Producing is illegal. Selling and using sort of legal.
This crazy policy has our police force waste all their time chasing a never ending line of illegal production facilities and kept the production in the hands of criminals.
We need a completely legalised product chain for softdrugs so it can be safely produced and legally traded, bought and used.
I've only been to Amsterdam once, and I don't pretend to even begin to understand their culture or politics, but legalization here in the US has been great. We've got a lot of people looking for reasons legalization has destroyed our society, and they are coming up empty handed. Meanwhile, we're making a ton of money on taxes. Is there anyone who knows why they couldn't/shouldn't follow our example?
Since the article is about marijuana, let's use that as an example. If you believe the US is a federal republic, then you ought to be able to grow whatever plants you want in the comfort of your own home - the federal government has no business regulating that. That precise case was brought before the Supreme Court during the Bush administration, and even Scalia (who famously championed states' rights in many other decisions) consented that the federal government could regulate the private, intrastate growth of marijuana:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
The states that legalized marijuana could only do so because Obama is personally tolerant of it. Had he not been, he could have directed federal authorities to enforce the federal ban on marijuana - federal laws trump local ones.
The state of California might just, by itself, choose to challenge the feds on this for example, and that would be quite interesting.
In what way is it not decided? The US Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that the federal government can indeed criminalize marijuana. This isn't something that they left kind of unclear. A 6 to 3 decision affirmed that the congress can completely outlaw marijuana nationwide.
The difference this time around is that the (legal) marijuana industry has significantly more political clout, social acceptance and financial muscle than 2 decades ago, so I see the states pushing back harder against the feds this time around.
I actually don't see the Supreme Court overturning this precedent because it's relevant to too many other cases, such as outlawing fully automatic weapons. It's far more likely that congress could repeal or reduce its own regulations and leave this to the states. Supposedly both major parties should want this, since the right talks about states rights and the left want marijuana legalized for its own sake.
This is a pretty unreasonable statement unless farming marijuana is also "close" to giving drugs to children.
I agree that machine guns are far more dangerous to allow in broad society than marijuana, but I don't think your comparison is very useful.
But I can appreciate the Irony of the question, no doubt.
Edit: wording
Edit: well, the LD is probably not that high, i wouldn't recommend to try for it
outlawing fully automatic weapons
This isn't an abnormal situation. There are lots of things that are illegal under state laws that aren't illegal at the federal level and vice versa.
Marijuana is still a schedule 1 controlled substance under federal law, and you can be arrested by federal agents, who have jurisdiction in every state, for possession of any amount. It's not likely to actually happen, but it's another tool the feds can use if you annoy them.
Personally, I don't see the constitution gives Congress the power to outlaw possession of anything unless that thing crosses state lines. But over the years the courts have supported an alternate view.
While I understand the spirit of this argument it is not entirely true. Obama has legal levers to pull but not without serious consequences to himself. For example Trump is very vocal about hurting all the "sanctuary cities" and I personally think he will be able to do zilch about it.
The problem with centralized control is that super inefficient. President can jump before a rally and claim he is leading it but the moment he decides to actually control the rally the shit will hit the fan.
Medical marijuana was in much more of a grey area than recreational marijuana, and previous administrations have still directed the DoJ to shutter dispensaries. It was very much Obama's decision to tolerate states legalizing marijuana.
> The states that legalized marijuana could only do so because Obama is personally tolerant of it. Had he not been, he could have directed federal authorities to enforce the federal ban on marijuana - federal laws trump local ones.
Obama did direct federal authorities to enforce the federal ban on marijuana. Obama's administration raided more medical marijuana dispensaries either Bush or Clinton[0]. Congress even passed a law explicitly stripping the executive branch of the power to do so, and Obama ignored that[1].
He did pull his foot off the gas pedal (so to speak) a bit in his second term, but not entirely - the raids have continued through this past year[2].
[0] https://www.greenrushdaily.com/2016/02/24/dispensary-raids-r...
[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...
[2] https://www.theweedblog.com/despite-reforms-federal-medical-...
http://fightthefuture.org/articles/the-fallout-of-american-a...
I did not realize this applied to marijuana law as well.
The US is a Frankish kingdom, in Machiavellian terms.
The big difference between the US and a Machiavellian Frankish kingdom is that we have more or less a single military, rather than each state having its own army and lending that to the central government.
Gonna play devil's advocate: shouldn't we wait a generation or something like 10 years to evaluate the situation ?
EDIT: I'd be interested to hear studies of things not going well since legalization.
Amsterdam is a place where you can go into any coffee shop and smoke there on premises. If you don't need to buy more, many will let you smoke and use their toilets if you buy a beer, coffee or snacks.
Smoking tobacco is a part of European culture and I was surprised to see smoking allowed indoors in many places, both in the west and east (several states in Germany seemed to allow it, or at least not enforce bans; same in Croatia, Montenegro, etc.) In the Pacific North West US, tobacco smoking bans are stricter than anywhere else I've seen in the US. Few bars even have outdoor smoking areas. I have never seen smoking areas outside pot stores (I think it's illegal).
This actually makes for a vastly different culture. Also in the Pacific Northwest, very few pot stores will take a foreign drivers license, even for alcohol! (In other parts of the US, people don't normally card adults -- it's really weird), so you're not going to see the same type of marijuana tourism seen in The Netherlands.
I'm curious what the culture is like in other places that have approved recreational cannabis. Anyone from Colorado or Maine want to chime in?
Pacific Northwest will take passports for those things, just not foreign DLs.
I can't find it now, but I remember posting posting a warning sign that illustrated someone dropping their cigarette hand to the side and hitting a child in the eye.
It's a condition of the license, and they're ridigly checked and shut down for non-compliance (selling to minors, keeping too much on premises, hard drugs, etc).
Cannabis is not a "recent situation" - people have been consuming cannabis since prehistoric times. The cannabis prohibition, on the other hand, is. The country-wide cannabis prohibition started in the United States with the founding of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930. We did wait three generations to evaluate the situation, it is obvious that the cannabis prohibition has been a complete and total failure causing uncounted damage to lives and communities, and needs to be repealed as soon as possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Psychotropic_Sub...
(Side note: the Netherlands probably needs to be a bit more careful in violating international treaties due to it's size and dependence on trade, I don't think I've heard the "we'll be violating a treaty" argument in the US)
Most people looking for reasons to oppose legalization are actually not saying anything in the like of "This is going to destroy our society". If you want reasons why legalization is a bad idea. Here goes one :
Legalization leads increased usage of pot amongst adults [0]. Combine this with the fact that usage (not abuse) of cannabis leads to permanent damage to the brain structure. Which negatively impact memory and cognitive abilities [1]. No one here is saying that by legalizing marijuana our society is going to the middle ages. I just don't think that it is wise to legalize one more substance that has known and proven irreversible long-lasting effects on cognitive abilites of people who are most likely going to live longer and longer. Ageism of the general population is a challenge in itself. Ageism of a population that is going to suffer from symptoms of partially altered brains on top of the cognitive challenges naturally coming with age is even more difficult.
[0] : https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/18/colorado-mar...
I am sure cigarettes would not pass legalization laws if they were "invented" right now. They are legal for historical reasons and many countries are actively trying to fight them by increased taxation, advertising rules etc. So basically, we are creating a new product we will have to fight in the future once we measure how dangerous it is.
We are playing a game of "let's fight back thats dangerous product we legalized 150 years ago when we did not know the adverse effects of it." and at the same time : "Let's legalize that new stuff that we never really could measure the long lasting effects of. It looks fun and kids love it.".
The paper says that it can't precisely measure the effect of those changes to cognitive issues. They just link marijuana with modified brains. If you belive that an altered brain function exactly like a non-altered one, this is your choice. But any sound safety principle should tell you to take care with that stuff IMO.
There are tons of papers measure the cognitive issues that arise with pot usage. Here is just one, but look it up. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3221171/
Are you asserting that this is not true for marijuana? You believe that infrequent use is somehow definitively linked to cognitive changes despite even heavy use being poorly linked so far?
However, for adults, my "gut feeling" (based on knowing some people who regularly consumed what I consider a modest amount of marijuana) is that if you aren't really heavy on your usage, you don't have much to worry about cognitive wise. Chronic heavy users, of course, may run into issues.
Unfortunately it's difficult to conclude much beyond "gut feeling" because data wise, the studies on long term effects are all over the map. See this evidence based review --https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3037578/ I get the impression that the data just isn't too good right now. You can look up one study, but you can then look up another with a different conclusion.
Part of the problem I'm sure is that the illegal nature of marijuana makes experiments difficult to conduct, and will introduce a bias in the population researchers are working with that they have to be careful to control out.
Alcohol incidentally also has significant cognitive concerns for pre-adults, while not being a real issue for moderate adult drinkers. Strictly enforced age restrictions mitigate this issue to some degree. (Prohibition of alcohol was tried for a while, but it didn't work too well.)
If not, why would you want to add one more dangerous substance in the stores ?
One could argue that if the demand can't be removed, then the most sensible course of action would be to keep the entire market/economy for such things out of the criminal realm where it can be tied up in all sorts of other unsavory things (turf wars, tax evasion, money laundering, etc).
Likewise, there's the well-worn concept of the "cure" being worse than the "disease". Even assuming some negative health impact of the ingestion of cannabis or other intoxicating substances, is that negative impact worse than that of criminal penalties or prison?
A good comparison would be alcohol. Lots of people drink too much alcohol for their own good health. A subset of these could be classified as alcoholics. Either way, you're talking about adverse effects. Would outcomes be generally better or worse if every wino and drunk got charged with a criminal violation or put in prison for their unhealthy alcohol use? What about those who just get a bit drunk a few times per year at a cookout, the company Xmas party, and New Year's Eve? Because that's essentially how cannabis is treated when criminalized.
From the study you linked:
"Questions surrounding the effects of chronic marijuana use on brain structure continue to increase. To date, however, findings remain inconclusive."
and
"Despite the observed age of onset effects, longitudinal studies are needed to determine causality of these effects."
Add to that this is one study that included only 110 people and was non-longitudinal. Do you have any other studies you can point to that have demonstrated' "known and proven irreversible long-lasting effects..." in chronic marijuana users? The linked study is helpful, but trying to prove something very controversial requires more evidence.
I'd say prohibition has destroyed our society. The onus should be on prohibitionists to defend the status quo.
---
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.
"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the 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."
Going down that route would mean banning alcohol and sugar, but that is not done because it discriminates against to much of the population, but disriminenting against smaller groups is fine.
I dot not want to change this as I believe in the system and I don't want my country to move to a situation where some people are just "left to die" because they made the wrong choices or are not able to pay for medical help.
I don't think that this system needs one more substance to deal with. The three biggest source of spending in the system today are : (without order) Hips replacement for elders. Cardiovascular surgery due to obesity. Treatment for lungs / throat cancer. Notice how two of those are already dur to "just" unhealthy habits. And I fear that in 50 years (when I am old), we will have to provide significant resources to elders with cognitive issues caused/helped by excessive use of marijuana.
I'll have to live in that world and share the limited ressources of the healthcare with those people. So I think I am allowed to voice my concerns, as I will indirectly will deal with the consequences of their choice.
what about the tax burden TODAY of paying for police, prison, and criminal justice system to enforce prohibition?
what about the cost to society TODAY of prohibition?
I believe there is a massive difference between making something legal, and making it illegal, even if not penalized.
You make it sound as if there is no possible ground between (a) fully legal consume as much as you want, get it easily virtually everywhere or (b) invest millions of dollars to puts hundreds of people in jail.
decriminalization leaves control of the substance in the hands of black market vendors who are ultimately connected with black market producers. the social harm of organized crime related to black market producers is a major issue that is solved by legalization and not by decriminalization.
additionally, there is the argument for liberty. why should a police officer be allowed to confiscate something you own, if your society basically agrees that its ok for you to have it? decriminalization is an incoherent policy. why would anyone support a policy that basically says "we think this is bad but we can't be bothered to do anything about it". if its not bad enough to do anything about then why is it illegal?
legalization allows for quality control of product, inspection of businesses, collection of tax revenues, and social normalization so informed responsible use by adults can take place.
in my opinion, there is no good argument for decriminalization besides the weak "it's better than militant prohibition". any of the goods that come from decriminalization are also present in regulated legalization, and then there are significant additional goods from legalization that cannot be achieved by decriminalization alone.
I think alcohol by far the more dangerous drug, at least based on what we know now, and yet it's completely accepted in society and often there's even pressure to 'partake'. I would not argue that weed should reach a similar status, and honestly based on the effects it's unlikely to, but even if it did, it would be an improvement.
Plus, when you consider the typical 'abuser', it tends to be an either/or situation when it comes to weed and alcohol. I knew many more people who exclusively use one or the other as a coping mechanism than people who use both.
My ideal approach to figure out what the longer-term impact of weed could be on society is pretty much exactly the coffeeshop approach: don't make the substance as easily available as alcohol (or cigarettes, in many places), but make it relatively possible to get legally if you want it. Basically, give it the status of something like a massage or going bowling (that might be a pun there, I'm not sure). Not something for every day (I'd hope!), but still something easily accessible and defanged of its status as 'illicit'.
If a country truly wants to commit to tax payed healthcare for all, needs to provide it for its free citizens, not its worker drones.
Its a problem of any Statist system that if the state does something, all the externalizes associated with it, are costs to the state. That typical solution is for the state to internalize/control these externalizes. Without some system to figure out what is to much, you are on a slippery slop.
That's the exact point Hayek made in the 'Road to Serfdom'. Not every state intervention will automatically mean that you slide into dictatorship, but rather he argued that if you logically respond to each problem with the natural solution of intervention you will end up in dictatorship. You need some higher level of thinking about the problem otherwise you have a problem.
His next 2 two books attempted then about how to design a system of law and governance that effectively balances the needs of individual freedom and state intervention. I don't think he was fully successful, but they are good books either way.
> We thank Tim McQueeny for assistance with the behavioral data. This work was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse Grant K01 DA021632.
in other words, the study was funded by an institution with a legal mandate to promote cannabis prohibition. the conflicts of interest makes this dubious science.
Does the U.S know that it works yet? It's early days yet. Colorado and Washington the two states to first pass legislation legalizing marijuana did so only 4 years ago. Compare this to Amsterdam which did so almost 30 years ago.
I'm not making a statement for or against legalization, but rather that 30 years of a policy vs only 4 years to conclude that "its working" is maybe not enough to to know. The majority of the 28 states that legalized it did so much more recently than 4 years ago at that.
Note that US state systems are almost the opposite of the Dutch systems in this regard: regulated from "seed to sale", heavily taxed, operated legally (at the state level anyway).
I only mention this because you stated 28 states later, but there isn't 28 states like Colorado / Washington. Most are more similar to California's original law.
It will be interesting to see if those states that now have the original California type legislation will move to full legalization for recreational or if they simply liberalize their view on what constitutes an ailment for which marijuana is prescribed - anxiety etc.
Just look through the back half of local newspapers (e.g. Metro in the Silicon Valley area) and look for the ads with mostly green graphics featuring hot girls wearing stethoscopes.
Surely there's an age limit?
If you go to a coffeeshop in The Netherlands you need to be 18 in order to receive marihuana. If you're younger than 21 you need to show your ID, and if the clerk thinks you are younger than 18 he can ask you for ID.
Of course, that can be faked. But if there's minors in your coffeeshop you got a big, big problem if the police find this out.
Disclaimer: I worked in a coffeeshop in Amsterdam.
Netherlands: Coffee shops can only store 500g causing multiple deliveries a day exposing couriers to robbery.
US: Coffee shops are excluded from the banking system exposing them to an increased risk of robbery.
Rules have to make sense and be somewhat consistent otherwise side effects can be severe.
For real. I thought pot had been legalised in some states, how does that work - you can work legally in a field but you're not allowed to bank your proceeds, was that bill sponsored by organised crime syndicates??
Anyway, they should probably do one of those tax-dodge deals that big corps do, buy trademark rights [ostensibly from themselves] and then send the money from the trademark licensing out of state. Surely there's already a similar "method" in place, investing in movies or some crock??
what the states think is legal, and what the feds think is legal do not, and have never had to agree. the feds have massively longer lists of illegal things than most states.
state legalization generally has no effect on the feds.
Any insights for a European on this?
AFAIU in Europe's not quite federated system European laws get ratified and become national laws in time (with selection and modification where the original law allows). That seems a natural and appropriate way to spread laws to member states.
> Presumably half the States would go one way and half the other??
if they want!
> That seems a natural and appropriate way to spread laws to member states.
allowing them to be differ from one another was part of the system's original goal!
Umm, you may want to do some research on this stuff, as a HN comment is not even going to come close to covering all the important topics, and there are a lot of them.
Essentially, the way it work in the US is that each state will do whatever the hell it wants to do until the Federal government forces them to stop, usually via some sort of money method, but occasionally via the military (bleeding Kansas, civil war, civil rights movement, etc). Our government works because we all hate each others' guts, but we hate equally. Most Americans are very happy/disgusted with the system, typically both at the same time. Again, we know it's strange.
I'm also told that notwithstanding the possibility that some bank might take your deposits, the MJ business is effectively cash-only because of the risk of seizure. It's also not as high margin as I initially thought. Honestly, from talking to a few people, it doesn't look like that great a business to be in. For one thing, CO rules require tracking from seed to sold. For any particular item in your inventory, you have to be able to track back to who grew it, who processed it (for oils and extracts), who manufactured the product - the paper trail is extensive and the penalties for messing up are stiff.
1) Dutch softdrug laws are heavily influenced by other/bigger EU countries like France and Italy that don't like their citizens visiting NL and using, or bringing back drugs. Hence the closings of coffee shops in border areas.
2) Closing of window prostitution in Amsterdam is a completely different issue than closing of coffeeshops. There might be a moral argument for both, but in my cynical mind most of the windows being shutdown have more to do with snapping up key real estate in the middle of the city than anything else. Some people claim it is about cleaning up the criminality, but I think it's just connected people getting better access to good real estate.
3) There might be a real estate angle to the closing of coffeeshops as well, but I'm not as familiar with it to really say. Amsterdam, like other major cities, has started to see an influx in foreign capital buying up homes for investment purposes. It's rather disgusting and has lead to rises in home prices in the city.
on 3. I know that in my city the coffeeshop rents the building, rent protection law does not allow the owner to kick a renter out without very good reason (not going to get specific here). The owner (renting company) wants the coffeeshop out, it has tried more than once. They want to re-purpose the building and make more money of the big building in the centre of the city.
I think it's a sign of a bigger societal/urban change, and that the bigger, underlying problem is rapidly increasing segregation.
My experience with any coffeeshop is that the vast majority of its clientele is, off the top of my head: 1) left-wingish 'hippie' type, 2) muslims/'ethnic' groups, 3) working-class individuals or 4) a certain subset of tourists. Most coffeeshops have at least a whiff of seediness.
anyways, what all these groups have in common is that they're not particularly liked by those who have a stake in the future of urban centers. These places should be clean, expensive, commercial, and acceptable to as many people as possible.
As to how much of which, stuffed if I know (and even ignoring real estate, the funding and attention given to 'rescue organisations' as part of soi-disant anti-trafficking efforts probably gives them at least an incentive under both a and b).
Though "pressure from an increasing level of (a) at The Hague" also seems plausible.
(tl;dr - I dunno exactly, I doubt there's a conspiracy as such, but I also don't believe the official reasons are even close to the whole story)
Our incoming administration will have to contend with an industry that has grown large reasonably quickly, and with a conflicting Federal policy. States that have chosen legalization want this money now. Many citizens from across the social spectrum have staked their livelihoods on it.
If this becomes a states rights issue, and the Feds choose to switch policy and start raiding, things could go downhill quickly for the administration.
Of course none of this has anything to do with softdrugs or cannabis. It's all about control and money. I suspect the Dutch policy shift has similar economic motives somewhere below the surface.
[1]: https://www.viceland.com/en_us/video/half-baked/56fae505be4a...
- The Netherlands chooses to (kinda) allow softdrug use and thus gains tourist income throughout the 90s and 00s (and maybe earlier?)
- The US pressures them to avoid full legalization and supply chain development
- US states then partly legalize two decades later, and quickly surpass the Dutch system in size, scope, and income
What should the Dutch learn from this?
The Dutch coffeeshop model was cutting edge back in the 90's when no one else was doing it, but as you said it's incredibly outdated compared to the explosion of high quality dispensaries we are seeing across the Pacific coastal areas of Canada and the U.S.
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands you didn't need permission from a doctor or anyone else to buy marijuana from a coffeshop. Recreational marijuana use was implicitly sanctioned -- something that most of the United States still has a problem with (though a handful of states are changing their mind).
Then there's the Federal laws against any kind of marijuana use, a very hard-headed, close-minded policy that forbids even the use of purely medicinal marijuana derivatives without psychoactive effects, much less recreational use.
Finally, there's the issue of drug testing, which no states (to my knowledge) have opposed. So you could still be effectively be prevented from using marijuana if you have to submit to drug tests or anti drug policies at your place of work.
On certain streets every couple of hundred feet there was some pusher asking if I wanted drugs. By the third day or so I was getting really annoyed with them. I was also offered drugs in a couple of nightclubs that I visited. I don't ever remember visiting a place where the drug sellers were so aggressive.
It's a very beautiful city and I recommended visiting. The people were friendly, the food fabulous and I would like to get back there some day.
Get out of the RLD! The street dealers are a truly obnoxious blight on the city, but they are really only concentrated in certain areas. They prey on the gullible, party-driven young tourists on stag-dos and the like. Most often what they sell is fake, and infamously some years ago one fool was selling white heroin as cocaine, leading to several deaths and a city-wide campaign to encourage people to ignore street dealers and not to fear punishment for seeking medical help.
(and even much of the RLD is dealer-free; it's specific streets)
Certainly outside the RLD throughout greater Nieuwmarkt was more hustle-bustle than the rest of the areas of Amsterdam that I saw, but I never felt like I was in a place I shouldn't be.
Anyway, it's as shame to see things going backwards in Netherlands ;(