As someone with a friend who, in a different state and different circumstances, foolishly was detained on a road trip in a state with a strict no-tolerance policy, was subsequently arrested and tried by some small prick DA in the middle of nowehre to teach a lesson with his "sorry, I don't make exceptions because we want to look hard on drugs" apologism, I hope decriminalization succeeds at least in the short term.
That friend had trouble finding work and grad school for years because this haunted him, and everyone asks in advance about your criminal record. It was all over a dime bag, and using crooked legal tactics.
Another friend, reminiscent of an article previously posted here, was in the Midwest (we grew up on the East Coast) and stopped for a busted headlight. They then found a negligible amount of weed. He was detained and then arrested on the spot. He was told he either call his parents, as he was a minor, and to pay a wopping 1,000 USD fine, or face charges and a court date, in which case pleading innocent and receiving a guilty verdict would mean doubled fines and potential jail time. You can guess what his parents did when they got that phone call in the middle of the night.
And don't worry, they never had a problem scrubbing this from their record, as youths who had fun. Their record would never ruin their adult (+21) lives, no?
All I have to say is, what the hell is wrong with us as society we penalize people so harshly (let's not kid, the non-white kids I knew got worse variations of these stories) for something so much less powerful than alcohol (I would love to see someone argue with me re this point after four years in the very wet college environment in contemporary America)?
Screw it. I hope this guy, and those like him win. But there is something so disgustingly Puritan and fascist, I feel myself working up the "he was a real reactonary" voice of Big Lebowski, full of snark.
The mental trauma of being in a US prison and permanent unemployability from a felony record causes far more hardship to a person than the act of smoking. That alone should indicate that the punishment is not fitting the crime.
They don't care what the "crime" was, a criminal record just disqualifies you. It's the same kind of HR idiocy that would forego hiring someone who has 5 years of Rails experience but did not list HTML as a skill, because HTML is in the checklist.
The reason for that is because HR departments doesn't know the difference between RoR and HTML and therefore doesn't think someone lacking the latter is capable of performing the job. Ignorance in other words. Are you claiming it is the same kind of ignorance that causes companies to not hire weed smokers?
I think both have the same root cause: not ignorance but laziness. Bad HR people tasked with filtering resumes don't want to hire the best people, they want to do as little work (and as little thinking) as possible while appearing to do a useful job.
So they just love rules that filter a lot of resumes, can be applied without thinking and make superficial sense. Understanding how skills relate is more work than comparing lists, looking at the specifics of a criminal conviction is more work that just using it as a binary exclusion criterium.
Criminal records never look good on a background check. For a substance which is probably less dangerous than cigarettes and alcohol, they shouldn't be there in the first place. Regulate it like cigarettes and alcohol, but don't criminalize it.
Most neighborhoods I've lived in my life, people drink too much. Every six months or so, there is a DUI arrest where a cop has actually followed the idiot all the way home at (and I've seen people get into/out of the car so drunk they go to the bathroom on the side of their car).
I don't care if people smoke pot in their apartments. But once it's legal, it's not going to stop there and I am not sure what can be done about respecting others, if anything, since that is probably a core problem of personality far beyond pot smoking.
I worry if everyone is going to be walking around everywhere smoking it because they don't think anyone is going to stop them. I personally don't care for it and I suspect my right to not be bothered by it is not going to be respected in the least.
If there is a solution to making others respect smoking only in their homes, I'd love to hear it.
The solution is the same as alcohol: ban smoking in public, then ticket violators. This kind of relatively minor negative effect is a silly objection to a proposal with so many potential positives.
Also, if you've ever visited Venice Beach or San Francisco, you'll know this is not a problem that's solved by prohibition.
"Your right not to be bothered by it" sounds really spurious. Being "bothered" is an extremely subjective judgment. If we outlaw everything that's potentially bothersome, that's complete paralysis... It's not a defensible right. Why should people hide in their homes to partake in something that you don't personally care for?
As an example, cigarette smokers as a group were horribly inconsiderate and often aggressively rude. They littered the ground and the air. The tar and the smell gets in your hair and clothes. They walked around burning people and things with their cigarettes. It was terrible. I don't miss it, even though I am sad that it took a broad law restraining everyone's behavior. That being said, even the possibility that pot smokers might become as obnoxious as tobacco smokers were before they were shunned en masse, it isn't a good argument against legalization.
Your right to consume drugs (which I fully support) stops when you begin to pollute the air I breathe.
People shouldn't have to hide in their houses, but neither should they be allowed to spew smoke where others will breathe it.
The problem is that this is really an air pollution issue but is being painted as a drugs issue, from both sides. Grandparent poster thinks that air pollution from portable fires is somehow related to the legal status of cannabis. Conversely, lots of smokers probably think that efforts to restrict their ability to pollute is some sort of effort to outlaw their drug.
We should, and do, heavily regulate those activities. Banning them altogether is impractical, but we don't just give people carte blanche to dump whatever they feel like into the air.
Doesn't this argument apply just as much to smoking cigarettes? They're banned from pretty much anywhere they might disturb you, transport, restaurants, bars etc. It seems the balance is pretty good between allowing you to smoke and preventing it from disturbing people that don't want to smell it.
If you buy a house in a district, you may or may not buy an insurance against neighbour's misbehaviour. But the first condition of the insurance is that you respect your neighbours yourself according some existing arrangements (specified in your insurance). Now if anyone is too loud when not appropriate, or drunk as hell, or peeing on your lawn, the insurance company will:
1. Pay you a compensation.
2. Make investigation.
3. Penalize the neighbour by raising his insurance fees (or via his insurer as they'd have some mutual agreements) or demanding a compensation from him. If he does not pay, his insurance is simply cancelled without cops and jails.
4. For ugly cases when neighbour is misbehaving too much (killing pets, breaking windows etc.), insurance company may have also agreements with water supplier's, wifi supplier's etc insurance companies that supplier cuts water/wifi/etc until the guy pays a compensation. Again, without cops, laws, police.
And if the guy goes to journalists and alternative insurer to whom he'll prove he wasn't that bad, just someone is exaggerating, then that insurer will make a good PR case and steal customers from abusive insurers. Or highlight the whole neighbourhood as a weird place to be or something.
The main point is, it's all done without guns and jails. This way every party has voice and can communicate their position any time they want to anyone. And insurers would have to strike a good balance between protecting customers and pissing them off. Like any non-monopoly business is doing already anywhere in the world.
So in one district it could be 100% okay to smoke and get drunk, while in another people would prefer less loud activities. The idea of a regional law just does allow this to happen.
You're proposing giving insurance companies the power to switch off my power, water and internet when they feel like it? Sounds like an excellent opportunity to abuse power.
First, laws, guns and police are much more excellent opportunities to abuse power and already attract all sorts of sadists and psychopaths.
Second, there is no "giving power" anywhere in the voluntary agreements. Your water will be turned off only if your water supplier thinks it's more profitable to please some insured customers than not piss you off. If they turn your water off unreasonably, they risk losing clients.
Policemen and congressmen do not have to please any customers and never suffer economical consequences if they don't. This attracts psychos of all sorts in the realm of brutal state power.
> If they turn your water off unreasonably, they risk losing clients
No, they risk getting sued. If my water company decided one day to turn off my water based on some bullshit claim of one of my neighbours, I would sue the shit out of them.
There are such things as contracts and consumer protection laws you know.
As a disclaimer, I live in Romania, Europe and what you're describing wouldn't be possible here. But it's funny how we've got less problems with drugs, even though Europe on the whole is more relaxed about drug usage than you are. More than 50% of incarcerations in your federal prisons are for drug offences and you've got the highest incarceration rates of all countries. To me that's a sign that you've been fixing the symptoms, rather than the real disease, making it worse in the process.
And really, I don't think that placing such power in your insurance companies would do any good. In theory abuse would be prevented by competition. In practice however, monopolies / oligopolies happen and insurance companies are primarily focused on minimizing risk, so you'd better have a good story when going from one insurer to the next.
I'm from Russia and live in France. I don't care about drugs, I care about people not bullying each other over unproved made-up values and ideals.
When I talk about insurance, I talk about voluntary agreements. About giving as much "power" to insurance company as you want. If they suddenly begin carrying guns and threatening people instead of having peaceful arrangements, customers will go away and all the funding for weapons will quickly end (or they won't, it's their choice). Also keep in mind that any enterprise needs savers who will invest their hard-earned money. They wouldn't like to gamble with a risk of losing all their money and customers by doing something people wouldn't like. Like shooting, killing, spying.
If you say that your ideal is being able to "sue" someone, what you are really saying is that you wish to use unilateral violent power to be directed on someone you disagree with. Now you have a problem. Because you won't be able to control that power. You'd either have to become part of that power (and fight hard with other such ruthless guys), or stay away from it and watch it being used upon you too whether you like it or not. Courts, police and politicians are not enterprise: they didn't have voluntarily invested private money that feeds them. They first take the money from every person by force, then decide what they want to do with it. This makes the whole motivational structure reversed and inherently abusive.
So fuck that shit. As I mentioned many times again on HN, pro-government or pro-law rhetoric is no different from religious bullshit that one group of people uses on another group of people at the expense of someone else.
"Without religion and church there's no morality" => "without government we'll have anarchic chaos"
"You must trust pope because he's set here by God" => "You must trust mr. president because there is society that elected him"
"If god does not exist, who created everything?" => "Without government how would we build roads and fly to the moon?"
"The Bible says what's good and what's bad" => "The constitution defines our rights."
"If you are against religion, you are against morality" => "If you are against government, you are against society".
Stop for a second and think why would abstract "richer group" ask for it and how would abstract "poorer group" prevent this from happening?
E.g. if the "richer group" got rich not via favors from monopoly of violence, but from efficiently servicing "poorer group", why would they risk massive boycotts and end of well-running business for a short-term benefit? Imagine if Amazon suddenly decides to print books using blood of cute little kittens because it's slightly more profitable. Would they think twice whether customers would be eager to buy those books?
Or you'd prefer a mythically benevolent all-powerful organization with guns, nukes and tons of paperwork that will create an appearance of "protection of piece and order" which you will never be able to control or affect?
This has nothing to do with preferences. The world is full of rich groups and governments that got there thorough favors and exercise of power if not violence.
It's effectively the same problem as smoking cigarettes and "respecting others."
The gentlemen who live next door to me love to chain-smoke on their balcony. It annoys me but I have no legal recourse. I can only ask them nicely to please not smoke when I have washing on my balcony, or I'm sitting out there enjoying the sunshine, or I have the door open to air out my apartment.
Replace cigarettes with marijuana, heroin, alcohol, cocaine, loud music or any other substance people use for enjoyment and it's the same story. You're 100% right in saying it's a problem of people respecting others.
Liu is running for mayor, losing badly, and fishing for votes. His campaign treasurer and a fundraiser were also convicted on fraud charges for fabricating donor information.
Hopefully the pushes De Blasio further in the legalization direction. As of now he's waffling on even medical marijuana and he's actually the most conservative of all the Democratic candidates when it comes to marijuana reform. It's interesting that Speak Quinn is so liberal on the matter given her ties to Commissioner Kelly and her love of Stop n Frisk
What I want to know is why governments support all illegal drug dealing, and dont get a cut of the action themselves. The illegality is pretty much what makes it profitable. All the "war" on drugs does is keep the prices up. Mean while the government just pours our tax money down the drain, get zero in return.
Legalize it and the government can tax it. Dealers get wiped out, and with them, a lot of the violence. The tax money raised can pay for a lot of rehab, and the police can concentrate on actual crime with the saved resources.
Because they're already making a lot of money from weed and other drugs being illegal. It's the prison industrial complex, man. The government isn't interested in stopping violence. If so, we'd have much saner drug laws. Drug busts are easy and when you do them the DEA and federal government give you money to buy shiny toys like tanks and new body armor.
It's phat to blame the prison industrial complex, but they're just taking advantage of the Puritan strain in American society. Remember, we're a country that actually passed a Constitutional amendment to make alcohol, even beer, illegal.
I'm sure the DEA loves the status quo, but that's not where the votes come from. The votes come from everyone who bought into Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign. People like my mom, who thinks pot causes young men to give up on life and not get jobs or girlfriends and just play video games all day, and supports keeping it illegal because she thinks that's bad for the country. If you poll your mom and her friends, I bet you see that viewpoint pretty well-represented.
The government runs propaganda campaigns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Youth_Anti-Drug_Media_...) to convince people like your mother that drugs are the worse thing imaginable. Those people then turn around and support the government in its opposition to drugs.
So why do they want to convince the public that drugs need to be pursued in the first place? If they were merely responding to pressure from the public, then that would be one thing, but they are fueling that sentiment. They want the public to think that way.
Do they want to sway the public because they are themselves 'true believers'? Or are there less noble motivations?
As I've said before, I think the power of marketing is less extensive than regularly believed. If the government could create demand for the drug war, then Microsoft could've made Windows RT happen...
My mom, who isn't a native English speaker, doesn't consume American media. And her Indian movies aren't being interrupted by ads for a Drug Free America.
The fact is that prohibition is a natural tendency in many societies. Whether its Jews not eating shrimp or Muslims not drinking alcohol, prohibitions have existed since long before modern marketing campaigns. In the U.S., prohibition of alcohol was not the result of government propaganda and powerful interests, but a grass roots movement, fully supported by women in particular. Just as that generation saw alcohol as an attack on their husbands, this generation of mothers sees marijuana as an attack on their teenagers.
So your mom didn't lap up Nancy Reagan's "Just say no."?
"Just say no" was a propaganda campaign and you rightly describe it as widely influencing the population. Somebody told your mom that "pot causes young men to give up on life and not get jobs or girlfriends and just play video games all day", she didn't dream that up all by herself.
Um, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but pot really does cause some young men to "give up on life" (whatever that means) and not get jobs or girlfriends and just play video games all day.
There actually is a such thing as a stoner. I don't hate them or want to outlaw them or anything, but they do exist. Nancy Reagan didn't invent them.
Typical strawman from tptacek; I am not disputing that pot, alcohol, television, or plain laziness sometimes cause people to become burntout bums. The myth is that all, or even most, people who smoke pot become burnout hippy bums and that it is a phenomenon uniquely caused by pot.
You are both absolute lunatics if you think government run propaganda campaigns have nothing to do with that perception.
Let's review:
1) rayiner describes the 'status quo' as stereotyping pot users, calls out media campaigns as one cause of this, and calls out his mother specifically as an example of this.[1]
2) I agree with rayiner.[2]
3) rayiner does not like it when people agree with him, and backpedals.[3]
4) I call him out for backpedaling.[4]
5) You "jump into the fray" damn near a day after rayiner's comment with a red herring large enough to make a professional fisherman blush.
Try reading the goddamn conversation before tagging in for your buddy.
[1] "The votes come from everyone who bought into Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign. People like my mom, who thinks pot causes young men to give up on life and not get jobs or girlfriends and just play video games all day, and supports keeping it illegal because she thinks that's bad for the country."
[2] "The government runs propaganda campaigns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Youth_Anti-Drug_Media_...) to convince people like your mother that drugs are the worse thing imaginable. Those people then turn around and support the government in its opposition to drugs."
You're taking my comment about Nancy Reagan out of context and putting words in my mouth by characterizing it as propaganda. The sentence before that was "It's phat to blame the prison industrial complex, but they're just taking advantage of the Puritan strain in American society."
I don't think "Just Say No!" created the demand for drug prohibition nor do I think it is propaganda. I think for most people who push the message, Nancy Reagan included, it is a genuine and organic sentiment, consistent with Americam Puritanism. When I say my mom and others "bought in" to the message, I don't mean that government propaganda convinced them to believe something they would otherwise not. Rather, I think what you have is a group of voters with Puritan tendencies and authoritarian dispostitions who "bought in" and got behind a program that plays to those characteristics.
I think chalking it up to propaganda is short sighted, because it punts on the issue of how to convince the electorate. It makes it seem like if the propaganda went away, the drug war would go away. But the fact is that my mom and many people like her believe its the governments job to keep people from doing harmful things to themselves. They see drugs (along with alcohol and sex and a raft of other things) as something the government should regulate for the betterment of society. The culture associated with marijuana use, which is in many respects antithetical to what tjhey think is healthy for society, reinforces their belief that it should be made illegal, for people's own good.
Look, we live in a country where until recently I couldn't buy beer on Super Bowl Sunday in downtown Atlanta. A place where you can be arrested for walking down the street with a cup of beer. It's not big money and the DEA perpetuating that status quo. It's grass roots. You think the voters who passed blue laws all over the country need propaganda to decide people shouldn't be allowed to get baked?
I suspect the root of it is that drugs make individuals respect authority less, so naturally to protect it's power government opposes the use of drugs. Rationalization takes care of the rest(play up the negative aspects of drug usage, downplay the positive aspects of usage and legalization).
The government fuels positive sentiment around pretty much all of its policies. It doesn't go round saying 'our policies suck' because that would provide an opening to opposition.
I don't see many television commercials for, say, the USDA's Rural Development programs. The absence of such television ads isn't them saying that those programs suck either. Being quite about it is the default position, spending many millions on primetime television ad spots to push it is exceptional.
There are lots of individuals and groups that have benefited greatly from the status quo on drugs and who made a conscious effort so that message cannon was always aimed at your mom and firing.
The Drug War has been massively expensive. It isn't expensive because they hand money to drug dealers, it's expensive because money is used to manufacture prisons and operate them, money is used to buy military equipment for police forces, money is used to supply dictatorships around the world (but esp. in South America) with helicopters, US-made weapons and cash, money is spent on wars that drugs are used as a partial pretense for. This money is all spent with the same individual interests who also happen to be some of our largest political donors.
So politicians, the ones responsible for official drug messaging and for drug laws, have a spigot of cash that will be cut off if they have a nuanced opinion about drugs.
It also often helps politicians to be seen as tough on minorities (especially presidents running for a second term) and "tough on drugs" has been a stand-in for "tough on blacks" along with welfare reform. The same demographic who is becoming more pro-drug is also a lot less racist than their parents, so that message doesn't play to them anymore. I think the Drug War is starting to be seen as preying on the weak, rather than preying on the undesirable.
It's not really meaningful to put the blame on Puritanism, because there were hundreds of years between the Puritan landing and prohibition, during which time most people spent a lot of their time intoxicated on whatever they liked. Drug prohibition was initially a result of race-baiting.
>If you poll your mom and her friends, I bet you see that viewpoint pretty well-represented.
I'm nearly 40, and my mother has always been against drug prohibition as far as I can remember. Depends on your family.
>pot causes young men to give up on life and not get jobs or girlfriends and just play video games all day
I don't know it to be a cause, but I'd say that there's probably an association. Alcohol is associated with falling, being poisoned and liver failure, fighting and domestic abuse. Both have been associated with a pleasant afternoon with friends, too.
Judging by the prescription drug market, the effects of either drug wouldn't keep us from trying to give it to children if a buck could be made.
>What I want to know is why governments support all illegal drug dealing, and dont get a cut of the action themselves
They do get a cut. Property forfeiture, among other things. Right now I am reading Balko's "The Rise of the Warrior Cop" and McCoy's "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade" You'd probably be amazed. I am.
It's considered a conspiracy theory, but many people do believe the government takes a cut of the drug trade. That money would be far more valuable than normal tax dollars because a small group would get to control it without any oversight or tax distribution (off the books it could be used for anything).
I believe the Federal Government will only legalize pot under one of two circumstances: 1) it becomes more profitable to tax it (the theory being that it's not today) and 2) they can no longer keep the cartels under control and they become a direct security threat
I don't get it. Marijuana laws are used against minorities all the time, not just middle class white kids[1]. Furthermore he talks of decriminalization as the solution, not legalization. Plenty of states have already decriminalized marijuana , but only two have legalized (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decriminalization_of_non-medici...). Decriminalization allows the state to continue using pot as a weapon against the people, legalization doesn't to any appreciable degree.
I get that he wants the whole thing to fall at once (but at the same time wants decriminalization, not legalization?), but that simply isn't something that we can accomplish in any foreseeable future, not for several more decades at least. Just getting the public to turn around on pot (something that is genuinely mild, not physically addictive, and is plainly mis-classified as Schedule I) has taken a ton of effort. Furthermore the only reason that effort has been so successful is because pot is so widely used; somewhere around half of all Americans have smoked pot at some point in their life. You don't have any sort of similar base on which to launch a publicity campaign for crack (in the specific case of crack, at least we've got the Fair Sentencing Act. Certainly a good start, but that has a hell of a long way to go).
[1] Per TFA: "Since Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002, there have been almost 460,000 misdemeanor marijuana arrests. And while blacks and Hispanics make up 45% of pot smokers in New York City, they account for 86% of possession arrests." Saying that legalization of pot only helps middle class white kids is just plain wrong. It is so stunningly wrong that it seems almost maliciously so.
I think part of his point is that, for "10-12%" of Americans, these laws actually make them go from unemployed in the official sense to actually having no meaningful income in the literal sense. In other words, it will make many bad situations even worse.
> As a result, "drugs are the only industry left in places such as Baltimore and east St Louis" – an industry that employs "children, old people, people who've been shooting drugs for 20 years, it doesn't matter. It's the only factory that's still open. The doors are open."
I'm certainly not going to agree that that's a reason not to do what we have, but that race/poverty line point he's making isn't just about arrests.
Those arrests cause broken families and drive away potential employers. The arrests are absolutely key.
If anything, keeping other drugs illegal while legalizing marijuana would provide a transition period for those impoverished drug dealers, a transition period that would be unavailable if the whole deal fell with one blow as he seems to desire.
> If anything, keeping other drugs illegal while legalizing marijuana would provide a transition period for those impoverished drug dealers, a transition period that would be unavailable if the whole deal fell with one blow as he seems to desire.
There are two approaches to solving political problems. Make incremental improvements where you can; or let things get so horrible that whatever you are opposed to collapses. The latter typically has far worse side effects.
It is utterly disgusting that the government feels that they can tell us what to do when there is pretty much zero effect on other people.
I can sort of understand government intervention for harder more addictive drugs, though it is horrendously misguided and broken (focus should be on rehabilitation), however for stuff like weed, MDMA, speed, even Ketamine or shrooms, the government has no fucking business locking people up for using, selling, or creating these drugs until they actually commit some sort of crime that affects people.
Looks like the tide is really turning on legalisation - more and more political rats are turning over and claiming they have always been in favour of legalisation. Tacky, but still a sign of progress.
In colorado with Amendment 64 there is a distinction between Hemp and marijuana. So one can safetly grow hemp for use in papers or bracelets or whatever else you want. It isn't regulated like Marijuana will be.
For those who are unaware, it is possible to grow hemp that does not contain the THC that gives people a high which is found in marijuana. Though I suspect most people here already know that.
I dont mean to say you are insinuating the following, but i feel it is important to say:
Is that reason enough to keep them there? Isn't it better to do the right* thing at some point, than do the wrong thing forever? Should an innocent man be sentenced to death, if at some point before his extinction from this earth, we find out the truth?
Asking for forgiveness, and admitting the wrong had been done, is and will always be, the first step towards rectifying injustice.
<rant>
* Marijuana has never, from its physical effects, killed any one. It is one of the safest substances for humans to ingest on the planet. You would die from drinking too much water before you could kill yourself from a smoking/eating pot (long term smoking effects not included).
For those who insist on the "moral" cough bullshit cough perspective: People do not become menaces, belligerent, and or violent towards their families smoking weed. People don't black out and wake up wondering what happened. For alcohol, the same cannot be said. Yet, marijuana is immoral? Let me hopefully be the last to say, with a smile, fuck you and fuck that :)
Furthermore, as is the case, well in my opinion, with all drugs they are at most: medical problems, not criminal. The criminal system is anti-rehabilitation; and as a result; ensures the propagation of the problem and not the solution.
You don't have to smoke it. You can eat it or vaporize it. So keeping it illegal because one form of consumption, may, be harmful is okay? I think you're missing the point and focusing on one quite minuscule detail.
I have yet to read a paper that actually shows smoking marijuana has or does not have adverse effects long term.
As a parallel, consider Alan Turing. At the time, he was convicted of an offense. Whether or not this led to his premature demise, we must leave for another thread.
Now, that offense no longer exists. There have been attempts to pardon Alan Turing, as yet unsuccessful.
However, I feel it can be sensibly argued that what truly conveys justice is the retroactive abolishment of the crime - that he would be, tragically posthumously, of an untarnished record.
Ought not such be justly applied in these circumstances also?
Hopefully, yes. I think that pardons would be in order for those convicted of only pot offenses (carrying an illegal handgun while also dealing would of course not be pardoned).
In reality I expect we would let them continue to rot in jail since they were technically breaking the law at the time.
carrying an illegal handgun while also dealing would of course not be pardoned
Why? If dealing pot shouldn't be a crime, why should being prepared to defend yourself with a handgun while dealing pot be a crime?
I don't understand the "illegal" qualifier. Isn't it always illegal to carry a handgun when dealing pot? Isn't having a handgun while committing a federal crime also a federal crime?
Obviously there are drug dealers who are aggressively violent, but if they haven't been caught for being aggressively violent why should they be punished as if they were? What other aspects of "innocent until proven guilty" should we do away with?
Even violent drug dealers represent a philosophical problem. Practically I don't think I'm willing to support letting them out of prison, but rationally I have some sympathy for some of them. Their involvement in the drug market shouldn't be a crime, and the violence in that profession is almost always due to the fact that it's a black market, with extremely high profit to be made and no legal protection against getting ripped off.
Their aggressive violence is not something to be condoned or accepted in society, but neither are laws that establish black markets that lead to such violence. Drug criminalization advocates claim all sorts of reasons why they're not at fault, from drug dealers being inherently evil due to bad parenting or genetics or whatever, to proximity to the criminal act and free will (no doubt legislators are further removed from the crime than the drug dealer who pulls the trigger). But who's really more at fault? The socially marginalized drug dealer from a relatively poor background who probably had poor schooling, who gets caught up in drug dealing, and who kills someone because his drug organization needs him to? Or a legislator with (supposedly) much more wisdom, who nevertheless votes to create a black market that leads to conditions where violence is commonplace?
I'm not condoning the violence. I simply think the root cause is not the drugs or the guns, or even the drug dealers themselves. Scapegoating gun-carrying drug dealers for the violence is just that... scapegoating. I think it's ultimately unproductive if we want to fix the problem.
Because carrying an illegal/unlicnesed handgun in NYC, with our without also being a drug dealer, is, well, illegal. Maybe that isn't right, but that is the reality of that situation.
If this were Vermont that we were talking about, then the situation would be different.
I take a strongly libertarian view of that issue. Not only should gun carry by itself not be a crime, but the only reason most of these drug dealers carry guns is because they are in a business where the legal system won't protect them, not to mention the reason they usually get caught carrying guns is that they were also involved in drug dealing. Cops go looking for drugs, and they find drugs and guns. If they weren't looking for drugs, they mostly wouldn't find guns either.
We're talking about a hypothetical ideal legal policy with regard to drugs, right? Why the return to the status quo the moment guns are in the picture?
My thinking here is that NY changing their pot laws seems more plausible than them changing their gun laws... Certainly changing pot laws is what is being proposed here, not gun laws.
Most of them weren't breaking the law in a fight to change the world, they were doing it opportunistically (consciously placing their own financial wellbeing above social rules). Hence, their punishment technically does not depend on current social rules regarding any object accessory to their crimes.
It's also politically hard enough to make people approve full MJ legalization, without having to fight the ghost of a wide-scale amnesty that would likely threaten deeper social repercussions.
In practice, a sort of low-scale amnesty for smaller infractions would likely have widespread support, even just to clean up personal records.
It's important to note that it's not "free the weed, man!"
It would be grown by government approved vendors and taxed. Private growing would likely be illegal. Sales by non-government approved vendors would likely be illegal. I'm certain the government would allow allow a single FDA approved variety: you wouldn't see the higher powered varieties or growing techniques. It would more highly regulated than cigarettes or alcohol. I have no clue about the number of how all this would work out, but it could be more expensive than it is now.
If you get caught with a cheaper variety, or more powerful variety, etc, then what? Probably the same thing that happens today. After all, you can get arrested for carrying around prescription drugs that aren't properly labeled; you'd probably see the same thing with government marijuana. Moreover, you can then be charged with tax evasion.
That isn't what has happened with amendment 64 in Colorado. You can grow up to six plants for personal use, no licence required. Funnily enough, the current situation of having legalised personal use without legalising trade is very similar to what was proposed by Hunter S. Thompson when he was running for Sheriff of Aspen.
I'm only responding to the article, and the comptroller's proposal, which is independent of actions taken in Colorado.
4th paragraph:
under my proposal, only adults age 21 and over would be allowed to possess up to one ounce of marijuana – which would be grown, processed, and sold by government-licensed businesses for recreational or medicinal purposes.
As written, this seems to imply those licenses won't be issue arbitrarily to individuals.
I am not familiar with the Colorado system, but that sounds similar to the Washington system. In order to grow or sell you need to buy a license (available in November I believe). This system is not going to restrict strains or products in any meaningful way. No more so than government issued licenses for medical grow ops have restricted strains... As most here are probably aware, the existence of government licensed growers has had the opposite effect as what you are hypothesising.
I believe Colorado has commercial growers obtain a license as well, though I cannot say that for sure.
Colorado has the most strictly regulated system anywhere, including the ability to trace all retail sales back to the plant they were grown on, 24 hour video surveillance of all legal growers, and background checks that should eliminate most of the criminal element in the trade (which is a huge problem in California).
Gotcha. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the pot scene is diverse and thriving despite this. Certainly not a "government growers only selling shitty government cheese^W^W ditch weed" situation.
As far as I am aware, Colorado has not changed the law on anything commercial, so there is no commercial growers license yet. I think they are intending to though from what I have read.
edit - on the other hand, after reading zevyoura's post, evidently I may be talking rubbish.
I'm not sure if legal commercial selling is up and running there yet or not. It kind of thought it was. Legal non -medical weed won't be available until next March or so in Washington (end of November until non-medical growing can start, plus a few months for those non-medical plants to mature.)
I doubt this actually. I assume it would be more like how the laws are in Colorado with Amendment 64. Adults, over 21, can grow up to 6 plants and posses up to an ounce. Growers are regulated, similarly to distilleries, but they are not government run. Sales are still taxed, just as tobacco and alcohol. With this we will still see all the different strains that we see now with medical marijuana in states that allow it. So as long as you are over 21, and not smoking in public and have under an ounce there would no possession charges, regardless of the strength or strain.
That's how I see this happening, and what makes the most sense to me.
Is there actually a drafted proposed law that is available to read at this point? What you are suggesting would be drastically different than Washington or Colorado.
It obviously bothers me that marijuana is still illegal, but I'm more upset about the lack of marijuana medical research in the past. I'm glad the medical establishment is looking into it more these days. It is just sad it took so long for them to come around b/c of the stigma.
The next thing I'm also very, very upset with is the still illegal nature of hormonal supplementation. People say free the weed? I say free the testosterone and hgh. If anything will give people longer, healthier and more productive lives, it is those.
Note: I know TRT and HRT are becoming big business in the US, but it is still quite difficult to actually get these without the right insurance.
Because 21 is the legal drinking age in the United States, and it's far more politically palatable to say 'this is just like booze' than it is to say 'let's embrace dirty stoner culture.'
Because it might be unsafe. See, the human brain undergoes important development until the age of 25 and research has shown that cannabis significantly affects the brain of children and adolescents. Structural changes have been found in the brains of young cannabis users, especially in the prefrontal cortex, the last brain region to undergo maturation during adolescence. I'm for legalizing medical as well as recreational use of marijuana for adults but I think more research has to be done on how certain cannabinoids affect the brains of children. Especially because cannabis might be the only known substance that helps for example with Davet syndrome - it can save their lives.
I'm suggesting that cannabis should be sold strictly to adults only. Cannabis, just like alcohol, impairs the growth and integrity of certain brain structures of adolescents. Would you want 14-year-old kids to be able to legally buy and consume cannabis and alcohol? Of course it won't stop all of them who want from getting it somehow, it didn't stop me either at that age but do we really want to make it easily accessible and risk having a generation with potential damaged brains?
These are the years it's most likely to tip certain folks over the precipice into mental illness. A tiny minority are at risk, but those are the years.
There is plenty of objective, non-sponsored research that shows marijuana to have at least in some cases a negative effect. But nice work blanketing all of the research you disagree with as illegitimate.
The point is: The whole purpose of these heavily funded studies is to penetrate mainstream journals. They were hyped in the mainstream press with the full weight of government behind the press blitz.
There isn't actually good evidence to distinguish the flow of causation with cannabis and schizophrenia. In a significant plurality of cases, schizophrenia manifests in the 15-21 age range, regardless of cannabis use.
I have no interest in consuming marijuana but I wholeheartedly support legalization, because it would save a lot of public money and because criminalizing it ruins productive people's lives. Anecdotally, a lot of people I know in the tech community think similarly.
As for the age limit, take it step by step. Insisting on a perfect solution immediately accomplishes nothing except to delay any solution.
Give us all a break. 'Technical people' are just as (if not more likely) to be biased than ordinary people.
Marijuana is safer than cigarettes and alcohol but it is hardly harmless and we definitely don't know enough about its effect on the brain especially amongst younger users. But of course you will often see such concerns dismissed.
And few people are seriously proposing that we regulated it less than alcohol and cigarettes, so where exactly is the irrational bias?
It doesn't have to be magical hippy juice to legalize it, being safer than alcohol or tobacco is reason enough to legalize it. Hell, the clear racial motivations for the initial banning and the continuation of it are reason enough to legalize it.
"it is hardly harmless and we definitely don't know enough about its effect on the brain especially amongst younger users"
I'm a great deal more worried about tobacco and alcohol binging in youths, or in the privacy nonsense and the social stuff, then I am about some weed.
If you really want to argue "Think of the children!" look at Portugal's decriminalization for the past decade, and see if they have any numbers for you. Stop scaremongering.
Actually, I think there is something about the cold logical mind that deals with logical computers that is more likely to come down on the legalization side.
If we say that legalization is rational and its irrational emotional concerns that keep it illegal, it would make some sense, right?
See, when I talk face to face to people who are against it, they usually accept all the logic to legalize it, then say something like, "well, yes, but I just don't like the idea". They then shut down.
So, I do think there is something in it. Not universally, but I reckon there is a correlation.
Weed is hard to study because it's a schedule 1 drug. Change that and you will have a massive surge in the amount of studies done on it. It's safer than alcohol, we know that much. Not that it should matter. I'm an adult and should be able to put whatever I want in my body.
Rationalism and left and right libertarianism will get you there. The same mix is against the high prison population, harsh penalties for non-violent crime with low economic value, e.g. copyright infringement by individuals, expensive wars, continuing to build Cold War weapons, etc. The federal Drug War itself is expensive, but it also a large fraction of local and state policing, prisons, and even the State Department. Lots of expensive economic drag is tied up in that. We would prefer to be more prosperous, in addition to being freer.
If you believe that you own your own body, then it would make sense. I wonder what people will say in 100 years. Will they laugh at us for letting people with the label "government" lay claim on how we use our own bodies? I would think so.
Or maybe it's just optimism and the belief that society tends towards increasingly more rational behaviour. Unless there are some dramatic scientific findings in the future, the case against cannabis is flimsy at best -- especially when compared with other legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco.
By any reasonable account, things have been getting better for at least several centuries now. Infant mortality is down, birth rates drop as prosperity increases, advances in farming technology have rendered world hunger a logistics problem, literacy rates are improving and access to education (traditional or otherwise) has never been better. Fewer people are being burned as witches (particularly in developed and developing countries). Entire diseases have been eradicated and more will soon be eradicated. Tolerance of alternative lifestyles, once relegated to small pockets of geography and history, is spreading. Slavery continues to be on the decline.
The collapse of the Roman Empire was by most accounts a setback, as was the the Black Death and two brutal world wars (though even after those we resisted the temptation of widespread nuclear, chemical or biological warfare). It really is quite difficult to find broadly negative trends. Even the loss of the Roman Empire becomes a temporary setback if you zoom your timeline out more. The Romans were doing better then the Babylonians (well, some of them were at least), and we are doing better than they were at their height.
Things get better because that is what humans do; we stand on the shoulders of giants. Stubborn incremental improvement.
I like the way you think, the cut of your jib, etc. That's how I view open source – as a culmination of millennias-worth of incremental changes and improvements.
Our view today is by definition the conservatism of tomorrow. If my children want to be religious they would have to be progressive religious because I am going to be the conservative atheist.
If I may float a counter argument (that I personally don't happen to support but fully appreciate): As we move towards socialized medicine, your body becomes less "yours" and more part of the collective. If society pays for the results of how you use your body, it seems logical that they should have some say in that use.
That is one of the reasons I dislike socialized medicine. The state allows one and only one solution, so you have to get into it, whereas you can likely buy a little more expensive "fat" insurance and not have to change your body (or, just as likely fit people get a rebate).
Rather that those who themselves use marijuana is much more likely to comment and be in favor of legalization. It doesn't tell you anything about the "silent majority." Then HN:s up & down-vote system means your comments are likely to be downvoted in spite if you voice concerns.
I'm not a pot user (though I have tried it). I favor legalization of most drugs (also not a user of those drugs). Imprisonment of drug offenders is horrible, counter-productive, and expensive tactic for dealing with social issues (I was a prison guard for a few years, too).
PS I rarely downvote anyone to spite them solely for their opinion.
it's been pretty apparent to me for some time now that "the war on drugs" is actually a mechanism to drive _up_ the price of street drugs, and i would go so far as to claim this is done intentionally.
without ridiculously stiff penalties for drug crimes, the sky-high premium placed on the drugs themselves would be unreasonable. a higher price on street drugs leads to a similar near-linear relationship with the amount of USD exported outside the US. in this way "the war on drugs" is actually a mechanism to increase demand and circulation of the USD.
softening the penalties for drug "crimes" makes a lot of sense, just look at portugal and other areas that have decriminalized/legalized possession of small amounts of drugs. i hope the US continues along the current vector of softening its approach with drug "crimes".
Why? To give the IQ ≤ 100 voters something scary but harmless to criminalize. We know what happens when you criminalize pot, and it ain't that bad.
Create a punishment vacuum and they will cook up some mad new criminalization scheme, as surely as the dog returns to its vomit. The FSM only knows what insanity they will foist on us. Maybe they'll recriminalize condoms, it got so many votes last time. Inflation busting is always popular too, nearly made FDR president for life.
That friend had trouble finding work and grad school for years because this haunted him, and everyone asks in advance about your criminal record. It was all over a dime bag, and using crooked legal tactics.
Another friend, reminiscent of an article previously posted here, was in the Midwest (we grew up on the East Coast) and stopped for a busted headlight. They then found a negligible amount of weed. He was detained and then arrested on the spot. He was told he either call his parents, as he was a minor, and to pay a wopping 1,000 USD fine, or face charges and a court date, in which case pleading innocent and receiving a guilty verdict would mean doubled fines and potential jail time. You can guess what his parents did when they got that phone call in the middle of the night.
And don't worry, they never had a problem scrubbing this from their record, as youths who had fun. Their record would never ruin their adult (+21) lives, no?
All I have to say is, what the hell is wrong with us as society we penalize people so harshly (let's not kid, the non-white kids I knew got worse variations of these stories) for something so much less powerful than alcohol (I would love to see someone argue with me re this point after four years in the very wet college environment in contemporary America)?
Screw it. I hope this guy, and those like him win. But there is something so disgustingly Puritan and fascist, I feel myself working up the "he was a real reactonary" voice of Big Lebowski, full of snark.
Sorry, end rant.