End Prohibition; Yes on Proposition 19

Townhall.com ^ | September 19, 2010 | Debra J. Saunders

[dalereed]

2 NO votes from this house!

[caseinpoint]

First, the comparison with Prohibition is not valid. Prohibition attempted to ban an activity that had broad public acceptance and practice for centuries. That does not apply with marijuana consumption. Whle many people have tried it, it is not publicly acceptable to most of society. Legalizing it would, however, create that broad public acceptance and make it nearly impossible to reverse if it turned out to be disastrous. We need only look at the arc of abortion to see how that principle works.

Second, you cannot argue, logically anyway, that legalizing marijuana will both take out the profit motive and result in wildly wonderful amounts of sales tax. Sales tax is based on price and the price of marijuana will drop, severely decreasing any expected sales tax windfall. This is already happening in Humbolt County where prices for legal marijuana farm produce is severely depressed.

Third, you won’t see a decrease in crime. Criminals use marijuana as a vehicle for ill-gotten gains because they are criminals, not because they have some brief to provide marijuana. They aren’t suddenly go to say, “Well, marijuana is now legal. Guess I’ll go get a job flipping hamburgers.” No, they will just move on to other lucrative, worse illegal activities, such as pushing harder drugs or stronger marijuana than government allows, or targeting kids instead of adults. Therefore, the alleged savings in law enforcement won’t happen.

Fourth, like it or not, marijuana is a gateway drug which tempts the weaker folk to look for higher highs and lower lows. Employers will be socked with the cost of testing everyone for drug use and trying to define what is acceptable and unacceptable impairment. With increased acceptance, impaired driving will be more common.

Fifth, “dignified” marijuana use right now is primarily among those financially able enough to use it recreationally. Getting high on the weekends or occasionally at a party is probably not that damaging to those who can afford it, both financially and mentally. But what happens to the weak among us, who have little home or hope, who are much more easily seduced to the dark side of drug use, even marijuana?

I don’t think our society can afford that cost. Nor can California afford to make itself a magnet for just those type of people. We have enough here as it is. I know many will have contrary opinions but this Freeper is voting against the Proposition. The devastation of alcohol is bad enough and, as Prohibition proved, impossible to change once it is publicly acceptable. We can’t afford to do the same with marijuana without understanding the true consequences of that decision.

[November 2010]

No vote here. Libertarians are right about licenses for practicing simple trades like hairstyling, right about taxes, spending, etc. They are wrong about drugs. Drugs hurt the user and the society and society should ban them.

If we get everything on track economically and socially, back to a free and strong people that won’t get abused by drug dealers, whether street corner or corporate, maybe I’ll change my mind. But people are too vulnerable to allow drugs. I am a smoker, constantly quitting, constantly going back after months or years, who wishes cigs were illegal. Addiction isn’t a free choice, it’s a hideous life-sucking burden.

Getting real, if drugs are legal, then pimps will legally be able to provide the drugs to women, get them hooked, and then get them hooking. The hooking is illegal, the abuse is illegal, but then again if the libertarians have their way, prostitution would be legal also, so it will get harder and harder to make a case against the slavers.

[wendy1946]

I don't have anything to do with drugs and recommend everybody on the planet do the same; every drug problem in the world would vanish within five days if the whole world were to do that...

Nonetheless that's never going to happen, hence the "War on Drugs(TM)", instituted under Richard Nixon. This is the single biggest issue I have with Republicans and there is little if anything to choose between demmy and pubby pols on the issue. The "war on drugs" leads to

• "No-knock" raids, which are a clear violation of the fourth amendment and of the common law principle of a man's home being his "castle". In fact technically a homeowner who were to shoot and kill one or more government agents in the process of conducting a "no knock" raid would be entirely within his or her rights.
• The incarceration of large numbers of people who would otherwise never have had contact with prison systems. For many this amounts to a career training program for serious crime.
• Gang wars, drive-by shootings and the like.
• Corruption, the rise of drug cartels, and outright civil wars in other nations which supply drugs to the illegal drug enterprises here.

It is that final item which some would use as a pretext to eviscerate the second amendment, which is the link pin of the entire bill of rights. Consider the following from the former head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection under the Bush administration no less:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/17/weapons-ban-urged-to-rein-in-mexican-drug-war/

The former head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection called Monday for the U.S. to reinstitute the ban on assault weapons and take other measures to rein in the war between Mexico and its drug cartels, saying the violence has the potential to bring down legitimate rule in that country.

Former CBP Commissioner Robert C. Bonner also called for the United States to more aggressively investigate U.S. gun sellers and tighten security along its side of the border, describing the situation as "critical" to the safety of people in both countries, whether they live near the border or not.

Mexico, for its part, needs to reduce official corruption and organize its forces along the lines the U.S. does, such as a specialized border patrol and a customs agency with a broader mandate than monitoring trade, Mr. Bonner said in an exchange of e-mails.

"Border security is especially important to breaking the power and influence of the Mexican-based trafficking organizations," Mr. Bonner said. "Despite vigorous efforts by both governments, huge volumes of illegal drugs still cross from Mexico..."

The problem here clearly is not guns and it is clearly a problem of economics. The drugs one of these idiots would use in a day under rational circumstances would cost a dollar; that would simply present no scope for crime or criminals. Under present circumstances that dollar's worth of drugs is costing the user $300 a day and since that guy is dealing with a 10% fence, he's having to commit $3000 worth of crime to buy that dollar's worth of drugs. In other words, a dollar's worth of chemicals has been converted into $3000 worth of crime, times the number of those idiots out there, times 365 days per year, all through the magic of stupid laws. No nation on Earth could afford that forever.

A rational set of drug laws would:

• Legalize marijuana and all its derivatives and anything else demonstrably no more harmful than booze on the same basis as booze.
• Declare that heroine, crack cocaine, and other highly addictive substances would never be legally sold on the streets, but that those addicted could shoot up at government centers for the fifty-cent cost of producing the stuff, i.e. take every dime out of that business for criminals.
• Provide a lifetime in prison for selling LSD, PCP, and/or other Jeckyl/Hyde formulas.
• Same for anybody selling any kind of drugs to kids.

Do all of that, and the drug problem and 70% of all urban crime will vanish within two years. That would be an optimal solution; but you could simply legalize it all and still be vastly better off than we are now. 150 Years ago, there were no drug laws in America and there were no overwhelming drug problems. How bright do you really need to be to figure that one out?

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

While I don’t know if I’d support full legalisation, at the same time, I can understand what drives a lot of this - the vast abuses to our 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 9th amendments that have been the result of the War on (Some) Drugs. Because of this idiotic enterprise, we have seen:

- The rise if the warrantless, no-knock raid.

- These raids being made based upon the testimony of questionable criminal informants whose word would probably be thrown out in court or in a legitimate warrant application before a judge.

- The militarisation of police forces.

- A contempt for the rights of the citizenry.

- Expanded efforts by police to trick and/or bully innocent citizens into abrogating their own 4th and 5th amendment rights.

- The vast expansion of property forfeiture laws, such that all is needed is an accusation of wrongdoing - no trial or conviction is even needed - for the police to confiscate your property permanently.

- The curtailing of our 2nd amendment rights on the excuse that police will be “safer” when busting down doors in the middle of the night, after failing to obtain a warrant or announce themselves.

If these don’t bother someone, then they’re either not paying attention at all, or else they’re a fascist.

[jospehm20]

I don’t have any evidence, but I am guessing marijuana was less of a problem before it was outlawed in 1937 than it is now. I think that taking the cash flow away from cartels, raising tax revenue from production and sales and not spending money putting potheads in jail are all good reasons to legaliize it. Besides the monetary commponent, I believe the “WOD” has cost us more of our freedoms than anything else, especially the forfieture and seizure rules. I don’t see myself ever smoking pot if it became legal. I just don’t think the government needs to protect me from myself.

[dljordan]

“Prohibition attempted to ban an activity that had broad public acceptance and practice for centuries. That does not apply with marijuana consumption.”

The Human race has been using pot for medicinal and recreational purposes since before recorded history.

[troy McClure]

How fast will O’Boozer & Eric Holder sue the state of California if this should pass?

[Ol' Sparky]

What an idiotic suggestion, one worthy of Joycelyn Elders and Barney Frank.

Marijuana is a gateway drug. Legalizing it will lead to increased drug usage and trafficking and more crime.

It's been decriminalized before and was a disaster.

It's embarrassing "conservatives" would promote such idiocy.

[Total Package]

I use to believe all of these lies until I was in my thirties and got educated. No I don't smoke it but have. I am a RN and have become very educated, alcohol and tobacco are far worse for you then weed.

To start watch "The Union: The business behind getting high". Or you can chose to be like a liberal and just be emotional about it and uneducated. You can use the link or watch it on Netflix. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9077214414651731007#

T. Package RN

[mvpel]

First, the comparison with Prohibition is not valid. Prohibition attempted to ban an activity that had broad public acceptance and practice for centuries. That does not apply with marijuana consumption.

Get your facts straight. The first woven fabric known to man was made from hemp fibers, and dates to about 8,000BC. There is documentation in China of hemp's medicinal properties dating to 2,772BC. Farmers in the Jamestown Colony were required to grow hemp in 1619. Your assertion here is so ridiculous as to fall beyond laughable.

Second, you cannot argue, logically anyway, that legalizing marijuana will both take out the profit motive and result in wildly wonderful amounts of sales tax.

Who has argued that? Who cares?

Third, you won’t see a decrease in crime. Criminals use marijuana as a vehicle for ill-gotten gains because they are criminals, not because they have some brief to provide marijuana.

Other statistics demonstrated the increasing volume of the bootleg trade. In 1921, 95,933 illicit distilleries, stills, still works and fermentors were seized. in 1925, the total jumped to 172,537 and up to 282,122 in 1930. In connection with these seizures, 34,175 persons were arrested in 1921; by 1925, the number had risen to 62,747 and to a high in 1928 of 75,307 (Internal Revenue, Service, 1921, 1966, 1970: 95, 6, 73). Concurrently, convictions for liquor offenses in federal courts rose from 35,000 in 1923 to 61,383 in 1932.

History has already refuted your assertion here. Why should police continue to help violent international gangsters protect their territory by raiding small-time domestic producers instead of going after the violent international gangsters?

Fourth, like it or not, marijuana is a gateway drug which tempts the weaker folk to look for higher highs and lower lows. Employers will be socked with the cost of testing everyone for drug use and trying to define what is acceptable and unacceptable impairment. With increased acceptance, impaired driving will be more common.

Spinning in a chair is a gateway drug, too.

Employers provide designated nicotine drug consumption areas for their employees, and free caffeine drug stations near the kitchenettes, and the more prosperous employers provide free alcohol drugging at after-work social events. Why do you expect that they will be "socked" for drug testing? Any sensible employer already tests and already has standards for acceptable impairment right now.

Fifth, ... But what happens to the weak among us, who have little home or hope, who are much more easily seduced to the dark side of drug use, even marijuana?

What happens? They simply drive to the nearest government-run liquor store and buy a "fifth" of Zhenka 100-proof vodka for $15 and then drive straight over to the dark side in their pickup truck.

Funny you should mention "impaired driving."

The fact that there are weak, homeless, and hopeless people in our society is not a justifiable excuse to wield the vast violence of government against people who just want to get a buzz on the weekends or fight back the nausea from chemo.

[dangus]

This experiment has been tried in the Netherlands.

Did pot usage go up or down in the Netherlands?

Did Dutch crime go up or down?

Did Dutch political corruption increase or decrease?

[dangus]

People who argue for the legalization of marijuana in the Netherlands often point to statistics saying drug consumption has not gone up that much, and is not that much higher than in other EU countries. In fact, it is lower than in Spain or France. But this doesn’t show the whole story.

The Netherlands spend 139 Euros per capita per year on drug treatment programs. Spain spends 9. Greece spends 2. The country which, after the Netherlands, spends the most on drug treatment and regulation is Sweden, which consumes about 1/5th the amount of drugs that the Netherlands does. The Netherlands’ expenditure in a nation the size of the United States would translate to one hundred and fifty billion dollars. (Data is from a 2006 report, based on 2004 data.)

Also of note: the consumption of drugs other than marijuana has risen sharply in the Netherlands.

So, drug use in the Netherlands is still funding crime, still causing political corruption, still involving marijuana users in criminal activity... and still serving as a gateway drug to harder drugs.

[Ol' Sparky]

Endanger your loved ones, vote yes on Prop 19!

[dalereed]

Anyone smoking pot should be locked up!!!!!

[caseinpoint]

I’m not that good at point-by-point discussion formatting, so bear with me. I appreciate your response. It does not change my mind, however. Hee’s why:

“Get your facts straight. The first woven fabric known to man was made from hemp fibers, and dates to about 8,000BC. There is documentation in China of hemp’s medicinal properties dating to 2,772BC. Farmers in the Jamestown Colony were required to grow hemp in 1619. Your assertion here is so ridiculous as to fall beyond laughable.”

No one argues that hemp has not been around for a long time, for a variety of purposes. Nor would I argue there aren’t societies in the world who have a long history of tolerating and even encouraging using natural substances for altering mental states. In some cases, it was probably limited to shamans or their equivalent. In Bolivia, I believe it was quite useful for tolerating the effects of high altitude. But the United States has no history of widely encouraging or tolerating voluntary mental impairment beyond that of alcohol consumption. Saying marijuana use is no worse, and perhaps more benign, than alcohol use is a no-win scenario for me. We live with the deleterious effects of alcohol abuse and I’m not at all certain it has wreaked more damage than good to tolerate it at all. That said, I am by no means a Carrie Nation. We are stuck with alcohol problems, like it or not, because we tolerated it for centuries and it can’t be eradicated by government fiat.

“Second, you cannot argue, logically anyway, that legalizing marijuana will both take out the profit motive and result in wildly wonderful amounts of sales tax.

Who has argued that? Who cares?”

Actually, the sales tax income and the purpose of removing the profit motive for pushing marijuana is one of the main arguments of the pro-legalization crowd. I care that the people are being urged tgo vote this in with the idea that it will help balance our wildly out of balance state budget. The same argument was made with the lotteries, by the way, and it has larely failed to produce the claimed benefits.

“Other statistics demonstrated the increasing volume of the bootleg trade. In 1921, 95,933 illicit distilleries, stills, still works and fermentors were seized. in 1925, the total jumped to 172,537 and up to 282,122 in 1930. In connection with these seizures, 34,175 persons were arrested in 1921; by 1925, the number had risen to 62,747 and to a high in 1928 of 75,307 (Internal Revenue, Service, 1921, 1966, 1970: 95, 6, 73). Concurrently, convictions for liquor offenses in federal courts rose from 35,000 in 1923 to 61,383 in 1932.

History has already refuted your assertion here. Why should police continue to help violent international gangsters protect their territory by raiding small-time domestic producers instead of going after the violent international gangsters?”

The Prohibition Era ran from 1919-1933. Your stats of increased criminal activity are measured during the time alcohol was prohibited. Of course the crime stats are going to leap if something once legal becomes illegal. In the case today, marijuana is already illegal and the levels of crime associated with it are already in place and measured. Not changing the law isn’t going to result in the same type of increases Prohibition caused. It is just going to continue on as it has.

Nor do I think legalizing marijuana is going to result in a decrease in criminal activity. It will just change the nature of the criminal activity, except for a few “gentleman and gentlewomen marijuana suppliers” who want only to provide and use marijuana. And they are a very tiny minority of the current marijuana drug trade offenders.

“Spinning in a chair is a gateway drug, too.”

Sorry, that doesn’t bear refuting. We aren’t talking about everything that could possibly cause one to want drug intoxication.

“Employers provide designated nicotine drug consumption areas for their employees, and free caffeine drug stations near the kitchenettes, and the more prosperous employers provide free alcohol drugging at after-work social events. Why do you expect that they will be “socked” for drug testing? Any sensible employer already tests and already has standards for acceptable impairment right now.”

The move for enforcement against marijuana intoxication will move to the employer, along with the liability for damages caused by such intoxication while at work. Today employers are not liable for the illegal activities of their employees unless it is clear they are tolerating obvious intoxication. The liability shifts to the employer when the activity becomes legal.

“What happens {to the down-and-out of society)? They simply drive to the nearest government-run liquor store and buy a “fifth” of Zhenka 100-proof vodka for $15 and then drive straight over to the dark side in their pickup truck. Funny you should mention “impaired driving.”

We can all agree that alcohol is a problem for many people. Most people drink responsibly, although many will probably admit they have driven impaired at one time or another and “but for the grace of God . . . “. That doesn’t mean we should set the people up for even more means to impair themselves.

“The fact that there are weak, homeless, and hopeless people in our society is not a justifiable excuse to wield the vast violence of government against people who just want to get a buzz on the weekends or fight back the nausea from chemo.”

I am not sure the “vast violence” of government is actually wielded against those who want a “buzz on the weekends”. Generally those go on quite unimpeded by law enforcement. I do know that in the state medical marijuana is already legal so the chemo victim is a nonissue. I also know the notion of “medical marijuana” is seriously abused because finding a doctor to prescribe marijuana for everything from chemo nausea to hangnails is easy.

Generally the law sets limits primarily for the weak among us, not the strong. In this case, a lot of the weak are the upcoming generation. Making something legal conveys a message to people that it is acceptable, even if “disapproved”. When abortion was made legal, the argument was that 150,000 abortions a year would just become safer, not more common. But over the course of the decades since that decision, abortion has moved from disapproval to approval to a “right” for taxpayer funding. We can’t kid ourselves that making marijuana legal won’t have an effect on the future generations who will taking seriously the “Tune in, turn on, tune out” philosophy.

I understand the arguments you make but I believe the risks of condoning marijuana use in California will only cripple the state more than it already is. We can’t afford the risk so a few “responsible” users can enjoy their weekend buzz. That is why I am voting as I am. You are free to vote however you wish.

[caseinpoint]

“Or you can chose to be like a liberal and just be emotional about it and uneducated.”

I agree that alcohol causes a great deal more damage than marijuana but that is a poor argument for adding to the carnage with another legal intoxicant. One reason is alcohol is much more widely consumed than marijuana. If we legalize marijuana, we really don’t know the impact but we do know that it will be nearly impossible to reverse course if the impact turns out to the as or more devastating than alcohol. (If you want to argue marijuana is benign, then take a walk on the wild side of Amsterdam and then decide if you want California to go that direction. Legalization is fine for the casual recreational user there but the city is infested with drug addicts and pushers plying their trade in stronger stuff than allowed by Dutch law.)

As for being “like a liberal and just be emotional about it and uneducated”, I am not the one making emotional arguments about it. I have cited logic, history and fallible human nature as concerns. That is what we common call the traits of a Conservative.

The emotional argument I hear too often is, “I want to enjoy my harmless indulgence in marijuana so the government should make it legal for everyone regardless of the risks or carnage it might cause for society as a whole.”

[WOSG]

“In March, the Partnership for a Drug- Free America reported that 38 percent of ninth- through 12th-graders studied in 2009 reported consuming marijuana in the past month.”

Dreadful statistic. USA is going to the dogs if the next generation is like that.
Succumbing to this is not a good idea.

[WOSG]

“I don’t have anything to do with drugs and recommend everybody on the planet do the same; every drug problem in the world would vanish within five days if the whole world were to do that...”

You should quit while you’re ahead.

Destructive behaviors dont get less destructive when we reduce incentives against them.