NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2009
A New Era for U.S. Drug Policy?
Jim Webb Says America's Justice System Is Broken and Drug Policy Is Largely to Blame; Is Portugal's Liberal Approach a Model?
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The last few months are "the first time I've ever felt that the wind is at my back and not in my face" when it comes to drug policy reform, said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "There's a tremendous amount of momentum across the board." (CBS)
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Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., calls America's criminal justice system "a national disgrace" and says that reforming drug policy is part of the solution. (CBS)
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Play CBS Video Video Marijuana: Steps to Legalization? Marijuana users in states where it's legal take a breath of fresh air as federal government guidelines recommend focusing on criminal prosecution.
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Video Medical Marijuana Reform The Obama administration has unveiled a new set of more relaxed policies concerning medical marijuana use. Bill Whitaker reports on the potential impact of this reform in Los Angeles.
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Photo Essay Celebs Busted for Marijuana Which stars have had run-ins with the law for possessing pot? Some may surprise you.
Ethan Nadelmann is feeling good. Really good.
As the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, Nadelmann has long advocated for the liberalization of U.S. drug laws -- specifically, making marijuana legal, regulated and taxed and ending criminal penalties on the possession and use of all other drugs.
For most of that time the Alliance has been relegated to the fringe of serious policy discussions, a space long occupied - or so the stereotype goes - by radical libertarians and readers of the marijuana enthusiast magazine High Times.
But things are changing. The last few months are "the first time I've ever felt that the wind is at my back and not in my face," Nadelmann said. "There's a tremendous amount of momentum across the board."
Consider the developments of the last year. In March, Virginia Sen. Jim Webb introduced a bill calling for a wholesale overhaul of the criminal justice system in the United States. Our system is cripplingly large, he argued, and marred by wrongful incarcerations, poor rehabilitative treatment and mental health care and a price tag of $44 billion a year on prisons alone.
Webb called the situation a "national disgrace," and said the elephant in the room is sky-high incarceration rates for drug users due to the U.S.'s 40-year-old War on Drugs.
California, the first state to make marijuana legal for medical use, is considering a bill to legalize and tax marijuana for all residents; it had its first hearing in the state assembly last week. Massachusetts voted to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana. The attorney general of Arizona has said that legal marijuana might be an answer to the Mexican drug cartel violence spilling over into his state.
Breckenridge Votes to Legalize Pot
And a Gallup poll released last month shows that support for national marijuana legalization has climbed steadily since the early 1980s, recently hitting an all-time high of 44 percent.
"That is the most extraordinary poll result as I have seen in all my years working in this," Nadelmann said. "We haven't changed our position, but we are basically more and more part of the mainstream discussion." He likens the situation to movements like gay rights and civil rights that made rapid strides in relatively short periods.
"We're getting awfully close to something that looks a lot like a tipping point," he said.
CBSNews.com Special Report: Marijuana Nation
The recent reform push hasn't been limited to the United States, either. In August, Mexico, with little fanfare, passed a bill decriminalizing the possession and use of small amounts of all narcotics, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines. The U.S. - in what drug reform advocates see as a promising sign - made no criticism of the change. (The George W. Bush administration persuaded then Mexican President Vicente Fox not to sign an identical measure in 2006.) Argentina has passed its own decriminalization bill and Brazil and Ecuador are considering similar measures.
None of this means that liberalizing drug laws in the United States is going to be easy for Nadelmann and his allies. Webb's bill, which is being heard Thursday in the Senate Judiciary Committee, has amassed 34 Senate co-sponsors - including Republicans Lindsey Graham and Olympia Snowe - and drawn broad support from justice advocacy groups.
But according to Webb spokeswoman Jessica Smith, "Twenty-one amendments have been filed in Judiciary that speak to our bill. They're largely from the Republicans [and] I imagine a large amount of them are going to be about drug policy. ... They don't want to go home and say 'I'm legalizing drugs.'"
Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, offered an amendment explicitly forbidding any recommendations that even discuss drug decriminalization or legalization.
To be clear, Webb's bill does not call for drug legalization or even focus on drug policy exclusively. Instead, it would appoint a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission to make recommendations on reforming the criminal justice system as a whole.
"We have 5 percent of the world's population. We have 25 percent of the world's known prison population," Webb said when he introduced the bill. "We have an incarceration rate in the United States - the world's greatest democracy - that is five times as high as the incarceration rate of the rest of the world."
"There's only two possibilities here," he continued. "Either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice."
Webb's bill calls for a hard look at drug policy with all options on the table. He has talked about "overincarceration" and the "criminalization" of drugs - phrases that have been taboo until now in mainstream drug policy discussions. One talking point: the United States had 41,000 drug offenders in prison in 1980. Now the number is more than half a million - a 1,200 percent increase. And many of those are non-violent offenders jailed only for possession.
(CBS)
Left: Webb
In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon appointed a former Republican governor, Raymond Shafer, to lead a similar commission to examine marijuana. The commission's report recommended the decriminalization of personal use and questioned the constitutionality of harshly criminal marijuana policy generally.
Nixon repudiated the recommendations, but the commission's findings were no aberration, according to Nadelmann.
"The same thing happens almost every time," he said. "If you actually set up a commission that is truly independent ... inevitably they come up with recommendations that favor significant reform."
Portugal: A Case Study
In 2001, Portugal decriminalized not just marijuana but all drugs - heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine. Drug use has held steady overall, but declined in several key demographics, including teenagers. Drug-related crime plummeted. So did overdoses and HIV from needle use.
Last year, the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute sent the writer Glenn Greenwald to Portugal to report on the country's experience in the nearly eight years since decriminalization.
Will Health Coverage Pay for Medical Marijuana?
Andrew Cohen: New Pot Policy Is Not Yet a Turning Point
Inside Holland's "Half Baked" Pot Policy
Greenwald, a former attorney who blogs at Salon.com, is best known for his liberal positions on civil liberties, torture, and the Bush administration. He said he has never written about drug policy before and went to gather empirical evidence on Portugal's outcomes. (Greenwald lives in Brazil and speaks fluent Portuguese.) The result was a strongly positive
"In the 1990s they probably had the single worst problem with drug abuse and related pathologies of any country in Europe. Crime was through the roof," Greenwald said in an interview in September. "They felt like they had a huge crisis on their hands … The more they criminalized the worse it got."
By Ken Millstone
© MMIX, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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- QUESTION: I hear there was an amendment to a bill tomorrow that would legally prevent some of the government?s top advisers from ? according to some of the memos we?ve seen ? even discussing the idea of legalizing or decriminalizing drugs.
Can you talk a little bit about that? I understand that you pulled that amendment, but, nonetheless, I wanted to ask you what your intent is with that.
GRASSLEY: Well, my intent on that amendment isn?t any different than any other amendments that are coming up. The Congress is setting up a commission to study certain things. And the commission is a ? is an arm of Congress, because Congress doesn?t have time to review some of these laws.
And ? and ? and the point is, for them to do what we tell them to do. And one of the things that I was anticipating telling them not to do is to ? to recommend or study the legalization of drugs.
Their ? their program would be what we tell it it is. ?
Senator Webb wants to understand why we have 5% of the world?s population but 25% of the world?s imprisoned. Sen. Webb understands that the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs? has a lot to do with it. Sen. Webb understands that discussion of marijuana legalization must be on the table. I?m not sure which concept is more misunderstood by Senator Grassley: science, democracy, free speech, or justice. Wait, maybe it?s compassion:
QUESTION: Would your amendment have even stopped the discussion of legalized marijuana for medical purposes?
GRASSLEY: I think that would not ? let?s see. Yes, the extent to which it would be decriminalization, the answer is yes - Reply to this comment
- by bajajohn1:
"A large if not overwhelming portion of personal freedom is a concept called 'choice.' So Republicans, are you telling Americans the government has the right to make choices for individuals? If not, then why are you opposed to the public option in healthcare? Isn't your mantra named 'freedom' without government intervention? Are we not talking about making choices?"
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Yep....the hypocritical republican'ts have always been against our FREEDOMS, and have only wanted to rule in the most authoritative way. The conservitards have always had a need to GROW their hated government ever larger with a very expensive criminal justice system that attacks our very freedoms. I'm surprised the busheviks and the GOP-led congresscritters that passed the Unpatriot Act of 2001 didn't require chip implants for all Americans, along with their national ID cards! - Reply to this comment
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- The Republican party is a party of hypocrites. Their idea of freedom is to allow people to pollute the atmosphere because of greed, rip of the government by hiding money in offshore accounts, install faulty wiring in troop barracks in Iraq. Prohibition took the mafia from bunch of penny ante crooks that preyed on their own to a billion dollar operation. The Mexican cartels are the same. The "War on Drugs" is a complete waste of time and money. I find it interesting that the legal drugs(alcohol and tobacco) cause so much trouble that they are not made illegal. My mistake we already tried that(prohibition)and look what it did for the Mafia. Anyone that wants to know why pot is illegal should read the book " The The Emperor Wears No Clothes"
- by snowball77:
"We've had the 40 year old war on the American public, isn't it time to try something else that might work better and cost less?"
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Yes, leading the entire world by number of incarcerations mainly due to a very failed WAR on drugs, is nothing to be proud of, and something that definitely needs to be changed. Other countries like Portugal are proving just how wrong our policies are, and it's people like grassley that are the problem and should just retire.
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"In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon appointed a former Republican governor, Raymond Shafer, to lead a similar commission to examine marijuana. The commission's report recommended the decriminalization of personal use and questioned the constitutionality of harshly criminal marijuana policy generally."
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Obviously, we've had the recommendations of better policy for decades now, but it's bozos like tricky dickie that swept them under the carpet for the worst ideological reasons! - Reply to this comment
- Our system is cripplingly large, he argued, and marred by wrongful incarcerations, poor rehabilitative treatment and mental health care and a price tag of $44 billion a year on prisons alone.
Webb called the situation a "national disgrace," and said the elephant in the room is sky-high incarceration rates for drug users due to the U.S.'s 40-year-old War on Drugs.
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Well duh.......after 40 years of very failed policy, it's well past time to try something different.
Only morons continue to do the same exact thing and expect a different outcome when it's already proven to be a huge failure! - Reply to this comment
- Valid medicinal value, it?s a victimless crime, the War on Drugs WAY too costly, too many arrests for simple possession, tax it and use the money to pay for health insurance and to reduce the deficit?Need I say more?
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RFWoodstock - Reply to this comment
- What kind of person would deny sick people good medicne ?
Charles Grassley, that's who........the last bastation of the reefermadness.
http://www.ketv.com/news/21522854/detail.html
Medical Marijuana Hearing Wraps Up In Iowa
Iowa Board Of Pharmacy Considers Whether Cannabis Has Medical Potential 11/4/09
Iowa Board of Pharmacy held its final hearing Wednesday about medical marijuana, with advocates on both sides of the issue offering opinions.
The last of four hearings took place inside a ballroom within Harrah's Casino in Council Bluffs. The board now must issue its recommendation to the Legislature.
Terry Mitchell supports the use of medical marijuana. He suffers from a degenerative disc disease causing him to slouch and use a cane to get around.
"I can't stand straight up," Mitchell said. "With smoking cannabis, I can get just as close as I can get."
Without the drug, Mitchell said his ability deteriorates.
"By the time two weeks rolls around, I look like a gorilla. I'm dragging my knuckles on the ground and my knees are buckled, and it even hurts to try and straighten up."
Susie Dugan said legalization would create problems, not solutions.
"It's really a dangerous drug and it's not benefiting those sick people at all," she said. - Reply to this comment
- How about a Public Option which respects the Constitution,
and addresses the points in this article?
How about some respect for the Constitution?
That is an option that the public can fulfill.
All it takes is one simple sentence.
Back in the good ol' days, farmers like George Washington
were growing cannabis hemp. Then, in the 20th century,
the US took over Northern Mexico and called it New Mexico,
and Arizona. They found the Mexicans smoking cannabis.
It smelled bad. What they called it, to a racist Anglo's
ears, sounded like, 'marihuana'.
Suppose marijuana was defined so simply. Such as this:
"The term 'marihuana' means all parts
of the smoke produced by the combustion
of the plant Cannabis sativa L."
Instead perhaps, there was a debate over contending points.
"Marihuana is whatever it is that is in cannabis that
gets those Mexicans high."
"Marihuana in all its parts, is the same as cannabis hemp."
"Hey, wait, you mean hemp is marijuana? No way."
Suppose that the official definition of marijuana,
was decided by committee, with the assent of the
parent of the DEA, and was defined preciously
in a way which met all those conditions, then
put in a Statute 40 years ago.
Formatted as poetry, it reads like this:
"The term 'marihuana' means all parts
of the plant Cannabis sativa L.,
whether growing or not;
the seeds thereof;
the resin extracted from any part of such plant;
and every compound,
manufacture,
salt,
derivative,
mixture,
or preparation of such plant,
its seeds or resin.
Such term does not include
the mature stalks of such plant,
fiber produced from such stalks,
oil or cake made from the seeds of such plant,
any other compound,
manufacture,
salt,
derivative,
mixture,
or preparation of such mature stalks
(except the resin extracted there from),
fiber,
oil,
or cake,
or the sterilized seed of such plant
which is incapable of germination."
Now that is an abstruse definition.
Does that make it a necessary, or proper legal definition?
How can an abstruse definition have value when an equivalent,
and simple definition is clearly constitutional?
The abstruse one is neither necessary, or proper.
It is the inverse of both.
It is probably unconstitutional, null and void.
This is true because it is an option that the public has retained
all along, anyway. Because the written law ignores the simple truth,
our only constitutional option has been to demonstrate that marijuana
is the smoke, not the plant.
Suppose we temporarily had a chance to correct it,
before it disappeared as law.
Would we prefer something to remain restricted?
Would we legalize it?
Just what is it?
Suppose the Public Option is beneficial, simple, and healthy.
If the members of the public were given the option, would they use that option?
Suppose the States could work with the Federal government to maintain
a necessary and proper Public Option, in their own ways?
What if the Public Option was for the Federal government to simply recognize,
1). the public's right to grow and use cannabis, and
2). the public's option is to not smoke it,
by just defining marijuana in a simple way.
Just one simple sentence for the Public. A Substance worth controlling. Just say it!
"The term 'marijuana' means all parts of the smoke produced by the combustion of the plant Cannabis sativa L."
The current definition of marijuana is a politically motivated unconstitutional omnibus. With so many people suffering economically, medically, and legally because of marijuana prohibition, obviously the time is right for a simple definition of marijuana.
This simple definition restores the States' 10th Amendment rights to regulate cannabis, and restores the Peoples' 9th Amendment rights to the medical benefits of cannabis, as well as our right to the many industrial benefits of cannabis hemp, seed and oil. We can use this new definition to engender the ideals promised in the Preamble of the
US Constitution.
Rights are recognized, cannabis is unscheduled and State regulated,
and marijuana simply remains illegal. The Constitution was designed for that.
With this Public Option, we can grow cannabis, and benefit from its spectrum of uses. With the assent of Congress, and according to State regulations, we can again grow and use all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L., except the smoke (in public).
Also, now that we know it is the smoke, we can soon have the smoke rescheduled.
Not enough of a change? Too much of a dare?
Prefer the current definition? Can you recite it?
Otherwise, everything stays the same.
Our Constitution suffers, but we can show the world how to do it right!
How about Cap and Trade?
Each person can get a cannabis grower's license capped at one carbon credit.
Then you either trade it for the carbon credit, or keep it to be recognized as a cannabis grower.
Let's Go! - Reply to this comment
- The drug war has done more to harm America and Americans that almost anything else in history. Been going on for forty years with no results except thousands of dead cops, suspects, millions of lives ruined, trillions of dollars wasted, full prisons, corruption in everly level of law enforcement because of the money, murders everyday in Mexico, all over a problem that is medical, not criminal. No shortage of stupidity in America.
- Reply to this comment
- Cannabis is ON THE ROAD to decriminalization/legalization. Nixon didn't listen to the first commission (Shafer Commission) that recommended allowing adult American citizens to possess and use cannabis.
Currently, we have a senator (stuck in the 1950s - Chuck Grassley - Iowa) who is trying to tell, again (Nixon), what a commission should do regarding recommending marijuana's decriminalization/legalization and our correctional system failure. This is a disgrace and a pathetic move from a politician in America. This is in fact, a Gag Order Amendment. I'm sorry, but why the hell should you have a system, in checking laws and failures, if you aren't going to listen and accept the research and scientific data put into a report? Is this STILL the American way of Washington D.C.? So much for the "change"...
I know Grassley went to Sunday School, but I doubt he went to anything beyond the 8th grade. - Reply to this comment
- Put this to a vote in the next election year ballot. I am 99% sure America would vote to decriminalize marijuana within the next two years. I am 100% sure America will legalize/decriminilize marijuana by 2020.
- Reply to this comment
- But according to Webb spokeswoman Jessica Smith, "Twenty-one amendments have been filed in Judiciary that speak to our bill. They're largely from the Republicans [and] I imagine a large amount of them are going to be about drug policy. ... They don't want to go home and say 'I'm legalizing drugs.'"
It's always the big government loving Republicans butting into people's lives, telling them what to do and how to act in their own homes.
Can we do away with the BS myth that conservatives are anything but authoritarians? Because in my lifetime I have never EVER met a Republican who actually believe in letting Americans live without interference from nanny government. - Reply to this comment
- Now with drug lords making the Forbes list of BILLIONAIRES maybe people will realize that the WAR ON DRUGS has been a COMPLETE FAILURE.
First, WE, the United States of America, ARE COMPLETELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THE VIOLENCE, MURDERS, AND CRIMES THAT ARE OCCURRING BECAUSE OF DRUGS.
It is our arcane, prohibitionist policies toward drugs and our WAR ON DRUGS that have fueled and caused all of this. Now our policies are nearly going to topple governments. Further, every day we early-release violent criminals back onto our streets because of all the prison-overcrowding caused by the harsh mandatory drug sentencing laws that put huge numbers of harmless marijuana users in prison. So this forces the early-release of child molesters, murderers, rapists, serial killers. And these predators get to conduct their violence against our communities once again. We have been completely insane in allowing this to happen.
We must take a far different strategy toward the drug problem with the goal being to take all the money out of it so as to decimate the drug cartels, and second to empty our prisons of people who are not a threat to society. IE, marijuana users.
After a year and a half we got a whole $50M and some drugs in this latest WAR ON DRUGS bust. Do you all realize that this isn't even in the NOISE LEVEL of the drug problem? The drug cartels are making HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars on illegal drugs.
BY ANY MEASURE, THE WAR ON DRUGS IS A TOTAL FAILURE.
We need to stop dealing with the drug problem as only a SUPPLY side issue. We must also deal with the problem as a DEMAND side issue as well. And that means putting USERS of hard addictive drugs in jail. These are the drugs that fuel all the crime.
As far as marijuana, it's a relatively benign, non-addictive drug used by MILLIONS every day. We need to realize that the better approach to marijuana would be to make it legal, tax it and derive revenue from it.
I make a very clear distinction between a benign non-addictive drug like marijuana and the highly-addictive drugs like crack, and cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, etc. The hard drug users are the cause of most of the crime in our communities because their $1000/day habits require large amounts of money, which fuels the criminal gangs and crime. These people are a danger to society. USERS of hard addictive drugs need to go to prison. In contrast, marijuana is non-addictive and a relatively benign drug used casually by MILLIONS every day. USERS of marijuana need to pay tax on it just like we do with alcohol.
This is a sensible drug policy that would completely undermine the drug cartels, keep dangerous hard drug users out of society and bring peace to our streets
THINK ABOUT IT! - Reply to this comment
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- Your ideas are too punitive. Drug addiction is a health problem, treatment is required.
Putting men in prison because they are addicts is really no different than putting an MS victim in prison as treatment.
Well...prison industries loves you and you love prison industries evidently. Better sell your stock soon, the good times are coming to an end.
Putting the govt in to "regulate" and tax and thereby control, does nothing good on this issue...it creates more laws to break and more law enforcement to tax and control. We want no more of this approach.
De-criminalize it and leave it alone.
- Your ideas are too punitive. Drug addiction is a health problem, treatment is required.
- Let us all agree on a few things regarding drug use; Not every drinks alchohol or smokes. Not everyone uses marijuana or uses other stimulants. A large if not overwhelming portion of personal freedom is a concept called "choice." So Republicans, are you telling Americans the government has the right to make choices for individuals? If not, then why are you opposed to the public option in healthcare? Isn't your mantra named "freedom" without government intervention? Are we not talking about making choices?
- Reply to this comment
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- I have a 'wonderful idea!!!! (envision 'Wile E. Coyote)...
Legalize all drugs and alcohol for every day consumption (with Surgeon Generals warnings all over them) wait 5 years for the hysteria and newness to wear off, then start a "Soylent green program" using the fallout.
This will accomplish several things, bring the Gene pool up several knotches, cut down on excess population, eliminate starvation as a cause for war and after twenty years or so, lower medical costs by 1/2.
- toolmangler1, this is the same type of hysteria that occurred after Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Everyone proclaimed that the whole nation would become alcoholics. And of course no such thing ever happened. And it's the same here except this time we will actually see a lot of benefits from legalizing marijuana. We'll decimate the drug-cartels. We quit early-releasing violent criminals back onto our streets to prey on us because of all the prison overcrowding that is due to putting massive numbers of harmless marijuana users in prison. And we'll actually begin to add to the public treasury by taxing the sale of marijuana just as we do with cigarettes and alcohol currently.
- by us_1776 November 4, 2009 6:20 PM EST
"toolmangler1, this is the same type of hysteria that occurred after Prohibition was repealed"
Did I appear hysterical??
Do you understand the term "Tongue in cheek"? Apply that concept with a heaping spoonful of 'sarcasm' and you have my mindset when I wrote that.
Please re-read...
- I have a 'wonderful idea!!!! (envision 'Wile E. Coyote)...
- If they legalize pot it would put too meny prison workers out of a job
can't lose that tax base - Reply to this comment
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- I foresee a huge increase "tune in, Toke up and drop out" segment of Americas homeless population. After all, "Why work" if you can get on the 'dole', Mary Jane is free and the hospital system "HAS" to treat you.
- by jumkey November 4, 2009 6:05 PM EST
"I foresee you are a typical big government loving conservative"
I see that you are dead wrong. I have been a Dem (moderate) since '56. but I vote for the Country not the Party...
- by AttentionDeficit November 4, 2009 7:15 PM EST
"ToolMangler: Where in the article did you get the idea that pot would be free?"
Where in the article did it say that it would be illegal to grow it in your own yard???? If that isn't free, what is???
- ToolMangler1 I was born in '59. You are my parents generation. The generation that has been in power but now my generation is in power. I always said when my generation is in power it will be legal. You were sold on the fear mongering of reffer madness. In your fathers generation it was called hemp. Your father and /or grandfather would never allowed it to become illegal if it was called hemp instead of the Mexican slang marajuana that Hurst printed in his newspapers, printed on paper made from wood from a process he just invented and would replace hemp as the main source of paper. He wouldn't have had a problem competing if it wern't for an invention that cut the man hours to produce hemp over 1000%. It was industrilist like Hurst, DuPont and others who's industries would suffer if the "new billion dollar crop" as reported in Popular Mechanics magazine we're kept legal.
- Sen. Grassley are you scared you can't control a controlled substance? It's OK. Keep it illegal if you're so scared about it. People will use the distribution system currently in place. No problem! The government can still control it by...what??? Catching about 5 to 10 percent of the product distributed? That's how it's currently 'controlled'. BTW, If you can't keep it out of a prison, what makes you think you control anything. Either way, people will still get anything they want within a couple of hours. Period. No questions asked. No one carded. No ID's presented. And all proceeds go into the drug gang's till. It's OK. Business as usual. Gov. Lynch you act like it's going away. It's not going anywhere, you just drove it back underground. Oh, by the way, China called and they want you to quit spending their borrowed money on your stupid prohibition. They're nervous and might call in their loans to us. Business as usual.
- Reply to this comment
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- Iowa's voters need to call Grassley back home and put him in a retirement home. Enough of his nonsense and backstabbing has been reported on issues ranging from healthcare reform to extending unemployment benefits. It is high time this moron was sent packing.
- It's amazing to me that the price of at least commercial cannabis hasn't gone up in price in 20 years. Show me something "legal" that hasn't been affected by inflation. And this with increasing enforcement. Maybe we're better off with it illegal. At least we don't have to pay more, unless you want something stronger than commercial. It's an inconviencence yes, but you don't have some exec coming up wath some advertizing scheme to raise the price every couple of years, or have to pay taxes. As long as you don't do something stupid to draw attention to yourself you have very little chance of getting arrested. Why would we want a legal product that cost more? After all the drug dealers dont want it legal, and they'll keep the price down so we won't want to legalize and tax it, probably doubling the price. If it we're legal, the government would put so many restrictions on it, you would have to prove your age for example, I mean who wants the hassle?
- Medical marijuana isn't a trick and it's pathetic to pretend that the people trying to legalize marijuana are behaving surreptitiously when smart people have been screaming "legalize marijuana" at the top of their lungs for a damn long time now. The fact is that the medical marijuana debate serves to illustrate so much about the absurdity of marijuana prohibition as a whole. Critics of medical marijuana advocacy often complain that it hasn?t been approved by the FDA and that the whole concept of medicine by referendum is absurd, as though there exists any other path for advocates to take. It really shouldn?t be necessary to explain all the ways in which endemic and entrenched anti-pot prejudice across numerous government agencies renders preposterous any notion that people could just play this out by the usual rules. Marijuana can't be treated like other medicines, because it's nothing like them. It was here first and it's vastly cheaper, safer, and more versatile than its modern pharmaceutical counterparts. It's a bush that just grows out of the ground and what we want is for the government to stop arresting people who've found ways to use it. There's nothing even the least bit complicated or disingenuous about that. Those who now lament the cascading political momentum of medical marijuana as some sort of grand conspiracy have it exactly backwards. Marijuana was prohibited through a vicious series of outrageous lies and perversions of science. We all know the history of racism, demagoguery, and blind hysteria that somehow turned a helpful plant into a scary satanic death bush. From the very beginning, there has never been a time when any of this made sense while tobacco and alcohol use goes on its merry way. Yes, there is a massive lie at the center of this debate, but advocates for medical marijuana are NOT the ones telling it. The crux of it all is the billions of taxpayer dollars WASTED to fund narco enforcement, lawyers, judges and jails. The drug war itself is the true Trojan Horse that masquerades as a symbol of health and safety, while harboring destruction within its folds.
- Reply to this comment
- One of the things I enjoy about living in Spain is that they don't come down on Marijuana use. I have smoked about four times this year. I'm not one who uses it often. In the USA, using it once can cause you to loose your job as it did me when I traveled to Amsterdam (many years ago), then they (the workplace) tested me the day after I arrived from vacation. I would like to see the USA lighten up a bit and quit thinking the sky will fall if Marijuana is legalized. I prefer it to alcohol but, a good wine or rum can be quite pleasurable at times, too. Jail space is for criminals, not drug users.
- Reply to this comment
- As it stands, Texas leads the nation by being LAST in education, so that should tell you why Republicans are in charge and managing the news. Don't rock the boat with the truth...."you can't handle the truth."
Texas is a police state, with nominal legislative interference and judicial review.
The ONLY balance to the Texas police state is the Federal Judiciary, period. It is a terrible thing to understand that both our PART-TIME legislature and our overly politicized and monied state courts are a modest two legs of our system that have next to NO POWER against the State executive branch. This is where the Federal Judiciary with its independence has to wade in and attempt ORDER for this disfunctional system.
When we have truly independent school districts, competing bars of law not exclusively under the Judiciary or as present joint officials in the executive or legislative branches of government.....then we will have a chance to make changes for the people. We need more 'people's candidates' in Austin and to demand the constitutional convention that was misguided in the 1970's away from adoption of a truly democratic, and separation of powers republic responsive to the people. AND FEWER LAWYERS. - Reply to this comment
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- Everything is true, but Texas is full of stupid people and so the government does whatever in he.ll it wants to do according to who pays them the most.
- I was born here and I moved to AZ in the 80s to "excape". Due to surcumstances beyond my control I had to meve back a few years back. It was like being droped behind enemy lines. I will say this. There are a few intelligent people here. And we also have some very influential people, especially in the drug war. Willie Nelson comes to mind first. Woodie Harelson is another activist. I think we have quite a few activist because it's when you live with injustice that you get sick enough of it to do something. When you live where people are right minded you don't have the incentive to be active. Yes there far and few between but they stand out, making them more effective. It's also led me to see that the Demos and Reptalians are the same. In the 80s Texas elected their first Reptalian Govener. Texas had always been Demo. The people didn't change, the politicians did. And the Reptalians say that if you quote from the Bible it will help get you elected. W say that when his father was running a tite primary against Pat Robinson and told his daddy, "Daddy, you have to cater to the religious right to get elected". The Babtist church has been an arm of the Reptilian party for decades, especially during the cold war. They don't people to believe scientist because they believe in evolution. So the schools here skip over things that don't fit their religion. A good example of how proud they are of being ignorant is, my daughter told me they had a new girl last year and she said "I'm a redneck, I don't need to learn this stuff". Many of these families are right, they don't need to learn because they have land, lots and lots of land and will follow their parents footsteps in working that land, which is not a bad thing, but don't seem to realize how mch better they could use their land if they are educated.
Kinki Friedman is supposed to run for governer again but is going as a Demo instead of indi. He's for ending prohibition, as is Ron Paul by the way, Kinki will have my vote again. He hurt himself here by saying Jesus was a Jew, which is true, but the Baptist took offence to it saying he was compareing himself to Jesus because he's a Jew. The way Texans back Isreal you would think they would want a Jew for Governer.
- We live in a fascist police state. You can't even grow one marijuana plant in your yard without Grassley snooping around. When we don't lead the world in incarcerations I will know that I am free. We've had the 40 year old war on the American public, isn't it time to try something else that might work better and cost less? How long will the lie continue that marijuana is harmful? In four years we'll go back to being lead by a fascist dictator like Bush-- the ulitmate hypocrite. I will smoke a joint on my 80th birthday regardless if it is legal. I will enjoy it too. Might have to meove from Iowa for that to happen. If marijuana is still available after 40 years of it being banned I can't imagine anything is going to change that situation. More people are growing on their own rather than buying it from Mexico. I am old enough to remember the temperance movement and how the state of Iowa controlled liquir sales. Grassley must have forgot that period of time. Grassley is the temperance movement. How embarrissing he is my representative. Grassley mind your own business.
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- Its broken because, for the last 100 years, our entire system is built upon outright bans and punitive measures. We do the same thing over and over and expect different results.
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