Alaskans vote to legalize marijuana | Hacker News Reader

Alaskans vote to legalize marijuana

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319 pointslygi211 comments

Here's an interesting piece of the Alaska marijuana legal status. We just voted to legalize recreational marijuana use, which includes growing and selling marijuana. I'm happy to see it pass because possession has been legal here for a long time, but sales and distribution has not. That's a murky legal situation, which I'm happy to see cleared up.

But last night an article ran in our local paper stating that the Coast Guard will continue to enforce federal marijuana regulations [0]. In Alaska, that's a huge asterisk next to legalization. You can't carry marijuana on a boat, which includes the ferries in southeast and throughout the Gulf of Alaska. That also impacts all of the villages throughout the state whose main access is by river. And finally, transporting marijuana by air is against federal regulations as well. That means marijuana is essentially legalized on the road system of Alaska, which leaves much of the state in another legal limbo.

I look forward to the day where the entire country has a more reasonable approach to marijuana regulation.

[0] http://juneauempire.com/local/2014-11-03/smoke-water#.VFpFQT...

As a Seattleite I was optimistic things might change at the federal level when Obama appointed Kerlikowski as drug czar, given his experience as police chief in what even in 2009 was a very cannabis friendly city. I guess I was just another sucker for hope and change that never materialized.

The US government is a pretty big boat and takes a while to turn around. You have to have patience and a longer view, but change does happen. In 2012 it was two states. Now it's four. We're getting there.

Exactly. Ten years ago gay marriage was illegal in all but one state. Now it's legal in all but 15, and even that number is shrinking rapidly.

The issue at the Federal level is not too long ago the US went around bullying UN nations into signing a unified drug treaty which is in effect for I believe 90 years. The idea was that if all countries agree on banning certain drugs, it can have a more unified effort in eradicating said drugs. It mostly targeted hard drugs, but marijuana is also named in the treaty.

It would be very difficult for the US to back out of or alter the very treaty we pressured most of the world into signing not that long ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_D...

That's a very good point - it's the basic reason that Obama can't 'end the drug war with a stroke of his pen' as some people seem to imagine, because treaties ratified by the US have almost constitutional standing in legal terms, and need to be formally derogated rather than legislated away. While the US could certainly do so without suffering meaningful sanctions or major geopolitical harm over the long term, indifference to treaty obligations is often the hallmark of an insular political viewpoint - but then such people also tend to be uninterested in the ramifications for international trade and cross-border institutions in the first place.

That said, the SCND dates back to 1961 which was 53 years ago, and those countries which have openly stepped back from full compliance with it such as Portugal and Uruguay don't seem to have incurred any disadvantage or sanctions worth talking about, though you might argue that they had little or no political capital to lose in the first place. I do think there's a global shift towards looking at drug abuse and addiction as public health issues rather than moral vices, so while there's pressure form some quarters to maintain or strengthen anti-drug enforcement there's also pressure to adopt more utilitarian policies focused on harm minimization and demand management.

I think the convention will not be explicitly derogated any time soon, but will rather be allowed to become a dead letter through diminished contributions of fiscal and political capital for enforcement, while being nominally and loudly upheld by more authoritarian regimes as both a blunt instrument in trade negotiations and as a proxy for the rule of law.

The difficulty in removing them is also why legislation enacted by way of treaties should be vigorously debated in an open forum, as opposed to the way the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been negotiated.

I think up-or-down votes or referenda are more appropriate for that. Multilateral treaties are inherently legislative documents, and legislating-to-legislate looks like a self-defeating increase in complexity - there's a reason that governments have executive as well as legislative functions, even though they ,may not always yield results we like in the short term.

I mean, imagine if the votes of US senators on individual issues were governed by the outcome of votes in state legislatures - you'd have a more responsive democracy on the face of things but in practice legislative work would slow to an utter crawl and you'd have even more procedural maneuvering than we do now.

I'm personally hoping the incoming congress gives the President fast-track authority to negotiate both the TPP and TTIP, which would be a shrewd political tactic; while I don't much like that it might benefit the GOP, that's outweighed by my support of free trade and my low opinion of economic populism and national sovereignty (just to be up=front about my political biases).

> I'm personally hoping the incoming congress gives the President fast-track authority to negotiate both the TPP and TTIP

He doesn't need congressional approval -- that's exactly how the TPP has been getting negotiated this entire time -- and is exactly why it's so outstandingly bad.

Back room deals regarding IP rights (pushed hard by the MPAA, RIAA and other lobbying organizations) among many other blanketed things that the public has no knowledge of nor any say in but will ultimately be as effective as law here in the country. (so much for the legislative branch)

You are mistaken. Existing negotiations are geared towards the production of a preliminary draft that would then be subject to legislative debate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_track_(trade)

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33743.pdf <<CRS is the Congressional Research Service, a useful resource for anyone interested in policy matters

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/195858-white-hous...

(so much for the legislative branch)

I could say the same thing about the executive branch, which persons like yourself seem to think should merely administrate the legislative will. Our constitutional design institutionalizes tension between these two branches of government, and very explicitly grants the President power to make treaties, subject to a 2/3 approval from the Senate for ratification.

Trade agreements are not exactly the same as treaties, but there is ample precedent for Congress pre-emptively authorizing the President to negotiate them. The consitutional basis for this is discussed in some detail near the start of the CRS paper linked above.

PS I don't mean you're mistaken about your disapproval of fast track negotiation - that's a completely valid opinion, albeit one with which I disagree. I just meant you were mistaken in regard to your assertion that the President doesn't need to consult Congress. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Given that the executive branch has prosecutorial discretion and never has been shy of using it when it mattered, I do not believe the "treaties make us do this" argument. Maybe the federal government could not have full de-jure legalize for some technical reasons. But it is completely capable to restrain the zeal of prosecution and reduce both the number of cases and the priority of those to a wide degree. If only they wanted to. Instead, the government tries to squash the legalize even when it happens (look up Operation Choke Point[1]). It's not something forced by treaties, it's a voluntary act. Not that the US is in mortal fear of sanctions from Pakistan or Colombia for not fighting drugs enough, but it's not treaties that make police kill a teen because they suspect he has a small bag of drugs [2] or kill a senior citizen in his own bed because they suspect he has some drugs (he didn't) [3]. It's something that the government can and must fix, and no treaty prevents it from doing so. The legal technicalities can come later, but the switch from a mentality where the government is at war with its own citizens should happen now. It should have happened years ago, actually.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014...

[2] http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2014/05/teen-dead-after...

[3] http://reason.com/blog/2014/02/15/yet-another-example-of-why...

I don't disagree about enforcement policy, which is in dire need of a top-to-bottom overhaul. It seems to me that the US could be fully compliant with its treaty obligations and even maintain an unpermissive attitude to drug use without enforcing the paramilitary enforcement tactics that have become commonplace. But the legal/constitutional framework within which drug policy is often overlooked in such debates, which was why I wanted to discuss it here.

Those stories are just heartbreaking.

>because treaties ratified by the US have almost constitutional standing in legal terms, and need to be formally derogated rather than legislated away.

As a matter of domestic law, that's not the case. Treaties are on the same level as federal legislation and the last in time controls. There are a series of court cases that disfavor implied abrogragation under comity principles, but if a later-in-time statute is in clear and unavoidable conflict with an earlier treaty, the statute controls.

Thanks for the correction. I certainly overstated it - I was thinking about pre-emption of state law and the limits of administrative fiat, and let my imagination run away a bit!

Treaty obligations do not have "almost constitutional standing". Treaty obligations have exactly the same standing as any law passed by Congress, whether they're constitutionally ratified (which is extremely rare), or congressional-executive (the common kind), in which the president signs a treaty that is completely non-binding on the US, but promises that Congress will enact legislation to fulfill its terms[0].

In either case, there is zero domestic legal consequence to deciding to ignore the treaty provisions. Technically a decision by the executive branch to violate treaty provisions is a violation of federal law, but there are no consequences. Obviously, if the US decides to violate a treaty agreement there may well be international consequences, including other nations' decisions to back out of the treaty, to refuse to trust the US in other negotiations or treaties, etc. All of that, of course, is exactly the same regardless of whether or not there is a formal process of derogation.

[0] There's a third form of treaty, "sole executive". That form is applicable when the treaty obligations are entirely within the scope of presidential power, such as Status Of Forces Agreements which the president executes in his role as Commander-In-Chief. Those, of course, have no legal standing at all except as lawful orders from the president to his employees.

It's sad to say this, but that's not the real reason.

The US ignores various agreements it's signed all the time, and international conventions, etc.

So I'd say, you're right, but only because it's convenient for them to adhere to it.

It will be very easy for the US to back out of or alter that treaty, for several reasons.

1) The US often does not abide by things the way most other countries are expected to. If we want to back out, nobody can stop us, there will be no negative consequences, nobody is going to embargo or sanction the US over the matter. Is that fair? Of course not, but that's one of the 'perks' of being the lone superpower.

2) Everybody else will celebrate. Most people realize at this point that prohibition does not work very well in most of the world (countries like Japan being the freak outlier due to culture; but I'd argue even they would benefit from liberalized drug policies).

3) The rest of the world wants to tear down the failed war on drugs that the US initiated. They will be eager to welcome a shift in attitude from the US Government. Now that the people of the US want to tear down the failed war on drugs, that is exactly what will happen, slowly but surely. Nothing can stop it now, there has been a fundamental culture shift in the US over the last 20 years, and once that goes a direction, there is nothing that can stop it (see: gay marriage, women's suffrage, civil rights).

It's not just that the U.S. is a big boat, it's that the federal government is necessarily slow to respond to local changes. At the national level, the consensus in favor of legalizing marijuana shifted to a slight majority just last year: http://www.people-press.org/2013/04/04/majority-now-supports.... Indeed, if we're talking about the voting public, rather than just the general population, the national consensus is likely still in favor of keeping it illegal, since actual voters skew older and more conservative than the population as a whole.

Furthermore, the drug policy boat in particular is very big. A lot of this policy, and the institutions implementing it, was developed in the 1980's and 1990's. In 1991, the consensus in favor of making marijuana illegal was an overwhelming 78-17. Being anti-drug was a political winner, something both sides of the aisle could get behind. Almost everyone old enough to have substantial leadership within the drug enforcement organizations grew up in an intensely anti-drug culture. It will take quite some time for those folks to age out of the system.

Actually, I think when Tobacco and Pharmacy companies start to get a piece of the financial incentives in the states where it is legal, you will see their lobbying arm start to influence federal elections on the national level. It is assumed that Marlboro/Camel or whichever tobacco company, could expand their market tremendously with legalized marijuana federal legislation.

I am not an expert (anyone want to chime in?), however it seems right now, the industry does not seem to have any real monopolies and that individual dispensaries (which also have farms?) are making most of the money, rather than any corporations.

Drug Czar is an executive appointment. If Obama had been the change he campaigned on he could have directed that the DEA, an _executive_ agency stop enforcing federal law on marijuana in states where it's been legalised. The grandparent wasn't talking about "the government". He was talking about Obama.

Marijuana laws are up to Congress, not the executive. They have discretion in how they enforce the laws to an extent, but they shouldn't just ignore them.

Congress makes the laws, the Executive enforces them, SCOTUS determines their Constitutionality. So in fact, one check that the Executive can have on the Legislative is in not enforcing laws.

There is an obligation on the part of the executive to enforce the laws passed by congress. The constitution requires that he "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Clearly there's some room for prioritization and allocation of scarce resources but he can't just ignore them. The Executive's check on the legislative branch is the veto power.

There are at least two was to interpret that phrase:

1 - he must take care that when the laws are executed, they are done so faithfully.

2 - he must execute all the laws, and do so faithfully.

The first of these interpretations does not require that every law be executed.

"The Executive's check on the legislative branch is the veto power."

The President also has the "power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States". Choosing not to enforce something is in fact a weaker exercise of power than pardon, as it preserves the ability of future administrations to prosecute current infractions.

There is a concept of prosecutorial discretion, and the current administration is not shy at all of using it.

The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 grants the head of the Food and Drug Administration authority to designate and remove illegal drugs from the schedules of controlled substances. The FDA can remove marijuana at any time and as long as the DEA director doesn't object, that is the law.

The DEA and FDA directors serve at the pleasure of the president. Thus, Obama can legalize marijuana if he wants to. He doesn't remotely want to.

Interesting! I had thought that at least some drugs like marijuana were directly enshrined in the law.

I didn't think drug enforcement was a duty of the Coast Guard. Usually anything related to cargo and crew is the CBP's responsibility, while the Coast Guard is about safety (life-jackets and -boats, certifications, search and rescue, etc.).

It's a drug and you're in or operating a vehicle I'd say it's no different than having an open bottle of alcohol.

Police in my province have been trained to spot DUI of drugs (besides alcohol) mostly pot since it seems many people think it's OK to drive stoned.

Having an open bottle of alcohol and drinking it is legal on a boat. You just can't be intoxicated.

In the Gulf of Mexico and the area around Florida, the Coast Guard does an enormous amount of drug-traffic-policing.

Looks like there's a wide swathe of "homeland security" missions on top of the more traditional missions I was aware of, deemed "non-homeland security":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Coast_Guard#Missi...

I wonder how this all interacts with the CBP.

Around here, Southern California, the Coast Guard regularly does drug interdiction duty. The boating safety stuff is usually done by the Harbor Patrol/Sheriff's Department.

US Coast Guard patrols down here in Costa Rica all the time specifically hunting for drugs.

The USCG has several sets of classes of ships, informally known as black, white and red hull. Black does what you say, white does border patrol for drugs and people illegally entering the country, and red is scientific and icebreaking. See http://www.uscg.mil/proceedings/spring2011/articles/10_Tlapa...

The Coast Guard has a very interesting set of law enforcement, military, and regulatory authorities.

By air, as at airport security, has been policed as a local issue, not federal.

Correct - if you're flying intra-California you are free to carry your medicine with you on the plane for example.

Once the plane leaves the ground it enters federal jurisdiction and medical marijuana is contraband. I learned this during training for my pilot's license. One of the examiners in my area liked to ask candidates about this during their oral examinations and all the instructors knew to make sure their students knew the right answer :)

Didn't DC just vote to legalize it, you just cannot buy or sell it.

Here is to hoping the next big issue after marriage equality if fixing our drug laws, which are more damaging than many will admit and far too profitable to law enforcement and the prison industry.

Profitable? It costs the state a lot to hold a prisoner.

Yes but you're forgetting that there's a private prison industry. A lot of states have outsourced it. I feel that's what Shivetya was alluding to.

I believe they're referring to the private prison industry, which makes a pretty penny off locking up non-violent drug offenders. Their trade organization listed liberalizing drug laws as a potential threat to their bottom line in their last annual report, so we can expect that they will fiercely lobby against anything happening at a federal level.

I feel like this situation is overstated a lot. Something like 8% of prisoners in the US are in privately run prisons, which could be a problem, but it's not the massive number that is often implied.

That's still 8% too much.

That still means there are millionaires out there lobbying to keep drug laws as is so they can keep filling their prisons. And the other 92% of prisons probably have a ton of people behind bars due to drug laws because of the 8% of prisons that lobby for & profit from them.

As though the 92% isn't attempting to hold onto its massive profit system. There's vastly more money flowing into pockets in the 92% than in the 8%, that's logically obvious.

Jobs, graft, construction, maintenance, slave labor, etc. - huge sums of profit derived from the government prison system, far more than in the corporate system.

As though the 92% of that equation is looking to give up its jobs and tax dollars. Because we just know how much the government likes to give up its spending.

> Something like 8% of prisoners in the US are in privately run prisons

For the other 92%, how much work does that state-run prison contract out to private companies?

People do often overestimate how many prisoners are in privately-run prisons, but at the same time, if the US suddenly had 10% fewer prisoners, those privately-run prisons would likely be the first to go.

As far as lobbying, the other 92% of prisoners are guarded by very powerful public sector unions, whose incentives are the same.

It's not just the privately run prison complexes, but also suppliers, consultancies, police equipment manufacturers, arms manufacturers, and so. That's the 'industrial' in prison industrial complex.

That's true, but 8% of anything in the US is a lot. There's roughly 2.2 million prisoners so maybe 200k of them are held in private prisons. And as someone points out upthread, when you add in all that prison-building, the firms that deliver services tot he corrections market and so on, it adds up to a lot of economic activity.

About 133,000 as of 2013. And two companies (CCA and GEO Group), both of whom are aggressively fighting for tougher laws as a matter of course have about 129,000 bed capacity.

It's absolutely massive when you consider that locking up humans in cages is perhaps not the sort of thing we ought to encourage by making the practice lucrative.

The existence of even a single for-profit prison provides a perverse incentive to put the marginal criminal into a private, profit-generating cage rather than a public, tax-draining, politically-risky rehabilitation or diversion program.

Furthermore, it is an invitation to corruption. Remember the judge that was sending juvenile defendants to a reform camp, often regardless of the merits of their cases, because he was getting kickbacks from the camp?

Something like 8% of prisoners in the US are in privately run prisons, which could be a problem, but it's not the massive number that is often implied.

Quick, off the top of your head: do you have any idea just how many people are incarcerated in this country, in both absolute and per-capita terms, and how those figures compare to, say, every other country on Earth?

8% of the US prison population is a HELL of a lot of people.

The government makes a lot more money locking people up than the private prison industry does.

It's 11 times larger. That's a lot of tax money to roll around in, and generates a ton of profit in the form of slave labor manufacturing, graft, jobs that politicians use as platforms, labor unions that get kickbacks and get to dole out well paying jobs.

What's the difference, when we're speaking of "profit" when it comes to whether the corporate prison generates a 7% margin, or whether that 7% goes to a union at a government prison? There is no real difference, it's just a matter of whose pocket the cash ends up in.

As with most politics, decisions aren't made by the people who actually incur the costs.

Exactly. That means there's a whole industry / sector of government trying to make it look like a lot of people should be prisoners to protect their jobs and expand their departments.

Yes, profitable. For example, prison guard unions lobby ferociously against relaxing drug laws, in order to protect prison guards' jobs and salaries:

http://www.republicreport.org/2012/marijuana-lobby-illegal/

http://mic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the-snake-how-califor...

EDIT: Here's a cute quote from Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit prison companies:

"any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them." [0]

[0] - http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9N...

It's true they have a financial incentive to maintain current drug laws, but those same incentives exist for many important roles.

If someone comes up with a cure for cancer, a lot of oncologists are going to be out of a job. Does that mean that oncologists are actively suppressing cancer cures?

Many uninformed people honestly do believe that, yes.

This might be the most useless analogy I have ever encountered. I'm sorry, I don't mean to attack you but I honestly have no idea what your point is.

Corrections Corporation of America and other private prison companies openly fight efforts to relax drugs laws. Same for prison guard unions; In 2008 the CCPoA, California's largest prison guard union, was the most active opponent of Prop 5, which would have expanded treatment for non-violent drug offenders, and reduced criminal penalties for non-violent drug crimes [1].

As far as I know, oncologists are not fighting cancer research in order to protect their careers.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_5_%2820...

I guess I'm questioning why the assumption is that they support drug laws because it makes them money. They may be supporting it for other reasons (strongly support law and order).

They have a duty to their shareholders to grow revenue and stay in business. If something threatens that, they will fight it. Like many other commercial enterprise they will spend money on lobbying to protect profits, in this case it is just particularly sickening how big the problem has become.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBDvxy5qQY

You just proved my point! Doctors who work in a group practice have a fiduciary duty to grow revenue. Does that mean doctors cut corners to make more money? I'm sure some do.

Do private prisons fight relaxing laws to make more money? I'm sure some do, but most don't.

> Do private prisons fight relaxing laws to make more money? I'm sure some do, but most don't.

Corrections Corporation of America does, and they account for more than 80,000 of the 133,000 private prison beds in the US. GEO Group does, and they account for about 49,000. Together they thus represents the vast majority of private prisons in the US.

Both of them are part of ALEC - a DC base lobbying group that develops model legislation that it then pushes as a means for state legislators to be "tough on crime".

But are they doing it to make more money? Or because they believe in the legislation?

@metrix many prisons are run by for-profit companies. It costs the taxpayers a lot, but there is profit to be made, and some elected officials benefit at least indirectly. edit: awkward wording

>many prisons are run by for-profit companies.

Citation for the "Many"?

Only about 5% of prisoners are in private prisons.

Given how many prisons are in the US, that probably still qualifies as 'many'...

I've got 8.4% (2013 U.S. DOJ statistics) via WikiPedia

if you add prison guards unions - which are formally non-profit, and that only means that they have no taxes to pay and they have nobody else to give the formal profit away, and as result they have all the money they collect to themselves - you'd get pretty much 100% of US prisons run by organizations with direct financial interests in growing the prisons in size and number.

By that logic, wouldn't every part of government with unions be "run by organizations with direct financial interests in growing...?"

That seems like it would be a union problem and not a prison problem.

Except in this case, peoples' freedoms are denied. Versus, say, waiting longer in line at the DMV.

yep, there is a reason why military for example aren't allowed to form a union. I hope CIA/FBI/NSA aren't allowed to have it too. And prison guards and police shouldn't be allowed to. Holders of "license for violence" shouldn't have masters other than the government hierarchy they belong to thus minimizing conflict of interests.

That's a common narrative, but it's not the driving force behind the drug war. Look at corruption, look at hardened attitudes on drugs, look at race, look at civil asset forfeiture, look at the militarization of law enforcement. That's where the momentum for the drug war is coming from, not so much from for-profit prison systems (though that does add a small component).

Not to mention private prisons have never been a large fraction of the prison system. The drug war dates to the late 1960s - and goes back further culturally. Corporate prisons were even less relevant when the drug war started putting tons of people in prison circa 1980, than they are today.

The problem is the US Government, and always has been.

The government is the for-profit prison system.

The money made on prisons, is made by construction firms, labor that works at the prison, and slave labor used to manufacture things. There is a ton of profit being made from government prisons.

I always find it bizarre that people point to the 5% to 8% problem - corporate prisons - and think that is the problem, while pretending the huge money that circles around the other 92% - the government prisons - is benign by comparison. The other 92% is even more vile than the 8% corporate prisons - it's 11 times larger.

If you look at who's making profit on war on drugs, look up how much money is taken by civil forfeiture. That's where the real money is. And by real money I mean millions, hundreds of millions. Just one case: http://www.government-fleet.com/news/story/2012/04/rhode-isl... There are many, many more. And not only from fatcats - there are thousand of forfeiture cases for sums like $300-$500.

I think in DC the situation will be that private individuals can't sell it, but there will be licensed dispensaries. That's pending congressional approval though. (Really it's pending congress not striking it down, which they seem loathe to do except for one very zealous committee member without much power).

> I think in DC the situation will be that private individuals can't sell it, but there will be licensed dispensaries.

No, the DC provision does not allow for licensed dispensaries for recreational use[0]. (Dispensaries for medical use have just begun opening under the medical law passed in 2011, but this is separate from the situation in Colorado post-Amendment 64).

> That's pending congressional approval though. (Really it's pending congress not striking it down, which they seem loathe to do except for one very zealous committee member without much power).

Do you have a source for this? Congress has struck down similar measures from DC in the past.

[0] http://dcmj.org/ballot-initiative/

Oops you're right, I thought the initiative had a provision for the dispensaries to sell to everyone, but that will have to happen in the city council. Grosso has a bill pending for it, but media doesn't seem to think the council is in a hurry; they'll at least wait out congress.

I'm trying to track down my source for the approval, but the general thought seems to be that the republicans other than Andy Harris (aforementioned super opposed member) are less likely to start a fight where they're in the minority on a "state's rights" issue during what should be a quiet legislative session.

Harris isn't a committee chair so he can't bring up the ban/amendment without help. I don't know the committee politics to well enough to know this is likely; but usually they sneak these things in as budget riders which takes the approval of the committee chair.

Wait until the pressure grows and then the coast guard will change their stance to, "we follow the local laws". This happened with the TSA in states with medical marijuana, even in Alaska. States rights, the fact that the people voted for it, is going to play a huge role going forward.

While this may technically be true, in practice the feds aren't going to charge you for personal possession unless they're specifically targeting you for some other reason. IIRC the feds usually don't charge you unless you have more than 100 kilograms.

It just boggles the mind how perversely government logic looks here. So Alaskans say: we are OK with people using marijuana, we see no problem with it. And then the Feds come and say - well, we are still going to arrest and imprison you if you do it, despite the clear will of the people of Alaska, because we can. We know we don't actually change anything as we absolutely can not prevent people of Alaska from using marijuana, but we still will prosecute random people unlucky enough to be caught by us in Alaska while doing the thing completely legal and OK in Alaska, because that's what we do.

This cuts both ways.... do you really think, that, say, Mississippi, should be able to inact anything 51% of the voters vote for? It'd be back to the Jim Crow days.

We're talking not about "anything". We're talking about specific thing where the law enforcement enforces arbitrary prohibition against the will of the same people they pretend to protect. Comparing this to Jim Crow laws makes no sense - Jim Crow laws limited people's rights, legalization expands people's rights. Jim Crow laws was an arbitrary governmental restriction, legalization removes the arbitrary governmental restriction. If anything, you should be asking what if the Feds had Jim Crow laws and some state would say they would not support it anymore - is it good for Feds to try and force them to still abide by such laws?

Not that there is absolutely any evidence theres even 10% of voters in Mississippi - let alone 51% - that would really support instituting Jim Crow laws now. For starters, 37.5% of Mississippi population is African-American, and it would require 88% of white vote to achieve 51%. Are you seriously claiming 88% of Mississippi white population - I assume you don't go as far as assuming African-American citizens of Mississippi want to introduce Jim Crow laws - are not only fervently racist, but actually want Jim Crow laws? Any data to back that ridiculous assumption?

30 years spent living in the deep south. Maybe it wouldn't hit 51% but I guarantee you it would be a lot higher than 10%. You're also assuming equal voter turnout and no voter suppresion. These are both, shall we say, optimistic.

Of course, I'm pretty sure there are racists in the south - as well as everywhere else, this is a common mental malady, which, like lice, often manifests itself when proper hygiene is not maintained. However the claim that virtually all white population is so racist as to wish for return of Jim Crow laws feels a bit strong to me. As for voter turnout, it looks like specifically for Mississippi it's not that bad: http://www.governing.com/blogs/by-the-numbers/changes-in-vot... and actually white voters' numbers are lower than black voters', while overall turnout is one of the highest in the nation - it looks like MS citizens take their voting seriously. Overall, 82% turnout doesn't sound bad at all, and if the hypothetical vote would be on something as outrageous as Jim Crow laws, I would think these numbers would further increase.

> Jim Crow laws limited people's rights, legalization expands people's rights. Jim Crow laws was an arbitrary governmental restriction, legalization removes the arbitrary governmental restriction.

As far as I know, those objections are irrelevant -- there is nothing saying "expanding people rights" or "removing governmental restrictions" are preferable compared to the opposite acts. As long as two acts of law both abide by US constitutional rules, they are equal in "goodness".

Well, maybe for you expanding rights and removing rights is the same thing. For me, it's not. Actually, I remember there was such thing as a Constitution where some guys wrote that people have the rights and government should be restricted in curtailing these rights, and they seemed to think that people's rights are preferable and government restrictions can be made only in specific limited areas. But what do they know? They're long dead anyway.

But let me ask you this: if for you it's the same, what problem you have with Jim Crow? After all, Jim Crow laws were approved by many courts and were considered very constitutional for a long time. So for you there was no problem with them? I know why I'd have problem with that - because they remove people's rights, and for only reason that they are of a "wrong" race. For me it's bad. But if for you there's no difference between people's right and government restrictions and one is not preferable to the other, what exactly is the problem there for you?

> I remember there was such thing as a Constitution where some guys wrote that people have the rights and government should be restricted in curtailing these rights, and they seemed to think that people's rights are preferable and government restrictions can be made only in specific limited areas.

I think you're jumbling up various documents there.

> After all, Jim Crow laws were approved by many courts and were considered very constitutional for a long time. So for you there was no problem with them?

From a legal standpoint, no, there was no problem (well, except for state-sponsored school segregation, which was ruled unconstitutional). From my (and likely yours) moral and cultural standpoint, they were terrible and this eventually resulted in the act that abolished them all. Both the act that instituted them and the act that abolished them were perfectly legitimate in their own way.

Morality and law are different things. The former can provide impetus for forging the latter, but confusing them is a Bad Thing and it's what leads you to Iran.

No, what leads you to Iran is the stance "if it's legal then it's OK". There are a lot of things that are legal but not OK, and when pointed to something that is not OK arguing "but it is legal!" is exactly the confusion in which you implicate me. My argument is exactly that - that what the Feds are doing is immoral and makes no sense. "But separation of powers!" is an Iran-like answer to this, if you like such comparisons - it's just saying "who cares about moral if we have the laws that we ourselves crafted that allow us to do what we want".

> what leads you to Iran is the stance "if it's legal then it's OK".

Nope. What I said is that, if it's legal then it's OK from a legal perspective, which is a tautology really and I can't believe I'm still explaining it to you.

> "But separation of powers!" is an Iran-like answer to this

To the contrary, the Iranian answer is to implicate moral into everything so that the law has to answer to "superior values", and to be honest I struggle to understand how you could fail to see this (unless you don't really know how Iran runs -- hint: religious/moral authority trumps regular law).

Separation of powers starts with the "two swords" of religious and temporal power being handled in different ways by different people, back when these topics were first seriously discussed in Europe (one could argue that the "unto Caesar" line is the start of this particular debate, but it was basically ignored for centuries afterwards). When people realized that this separation alone was not enough of a guarantee, they split it further (roughly along Montesquieu's lines) exactly so that nobody could inflict its own personal moral code on the whole of the community without the community agreeing first. When the community changes its stance (because of moral or technical changes or whatever), then it collectively agrees that laws should change, and new law supersedes old law. This is how the system should work in a democratic society (which is not to say that's actually what happens, but it's the ideal we strive for, so to speak).

Law shouldn't answer to anything but future law. The US Constitution lives about most other laws, but it's still "just" law.

That is how progress is achieved and how we can all live together without starting religious wars every other day.

Ahem: http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2014/11/05/...

What's perverse about the logic here? Alaskans say: we're okay with people using marijuana. And the Feds say: that's great, but we're not okay with it and as long as it involves interstate transportation or the coastal waters of the United States, we'll arrest you for it.

That's precisely the separation of state and federal power the founders envisioned.

All it takes is you sending a picture postcard using the US Postal Service during your 'crime' to make it a federal thing.

This sort of hack to elevate crimes to federal level has been abused plenty of drugs cases in the past, so that separation of state and federal powers is mostly a matter of decorum, if the feds want to be involved in a case they will be.

How is it a "hack" for the federal government to assert jurisdiction over a crime that involved the use of a federal service?

The postal service being used within a state should not make a non-federal crime a federal crime. "Not crossing state lines" versus "using a service that could be used to cross state lines".

The perverse part is that people who are supposed to protect the rights of the Alaskans are instead actively working to deny them those rights, while hiding behind the flimsy excuse of "separation of state". It's definitely not what the founders envisioned - the "commerce clause" - the reason-to-go for every federal power expansion now - was meant to prevent trade bareers between states, not to allow the Feds to suppress state decisions under the guise of "oh, it might influence the price of marijuana in other states, so it's commerce, so we can do whatever we want". Calling this "precisely what the founders envisioned" is just laughable.

I think the fact that this boggles your mind says a lot more about your inability to understand other people's point of view than it says about the policies of the federal government (or the government of Alaska for that matter).

Local hydroponics would work fine here. Energy is Alaska cheap, a local store can setup a hydroponics shop pretty easily. Why import?

I still find it very strange that California wasn't one of the first states to legalize marijuana. Now there are three states ahead.

EDIT: Looking at the results, these counties that voted 'No' surprised me

Los Angeles County (Los Angeles, Long Beach, Glendale, Santa Clarita, Pomona, Palmdale, Pasadena, Torrance, Inglewood, Burbank, Carson, Santa Monica etc.)

Santa Clara County (San Jose, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Gilroy, Palo Alto)

Riverside County (Riverside, Moreno Valley, Corona, Palm Springs)

Orange County (Santa Ana, Anaheim, Irvine, Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach)

It might as well be legal in California. The medical marijuana provision is so loose you can get a prescription for almost any reason whatsoever. And the number of dispensaries got so out of control that even LA backed off a little. Still, I have about 10 dispensaries within a 5 minute drive of me.

Maybe illicit growers and sellers in those areas want to avoid government intervention in their process and profits? I have no idea how much voting power that industry has, though.

I don't feel that growers currently have much voting power or even enough money to influence elections.

Maybe not the growers themselves, but there's a lot of money there, and I guarantee somewhere along the line it flows through the hands of people with wealth & power to protect.

Not yet, in CA. That time will come, but in 2010 (Prop. 19) the growers and vendors were not organized enough to make anything happen. The inevitable consolidation has still not occurred in 2014, but you're right, it will eventually.

No, the point is the black market wanted Prop. 19 defeated, because if you legalize it they lose their profits. (Some parts of) the black market wants drugs to say illegal.

Yes but has there been evidence of the cartels funding political campaigns in the US?

If they were it would almost certainly be through a front in such a way that it wasn't publicly known about unless/until a scandal broke stopping that particular incident. As to whether that's likely to be happening... I've absolutely no idea, for all I know it could be extremely likely, or conspiracy theory level.

I'm really very skeptical when it comes to the US. Why? It's very difficult for them to transport money since they're mostly shut out of the international banking system. Even when they get some access, it doesn't last long (see HSBC).

Another reason is I feel that most bribes in the US are more subtle: they're in the form of political campaign funding, non-profit funding, a future board member, and so on... You need access to the banking system to do that stuff easily.

The impression I've always had was that money laundering, as long as they dont mind losing a big chuck of their cash by doing it, is pretty easy - and therefore if they saw the value in getting it into a legal banking system (to lobby through a non-illegal front) it wouldn't be impossible, just more expensive than lobbying with legal money. But the extent of my knowledge on money laundering comes 30% from an old friend who used to work for a bank detecting it and 70% from breaking bad, so could easily be wrong!

I get your point. I'm saying no segment of the MJ/MMJ market was strong enough in LA County to swing the election. The pushback from rank-and-file residents against the dispensaries was in the front sections of the LA Times for months. The growers were not part of the discussion.

It's true that there are multiple constituencies in the MJ/MMJ community (patients, recreational users, growers of all kinds, licensed dispensaries, unlicensed, street gangs, cartels) and that Prop. 19 split them. Perhaps a different Prop. might have made the MJ community slide definitively to one side or the other, but that's a different question.

The neighborhood where I live was affected by this, and one of the lightning rods was a friend (interviewed in the LA Times several times), as were some people on the other side. That makes me consider myself well-informed, but who knows, maybe I'm biased. ;-)

Yes there is a lot of money. It's in the pharmaceutical and alcohol industry lobbies. There will be a strong marijuana lobby one day, but it doesn't exist now.

The marijuana growers in California did not support legalization as they felt (correctly) that it would impact their profit. They supported the status quo, which was enough to defeat legalization in California.

That's a second-order effect. The first-order effect is that even large, urban areas like LA did not get behind Prop. 19. The growers have minimal influence on LA voters.

The growers have a lot of money though, that can be directed (or not) to supporting lobbying groups/advertising. And when the vote is close, small groups can have an outsized influence.

Another important element in California, of course, is the Prison Guard unions - they are a very powerful and wealthy lobby, and are directly threatened by legalization efforts, though, with universal "medical availability" - their sun is waning.

California will eventually make the move though, it's inane to believe any state will, in the long term, allow legal nicotine, legal alcohol, but illegal cannabis, particularly now that there are states in which the results of legalized cannabis show that it's not a major threat to society - unlike alcohol and nicotine, which do a lot more damage.

The long term might be measured in decades, but not centuries.

It will be interesting to see how some of the more conservative states like Singapore (Death to Drug Dealers) will deal with this type of cognitive dissonance.

> The growers have a lot of money though, that can be directed (or not) to supporting lobbying groups/advertising.

They have neither the resources or the lobbyists that come close to what either the pharma or alcohol industries have. Maybe this will change when the markets in CO, WA, and AK mature.

This is all interesting, but it's also possible that Prop 19 failed because it was an extraordinarily overreaching measure. Here's the text:

http://ballotpedia.org/Text_of_Proposition_19,_the_%22Regula...

Note that Prop 19 in effect makes marijuana use a protected class, in much the same manner as race, gender, and religion are. Employers, under Prop 19, could make personnel decisions based on an employee or candidate's marijuana consumption only if they could demonstrate in court that marijuana "actually impaired" the employee's job performance.

It gets worse: California's largest employers include companies that for any number of reasons have drug-free workplace policies that Prop 19 would have made unlawful overnight. Some of those policies are contractually required by relationships with companies operating in states where cannabis is criminalized.

Maybe discrimination against cannabis users is as important a public policy issue as discrimination against African Americans or Muslims. But the smart political strategy probably would have been to make its use not a crime first.

California had a legalization ballot initiative some years ago that was poorly written and went too far. It failed.

We had four this year, but none got enough support to actually make it on the final ballot. Californian potheads generally don't feel the need as strongly as in other states because our medical marijuana laws are so very liberal.

Legalization will probably be on the ballot again in 2016.

Four, actually (or five including DC): Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and DC.

I live in LA county. The reason the initiative failed in LA county is that we had a rash of fly-by-night MMJ dispensaries popping up everywhere. They looked shady: armed guards standing outside, blacked-out storefront windows, typically not run/owned by anyone identifiable in the community. The look from the street was like a massage parlor or strip club.

When cities, like LA proper, tried to regulate them by establishing a permit process, the MMJ dispensaries fought back in the courts (which is their right), and there ensued a legal cat-and-mouse game that stretched on for years. Because medical MJ is used in CA as a surrogate for legalization, it was hard to have an honest debate.

Given the failure of local regulation, there was a backlash against going farther. It'll work itself out. And then we'll see how it looks, because as with everything else under the sun, legalization won't be a panacea.

It might be helpful to note that a major reason for armed guards could be the inability to keep money in proper banks, due to federal laws. When one doesn't allow law abiding citizens to participate in a seemingly reasonable manner, I don't think it is any surprise that criminals and other societal outcasts tend to fill the void....

(As an aside, even with the change to federal regulations earlier this year, it is unclear that it even affects and allows California dispensaries to legally deposit money as they are not state regulated, which I believe was a stipulation, but someone more informed might be able to correct me.)

> ...inability to keep money in proper banks, due to federal laws...

I agree. This contradiction (partly legal, partly not) discouraged typical law-abiding citizens from entering the MMJ business.

I think there was also a tax angle, in that you had a hard time reporting the MMJ income as taxable, but if you didn't, you were evading taxes.

The operator of a dispensary up the street from me was pinched by the feds boarding a private plane with a suitcase containing about $60K in cash. (It's not like it was a flight to Mexico, it was all within CA.)

So, like it or not, because of the way we have regularized MJ, that's the type of incumbent "businesspeople" we have.

I'm not sure I buy that. Colorado also passed medical before full legalization and basically was in the same situation as CA in terms of medical dispensaries opening everywhere, run mostly by "out of towners".

DC and Oregon too. I think DC in particular will be interesting because Congress has power over DC it does not have with states. Could be the opening for a national debate (or the newly elected Congress could simply crush it).

DC legalizing- Christmas came early for Late Night show writers and hosts.

I expect it to get a lot of play in the media. In addition to being the seat of government, DC is the first place to vote for legalization on the East Coast.

Although the change has already been passed (overwhelmingly) by referendum, the city council still has to submit the changes to Congress, which will have 60 days to veto them. Further, at any point in the future they can restrict what DC can do via amendments to must-pass spending bills.

>DC is the first place to vote for legalization on the East Coast.

That is true but most of the Northeast has decriminalized it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._st...

> DC is the first place to vote for legalization on the East Coast.

Well, DC is a city, and Portland, Maine actually already voted to legalize marijuana in 2013[0].

If DC were a state, it'd be the first state on the east coast, but it's not. It's the first city that is not part of a state (and therefore not subject to constitutional rights allowed states), which is what makes this case very interesting.

DC is tricky because it's such a special case, but remember that it's much easier to pass an initiative at the city level than at the state level.

[0] http://www.mpp.org/states/maine/

Is it easier to pass an initiative in a city than in a state with a similar population? DC proper has a similar population to states like Wyoming and Vermont.

Still yes; DC has a 14 member city council that meets frequently with a long legislative session, and a mayor.

Even the smallest states have a few hundred legislators in 2 houses, and much shorter legislative calendars to get things done in.

These are ballot initiatives that didn't go through the legislature. And for what it's worth, DC doesn't make it especially easy to get something on the ballot.

The initial steps (decriminalization, medical marijuana) were taken in the council though, and those set the stage.

Your question re:ballot initiatives interested me so I looked it up; signature-wise it takes 5% of DC voters distributed through 5/8 wards to get something on the ballot [0]. That's around 23,000 verified signatures. There are also the normal review periods/court challenges that are common in (nearly?) every state.

In Wyoming it's 15% of registered voters, nearly double DC, plus a fiscal review in addition to the normal court challenges.[1] I can't find anything saying direct initiatives are legal at all in Vermont, except constitutional amendments which come through the legislature [2].

In alaska (bigger but apropos since they legalized too) it takes about 30,000 signatures, and they have much stricter signature rules, including a house-district distribution rule. [3]

Overall it seems that DC is one of the easiest small 'states' to get something on the ballot in, although I have no way to compare how tough the court challenges are between states. Looking at the number of initiatives would be instructive but this comment is already getting long.

[0] https://www.dcboee.org/regulations/initiative_and_referendum...

[1] http://ballotpedia.org/Laws_governing_the_initiative_process...

[2] http://ballotpedia.org/List_of_Vermont_ballot_measures

[3] http://ballotpedia.org/Laws_governing_the_initiative_process...

The current Congress could simply crush it, no need to wait for the next Congress to start.

Anything's possible, but just due to timing that seems unlikely. The Council says they probably won't submit the legislation for review until December or January.

My understanding is that it doesn't apply to federal lands in the District, which makes for some interesting problems what with all the parks.

I don't think Congress will attempt to shut it down in the city. I don't see that being a winning move politically, for a number of reasons. But I could also see zero tolerance being stepped up on The Mall to keep the tourists from less tolerant states placated.

Correct, there are many federal parks in DC where this would not apply. Even on DC land, I don't think the law permits smoking in public anyway.

I don't think Congress will veto the law (which doesn't happen often) but I think there's a good chance they kill it with a budget rider (which happens every year).

It will be interesting to see if they choose to enforce it on federal lands.

One thing that is interesting is that Congress usually blocks funding for DC laws by restricting how we can spend our local tax dollars (through the appropriations process).

When DC decriminalized possession, Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland tried to block the decriminalization by blocking funding for decriminalization. If that sounds like the legislative equivalent of a double-negative, it is!

Harris's legislation potentially would have had the un-intended affect of preventing the District from spending any money on enforcing the decriminalization: no money could be spent on writing citations, printing tickets for possession, or prosecuting cases in court. This would have effectively legalized it since the criminal law is already off the books.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/mike-debonis/wp/2014/06/...

I doubt Congress will pick this up. They have 90 days to veto DC laws or they go into effect, and they can barely name post offices at this point. Obama has also promised to veto the veto.

Yeah, I read that article about the Harris amendment and it was a cute legal theory, but I don't really buy it. It certainly wasn't validated by any court -- nobody would even put their name on it! It certainly isn't proof that an amendment couldn't be crafted that would prevent legalization.

My understanding is that literally everything the city does requires at least some nominal amount of staff time and funding, so Congress has considerable power through the appropriations process. But IANAL. It would certainly be an interesting court case.

This is very interesting considering Alaska has some strict alcohol laws. There are many areas that are completely dry, and alcohol is very expensive (black market). It's generally this way due to crime and abuse.

Will these areas kneejerk the same restrictions with marijuana, or will they wait to see how the community reacts?

/serious off

It's illegal to give a moose alcohol in Fairbanks: http://www.legalsource360.com/index.php/strange-laws-in-alas... Hope they're not left out, again.

> It's illegal to give a moose alcohol in Fairbanks

This sounds like a perfectly reasonable law. Imagine the damage a 1500 lb drunk bull moose would do.

I guess somebody actually experienced it, so they wrote down for good that it's a Bad Idea™.

An interesting but perhaps meaningless correlation: The areas legalizing marijuana first are all predominantly cold, mountainous states.

Except DC which was built on a swamp.

I'm ready for Texas to follow suite. You think corn, wheat, cotton, cows, and oil are profitable? Wait till the congressmen and farmers understand how valuable MJ is as a cash crop, I predict legalization even in our red state within a decade.

That would certainly push the conversation on a national/ federal level. It seems most of the legalization efforts have focused on in-state use. If one of a state's primary goals was to become a producer serving other states, there would be pretty strong motivation to bring federal policy in line with what's happening at the state level.

I think industrial hemp holds even more promise commercially, but I suppose the marginal profit by weight on cannabis vs. hemp is greater since it's either slated for recreational or medicinal uses rather than the generally less-sexy uses for hemp fibers and oils.

I agree regarding hemp. It's a very versatile and relatively hardy crop, and with shorter growing cycles than other crops, so the same applies to it.

Won't prices eventually start to fall, though, the more legal it becomes? One much-repeated theory explaining support for the initial wave of prohibition was that weed (eh) was too easy to grow, and as such it was depressing prices for a number of other crops. If that's true, I would expect states where the agriculture sector still holds significant power, to be the staunchest bastions of prohibition.

Why would it depress prices for other crops? The economic phenomena you're describing is called "replacement" but it's not like farmers aren't growing opium poppies because cannabis is so easy to grow.

Cannabis and opium poppies cannot be used to produce the same end-product. From what I understand, hemp can replace cotton in most end-products; being much easier to grow (and hence cheaper / more plentiful), it could potentially flood markets earlier reserved to cotton, hence depressing prices.

Say you have two farmers; one grows cannabis, the other cotton. Because cannabis is easier to grow, the cannabis farmer has more stock to sell, and if demand from the drug market does not absorb it all, he'll try to sell it on the cotton market, potentially igniting a price war with the second farmer.

If cotton is an inferior crop, why would we want to keep planting so much of it?

In this scenario where hemp & marijuana are legal, cotton farmers could start growing hemp too if that is more profitable.

There is a lot of different infrastructure for large scale cotton farming versus large scale hemp farming. Those heavily invested in the former have obvious incentive to keep it profitable rather than having to retool. That isn't to say that it's economically most efficient, but that it can certainly motivate propaganda and eventually legislation (and my understanding is that there's some historical evidence that this is what happened, but that it's not completely conclusive).

There are absurd amounts of cotton subsidies in this country, to the extent that it's cheaper to ship American grown cotton to factories where it's made into shirts.

Typically the opposite happens, where we import crops (cocoa beans, etc) and make the products here to save money.

Interesting, I was not aware that this sort of situation could spring up. But I don't think this should be a reason behind retaining criminalization of marijuana. To those who tout "Free Market" and "True Capitalism," it should be plainly clear that hemp should be allowed to fill the market if it can provide a better or comparable product at a better price. While I don't necessarily think we should necessarily promote a free market economy, I definitely think that marijuana legalization should not be hindered by the potential "negative" drawbacks such as these. Worst case, the government should focus its efforts in regulating prices and uses for marijuana plants, similar to how they regulate/subsidize over-farming.

A lot of those touting "Free Market" and "True Capitalism" adds as a footnote "as long as it doesn't add more competition for me".

That's not quite the case though. Hemp is a member of the cannabis plant family, but it's very low in THC (the active ingredient in the recreational type of cannabis). In other words, industrial cannabis (hemp) and recreational cannabis are two different plants. The farmer would be growing for one side of the market.

I am well aware about the two plant species and their uses by humans.

The original poster said MJ, which is not hemp. Marijuana is psychoactive and hemp is not, though they are the same species. The economic idea of "replacement" is that one good (Coca-Cola) can be replaced by a comparable good (Pepsi) based on price discrimination or differences in quality. My point is that MJ can displace a comparable good (another narcotic like opium) but it cannot replace corn or cotton as the uses of all these products are different.

Now maybe you mean hemp can replace/displace cotton or corn? I definitely agree hemp can displace cotton but that's because the water requirements, fertilization and effort spent harvesting are so much easier for hemp than cotton.

I am really confused by your assertion that a cannabis farmer is going to sell their MJ "on the cotton market." Maybe you mean that resources that would have been spent purchasing cotton commodities will instead be used to purchase cannabis commodities?

At this time though, the only reason farmers are not allowed to grow hemp is because hemp is related to marijuana. We would have to assume, that if marijuana was legal to grow, hemp would be as well. Legalizing marijuana probably would upset the cotton industry.

edit: Just re-read the parent comment that spawned this exchange. I get the distinction you are trying to make.

Cannabis and hemp are basically the same plant -- yes, one is psychoactive and the other is not, but they share cultivation tools and as far as I know, cannabis can be used in the same way hemp is (although the opposite, of course, is not true). At the moment hemp is locked out of the market because it's too similar to cannabis for authorities to just let people grow it; but once cannabis is legalised, hemp will likely make a big comeback, as cannabis grower will grow both cannabis and hemp, if necessary switching between one and the other at very short notice, especially if the price of cotton rises over the one for psychoactive cannabis. Even without switching actual cultivations, as far as I know, you could sell cannabis as hemp (although the opposite is not true) right away.

> I definitely agree hemp can displace cotton

That's what I'm saying. Hemp is much cheaper and it's been shut out of the market only because cannabis was and the two cannot easily be distinguished. Once they're both legal, things will change.

The whole country needs to legalize MJ. what a great plan to boost our depression!!

It is so hard to say. Texas very much has a libertarian streak on the right and the cities are blue, but there are so many social conservatives around that it is hard to get a bead on how realistic that is.

I've been in Texas 10 years, and I don't see this happening until things change at the federal level. Same with gay marriage.

Things don't change in Texas until the tanks roll in.

Texas still has a lot of dry counties that would probably fight pretty hard against marijuana legalization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dry_communities_by_U.S....

I can't help but to wonder if the tobacco lobby is somehow involved. For decades society fought against smoking and has largely won. So, what happened to all of those tobacco crops? I wonder if that industry is behind the legalize movement so they can shift their production to another crop.

Interesting historical fact is that initial tensions over marijuana came about because slaves, and later Mexican labourers were frequent users. White plantation owners (tobacco farmers) took issue with their practices. So, at least in part the banning of marijuana can be partially attributed to racism.

  You’ll also see that the history of marijuana’s criminalization is filled with:

  - Racism
  - Fear
  - Protection of Corporate Profits
  - Yellow Journalism
  - Ignorant, Incompetent, and/or Corrupt Legislators  
  - Personal Career Advancement and Greed

  These are the actual reasons marijuana is illegal.

Some messed up stuff right here: http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal...

There's a lot more money to be made domestically by legalization, when it comes to corporate profits, than there is in prohibition.

The beer companies proved that the last time around.

If legalization were decided by corporate profits, the war on drugs would have ended a long time ago. Big pharma would love nothing more than to hand out all sorts of prescription drugs over the counter. Big ag farms would love nothing more than to grow and sell pot.

It's blatantly obvious that corporate profits are in fact not the issue.

Right now, a lot of that money is outside the country, in the hands of cartels, middle-men, etc. That could be mostly brought home, and it would bolster corporate profits tremendously, to the tune of billions in profit per year.

'Big pharma' has no interest in marijuana because it's not their business model. Since there is no patent protection the generic manufacturers would squeeze out any profit to be had the medical marijuana market.

There is a reason it's called "weed", it grows like one.

Another thing to consider is that, at least in Europe, cannabis + tobacco joints are very popular. So not only could big tobacco quickly gain traction in the cannabis world if it were legal, but it'd also help hold onto its crashing tobacco sales.

I suspect if it was legal, a lot of people would move towards tobacco-substitutes to mix in their joint rather than actual tobacco. Amsterdam coffeeshops already sell pre-rolleds with "mix" in them (since smoking tobacco is illegal in there), I'm a cigarette smoker myself and I have no issues replacing tobacco with "mix" when I'm over there.

(But right now for typical weed smokers: "mix" isn't easily found to buy, while tobacco is always easily on hand. If it was sold in legal shops they could offer mix at the same time, something there's no incentive for illegal dealers to do.)

    The biggest players in the anti-marijuana
    legalization movement are pharmaceutical,
    alcohol and beer companies, private prison
    corporations and police unions, all of whom
    help fund lobby groups that challenge
    marijuana law reform.

http://www.ibtimes.com/marijuana-legalization-pharmaceutical...

The Liberal Canadian government of the 90s toyed with the idea of marijuana decriminalization, but the opposing argument that was always raised was that the Americans would be so staunchly against it.

Back in the 90s I would not have expected all other "Cascadian" states would legalize marijuana before British Columbia.

Well, its not like BC can independently legalize/decriminalize it. All they can do is not enforce federal laws.

Here in Vancouver, BC, it seems to be treated as being de facto legal.

You can walk into a dispensary, make an appointment with their in-house naturopath and claim to have any of a long list of medical conditions which includes insomnia, digestive problems etc. As long as the naturopath signs off on a form stating that you have told them you have a condition that is on the list - you are eligible for membership at the dispensary with no prescription necessary.

Within 5 blocks of my house there are two such dispensaries, one of with is renting a retail unit that used to belong to a high-end salon, so essentially anyone can head on in to a clean, safe store and choose from a wide variety of cannabis products.

Obviously we still have the problems caused by criminalized marijuana to some extent (criminal records preventing employment, wasted resources etc.) but it's impressive how far things have come without decriminalization actually passing into law.

Ah, this reminds me of this priceless video of a journalist who quits live on air to dedicate all her energy towards this end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBPsbgKeIFM

Hopefully all her energy was enough.

Does this MJ legalization apply to the native Alaskan areas where alcohol possession is illegal?

I think it's now up the local legislative.

At the time of this comment there are 96 comments with only 6 of them about Alaska. I find that to be an interesting commentary on HN commentaries. ;-)

A lot of what can be said has already been said. However, I would like to share a piece of joy- I'm in one of the pictures in this article. It feels great.

I look forward to the day they have a vote on PEDs.

Gosh we're so far from it in France

I live in Alaska as a high school teacher.

We lead the nation in welfare, alcohol abuse and fetal alcohol effects, suicide, sexually transmitted disease, credit card debt, number of women murdered, and domestic abuse.

Now we are all going to be high as a kite, too.

This does not make my job any easier.

So, basically every thing you listed can probably be directly related to Alcohol Abuse. Maybe, just maybe, giving people a healthier and less abusive vice will make your job easier.

I got into a lot of credit card debt once in my life. It was not related to alcohol abuse at all. That's a pretty big assumption you make there.

Thankfully none of those other items have ever been in my life.

> I live in Alaska as a high school teacher.

It's still illegal unless you're 21 or over, so I'm not really sure why that would make your job as a high school teacher any more difficult.

It is true that small amounts of pot has been legal in Alaska, but my concern is geared towards greater accessibility. Now that it is legal and will be sold commercially it will be much easier for young adults to attain. Usually the youth will steal from their guardians, just like alcohol.

I've been teaching 21 years and I can tell when a student has started smoking pot. When a young person begins smoking their grades usually drop and they do not seem to care. This may not be the case with adults, but it is VERY obvious when working with youth.

I don't think increased accessibility is a legitimate concern. A pot smoking parent that can't keep their stash secure from their kids will be equally ineffective whether the pot was purchased from the black market or legally from the grocery store.

There will, however, be more pot smoking parents / grandparents / aunts and uncles / older siblings / etc.

It's easy to believe there are situations you notice.

It's also easy to believe there are students where you don't notice.

While I agree that someone whose brain is not developed should not be using mind-altering anything, what you described is essentially puberty.

Heck, these kids shouldn't be drinking coffee or caffeinated soda, either.

I can clearly see the popular opinion (reddit/hacker news) is that marijuana is harmless. My professional opinion is different, however, and over the course of my career I have seen its affects first hand. Laugh and down vote me if you will, but the negative affects are real and damaging to youth and the research backs me up.

http://www.livescience.com/37889-marijuana-users-lack-motiva...

My teenage relative's schoolmate went from being an excellent student and actress to a severe down-and-out in a short space of time due to her marijuana use. Likely other things contributed but the change was radical.

Without administering chemical tests to all of your students, you can't know with certainty which ones are using.

Sure, if a student has problems from it you will be able to observe that, but it's flawed reasoning to go from "I observe some students having problems" to "Using always leads to those problems".

And I don't naively believe that marijuana is harmless, but if you give me a choice between prohibition for everyone and (further support for) programs that reach out to students that exhibit sudden changes in behavior, it isn't very hard to decide.

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