Regulate Marijuana Like Wine (interesting article)

by sabastious 87 Replies latest jw friends

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  designs

  The British aristocracy made fortunes from Opium that lasted centuries.
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  144001

  Those in favor of legalizing marijuana usually think that the criminal ramifications of drug use will cease to exist once marijuana becomes an item like so many others.

  Pure nonsense. Cite some references to support your statement above. It's obvious you don't believe in legalization of marijuana, so you've chosen to misrepresent the position of those you don't agree with and then you attack the misrepresented position.

  Bottom line, folks. It costs $45K/year to lock folks up in prison. The USA incarcerates more people, both in total numbers and as a percentage of the total population, than any other country on this planet. Idiocy and financial mismanagement have pushed our country to the precipice of economic catastrophe. We're going to have to take a good hard look at what we lock people up for, because we can no longer afford to lock up so many people.

  It's amazing to me that this subject is still being debated. This is 2011. Marijuana should have been legalized years ago!
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  wha happened?

  The biggest drug by volume from Mexico is marijuana. The gangs in Mexico are better armed then most nations and it's growing. Why do they have so much money, well drug sales. Since there isn't a legal competitor they have the market covered. Could u imagine making cigarettes illegally and trying to sell them in the street? Or alcohol? The later was illegal and all we did was create a underworld of unscrupulious characters.

  The argument of what is harmful and what is not was lost a long time ago on cigarettes. They have no medical use whatsoever, costs this county millions in medical care, and yet they can be bought on most any corner.

  Taking a huge cash cow out of the hands of gangsters would be a huge blow to them. It really needs to happen. My heritage goes back to Mexical and honestly, I hate going there now. Just came back from Ensenada and I saw police in military vehicles. Faces covered in masks wearing black holding automatic weapons. Scary looking guys and they are the good guys, terrified they will be killed if they are identified.

  I'm hoping for a national comprehensive plan to regulate and TAX. With all the noise these days about budget balancing, why not tax the biggest cash crop in California. And the taxes will benifit us all the to the local level with city taxes.

  In agreeing with 144001, we are paying a lot of money to keep a pot smoker in prison or jail. What a waste of resources. Shouldn't we be spending those same efforts putting pedophiles in jail. That's money well spent
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  sabastious

  Maybe it can be claimed that the war on drugs gives money to the governments that enforce it, as Sabastious claims. I don't know much about that. I do know that, in Mexico and Central America, governments have no option but to fight drugs, or else they will become failed states. Guatemala is at the brink of becoming such a state. The war on drugs in those countries is certainly not about money. It's about how a group of very powerful thugs could eventually take control of everyone in the country.

  DGP, you are using the term "drugs" very stereotypically and that is part of the problem, imo. I am in NO way against governments protecting their people from extortion and guerrilla tactics from black markets within their borders. That said it's the government's responsibility to classify what is an illegal substance and what is not. GREAT care must be given to this defining process and as we can see, through the public's generalizations, that that process is not necessarily engineered in the name of the protection of the people. The black markets will always sell what is not legal and what is placed into that pile is on the governments shoulders, no one else's.

  -Sab
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  dgp

  144001, I made no secret of my opposition to the legalization of marijuana. I also gave my reasons.

  Where I live, some of us believe that, if the United States were to legalize the sales of marijuana, then the assholes on my neighborhood would have a lot of cash that they would use against the law-abiding citizens. Just as they are doing now.

  Since you wanted me to quote references, Here's one: The Wikipedia. Emphasis added by me.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arguments_for_and_against_drug_prohibition#Violence_and_profits_of_drugs_traffickers

  Violence and profits of drugs traffickers

  Prohibition protects the drug cartel insofar as it keeps the distribution in the black market and creates the risk that makes smuggling profitable. [ 93 ] [ 96 ] As former federal narcotics officer Michael Levine states in relation to his undercover work with Colombian cocaine cartels,from Lamar

  "I learned that not only did they not fear our war on drugs, they counted on it to increase the market price and to weed out the smaller, inefficient drug dealers. They found U.S. interdiction efforts laughable. The only U.S. action they feared was an effective demand reduction program. On one undercover tape-recorded conversation, a top cartel chief, Jorge Roman, expressed his gratitude for the drug war, calling it “a sham put on for the American taxpayer” that was actually “good for business”. [ 107 ]

  Critics of drug prohibition often cite the fact that the end of alcohol prohibition in 1933 led to immediate decreases in murders and robberies to support the argument that legalization of drugs could have similar effects. Once those involved in the narcotics trade have a legal method of settling business disputes, the number of murders and violent crime could drop. Robert W. Sweet, a federal judge, strongly agrees: "The present policy of trying to prohibit the use of drugs through the use of criminal law is a mistake". [ 108 ] When alcohol use was outlawed during prohibition, it gave rise to gang warfare and spurred the formation of some of the most well known criminals of the era, among them the infamous Al Capone. Similarly, drug dealers today resolve their disputes through violence and intimidation, something which legal drug vendors do not do. Prohibition critics also point to the fact that police are more likely to be corrupted in a system where bribe money is so available. Police corruption due to drugs is widespread enough that one pro-legalization newsletter has made it a weekly feature. [ 109 ]

  Drug money has been called a major source of income for terrorist organizations. Critics assert that legalization would remove this central source of support for terrorism. [ 110 ] While politicians blame drug users for being a major source of financing terrorists, [ 97 ] no clear evidence of this link has been provided. US government agencies and government officials have been caught trafficking drugs to finance US-supported terrorist actions in events such as the Iran-Contra Affair, and Manuel Noriega but the isolated nature of these events precludes them from being major sources of financing. [ 96 ]

  Corruption

  Human rights organizations and legal scholars have claimed that drug prohibition inevitably leads to police corruption. [ 111 ] [ 112 ] [ 113 ] [ 114 ]

  On 2 July 2010, former Interpol President Jackie Selebi was found guilty of corruption by the South African High Court in Johannesburg for accepting bribes worth $156,000 from a drug trafficker. [ 115 ] After being charged in January 2008, Selebi resigned as president of Interpol and was put on extended leave as National Police Commissioner of South Africa.

  This was published in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/25/opinion/legalizing-marijuana.html)

  I have spent my entire adult life fighting the war on drugs as a police officer on the front lines. I have experienced the loss of friends and comrades who fought this war alongside me, and every year tens of thousands of other people are murdered by gangs battling over drug turf in American cities, Canada and Mexico. It is time to reduce violence by taking away a vital funding source from organized crime just as we did by ending alcohol prohibition almost 80 years ago.

  Here's another (http://www.balancedpolitics.org/marijuana_legalization.htm)

• Legalization would mean a lower price; thus, related crimes (like theft) would be reduced. All illegal drugs are higher in price because the production, transportation, and sale of the drugs carry heavy risks. When people develop drug habits or addictions, they must somehow come up with the money to support their cravings. Unless a person is wealthy, he or she must often resort to robbery and other crimes to generate the money needed to buy the drugs. Legalization would reduce the risks and thus reduce the prices. There would therefore be less need for the secondary crimes needed to raise money.

You wanted me to produce references, and I have.

Think as a member of the Zetas, for example. You have lots of money, lots of weapons, and the ruthlessness necessary to run their "business" -for that is what it is to them- in the way they run it. Suppose they were to legalize marijuana, and, therefore, they were also free to sell marijuana. Why in the world would they not resort to their "usual ways" to reduce competition?

They would not really need to kill others. It would only be necessary for them to warn you, in the way they usually do.

I assume you guys don't know this, but in countries like El Salvador, people are sometimes very afraid of nice ladies selling vegetables in the street. Say you own a legal business. One fine day, a customer comes in who tells you that you will have to pay "rights" in order to continue to operate. And he warns you that you will not see him again; the nice lady on the other side of the street, however, will use her cell phone if she sees something "inappropiate" happening. Try complaining to the Police, OK? We have them on our payroll too.

I mentioned this elsewhere in this forum, and I will repeat it now. One of my cousins had this boyfriend who was a surgeon. He was kidnapped. The family paid the ransom, and he was returned alive. "Only" he didn't have the fingers of the hand he used to perform surgeries. This was a young man, you know? This is the kind of people who would be given an opportunity to engage in "legal" trade. If they don't hesitate to use this kind of methods, why would they refrain from using them in the future?

Open question: If this kind of people were involved in selling marijuana legally, who of you would open a shop and be THEIR competition?