stateofkane

First off, let me say I am just as opposed to the drug war in America today as anyone else. We are locking up hundreds of thousands of people for possession of cannabis and it is wasteful to our economy, people's lives, and personal liberties are taken away.

If pot was legal, there would be a tax placed on it unless it was the government that sold. Regardless, the government would in fact collect revenue which is good. However, there are other implications that the seller would have to abide by legally. Just as there are requirements of alcohol and tobacco vendors, marijuana vendors would be held responsible to some degree.

Bartenders, liquor store clerks, even people who work at a gas station that sells tobacco have all been subject to legal action taken against them because of what they sell.

A marijuana vendor would require a completely new set of laws. It would beg the question as to who is responsible if and employee tests positive for an employment test, car accident victim, etc.

This would flood the court systems even more. This alone would cost our government a substantially larger amount of money that it collects from the revenue of the legal marijuana.

It makes no sense financially to legalize marijuana. You can't possibly claim that people wouldn't use it more, and as new users pop up every day, that we would have many people still subject to the court system as they are today.

A legal punishment for possession should never be fines or imprisonment, but rather community service or medical care if the person is in obvious need.

Smaerd

"It would beg the question as to who is responsible if and employee tests positive for an employment test, car accident victim, etc." - Well lemme put it this way, there would be no tests for employment for THC unless you were a juvenile... Car's are currently the hardest proposal for this arguement I would say. I believe you shouldn't be allowed to drive stoned, but I am not sure if there are any swab tests efficient enough to detect if a person is high at the time. I proposed no paraphenalia outside of your home.

"You can't possibly claim that people wouldn't use it more, and as new users pop up every day, that we would have many people still subject to the court system as they are today." - Amsterdam. Prohibition brings appeal.

It'd be best if it was fully decriminalized.

freeweed420

def needs to be decriminalized:bigjo int:

stateofkane

[QUOTE=Smaerd;5166009 6]- Well lemme put it this way, there would be no tests for employment for THC unless you were a juvenile... QUOTE]

What makes you think private employers would stop drug testing their employees, even if the drug(s) became legal? They aren't doing it just because the drugs are illegal, but because they don't want users working for them. Or at least they want the users to be able to stay clean long enough to pass a test.

Bearsy

You talk about flooding the courts... it wouldn't be a flood if you subtract the amount of people not in court because of drug possession/sale "crimes"
You say there would be a loss of revenue, but what about the $39,087,277,217 spent so far this year alone on the war on drugs. Court costs are guaranteed not to equal even one 1/10th of that amount.
Employers test for illegal substances, any legal substance is no longer tested for and is none of their business. Any discrimination on the part of an employer because of suspected or proven legal cannabis use can be answered with a civil liberties lawsuit and very quickly cannabis testing in urinalysis or any other DT for employment will end.
Liquor stores aren't held liable for drunk driving accidents, cannabis vendors cannot legally be held responsible either.
There should NO PUNISHMENT for cannabis use. None. EVER.




Oh yeah, and fuck you, legalize it.

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Smaerd

Well all they need is a more effective form of drug testing to see if one is high before work. Like you can't say he drinks beer once or twice every 30 days he can't work for me.

Mr.E

If pot were legalized, why would it be good that the government is taxing it and creating revenue for themselves?

Rubix

have you gone mad?

as for the people smoking more because it is legal, that is not true, at least not in Amsterdam, they have a lower per capita smoking pot rate than the U.S. Even IF, the more people that blaze, the merrier imo. What's wrong with more people responsibly using marijuana?

as for testing someone involved in an accident, there would have to be a metabolite cut off to really show that the person was under the influence at the time of the crash, not because they smoked three days ago.

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Silverleaf

this man speaks the truth. post-legalization legislation would be a godsend in comparison to the pre-legalization swamp that is our judicial system, brimming with nonviolent drug users and dealers (a complete waste of time, money, manpower, and resources). if the government can regulate the sale of cigarettes and alcohol, it can certainly do the same for marijuana. and if the government can enact laws that penalize businesses that engage in illegal sale practices with alcohol and tobacco, then it can certainly do the same for marijuana. civil laws created to protect others in society, like drunk driving laws, are also entirely feasible -- if a person is sober enough to pass a sobriety check, then what difference does it make if they smoked a joint or drank a beer?

i guess what i'm trying to say is that rational legislation designed to actually protect the public welfare makes more sense to me than just throwing everyone who smokes pot in jail. if you're selling it to a minor, then yeah, you are doing something contrary to the societal good and you deserve whatever punishment the books prescribe to those who break that law -- just like with cigarettes. if you're high when you're driving and you're a danger to others, then you should probably get your license revoked -- just like with alcohol.

the revenue the industry would create is probably the biggest incentive of them all, I would think. nobody would expect the price of weed to go down if the government started selling it -- the taxes they could levy on it (similar to cigarette taxes) would be a windfall, to say the least.

anybody want a balanced budget?

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Bearsy

And if you have qualms with paying taxes on it, then grow it yourself. Government doesn't taxes micro-breweries or homegrown tobacco.

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Roach

Only speaking for myself , I already smoke pretty much all the time .
Legalization, even with taxation, would make weed much much cheaper for me. That would free up some money to spend on other things.

Like opium maybe

that's just not true.

You really need to read a whole lot more about the subject of cannabis. I don't have the time to teach you, but perhaps someone else here does.


Sounds to me like you've gotten the best drug education D.A.R.E. could provide.

Maybe start here and see what a few professionals have to say about legalzation.

http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php

Legalized Regulation of all Drugs!
COPS SAY LEGALIZE DRUGS!

After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs with over a trillion tax dollars and 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug offenses, our confined population has quadrupled making building prisons the fastest growing industry in the United States. More than 2.2 million of our citizens are currently incarcerated and every year we arrest an additional 1.9 million more guaranteeing those prisons will be bursting at their seams. Every year we choose to continue this war will cost U.S. taxpayers another 69 billion dollars. Despite all the lives we have destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far easier to get than they were 35 years ago at the beginning of the war on drugs. Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before. We would suggest that this scenario must be the very definition of a failed public policy. This madness must cease!

The stated goals of current U.S.drug policy -- reducing crime, drug addiction, and juvenile drug use -- have not been achieved, even after nearly four decades of a policy of "war on drugs". This policy, fueled by over a trillion of our tax dollars has had little or no effect on the levels of drug addiction among our fellow citizens, but has instead resulted in a tremendous increase in crime and in the numbers of Americans in our prisons and jails. With 4.6% of the world's population, America today has 22.5% of the worlds prisoners. But, after all that time, after all the destroyed lives and after all the wasted resources, prohibited drugs today are cheaper, stronger, and easier to get than they were thirty-five years ago at the beginning of the so-called "war on drugs". With this in mind, we current and former members of law enforcement have created a drug-policy reform movement -- LEAP. We believe that to save lives and lower the rates of disease, crime and addiction. as well as to conserve tax dollars, we must end drug prohibition. LEAP believes that a system of regulation and control of production and distribution will be far more effective and ethical than one of prohibition. We do this in hopes that we in Law Enforcement can regain the public's respect and trust, which have been greatly diminished by our involvement in imposing drug prohibition. Please consider joining us. You don't have to be a cop to join LEAP! Find out more about us by reading some of the articles in our Publications section or by watching and listening to some of our multimedia clips,. You can also read about the men and women who speak for LEAP, and see what we have on the calendar for the near future.




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Bearsy

OMG gateway drug!!!!1!one

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stoneric

No. I'm not picking shit off the hghway because I get stoned. And no one is in obvious need of anything, no matter how much they smoke. People that smoke to much end up being non smokers. It's that non-addictive thing. No sense in going to dry out for something that has no withdrawl symptoms.

stateofkane

I am very much opposed to the drug war. We could save billions by ending it and stop locking up productive working users. The revenue from marijuana sales wouldn't be enough to make a big difference to help our economy.

It wasn't until Nixon that we started becoming fascist about drugs. It wasn't until Reagan that we became insane about them. We don't have to legalize to end the drug war. Besides, if it ever happens it will happen my way first, then the masses will talk about legalizing it.

Why talk about how we can get to step C when we are not even to step B yet? The way you guys present your arguments on Yahooka as I have read them is not going to appeal to the mainstream, mostly just to users.

yoh

i dont follow the notion that to legalise something, and to create "vendors" to sell it are one and the same.

Would it really be impossible for the government to just say "yeah, its legal, you wont get arrested for using it, but we will not supply it or create any kind of vendors"?

Sure, there'll be people trying to sell complete garbage, with crayon shavings, dusted with sugar or whatever else imaginable, but that stuff happens anyway its still down to buyer discretion to get it from reliable sources. But then again, i suppose this does raise the question of what people are supposed to do when they get ripped, maybe thered be even more people trying to pedal cheap, horrible, dangerous weed, and the government couldnt exactly be expected to ignore it.

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hi wo tsukete~

Roach

All that homegrown nugget would literally come out of the woodwork.

Quality would go up, killing demand for the rank dank.
We are all still health aware.
A little kind is easier on the lungs (works better in a vaporizer) than more massive quantities of old moldy thick as a brick !

Charley Phogg

Yeah, if marijuana is legal I don't see why an employer would test for it. Not hiring someone because they practice their legal right to smoke? Ur brain doesn't work.

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If you are the big tree...
We are the small axe

badgoalie85

this statement is ridiculous. marijuana is estimated by most economists to be the US's largest or second largest cash crop. making it legal for farmers to cultivate and sell it in domestic as well as foreign markets would have a HUGE effect on the economy.

do yourself a favor and get educated about this before you make statements that just aren't true. you have no reason to believe that the revenue from marijuana sales wouldn't help the economy, so why would you say it?

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Pursue happiness.

To each his own.

stoneric

And there comes a time when the hypocrisy of prohibition has to be taken into account regardless of the economic impact.

Bearsy

Yeah it's the largest, the closest are corn and wheat, but those two combined don't reach the same amount that cannabis brings in. If I'm not mistaken, California's annual income from cannabis($13.8 billion) is more than the annual amount garnered from all the soybeans grown in the US(can't find link to back it up though, so I could be wrong).

ABC News: Marijuana Called Top U.S. Cash Crop


And although the amount of money would go down with legalization because black market prices would no longer be in existence, the amount of growers would probably double. So it would even out quite nicely.

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