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Comment by KhoomeiK | Hacker News Reader

One of the volunteers at Decrim Santa Cruz here. AMA!

What are your thoughts on the layered nature of our government and how such efforts could do better with the many layers? Take marijuana for instance. I think it should be decriminalized, and in many states we talk about it like it is, but in reality it depends on which law enforcement officer catches you. Where I live you'll be arrested by the sheriff (county), but not the police (town), depending on which officer catches you and if they like you or not, and not state patrol. And you won't be prosecuted by the feds, but the businesses you bought it from, which pay local and state taxes, can't use federally insured banks because it's still illegal even though it's not enforced. But state law might forbid the bank from making a hiring decision on someone's marijuana usage. In some ways it feels like we've made progress, but I'm still afraid to use it myself. How do we deal with this mess of rule-of-law moving forward?

I would like the idea of proving an idea on a small scale to make it easier to sell at larger scales. But honestly, being one of the first places that legalized it, we got a large influx of "undesirables" from other places that hadn't legalized it, causing problems we wouldn't have had if we weren't one of the first states to legalize it.

I think the decentralized/layered structure of American government is great, because as you said, it allows smaller polities to test out new ideas before growing to a larger scale. I haven't heard of that phenomenon where people migrate to a new city in pursuit of the substance, and that could definitely be a valid issue.

What makes them "undesirable" though? Are they not contributing to the local economy or something else? I don't think it's a problem intrinsically linked to substance decriminalization, and might even be a benefit of decentralized government. Delaware's lax incorporation laws, for instance, encourage people to do business there, which benefits the state.

There was a very noticeable influx of homeless people in Denver immediately following marijuana legalization (or at least homeless-looking people hanging out on the street).

I use the term "undesirable" somewhat ironically, because I also don't think arresting people who have nowhere else to sleep makes any sense, but it's the only remotely understandable problem I've heard complained about from people who were against legalization.

This could be an argument against all civic improvements. Let's continue to have a horrible, expensive mass transit - otherwise there will be an influx of homeless people.

For some years, I traveled more or less annually to Amsterdam to use Psilocybe. So did numerous others, from Germany, France, the UK, etc.

And eventually, it became illegal again, and tourists were stuck buying truffles. So just sayin'.

Congrats, I'm very excited to see how this affects the greater movement.

As a former Santa Cruz resident of ~4 years at UCSC, do you think this will affect enforcement at the local level? Living there between 2010-2014, there didn't seem to be much drug enforcement by the police at all, at least not for possession.

Yeah, I don't think it'll change anyone's day to day life very significantly as enforcement is pretty lax already. It's more important in the sense that it's a step in the direction of legalization, which I think will have genuine society-changing effects. There will likely be a boom in psychedelic treatments for mental and physical health when they're legalized on a state level, and that can't happen till everyone's comfortable with them being decriminalized.

As a journalist/Santa Cruz resident for 8 years, you would REALLY have to do something wrong to get in trouble here for drug related crimes.

Looker just sold to Google for 2 billion and there is still an army of tent cities around town due to people falling through the economic cracks coupled with a city wide meth and heroin epidemic. How-do-we-fix-this ?

Okay, enough trolling. I sent you a real email. Bye

Decrim SF here! Thanks for your support :)

Thanks and good luck!

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