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Showing posts with label Drug Legalization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drug Legalization. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Stimulus We Can Believe In
TW: This is exactly what I mean by drug legalization achieving success for the U.S. Grow it (agriculture industry in the U.S. instead of imported), distribute it (retail/wholesale industry), tax it (government revenue) and regulate it (increase our control on actual use). All of these components are largely captured by criminals currently, lets re-capture them. Finally stop using law enforcement on these activities potentially saving even more money. This is American ingenuity in action, entrepreneurial etc.
From WaPo:
"Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico.
Illicit pot production in the United States has been increasing steadily for decades. But recent changes in state laws that allow the use and cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes are giving U.S. growers a competitive advantage, challenging the traditional dominance of the Mexican traffickers, who once made brands such as Acapulco Gold the standard for quality.
Almost all of the marijuana consumed in the multibillion-dollar U.S. market once came from Mexico or Colombia. Now as much as half is produced domestically, often by small-scale operators who painstakingly tend greenhouses and indoor gardens to produce the more potent, and expensive, product that consumers now demand, according to authorities and marijuana dealers on both sides of the border.
The shifting economics of the marijuana trade have broad implications for Mexico's war against the drug cartels, suggesting that market forces, as much as law enforcement, can extract a heavy price from criminal organizations that have used the spectacular profits generated by pot sales to fuel the violence and corruption that plague the Mexican state.
While the trafficking of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine is the main focus of U.S. law enforcement, it is marijuana that has long provided most of the revenue for Mexican drug cartels. More than 60 percent of the cartels' revenue -- $8.6 billion out of $13.8 billion in 2006 -- came from U.S. marijuana sales, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy..."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/06/AR2009100603847.html
From WaPo:
"Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico.
Illicit pot production in the United States has been increasing steadily for decades. But recent changes in state laws that allow the use and cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes are giving U.S. growers a competitive advantage, challenging the traditional dominance of the Mexican traffickers, who once made brands such as Acapulco Gold the standard for quality.
Almost all of the marijuana consumed in the multibillion-dollar U.S. market once came from Mexico or Colombia. Now as much as half is produced domestically, often by small-scale operators who painstakingly tend greenhouses and indoor gardens to produce the more potent, and expensive, product that consumers now demand, according to authorities and marijuana dealers on both sides of the border.
The shifting economics of the marijuana trade have broad implications for Mexico's war against the drug cartels, suggesting that market forces, as much as law enforcement, can extract a heavy price from criminal organizations that have used the spectacular profits generated by pot sales to fuel the violence and corruption that plague the Mexican state.
While the trafficking of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine is the main focus of U.S. law enforcement, it is marijuana that has long provided most of the revenue for Mexican drug cartels. More than 60 percent of the cartels' revenue -- $8.6 billion out of $13.8 billion in 2006 -- came from U.S. marijuana sales, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy..."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/06/AR2009100603847.html
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Creeping Pot Legalization
TW: As I have stated previously if it were up to me legalization would not creep it would be swift and systematic. But elections do have consequences as evidenced by how a POTUS elects to enforce existing laws can have big impacts. I am not a big fan of these implicit policy changes but in our political environment where achieving sweeping legislation is very difficult both sides tend to find ways to implement policy through alternative means.
From Fortune Magazine:
"...Under President George W. Bush (and under President Bill Clinton before him, for that matter), the U.S. Justice Department treated state medical marijuana laws as nullities. Such laws were contradicted and therefore preempted by federal drug laws, the Justice Department reasoned, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that position in 2005.
Accordingly, the federal government has periodically raided and prosecuted defendants who at least claimed to be complying with state medical marijuana laws, and when it did, defendants were forbidden from telling juries about the existence of those laws.
In late February, President Obama signaled a new approach. His attorney general, Eric Holder, confirmed at a press conference that he would no longer subject individuals who were complying with state medical marijuana laws to federal drug raids and prosecutions.
This understated act -- a simple pledge not to act, really -- could have enormous consequences. It potentially leads to exactly the same endpoint as the Twenty-First Amendment, which repealed the federal prohibition on alcoholic beverage sales.
Here's how. When states make a legal loophole allowing medical use of marijuana, they must grapple with the messy question of what precisely constitutes medical use. After all, doctors regularly prescribe powerful drugs like Valium, Viagra, Prozac, and -- give us a break -- Botox to patients who are hardly at death's door.
If a state doesn't tightly limit what "medical use" means, the camel can get its nose under the tent.
That's what happened in California. Like most medical marijuana states, California permits doctors to "recommend" marijuana use for patients who suffer from specific serious diseases. (Drafters of the law avoided the word "prescribe" in an attempt to sidestep conflict with federal law.)
California's law then adds a catchall provision that lets doctors also approve marijuana use for "any other illness for which marijuana provides relief." In practice, doctors -- largely protected from second-guessing by confidentiality privileges -- have been free to make the final call as to which conditions those might be.
This is, after all, the norm vis-à-vis medicines. Once a pharmaceutical has been FDA-approved for one use, doctors can lawfully prescribe it for other, so-called off-label purposes, even though the drug has not yet been certified as safe or effective for them.
Accordingly, California doctors are authorizing patients to take marijuana to relieve such ailments as anxiety, headache, premenstrual syndrome, and trouble sleeping. "You could get it for writer's block," comments Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws..."
http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/11/magazines/fortune/medical_marijuana_legalizing.fortune/index.htm
From Fortune Magazine:
"...Under President George W. Bush (and under President Bill Clinton before him, for that matter), the U.S. Justice Department treated state medical marijuana laws as nullities. Such laws were contradicted and therefore preempted by federal drug laws, the Justice Department reasoned, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that position in 2005.
Accordingly, the federal government has periodically raided and prosecuted defendants who at least claimed to be complying with state medical marijuana laws, and when it did, defendants were forbidden from telling juries about the existence of those laws.
In late February, President Obama signaled a new approach. His attorney general, Eric Holder, confirmed at a press conference that he would no longer subject individuals who were complying with state medical marijuana laws to federal drug raids and prosecutions.
This understated act -- a simple pledge not to act, really -- could have enormous consequences. It potentially leads to exactly the same endpoint as the Twenty-First Amendment, which repealed the federal prohibition on alcoholic beverage sales.
Here's how. When states make a legal loophole allowing medical use of marijuana, they must grapple with the messy question of what precisely constitutes medical use. After all, doctors regularly prescribe powerful drugs like Valium, Viagra, Prozac, and -- give us a break -- Botox to patients who are hardly at death's door.
If a state doesn't tightly limit what "medical use" means, the camel can get its nose under the tent.
That's what happened in California. Like most medical marijuana states, California permits doctors to "recommend" marijuana use for patients who suffer from specific serious diseases. (Drafters of the law avoided the word "prescribe" in an attempt to sidestep conflict with federal law.)
California's law then adds a catchall provision that lets doctors also approve marijuana use for "any other illness for which marijuana provides relief." In practice, doctors -- largely protected from second-guessing by confidentiality privileges -- have been free to make the final call as to which conditions those might be.
This is, after all, the norm vis-à-vis medicines. Once a pharmaceutical has been FDA-approved for one use, doctors can lawfully prescribe it for other, so-called off-label purposes, even though the drug has not yet been certified as safe or effective for them.
Accordingly, California doctors are authorizing patients to take marijuana to relieve such ailments as anxiety, headache, premenstrual syndrome, and trouble sleeping. "You could get it for writer's block," comments Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws..."
http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/11/magazines/fortune/medical_marijuana_legalizing.fortune/index.htm
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Ganjapreneurship
TW: I support drug legalization. Grow the stuff here, tax the heck out of it, regulate it, support American jobs. Various states have relatively liberal drug laws but federal laws overlay local law. The Obama administration is taking a more lenient view of the state laws (see Dems can support states rights too...) than his predecessor. Unsurprisingly jobs are being created. Or perhaps not so much created as lifted from the "black" economy, where no one pays into social security, medicare etc., into the formal economy where they do. Imagine folks opening up storefronts paying property tax contributing to the vitality of a town rather than lurking surreptitiously within the shadows of society. This stuff is not that complex.
From Atlantic Monthly:
"...What can only be rightly described as an explosion of ganjapreneurship is currently underway in Colorado, sparked by the Obama Administration's new policy announcement in February, which directed federal agencies to defer to state law enforcement on the issue of medical marijuana.
Medical marijuana has been technically legal in Colorado since 2000, when residents voted to add Amendment 20 to the state's constitution. The Bush Administration, however, always maintained a rigid stance that federal anti-drug laws took precedence over state rights. Regular DEA raids on medical marijuana distributors in states that legally permit such commerce effectively intimidated citizens who would have otherwise officially registered as patients or caregivers.
At the beginning of this year, only 2000 people had applied for Colorado's Medical Marijuana Registry since the system was established on 2001. In the past six months, the registry has grown to nearly 10,000.
...Colorado is just now entering a phase of transition that embraces that legal reality. The longtime lucrative blackmarket in a forbidden agricultural product is being legitimized--all the financial transactions that used to flow underground are now being raised to the taxable surface, creating a new era for an ancient industry, and fertile ground for ganjapreneurial start-ups to sprout like new shoots of Cannabis sativa.
...Kathleen suggests, "Marijuana is the only thing pulling Colorado out of the recession right now." Not only has her own small business been saved, but whereas her previous sales tax bill would run about $500 per quarter, Nederland will be getting a $5000 check out of her first few months as a dispensary. Most of the farmers Kathleen works with have been cultivating their product illegally for many years--the oldest has been in the illicit business for 35, more than half have grown marijuana for over two decades. Now that they sell their product to a legal commercial enterprise, weed farmers will have to register their income and pay taxes on it, just like anyone growing tomatoes or tobacco.
...Kathleen says. Since marijuana farmers have begun selling exclusively to legitimate dispensaries, the underground market for illegal weed has been quashed, putting drug dealers out of business for lack of available stock.
...Considering the prevalence of the underground market, legitimizing the business has the effect of tightening controls over it, regulating who can legally purchase, sell, or grow it, which puts unscrupulous drug dealers out of business, this reducing the availability of product through any but official channels. The controls that come with legalization effectively reduces its availability, rather than the contrary..."
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/christina_davidson/2009/08/at_first_glance_the_one.php
From Atlantic Monthly:
"...What can only be rightly described as an explosion of ganjapreneurship is currently underway in Colorado, sparked by the Obama Administration's new policy announcement in February, which directed federal agencies to defer to state law enforcement on the issue of medical marijuana.
Medical marijuana has been technically legal in Colorado since 2000, when residents voted to add Amendment 20 to the state's constitution. The Bush Administration, however, always maintained a rigid stance that federal anti-drug laws took precedence over state rights. Regular DEA raids on medical marijuana distributors in states that legally permit such commerce effectively intimidated citizens who would have otherwise officially registered as patients or caregivers.
At the beginning of this year, only 2000 people had applied for Colorado's Medical Marijuana Registry since the system was established on 2001. In the past six months, the registry has grown to nearly 10,000.
...Colorado is just now entering a phase of transition that embraces that legal reality. The longtime lucrative blackmarket in a forbidden agricultural product is being legitimized--all the financial transactions that used to flow underground are now being raised to the taxable surface, creating a new era for an ancient industry, and fertile ground for ganjapreneurial start-ups to sprout like new shoots of Cannabis sativa.
...Kathleen suggests, "Marijuana is the only thing pulling Colorado out of the recession right now." Not only has her own small business been saved, but whereas her previous sales tax bill would run about $500 per quarter, Nederland will be getting a $5000 check out of her first few months as a dispensary. Most of the farmers Kathleen works with have been cultivating their product illegally for many years--the oldest has been in the illicit business for 35, more than half have grown marijuana for over two decades. Now that they sell their product to a legal commercial enterprise, weed farmers will have to register their income and pay taxes on it, just like anyone growing tomatoes or tobacco.
...Kathleen says. Since marijuana farmers have begun selling exclusively to legitimate dispensaries, the underground market for illegal weed has been quashed, putting drug dealers out of business for lack of available stock.
...Considering the prevalence of the underground market, legitimizing the business has the effect of tightening controls over it, regulating who can legally purchase, sell, or grow it, which puts unscrupulous drug dealers out of business, this reducing the availability of product through any but official channels. The controls that come with legalization effectively reduces its availability, rather than the contrary..."
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/christina_davidson/2009/08/at_first_glance_the_one.php
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Bottom Up Governance For Pot
TW: This Chicago Tribune editorial speaks to the confused nature of how America deals with pot. A proposed Cook County measure to reduce the sanctions against pot possession has garnered press not because of its profound substance, it would not change much either way, but because it is pot and ooooh pot is pot.
The editorial one hand appears to support reducing the possession sanctions (because they are expensive) but then blanches at the notion of perhaps legalizing it to tax and regulate (because after all it is illegal...but jeez if it were legalized would it not then be....legal). They appear to like the notion fining pot possessors just not taxing them. Perhaps because fines sound better than taxes.
Like many other political issues I suspect over time liberalized laws will grow, it is just a very haphazard (inefficient and inequitable) way of going about governance.
From Chicago Tribune:
"The measure would give...officers discretion to issue a $200 ticket instead of making a misdemeanor arrest in cases where the suspect was carrying less than 10 grams of marijuana.
....Cook County will be far from the first place to decriminalize small amounts of pot. Similar laws began popping up in the '70s, and close to one in three Americans now lives in a jurisdiction where officers are allowed to make similar calls.Whether this reflects growing acceptance of marijuana use or a more pragmatic concern for the cost of enforcement, or both, is subject to interpretation.
...Roughly 9 of every 10 marijuana arrests nationwide are for possession only, and the vast majority of them result in plea bargains or dismissals, calling into question the cost-effectiveness of arresting, jailing and prosecuting small-time users. Governments that have decriminalized such cases report little to no increase in marijuana use -- and significant savings in enforcement.
We see the sense in decriminalizing. Lately, though, the liberalization of marijuana laws is being driven by pot's potential as a revenue source. Prosecuting people for possession costs money; fining them brings in cash.
...We're grateful that Illinois leaders haven't smoked enough to fantasize about marijuana as a budget booster. It's an illegal drug, remember?
...They and other police departments will have no such discretion in the cities and villages. Dart's officers made just 173 misdemeanor pot arrests last year and 150 the year before..."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/chi-0725edit1jul25,0,7364464.story
The editorial one hand appears to support reducing the possession sanctions (because they are expensive) but then blanches at the notion of perhaps legalizing it to tax and regulate (because after all it is illegal...but jeez if it were legalized would it not then be....legal). They appear to like the notion fining pot possessors just not taxing them. Perhaps because fines sound better than taxes.
Like many other political issues I suspect over time liberalized laws will grow, it is just a very haphazard (inefficient and inequitable) way of going about governance.
From Chicago Tribune:
"The measure would give...officers discretion to issue a $200 ticket instead of making a misdemeanor arrest in cases where the suspect was carrying less than 10 grams of marijuana.
....Cook County will be far from the first place to decriminalize small amounts of pot. Similar laws began popping up in the '70s, and close to one in three Americans now lives in a jurisdiction where officers are allowed to make similar calls.Whether this reflects growing acceptance of marijuana use or a more pragmatic concern for the cost of enforcement, or both, is subject to interpretation.
...Roughly 9 of every 10 marijuana arrests nationwide are for possession only, and the vast majority of them result in plea bargains or dismissals, calling into question the cost-effectiveness of arresting, jailing and prosecuting small-time users. Governments that have decriminalized such cases report little to no increase in marijuana use -- and significant savings in enforcement.
We see the sense in decriminalizing. Lately, though, the liberalization of marijuana laws is being driven by pot's potential as a revenue source. Prosecuting people for possession costs money; fining them brings in cash.
...We're grateful that Illinois leaders haven't smoked enough to fantasize about marijuana as a budget booster. It's an illegal drug, remember?
...They and other police departments will have no such discretion in the cities and villages. Dart's officers made just 173 misdemeanor pot arrests last year and 150 the year before..."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/chi-0725edit1jul25,0,7364464.story
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Pot Legalization Stuck In Neutral Nationally
TW: My guy Obama and his director of drug policy are not going to blaze any trails on pot legalization. To think they would do so is to believe in a bridge too far. Our country is so cockeyed on such issues that we will just keep bashing our collective heads bloody before pondering legitimate alternatives. Meanwhile the drug cartels get richer, enforcement dollars are squandered etc. etc.
There are some signs of progress, however, on the local level...more to come.
From Economist:
"...Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. "Legalisation is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine,"... Sadly America's conversation about marijuana has not advanced to the point where an official can even mull the idea of legalisation. More depressing, though, was Mr Kerlikowske's line that "marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit". That is a trite and ignorant statement.
Mr Kerlikowske is simply echoing the conclusion reached by the FDA in 2006, which we said at the time seemed to "lack common sense".
Cannabis has been used as a medicinal plant for millennia. In fact, the American government actually supplied cannabis as a medicine for some time, before the scheme was shut down in the early 1990s. Today, cannabis is used all over the world, despite its illegality, to relieve pain and anxiety, to aid sleep, and to prevent seizures and muscle spasms...
...We can say that this has no medical benefit because no tests have been done, and then we refuse to let you do any tests. The US has gotten into a bind, it has made cannabis out to be such a villain that people blindly say 'no'..."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/07/panning_pot.cfm
There are some signs of progress, however, on the local level...more to come.
From Economist:
"...Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. "Legalisation is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine,"... Sadly America's conversation about marijuana has not advanced to the point where an official can even mull the idea of legalisation. More depressing, though, was Mr Kerlikowske's line that "marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit". That is a trite and ignorant statement.
Mr Kerlikowske is simply echoing the conclusion reached by the FDA in 2006, which we said at the time seemed to "lack common sense".
Cannabis has been used as a medicinal plant for millennia. In fact, the American government actually supplied cannabis as a medicine for some time, before the scheme was shut down in the early 1990s. Today, cannabis is used all over the world, despite its illegality, to relieve pain and anxiety, to aid sleep, and to prevent seizures and muscle spasms...
...We can say that this has no medical benefit because no tests have been done, and then we refuse to let you do any tests. The US has gotten into a bind, it has made cannabis out to be such a villain that people blindly say 'no'..."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/07/panning_pot.cfm
Saturday, July 25, 2009
The Wave Of the Future: Pot Taxes
TW: We have hit this before (see the sidebar for "drug legalization"). But California, as usual, is leading the way. De-criminalizing, regulating and taxing the crap out of pot only makes sense.
From Economist:
"It was just a matter of time until someone in some struggling locale did this—Oakland, California has passed a measure (by popular vote) to tax marijuana. Pot shops had been paying the same tax as all other retail businesses, $1.20 per $1,000 in sales. That rate will now be raised to $18. Marijuana is medical for medicinal purposes in the state of California, but oversight of sales is rather lax, and the state will vote on legalisation of the drug for recreational purposes next year.
An interesting fact about the proposal: Oakland marijuana dispensaries reportedly supported the tax increase, on the grounds that passage of the measure would further legitimise their businesses and the practice as a whole. Indeed, once a line of revenue is established city leaders will have a strong incentive to protect the status of the sellers.
One wonders why more cities and states haven't experimented with non-traditional methods of encouraging economic activity and raising revenue. Perhaps crisis isn't quite as good at opening the door to daring or controversial new policies as is widely imagined."
From Economist:
"It was just a matter of time until someone in some struggling locale did this—Oakland, California has passed a measure (by popular vote) to tax marijuana. Pot shops had been paying the same tax as all other retail businesses, $1.20 per $1,000 in sales. That rate will now be raised to $18. Marijuana is medical for medicinal purposes in the state of California, but oversight of sales is rather lax, and the state will vote on legalisation of the drug for recreational purposes next year.
An interesting fact about the proposal: Oakland marijuana dispensaries reportedly supported the tax increase, on the grounds that passage of the measure would further legitimise their businesses and the practice as a whole. Indeed, once a line of revenue is established city leaders will have a strong incentive to protect the status of the sellers.
One wonders why more cities and states haven't experimented with non-traditional methods of encouraging economic activity and raising revenue. Perhaps crisis isn't quite as good at opening the door to daring or controversial new policies as is widely imagined."
Friday, April 17, 2009
Is the Mexico Story Overblown
TW: A local publication in El Paso provides a different perspective on the border "crisis". They begrudge the hype by which national media and certain interest groups apply the story. No doubt they have a point (national media lives on hype). Certainly local media can have their own biases as well though. It is in their economic interest to downplay the violence lest investors and tourists go elsewhere. Their themes focus on a desire not to have troops patrolling their streets and for folks to understand the complex dynamics of a border economy rather than the simplistic characterizations framed by outsiders.
I would rely more on lcoal views than say, Lou Dobbs. I never watch Dobbs but we overheard his venom while at an airport recently, he is a bloviator of ignorance. Bill O'Reilly may be more constructive than Dobbs.
From Texas Monthly:
"...it’s the twisted perception created by border-warrior politicians and national news media, and foisted on Juarez’s relatively peaceful sister city. For El Pasoans and residents of nearby border towns, it might all be a mere oddity—maybe even worth a chuckle—if it didn’t mean the construction of 18-foot border walls, blustery talk about National Guard troop surges, and new resources for the disastrous war on drugs. While “troop surge,” “border wall,” and “drug war” might sound irresistibly sexy to politicians and pundits, it’s border residents who have to live with the fences and tanks and consequences.
The truth differs wildly from the perception. Certainly, El Paso’s symbiotic relationship with Juarez has been disrupted by the explosion of drug violence south of the border, which began to tick up in January 2008. But it’s not the kind of disruption brought to you by CNN, Fox, and the rest of the media pack.
The real impact of the ongoing tragedy in Juarez is felt by El Pasoans in more indirect and personal ways. While the brutality across the river has not caused a wave of kidnappings and murders in El Paso, folks do feel its effects every day. Families are divided. El Pasoans can no longer visit their friends, relatives, doctors or dentists in Juarez. Businesses on both sides suffer. The stories are legion: The high-school student who can’t visit her beloved, 105-year-old grandmother because her parents don’t want to risk her safety. The young Juarez woman who worries that her El Paso friends and relatives won’t be able to attend her wedding. And the many families mourning loved ones lost on the other side of the Rio Grande.
...Consider this gem from former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, now a consultant for ABC News, commenting on Juarez: “There is in fact an insurgency on both sides of the American-Mexican border, and it’s stepped up a lot in the last several years because the Bush administration ignored it and put its focus on Iraq.”
...According to the FBI, more than 1,600 people were killed by cartel violence in Juarez in 2008. El Paso, a city of 755,000, recorded just 18 murders last year. Laredo had 11; Brownsville and McAllen had three and nine, respectively. By comparison, Washington, D.C., with a population smaller than El Paso’s, had 186 homicides in 2008.
...The violence is not “spilling over the border” into the U.S. No, every time you say that, whether you mean to or not, you’re conjuring up images of crazed Mexicans crossing the border to burn Columbus, and you have it backwards. It spilled over from the U.S. into Mexico and Latin America long ago. ... [F]or the past 20 years, we’ve been slowly turning the border into a militarized zone, so let’s not say there isn’t violence associated with both sides of the drug trade and the Drug War. We could say that we’re now sharing the violence to a higher degree, an important distinction from the simple-minded terminology of “spilling over.”
...Negron cops to his own role in whipping up the frenzy. In January he penned an article for Texas Monthly called “Baghdad, Mexico,” comparing the carnage in Juarez to the insurgent violence in Iraq. He wishes he hadn’t made the comparison, he says, because it helped fan the blaze of overheated news coverage.
...It’s not that border mayors like Cook and Cortez aren’t deeply concerned. Even before the violence began to spike in Juarez last year, they had been asking Congress for more checkpoints to search for guns and cash heading south, and for more customs officials at U.S. ports of entry to stop drugs heading north.
...Tired of living under virtual house arrest, mayors, county judges and business leaders formed the Texas Border Coalition in 2006, the first year of Operation Jump Start. The coalition has tried ever since to educate state and federal policymakers about what U.S. border towns are really experiencing and what they really need. They’ve spent a lot of time pleading their case in Washington. It’s been uphill all the way.
The coalition fought the 18-foot steel wall through their communities.
...Now the coalition is trying to fend off calls for another National Guard “surge” along the border. It’s not easy, with fear-mongering about drug violence, spillover, and terror threats again reaching fever pitch.
...One problem, Cook says, is that Washington politicians and national media “don’t know how Mexico positively impacts our region”—including the billions in legal trade across the border. “Typically what happens in Washington is that they listen to you, and it sounds like you are getting through to them. Then you leave, and they do whatever it is they planned to do anyway.”
...The same disconnect between reality and perception, O’Rourke says, has derailed meaningful debate about immigration reform. “For the past two years, we’ve been told that Mexicans are smuggling terrorists, taking our jobs, and selling us drugs, and that we are being invaded,” O’Rourke says. “And it worked. It totally freaked people out, and they reacted emotionally to an issue that I think could be solved rationally.”
...He won’t stop trying. O’Rourke wants to organize a national conference in El Paso on U.S. drug policy. “We are ground zero in the drug war—this is it,” O’Rourke says. “We are disproportionately affected by any U.S. policy that deals with Mexico, whether it’s immigration or, in this case, drug policy. We should be the ones framing this and informing the policymakers at the national level—not Lou Dobbs or people in D.C. or other parts of the country. Because the reality is that Mexico scares them, the border scares them, and military interdiction seems to make perfect sense to them.”
...Local reporters and officials occasionally have a chance to give a national audience a window into what’s actually happening. But the story they have to tell is complicated and nuanced. It can’t compete, in the American imagination, with daily tirades from the likes of CNN’s Dobbs and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. Dobbs has been especially avid and persistent in calling for armed troops on the border. In a recent newscast, he had this advice for President Barack Obama: “Bring home the troops from Okinawa, Afghanistan, Iraq ... and bring them here to secure our border and stop the flow of illegal immigrants, drugs and terrorists.”
...Still, Negron tries to look at the bright side. “At least CNN sent Anderson Cooper to El Paso,” he says, “and not Lou Dobbs.”
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=3014
I would rely more on lcoal views than say, Lou Dobbs. I never watch Dobbs but we overheard his venom while at an airport recently, he is a bloviator of ignorance. Bill O'Reilly may be more constructive than Dobbs.
From Texas Monthly:
"...it’s the twisted perception created by border-warrior politicians and national news media, and foisted on Juarez’s relatively peaceful sister city. For El Pasoans and residents of nearby border towns, it might all be a mere oddity—maybe even worth a chuckle—if it didn’t mean the construction of 18-foot border walls, blustery talk about National Guard troop surges, and new resources for the disastrous war on drugs. While “troop surge,” “border wall,” and “drug war” might sound irresistibly sexy to politicians and pundits, it’s border residents who have to live with the fences and tanks and consequences.
The truth differs wildly from the perception. Certainly, El Paso’s symbiotic relationship with Juarez has been disrupted by the explosion of drug violence south of the border, which began to tick up in January 2008. But it’s not the kind of disruption brought to you by CNN, Fox, and the rest of the media pack.
The real impact of the ongoing tragedy in Juarez is felt by El Pasoans in more indirect and personal ways. While the brutality across the river has not caused a wave of kidnappings and murders in El Paso, folks do feel its effects every day. Families are divided. El Pasoans can no longer visit their friends, relatives, doctors or dentists in Juarez. Businesses on both sides suffer. The stories are legion: The high-school student who can’t visit her beloved, 105-year-old grandmother because her parents don’t want to risk her safety. The young Juarez woman who worries that her El Paso friends and relatives won’t be able to attend her wedding. And the many families mourning loved ones lost on the other side of the Rio Grande.
...Consider this gem from former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, now a consultant for ABC News, commenting on Juarez: “There is in fact an insurgency on both sides of the American-Mexican border, and it’s stepped up a lot in the last several years because the Bush administration ignored it and put its focus on Iraq.”
...According to the FBI, more than 1,600 people were killed by cartel violence in Juarez in 2008. El Paso, a city of 755,000, recorded just 18 murders last year. Laredo had 11; Brownsville and McAllen had three and nine, respectively. By comparison, Washington, D.C., with a population smaller than El Paso’s, had 186 homicides in 2008.
...The violence is not “spilling over the border” into the U.S. No, every time you say that, whether you mean to or not, you’re conjuring up images of crazed Mexicans crossing the border to burn Columbus, and you have it backwards. It spilled over from the U.S. into Mexico and Latin America long ago. ... [F]or the past 20 years, we’ve been slowly turning the border into a militarized zone, so let’s not say there isn’t violence associated with both sides of the drug trade and the Drug War. We could say that we’re now sharing the violence to a higher degree, an important distinction from the simple-minded terminology of “spilling over.”
...Negron cops to his own role in whipping up the frenzy. In January he penned an article for Texas Monthly called “Baghdad, Mexico,” comparing the carnage in Juarez to the insurgent violence in Iraq. He wishes he hadn’t made the comparison, he says, because it helped fan the blaze of overheated news coverage.
...It’s not that border mayors like Cook and Cortez aren’t deeply concerned. Even before the violence began to spike in Juarez last year, they had been asking Congress for more checkpoints to search for guns and cash heading south, and for more customs officials at U.S. ports of entry to stop drugs heading north.
...Tired of living under virtual house arrest, mayors, county judges and business leaders formed the Texas Border Coalition in 2006, the first year of Operation Jump Start. The coalition has tried ever since to educate state and federal policymakers about what U.S. border towns are really experiencing and what they really need. They’ve spent a lot of time pleading their case in Washington. It’s been uphill all the way.
The coalition fought the 18-foot steel wall through their communities.
...Now the coalition is trying to fend off calls for another National Guard “surge” along the border. It’s not easy, with fear-mongering about drug violence, spillover, and terror threats again reaching fever pitch.
...One problem, Cook says, is that Washington politicians and national media “don’t know how Mexico positively impacts our region”—including the billions in legal trade across the border. “Typically what happens in Washington is that they listen to you, and it sounds like you are getting through to them. Then you leave, and they do whatever it is they planned to do anyway.”
...The same disconnect between reality and perception, O’Rourke says, has derailed meaningful debate about immigration reform. “For the past two years, we’ve been told that Mexicans are smuggling terrorists, taking our jobs, and selling us drugs, and that we are being invaded,” O’Rourke says. “And it worked. It totally freaked people out, and they reacted emotionally to an issue that I think could be solved rationally.”
...He won’t stop trying. O’Rourke wants to organize a national conference in El Paso on U.S. drug policy. “We are ground zero in the drug war—this is it,” O’Rourke says. “We are disproportionately affected by any U.S. policy that deals with Mexico, whether it’s immigration or, in this case, drug policy. We should be the ones framing this and informing the policymakers at the national level—not Lou Dobbs or people in D.C. or other parts of the country. Because the reality is that Mexico scares them, the border scares them, and military interdiction seems to make perfect sense to them.”
...Local reporters and officials occasionally have a chance to give a national audience a window into what’s actually happening. But the story they have to tell is complicated and nuanced. It can’t compete, in the American imagination, with daily tirades from the likes of CNN’s Dobbs and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. Dobbs has been especially avid and persistent in calling for armed troops on the border. In a recent newscast, he had this advice for President Barack Obama: “Bring home the troops from Okinawa, Afghanistan, Iraq ... and bring them here to secure our border and stop the flow of illegal immigrants, drugs and terrorists.”
...Still, Negron tries to look at the bright side. “At least CNN sent Anderson Cooper to El Paso,” he says, “and not Lou Dobbs.”
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=3014
Thursday, April 16, 2009
This Bulge Explains Much
TW: Nate Silver hits on a good point regarding why drug legalization is creeping back towards respectability. The baby boomers and those since were much heavier users (or at least experimenters) with pot than those who came before them. As the user demographic crowds out the older voters, pot becomes less exotic and perhaps less threatening.Joe Klein put together a recent piece on legalization. We have hit many of the points previously but he reiterates some of the numbers and angles. Pot legalization goes to numerous challenges facing the U.S.- need for tax revenue, desire to reduce imports and grow domestic industry, need to reduce the stress at the Mexican border, need to address our ineffectively bulging prisons, and ultimately the need to address whether pot, alcohol and tobacco should be treated so differently.
From Joe Klein at Time:
"...the U.S. is, by far, the most "criminal" country in the world, with 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all arrests are marijuana-related.
...It is estimated that pot is the largest cash crop in California, with annual revenues approaching $14 billion. A 10% pot tax would yield $1.4 billion in California alone. And that's probably a fraction of the revenues that would be available — and of the economic impact, with thousands of new jobs in agriculture, packaging, marketing and advertising.
So why not do it? There are serious moral arguments, both secular and religious. There are those who believe — with some good reason — that the accretion of legalized vices is debilitating, that we are a less virtuous society since gambling spilled out from Las Vegas to "riverboats" and state lotteries across the country. There is a medical argument, though not a very convincing one: alcohol is more dangerous in a variety of ways, including the tendency of some drunks to get violent. One could argue that the abuse of McDonald's has a greater potential health-care cost than the abuse of marijuana. (Although it's true that with legalization, those two might not be unrelated.) Obviously, marijuana can be abused. But the costs of criminalization have proved to be enormous, perhaps unsustainable. Would legalization be any worse?.."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1889021,00.html
Friday, April 3, 2009
Drug Legalization: The Libertarian View
TW: I have pounded the table on this, here is a libertarian economist making some of the same points we have previously expressed.
From Jeff Miron via CNN:
"...The U.S. and Mexican responses to this violence have been predictable: more troops and police, greater border controls and expanded enforcement of every kind. Escalation is the wrong response, however; drug prohibition is the cause of the violence.
Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground. This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead.
Violence was common in the alcohol industry when it was banned during Prohibition, but not before or after. Violence is the norm in illicit gambling markets but not in legal ones. Violence is routine when prostitution is banned but not when it's permitted. Violence results from policies that create black markets, not from the characteristics of the good or activity in question.
The only way to reduce violence, therefore, is to legalize drugs. Fortuitously, legalization is the right policy for a slew of other reasons.
Prohibition of drugs corrupts politicians and law enforcement by putting police, prosecutors, judges and politicians in the position to threaten the profits of an illicit trade. This is why bribery, threats and kidnapping are common for prohibited industries but rare otherwise. Mexico's recent history illustrates this dramatically.
Prohibition erodes protections against unreasonable search and seizure because neither party to a drug transaction has an incentive to report the activity to the police. Thus, enforcement requires intrusive tactics such as warrantless searches or undercover buys. The victimless nature of this so-called crime also encourages police to engage in racial profiling.
Prohibition has disastrous implications for national security. By eradicating coca plants in Colombia or poppy fields in Afghanistan, prohibition breeds resentment of the United States. By enriching those who produce and supply drugs, prohibition supports terrorists who sell protection services to drug traffickers.
...Prohibitions breed disrespect for the law because despite draconian penalties and extensive enforcement, huge numbers of people still violate prohibition. This means those who break the law, and those who do not, learn that obeying laws is for suckers.
Prohibition is a drain on the public purse. Federal, state and local governments spend roughly $44 billion per year to enforce drug prohibition. These same governments forego roughly $33 billion per year in tax revenue they could collect from legalized drugs, assuming these were taxed at rates similar to those on alcohol and tobacco. Under prohibition, these revenues accrue to traffickers as increased profits.
The right policy, therefore, is to legalize drugs while using regulation and taxation to dampen irresponsible behavior related to drug use, such as driving under the influence. This makes more sense than prohibition because it avoids creation of a black market. This approach also allows those who believe they benefit from drug use to do so, as long as they do not harm others.
...It is impossible to reconcile respect for individual liberty with drug prohibition. The U.S. has been at the forefront of this puritanical policy for almost a century, with disastrous consequences at home and abroad...
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/24/miron.legalization.drugs/index.html
From Jeff Miron via CNN:
"...The U.S. and Mexican responses to this violence have been predictable: more troops and police, greater border controls and expanded enforcement of every kind. Escalation is the wrong response, however; drug prohibition is the cause of the violence.
Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground. This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead.
Violence was common in the alcohol industry when it was banned during Prohibition, but not before or after. Violence is the norm in illicit gambling markets but not in legal ones. Violence is routine when prostitution is banned but not when it's permitted. Violence results from policies that create black markets, not from the characteristics of the good or activity in question.
The only way to reduce violence, therefore, is to legalize drugs. Fortuitously, legalization is the right policy for a slew of other reasons.
Prohibition of drugs corrupts politicians and law enforcement by putting police, prosecutors, judges and politicians in the position to threaten the profits of an illicit trade. This is why bribery, threats and kidnapping are common for prohibited industries but rare otherwise. Mexico's recent history illustrates this dramatically.
Prohibition erodes protections against unreasonable search and seizure because neither party to a drug transaction has an incentive to report the activity to the police. Thus, enforcement requires intrusive tactics such as warrantless searches or undercover buys. The victimless nature of this so-called crime also encourages police to engage in racial profiling.
Prohibition has disastrous implications for national security. By eradicating coca plants in Colombia or poppy fields in Afghanistan, prohibition breeds resentment of the United States. By enriching those who produce and supply drugs, prohibition supports terrorists who sell protection services to drug traffickers.
...Prohibitions breed disrespect for the law because despite draconian penalties and extensive enforcement, huge numbers of people still violate prohibition. This means those who break the law, and those who do not, learn that obeying laws is for suckers.
Prohibition is a drain on the public purse. Federal, state and local governments spend roughly $44 billion per year to enforce drug prohibition. These same governments forego roughly $33 billion per year in tax revenue they could collect from legalized drugs, assuming these were taxed at rates similar to those on alcohol and tobacco. Under prohibition, these revenues accrue to traffickers as increased profits.
The right policy, therefore, is to legalize drugs while using regulation and taxation to dampen irresponsible behavior related to drug use, such as driving under the influence. This makes more sense than prohibition because it avoids creation of a black market. This approach also allows those who believe they benefit from drug use to do so, as long as they do not harm others.
...It is impossible to reconcile respect for individual liberty with drug prohibition. The U.S. has been at the forefront of this puritanical policy for almost a century, with disastrous consequences at home and abroad...
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/24/miron.legalization.drugs/index.html
Friday, March 13, 2009
California Starting To Think Creatively
TW: I doubt most Republicans anti-tax freaks in California were jonesing for the legalization of drugs (am sure a few libertarian ones would be exceptions) but that is where things are moving in CA. I have pounded the table on this one before but somewhat surprisingly it is starting to seep into MSM in a much more overt way than it has before. This piece puts some actual numbers down on paper. They are large, perhaps $10 billion a year of tax revenues. Over a ten year period you are talking $100 billion in taxes and a similar amount in avoided interdiction costs. And those are the impacts related solely to pot, which is where I would leave things to start at least.
From Int'l Herald Tribune:
"Want to help fund the bank bailout, ease the California budget crisis and shore up strained U.S. finances? Legalize drugs, tax the trade and save on interdiction, domestic enforcement and the prison and court system...
...[the Governator]... has an offer from a group call Let Us Pay Taxes, which claims to represent the marijuana industry and is willing to pay $1 billion annually in taxes if only he would legalize. No doubt they are low-balling. The United Nations estimates the value of the U.S. cannabis market at $64 billion annually, while a paper by Jonathan Caulkins and Peter Renter calculates that about half of the costs of drugs are in one way or another attributable to factors linked to interdiction and its perils.
But even if you cut the UN number in half and tax it at only 50 percent, a lower tax than many states and localities put on tobacco, you would still get more than $15 billion nationwide. If California consumes its 13 percent share, in line with GDP, and I am betting it does, you are looking at something on the order of $2 billion, even before you take account of lower costs.
The Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron has a lower estimate, at $7.7 billion annually in lower spending nationally and $6.2 billion in extra revenues.
...Cheaper legal drugs might lead to a spike in use, which might hit productivity and impose many costs, like higher health and other welfare costs.
All of those prison, military and law enforcement jobs are a huge source of stimulus, and the cutbacks implied by legalization would raise transitional problems.
Moreover, drug legalization, just as for alcohol, is essentially a moral and political decision about which reasonable people can disagree. It is also, to put it mildly, not very likely.
Still the war on drugs rolls on, costing billions, creating huge incentives for violence and crime, imprisoning hundreds of thousands and seemingly never much closer to victory."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/24/business/col25.1-436575.php
From Int'l Herald Tribune:
"Want to help fund the bank bailout, ease the California budget crisis and shore up strained U.S. finances? Legalize drugs, tax the trade and save on interdiction, domestic enforcement and the prison and court system...
...[the Governator]... has an offer from a group call Let Us Pay Taxes, which claims to represent the marijuana industry and is willing to pay $1 billion annually in taxes if only he would legalize. No doubt they are low-balling. The United Nations estimates the value of the U.S. cannabis market at $64 billion annually, while a paper by Jonathan Caulkins and Peter Renter calculates that about half of the costs of drugs are in one way or another attributable to factors linked to interdiction and its perils.
But even if you cut the UN number in half and tax it at only 50 percent, a lower tax than many states and localities put on tobacco, you would still get more than $15 billion nationwide. If California consumes its 13 percent share, in line with GDP, and I am betting it does, you are looking at something on the order of $2 billion, even before you take account of lower costs.
The Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron has a lower estimate, at $7.7 billion annually in lower spending nationally and $6.2 billion in extra revenues.
...Cheaper legal drugs might lead to a spike in use, which might hit productivity and impose many costs, like higher health and other welfare costs.
All of those prison, military and law enforcement jobs are a huge source of stimulus, and the cutbacks implied by legalization would raise transitional problems.
Moreover, drug legalization, just as for alcohol, is essentially a moral and political decision about which reasonable people can disagree. It is also, to put it mildly, not very likely.
Still the war on drugs rolls on, costing billions, creating huge incentives for violence and crime, imprisoning hundreds of thousands and seemingly never much closer to victory."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/24/business/col25.1-436575.php
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Crisis Breeds Opportunity: Tax Pot
TW: I will continue pounding the table on this one!! I dont like regressive taxes but sin taxes are the exception.
From Economist:
"THE states facing in their greatest revenue crunches since 1939, and they're run by legislators who—understandably—don't want to lose re-election by raising taxes on everyone. Thus, they're getting creative.
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a freshman from San Francisco, made a proposal intended to increase revenue, and, no doubt, appetite: legalizing and taxing marijuana, a major—if technically illegal—crop in the state. "We’re all jonesing now for money," Mr Ammiano said. "And there’s this enormous industry out there."
In general, sin taxes are the most regressive—and popular—taxes that legislatures can enact. A marijuana tax would be less regressive than a cigarette tax, given the demographics of each drug's smokers. In some quarters it would be extremely popular. And the money it would cost to collect the tax would be a pittance compared to the money saved by police no longer making marijuana arrests. So is this enough of a crisis to give it a try?"
From Economist:
"THE states facing in their greatest revenue crunches since 1939, and they're run by legislators who—understandably—don't want to lose re-election by raising taxes on everyone. Thus, they're getting creative.
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a freshman from San Francisco, made a proposal intended to increase revenue, and, no doubt, appetite: legalizing and taxing marijuana, a major—if technically illegal—crop in the state. "We’re all jonesing now for money," Mr Ammiano said. "And there’s this enormous industry out there."
In general, sin taxes are the most regressive—and popular—taxes that legislatures can enact. A marijuana tax would be less regressive than a cigarette tax, given the demographics of each drug's smokers. In some quarters it would be extremely popular. And the money it would cost to collect the tax would be a pittance compared to the money saved by police no longer making marijuana arrests. So is this enough of a crisis to give it a try?"
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Now We Are Talking
TW: Another common sense move from Obama. The New Yorker piece mentioned is in fact a great article. I had not realized how liberalized the California laws have become relative to "medical" pot although they remain nebulous and the Feds could either leave the free market reign or gum up the works. The Feds under Obama will apparently err on the side of the market.
From Mike Scherer at Time:
"...[word] is that the Obama Administration is no longer going to "beat up on hippies" by busting their medical stashes. At issue is the contradiction between laws in states like California, which allow pot for medical purposes, and federal law, which does not. For years, the Drug Enforcement Administration has been busting marijuana dispensaries, even though they legally operate under state law. But Obama has promised a shift: "I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users," he said during the campaign.
For more on this issue see David Samuel's New Yorker piece, "Dr. Kush: How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry," As Samuels explains:
In the past five years, an unwritten set of rules has emerged to govern Californians participating in the medical-marijuana trade. Federal authorities do not generally bother arresting patients or doctors who write prescriptions. Instead, the D.E.A. pressures landlords to evict dispensaries and stages periodic raids on them, either shutting them down or seizing their money and marijuana. Dispensary owners are rarely arrested, and patient records are usually left alone. Through trial and error, dispensary owners have learned how to avoid trouble: Don't advertise in newspapers, on billboards, or on flyers distributed door to door. Don't sell to minors or cops. Don't open more than two stores. Any Californian who is reasonably prudent can live a life centered on the cultivation, sale, and consumption of marijuana with little fear of being fined or going to jail."
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/02/07/smoke-em-if-you-got-a-prescription-for-em/
From Mike Scherer at Time:
"...[word] is that the Obama Administration is no longer going to "beat up on hippies" by busting their medical stashes. At issue is the contradiction between laws in states like California, which allow pot for medical purposes, and federal law, which does not. For years, the Drug Enforcement Administration has been busting marijuana dispensaries, even though they legally operate under state law. But Obama has promised a shift: "I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users," he said during the campaign.
For more on this issue see David Samuel's New Yorker piece, "Dr. Kush: How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry," As Samuels explains:
In the past five years, an unwritten set of rules has emerged to govern Californians participating in the medical-marijuana trade. Federal authorities do not generally bother arresting patients or doctors who write prescriptions. Instead, the D.E.A. pressures landlords to evict dispensaries and stages periodic raids on them, either shutting them down or seizing their money and marijuana. Dispensary owners are rarely arrested, and patient records are usually left alone. Through trial and error, dispensary owners have learned how to avoid trouble: Don't advertise in newspapers, on billboards, or on flyers distributed door to door. Don't sell to minors or cops. Don't open more than two stores. Any Californian who is reasonably prudent can live a life centered on the cultivation, sale, and consumption of marijuana with little fear of being fined or going to jail."
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/02/07/smoke-em-if-you-got-a-prescription-for-em/
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Phelps Inadvertently Pushes Legalization To the Fore
TW: Clearly not Micheal Phelps intention, but his situation has spurred a plethora of MSM commentary in support of pot legalization. I agree with Ms. Parker who continues her quest for banishment from the Republican party (at least the non-libertarian wing). Parker focuses on the hypocrisy of our treatment of pot. I would add we waste billions chasing pot users and forgo billions in taxes due to our narrow-minded policies. Regulate the hell out of pot but not criminalize it.
From Kathleen Parker at WaPo:
"...Our marijuana laws have been ludicrous for as long as we've been alive. Almost half of us (42 percent) have tried marijuana at least once.
...The U.S., in fact, boasts the highest percentage of pot smokers among 17 nations surveyed, including The Netherlands, where cannabis clouds waft from coffeehouse windows. Among them are no small number of high-ranking...leaders..., who surely cringe every time a young person gets fingered for a "crime" they themselves have committed.
...Understandably, parents worry that their kids will emulate their idol, but the problem isn't Phelps, who is, in fact, an adult. The problem is our laws -- and our lies.
Obviously, children shouldn't smoke anything, legal or otherwise. Nor should they drink alcoholic beverages, even though their parents might.
There are good reasons for substance restrictions for children that need not apply to adults.
That's the real drug message that should inform our children and our laws, rather than the nonsense that currently passes for drug information.
Phelps may be an involuntary hero to this charge, but his name and face bring necessary attention to a farce in which nearly half the nation are actors. It's time to recognize that all drugs are not equal -- and change the laws accordingly."
http://tinyurl.com/ck893g
From Kathleen Parker at WaPo:
"...Our marijuana laws have been ludicrous for as long as we've been alive. Almost half of us (42 percent) have tried marijuana at least once.
...The U.S., in fact, boasts the highest percentage of pot smokers among 17 nations surveyed, including The Netherlands, where cannabis clouds waft from coffeehouse windows. Among them are no small number of high-ranking...leaders..., who surely cringe every time a young person gets fingered for a "crime" they themselves have committed.
...Understandably, parents worry that their kids will emulate their idol, but the problem isn't Phelps, who is, in fact, an adult. The problem is our laws -- and our lies.
Obviously, children shouldn't smoke anything, legal or otherwise. Nor should they drink alcoholic beverages, even though their parents might.
There are good reasons for substance restrictions for children that need not apply to adults.
That's the real drug message that should inform our children and our laws, rather than the nonsense that currently passes for drug information.
Phelps may be an involuntary hero to this charge, but his name and face bring necessary attention to a farce in which nearly half the nation are actors. It's time to recognize that all drugs are not equal -- and change the laws accordingly."
http://tinyurl.com/ck893g
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