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NY Comptroller: Legalise marijuana, tax it and end wrongheaded war on pot

theguardian.com

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Re: NY Comptroller: Legalise marijuana, tax it and end wrongheaded war on pot

#21

Post by rubyn00bie »

pr0xy wrote: post #12

If they did legalize it, what would happen to the thousands sitting in jail / probation for pot offenses. Oh were sry, it's ok now?

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.

* 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.

Re: NY Comptroller: Legalise marijuana, tax it and end wrongheaded war on pot

#22

Post by rodgerd »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #15
pekk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they will all be incredibly conservative and religious. It's a cheap trick to claim that your own view is the view of the future.

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.

It's certainly opimisim. A quick look at the history would suggest there's no particular reason to believe that things always get better.

Re: NY Comptroller: Legalise marijuana, tax it and end wrongheaded war on pot

#24

Post by jlgreco »

rodgerd wrote: post #22
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's certainly opimisim. A quick look at the history would suggest there's no particular reason to believe that things always get better.

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.

Re: NY Comptroller: Legalise marijuana, tax it and end wrongheaded war on pot

#25

Post by speeq »

pravda wrote: post #7
e40 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps that's because technical people tend to look at facts when they analyze a situation?

Ummm...also because they like to get toasted. I think this plan is discriminatory. "under my proposal, only adults age 21 and over would be allowed to possess up to one ounce of marijuana" Why shouldn't 18-20 year olds have the right to blaze up? Those are the prime toking years.

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.

Re: NY Comptroller: Legalise marijuana, tax it and end wrongheaded war on pot

#26

Post by aaronbrethorst »

pravda wrote: post #7
e40 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps that's because technical people tend to look at facts when they analyze a situation?

Ummm...also because they like to get toasted. I think this plan is discriminatory. "under my proposal, only adults age 21 and over would be allowed to possess up to one ounce of marijuana" Why shouldn't 18-20 year olds have the right to blaze up? Those are the prime toking years.

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.'

Check out the pro-legalization ads that ran in Washington last year when we successfully passed a MJ legalization initiative: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xja72pL-ZEM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatc...

Coincidentally, this weekend is Hempfest here in Seattle. The Seattle PD is on hand passing out Doritos and literature on how to stay compliant with our state laws: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/15/us/seattle-police-doritos-...

Re: NY Comptroller: Legalise marijuana, tax it and end wrongheaded war on pot

#27

Post by bdcravens »

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.

Re: NY Comptroller: Legalise marijuana, tax it and end wrongheaded war on pot

#28

Post by [deleted] »

jlgreco wrote: post #18
pr0xy wrote: post #12

If they did legalize it, what would happen to the thousands sitting in jail / probation for pot offenses. Oh were sry, it's ok now?

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.

[deleted]

Re: NY Comptroller: Legalise marijuana, tax it and end wrongheaded war on pot

#29

Post by aaronbrethorst »

pr0xy wrote: post #12

If they did legalize it, what would happen to the thousands sitting in jail / probation for pot offenses. Oh were sry, it's ok now?

In Washington, some prosecutors threw out all pending pot-related cases after I-502 (pot legalization) passed last November. http://blogs.seattletimes.com/politicsnorthwest/2012/11/09/1...

(Note: Seattle is in King county)

Re: NY Comptroller: Legalise marijuana, tax it and end wrongheaded war on pot

#30

Post by harshreality »

jlgreco wrote: post #18
pr0xy wrote: post #12

If they did legalize it, what would happen to the thousands sitting in jail / probation for pot offenses. Oh were sry, it's ok now?

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.

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