the police state implementation that demands pot puffers fill those for profit prison welfare jobs creating prisons

The benefits of cannabis have been well known for centuries. Industrial hemp, medicinal and recreational marijuana, all have been demonized and prohibited, due to the absolute lies and propaganda from a few assholes in the '30s.

It's way past time for the feds to re-classify cannabis, and allow states to take advantage of what is arguably the most beneficial plant known to man.

position thusly...

"so the narco terrorists are supplying drugs into this country for big money - If we legalize it we open up even more traffic to them, (because narco terrorists are the only ones who can grow, uh, grass?) - And thus it would make the problem worse.

Paraphrased, but something along that line.

I wanted to ask, if that were the case, might there be a societal benefit to simply no longer jailing tens of thousands of our neighbors, not giving them records or putting them in prison which prevents employment or school or food stamps or being a father or mother. For illegal agriculture of all things.

I also wanted to point out that when the prohibition on alchohol ended the price went down and the mob lost their leverage as everyone and their distributor began to produce, and ask why this time would be different? Maybe he thinks the banks would get in and they already have enough money?

But the guy put me in mind of the kid of creep who would show his government ID trying to impress high-school-age girls, so I tuned out...

Did the end of Prohibition result in more or less alcoholism in our country?

Did the end of Prohibition result or correlate with more or less alcohol-related homicides (and other crimes)?

I wonder whether there are any statistics to answer my questions.

I ask this quite dispassionately and respectfully.

I think my questions are relevant to the discussion of the legalization of drugs. Because in addition to questions about health effects of drugs that might be legalized, there are questions about whether legalization would increase the use of now-illegal drugs, whether that would be detrimental to families, to children, to society.

If we knew the answers to these questions about Prohibition and its end, we might have a clearer view of the way to go. So far, people just are pro or con legalization but don't mention the research on the questions I ask.

If we legalize marijuana, for example, will we have a worse obesity problem? Will even more families fall apart because one or the other parent prefers a marijuana high to a job? What would legalization mean to our society? I'm asking, not predicting. I don't know the answers to my questions. But if alcohol were less OK to drink, we would have fewer alcoholics.

Prohibition ended in 1933, note the sharp decline in the homicide rate at about that time..

starts approximately with Nixon's 1971 War on Drugs.

do you have a source link? I'd like to use it for somewhere else but I need a source.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/hmrt.cfm

That's a fact.

Leaving aside the inane notion that somehow the government is entitled to tell consenting adults they can't ingest a relatively benign chemical into their OWN BODIES in the privacy of their OWN HOMES, the fact remains that prohibition didn't work. And alcohol is a highly addictive substance that can kill people. Marijuana doesn't kill people who imbibe too much of it, it doesn't cause DTs or physical withdrawls, and it's not generally associated with violent behavior.

Could lots of things happen if it were legalized? Yes, lots of things could. But certain things definitely WOULD happen. One, we would stop spending $60 Billion a year to turn 70 million otherwise law-abiding pot smokers into criminals.. (Not including costs of incarceration) .. tax revenues from legal, regulated, and taxed marijuana would be substantial.

or society as alcohol, I'm still curious as to what the effects of ending Prohibition really were. I'm from a family of teetotalers, and, of course, as a result, we don't have any alcoholics, not a one in the family. So I'm not arguing one way or the other about marijuana. I don't think anyone has taken claims of the dangers of marijuana seriously enough to even do research on the effects of marijuana, much less the real or perceived dangers.

But I have heard so much about how Prohibition was such a failure. People point to the decline in the power of the mob. I'm not so sure that the mob really lost power due to the end of Prohibition. I think they just became legal. (Some of them became Republicans and Democrats and their offspring and clones are still around.)

But I wonder whether alcoholism has become a much bigger problem since the end of Prohibition or not. And what about social problems associated with alcoholism like alcohol-related crime and especially homicides.

The graph on crime is very interesting, but it does not specifically show alcohol-related homicides or even alcohol-related crime in general. I'd also like to know the statistics on alcohol-related accidents of various kinds. How did Prohibition and the end of Prohibition affect statistics on that?

Everyone makes this claim that Prohibition was so awful and how things got better after it ended, but I have never seen statistics that really prove that claim and I would like to.

Many studies had been made about pre and post Prohibition of Alcohol. The conclusions were that Prohibition did not lower the use of Alcohol but instead created a criminal institution.

The use of marijuana has many medical benefits and there are hundreds of commercial uses of the hemp plant (clothing, fuel, paper etc). A little research and a lot of questions could be answered.

Bars that banned women were often replaced by Speakeasies that, already not conforming with the law, felt no need to conform with societal pressures to ban women.

So Prohibition almost certainly increased drinking in the long haul.

the prohibition of cannabis resulted in the switch to indoor growing and the hybridization of sativa and indica strains. Prohibition had a direct "evolutionary" effect on the plant.

I highly recommend the movie "Botany of Desire" which explores this in great detail.

Here is a clip:

on pot. Actually a site at http://www.druglibrary.org/prohibitionresults.htm says that people come up with such misleading information about this so often they documented their answers. A start if one really wants to learn about alcohol prohibition. One of the characteristics of prohibitions is that there is, by definition, no regulation, so a new problem appeared, childhood drinking. People were making the stuff in their bathtubs - wasn't exactly hard to get. Direct testimony talks about an initial improvement by the observation of fewer drunks on the street, but after a couple of years of prohibition the problem was worse than ever.

Google is handy, if someone really cares.

I think anyone who takes a serious look at alcohol prohibition will come to the conclusion that it was tantamount to throwing the rules out the window, pouring every 10,000th barrel down the drain, and calling it enforcement. The cities were awash in the stuff, what passed for corruption in those days was common, and rural folk had their own recipes. Winners in alcohol prohibition are hard to find, but the people who lost out were the police who tried to enforce it, the lives that were ruined in that failed pursuit, and the country for all those losses. They only regained control when they legalized it so they could regulate it.

Btw, the assertion that alcohol being less ok decreases alcoholics only holds true in this country. In most of Europe the phobia about alcohol is far less severe, it is much more culturally accepted in a family setting, yet they report far fewer problems as a result. We must be special.

I find it humorous that the authorities are so helpless in the face of their marijuana war. Weed use has been widespread since I was in junior high in the 60's, and it's widespread and way more sophisticated now. Except for the lives that are ruined by needless arrest and jails, the shit is completely unregulated, so it is everywhere. Few people REALLY care. Pension funds are underfunded while the state spends tax money playing this silly game they can't possibly win, and the police add to their expenses helicopters - expensive helicopters - so they can spend a day in the brush on the taxpayers dime. I do not feel safer.

But back to the questions - more or less legitimate, maybe a little specious. I notice there is nothing in there about the societal cost concerning and to tens of thousands of people arrested or jailed or negatively impacted by enforcement. Because we know the stuff is everywhere anyway, and few seem to care, why are we spending money and hurting people to enforce a policy derived from and sold with racism, not science or potential outcomes?

This question -> "If we legalize marijuana, for example, will we have a worse obesity problem?"<

So we might spend hundreds of millions on a drug war to prevent people from getting fat? I would think we could buy them their choice of P90x or a Zumba DVD and come out a lot cheaper.

The problem is the framing. There is some assumption that the current prohibition is providing much of a curb on marijuana use, and I think people are fooling themselves. It is in garages, bedrooms, thousands of outdoor locations with just a few plants or more. And that's just the 15 year olds It is a weed. It does not take rock science to figure out how to grow it. If you just throw it out the back door on the ground anywhere South of Washington State it will probably grow fast enough that you might be surprised. Grow a bunch of it and the helicopters will come and shake the seed all over several acres for you. Nice helicopters. It is absolutely illegal, yet seeds and plants are shipped in thousands of ways around the world every day. Prohibited, yeah.

Millions of people smoking pot regardless of the prohibition, just because they like it. And yet because of the prohibition in our free society one can never find out enough about it, stop it, or even use it as a resource. It will sap every dollar and life put into that enforcement with a negative return. In addition, I was listening to the owner of the Medical Marijuana place on tv the other day, (understand his focus is adults - no children). His hypothesis (and others) is that there is far more depression among the adults in our country than we acknowledge, and since we really, really suck at dealing with mental health issues we are seeing millions of people self-medicating. So there's a few million more. I guess usage could, and probably would, go up some, but it sounds like the market is pretty large already.

So there really isn't much control, it's most everywhere anyone wants it, (in jail too - LOL) but there are thousands of lives needlessly ruined in pursuit of a failed policy. And we can't regulate it because it's prohibited.

With so much evidence that the war on marijuana users is largely ineffective, potentially hurting us more than it is helping, I wonder if the best question is why?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g9C6x99EnFVdFuXw_B8pvDRzLqcA?docId=CNG.e740b6d0077ba8c28f6d1dd931c6f679.5e1

That's decriminalization of ALL drugs, not just marijuana.

pretty much.

I also saw a tv news segment on Portugal that was pretty convincing case for decriminalization.

has had a huge impact on reductions of the number of major illnesses related to drug use.

It's not feasible to dispense needles to so many when drugs are criminalized.

Portugal doesn't force anyone into a treatment program, but they make them easily accessible.

They are willing to spend money on this issue in a way that benefits those who need help rather than giving money to right wing punitive views of dealing with this issue.

...and this is why the U.S. will continue with its failed policies. no one is lobbying for those in our nation who need help the most. instead, the prisons lobby to punish people for health problems and the politicians go right along.

It's the bipartisan equivalent of abortion politics. Rather than admit that a society will always have health problems like these, and work to mitigate the worst of it, the drug war is like putting a woman in prison who had an abortion.

Democrats own this policy.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/117015

Robert J. MacCoun, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and the UC Berkeley School of Law, said that the well-documented Dutch experience with marijuana shops may provide important information for other jurisdictions wrestling with how to deal with cannabis.

Findings include:

Dutch citizens use cannabis at more modest rates than many of their European neighbors.

Dutch youth report high rates of availability of cannabis, but not as elevated as reported rates in the United States and several other countries.

The Dutch “continuation” rate for using marijuana from a causal experimentation in youth to regular usage in adulthood (ages 15-34) is fairly modest by international standards

Past-year cannabis use among Dutch 15-to-24-year-olds dropped from 14.3 to 11.4 percent between 1997 and 2005.

Dutch cannabis users are more likely to be admitted for substance abuse treatment than their counterparts in most European countries, while the United States reports four marijuana treatment admissions for every one admission in the Netherlands. It is not clear whether this reflects a greater investment in treatment by Dutch officials, or the higher potency of Dutch marijuana.

In the United States, about half of those admitted for treatment for marijuana addiction happen through criminal justice referrals. In the Netherlands, such referrals account for closer to 10 percent.

and the reason for this stat is the War on Drugs.

How is it not disruptive for families to deal with imprisonment of a family member for engaging in a behavior that is less harmful than drinking a glass of whiskey?

The War on Drugs is an extension of Jim Crow in the United States.

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I'm responding to your title alone as I have not watched the video.

they executed someone for DUI vehicular manslaughter. That still doesn't say we don't incarcerate way too many people.

the majority of prisoners in the U.S. on drug charges are there for possession of marijuana. nothing more. Any nation that executes citizens for use of marijuana or for drinking alcohol would be the apt comparison. the only nations that engage in this sort of action are totalitarian in nature.

Approximately 82% of ALL arrests in 2010 were for possession of various substances. Out of those, nearly 46% of all arrests were for simple marijuana possession. Only 18% of arrests were for dealing.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10arresttbl.xls

but it is a possible reason for less use. If dealers are less willing/able to deal then users are less able to use.
I agree that we should not be incarcerating people for simple marijuana use. (Though I wonder how many of those listed for 'use' plea bargained down to a 'use' charge.) I've known many people who got fined for marijuana use but never anyone who got incarcerated for it.

the laws in the U.S. are applied selectively, by region and race and class.

I would assume you're a white person.

I am too - it's nice when white people can appreciate the way in which laws enforce racism and actually care about their fellow citizens.

that less 'dealing' results in less use and therefore fewer arrests. I made no mention of race.
(Lack of use could be for other reasons as well.)

Why would you assume I am a 'white person?'

a refusal to go along with prohibition of a substance that is less harmful than alcohol would also result in fewer arrests.

I don't understand why someone would support policy that was and is based upon lies. From its inception, the prohibition of cannabis was justified by racism and misinformation. This remains the reason for prohibition.

Creating laws intended to target minorities is bad policy - and so is the continuation of those policies.

was a urinalysis that showed they had ingested cannabis?

AND it turns out to be racist in its implementation.

Great post...great book, "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander. So glad to see your post, RainDog.

There are lots and lots of links to various studies that look at this issue. You assume people are just "pro or con legalization but don't mention research" - and that's an incorrect assumption.

Is continuing the war on drugs and all the loss of freedoms, revenue, and lives that entails (violence on the border, ever expanding police powers, largest imprisoned population in the world and so on) better or worse than the risk of more people getting stoned out in public on Saturday night?

but I don't make money off of current policies, so my judgement may be clouded...

People are going to do what they want. As long as it doesn't harm anyone but themselves, the only thing prohibition does is grow a prison economy.

There is a line that must be drawn with respect to what and how much protection is needed to ensure the safety of people in a society. And there are diminishing returns on top of that.

I think we live in a partially insane society. People like Mumia are not a threat to anyone, yet there they languish, in cells.

Imagine you have a sample of 100 people. 60 of them support legalizing marijuana, 40 of them oppose it. However, of the 60 who support, only 10 will vote for a candidate solely because of that criteria, while 30 of the 40 will absolutely vote against any candidate who does support legalization. Put another way, it remains illegal because people who like drugs aren't as obsessed with them as people who dislike drugs.

"Candidate A supports marijuana legalization, but you oppose it. If you otherwise supported Candidate A, would his support of legalization cause you to vote against him?"

Then we would see the size of the single-issue Reefer Madness vote. I would wage it's smaller than you think.

The real problem is, $$$ entrenched interest$$$ enjoy the $$ drug war $$$ gravy $$$ train too much $$$$$.

It'll happen. Actually, the problem for pro-legalization people isn't a lack of enthusiasm, it's been a lack of candidates willing to stand up to say that it's time to end the insanity. When candidates DO stand up for legalization, that position ALONE is often enough to get them into office, or at least give them far more votes than they would have had otherwise (see Ventura, Jesse... or Paul, Ron)

The waning enthusiasm gap is actually on the part of the people FOR the drug war, at least the ones who aren't enjoying the lucrative never ending money and treasure bath that falls out from the fun and profitable act of pissing away $60 Billion a year in taxpayer dollars to throw cancer ridden grannies in prison for smoking a joint. Those 30 of the 40 you talk about? 29 of the 30 will drop it when you remind them that THEY have to pay for prohibition.

... one thing I have noticed over the past few decades, is that whenever marijuana decriminalization and/or legalization bills come up in the state or federal legislatures, the beer and liquor industry lobbyists kick into gear. The beer and liquor industry, especially the corner liquor stores, know that if marijuana is available, they sell less product. And vice-versa for when the respective areas get, "dry", as it pertains to marijuana.

So you can see the beauty (or is it conniving?) of the relationship. Someone remind me again, what is the law enforcement definition of a RACKET?

This is also an issue of race discrimination - it's about ruining families because of stupid policy.

If the federal govt wanted to deal with this, they could by simply framing this issue in a way that deals with the real problems surrounding it. But when you have for-profit prisons lobbying for the cash cow that is the war on drugs, and politicians who get paid off for pretending they give a shit about crime based upon this issue - you get bad policy - no matter which party is in office.

I grew up in a county where the largest city has under 3000 residents. I live in Chicago which has just a wee bit more.

One of the things I have had to learn when visiting where I grew up is *not* to talk casually about marijuana use. Here in Chicago I know people from all political ideologies who smoke rather openly. They are blue collar, white collar and cops. They are wealthy, poor and everything in between. I wouldn't think anything of saying at a meeting, "you need to light up a joint when you go home tonight" to someone talking about being stressed out by work.

Let me say something like that where I grew up, and a solid majority of the people I know would be shocked and look at me like I just admitted to being a child molestor.

Heck, this very conversation - a debate on decriminalization - would be walking on thin ice where I grew up.

When they take the national polls, support in the Liberal areas combine with a minority in the Conservative regions to push the decriminalizing numbers over 50%. But if you break out those polls state-by-state, congressional district-by-district...?

I've never seen such a poll. But I would be really surprised if that showed 40+%, much less 50+%, supporting decriminalization in the vast majority of congressional districts.

and he noted in his book, This Is Your Country on Drugs, that politicians assumed only 30% of their state population was in favor of legal medical cannabis. The reality, tho, and this was more than a decade ago, was the 70% of the population of people in states such as Rhode Island favored legalization of medical cannabis.

The breakdown by region indicates the south has the fewest number of people who report to Gallup that they favor legalization of all cannabis (not just medical.)

Rural areas in the United States are always backwaters of bad policy. They are always behind the curve in the move to better law, every time, on issues regarding social policy. Every time. They have to be brought kicking and screaming into decency.

Rural areas also have a vested interest in maintaining regressive policies because they make money off of them. For-profit prisons locate in rural areas and create jobs - those jobs are comprised of a largely white, uneducated population imprisoning a largely black, uneducated population.

Drug laws also serve to inflate population numbers in rural areas - so politicians in those areas also have a vested interest in keeping regressive drug laws in place.

We cannot look to rural areas when framing policy in this nation, unless it is to see what we should not do.

Not gonna even be part of the debate. Maybe next year when Obama has a bit more latitude.

Colorado and Washington, and may yet make the ballot in Montana and Oregon.

Someone is going to ask the candidates their positions on the matter. Repeatedly, I hope.

debate the other night and all three said they would not support medical marijuana in NC.

large majorities, and some states are already looking at full legalization. So clearly, things in those States are not much like they are in NC. Medical Marijuana is a matter of compassion, not of drug control, and at some point, NC will tire of forcing cancer patients to suffer more than they need to and such. The shame of what they are doing will at some point catch up with them.

doctors are too afraid of the Feds to prescribe medical marijuana.

debate. It was part of the first debate here. My one and only point.

"Valley City State University"

I'd even heard of some of the community colleges , but this one threw me...

http://web.archive.org/web/20110718081238/http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/endorsers.html

can you find a list of economists who think prohibition is a good thing?

honestly, it's disgusting to see you try to defame this by claiming the list doesn't matter because an economist teaching at a community college signed it.

here's another list calling for an end of the war on cannabis. This list includes the NAACP, Jimmy Carter, Former Presidents and Foreign Ministers for various nations, members of the Democratic Party at the state and federal level, a former head of the FBI in Seattle, the California Medical Association... and I would imagine many teachers at community colleges would agree.

These statements range from 2010, when Prop. 19 was on the ballot in CA to Dec. 2011.

Norm Stamper, Former FBI chief in Seattle, endorses marijuana legalization initiative (Nov. 2011)
http://today.seattletimes.com/2011/11/former-fbi-chief-in-seattle-endorses-marijuana-legalization-initiative/

The NAACP
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20084203-503544.html

Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX) introduced a bill (H.B. 2306) modeled on the 21st amendment to repeal prohibition, to end the federal govt's prohibition of cannabis. This was the first time such a bill has been entered in the house (June 2011.)

Democratic Reps. John Conyers (MI), Steve Cohen (TN), Jared Polis (CO) and Barbara Lee (CA) are co-sponsors of the bill.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/06/23/251897/paul-frank-introduce-bill-to-legalize-marijuana/

Stop the Violence, a high profile group of Canadian business, political, and educational, legal and law enforcement professionals, includes former B.C. Supreme Court justice Ross Lander and B.C.'s former chief coroner Vince Cain, launched a high-profile political campaign to "end the cannabis cash cow of organized crime."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/10/27/bc-stop-the-violence-marijuana-coalition.html

The following Commissioners from the Global Commission on Drug Policy:

» Carlos Fuentes
- writer and public intellectual, Mexico

» Ernesto Zedillo
- former President of México

» George Papandreou
- Prime Minister of Greece

» Javier Solana
- former European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Spain

» Kofi Annan
- former Secretary General of the United Nations, Ghana

» Maria Cattaui
- Member of the Board, Petroplus Holdings; former Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Commerce, Switzerland

» Mario Vargas Llosa
- writer and public intellectual, Peru

» Paul Volcker
- former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve and of the Economic Recovery Board, US

» Ruth Dreifuss
- former President of Switzerland and Minister of Home Affairs

http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Commission

Edward Schumacher-Matos, The Washington Post (2010)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/21/AR2010102102957.html?sub=AR

The Editorial Board of the British Medical Journal (2010) - and recommend it be sold in stores like cigarettes and alcohol.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8056292/Cannabis-should-be-sold-in-shops-alongside-beer-and-cigarettes-doctors-journal-says.html

Roger Pertwee, UK's Leading Pharmacological Expert on Cannabis, Calls for Legalization
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/14/cannabis-licence-legalisation-pertwee

California Council of Churches IMPACT (21 different denominations and over 1.5 million members within the mainstream and progressive Protestant communities of faith) endorses legalization of cannabis
http://www.examiner.com/progressive-in-portland/prop-19-california-council-of-churches-says-yes-to-legal-marijuana

Former (Republican) Governor of New Mexico, Gary E. Johnson
http://my.firedoglake.com/garyjohnson/2010/09/03/legalize-marijuana-to-stop-the-drug-cartels/

John McKay, the prosecutor who sent "prince of pot" Marc Emery to jail
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2012804422_guest05mckay.html

Please feel free to add others that I have missed.

Wonderful sources, but I'm not looking at them all. I'm pro legalization, you see. I just was curious about the school, the one thing you didn't reference.

What's wrong with looking at the list, anyways? Frankly, they would make a stronger case by leaving all the community college professors off of it.

Please don't waste your time on further cut and paste jobs, unless you are trying to alienate fellow supporters of legalization. Your stridency does not play well.

that is here on DU, one that I compiled from over more than a year of tracking this issue.

so the "cut and paste job" you're referring to is my own work.

you may call that stridency. I call that making an assessment based upon valid information.

someone who claims he or she is alienated by someone posting factual information - I suppose I have to wonder whose nerve was touched. Information is stridency?

the point, really, is that there are people who teach at community colleges who are very good at their jobs. what are your credentials?

the origin of the signing came from Jeff Miron, at Harvard.

you can live on campus and it has a football team.

Please join me in Denver Oct 2013 for the International Drug Policy Reform Conference. Fly by Night and I ran into each other in the elevator.

Great resources and so inspiring.

http://www.reformconference.org/

I don't have the financial resources to attend that conference. Maybe things will change.

classified as the most dangerous drug there is, if it were not for Pharma cash, it would be rescheduled by the President.

Were it not for Pharma cash, it would be decriminalized on a national level via legislation.

Wake me up when the executive and legislative bodies are not so easily purchased, then we can talk about sane policy and expert recommendations.

from 2005:

http://www.forbes.com/2005/06/02/cz_qh_0602pot.html

it's gotten to the point that this entire scenario is ridiculous. the Federal Govt. is like a child with his fingers in his ears, going, "nah, nah, nah, I can't hear you..."

This is another one of the areas where the President has nothing of merit to add to the discussion....

His DOJ has come down heavy on the side of prohibition.

For the man in the paddock, whose duty it is to sweep up manure, the supreme terror is the possibility of a world without horses.

-- Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer"

in long term.

The number 17.8 billion dollars saved by legalizing marijuana is worth it, and it can become a major cash crop for many states.

Thanks for the thread, MindMover.

from their government can be so annoying, it pissed off King George III to no end.

...by policy makers for the near future, at least.

Marijuana remains illegal because big PhRMA doesn't want the competition. And the war on untaxed drugs has become very narrowly targeted economic stimulus for the prison-industrial complex.

Prohibition was tried once already. Can this madness please just fucking end?

Guess who wins?