Enough already. Just legalize it federally and pinch it off.
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.
Generally, any mass scale stupidity that seemingly makes zero sense boils down to specific people making money. Bigger stupidity equals big financial gains
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.)
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.
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...
Marijuana convictions generate a lot of revenue, and in some places marijuana arrests are a significant chunk of all arrests.
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.