Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
To understand how we ended up here, it is important to go back to what was happening in the United States in the early 1900’s just after the Mexican Revolution. At this time we saw an influx of immigration from Mexico. Not surprisingly, these new Americans brought with them their native language, culture, and customs. One of these customs was the use of cannabis as a medicine and relaxant. During hearings on marijuana law in the 1930’s, claims were made about marijuana’s tendency to cause men of color to become violent and solicit sex from white women. This imagery became the backdrop for the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 which effectively banned its use and sales.
While the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was ruled unconstitutional years later, it was replaced with the Controlled Substances Act in the 1970’s and brought forth President Nixon’s “War on Drugs”. But from its inception, the war on drugs has been a ruthless, relentless and naked war on minorities, especially African-Americans. In an interview in Harpers in 1994, disgraced Nixon White House advisor John Ehrlichman made the frank admission that the war on drugs was not about law enforcement getting a handle on drug sales and use, but another weapon to lock up as many blacks as possible. "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the (Vietnam) war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." But an admission by the federal government that the laws are biased and unfair, and have not done much to combat the drug plague, would be an admission of failure.
Since Colorado has legalized cannabis for both recreational and medical use, less teens use marijuana, violent crime has dropped, and there is less use of dangerous and addictive pharmaceutical drugs. According to the American Journal of Public Health (Nov 2017), the amount of opioid-related deaths dropped by 6.5 percent in Colorado during the two years following the legalization of recreational marijuana in 2014. VS Strategies, a pro-legalization research company in Denver, says the state has pulled in $506 million in marijuana taxes since retail sales began in January 2014, a substantial amount of which has been funneled back into education, law enforcement, and drug abuse programs. Last year, marijuana tax revenue totaled $256 million in Washington and $60 million in Oregon, in the same year that Colorado brought in $200 million, according to VS Strategies. While Colorado, Washington, and other ‘legal’ states continue to prosper, monthly budget deficits and cuts to social programs and education have become the accepted norm in others.
A search using the term “marijuana” on the website of the National Library of Medicine—the repository for all peer-reviewed scientific research—yields more than 22,000 papers referencing the plant and/or its constituents. Among this extensive body of literature are over 100 randomized controlled studies, involving thousands of subjects, evaluating the safety and efficacy of cannabis or the components contained therein (cannabinoids). The National Cancer Institute recently released a report on cannabis concluding that THC (the active ingredient in cannabis) caused a 45 percent reduction in bladder cancer, remission in breast and liver cancer and more. They have also determined that there is no lethal dose of marijuana and addictive potential is considerably lower than any other medicine available. In a 2014 study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the authors found that annual opioid overdose deaths were about 25 percent lower on average in states that allowed medical cannabis compared with those that did not. Further, a study published in July 2016 in Health Affairs explored what happened to Medicare (Part D) painkiller prescriptions after states green-lighted medical marijuana laws, and found that a typical physician in a state with medical cannabis prescribed 1,826 fewer painkiller doses for Medicare patients in a given year—because seniors instead turned to medical cannabis. There were also hundreds fewer doses prescribed for antidepressants, anti-nausea medications and anti-anxiety drugs. The volume of scientific evidence showing the benefits of cannabis continues to grow on a daily basis, yet our elected leaders continue to ignore these findings.
I simply cannot fathom that in this era of advanced scientific knowledge, where the beneficial effects of cannabis have been proven time and again, that we have an uninformed / uneducated populace that cling to the idea that "weed" is just as dangerous as heroin, meth, crack cocaine, LSD, and other illicit drugs. According to the DEA, cannabis has no medical value and is more dangerous than methamphetamine, cocaine or even fentanyl. Note also that tobacco and alcohol, both far more dangerous than cannabis, are not even on the DEA drug schedule. Couple this with the fact that pharmaceutical companies pay lobbyists millions of dollars to keep cannabis classified as a Schedule 1 drug and then you might begin to understand why this is happening. Legal cannabis would eliminate so much of their revenue that they would do just about anything to stop it from ever being legalized. And there are also those that say rescheduling / decriminalization would cost millions of jobs in the Prisons for Profit, Law Enforcement, Judicial and Legal defense industries. But I suppose their justification is that in a vibrant and robust economy such as ours, we cannot jeopardize all we've built just to save some useless lives.
Either our elected leaders are simply morons who are unable (or unwilling) to see the health, social, and economic benefits of cannabis legalization, or they are just holding the party line and continuing to spout the same drivel they always have while their pockets and purses get heavy with dollars from the pharmaceutical and prison industries.
The primary concern is WHERE people are getting their pot...who is profiting, right now, the cartels profit with it being illegal, law enforcement also benefits, as its a law alot of people are willing to consistently break, meaning more people they can arrest, its no wonder LE wants it to remain illegal, its job security for them. Its the same reason why they went after opioid drugs, when addicts could get their fix from a doctor, totally legal, pharma was reaping all the profits...cartels didnt like that and ensured laws were put in place so addicts were forced to come to them for these drugs, its a business like any other.
I truly believe DEA and other law enforcement agencies are in collusion with the drug cartels, and/or are their lobbying arm in the US, it makes sense when you think about it. Everything these agencies do, benefits the cartels business.
Throughout history, governments have relied on smugglers to get some things accomplished. I don't think it matters much exactly what is being smuggled, only that smugglers exist and have ways to reliably move people and money across borders.
I think Sessions himself is pretty puritanical and would take a dim view of the US cooperating with cartels. I think he genuinely believes that marijuana is evil. He will obey the law if federal law tells him he can't go after people who are complying with their state's marijuana laws, but he will also oppose those laws anyway he can.
Hate to say it-but there is no such thing as "legal" weed. Still illegal at the federal level, and those laws apply to every state in this country. Only question is will the executive branch do there job and enforce the law, or not? Stupid law, but it needs to be changed in congress, not for the states, or the president, to just pretend it doesn't exist.
What you are looking at is a peaceful insurrection. There is no way the feds have the resources to investigate, arrest and try tens of millions of people. The state legalization laws generally allow for home cultivation, and 2 or 3 plants will provide all the weed anybody needs. They could shut down the retail outlets, but that is about all. Even the commerical growers primarily serve the medical marijuana market, and if they tried to shut that down they would run into a buzz saw.
When you get right down to it, DC only rules by consensus. If people decide not to comply with federal law, there isn't much they can do about it. Look how much they put into drug interdiction, and you can still buy anything on the street you want. Most of it comes right out of the back door of the pharmaceutical factories, and the rest comes across borders that leak like a sieve. The feds decided they wanted to reintroduce wolves into the west, but lots of them are dying of lead poisoning. A large number of people with jobs are working under the table and pay no income or payroll tax. The feds know it and are drooling to eliminate cash from society. Investopedia estimates the underground economy, not including illegal activities like drug dealing, at 7.2% of the economy, or $1.3 trillion a year. They are not as much in control as they like to delude themselves that they are.
I'm pro legalization and while the post doesn't quite go there, one should never try in any way shape or form defend driving while stoned.
It's not as bad as driving drunk should never be noted. We should be adamant that one never drives after participating.
Agreed. Just like I believe anyone who buys firearms should know the 4 safety rules and be held responsible if they don't follow them. With freedom comes responsibility. Don't drive while stoned. Unfortunately a lot of the people who do it ignore these rules.. these are the "potheads" that give sophisticated potheads like myself who just do it in the even a couple times a week a bad name.:P
Trump administration to crack down on legal marijuana
Surprised this isn't here yet.
Jeff Sessions the Trump appointed Attorney General will announce today that he is rescinding a trio of memos from the Obama administration that adopted a policy of non-interference with marijuana-friendly state laws.
I don't like your misleading attention-grabbing subject line.
Yes, the memos will be rescinded. But that doesn't mean "crack down". I believe Trump and/or his advisers knows how big of a hot potato this issue is and hopefully won't act recklessly. From the article your cited:
Quote:
The memo will be rescinded but it's not immediately clear whether Sessions will issue new guidance in its place or simply revert back to older policies that left states with legal uncertainty about enforcement of federal law.
Kind of agree. He should embrace it and tax the crap out of it..... Remember. A stoned population is a happy population.......
The state as drug peddler?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Trump administration to crack down on legal marijuana
