kill each other over drug selling turf, customers or smuggling routes. It's a mad free-for-all free from any sort of government controls. I think government would have a lot more control over it than they do today if they'd just legalize and regulate marijuana production and sales.
“Even legal but controlled (by prescription) drugs like zanex are abused nationally.”
Yes, as is alcohol, tobacco, junk food, etc. Marijuana is abused too. I think though that most people who want to smoke marijuana already smoke it, especially those most likely to really abuse it. Those very few who are just waiting for marijuana to finally become legal so they can finally smoke it are at least fairly law abiding people with some measure of self control or they'd already be smoking pot. I don't think we'd see just a huge increase in marijuana smokers if we legalized pot. At first there probably would be a honeymoon period where a lot of people just went out and tried it because of the whole novelty of it, but the novelty would soon where off. Pot would still be pot, the stuff the ;losers at the party staring at the TV with the sound turned off are smoking. The stuff the forty year old loser living in his basement with his parents smokes. The stuff that makes an attractive man far less attractive to females when they hear him blabbering on about nothing in his stoned state, if he's not to anxious to talk to them to begin with. There are plenty of good reasons not to smoke pot, and almost all of those reasons will still exist if pot was legal. The laws aren't stopping many from smoking it. The chance that one who smokes it will ever get caught is minuscule, and if he does get caught in most places he'll just get a slap on the wrist. In some countries they basically allow people to smoke marijuana, and in a few they allow people to grow a few plants and even in the case of the Netherlands they allow not only possession but also open marijuana sales from licensed shops. But in most other countries the percentage who smoke it is far lower than the percentage who smoke it here and none have much higher rates of marijuana use than we have. Marijuana is just not something that appeals to most people and that wouldn't change if it was legal.
If we legalized marijuana I bet Mexico would also legalize and try to participate in our legal marijuana market. The Mexican government has played with the idea of marijuana legalization for years now. They'd like to reduce the power of organized crime. The problem is that the vast majority of the marijuana produced in Mexico is sold in the U.S., so legalizing it there really wouldn't help them much with the problem of organized crime. If we legalized it I bet they would too. I don't know that all the same people would be involved, but I bet that we'd see Mexicans trying to participate in our legal market for marijuana if we were to legalize it.
“And the Mexicans who sell cocaine (because they also sell marijuana) will stop selling cocaine tomorrow or suddenly forget how their distribution network works?”
No, but I do think it would be harder for them to move their product. There are so many people involved in the black market for marijuana. You have the big cartels and the armies of people who help bring their product to consumers who in most cases aren't even really part of their organizations. The cartels get the marijuana in the country and get it distributed all over America. They move their cocaine and other drugs through the same channels. They'd still be able to do this without the marijuana business, but where they'll really be hurt are at the lower levels. Imagine a pyramid. A drug cartel is at the top and at the wide bottom are all the thousands of people selling their pot at the retail level. What they are going to lose are the people at the bottom of that pyramid, the middlemen toward the bottom and the retail sellers they supply. These are people that today they tap to sell their other drugs. When people start buying their pot from the pot store, we aren't going to have our neighborhood pot dealers anymore. These aren't generally professional drugs dealers. These are more often than not people who buy a little more than they use and sell the rest to friends so they can get free smoke and maybe a little extra cash. They're also people who are tapped to sell other drugs. When they are gone, before long it will start getting harder and harder to find people to sell the other drugs. Today, all they have to do is offer these drugs to people already breaking the law, people already selling one illegal drug. These people are a pretty safe bet. Even if they say no to the other drugs, they aren't likely to to the police or anything because they are already breaking the law. IN the future when we legalize marijuana a cocaine seller can maybe tap his cokehead customers to sell more coke for him, but those are often going to be completely unreliable coke addicts who are trouble and will bring trouble to the people supplying them. They could also go out and try to recruit people not involved with the drug trade but of course the danger in that is that there isn't much stopping these people from turning in those who try to get them to sell drugs. I don't know how many there are, but there are many many thousands of low level middlemen and retail pot sellers at the bottom of the heap who are an invaluable asset to the drug cartels at the top of the heap trying to move drugs other than marijuana. If marijuana was legal they'd still sell their other drugs, but it would be a lot harder without all the people at the bottom of the heap selling their marijuana today.
“And if we “tax the hell out of it”, the ATF will become the ATMF as they go “revenuing” to knock on your door and make sure that you are up on your tax stamps for pot seeds.”
I don't have any pot seeds. I do brew beer though and the ATF hasn't knocked on my door yet. Most people don't brew their own beer though and most wouldn't grow their own pot either. It's much easier to go to a store and choose from a wide variety of quality product. Look at those “medical marijuana” dispensaries in California that do gangbusters business selling super expensive pot to people with medical marijuana cards who are allowed by the state to grow their own. We could regulate it, and we could tax it. In fact, we'll have to tax it if we want to keep prices anywhere close to where they are today. When all the risks are gone and the government isn't seizing thousands of tons of marijuana and farmers start growing it out in the open on a huge scale like they grow other crops, the price of pot will drop through the floor. We'd have to tax the crap out of it to keep prices in the neighborhood of where they are today.
Ban cigs and legalize pot. Got it..
Of course you don't have back-up for that because it's scientifically impossible. Oil companies steal babies, too, I suppose. I've stolen several myself.
Cokeheads suck too, but alcoholics are among the most violent people of them all. It definitely induces violence in the “right” person.
I’m curious, if the fed decriminalizes pot all that means is that they (the Fed Government) will not arrest or pursue marijuana users or sellers. Doesn’t this just mean it is up to the states to decide if they want to make it legal or not?
I believe the "criminality" is determined by it's scheduling under the Controlled Substances Act. The process of scheduling drugs involves, from start to finish, not one elected official.
Since then, Congress has also passed legislation committing us to abide by provisions of UN anti-drug treaties, and the mj provisions of those seem to have been written to conform to DEA policy - mj is not legal for anything other than strictly controlled research. Previous attempts to get it's status changed have resulted in Congress saying "Go talk to the DEA, they have the authority to change the scheduling.", and the DEA saying "Go talk to Congress, they passed this treaty and our hands are tied."
I don't think marijuana will be legalized here anytime soon. My bet is that it actually happens in one or more other countries before it happens here and that the treaties begin to fall apart or are modified at least with respect to marijuana. If not for the various treaties and conventions I think we probably would have seen a country or two legalize already. Several are a lot closer to doing it than we are, but they worry about how big powerful countries like the U.S. will react. We don't have to worry as much about these things as a small country with little power on the world stage.
What would the world do if we legalized marijuana tomorrow? Would we be punished? What about a smaller country like Canada? Would they be punished? I know they have a lot more support there for legalizing marijuana than we do and their Senate has even recommended legalization. But our government was quick to let them know there would be serious trade consequences if they were to do it and that was enough to put a damper on that debate in Canada. I wonder though what would really happen if Canada legalized? Would we really punish them that hard? I kind of doubt it. They need us more than we need them, but they are a pretty significant trading partner and significant trade sanctions against them would cost a lot of people and businesses here a lot of money. I don't think the American people would support all that over something silly like Canada wanting to make their own laws with respect to marijuana and folks would complain loudly enough that our government would back off. I think we're just “blowing smoke” with our threats.
I don't think there are really any major domestic hurdles to legalizing marijuana here, if our lawmakers wanted to do it. Internationally it's a little bit more of a problem but just watching what is going on around the world with this issue I think we'll see some changes in these treaties and conventions on drugs in the coming years that will open things up for countries that really want to legalize. These things won't go away. They'll be modified so that the whole framework doesn't fall apart. That's just my guess, but I don't have a crystal ball.
Cool dude.
man
wow
pass me that fatty Jerry...
Actually, I think it's more of a case of wanting it done, but not wanting to have to answer for the consequences.
Cocaine is not something done by the selfless. And it does not bring out the best in people either.
Yeah. But refuting liberal dogma is so tiresome.
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