The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

I have a feeling you are more like the average person here.

When the economy goes into a recession, or our current line of work is down sized; we take a chit job.

Only the elite can wait around until something palatable opens up.

My problem with people so desperate for money, is they come here illegailly, or just happen to somehow get some bogus paperwork by the federal government, and will do practically any job.

A large swath of American employers know they can use these people, treat them poorly, and make a better ROI in their particuliar business venture.

Construction trades--love them. It's gotten so bad, if I took my general contractor's licence out of non-op status, I honest don't know if I could be competitive without hiring the people who will work for minimum wage, or less.

("How do these workers manage to live on the U.S., if you pay them so little? They have different cultural norms than the average American. They see nothing wrong with bunk beds, and four, or more to a residential bedroom. Maybe the average American should get used to living like this; that's another debate.)

So basically, my gripe is certain employers are thrilled they can get away with underpaying their employees. If they do it shroudly, they can live the American Dream--nice house, happy wife, a bunch of spoiled kids.

There are so many business that use this business model.

I have very wealthy neighbors in Marin County. Yes, that liberal enclave north of San Francisco. Literally every landscaper on this block doesn't speak English, nor do most of the plumbers, and handymen. The DINK's like to gab, and a lot of the talk is just how cheap they get their jobs done. My next store neighbor literally brings two low wage helpers to Home Depot in her Mercedes. Their job is to follow her around, in her high heals, and carry her stuff to the car. Then they spend the rest of the day at her disposal. (I'm glad they are doing this job.)

In the end, it makes chit jobs hard to find when Americans are layed off, or fired.

Before we had this huge sector of society that will literally do anything, for practically noting; chit jobs were better. That was in the 80's, and 90's. By the 2000's it was over. They were here, and spoiled the low wage job sector even further.

That's where the anger comes in. It has nothing to do about Trumps claims of "Rapists--and sometimes, good citizens", etc.

Hooray for the scientific type approach of trying drug policies and studying the results. I'm ambivalent about marijuana legalisation and the results look fairly neutral but there are other policies like prescribing heroin like drugs to addicts so as to cut out the pushers, thefts and deaths through bad drugs that could probably save thousands of lives. I hope those get some experimentation and testing too.

There's a small scale experiment here http://health.spectator.co.uk/the-case-for-prescription-hero...

Excerpt:

>Inspector Michael Lofts studied 142 heroin and cocaine addicts in the area, and he found there was a 93 per cent drop in theft and burglary. ‘You could see them transform in front of your own eyes,’ Lofts told a newspaper, amazed. ‘They came in in outrageous condition, stealing daily to pay for illegal drugs; and became, most of them, very amiable, reasonable law-abiding people.’ He said elsewhere: ‘Since the clinics opened, the street heroin dealer has slowly but surely abandoned the streets of Warrington and Widnes.’

I like this, an honest analysis.

One major argument about crime I didn't see addressed was the revenues going to organised criminal gangs before and after.

I'm also not sure about the paper's claim that advocates claim a fall in crime, in general, from Cannabis legalisation. I can see the argument that decriminalising and medicalising heroin addiction may decrease various forms of crime, particulary acquisitive crime. But with cannabis?

You might find reports about just this from Switzerland. Zurich started as early as 1994 with a program, which provides clean drugs, and safe places to take them, to proven addicts.

It's been quite a success and the program is now nation-wide and backed by laws.

If you google "portugal drug legalization study" you'll find plenty of positive results.