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The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

cato.org

241–250 of 274 posts

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#241

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…

Canberran here - not to detract from your point, but possession of cannabis plants here isn't legal, it's merely "decriminalised", which in this case means for small quantities that are for personal use, police have the power to issue a "Simple Cannabis Offence Notice" which can be discharged by payment of a fine similar to a traffic ticket. The plants will still be confiscated.

Aye I havE heard the confiscation is at the discretion of the officers involved. Have known some old hats that grew in their backyard in Canberra. If the cops came knocking they usually got a fine and asked to keep things discrete for the neighbors sake. Weird as hell, have even on the rarest of occasions heard of this happening in nsw, I guess some cops don't fully back the laws they are supposed to enforce for the better occasionally.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#242
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

That's partially because it has not been legalized in a non-nearly-exclusively-caucasian state yet. Meaning it hasn't been legalized in a state where there are many marijuana arrests. 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…

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Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#243

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…

The trend is that more Mexicans have left the US rather than entered it. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-... Then, you used Mexican immigrant and illegal immigrant interchangeably. Not all Mexican immigrants are illegal or financially distressed, or seeking to do jobs that no one else wants to do. This pisses me off. The US entertainment industry is hostile towards Mexico in a very passive…

You made a great point, I'm Mexican so I'm aware of all the ideas and stereotypes the entertainment industry spread to the whole globe about Mexicans.

I've met people from other countries who really think we live in a desert (old west style), with a poncho and a sombrero. I can't really count all the American movies or shows where they show Mexico in a old west style, sepia background, sand and cactus everywhere, women using old style dresses, people armed everywhere. I love Terminator and Breaking bad, but the way they show Mexico, wow, it's so laughable.

People tend to think we all Mexicans are just looking for an opportunity to go to the US, they don't stop for a second and think that that might not be true for most cases, I have family over there that would give everything to come back to Mexico if they could find a good job.

You know it's not easy crossing a desert risking your life, leaving your whole family behind, knowing that you might never see them again, just to take an unpleasant job cleaning someone's else toilet, just to live in a small house in an ugly neighborhood, experiencing racism, facing cultural and language barriers, praying God for good health.

I'm a developer so I have a reasonably good job over here, I've had a lot of offers from American companies but I've rejected all of them because I just don't see it as a necessity, right know money is not a factor to consider facing all the downsides a Mexican will face in the US, here I have everything that I need and want.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#244
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

That's partially because it has not been legalized in a non-nearly-exclusively-caucasian state yet. Meaning it hasn't been legalized in a state where there are many marijuana arrests. 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…

> I'm not exageratting... I've never met a caucasian person who's been arrested for marijuana posession. Never.

You can meet one now, on HN! I was arrested in 2011 for having ~3 grams of marijuana in rural Maryland. I am Caucasian. Got cavity searched and sat in jail for about 18 hours. Without going into too much detail, the charges were still dropped - apparently the police officer who arrested me had a bad track record of illegally detaining people. (It is questionable if my race had anything to do with their willingness to drop charges of course, but that is a totally different discussion.)

In any case, I wonder if this would have happened to me if MD had passed their decriminalization laws earlier? I've since moved to Washington State.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#245
post #213
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the major disagreement isn't whether law breaking is ok or not. The question is whether violating US immigration laws is a serious crime that requires harsh punishment or a minor crime the requires a slap on the wrist. The "apologize, pay a token fine, get a work permit" crowd thinks violating immigration laws are like speeding, pot, or jaywalking laws. The "deport them all" crowd thinks violating immigration…

Sure, speeding might be a misdemeanor, but no one in their right mind will continue doing it of they see police lights in their rear view mirror. Similarly, illegal immigration may be a misdemeanor, but you can't continue doing it after you're caught. Deportation is not meant to be punative, it is simply the mechanism needed to bring you back in compliance with the laws you've knowingly broken.

The "pay a fine, get a work permit" solution will put you into a compliant status too.

Whether deportation is meant to be punitive or not, it is harsh. Not just for the deported person, but also their employer, family, landlord, etc.

This gets back to my point, does the crime deserve a harsh punishment or not is something that our society doesn't agree on.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#246
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarianism, as envisioned by the Koch brothers, is AMAZING when you're rich. You simply remove all government functions that protect the poor from the wealthy, and re-create feudal Europe. What's not to love???

I have to ask: have you ever looked at the Koch brothers' actual views? Because I have a hard time reconciling your strawman description with http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/13/koch-bros-t... as just one example. Or http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/08/15/clemenc... or http://cjonline.com/news/2015-10-15/forfeiture-reform-aligns... for that matter. Those are not rich people problems they're…

There are equally strong objections to their attempt to dominate the political system by spending billions of dollars, from the local to the national level on an extensive range of elections and organizations.[0] At one point, they were planning to spend approximately as much as the Republican Party on this election cycle (they don't seem to like Trump, so maybe they backed off a little, but I don't know).[1]

Why should two voters have so much more influence than 310 million others? It's anti-democratic.

I also think this the parent post presents an overly-moderated depiction of their views - but I'm too busy to look it up myself right now.[0] Certainly the existence of a few things I agree with among their extensive activities wouldn't mean much.

[0] Wikipedia, which I wouldn't put much faith in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Ko...

and: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Maze_of_Money.png

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/01/26/koch-...

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#247

So, half the hn crowd see this report as a partisan biased attempt to push legalization, and the other half see it as a partisan biased attempt to suppress legalization...

Given the Cato Institute is a libertarian policy think tank, I'm not sure how the second group would maintain that idea.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#248
post #170

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…

Looks like this report deliberately chosen negative stats and use of non zero y axis in some graphs made me cringe as well.

Not to mention that lack of any control data or comparison to other factors, like alcohol.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ad hominem fallacy is simply a guideline to evaluate the logical consistency of an argument. It's not a magic spell you can use to discount a premise. Indeed, blind use of "fallacies" is just an appeal to ancient Greek authority! For non-expert HN commenters, we have to use authority, preexisting bias, and past actions of the speaker to give us more information without fully delving into the article. Unless you'r…

>it's expedient to use available information It's intellectually lazy and it's why blind peer review is a thing.

According to your world view, if I can't devote hundreds of hours to evaluate a statement, I'm not permitted to have an opinion? Please clarify.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#250
post #154

Interesting! I'm from California but haven't lived there in ten years and I thought marijuana was already legal there. Turns out that it's only medicinal use of marijuana that is legal (2010), but there is a ballot proposition for wider legalization on the upcoming November, 2016 elections. https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_64,_Marijuana...

California's medical use law is a little special, though, in that it has language allowing usage if it will alleviate suffering from any condition in any way. Everyone has something, however small, so it ends up being a de facto legalization with a hoop to jump through.

That said, I fully expect the upcoming initiative to result in recreational legalization. It was a near miss on the last shot a few years back, and the political climate is significantly friendlier now.

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