Veterans push for medical marijuana in conservative South
stripes.com
stripes.com
>> a recently formed advocacy group called NC Families for Medical Cannabis.
And what about the countless veterans who are currently incarcerated on marijuana charges? What about all those soldiers who have had careers damaged by petty pot charges? They are veterans too.
A lot of constituents in the south, from my experience, already use CBD, THC, or both. I'm not sure what actually holds the state back from legalizing it given that so many folks already support it.
I remember when it was a big problem in terms of the combination of Texas roads & drunk driving. And people carried shotguns & rifles in their vehicles (on display).
Now, at that time, we also had a bunch of marijuana and "illegals" from South (which were associated, at least in our minds). We also had a national/universal war on drugs and cartels. Reefer madness was in full effect during my teen years, but as teens, we smoked Mexican brick weed mostly. This, this is the mentality that continues to shape our marijuana policies. Also, Fox News.
In good news, Gov. Greg Abbott has recently said he would sign the bill to broaden medical marijuana usage [1]; including for veterans.
[0] https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/annual/measur...
[1] https://twitter.com/gregabbott_tx/status/1403188569817161730...
I think we look to places that have legalized. Where it’s basically an extension of the craft beer industry and very white, so I think the same would be true here if/when legalized. I don’t see how racism comes into current policy choices.
My personal opinion, and I feel like I’ve always been pro legalization, but I don’t like how it’s been done in other states I’ve visited. I don’t want to see a weed shop in every strip center or a green cross on ever billboard. I don’t want my kids seeing that. Just because we do alcohol that way, doesn’t make it the best way. I wish it was behind the counter at a pharmacist or mail order only or something similar. Porn shops and strip clubs are highly zoned to keep it out of neighborhoods here, that could work.
At least that’s what my Texas History teacher told me in the state mandated class.
Some people include Texas in their definition of The South and some don't. There are multiple states that people have this argument about. Humorously, Florida is another such state.
From what I remember, it was different from other Southern states in that a large minority of settlers weren’t southerners and held the relatively new religious Northern idea that slavery was evil. Southern Democrats were still the majority and the Democrats were holding the threat of succession and violence against Republicans to force concessions about slavery (eg, the Missouri Compromise).
It seems pretty cut and dry to me now, but this man was an intimidating teacher, and I was a quiet kid...
Divest yourself of anything related to the ATF and pay attention to the changes at the DEA.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/442848/per-capita-alcoho...
This is an important thing to understand. Pills prescribed by trusted medical professionals in these places were destined to be a kill shot because there were no “cultural antibodies” against them. Weed, alcohol and other potentially damaging habits are kept in check by religion. Opiates and bad diet are the big killers in the south because there are no religious restrictions to moderate. The notion that southerners are drunks is a myth, as are many negative stereotypes of the south.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/marijuana-legalization-...
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/16/americans-o...
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/20/senate-democrats-we...
Young people are much less likely to vote, so of course their values aren't reflected in the electorate.
And then you have unnecessary barriers to voting that further discourage young, transient, and lower-income from voting.
At a minimum, I'd say we won't have a bill on the Senate floor until after the after the reconciliation infrastructure bill and debt ceiling increase are passed. Most likely it'll take until after a voting rights bill is passed as well.
My prediction is 4/20 of next year, both for the obvious symbolic reason and because the timing means that the law could go into effect shortly before midterm elections.
Marijuana convictions generate a lot of revenue, and in some places marijuana arrests are a significant chunk of all arrests.
FWIW this is not at all unique to right wing politics, or to the US in general. For another example, consider how UK censors porn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_the_United_King...
Generally, any mass scale stupidity that seemingly makes zero sense boils down to specific people making money. Bigger stupidity equals big financial gains
Well over 2m in federal funds are provided for counties in the appalachian high intensity drug trafficking area organized by a group called the appalachian regional commission and subgroup substance abuse advisory council. Those funds are then used to sponsor manufacturing industries moving to the area and keep up a substance abuse treatment grift that includes a lot of cannabis users. Often the punishment for minor drug crimes is supervised probation for a year, including the requirement of full time employment and inability to leave the area (which is known to be under performing economically as that is the criteria for ARC intervention) [0]. This creates the additional benefit of a cheap labor pool for the sponsored companies.
The entire Appalachian region (which somehow includes Mississippi and Alabama) is given 235m to achieve the goal of retaining or creating 26k jobs (9k per job).
So yea, I guess 2m state budget is nothing compared to propping up several industries in the poorest counties using some people who are essentially enslaved for cannabis use to prop up their success metrics. It is easier to extract productivity from people using a non-addictive substance than actual hard drug users or alcoholics.
[0]https://www.arc.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/FY2022-Congre...
Also, the south is ruled by Republicans, mostly, and they're all about denial. No abortions and no birth control. No public assistance--there is some, but they always seek to minimize it. No affirmative action. No BLM, since they're about All Lives Matter. No vaccines. No mask mandates. No reliable power grids. No lack of corruption at the state level (FL is off the charts corrupt... the people being bribed with zero state taxes). They're generally, bootstrap yourself into wealth like they did, even they they had privilege on their side; poor people need not apply to the American Dream. Curiously, they will ask the Federal government for a handout when they run into trouble, usually due to natural disasters, like flooding.
Texas is the only independent power grid (to which I assume your ignorance refers). The states that people refer to as the south are all actually part of the eastern grid.
Meanwhile vastly subsidized rural America, much of it in the south, is dying, because the wealth producers and job creators in those tax tax tax waste money jurisdictions are tired of sending money to people who complain about having money sent to them.
country’s*
Regardless, that’s a stat for morons to parrot (e.g. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/11/09/biden-v...). A county that Biden won 60/40 that produces $1 billion GDP is not $1 billion of GDP support for Biden. It’s 600 mil Biden and 400 mil Trump, and that’s under the charitable interpretation that rich people are just as likely to vote Democrat as they are Republican.
If you jam something through, it will never achieve 100% buy-in. If you let it progress naturally, the naysayers will eventually come around organically.
Granted that’s not why we’re moving at this glacial pace but the benefits certainly don’t hurt.
Furthermore, the states are supposed to be "laboratories of democracy" to run such experiments. If the feds legalize it, any state prohibitions remain in effect. Those states that want to be conservative about it can keep them on the books, and those that don't can move fast to legalize themselves - and then we see what happens.
(Although, at this point, I'm not sure there are any states left where the majority public opinion is not in favor of legalization.)
Their argument is (quite literally) that because marijuana could in some theoretical sense cross state lines that they then have the authority to regulate it (even if it never crosses between states).
The Interstate Commerce Clause has been used by both parties over the years to illegally centralize and cement their Federal power.
State legislatures and governors don’t get enough attention. They still exert tons of day to day influence on your life. Almost as importantly, a voting poll of a few million rather than a couple hundred million means you have much more influence and thus more influence over your life.
Curiously, this isn't even something that requires legislation! Existing federal drug laws already give DEA extremely broad latitude wrt re-scheduling drugs (which is generally problematic, but in this case it could be an advantage). So, DEA could just move cannabis off the schedule if they felt like it. But they'll never do it by themselves, because all the high-ranking officials in the agency literally made their careers fighting the "war on drugs".
However, since this is purely an executive branch decision, the president could prod them with an executive order - much like Trump did to force ATF to reclassify bump stocks as machine guns. At that point, Congress could still override it by passing legislation to put it back on the schedule... but that would be political suicide for them, and they know it.
There's a long history of medical progress being closely tied to the military. Military service involves exposure to violence and people are routinely injured or even maimed in the course of doing their job.
Even if nuclear is perfectly safe (which it largely is), and waste disposal is a perfectly solved problem (which it's not), economically there's a big question mark over it. I don't understand why conservatives are so hot about something so fiscally reckless.
I deplore everything else about them but I have to respect the effectiveness of their propaganda.
I read a lot about "the South" that sounds like the closest anyone ever came to it was watching "Dukes of Hazard" while high on a bet.
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4435830/kendall-martin...
I used to drive to Savannah from South Carolina semi regularly. I always found it amusing that crossing the state line you’d have machine gun shooting ranges and full nude strip clubs over the line. Massachusetts used to be similar (New Hampshire was home to fireworks, cheap booze, nunchucks, tattoos and dog racing), but everyone thought it was stupid there.
Boomers questioned that authority, protested their wars, wanted sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and then suddenly middle age hit them and they yearned for the safety of the world their parents raised them in. Many of them even decided that their parents' houses of worship didn't go far enough, leaving moderate traditional churches for extreme and fundamentalist churches.
The two most underrated jobs in the US are boat and RV salesmen. Better percentage commissions at selling what amounts to house-level prices a lot of the time.
Come on, now you're just making things up.
Just like how the law enforcement beaten at the Capitol and those who have committed suicide afterwards (I think it's like 5 now?) are being called crisis actors.
I have a slew of my own terrible health issues, but I can't imagine what it's like living as somebody with something like cerebral palsy, who has near remission of debilitating symptoms while using marijuana (for some currently unknown reason, some have great symptomatic relief and some absolutely none at all), and not being able to legally or accessibly use it because of these stupid, mostly racist laws. I can't think of many better ways for a person, already suffering, to be told "we literally give not the slightest shit about you" by their representatives than issues like this.