Posted on 10/26/2010 6:28:08 PM PDT by prairiebreeze
Our marijuana laws are clearly doing more harm than good. The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.
Law enforcement agencies today spend many billions of taxpayer dollars annually trying to enforce this unenforceable prohibition. The roughly 750,000 arrests they make each year for possession of small amounts of marijuana represent more than 40% of all drug arrests.
Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually. It also would reduce the crime, violence and corruption associated with drug markets, and the violations of civil liberties and human rights that occur when large numbers of otherwise law-abiding citizens are subject to arrest. Police could focus on serious crime instead.
The racial inequities that are part and parcel of marijuana enforcement policies cannot be ignored. African-Americans are no more likely than other Americans to use marijuana but they are three, five or even 10 times more likely—depending on the city—to be arrested for possessing marijuana. I agree with Alice Huffman, president of the California NAACP, when she says that being caught up in the criminal justice system does more harm to young people than marijuana itself. Giving millions of young Americans a permanent drug arrest record that may follow them for life serves no one's interests.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
It does for me. The guy went around like the national scold lecturing us on how to be virtuous while he was dropping heavy coin at the gaming tables.
Well that decides it for me. If Soros is for it, I’m against it.
I couldn’t understand why he thinks the way he does. A stoned population is a passive population.
Their is no evil cause that the liar and thief George Soros does not support. Evil is as evil does and the boy is evil indeed.
And if you are a conservative legalizing something so you can tax it is a pretty stupid excuse anyway.
Well then, it’s up to you to give us some solid stats on all the money being made on pot busts (that have nothing to do with other crimes). Thanks.
Sure they are. You did not qualify anything. You said prohibition didn’t work. Perhaps you would like to clarify your original statement. Things and actions can be prohibited (and some things and actions should be). Some things are more difficult than others. I suspect drug prohibition has been a failure because very powerful people are behind keeping the drugs flowing.
I think all of those who make the case that the cartels will evaporate once drugs are legalized are naive beyond belief, btw. However, I’m not making the argument about whether or not pot should be legal It’s problematic either way because people, as a rule are stupid and short sighted.
I would be 100% for legalization if we could tighten up our criminal law, so that people caught doing real crimes were harshly punished, people driving under the influence were gotten off the roads and I was not on the hook to pay for rehab or medical care etc. Unfortunately when drugs are legalized (and I suspect pot and probably other things will be) it will just be another thing the rest of us will pay for in some way or another, which is why I am ambivalent.
I agree. I'm torn by this as a conservative libertarian. Philosophically, I lean towards decriminalization of most drugs. Up until the 20th century, there were very few drug laws in this country. This certainly led to health problems, but our 'war on drugs' clearly has not eliminated the health effects of drug use. I am also inclined to think that lessening the power and profits of organized crime and elements of the federal government, for whom drug illegality is the prime source, is desirable as well.
The problem is that the government would then serve as a drug provider instead of an anti-drug enforcer, which is probably worse. If marijuana were made legal, it would be regulated and heavily taxed. The federal government would then have an incentive to keep this tax revenue coming in. As others have said, legalizing marijuana simply would not be a 'live and let live' libertarian move in our political climate. It would result in more costs in the health care arena that would be borne, as ever, by taxpayers.
I also envision the poor service one encounters at the DMV, post office, etc. becoming even worse as many of the already incompetent state and federal workers would be free to chronically indulge in their free time...
“Do as I say.” Well, I agree with you there about the hypocrisy, but we all have our demons. He is a voice of reason and has a great show, however. So, I can forgive him his sins. I have voted against gambling ever time the issue has come up so that’s now strongly I feel on that issue.
I agree with every statement you have made. I have to admit that there are days I become very down about knowing all of this.
I happen to be a college student right now. I will graduate in May. I have called out profs on some of this and they seem shocked. In one of my classes, we were recommended to read Bill Ayers’ books. I confronted the prof on this and she said, “Don’t you think people change?” Yes, but he did not.
They do indoctrinate our kids and I’ve had the stuff polly-parroted back to me by the students. It’s all there - the environmentalism, the anti-Americanism, the anti-Israel sentiment, the perversion. All of it. The homosexual stuff is really forced down our throats.
Oh, and do you want to laugh? One time a professor had a young guy - just a kid really (19) come in to our class and talk about the stereotyping done on him as a Muslim in America. He went on and on. As he was relating a story to us, he talked about these “stupid farmers” who don’t know anything.
Well, after class, one of my little friends came up to me - her family are farmers (they own a large dairy farm here in Ohio). Anyway, she said something to the effect of, “Do you believe that guy talking about stereotypes and stuff but he had no problem stereotyping and mocking the dumb farmers?”
LOL!
Amen, sir. Amen. There is a lot of spiritual darkness that comes through these drugs...the occult has always used drugs as a way to tap into the dark world.
Soros is never going to be on the side of anything good. I agree with the guy. If that guy is for something, we can be relatively assured that it will not be something we would want to endorse.
He’s a one track pony.
Ditto. I’d want to be on the ping list! What I really wish is Susie would start a blog. I disseminate a lot of stuff via facebook. And I have found that a lot of people read it... not all comment... but a lot read it. Only God knows what hearts and minds might be changed by finally hearing truth (since they sure won’t get it in the marketplace).
It would likely be better had there never been any laws at all, however, we have what we have, and I don’t envision them suddenly saying, “Oh, ok, well, never mind, we wash our hands of the whole thing.” And that’s where I see the real problem. They will tweak here and there and make either a bigger, or just a different mess.
One thing I like about John Stossel, altho I don’t always agree 100% with him (and he seems ok with people NOT agreeing with him 100% unlike many libertarians) is that he admits that it’s not a perfect solution. There WOULD be problems. I like the honesty, which I don’t often see from the pro-legalization crowd. That’s all I ask, in the debate. Lets debate with complete and total honesty so people can make really informed decisions. The cartels won’t go away. They will find something to do.
The government can't even keep drugs out of its maximum security prisons. What makes you think it can keep drugs out of the whole country?
I agree that it should be legalised, taxed if sold, and legal to be grown for personal consumption. I do not believe that it would be used for control, as the few that don’t do it now because of legal reasons, is not a problem. The govt will not make people use it, just as they do not make people drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. If someone does not want to do it now, why would they want to do it, just because it’s legal? That’s like saying if if wasn’t illegal to murder people, we would all go out and start killing, Not true and a foolish argument.
I would like to see it happen, so that in 5-10 yrs, there will be people that can look back and say...”I told you so”. How else will anyone know what happens when it’s legal?
Yours is the kind of post that makes me sick.
Everyone was new here, you were new here once.
I went back and read some of Tea Roll's posts to see if he was really a 'troll' and found them logical and thoughtful.
So tell me TXnMA, what makes you the grand authority on new member's personal lives?
My best friend for the last 40 years died last week from pancreatic cancer and he told me the same thing.
Considering the pain and suffering he experienced in spite of his prescriptions for methadone, morphine, marinol, ritalin, and all the other soul-sapping crap they fed to him just to make his final days more comfortable, the only thing that helped him was a joint. And I knew him well enough to know he was telling me the straight-up truth, as only a man dying of cancer would know it.
So completely apart from the social issue, there may be something to this.
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