I don't even smoke/eat pot and I'm happy this is going through. It's just a mire of confusion that tobacco and alcohol are legal, while a relatively harmless drug is federally illegal. You can't even do medical research on MJ as the laws stand. Mostly because of a backlash against a counter culture who didn't support a corrupt set of government officials and a textile industry that doesn't even produce in America, anymore. I'm (obviously) American, but this propping up of a legacy of corruption and convenient morality is just infuriating...... sorry. Rant =)
I don't smoke/consume either and I have to say it's working pretty well here in Oregon. More tax revenue for the state, fewer people in jail and so on.
For California Prop 64 of the $2,077,438 spent in opposition $1,364,000 (65.6%) came from Julie Schauer.
The only other major donor was Smart Approaches to Marijuana Action (SAM Action) which donated $489,150 (23.5%)
The California Teamsters Public Affairs Council donated $25,000 (1.2%) and the Peace Officers Research Association of Claifornia PIC donated $25,000 (1.2%).
In both cases the majority of support for the opposition came from a SINGLE WEALTHY INDIVIDUAL - not "private individuals."
I am not sure if the Teamsters directly represent police officers but they are a union and Peace Officers Research Association sounds police related so you are right that some vaguely "police" and "union" related groups did donate a relatively insignificant 2.4% to the opposition campaign, but that is it.
PORC is one of the largest police advocacy organizations in California state. SAM is funded largely by private individuals (yes, "individuals" not "individual", although its single donor is Julie Schauer). Notably absent is any "big pharma" or private prisons, in contrast to what the GP stated.
Although I know many individual cops who can't wait for legalisation. They're tired of wasting time on weed when heroin and opioids are destroying whole communities.
I would imagine that the reason why PDs tend to be against legalization, is because it provides them with a much broader list of targets for civil asset forfeiture, which goes into their budgets.
That's because Insys makes fentanyl. Fentanyl is abused, so everyone points to them and says "What are you doing to stop drug abuse?". So they write a fat check to stop "drug abuse". The fact it was marijuana legalization doesn't matter, it served it's purpose.
That should say: government prison lobbyists. See: how government police & prison lobby groups have fought against pot legalization for decades. They have far more money and influence than the private prison industry (and that was 10x more the case 10+ years ago, when the private prison industry was hardly more than a pebble).
Those with the most to lose from pot legalization in terms of money, are government employees. The extreme majority of all the people put in prison during the US prison boom, went into government prisons staffed by government employees, and were arrested by government employees.
The war on drugs was a government program, that benefited the government by dramatically increasing its power and scale in just about every possible way. The private prison industry was tiny before year ~2000 (and it's still a small minority of the racket, which still mostly benefits the government).
The government prison complex is worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year. All that profit extract goes into the pockets of the government employees (and to a lesser extent, government contractors that build prisons etc).
Show me the labor cost of all the government employees related to the prison system (including the unnecessary police/arresting-related employees) over the last 40 years, inflation adjusted. Here's a hint: it's over a trillion dollars and makes the private prison money look like a joke.
CoreCivic is worth $3 billion and does $1.8 billion in revenue. That's equivalent to the salary & benefits of about 20,000 cops. There are two million (that's 100x the size of CoreCivic) people directly or indirectly employed by the government prison system, including 1.2+ million that are employed by state & local law enforcement agencies.
The income & benefits for those two million workers that are feeding off the government prison complex, is worth at least $150+ billion per year.
Politicians also love the government prison complex. It supports their power by making sure taxes remain artificially high, which keeps their slush funds higher, and they can basically build jobs in their voting districts with government prisons.
>Politicians also love the government prison complex. It supports their power by making sure taxes remain artificially high, which keeps their slush funds higher, and they can basically build jobs in their voting districts with government prisons.
This doesn't make any sort of accounting sense. This doesn't keep taxes "artificially" high. That money is collected in taxes because there is a very expensive program that needs to be funded. There no greater opportunity for embezzlement in your scenario than out of your scenario.
Your argument is fine without this claim, though. LEO unions are profoundly fucked up institutions.
That's universally ignored on HN. Almost nobody on here ever wants to talk about the fact that ~97% of all the people that were put into prison under the war on drugs over the last 40 years, went into government prisons to benefit government agendas & employees. It's very, very, very aggressively ignored here, and the sole response you'll usually get if you do bring up the actual facts of the situation, is heavy downvoting (you won't get much discussion unfortunately).
Please don't make grandiose generalizations about the community as a rhetorical device. It's pompous and the generalizations are invariably wrong. Moreover, who cares? Let's keep to the topic, or at least something interesting.
I think for most young people it's obvious that cannabis should be legalized and regulated like other "vice" substances like tobacco and alcohol. I'd stop short of wanting to legalize "hard" drugs, but I would like to see a focus on addiction treatment rather than virtual criminalization of the addicts --I'd still be for criminalization and controlled distribution of drugs that can have immediate deleterious effects on people's health, wellbeing and functionality. Alcohol, while dangerous, unfortunately is well ingrained in society, so even though it qualifies as dangerous, it might have to remain an exception, given it would be hard to extirpate (see prohibition in the various countries and its lack of success).
Why should personal consumption, or possession with intent to consume personally, ever be criminalized? No matter how harmful the substance is to the person, the basic principle of bodily autonomy (you know, the same one that dictates abortions to be legal) applies here.
The only reasonable exception I can see is substances that alter behavior in a way that's likely to endanger other people (e.g. those that induce aggression). Ironically, though, alcohol would be relatively high on that list compared to most everything else.
I'll play Devil's advocate here. Suppose you want to consume a drug that is currently criminalized, you need to think past the toll on only your body. You need to consider the toll to society. The retail price you pay includes the salaries of gangsters who commit murders and help perpetuate a culture of violence. It encourages other unrelated crime, because it helps set up infrastructure required by criminals, like easy access to guns. It includes the bribes that are given to law enforcement and other public officials who then subvert some of the rules and laws that are the basis of our society. To a lesser extent, since your transaction won't be taxed, there's a small hit to society compared to if you chose a legal high instead.
None of these points would apply if those hard drugs are legalised and regulated, of course. At that point, I'm less certain about the right thing to do. Should the government sell clean versions of ecstacy, heroin or any of the other million synthetics available? I honestly don't know.
I've always thought this would be a great use of the blockchain. If you want to party with dangerous drugs you take your pharmacy card to the pharmacists and get a recreational prescription. This gets written to the blockchain. Next time you do it they see your full history. If your usage is showing patterns of abuse then they can refuse your request and sign you up for legally binding treatment program.
With the inevitable trend toward public healthcare, I just hope that we're able to tax these kinds of products. I don't want to pay higher taxes just so we can provide extra medical treatment to people with alcohol/red meat/tobacco/marijuana habits.
I’ve never been able to understand how the anti-weed interests have been able to rationalize the astronomical costs of enforcement and punishment for so long. Even if I went out on a limb and said, “well, it’d suck if TONS of people smoked TONS of pot ALL of the time”, then I’d still be skeptical about whether that’s a problem worth spending billions of dollars (and locking up millions of people) to address.
Put another way: am I missing some sane way to do a cost-benefit-analysis for cannabis policy that winds up showing costs (or negative externalities) that are big enough to conclude that criminalization is the best answer?
> am I missing some sane way to do a cost-benefit-analysis for cannabis policy that winds up showing costs (or negative externalities) that are big enough to conclude that criminalization is the best answer?
Yes, you are missing one thing: you classify "locking up millions of people" as a cost. For those who created and are perpetuating this practice, it is considered to be a benefit, not a cost. Consider private prisons, for instance: they would go bankrupt without such policies. Consider also that it is overwhelmingly black people, or hispanics, who go to jail on minor pot-related charges. A fundamental purpose of these policies is to provide the ability to lock up millions of colored people. Without this policy, the legal persecution of minorities would become more difficult.
The criminalization of pot is fundamentally about institutional racism. Yes it's expensive for the taxpayers, but the racists in power consider the price tag to be worth it.
The criminalization of pot is fundamentally about institutional racism.
Women are consistently less supportive of legalization than men (e.g. http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/08/more-men-than-women-suppor...). I've never heard claims suggesting that women are more racist than men, but this is consistent with women being more receptive to "for the children" arguments.
> Are excessive traffic fines and debtors' jails fuelling community tensions in suburban Missouri? Claire Bolderson reports on a network of ninety separate cities in St Louis County, most of which have their own courts and police forces. Critics say that their size makes them financially unviable and allege that some of them boost their incomes by fining their own citizens and locking them up when they can't pay.
> This edition of Crossing Continents goes out and about in St Louis County to meet the people who say they are victims of a system which sees arrest warrants issued for relatively minor misdemeanours. Many of the victims are poor and black. The programme also takes us into the courts, and out onto the freeways with some of the County's police, who say they are upholding the law and promoting road safety.
> The US government is not so sure. One of the towns in question is Ferguson where riots erupted after a white police officer shot a young black man dead last summer. In a recent report on the riots, the Department of Justice concluded that the Ferguson police had been stopping people for no good reason. It said they were putting revenue before public safety.
> Claire Bolderson investigates how widespread the practice is and considers the impact on relations between citizens and the authorities that govern them.
well i can't help but upvote said arguments because there's a lot of truth to them tbh. even if racism isn't inherently part of the system, it's still widely present in those that enact the rules of it!
>I’ve never been able to understand how the anti-weed interests have been able to rationalize the astronomical costs of enforcement and punishment for so long. Even if I went out on a limb and said, “well, it’d suck if TONS of people smoked TONS of pot ALL of the time”, then I’d still be skeptical about whether that’s a problem worth spending billions of dollars (and locking up millions of people) to address.
It's entirely a generational issue in the US. People were fed decades of paranoid nonsense about marijuana from the DEA and other federal agencies, and as a result it was seen as a "dangerous narcotic" like heroin or meth. People who grew up actually using it and knowing people who use it, however, saw through that. And those people are now in power and voting.
The ban on the recreational use of marijuana isn't based on a cost/benefit analysis. It's just something that remains law, because trying to repeal it is not politically beneficial (yet), and potentially career-limiting for a politician.
I suspect that the sunk-cost fallacy (or similar flaws in human reasoning) plays a role as well. Decriminalizing something after it has been highly illegal for decades means coming to terms with the fact that that policy was wrong and a waste of tax payers money — i.e., if it wasn't, why repeal those laws? That's not something policy makers like to do (consciously or otherwise), because of a fear of how it will reflect on them.
"I’d still be skeptical about whether that’s a problem worth spending billions of dollars (and locking up millions of people) to address."
Many people are deathly afraid of illegal drugs, including marijuana.
It may seem to some people today that marijuana is "obviously harmless" or much less harmful than legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco, but that view has only relatively recently become at all widespread. Remember fear-mongering films like Reefer Madness, government anti-drug propaganda ("Just Say No" campaign, "DARE", etc), media sensationalism, politicians equating drug use with crime, and so on -- these things really got people in to an anti-drug frenzy, and marijuana was just one of many drugs in the firing line.
Such moral panic is far from over. It's still going strong against the boogyman drugs of the day: meth and heroin (or the so-called "opiod epidemic"). If you get riled up about the dangers of those drugs, you can perhaps understand how some people used to feel (and still do) about marijuana (and about alcohol, for that matter, which was also prohibited at one point before becoming legal).
The difference between cannabis and every other drug is that there are 0 reported deaths, making the arguments related to physical harm far more questionable than those that appear in the current moral panic over frequent opioid deaths which are obviously harmful.
I can't believe so much money was spent on this shit. Unlike alcohol, cannabis is less addictive and way more pacifying, it doesn't make people violent, at worst it makes them dumb, unmotivated and complacent - just like alcohol.
There's literally no reason to it being banned if alcohol is still legal. It's a better replacement, too.
I smoke every now and then, to relieve stress. I just go to sleep, I don't like the high and unlike alcohol I can still follow through on that thought of "nah, it detrimental" when I have stuff to do.
Alcohol is like "one drink, man, you'll be good" and then it's all downhill because one drink leads to half a dozen. Every. fucking. time.
Really, really mixed opinions because you are totally right when it comes to alcohol, but I can't completely agree with your perspective on Marijuana.
Neither are entirely healthy or can demonstrably lead to long-term positive outcomes if consumed by individuals under the age of 25 or so. These are not nutritive vitamins by any means.
That said, the long-term effect of jailing African-American or Hispanic teenagers for minor possession or sale of inconsequential quantities is probably far worse.
It's a real toss-up, in my opinion, so all I can say is this: completely and totally legalize Marijuana, but impose strict penalties (5+ years in jail, $xx,xxx fine, etc.) for anyone who provides or sells to anyone under 21, and intensely harsh penalties (10+ years in jail, $xxx,xxx fine) for anyone who provides or sells to anyone under 18.
Do you have sources that detail the negative effects on people under 25? I ask because I have smoked almost every day for about 2 years, I'm 23, and I'm worried.
Symlinkk- As someone who smoked daily at roughly the same age as you, I can understand your concern. I smoked almost daily for about four consecutive years, starting around 21, and ending around 25. Looking back on that period, I had numerous negative side effects, and it's hard for me to know how much that's perpetuated in the last 6 years since I moved towards closer to a once a month usage level, with long stretches of total abstinence mixed in there.
A few things you should consider. First, is it an addiciton? Addicitions typically manifest themselves in situations where you can't quit using your substance, or change your behavior, despite negative consequences. Smoking for two consecutive years definitely makes it a habit, but I obviously can't comment on whether it's a full on addiction for you.
If you don't feel like you can stop, I'd recommend seeking help. There are likely local MA (marijuana anonymous) or NA (narcotics anonymous) meetings near you, and those support networks can be very helpful for a lot of people.
My father died from at 60 due to heavy alcohol consumption, and was more prepared to die than entertain the thought of no longer drinking. Addiction is a remarkably challenging disease, which can warp ones decision making massively, so if you don't believe you can fairly answer the question, you should think about asking those around you how they see it impacting you.
Wishing you all the best as you seek some answers.
Aside from the physical effects, quite possibly long-term but not conclusively proven to be the case (afaik), one reason to be extra-wary of heavy smoking < 25 is really all the usual stuff: lethargy, developing addiction/dependency, social and career stagnation. These can have a pretty negative effect at any age, but at a younger age the effects compound and end up much worse.
The things you learn and experience in your twenties are often crucial preparation for how you'll doing in your thirties and beyond. If much of that time is spent being high and doing little, you'll pay the price later on.
Basically, my experience (personal, and looking at friends and acquaintances) is that chronic, daily smoking often results in being 'stuck in place'. Getting stuck in the jobs, friendships, experiences, and relationships that dominate your early twenties is probably not a desirable outcome. On the other hand, a seventy-year-old picking up a weed habit probably won't suffer much from it. At any point in between I'd still argue it's better not to chronically dull your brain, but hey if you're happy do whatever you want!
That said, obviously this doesn't apply to everyone. But I know a number of daily smokers who started early, and with few exceptions they are not very happy or successful thirty-somethings (by any metric they or I care about).
Smoking anything is going to cause harm. If subjectively you don't feel it's impacting your life in a negative way, then go for it, but consider other methods like vaping or edibles.
I do not have sources that directly detail the negative effects of smoking Marijuana on people under 25, but the prefrontal cortex of the brain does not fully develop until then. It would be possible to furiously Google supporting studies, but I have limited interest in doing so.
I apologize for alarming you, but that said (and with absolutely zero judgment or gratuitous negativity) I highly encourage you to reduce your consumption of Marijuana for your own sake.
The reason is that it justifies huge budgets for narcotics enforcement agencies across the country, guaranteed numbers of inmates, and employment for thousands to enforce it all.
To anyone who's confused by the title: the law was passed in November (by ballot referendum), but it went into effect today, with the first recreational sales. (Medical marijuana was already legal in Nevada).
By contrast, Massachusetts also legalized marijuana on the very same day - and by an almost identical vote margin - but Bay State legislators are still contemplating whether to let the law take effect at all, and it's unclear if and when recreational sales will actually become legal.
> People aged 21 and above can now buy up to an ounce of the drug at a time and use it in their homes if they have a valid ID in the western state, which is famed for the hotels and casinos in its largest city Las Vegas.
> The millions of tourists who visit Nevada cities every year are expected to make nearly two of every three purchases from retailers, who began selling pot early on Saturday morning.
It requires a Nevada ID but they expect tourists to make two thirds of the purchases?
I don't know where they expect tourists to actually consume the stuff, it's not legal in public and I can't imagine casinos are too thrilled about people lighting up in their hotel rooms, even in rooms that are already designated as smoking rooms.
Thank you, but Biggie & Tupac brought the East/ West coast divide to attention 20 years ago.
It does annoy that here in the UK, the only licensed use for medical Marijuana (Sativex) is to treat MS. This has to be a better option than using strong opiates such Fentanyl for people like myself.
Legalisation of cannabis in the UK is politically toxic. Many people buy info the 'drugs are bad, OK?' rhetoric that has been trotted out for decades, as well as the sensationalist rubbish that is spewed forth by hate rags like the Daily Mail.
For some - even intelligent people - it's so firmly ngrained that it's impossible to even have a sensible discussion about it.
Sadly, I don't think we'll see meaningful medical usage any time soon, let alone recreational.
Not to mention high-risk activities like driving a car, downhill skiing, skydiving, or scuba diving (or various "extreme sports") which are perfectly legal but can easily kill you, cause brain damage, paralysis, and sometimes inflict the same or worse on some innocent victim.
Few if any people will heap extreme moral outrage on people who engage in such risky activities, but if someone dares light up a joint or god forbid consume some other illegal drug, they're a dirty druggie who should be thrown to rot in jail, where (if they don't get killed outright during the raid on their home) they are likely to suffer rape, torture, or other human rights abuses. On top of that they face having their home and other possessions confiscated and a felony keep them from getting good jobs for the rest of their life once they're released (if they manage to survive jail).
Can you even imagine anyone suggesting such a fate for someone who merely chose to drive a car or ski?
It's not intuitively obvious that acetaminophen has a startlingly small therapeutic window, especially when combined with alcohol. It's not intuitively obvious that alcohol may reduce all-cause mortality in a hormesis-like fashion, with low chronic consumption reducing risk but high chronic consumption increasing it. Pharmacology == intuition goes out the window.
> Marijuana smokers will still face fines of up to $600 if they light up in public places, including casinos, bars, restaurants, parks, and concert halls, and driving under the influence of the drug remains illegal.
Anybody know if that includes when you're in your hotel room or just on the open casino floor? If so, does "non-smoking room" apply to marijuana as well?
The key to paranoid consumption in casinos and hotels is the e-cig style vape pens. They're very inconspicuous and I've had many a craps session now where no one has batted an eye while I puffed on a vape pen every now and again. If you're spending money and being respectful, people in the hospitality and resort industry don't give a fuck.
edit: pro-mode paranoia for in-room consumption brings a smoke buddy, febreeze, and a generous tip for house keeping into play.
It's not being treated the same as tobacco or alcohol. The article says it's legal 'Only in a private home, including yards and porches.' It's prohibited in casinos, bars, restaurants, parks, concerts and on U.S. property, from national forests to federally subsidized housing.
This is going to come in handy for the upcoming Burning Man event, although there it's going to be difficult to define what a public space is and what not.
I'd go further and say this could have a dramatic impact on the vibe at Burning Man. Marijuana has historically been one of the least popular recreational substances at Burning Man, because the smell is hard to disguise. If marijuana is treated more lightly now by Nevada authorities, I'd expect it to become more popular at Burning Man, and take "market share" away from other substances.
I disagree. It might take some more experimentation, but once you figure it out for a particular product for your body weight and metabolism, it's pretty consistent.
Innocent question from a non-Burner: why would anyone attending Burning Man care about the smell of marijuana? The event is held in the desert. And judging from what I've heard and seen about it, most of it is outdoors.
At Burning Man, there is a large presence of law enforcement officers with conservative attitudes. Both uniformed and plainclothes. The plainclothes officers especially create an atmosphere of distrust regarding substances.
