Finally! The root cause of California’s economic malaise has been identified: “not enough drug use”.
The bill, authored by San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, would essentially treat pot the same way alcohol is treated under the law and would allow adults over 21 to possess, smoke and grow marijuana.
The law would also call for a fee of $50 per ounce sold and would help fund drug eradication and awareness programs. It could help pull California out of debt, supporters say, raising up to $990 million from the fees.
“Pot and prosperity” – they go together like “bag lady and shopping cart”.
It’s why the end of prohibition signaled the death of organized crime.
It certainly ended a simple and lucrative stream of illicit revenue.
And you can bet that prohibition fueled the explosive growth
of organized crime in the twenties as it has fueled that growth in the last few decades.
And do you know who is on your side and Harper’s side on this issue?
Organized crime. Sane drug policy would kill the goose that lays their golden eggs.
I have never heard of anyone smoking a joint and going home and beating the wife and kids, can’t say the same about booze.
Yes the average smoker will smoke an ounce a month.
Causes cancer? Show me the studies that tell you that.
Driving under the influence? Testing is available.
Before you say I am defending my habit, let me tell you that I can pass a random drug test at anytime and have passed two in the last year.
Legalize it, tax it,(tax avoidance is epidemic anyway) and forget about it.
Many things made prohibition moonshine toxic.
1. Use of contaminated copper pipe for condensers…including lead solder.
2. The nasty habit of dumping car batteries in the mash to make it work faster…..lead…
3. The fast profit to be made by increasing profit by adding wood alcohol….methol is toxic.
4. the risk of toxicity from careless distilling…9 different types of organic alcohol beside ethyl. some make ya sick…others kill ya…quick.
The commercial environment had a nasty trait to be quite trigger happy….
Then, of course, the spectacular explosions….alcohol stills are notorious for this…especially the clandestine ones.
“Pot and prosperity” – they go together like “bag lady and shopping cart”.
Lol Kate. If they think they had a weight problem before?
What are the Nazi smoking police going to do now!!! The irony is to sweet to bare. You can puff away like a respectable Herb-avore on something that really can effect second hand users. While nary a whiff of tobacco allowed.
I will say one thing about the law and organized crime. Cutting the excise tax on tobacco would put the illegal smoke shacks around here out of business in a day. Poof, gone. We know this because they did it already. Cut taxes, crooks had to find new products.
I can only expect the same thing will happen to grow ops and smuggling the day government can no longer afford the luxury of continuing the ban on weed.
Economics 101.
If it is true that 1 in 4 is a recreational pot smoker then doesn’t it make sense to deal with it in a rational manner?
Besides, if it is a 1/4 ratio, then my office of 100 people has 25 potheads and outside of a few obvious ones, the other 21 are not obvious at all and are well dressed and managing to hold down pretty good jobs. No 60’s hippies hanging on my floor.
Just what’s needed in California, more dopes! Abe Froman, people smoke dope because they don’t care about anything or anybody, and makes them care even less.
Pot can be laced with some very bad, nasty drugs. Legalizing pot would make it tougher to crack down on distribution of the hard drugs, as some of them can be easily hidden in the legal ones.
And once they are legal, the police probably can’t seize and test them.
Just something to consider.
one step from the Korova Milk Bar
Haha! From the 7th largest economy in the world to last resort for 1960’s sh!theads…. a bankrupt commune…. a social experiment doomed to failure.
The last adults left Kalifornia 20 years ago or retreated to their castles, filled the moats, pulled up the drawbridges and posted the armed guards.
Now all we’re waiting for is new generation of Manson’s…..
Lots of comparisons to Amsterdam. One thing to keep in mind, there are quite a few Dutch people there. That might be a factor in the way people behave.
Drugs are bad, drugs are bad. Just keep repeating the mantra as you sip on a beer.
Pot is BC’s largest export. It’s not being taxed. The profits are going to organized crime. A significant portion of the population in North America already smokes pot on a regular basis.
If cute little comments can take the place of rational analysis then just quip away Kate. I for one, think our current approach has failed.
I’m in the other camp on this one Kate. Reality is that many Canadians choose to smoke the herb, which ends up as cash in the pockets of the HA or some other gang. Canada should follow this policy. Think of the tax revenue that could go into Government coffers…better to raise taxes or tax/sell pot and take away income from criminal organizations. As for the pot is a stepping stone to hard drugs…baloney…some people who drink beer might become raving alcholics, should we ban it??
“Pot is super easy to grow into a good potent quality product. It’s the main reason why governments will not legalize pot: It’s too easy to grow, dry and smoke.”
Posted by: Right Honorable Terry Tory at January 12, 2010 2:30 PM
Easy solution. You want to grow pot you have to get a licence. You go to the Department of Agriculture and for a fee you get a licence to grow pot. The greater the number of plants the higher the fee. All growers are then registered. Then a couple of times a year the Department of Agriculture Inspector comes by to count the number of plants you have. Inspections can be done at any time and you will not be informed prior to the Inspectors visit. If you have more plants than you are licenced to grow you are fined. The fine would have to be very big say $50,000 to $100,000. If you are growing without a licence you get fined even more say $100,000 to $500,000. If you cannot pay the fine there are a number of options your wages are garnisheed to pay the fine, or property is siezed to the value of the fine if that fails then serious jail time.
By making it extremely costly to break the law you discourage people from not registering.
Adults can’t be allowed to make choices like these! Smoke and grow pot? What next? Brewing your own beer and wine? Unregistered firearms?
Marketing your own grain? The horror! The horror!
For the sake of consistency, why smoking tobacco is an individual right, therefore good, and smoking pot is not a right and is bad?
Kate, you would be most qualified to clarify, as you keep posting these snippets.
This is when the Libertarians start striking sparks off the Social Conservatives, Thomas_L. 🙂
I’d say the experiment has been done enough times for us to know that prohibition doesn’t work, registration etc. doesn’t work. Government does not posses the ability to make that work.
But shunning works. No jobs for pot-heads, no welfare for pot-heads, no apartments for pot-heads, soon you have a very low number of pot-heads. Its cold here in the winter, you know?
Shunning. Works awesome. Conservatives should know, frickin’ liberal useful idiots do it to us all the time.
“would allow adults over 21 to possess, smoke and grow marijuana.”
How are they going to tax something grown in a private home? On the honour system?
Lyle, good point. How do “they” tax home brew? They don’t!
Phantom – Hell, let’s shun each other! That oughta work great! Now, all I’d like to know, is how you’d know if I didn’t tell you? I am a responsible adult. Have always worked. Have succeeded in my chosen field. Raised three decent, well educated and productive citizens. Things are good. How about you?
“Now, all I’d like to know, is how you’d know if I didn’t tell you?”
Well that’s the thing, isn’t it? The other half of the equation is, its none of my business what people do so long as they aren’t doing it -to me-. So if you’re functional and not being a problem for everybody, then there’s no problem.
Drug addicts don’t generally behave that way. They’re busy feeding the habit by stealing anything not nailed down, engaging in prostitution, ruining their families lives, and etc.
Truthfully though, looked at with a cold, heartless eye the depredations of all the existing junkies of today are as nothing compared to the harm to society from the organized crime that supplies them.
What we are doing isn’t working, and its slowly destroying our society by corruption. The rule of law can’t survive when a third of the population makes a living by circumventing it. I’m sure some kind of tax/regulation regime would work no better, people will just duck it as they do with the tobacco taxes and regulations.
Giving people -back- the power to decide for themselves and sticking them with the consequences for the decision is about the only thing that hasn’t been tried lately. Probably because it can’t be used to justify a tax increase.
Just sayin’.
It’s why the end of prohibition signaled the death of organized crime.
~Kate
Lucky Luciano had already formed “the Syndicate” in September 1931, the Volstead Act wasn’t repealed until December 5, 1933.
The Syndicate got most of it’s money from traditional organized crime sources such as racketeering(extortion), numbers(illegal gambling), prostitution, and theft (warehouses and hijacking trucks).
Control of the Unions was already in full swing and connection to the Unions allowed them to rob warehouses, trucks, and cargo offloaded at ports as well as to collect paychecks from “phantom” Union members and get a percentage of all Union dues.
By the time alcohol prohibition ended, organized crime was well placed to be the producers of the new legal domestic alcohol, make sure the workers who produced it were Union, guarantee the truckers who shipped it were Union, and still get the opportunity to rob foreign liquor shipments at the ports.
The Syndicate was also involved in getting money from the distribution of illegal drugs in the big cities and, as we all know, that part of prohibition never ended.
Phantom – I am not a drug addict. Cannabis is not actually a drug, except in legal terms, and I am only talking about Cannabis. I would argue, however, that the things you describe are the natural results of prohibition rather than the use of any particular substance. But anyway … so what? We let people screw up their own lives, any way they see fit. What’s different about drugs? Besides, prohibition is just so … progressive. I wonder how modern conservatives can accept it?
Some people are conservative because they don’t like being pushed around, don’t like seeing their money wasted by idiots, and don’t think a government salary makes a man some kind of superior being.
Some people want to use the government for -their- ends, which differ from the present lot. They worry me.
Incidentally, don’t mistake my position for support of dope smoking. Its one of the three stupidest things you can do in life, IMHO. (Its friggin’ bad for you, duh.) Its just that the damage you can do as an individual is quite limited, whereas the damage that can be done by government officials trying to “fix” things is enormous. Unlimited, in fact.
In other words, keeping you in line isn’t worth the crap I have to put up with to get it done.