How marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington is making the world better
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
The Washington Liquor Control Board, in its infinite wisdom, only authorized about 25% of the total amount of legal pot-growing necessary to satisfy demand in the state, which means that the black market here in Washington is still flourishing: http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/07/08/how-wash...
Thankfully, it sounds like the LCB started changing its tune about pot production on Friday, but given how slow they seem to be in implementation of things like this, who knows how long it'll be before there's enough legal supply for the state's demand. http://www.komonews.com/news/local/State-may-allow-more-lega...
But, this still doesn't address the other fundamental issue here: the number of places where you can legally buy marijuana in Seattle is currently 2 (not a typo).
So, there's definitely demand. I don't buy pot, and only very rarely smoke, but if I did, I'd definitely buy from a licensed shop despite the price increase. Guarantees about quality, funneling tax revenue back to the state, and ensuring that I'm not funding narcoterrorism would totally be worth it to me: http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2...
If a person smokes very regularly, yes. Your argument has merit, particularly among people with modest to low financial means.
However, people with average and above financial means, who also really are recreational users are likely to buy. (weekend, social, specific event users) They know doing so contributes to the acceptance and normalization of the activity, and that's worth a lot to everyone involved, save the black market dealers.
That's the hypocracy. It's not their behaviour that leads to acceptance, it's the state deciding what's acceptable or not . That is to incure tax and decrease spending, for all I care, and maybe a twisted social experiment of sorts, but not in first line for the well being of the people. Supporting that with the rhetorical finger pointing at The Terrorist is so utterly hypocritical, I'm at loss of words. Surely, the argument is not immoral, but it's completely missing the point. Us against The Terrorist is too simple a frame of mind, it's agrevating, but not to a calmed down stoner of course.
Those "calmed down" stoners may well be politically active. In the past, they were. The classic stereotype paints the stoner as living on the couch, munching, doing nothing.
Lots of those out there for sure. However, there are a lot of people who use lightly, or for creative reasons. Those people tend to be politically active. They also generally abhor bull shit.
Right now, I'm not sure our system can operate without some degree of hypocrisy. But, it is the system we have. There isn't going to be another one, so we've got to work with and sometimes hack the one we've got. Maybe it can be made better.
Also, the story I linked to previously was a finalist for a Pulitzer prize. I think that qualifies as being slightly more substantiated than "rhetorical finger pointing".
Finally, I'm disappointed that you felt compelled to resort to an ad hominem attack to try to make your point.
Meanwhile, you use an argument of authority. Keep your disappointment. I could point to a couple sources about the Terrorist strawman, but I'm sure you know the context.
Because that supply doesn't come close to meeting the demand, most people either have to see a doctor and get their green card, or keep buying on the black market.
I, for one, am looking forward to the renaissance that a more accepting attitude towards marijuana and psychedelics may herald. Both have the potential of transforming society, culture, and politics for the better.
Witness the great ferment of the psychedelic and cultural revolution of the 60's and 70's.
I hope I may live long enough to see the fruit of the next psychedelic revolution.
Most people who can read don't do much noteworthy with their knowledge, but that doesn't mean the invention of writing and the printing press weren't revolutionary technologies that had the potential to transform the cultures and societies that came in contact with them, and radically increase the potential of those people who best made use of them.
Psychedelics hold this potential.
It should be like tobacco in Australia where it cannot be advertised and is sold in plain packaging from behind a counter and cannot be displayed or promoted.
It should not be illegal but it is a health hazard and should be treated in the same terms as tobacco.
It's not a good thing that it is being sold as a "fun" product in cookies and food etc. Children should be discouraged from thinking it is a "fun" thing to do.
Unfortunately, it's not that harmless. I know plenty of people that have been smoking cannabis daily from an early age and they are suffering because of it.
That being said, I'm entirely for its legalisation, but there should be some reasonable middle ground between harassing users and ignoring the risks.
So no, I don't think they should be authorised to sell their tobacco cigarettes with cannabis inside! Actually, I hope that legalisation will give the opportunity to inform people about this.
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Conten...
I think someone should dig them up, so the world can know its heroes by name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Doughton
That said, Democrats are absolutely to blame, too, for the current state of our misguided drug war:
http://books.google.com/books?id=SGUJBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&ots=X6...
n.b. the author of the book linked to above is a close friend of mine.
Post-communist states did apologise for things they did decades before while being very different regimes. And that was a good thing; stubborness would be a disaster there, you can't move forward unless you repent.
If you think of it, Marujuana criminalization took a toll of human lives comparable to GULAG.
Basing your voting on whether your politicians are improving drug policy and/or have committed to do so on the future is totally reasonable. Basing your voting on your demand for an inherently empty ritual seems... not.
edited to add: Note that a Truth & Reconciliation type process is an entirely different thing - exposing and acknowledging the truth can be important and allow healing in ways that have no particular relationship to emotions fictionally experienced by the organization.
In that sense, speeches in senate are exactly that, even before laws are put in action. Sadly, my opinion about the credibility can't be written here in good faith.
You can certainly regret what you did not cause. You can express sympathy for what you did not cause. I think an apology is necessarily an expression of regret for something you had a role in, however. The word "sorry" expresses regret, but that regret is only part of an apology when there is some level of culpability. Apologizing on behalf of someone you've been associating with for a long while is regret that your impact did not lead to better behavior from them. Apologizing on behalf of someone you've just met seems weird to me. Apologizing for things done before you were born, even weirder.
As I've said elsewhere, that doesn't mean I have a strong opposition to people doing or saying weird things - I just think we should try and be clear in our thinking.
>Apology:
>A regretful acknowledgement of an offence or failure
) http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/apology
they simply don't regret it so the whole discussion is besides the point
>An etymology is not a word's "true meaning".
Anyway, it's still a good indicator.
>Given the wink, you may well know this
Indeed, I have no hope of convincing the MW editors here, or correcting what seems to be
>A word derived from another language can (and often does) acquire an entirely different meaning in its new environment.
It's not derived. It is the same word given a second meaning. Languages aren't separate entities, they are intertwined and defined by the speakers. In that sense you are right, a word should mean whatever it is intended to mean.
Still, it's a loanword and that implies a certain responsibility for the user, as with any loan. I don't see any argument for the necessity of transforming the meaning. I think the transformation is a mutation, coming from ignorant usage and that goes against my grain. Simplification might have merit, but I'm all for generalization.
>You can certainly regret what you did not cause. You can express sympathy for what you did not cause. I think an apology is necessarily an expression of regret for something you had a role in, however. The word "sorry" expresses regret, but that regret is only part of an apology when there is some level of culpability. Apologizing on behalf of someone you've been associating with for a long while is regret that your impact did not lead to better behavior from them. Apologizing on behalf of someone you've just met seems weird to me. Apologizing for things done before you were born, even weirder.
What's the reverse of the euphemism treadmill? Apology is suffering it. A proper apology would explain all the reasons for the laws, which are by the way still in action. The focus shouldn't be on acknowledgment, but on correcting the understanding of the situation, to ease any confusion. To my understanding
>As I've said elsewhere, that doesn't mean I have a strong opposition to people doing or saying weird things - I just think we should try and be clear in our thinking.
Exactly.
Therefore words heavily rely on context and the context here was clear. The GGGP demanded an excuse, a justification or most importantly a clear explanation as to why the law has changed.
Obviously though, that couldn't be expected, because there is no clear situation, on the federal level it's still illegal, there was no change. That, I think, really requires an explanation. That is a double standard, don't you see a new-speak reference in this?
A joke really didn't work out if it has to be explained at length. Maybe, because secretly I was angry that my english isn't perfect and it's your fault ;)
The 2009 apology by Gordon Brown made somewhat less sense. I don't have any strong opposition to well-intentioned nonsensical theatrics, but I think that it can lead to confusion and that keeping in mind that an organization is a different kind of thing than an individual is important.
Yes, the vast majority of beer is "big beer" and that's fine. For those actually wanting a great beer experience, they can get it.
IMHO, we will see the same thing with cannabis. There is a lot of variety, and there are also some clear "can't miss" strains that will prove sufficient to the majority of potential users.
For those really interested in that variety, I suspect the micro-brew type model will end up working well.
If medical laws are left alone in enough places, we will see ongoing variety come out of those efforts.
Funny thing, though, we've done a similar experiment with tax cuts for the wealthy three times now: once in the 1920's, once starting in the 1980s, and most recently in Kansas. The results have been similarly disastrous all three times. And yet we're still arguing about that too.
Cannabis prohibition, on the other hand, has historically been targeted explicitly at minorities (and later expanded as a way to scare young people out of counter-cultures). In a sense, it has been extremely effective at its intended goal: systematic oppression of The Other. (The fact that early demonization of marijuana was intertwined with fears of white women being seduced by jazz culture or raped by "reefer madness" also signals an evo-psych component: removing competitor males from the gene pool by locking up as many black men as possible.)
In addition to reducing undue U.S. interference with other countries' affairs, legalization is badly needed at home to reduce the prison population and address the racial injustices of the legal system.
Note: targeted at minorities by minorities.
The African American community was hugely supportive of the "War on Drugs", until it became clear that it wasn't helping.
But seriously, in the 1960s through 1990s, plenty of powerful African American politicians supported the War on Drugs. http://prisontime.org/files/2013/07/oberia-dempsey-war-on-dr... . The "War on Drugs" was built with huge support from the African American community, we Americans as a whole thought it would be good for us.
It was believed that the white man oppressed African Americans through the use of drugs. Therefore, by declaring the war on drugs, the Black man would become freer. Things didn't turn out that way :-(
Today, the "War on Drugs" is clearly not helping. Eric Holder / President Obama ordered the FBI / Justice Department to go easier against drug offenders.
So it is clear to our current leaders (as well as African American leaders) that we need to end the "War on Drugs".
You are talking about a much later stage, when the power dynamic was one of entrenched power.
I do think it is important to remember that the African American community was pretty happy with the inception of the "War on Drugs" however.
In the USA. And the rest of the world inherited that for free. Which is kind of sad actually, living by other people ideosyncrasies.
Cannabis (and pretty much every psychoactive drugs except alcohol) is prohibited in almost every countries in the world. Isn't it a bit simplistic to think that oppressing minorities was the only reason behind it?
Do you have a "when" in mind there? Cannabis has a colorful history in the USA, and it does not seem like its entire history has been centered on "suppressing the Other". To my knowledge it was originally regulated as a part of the opium/narcotics laws that swept the world in the early 1900's.
Whether or not it was worth the cost is a separate issue; I think it's pretty clear that it wasn't. But the argument can be made that it did "work" in reducing alcohol consumption.
As for Jim Crow 'working,' it's notable that drug prohibition has 'worked' as a Jim Crow as well.
That aside, the parallels regarding stronger formulations and compounds is spot on.
It's just not the way "worked" is used, and falling back on the most literal, narrow meaning of the term actually signals conceding the argument.
"We find that alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of Prohibition, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. During the next several years, however, alcohol consumption increased sharply to about 60-70 percent of its pre-Prohibition level."
If I was trying to prohibit something but could only manage to prevent 30-40 percent of it compared to when it was legal I would certainly feel I had failed. This is without factoring in all the other problems Prohibition caused.
Does it mean that all drugs should be freely sold? I have no doubt that cannabis should be legal: not only is it relatively harmless, but it's very easy to grow. But what about other more addictive and dangerous drugs?
If the argument is that everyone would just become drug addicts, I would argue that a hell of a lot of us already are drug addicts, just addicts to more socially acceptable drugs. And if reality can't compete with drugs, reality should step up its game.
No. Ron's First Law still applies: all extreme positions are wrong.
What about the comment is wrong to you? It made perfect sense to me, but if you've got another perspective then feel free to share it.
The problem has always been deficit spending. That spending wasn't cut with the tax cuts; or that tax cuts weren't paid for out of surplus (which obviously the modern US Govt. has rarely had).
For example, had George W. Bush not gone on a massive spending spree, there would have been zero deficit problem during his presidency in relation to the tax cuts. The problem was the extreme spending increases during his eight years, combined with cutting revenue.
There's no inherent moral basis to claim rich people should always get soaked on taxes, even when there's plenty of revenue such that you have a surplus - it's a question of balancing.
I'd argue unchecked spending expansion, drastically faster than the rate of population increase (ie what has happened in the last 13x years), is far more destructive than tax cuts for the wealthy. If you run a disciplined budget, and an efficient government, you will more than likely be able to bring down taxes for all people over time. The US has done the exact opposite lately, as have so many other failing welfare states across the globe.
There's absolutely a problem with relative tax burden shifts from the poor to the wealthy (which is what tax cuts disproportionately for the wealthy are), independently of overall spending/tax balance.
Whether deficit spending is a problem is a completely separate question (though I'd argue that the simple "deficit = bad" position is ludicrous, current spending in excess of revenue is good or bad based on what the spending is for and what the rationally expected outcome of the spending is; sure, interest has a cost, but there are benefits to weight against that cost if the spending is well-chosen.)
The data say otherwise.
> The problem has always been deficit spending
No. In Kansas they cut spending along with taxes (no choice -- a state can't run a long-term deficit). The result has been such an unmitigated disaster that even many prominent Republicans are now supporting the Democratic candidate for governor.