Drugs, elephants and American prisons
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–Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own–
Are the 305 million people living in the United States the most evil in the world? Is this the reason why the U.S., with 5 percent of the world’s population, has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners and an incarceration rate five times as high as the rest of the world?
Or is it a matter of a criminal justice system that has gone dramatically wrong, swamping the prison system with drug offenders?
That rhetorical question, asked on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Virginia Senator Jim Webb, fits into what looks like an accelerating shift in public sentiment on the way that a long parade of administrations has been dealing with illegal drugs.
Advocates of drug reform sensed a change in the public mood even before Webb, a Democrat who served as secretary of the Navy under Republican Ronald Reagan, introduced a bill last month to set up a blue-ribbon commission of “the greatest minds” in the country to review the criminal justice system and recommend reforms within 18 months.
No aspect of the system, according to Webb, should escape scrutiny, least of all “the elephant in the bedroom in many discussions … the sharp increase in drug incarceration over the past three decades. In 1980, we had 41,000 drug offenders in prison; today we have more than 500,000, an increase of 1,200 percent.”
The elephant has ambled out of the bedroom and has become the object of a lively debate on the pros and cons of legalising drugs, particularly marijuana, among pundits on both sides of the political spectrum, on television panels and in mainstream publications from the Wall Street Journal to TIME magazine.
True watersheds in public attitudes are rarely spotted at the time they take place but the phrase “tipping point” comes up more and more often in discussions on the “war on drugs”.
“Something has changed in the past few months,” says Bruce Mirken, of the Marijuana Policy Project, one of a network of 30 groups advocating the legalisation of the most widely-used illegal drug in the United States. “In the first three months of this year we’ve been invited to national cable news programs as often as in the entire year before.”
SHIFTING MOOD
Allen St. Pierre, who leads the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), also feels that the most serious public discussion in more than a generation is getting under way. “In mid-March,” he said in an interview, “there were 36 separate marijuana bills pending in 24 states — on legalization, de-criminalization, medical marijuana. Not all the bills will make it, but they are a sign of change.”
So are public opinion polls. On a national level, they show an increase from about 15 percent in support of marijuana legalization four decades ago to 44 percent now. The numbers differ from state to state. In California, the most populous, a recent survey showed 54 percent in favour.
St. Pierre sees a confluence of reasons for the shift in attitudes — baby boomers, a generation familiar with drug use, are in charge of the country’s institutions; the dismal economy makes people question public expenditures that do not seem essential; and the drug violence in Mexico that has begun spilling across the border.
Contrary to widespread perceptions, marijuana accounts, by many estimates, for considerably more than half the illegal drugs smuggled from Mexico to the United States.
The argument for legalizing marijuana, and eventually other drugs, is straightforward: it would transform a law-and-order problem into a problem of public health. A side effect of particular importance at a time of deep economic crisis: it would save billions of dollars now spent on law enforcement and add billions in revenues if drugs were taxed.
If drug policies were decided by economists, the debate would have begun earlier and might be over by now. Four years ago, 500 economists including three Nobel prize winners urged the administration of George W. Bush to show that marijuana prohibition justified “the cost to taxpayers, foregone tax revenues and numerous ancillary consequences…”
Such as prisons holding, in the words of Senator Webb, tens of thousands of “passive users and minor dealers.”
While they contribute to prison overcrowding in some states, they have little to fear in others. To fully grasp the bizarrely uneven treatment of marijuana use, consider the annual “smoke-out” on April 20 in Boulder, Colorado.
There, on a sunny Monday, a crowd estimated at more than 10,000 converged on the campus of the University of Colorado to light up marijuana joints, whose smoke hung over the scene like a grey blanket. Overhead, an aircraft dragged a banner with the words “Hmmm, smells good up here.” Police watched but made no arrests and issued no fines.
Even the most optimistic of reform advocates do not see an end to prohibition in the near future. President Barack Obama endeared himself to reformers during his election campaign by an honest answer to a question on past drug use: “Yes, I inhaled. Frequently. That was the point.” But his spokesman recently said Obama opposed legalization.
It remains to be seen whether that stand remains the same if Webb’s proposed commission, assuming it will be established, came up with recommendations for deep change. That happened to the last report by a blue-ribbon commission on the subject.
The so-called Shafer report, whose members were appointed by then-president Richard Nixon, found in 1972 that “neither the marijuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety” and recommended that there should be no criminal penalties for personal use and casual distribution.
Nixon rejected the report. He had already declared “war on drugs”, and American prisons soon began filling up.
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I agree, I just wish there was some way to fast track these growing debates right up to congress. Most educated people are ready to debate the war on drugs and it’s benefit (if any) to the taxpayers.
Very good article. It’s refreshing to hear this topic discussed without fearing a swat team breaking down the door and stealing everything that isn’t nailed down. Using deadly force to stop someone from using cannabis is simply insane. Listening to John Walters (formerly with ONDCP) making the think tank rounds lately and exclaim that we are winning the drug war makes one see the absolute inability of the prohibitionist to reconcile reality with their position. If what we are doing now is ‘winning’ then maybe we need to lose for a while and see how that works because ‘winning’ has brought the drug gangs to our very doorstep and inside our larger cities. Prohibition makes the wrong people rich.
Bernd, thanks for your article, you’ve written pieces similar to this and in the past the comments have told the tale that you’re preaching to the choir. The vast majority of Americans are sick of being taxed to their knees to pay for this ludicrous drug war but with the economic “crisis” and terrorist “threat” and swine flu “epidemic” they’re keeping us very distracted.
Interesting article but one fatal flaw. America has “full prisons” because we are one of the few countries in the world that has a backbone and actually enforces their laws. Somalia, the netherlands, Columbia, panama, mexico and a couple hundred other countries have practical anarchy on the streets and empty prisons because they choose to ignore their real problems. You can always say you have no problems when the 800 pound bear is sleeping in your living room.
Drugs are bad the drug war is worse.
Let our people go!
Amen brother! I can attest to the (so far) lack of danger. Mind you, I’ve only been researching for some35 years now so it’s too soon to tell for certain but…
I’ll go one step farther: ALL drugs should be legal. Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and their experience has been positive. Now if you are caught with a 10 day supply of your drug or less you face an administrative court, not a criminal court. We can do that here in the USA. A group of 10,000 very serious policemen, prosecutors, attorneys and citizens have formed a group to legalize ALL drugs, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (http://leap.cc ) They see what happened when we legalized alcohol in 1932 as a good example of how drug legalization would work. We can’t stop drugs. They’re sick of chasing drug users and sending innocent people to prison for decades just because they like to get high. This foolish war on drugs has lasted 37 years and cost us over a TRILLION dollars and we are not an inch closer to stopping drugs. How many millions of Americans are we going to lock up in prison for decades? Legalize ALL drugs now. Mark Montgomery boboberg@nyc.rr.com
Distracted is the right word. This is very much a situation that is ignored. Marijuana use is ubiquitous among Americans and we need to address the reasons why we are choosing marijuana over alcohol as our drug of choice. Alcohol causes more deaths and injuries each year.
You know, everyone in the black community (I am black) knows that the war on drugs is just a money making scam that private prisons only profited from. When you have a dude spending half his life in prison for selling dilluted cocaine, and the cat selling the pure gets off with a slap on the wrist, you know the war on drugs is a joke!
I bet if all the money that was invested in putting petty criminals into Crime University USA was spent on education and programs to give better opportunities to people (other than selling or using illegal drugs) we wouldn’t spend nearly as much on those programs, and the benefit to society would be far better.
Legalize the crap and tax it!
Two groups are most opposed to decriminalization of drugs — especially marijuana: The drug cartels and Law Enforcement.
In both cases it’s about the money. The cartels get rich from black market pricing and Law Enforcement gets huge budgets and ever growing bureaucracies to fight the “war”.
Meanwhile, under mandatory sentencing, people who are law abiding in every other way are sent to prison for decades simply for possessing marijuana.
Let’s start asking rational questions:
Why do so many people enjoy drugs and use them frequently?
Are they all insane, depraved, or sick?
Should a democratic government make laws to protect us from ourselves?
Has prohibition ever worked?
What is the cost/benefit analysis of the “War on Drugs”?
Are the Puritans alive and well in America?
If you take the profit out of the drug trade by decriminalization, what ancillary problems might be mitigated or eliminated?
For instance, what if the terrorists in Afpakistan couldn’t make millions selling opium and cocaine base to fund their operations?
I have volunteered with a Prison ministry group for years and been in several prisons including death row in Texas. What I have learned is that prior to the 70s the prisons contained only the most violent and twisted members of society. As more drug related offenders entered following laws from the 60′s and 70′s these young drug offenders looked for a mentor in prison and the leaders in prison are these terribly violent people. So a drug offender enters as a relatively harmless idiot and come out a much more violent criminal.
Prison has become “Crime University” in its modern form.
The “War on…anything” will end up being a failure. They never define how we will know we have won such a “war”, or who the enemy is, etc. The whole term is for the politicians to use to make it sound like they mean business. These types of “wars” go on and on for decades. The so called enemy never surrenders. It is only years later that we realize what a waste it all was.
Watch out for another unending war, the war on terror.
John,
Actually us having backbone is the opposite of the truth, the whole reason marijuana was made illegal was to kill the hemp industry and to arrest Latin Americans decades ago because some corporate elites were having their profits cut into. So we were bending over for special interests in the first place and now the only reason why we keep them illegal is because of the market we’ve built in arresting these people (prisons, more cops, enforcement agencies, etc.). There’s nothing honorable about the drug war, an enormous percentage of non-violent drug users get arrested and go to jail and turn into violent criminals.
We need to make room for real criminals: corporate executives; gun enthusiasts; obese people; parents of truants.
WASTE OF MONEY – Yes, and that is an understatement. Not too long ago, I sat at a USCG base in Puerto Rico. I was curious to know how much of our tax dollars each “snow flake” and “marijuana leaf” cost the tax payer to paint onto the side of these “drug busting” cutters (one symbol is painted for one bust) Using the MOST conservative of estimates (cost of ship/maintenance /fuel/personnel/and NOT including miscellaneous costs)I guesstimated taxpayers pay the US Gov. AT LEAST $100,000,000 for each bust that likely nets street values of less than $1,000,000 These 5 ships working for the past 9 years have only netted about 30 busts TOTAL. Not impressive and quite a waste.
It is interesting that some still believe incarceration of drug users will deter drug use or that tougher laws and longer sentences deter use. The facts speak for themselves in both cases. After all the years of this war on drugs, we have even more drugs than before on our streets and we have them in our prisons. California went to the extreme when it enacted its Three Strikes Law which can earn a life sentence for simple drug possession. 690 people have been caught in this net; none are eligible for any drug program in prison until they serve 23 years of their sentence. Each will cost taxpayers over a million dollars to warehouse. Even through drug treatment cost a fraction of incarceration? So today more Americans are in prison and the cost to operate these prisons come on the backs education, health care and even front line police and fire services! This mentality could not be anymore backwards or counterproductive. It is truly impossible to justify or support what we know after years of this costly and destructive experiment on our own citizens. Nothing could be more un-American!
To anyone opposed to the legalisation of marijuana….Why do you think alcohol and cigarretes should be legal and not marijuana?
John says
“the only reason why we keep them illegal is because of the market we’ve built in arresting these people (prisons, more cops, enforcement agencies, etc.). ”
I am impressed with the comment section so far. The drug war is a scam and an all-out assualt on the principle of freedom. Do we want more prisons, cops, enforcement agencies? Besides use and distribution, how many offenses are related to prohibition? Prohibition is a cottage industry for the police state. Let’s cut crime and gov’t by about 80% and just stop this non sense today? The propoganda machine would never allow this simple truth. This is a big fight against one of the many dirty gov’t machinations.
Good post! The war on drugs must stop. The cartels will be brought down with legalization. With the war on drugs as a federal excuse for jobs, over-reaching legislation, and to secretly funnel tax money into secret programs, the pluses from legalization tremendously outweigh the minuses to taxpayers. But the feds are in the business and will not give it up easily. A sensible argument for it being illegal doesn’t exist in the free world.
Talk about criminal justice driven industry, the urine testering labs must blanch at the very mention of legal marijuana, not to mention the prison guards unions.
“St. Pierre sees a confluence of reasons for the shift in attitudes — baby boomers, a generation familiar with drug use, are in charge of the country’s institutions…”
This is not quite true yet, especially when we’re talking about our federal law making bodies. The oldest baby boomer is only 63. The average age of a Senate committee leader is 67. I’m not sure what the average age of a committee leader is in the House of Representatives, but it is also way up there. The real power brokers in our law making bodies, those that set the agenda, tend to be really old. Look at sites like this one I’m linking you to that rank lawmakers by how powerful they are and you’ll see that average of the most powerful is up there approaching 70. http://www.congress.org/congressorg/powe r_rankings/index.tt
In the coming years baby boomers will really take control of our lawmaking bodies. Most baby boomers have smoked pot. Those born in the 40s are less likely than those born in the 50s to have done it, but males born in the second half of the 40s who have graduate degrees are more likely than not to have smoked it according to government statistics, and most of our lawmakers born in the 40s are males with graduate degrees, so there is a high statistical likelihood they’ve smoked pot themselves. They’re going to be a lot less opposed to legalization than those who came before them who in most cases have never tried marijuana and who tend to be most afraid of it and most opposed to legalization.
Criminalizing Marijuana leads youth to recognize the taboo of the plant and actively seek it out. Once they have used it, it becomes painfully obvious to them that all of the demonizing of the plant that they have heard is not actually true. This in turn leads them to support legalization. Every generation that is raised to believe in the drug war will eventually turn against it. In 2012, people who were born in 1994 will be voting for the first time and will be replacing voters who were born in the 10′s, 20′s and 30′s. It will truly not be long before politicians must either jump on the legalization bandwagon or be left behind.
John said:
“Interesting article but one fatal flaw. America has “full prisons” because we are one of the few countries in the world that has a backbone and actually enforces their laws.”
John, did we just grow this backbone since the late 70s or what? If you look at historical numbers you would see that our incarceration rate was relatively low and relatively flat throughout the 20th Century until 1979 when we hit a new record high. It climbed like crazy after that to the point that we now have several times as many people in prison in total and on a per capita basis than we ever did at any time prior to 1979. This has been a radical departure for us.
If you look around the world you will see several countries with lower crime rates than ours that have incarceration rates several times lower than ours. I’m not talking about countries where they are hanging people left and right, chopping off hands and all that. I’m talking about Western democratic “free” countries. Our incarceration rate is several times higher than the average in Europe, and I don’t think these countries are in any more of a state of anarchy than ours. The Netherlands isn’t in a state of anarchy either. Their incarceration rate is actually one of the higher ones in Europe, believe it or not.
I suggest you do some research. Look at crime rates here and around the world. Look at incarceration rates, both today’s numbers and historical numbers, and I think you’d be surprised by what you see. What has happened here in the last 30 years or so is unprecedented. It has actually resulted in some drop in crime, but at an enormous cost, in financial and societal terms. And if you look around you can see other nations have been able to reduce crime without more than quadrupling the number of people they have in prison. We’ve been tough on crime with our shotgun approach, but has this been the best use of our system and our limited resources? I say it’s past time we try to be smart on crime rather than just tough on crime. We need to evaluate what we’ve been doing, look at what has worked well for us, what hasn’t, what has been a complete waste, etc. We have backbone. Do we have brains, good sense, to go along with it?
It’s okay to do another study, but back in 1944 an extensive report was done ( http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Libr ary/studies/lag/lagmenu.htm ) under New York’s Mayor La Guardia. The results were very conclusive, and was a real embarassment to the US Government at the time. We must remember that government officials like control, and the “war on Drugs” works as a wonderful tool for them.
It’s a plant! A plant people! A flower, we picked a fight with a flower, and were loosing. No one has the right to outlaw a living thing least of all a flower which has never been known to kill anyone.
Tobacco killed 435,000 people in 2000, NSAIDs “aspirin” killed 7,600, and marijuana zero.(1) Yet tobacco is a multi billion dollar industry and you can get the family pack of aspirin even if your five years old (take twenty and that’ll be your last headache).
This “war on drugs” makes no sense and is immoral. Thousands of people are dying every year in Mexico at the hands of these prohibition era gangs or “drug cartels” and we’re locking up hundreds of thousands of our own citizens every year. Over a plant?
(1)”Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000,” Journal of the American Medical Association, March 10, 2004, Vol. 291, No. 10
drug cartels are the pharmaceutical companies and vice versa…
As long as we tag “issues” with money… there will always be lobbyists… lobbyists really run our government!!
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2 009/04/30/ownership/index.html
The prison system is designed to take criminals out of the system.
It is good to try and rehabilitate them. But remember that crime harms society, and innocent people.
If people refuse to rehabilitate, then this is not the nations problem. It should simply lock these people away, where they can no longer harm or inconvenience society.
Hello I created The Bureau of Inmate Advocates this year. I think our Justice System does not fit the crime with the punishment. Having an independent organization like the one I created made up of citizens who will be able to lobby for and fight for release of and inmate rights.
We need to change our sentencing guidelines with moral judgment and not personal belief fueled by power crazed politicians and judges.
I talked with drug dealers sentence to 30 years or more and another inmate sentence to 10 years for vehicle manslaughter.
A third did 3 years for having pot seeds in his basement and he happen to live in a school zone which was 1000 feet as the crow flies. But not visible form his house and if walked or drove it was more than 1000 feet.
We do support do the crime do your time but some just seems unfair. Some are punished while in jail but that’s another topic.
And as for water boarding when u see it on on video looks scary but they are not actually drowning and killing them so we are split even on that belief half of us say yes he other half of us says no.
Making real prison reforms, and not just for drug offenders, would save salvageable lives and save us lots of tax payer dollars.
The Pew Reseach Center for the States, says we incarcerate more of our population than any other democracy in the world; more than Mexico, more than India. We do not have the most evil people in the world. Our justice system has gone dramatically wrong.
Auto mechanics sell struts and tuneups you don’t need. Stock brokers sell investments that don’t make money. Law enforcement officials would be out of a job if crime rates dropped. Politicians can always run a “Tough on Crime” campaign. If we run out of criminals our leaders will find or make some. It beats telling your constituents how you’re going to solve global warming or the financial crisis.
Something is terribly wrong with America’s criminal justice system when we mete out life sentences for our own citizens for simple drug possession, yet give 15 year sentences to terrorist whose plan is to kill hundreds if not thousands of our Americans? Marri Admits Conspiring With Al-Qaeda Operatives; Faces Up to 15 Years!!!!!
5% of the population and 25% of the WORLDS prisoners is shocking and robably seen by a lot of the world as a VERY sick society……… and buried inside that statistic, doesn’t Texas have the highest execution rate on the planet??
Time to figure out what really is “criminal”, and repeal the stupid stuff.
The era of slavery isn’t over yet. We’re all slaves after a fashion. We live in a place where our only value comes from our ability to follow orders and do work we’d rather not do. Or at least not do that particular way. But because we “need the money” we let our own dreams go by the way side.
Most working folks are decent enough. We just want to live a good life and not interfere negatively in the lives of others if we can help it. But how sad to live in this world your whole life and not know yourself and your potential in all its dimensions. That should be the reason for living. To discover your humanity to the fullest. Instead we chase money. We chase money as if the breath of life from the mouth God itself were in the dollar amount we’re after. Interesting that it says “In God We Trust” on our money.
How obscene is it that we want to “fix” a system that pays the lowest wage it can get away with paying for the hardest jobs, and pays not by the job but by the hour? In effect asking you spend the majority of the most productive and creative hours of your time doing what you “have to do” instead of what you want to do. And paying whole sale for your time.
And how wonderful that as the consumer you get to be the back bone of this economy by going to the retail outlets so that you can pay two to three times more than you were paid to help produce all of that stuff by your employers.
Sounds like a great deal when you really think about it doesn’t it? And some will ask, “well what else would you do? Just sit around?”
And that would be my point. How sad, that when we attempt to think about having a life that doesn’t involve some mindless job, most people don’t know what to do. How tragic that the idea of discovering your inner gifts and talents doesn’t even occur to many working folks. They don’t have time to think about anything else but making ends meet. Should any human being live that way?
Is it any wonder people turn to drugs? Drug use is just a symptom of a much larger problem. And a war on people who are suffering is the last thing this nation needs. Our health care and financial systems are money centered. The human being is just a chunk of money being accounted for as it traverses the system. How obscene. How insane. How can it be that the mother of our president had to argue with an insurance bean counter on her own death bed? And the only reason we know about her is because her son is so successful. How many more suffer like this?
But when the human argument is made. It is most often met with ridicule. To think that you might jeer me for valuing you. Does that make sense at all? All of our social systems must be human centered. And the human must be of highest ultimate value in ANY system we design. We have an opportunity as citizens, to let our government know that the business sector needs to be put in its place. And that no matter what happens in this so called crisis, that we will not allow our families to be uprooted or evicted.
It is a reasonable demand. If the govt can spend our money to keep businesses afloat then surely they can spend our money to keep us in our homes. And if all else fails. Money be damned. Families come first.
I don’t smoke pot or snort cocaine, but my sister had cancer for 8 years until it took her life. Marijuana was the best drug among all the cancer pills and pain meds she took the last couple of years. If you can’t eat you starve to death. She got 8 years out of a 6 month initial prognosis – all because she smoked pot when she needed an appetite.
Drug abuse should be dealt with in treatment centers. People do heavy drugs because of not only physical addiction, but underlying issues that lead to neverending failed cycles of attempted sobriety. Treatment centers know what they’re doing with alcohol and drugs. Prisons only harden people and leave them unable to live among society with felonies as roadblocks to ever leading a normal life.
Hopefully, we’ll do the right thing and eventually legalize everything and begin (as many municipalities do now with ‘Drug Courts’) to deal with offenders as sick people needing help, not bad people. Drug use shouldn’t be a crime. The “War on Drugs” has been a catastrophe.
As another poster already mentioned even law enforcers are sick and tired of this useless waste on drugs. Do as you do with cigarettes and alcohol: legalize all drugs and then tax them high enough so that the additional tax revenues combined with the savings garnered in law enforcement outweigh the costs of dealing with drug use. A nice side effect would be that Afghanistan would suddenly be able to import opium legally, thereby decriminalizing the entire country and drying out the terrorist morass (as you would not be keen on destroying your most lucrative market).
while drug offenders, especially users, are somewhat victimless in their “crimes” relaxed punishments have to be coupled with legalization and an attitude of tolerance.
a well informed public, who is’nt told to just not do something, who are educated on the true nature of mind altering substances and who are cultivated in a society that intelligently approaches the issue of addiction and of treatment, is far less likely to be over run by a “drug epidemic” than one that lives in the current state of fear mongering and misinformation that is our current course. we have made drugs the huge problem that they are, people were doing not so bad for 100,000 years before that.
Citizen’s in Florida are proposing that medical marijuana be legalized, People United for Medical Marijuana (www.pufmm.org)developed a ballot initiative for the 2010 election cycle. Kim Russell, the chairperson of PUFMM is hoping to get state legislators to initiate a bill for the second half of the legislative session this year. Alas, our legislature is
dominated by Republicans and will have a hard time finding one with guts to sponsor a bill, but we will.
Join us at Lake Eola Park this Saturday!
First: I don’t support outright legalization. Instead, I support separating drug policy from the legal system. That is, finding ways outside the legal system, through health care, social policy, etc, to curtail use as much as possible, and effectively monitor and measure it where we can’t prevent it!
Obviously, the legal system, and the black and white moralistic mindset around which it is built is entirely the wrong approach to the problem.
There are no easy answers here, but just simply locking up anyone who has anything to do with drugs, and limiting the use of narcotics in medicine to levels that doctors know is not always clinically valid, is clearly counterproductive!
Another elephant in the bedroom: who funds and promotes drug prohibition propaganda?
We know who wants it maintained: Big Pharma, prison guard unions, certain factions of law enforcement, district attorneys, large drug cartels, large grow ops, breweries, infrared equipment manufacturers, the drug testing industry, and those in their pay (read heavily lobbied elected representatives).
Why? Only the naive believe it is because they are interested in public welfare. The simple answer is money, and job security.
And never forget that forfeiture laws provide a steady stream of income to the DEA and local LEOS. Only in drug cases can the government confiscate property that was gainfully acquired through legitimate means, and do so with little or no oversight. That, in my book, is stealing from the public, pure and simple.
Never forget that prisons are now for profit and their stocks are traded on Wall Street. More prisoners = more profit.
I invite anyone to challenge what I have stated above.
According to the Field Poll released yesterday, 56 percent of California voters support legalizing marijuana for recreational use and taxing its sale. This is exactly what California Assembly Bill 390 would do.
Californians understand the economic benefits of ending a policy that has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars and imprisoned millions of otherwise law-abiding, contributing Americans.
AB 390 would create jobs, generate $1.2 billion in new direct tax revenue, reduce crime, reduce prison overcrowding, cut funding to drug cartels, reduce police corruption, and protect our public lands.
If you live in California and favor legalizing marijuana for adults, YOU can make it happen. Tell your state representatives to support California Assembly Bill 390. It’s easy. Visit yes390.org
To Robin Reese:
The question really is:
There seems to be an excuse for everybody that wants to get stoned to get stoned but why is being sober and with a clear mind such a bad thing?
Regarding the legalization of marijuana, it’s just another alcohol type of culture in that whole societies get hooked on smoking it just like whole societies are hooked on drinking wine, vodka or schnnapps; producing it and harvesting it while allowing other more savvy sections to pass them by. You see an impoverished section of society that is exclusively growing wine, with severe cases of alcoholism that run for generations and it will happen the same with marijuana.
I didn’t realize that the US had 25% of the world’s prisoners. Just like universal health care this is another problem for President Obama to tackle.
Anubus, you are so cynical. I guess it was late and you were tired.
Actually I tend to agree. When Alaska decriminalized MJ it took State Troopers and the State Courts to stop the local municipalities from fining people for possession. Their only defense at trial was “how will we replace the revenues generated from the fines?” The judge had no sympathy with the mayors or their attorneys.
I hope the current economic crisis coupled with the carnage south of the boarder and the fact that Oakland, Ca. has just established a tax on Medical MJ will spur on our legislators local as well as national to legalize Marijuana within 2 years.
As for the other drugs, people have a perception that they are some how more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco or even over the counter drugs. In reality they are not. Alcohol is addictive and you can OD on it so how does it differ from heroin? It really does not but people perceive it differently. Like, you can use alcohol without addiction but not heroin. This is false. Many people use heroin without ever becoming addicted to it. Psychology and physiology have both shown through tests and studies that addiction has more to do with the person than the substance. For example Alcohol is not addictive unless the individual body chemistry produces certain enzymes that break it down differently than most others. The other drugs are no different. If we could end the prohibition on alcohol without societal collapse, I doubt it would happen with for heroin and cocaine.
At the very least MJ should be removed from the controlled substance list and legalized. The War on Drugs causes so much pain and suffering that only an authoritarian sadist would want to see this policy continued. There is no cost effectiveness. There is no reduction in drug use. It maintains black markets that fund gangs and terrorists. It is responsible for creating the fastest growing subculture in the US, the disenfranchised ex-con whose voice cannot be heard since he is not allowed to vote. Let’s see if this administration does something or turns its back on the American people.
Glenn, tries to draw a line between decriminalization and commercialization. I have to disagree based upon on of my major points and that is to dismantle the black markets funding gangs and terrorists. This cannot be done without commercialization like alcohol and tobacco at least for MJ. You might be able to get away with clinicalization of heroin and cocaine. I do not think it is really necessary though and the costs must still be minimized.
“When Alaska decriminalized MJ it took State Troopers and the State Courts to stop the local municipalities from fining people for possession. Their only defense at trial was “how will we replace the revenues generated from the fines?” ” – posted by B.Free
__________________________
If it’s sold legally, it can be taxed – so the revenues can be replaced.
Bernd, I see only one problem with your post – you preach to the converted. Most, if not all, of your readership agrees with you. Too bad the ones who can make the decisions either didn’t read it or ignored it. IMHO your post must be mailed to all members of all branches of power, Obama being the 1st on that mailing list.
Thank you for a very thoughtful article. It would be nice if law enforcement became keepers of social peace rather than a money making exercise and a witch hunt for minorities such as marijuana uses.
Did we not learn anything from alcohol prohibition?
Marijuana prohibition has been an indisputable failure. Legalize it and take the money out of the black market. Marijuana is less dangerous than either alcohol or tobacco yet both of those substances are legal (and should be). Every year our prison system releases violent offenders to make room for non-violent pot smokers. That is just plain insanity. Think of how better society would be served if our law enforcement efforts were directed more towards dealing with violent individuals. We would also save BILLIONS of dollars on prosecution costs and jail expenses every year.
There is also substantial evidence indicating marijuana has numerous medical uses as well.
This is a plant, legalize it and regulate it. We need to look at this issue using nothing more than basic common sense. Isn’t it time to drop the “Reefer Madness” stupidity?
Here’s the thing on legalization: Being a Californian, and knowing that marijuana is our largest cash crop (to the tune of billions of dollars more than any other), I disagree wholeheartedly with the idea of full legalization.
The marijuana economy in my state is, by and large, NOT fueled by Mexican cartels as legalization proponents seem to think it is. Most of California’s ganja is grown by local farmers. This creates a unique chain of supply and demand separate from any corporate or governmental regulatory authority.
The problem I see with legalization is that the sweet sticky icky that Californians love so much will become a commodity similar to tobacco, chemically modified by Philip Morris and sold in packs of pre-rolled doobies at 7-11.
And for those that say we’ll see our state budget deficit disappear, you may be right- but when marijuana becomes legal the price will drop (independent of subsidy etc.) and the revenue from farming and sales will shift from the hands of local producers in local communities to giant factory farms in the hands of RJ Reynolds.
I love my organic bud just the way it is.
I love the fact that buying it on a regular basis requires a certain measure of decency and community spirit.
This may not be the case everywhere, but in Northern California we’ve got things under control. Decriminalization works. Bust the high-level traffickers, the thieves, the violent- but keep government hands out of the last true microfinanced commodity.
Addiction, defined as when a habit becomes a problem, oddly has been strictly defined as a health problem rather than also a societal problem. If smoking pot is illegal, then smoking it at all is a problem. Therefore anyone who habitually smokes it can be labeled “addicted.”
So as the argument goes, because the barrier to try pot would be lowered, to legalize pot would be to create many more addicts. Would it? Or would we finally be able to differientiate the “addicts” by seeing how many actually require treatment, and how many were “addicts” created by the state?
Marijuana should be legal. And it should be allowed to reside in the hands of ordinary citizens. The only regulation allowed should be safety regulations. Aside from that. There’s no need to tax or control the means of production of this harmless plant. Make it legal for personal, recreation, industrial, and medical use without the government trying to figure out how to get money out of you in exchange for something you should already have had unfettered access to.
Since recorded history humanity’s relationship with marijuana has been a positive one. If more than 40% of Americans are in favor of legalizing it then why are we politely asking government to do so?
Speak up. Let your reps and president know that you won’t vote for them again unless they handle this issue and clear it up. And then DON’T VOTE FOR THEM if the fail to take your side. Write in a candidate if there are none to your liking. But if the desire to make it legally available is so strong, then stop asking and tell your reps what you want. This is hopefully still our (the people’s) government right? So put it to the test and see what that tells you about America.
Benny Acosta is correct. However, to overcome the prohibition industries we need to tell our congressmen and Senators often. At least once a month I email my Senators, Representatives and the White House regarding the removal if Marijuana from the controlled substance list and legalize it. I send research and commentaries like these with select responses and suggest they read all the responses. I ask them to look into the Marijuana Policy Project, NORML, Drug Policy Alliance Network, and any article that has retired police saying no more drug war. Obama knows:
“(SEATTLE) – In early December, Barack Obama invited Americans to participate in an unprecedented, bottom-up approach to government. Visitors to the President-elect’s official website, Change.gov, were able to submit questions and vote on which questions should take priority for the new administration.
More than a dozen of the top 50 questions called for amending America’s drug policies, with inquiries ranging from availability of doctor-recommended medical marijuana to the economic impact of continuing to arrest and incarcerate millions of people for drug offenses.
The number one vote getter was:
“Q: Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?”
Americans got their answer, sort of. A one-sentence response from the President-elect’s transition team:
“A: President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.”
He doesn’t have to be in favor, he just has to understand who he works for and make the right decision. The only way he will know what that decision should be is by people telling him what they want. Marijuana should be legal. I promise the opposition is blasting him daily.