Cannabis is legal in most US states but federal laws block businesses from banks
usatoday.com
usatoday.com
A lot of right wing / libertarian adjacent people were hoping Trump would come out in favor of it as a 2020 election issue, to outflank Biden on at least one issue. It didn't happen, but I bet it would have made the election a bit closer -- it would have cooled support for Biden by a lot of younger and disillusioned voters.
I predict they'll make it a campaign issue and force the Republican candidate to come out strongly against it, to try to cool support from a lot of younger and pro-legalization Republicans.
My comment is that making the 2024 election a referendum on legalization (and a few other big issues like abortion) will likely be the good strategic play. You could imagine a future, though, where they go ignore legalization and focus entirely on abortion and other issues.
But they would risk getting outflanked on legalization by a more libertarian-minded Republican, which could cost the election due to reducing turnout of young and disillusioned voters who would otherwise go Dem.
My take is that most people don't see cannabis legalization as an important-enough issue. It's kind of "would be nice" issue that's overweighted by issues like economy, democracy, and immigration.
I'm not in the US, but that's my only explanation for why hasn't cannabis been legalized on the federal level yet, i.e. that people simply don't care enough about it to even be a part of the discussion.
The big divide is really by age. Older voters (in both parties) tend to oppose it. 72% of people under 30 are pro-legalization, but only 30% of people older than 75 are. The average for all US adults is 60%.
Younger voters' low turnout messes up the calculus here. But as soon as the number of young voters you'd gain exceeds the number of old voters a candidate would lose, you'll start to see this play out, and I think we're really close to that tipping point.
It wasn't included thanks to Republicans.
So whenever good people try and come up with ideas about literally any subject. the republicans ie McConnell are ready to strike it down 100% of the time.
It doesn't matter that it has majority support. It doesn't matter if it helps save American lives. It does not matter what the logistics are or how much money is involved. It does not matter if it helps military veterans and minorities.
Every plan. Every thought. Every move. will be without fail. Denied. Denied. Denied.
That is their only play. and it will also be their downfall. much like a DDOS attack on a network. All we have to do is create a network stronger then the ones they have in play and they will cease to exist entirely. aka - voting. and with republicans saying don't vote - don't vote with mail in ballots - don't vote early.
They got absolutely destroyed pushing their own agenda. Its honestly amazing.
>It passed the House seven times — receiving a whopping 321 votes last year — and had enough GOP support to reach 60 votes in the Senate.
>But it did not have the support of McConnell, whose opposition kept it out of the spending bill.
>McConnell first blocked the SAFE Banking Act’s inclusion in the defense bill earlier this month, arguing that it would make the U.S. financial system “more sympathetic to illegal drugs.”
The only true policy is a coherent policy- anything else is just the whims of whoever holds executive fiat.
It should just be fully legalized.
- Should be denied because its currently not passed yet
- https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1996
- Passed House (04/19/2021)
- " It should just be fully legalized " - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrHecD8JhfY
- Then why does the government lie to its own people to push agendas ? Why is that allowed ?
- Oh right its because nobody knows how to read anymore. or educate themselves.
- Banks violate federal law on purpose pay a slap on the wrist fine and keep engaging in behavior that ruins the lives of millions around the world yet here you are FUCKING ACTING LIKE YOUR ABOVE ALL THIS BULLSHIT.
- Naw fam. Read.
- EDIT: fentanyl is a bigger priority. Yet you would probably convince yourself that somehow overdosing millions of Americans is completely fine unchecked - https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/12/22/us-life-exp...
- " The fentanyl category of opioids accounted for 53,480 preventable deaths in 2020, representing a 59% increase over the 33,725 total in 2019. "
- " Preventable drug overdose deaths increased 34.4% in 2020, from 62,172 in 2019. In 2020, 83,558 people died from preventable drug overdoses – an increase of 649% since 1999. These deaths represent 91% of the total 91,799 drug overdose deaths in the United States, which also include suicide, homicide, and undetermined intents. "
- AND BANKS CANT TAKE CASH FROM ALREADY LEGAL BUSINESSES OK DUDE. WHATEVER YOU SAY
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico...
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/3...
https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/global-bank...
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-fines-16-major-w...
https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/industry/financia...
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/investing/wells-fargo-cfpb-fo...
> Primarily, these involved deposits of traveller's cheques in euros. They had sequential numbers and deposited larger amounts of money than any innocent travelling person would need, with inadequate or no KYC [know your client] information on them and what seemed to a trained eye to be dubious signatures. "It was basic work," he says. "They didn't answer the obvious questions: 'Is the transaction real, or does it look synthetic? Does the traveller's cheque meet the protocols? Is it all there, and if not, why not?'"
I've kind of become a bit of a voting reform absolutist for this reason. Publicly funded elections, get rid of first-past-the-post plurality voting (and replace with approval, ranked choice, anything really), electoral college reform, Wyoming rule, etc.
If these problems were fixed, the incentives to solve the other problems are much more aligned.
The only current method would be to somehow convince the people in power that they will need to overhaul the system to stay in power in the future. But that’s not gonna happen because the existing loopholes are so massive (e.g. gerrymandering), that they can basically guarantee that anyway.
It’s also not a policy issue, and it feels weird to vote for it (or vote for people who promise it), because it’s not a direct thing that will affect your daily life and is more second order than that.
That's not how the Senate works. A 50-50 "majority" is not full control.
In any case, it's pretty silly to blame the party that's on your side for not being able to overcome the bad-faith obstructionism of the opposing party. It's not about political "footballs", it's about having finite time and public attention to be able to get things done. If every single fight has to be dragged into the public to shame the other side into taking a few minutes off from looting and pillaging, then you have to prioritize and pick the optimal time for each battle.
Is that really the case? It is a bias towards the status quo.
Regardless, IMO the constituents represented by those parties don't benefit from it.
> It is a bias towards the status quo.
These are the same thing.
Given that these kingmakers are what causes things to go over 50-50 they want to preserve their power.
Not a fan of the status quo, but with two largely insane parties fighting for power, I'm thankful for moderating forces.
Blaming the party rather than individual Senators is not a helpful way of looking at the problem.
The filibuster continues to exist because it gives people like manchin compete power, so the most moderate of each party will always try to keep it alive.
Not to be a complete downer, but there is so much special interest money involved in our political system, neither the Democrats or the Republicans are on your side. They are both on the moneyed interest side. These political footballs are, for the most part, to string along voters on "hot button" issues to keep the public disinterested on the numerous things that these parties actually agree on, like expanded military spending, global expansionism, corporate tax reduction, lessening monopoly laws, reducing banking restrictions, reducing spending on interstate infrastructure, cutting education spending and restricting the ability for fair and equal elections through redistricting. All of these (and more I can't think of) are bipartisan efforts.
Sorry... I shouldn't watch the news. It's a bummer =)
> expanded military spending
Democrats don't really vote for this, certainly not to the same degree, but sure, I wish there were more difference.
> global expansionism
Vague to the point of meaninglessness.
> corporate tax reduction
Definitely not the same. Democrats recently pushed for a minimum corporate tax (https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-corporate-tax-plan-th...).
> lessening monopoly laws
Also vague, but not generally true. Democrats will vote for actual antitrust legislation; they won't vote for the Republicans using "anti-trust" as a meaningless scare-word to bash businesses they don't like for unrelated reasons.
> reducing banking restrictions
Maybe in the 90s, but not recently. Who wrote the Dodd-Frank Act, and who repealed it?
> reducing spending on interstate infrastructure
Vague, but not generally true. There are a bunch of major transportation projects (e.g. California HSR, DC's Purple Line) that have been held up for ages because Democrats will vote to fund them and then Republicans will take it away, or because it's impossible to get Republican states/counties to pay their fair share. For telecomms, Democrats will tend to push more for equitable-access programs, whereas Republicans will frame corporate tax cuts as "infrastructure spending" as long as some infrastructure-related companies benefit. Go look at the numbers and priorities in the 2021 infrastructure bill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_Investment_and_...), which passed on mostly party lines, and tell me the parties agree on cutting infrastructure spending.
> cutting education spending
Laughably false. Go look at the per-student education budget per state. (Federal DoE spending YoY is kind of weird because it's washed out by college loan financing; most direct spending on education is at the state level.)
> restricting the ability for fair and equal elections through redistricting
Seriously, you're going to sit there and argue, in the year 2022, that the parties are the same on election fairness? The fact that the Democrats don't aggressively gerrymander is why they don't currently hold the House - the New York legislature could have chopped up Long Island differently to stem the losses. More generally, Democrats consistently vote for protecting ballot access, against Republicans who nakedly want to make it more difficult to vote - and that's setting aside the whole armed-insurrection-to-overthrow-an-election thing, which, last I checked, 90% of the Republican party will still fall in line for.
Act how?
Unlike marriage (where the FFC clause gives Congress an explicit power), the “codify Roe” refrain was always hollow since without Roe being a 14th Amendment right there is no real Constitutional argument for authority for federal codification.
This was simply yet another issue that was intentionally managed to benefit The Politics Industrial Complex.
Note: I don't consider HuffPost to be a beacon of journalism. It's simply the top of the SERP. I'm confident better have reported the same.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-codify-roe-v-wade-congr...
The Affordable Care Act is probably the most impactful law passed by Democrats in the recent past. In a survey of 2000 voters, a staggering thirty-five percent did not know [1] that the ACA and the colloquial "Obamacare" were the same thing. Bizarrely, an additional number didn't know that 'Obamacare repealed = ACA repealed'.
I cannot blame either party for playing political football when dealing with this sort of electorate.
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[1] https://www.npr.org/2017/02/11/514732211/obamacare-and-affor...
I DO support a basic civics and mathematics test, on a recurring basis, for voters. HOWEVER, that's only with the catch that failing or opting out of the test creates benefits designed to encourage the citizen to pass the test in the future. A benefit like, access to public education to work on that math skills and civics awareness. Or possibly someone is disabled (often silently, dementia is a real issue!) and the voter tests might be one of the places it's discovered.
Also, literacy tests were ruled unconstitutional in Oregon v. Mitchell.
That's what is so mind-boggling to me.
The US as a whole spends more on healthcare than any other OECD country, and the fact that most people in the electorate don't care about this is kind of depressing.
Even Massachusetts elected a Republican Senator!
Even now I don’t think the Democrats gain much from bringing it up,
Them having full control wasn't enough.
Democrats passed it in the House and all Democratic Senators supported it in the Senate. However, Republicans killed it because Democrats wanted the Omnibus bill to pass for which support from Mitch McConnell was necessary. Mitch McConnell was opposed to this Cannabis bill.
Link: https://thehill.com/policy/finance/3782514-marijuana-advocat...
The War on Drugs has effectively brainwashed most people to think that the best way to control "dangerous" drugs is to make them illegal.
And the politics of this is that were the Dems to try to do this then the GOP would campaign on the Dems trying to give drugs to kids like candy.
The DEA regularly describes it as dangerousness: “Schedule I is the most dangerous!”
But it’s not dangerousness, it’s whether there is a medical use.
Marijuana didn’t have a medical use, because it’s not very powerful. It makes you feel dizzy and hungry. If it was a drug, spinning around in circles would he schedule I.
Heroin is powerful enough to be a legit pain killer, so it’s Schedule II.
This really is a case of reporters not doing their job.
That’s what a democracy is. Democracies aren’t nicer places to live because our politicians are nice people. It’s because our interests happen to align with those of politicians. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
CGP Grey had a nice video on this, which I plagiarized for the comment above:
Every decision will result in some people supporting you and others working to kick you out of office.
If you don’t tread carefully you won’t be in power long.
It has nothing to do with the American system and everything to do with democratic representation in government.
Actually, they made this move just recently, not tied to an election. But Republicans blocked it in Senate.
Obama was elected on his promise of "hope" and "change" and he asked his voter base what to spend his time on. The top two issues were health care and cannabis. He noped cannabis.
Perhaps making this an election issue is actually the necessary ingredient to bring republicans on board.
If the polls are to be believed, this seems an unlikely outcome. I don't see a Republican candidate doing this, but stranger things have happened, I guess.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/11/22/americans-o...
All this ambiguity is just grinding inefficiency in the meantime. Look at all that states where this is legal or decriminalized:
https://disa.com/maps/marijuana-legality-by-state
And even in states where it’s still illegal, I really have trouble believing they are spending a whole lot of time enforcing that. States have legalized it, they have seen great tax revenue, they have not seen huge swatches of marijuana-related crimes and medical emergencies (though I admit that’s hard to pick out above the noise of all the other stuff over the past few years). It’s going to happen. Everyone knows it’s going to happen. But we have to go through this song and dance where we keep it illegal, because reasons.
States have seen increased theft from marijuana businesses. Both because they need to hold a lot of cash (very related to being locked out of banking) and because the weed itself has some resale value on the black market.
(I still think legalization is obviously worth it, just want to clarify that particular part of your statement.)
That is possibly selection bias. Marijuana thefts were previously not reported to the authorities, so it is difficult to estimate whether the actual number of thefts has changed.
What I don’t want is broad normalization of it. Maybe some cultures do just fine with that, but the trend is America has been to maximize the individual liberty without any concept of duty or decency to others, and the obvious consequence is rampant abuse and widespread degeneracy that everyone is subjected to whether they consent to it or not. In other words, I don’t think we’re mature enough as a society to have easy access to the cookie jar without deciding to eat cookies for every meal. Walk through the streets of NYC or SF to see what I mean. People don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves, and giving them more tools to be self indulgent while avoiding social responsibility + spewing externalities is just a no-go at the moment.
I imagine a world with legal weed is a lot like a world with legal porn: it’s everywhere, even children get exposed to it insanely young, people treat it like “a human right” and so fight any reasonable restrictions made to curb the broader social effects, and the externalities hit everyone whether they like it or not.
Not every vice needs to be legal. Keep it illegal and weaken enforcement. Keep it a taboo, and for those who really need it they can still find it.
And for the record: I have edibles at home. I’m not against responsible weed use at all, I just don’t think society at large will be responsible users and I don’t want to live in a society full of that. Porn went through the exact same evolution as weed is and now it’s everywhere
You base this on extreme idea that when weed is legalized it will be literally everywhere, which is incorrect, outdated and the very source of utter republican clusterfuck that War on drugs was and is. Hasn't this produced enough evil in whole world so we should wise up for a change?
I base the idea that weed will proliferate based on the trajectory of porn or alcohol: they ARE everywhere.
There was an old expression "say know to drugs". I spent a lot of time as a teen reading about various drugs and their effects. Ultimately, it made me stop exploring. Otherwise I probably would have taken way more risks (which I did before discovering sites such as Erowid back then).
I have a teenager, and so far so good. Whether it's fast-food, drugs, alcohol, sex or porn, they exist. My logic usually has been: 1) wait if you can, 2) be moderate, 3) know the good and the bad, learn to set boundaries.
My main grief is with alcohol. It's glorified, associated to socializing and sports. The bad impacts of alcohol are taboo, and yet they're everywhere, but it's a big business. I like a drink now and then, with my partner or with friends, but with my partner we have a hard boundary of 2 glasses per week each, and with friends it's max 3 pints, max twice per month. Cannabis twice per month, in small quantities.
Yes, they should. We've collectively agreed that dangerous drugs should be legal (i.e., alcohol and tobacco). Making them illegal doesn't make it go away, it just fosters criminal activity.
Tax and regulate them. Educate the people about the dangers (honestly) and treat abuse as a health issue, not a criminal issue.
Then throw away those edibles (that some body might confuse with food) and replace it with the safer, much safer, dried flower.
By "legalization", I'm talking mostly about THC edibles. There are now hemp-based edibles which contain as much THC as traditional MJ edibles. Legal in all states. Achieved thanks to the Hemp Act and some creative processing of hemp.
It's an interesting wrinkle to this whole mess.
Not actually seriously dangerous to one's health to eat cannabis on purpose. But extremely disconcerting and discombobulating if consumed accidentally.
Even on purpose it is easy to overdose. Not a lethal overdose but still deeply unpleasant.
Given that there are very few problems with smoking it (surprisingly, there should be, but the data is quite clear - few risks) this really demonstrates the moral depravity of drug laws.
So he sees his opportunity and becomes their "partner."
If it's a legal business, banks should not discriminate against the dealers. They're not selling fentanyl, after all.
[1] https://time.com/4080110/dea-medical-marijuana-california-ru...
https://hightimes.com/news/trump-makes-deal-protect-states-l...
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-issues-mem...
However, federal law since 2014 has prohibited expenditures of federal funds to interfere with state medical cannabis laws, which limits what the executive can do (on its face, it only applies to state medical-use laws, though, so in principal federal enforcement against state-legal not-purely-medical marijuana might be viable.)
That said, raids are relatively rare now due to executive order and the Oakland mess. In 2012 the DEA raided Oaksterdam [1] without properly notifying the Oakland PD, tying them up right as a local college was getting shot up [2]. It was a minor scandal that collapsed support for the DEA on the west coast and they haven’t done much cannabis enforcement since.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaksterdam_University#Raid
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikos_University_shooting
That's not how it works, taxpayers enjoy fifth amendment protections against self incrimination.
IRS can't share this information with other LE without a warrant anyway.
Yes, though there is a federal policy against most enforcement activity where use is allowed by state law. But, yes, its still illegal, and those making lots of money in (or even as major investors in firms in) the industry are violating the drug kingpin statute and, were the non-enforcement policy to be removed, coild suddenly find themselves facing 20+ year, or life, sentences in federal prison.
This has a significant effect on who is in the industry and how they conduct business.
Turns out Box realized this client was in the cannabis industry and shut their service off for violating TOS. We did get into the accounts after working with support so we could migrate, but there were no warnings. I guess reading and abiding by the TOS should be warning enough, but no one had actually read it.
I absolutely hate having a persistent divergence between laws on the books, and what's enforced. In my view, that gap exists only to be exploited by villains: both those who would selfishly break the law, and those who would capriciously enforce it. Policies like this make chumps of anyone who obeys such laws, invites tyranny, and are anti-democratic.
It took me a long time to realize that my views were in the minority. I still struggle to understand how that could be. But I think I see a trend where this correlates with Asperger's. I'm curious if others see this too.
From city councils to the oval office, a lot of leaders have a short list of who's approval they need and can't get to do anything at all.
Federalism invites this type of incongruity. The silver lining is that it's a game that keeps a certain type of person preoccupied so as not to pursue worse ways of exploiting the rest of us.
At least, I don’t think I have that, but I sure hate the unfortunate fact that the world (and this seems to be universal, not specific to any country or culture) is that way.
The common thread being that everyone agrees up front what the rules are, and then expects all parties to adhere to them.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dp3e4y/the-us-government-has...
There's at least 1 federally legal marijuana patient.
1: https://business.dutchie.com/payments
2: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-05/how-to-bu...
This is not only the case for USA - but something you see in other countries.
Maybe something more specific to the US, would be the people and corporations that benefit from keeping cannabis illegal, and thus lobby equally hard against it.
Sometimes market liberalization and conservative thinking does not go hand in hand.
Be careful what you put in your body. Especially if the thing is some novel substance. I guess this principle applies much more broadly than to cannabis.
In the same time we let people freely get drowned in one of strongest addictions - nicotine. Oh but we banned (in some places) advertisement for it. We even get kids get hooked on it for life too via vaping.
Kind of worried about the following scenario: US legalise weed with next to no regulations on e.g advertising. US consumerism/advertising + social media + lack of widespread cultural norms = massive peak in usage short term. Anti-drug lobby uses this as "proof" that legalisation is wrong, convincing enough politicians to keep Europe in the dark ages for another 20 years.
One of his episodes involves a medieval Germany who has outlawed a ton of things and has tortured people hanging high in the sky off a massive church. One of his points in the episode is that if you end up making too many things illegal, people just stop caring and continue to do the illegal thing. Makes me wonder if my country's heavy handed approached just ended up making people more curious and now cannabis is very popular.
Germany’s current legislation attempts are thwarted by EU which prohibits any legal market for the drug.
NL style decriminalization is OK because it’s still illegal, individual users are just not prosecuted and the state turns a blind eye on the shops.
But the shops have to get their supply on the black market - something Germany explicitly does not want.
But EU does not allow a legal market.
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/3782514-marijuana-advocat...
This might inadvertently be a limit on corporate size/power, and you might get lots of smaller players competing instead of one or two big "efficient" players.
Granted, customers will need something like BLW [3]. If they've got no other options to pay the merchant, then that should be sufficient.
Accept either physical Federal Reserve Notes, or decentralized electronic payments.
They generally take cash, debit card, and a prepaid debit card (something prepaid like that) and use modern PoS.
Bank access is coming soon too.
Technically, at least in CA/OR, they're often just processed as an ATM withdrawal that occurs at point of sale.
What's the reason for CA/OR? Local banking shouldn't be an issue?
Variability in currency would destroy these companies quickly.
Please explain how you would protect yourself from adverse price movements in cryptocurrencies as a merchant to ensure you have enough USD to pay all your obligations.
Edit: OP, if you're going to completely change the last sentence of your post after people respond, which then changes your point, at least highlight that you've made a significant change.
The federal government just doesn’t enforce it in most cases. The DEA can start enforcing tomorrow if they wanted
I’m sure it would go down really really well if the DEA started arresting people for simple possession in states where it’s perfectly legal.
To say its legal is simply wrong
To say that is "simply wrong" is to ignore nuance and, in point of fact, is "simply wrong". It is legal at the state level, meaning no state official will punish you for it. It is illegal at the federal level, meaning a federal official could punish you for it.
Isn't nuance fun!? :)
It's also why so much is pushed for to be done at the Federal level, because it completely sidesteps the chance for States to make their own local laws on the matter. The danger there, is that as it turns out, different places/populations have different views on things, which often do not exactly line up with D.C.'s.
Hence why Federal overreach side of things has been a hot button topic in politics for decades.
So no, the line is definitely not as clear as “federal law supersedes state law, period.” It’s a lot more nuanced than that, and in practice, in most situations it’s the state law that reigns supreme.
The Constitution is a subset of federal law
> which are much more on par than you're suggesting.
The Constitution disagrees; Art VI ¶ 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
I said "laws" specifically so the ambiguity you are using would not exist.
I kid you not. Link below, read it.
The same logic that is applied to making production of fully automatic weapons for personal use a no-no in a State that explicitly allows it is the exact same legal logic that makes THC prosecutable at will by the Feds.
You can't take out one without taking out the other, because they both stem from the most abusable pieces of jurisprudence ever admitted to the U.S. code.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
Enjoy. If you are a U.S. citizen, this is the case that basically gave the Feds carte blanche to drop in on anything because of whatever tenuous excuse the judges/DA's in question decided to apply to link it to Interstate Commerce.
I have come across few cases that make me scream more than Wickard v. Filburn.
> Possession of a handgun near a school is not an economic activity and doesn't have a substantial effect on interstate commerce, and therefore cannot be regulated by Congress. The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 is unconstitutional.
And even more riduculous is the fact that certain justices dissented on this opinion.
Of course it’s all heavily politicized, but the federal government really loves milking the commerce clause ad absurdum.
I would like to get the pulse of hn on this:
What do we think if e.g. the Coca-Cola Company got in the pot business? Is the fact that these Federal constraints are keeping big business out of the pot business good or bad?
The President of the United States, head of Executive branch, directed with enforcement of Federal law has pardoned ALL federal marijuana convictions and doesn't plan to pursue more.
It is effectively legal federally, no matter how much that makes you clutch your pearls.
The current federal government has determined it to be an issue left to the states. Reducing the influence the federal government has in everyday American's lives, it's left the Republican party in quite an ironic situation.
It is not "effectively legal". You cannot do any of these while possessing and/or using marijuana:
* Pass federal employment drug tests
* ̶F̶l̶y̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶n̶e̶
* Buy a gun
etc.
Don't let perfection get in the way of progress, you claim to be pro-legalization but any conversation regarding the progress of it you only bring up the negatives and letter-of-the-law exclusions.
News flash buddy, there's lots of shit you can't fly with. Lot's of other reasons to not be allowed to purchase a gun. As well as other legal substances that will prevent you from passing federal employment drug tests (Hemp-derived CBD, Kratom). That doesn't make those things any more illegal, just a side-effect of the federal governments involvement in your life.
I've even had a TSA agent rummage through my carry-on in Oakland airport, pull out prerolls and buds, dig further to find the half-full water bottle I forgot I'd had, tell me they have to throw it away, and return my cannabis to me. I've flown with it entirely too many times to count, never attempting to conceal it, and have never had a problem.
The only time you're likely to run into trouble flying out of a legal state is if it looks like you're traveling with the intent to distribute.
It is still illegal, and all it will take is someone plopping into the Exec seat and getting a hair, then it is back to square 1.
Legal exposure is kind of like HIV, herpes, or COVID. There is a big difference between "I don't have it", and "It's not an issue right now", wherein the exact state of affairs drastically effects how one moves forward.
Until it is off the books /repealed, nothing has changed in the grand scheme of things.
Because we've reached this point, you're not going to see someone come into the exec seat and target weed. It's just not going to happen. The cat's out of the bag and it's not going back in.
So yes, things have changed in the grand scheme of things. This is progress, even if it's a fucked up legal grey area.
It would be fascinating and good for consumers because they could be held accountable for regulating an industry that is badly in need of it.
That doesn’t change my opinion of Philip Morris (or parent company Altria). Evil sons of bitches through and through.
Cresco Labs, Verano Holdings, Curaleaf.
Going to a Cresco run "Sunnyside" dispensary is like the Apple store of pot. It's kind of ridiculous.
You were not kidding: https://www.crescolabs.com/ & hey, there is one near me.
Publicly traded corporation. Pays taxes.
That's one of the biggest fears of cannabis producers in states where it's currently legal, and it's actually a reason for some of the small business not supporting federal legalization. They don't want Amazon to invest billions of dollars, completely destroying current dispensaries.
I think the problem is that in the world of billion to trillion dollar corporations, like Amazon or Wallmart, the business can't be mediocre to survive. In the past, simply being "all right" got you by, but big corporations can do "all right" products. To survive nowadays, businesses must differentiate from the corporations to survive.
For the consumers, I think corporations taking over "all right" businesses is a good thing. For the society at large..? This probably shrinks the middle class throughout the world, and increases inequality in multiple ways, e.g. the inequality between the one CEO (and upper management) and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of employees. So I'd personally count that as a "probably pretty horrible" reality.
They are defacto legalized, because practically those agencies won’t. But that is not the same thing.
The Supreme Court ruled back in the Great Depression days that the feds can regulate local businesses, if the goods sold are similar to goods sold that could be sold in interstate commerce.
So the DEA is still a thing.
0: https://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/resources/305201382913275685...
I think that implying that it's "legal" in certain places, which has happened repeatedly over the last decade, is part of the problem. If everyone thinks cannabis is already legal, then who is going to push for federal legalization?
And since when were national laws made by consumers? Federal legalization will happen when a big industry partner wants it it be legalized and not before.
And it is completely false that this only affects the "industry itself". There are other federal laws that concern the rights and privileges of people who use illegal drugs. For instance, if you use federally illegal drugs, you may not legally purchase (or possess) a firearm. There are other examples in terms of employment, etc.
Regarding drugs and guns — how is that enforced? Can’t see how a gun dealer would know.
Also, employers can drug test for nicotine, which is legal, and deny employmet.
> Regarding drugs and guns — how is that enforced? Can’t see how a gun dealer would know.
All gun dealers must record form ATF form 4473 for each gun purchase, which specifically asks questions about drug use. If you say yes, you will be denied the gun. If you lie, you may face up to 5 years in prison plus $10K fines. If your state has a medical marijuana registry, this may be cross referenced. If you are later found to be in possession of a gun and marijuana (or evidence of use like a marijuana card), you are a "prohibited person" in illegal possession of a firearm. These still happen, they just get reported as "weapons charges" because that's what they are.
> Also, employers can drug test for nicotine, which is legal, and deny employmet.
Federal jobs (or federally regulated jobs, i.e. being a pilot[0]) don't ban it.
0: https://www.kgns.tv/content/news/Colorado-pilot-fired-after-...
I said how I'd write the headline above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34118464
If you can wave cannabis around in front of a policeman and have no fear of repercussions than it is legal in practice.
> Relying on Congress’ abstract assertions, the Court has endorsed making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one’s own home for one’s own medicinal use. This overreaching stifles an express choice by some States, concerned for the lives and liberties of their people, to regulate medical marijuana differently.
> If the Federal Government can regulate growing a half-dozen cannabis plants for personal consumption (not because it is interstate commerce, but because it is inextricably bound up with interstate commerce), then Congress' Article I powers – as expanded by the Necessary and Proper Clause – have no meaningful limits.
I would also note that the Cole memo was rescinded in 2018 by Sessions and decisions about enforcement were pushed back onto federal DAs. I do not believe that Garland has reversed Sessions memo so the blind eye policy is informal.
The 13 with no legalization:
Idaho
Wyoming
Nebraska
Kansas
Iowa
Wisconsin
Indiana
Kentucky
Texas
Tennessee
North Carolina
South Carolina
Georgia
This is a clumsy summary, ANAL
Safe to say we can all ignore that treaty with impunity.
edit: Oh and the sky didn’t fall either. If anything, the opposite: marijuana isn’t a cool edgy thing anymore. You just do it if you want to, or don’t if you don’t.
The black market still exists, but prices have cratered, so assuming black market demand is unchanged (it’s probably lower), the criminal element has shrunk in size.
I wouldn’t call using the office of the privacy commissioner as cover for CSIS “resource extraction” or “financial engineering”, but I’ll give them credit, they are quite good at playing dumb.
Are you saying US is not a signatory to the convention?
Are you saying that US is not bound by international agreements, treaties and contracts that it has signed up to, of it's own accord?
Are you saying that US can leave the agreement at any time? (I beleive it can)
Or are you saying that is US breaks the obligations it signed up to, the UN cannot hold it accountable?
In general the US, as the world dominant cultural, military and economic power, signs agreements to bind others, not themselves.
Primacy to do what?
No, it isn't. The Constitution is the basis of the entire system, and it defines the powers of the Federal government. The 10th amendment says:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
This simply isn't true. There are areas where federal laws can contravene states laws and areas where they cannot.
Additionally, the federal laws often don't "trump" state laws, but supplement them. Generally speaking (there are exceptions), state law enforcement can only enforce state laws.
That is quite properly nuanced, and "in most cases" means "those cases where the Federal law is constitutional." SCOTUS rules on that issue all the time.
The "states' rights" framing of the US Civil War skips over which specific right the southerns states were willing to die for. It wasn't abstract, though it was papered over as such.
The history of later southern political leaders (e.g. Richard Russell) confirms that the fundamental issue was the enslavement (ideal, for them) or segregation and oppression of blacks in the US.
Which isn't to say that the state vs. federal power struggle of constitutional interpretation isn't still happening. These cases rise to the SCOTUS regularly. The US Civil War, however, wasn't that.
Seems to me these aren't mutually exclusive. I find your argument to be overly concerned with injustice of slavery. No one is defending it. And the southern states absolutely did not want to adhere to the laws set by the northern states.
In the abstract, they are not.
Its just that the slavery explanation is factually true and the other is false, though it represents part of one sides propaganda (and more strongly that of the retrospective sympathizers of that side than the actual side, which was quite explicit about slavery specifically as the motivation.)
Florida trying to tell California what to do is by definition not a states rights issue.
At the end of the day there are as many causes for the war as there are people participating, there can be various factors that led to the outbreak of the war, and sometimes we are lucky and they are clear cut, but often there will be several different prominent factors and trying to attribute the war to any one of them is just historical masturbatory navel gazing, or more insidiously trying to rewrite history to fit an agenda.
So those who claim the Civil War was only about slavery are just as disingenuous as those who claim the Civil war was only about states rights. Ultimately these were both major contributing factors and trying to attach primacy to one of them is unproductive and pointless.
If you want a perfect example go ahead and tell me what caused WW1.
The civil war was fought because the southern states wanted to maintain their slave economy. It is as clear, cut and dried as that. Individual southerners may have fought for glory, for Suzy to love them, for money, or for any other reason, but the prosecutors of the war effort for the south did it because their economy was dependent on slaves and they wanted that to continue. It's not disingenuous to state that.
If you want to get that reductive than I am right. The Civil war happened because the Confederate States of America fired on Fort Sumter and everything else was ancillary. Just like WW1 happened because the Archduke Franz Ferdinand got assassinated.
Youre argument is overly reductive and your ignorant of history
To add to the sibling comments, the southern states hated states' rights when northern states were liberating escaped slaves within their jurisdiction. The Fugitive Slave Act immediately destroys any argument that the Civil War was about states' rights.
States rights was a huge deal from day one, to the point that the mostly forgotten original government of the United States was a confederation of nominally sovereign states, almost EU style. Under the Articles of Confederation, the US government was very weak.
Slavery was essential to southern land barons. It was not essential to northern industrialists, who were better off with immigrant labor. The issue at the end of the day is that Southern wealth was largely defined by chattel slaves - they were the human equivalent of industrial equipment. End of the day, it was about amoral consideration of preserving wealth above all else. (A lesson for any era certainly)
The problem was that the writing was on the wall - machines would replace slaves. But the owners of these big slave estates needed the political power to keep it going long enough to pivot to something new — the vision as I understand it was to build the west with slavery and realize imperialist visions with slavery in Latin America.
Wrapping this craven nonsense in high minded ideals was key for support and to get soldiers. Johnny Reb wasn’t dying for his slaves, for the most part these guys were victims of slavery in a sense as well as the wages for working class people were suppressed by enslaved people.
It’s important to fight lost cause bullshit. But the path to victory is rejecting the notion of slavery attacking the moral failure of slavery and association with it. Bikeshedding over trivia is like arguing with gun nerds over the nuances of firearms.
As another thread points out, if slavery was prohibited in all the new states from the West, it would be game over in Congress, and the slave states knew it. Hence the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
That said: "save the Union" was a much bigger motivator for Union soldiers than "abolish slavery." That's what made them volunteer.
For the Southern soldiers who mostly did not own any slaves, it was more "defending our homes and our way of life" than "states' rights."
In other words, it's more nuanced than you present.
Mississippi’s is even more explicit https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp - “Our position is thoroughly identified with slavery — the greatest material interest of the world”
The civil war was fought because slave states wanted to force slavery on other parts of our country, outside their own borders.
Solvevo Wellness, Delta 9, and Maitri Medical should all be raided the by the goddamn DEA, and I say that as someone who had nothing but pleasant experiences in Amsterdam, Denver, Las Vegas, and California when I was purchasing recreationally.
As I said when speaking with the governor's office yesterday, I am not going to renew my card lest I reward extortion and abuse that never seems to cease.
(As they say in Appalachia: fuck around and find out -- sue me for slander if you don't like what I've written, you literal gangsters.)