Replies

2 NO votes from this house!

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Endanger your loved ones, vote yes on Prop 19!

“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.

By all means, allow that socialist dystopia known as California to grease its skids on the fast track to hell. Legalizing, encouraging, and superimposing a marijuana paradise on top of the fool’s paradise they’ve already built makes eminent good sense.

Anti-drug laws create more problems than they solve.

It’s amazing to me that many people who are otherwise advocates for small, non-intrusive government still rally to the cause of the war on drugs, particularly given all the abuses that entails...

What right does the government have to arbitrarily ban certain drug use while permitting others? What right does the government have to tell a responsible, tax-paying adult that alcohol is permissible and marijuana is not? How many people are in prison at this very moment, lives ruined, their children missing a parent, unemployable when they get out, because they engaged in a behavior that simply cannot be called criminal in any meaningful sense.

If you think the government has the right to restrict this, then it’s really not an unimaginable a stretch to use the same types of arguments that I’m seeing here to justify limiting Big Mac consumption, with all of the coercive power of the state behind that effort as well. It’s all part of the same kind of nanny-state mentality...

"In almost every respect imaginable, Prohibition was a failure,"

Probably because it wasn't much of a prohibition. People who wanted alcohol could still get it legally, and possession was legal, too.

"It deprived the government of revenue, stripped the gears of the political system,..."

That's a good idea.

Marijuana is a tool for slavery.

“Some of my finest hours have been spent sitting on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see.” - Thomas Jefferson
From His autobigraphy
Ah the insight and vision of the God given freedoms which were seen from the founding Fathers, sometimes the truth takes a different perspective