191–200 of 274 posts
This is really interesting in light of the current political discussions: "Until 1913 marijuana was legal throughout the United States under both state and federal law. Beginning with California in 1913 and Utah in 1914, however, states began outlawing marijuana, and by 1930, 30 states had adopted marijuana prohibition. Those state-level prohibitions stemmed largely from anti-immigrant sentiment and in particular rac…
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…
Many people get ground in the gears of the criminal justice system in the U.S. with charges of marijuana possession. In my state, sharing with a friend can get you hit with a possession with intent to sell or deliver charge, which is a felony. A felony conviction almost guarantees you'll do time. You will go to jail. You will probably lose your job and have trouble getting a new one. Life changes in significant ways.…
Yes, what you describe is a travesty and needs to be writ large - legalisation may not change much but it does reduce the number of people who get their lives ruined by the state for no good reason
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't refer to the Cato Institute as anything but biased, as it's a neo-con libertarian think tank funded by the Koch Brothers but this particular study is fascinating simply because it IS a neo-con libertarian think tank funded by the Koch Brothers.
How is that fascinating? Libertarianism as an ideology is overtly based on the theory that everyone ought to have extreme and full personal freedom to do whatever they like, so long as it does not affect anyone else. They have long advocated the full legalization of marijuana and all other drugs. Neoconservativism and libertarianism are very different ideologies, by the way. Perhaps the out-group homogenity bias is a…
Unless it's a big corp causing harm to people in which case they fight tooth and nail to prevent any kind of legislation that might fix the issue see discouraging tobacco smoking, global warming, coal pollution, fracking and so on.
> The absence of significant adverse consequences is especially striking given the sometimes dire predictions made by legalization opponents. No kidding - let me just quote Kofi Annan's excellent essay on the subject (published a couple of months before the UN failed to course correct at UNGASS 2016): "Nowhere is this divorce between rhetoric and reality more evident than in the formulation of global drug policies, w…
it would of been nice is they contrasted the "no rise in serious crime" with the number of drug related arrests. for me the biggest reason to have gange legal is it frees policing resources up from processing fairly ridiculous prosecutions of people dealing in what is basically just plant material. so while it is nice to see there is no real impact on "other crime" the fact they missed the impact of freeing up resour…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your quote nails my sentiment on the matter of drug legalisation. The conversation shown here within HN is fascinating, from an outliers perspective. The benefits and effects of the legalisation of Marijuana I would assume, have been well documented by now though the quantity of these reports, I would assume to be small in number. Surely it's a benefit if the number of these reports and articles were increased. Surel…
you failed to read the one paragraph conclusion. both pro and cons arguments were wrong. absolutely nothing relevant has changed. crime didnt go up nor down. neither did taxes. etc. nada. also, ted is only relevant to rich pot heads ;)
I'm not exageratting... I've never met a caucasian person who's been arrested for marijuana posession. Never. And yet here in NYC alone, on the order of 50,000 people (almost exclusively of color) are arrested every year for marijuana possession. This gives them a record. This means they can't get jobs or take financial aid.
This Cato report, quite frankly, is a painfully long bore that ignores the dynamics at play that make Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska uniquely atypical test-beds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, though the article's summary claimed to find no noticeable change, the section on taxes says: One area where legal marijuana has reaped unexpectedly large benefits is state tax revenue.
Which means more money to invest in the country fixing issues, hopefully, instead of being wasted on mansions for corrupt politicians or spent recklessly. For example, issues that cause crime. Wouldn't that be nice? Or at least advancement of science and engineering. Someone gets to fund the space program.
I would express the same sentiment about illegal immigrants. This is to all the people who support Donald Trump's rhetoric about deporting all 11 million undocumented immigrants. These people fled the drug gangs and violence that our war on drugs helped create (think fleeing ISIS) and came to work jobs no one else would take and make a better life for their family. Yes technically they broke a law. If you're going to…
> came to work jobs no one else would take This is a particular piece of rhetoric I find distasteful. If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take, that job should not exist in that form or at that pay rate. Full stop. So the fact that jobs that "no one else would take" exist and are being taken by ille…
A contrasting report: http://www.rmhidta.org/html/2016%20FINAL%20Legalization%20of... There are indeed significant changes in some marijuana-related statistics. The Cato institute report has selected indicators that are relatively stable and do not show these effects. It does not discuss the limitations of the data, discuss data sources that were considered but not used, or include illustrative anecdotes. It can be s…
> The absence of significant adverse consequences is especially striking given the sometimes dire predictions made by legalization opponents. No kidding - let me just quote Kofi Annan's excellent essay on the subject (published a couple of months before the UN failed to course correct at UNGASS 2016): "Nowhere is this divorce between rhetoric and reality more evident than in the formulation of global drug policies, w…
Pot is different then Cocaine and Heroine in terms of impact on society and the economy. Can't search for support for the reality, but several cities that had drug free zones had closed them due to harm that is done to the individual and those around them.
It is true that cocaine and heroin are very serious drugs that can do a lot of harm. It is also true that prohibition and the prosecution of users only seems to make matters worse. For some scientific evidence in cartoon format :) :