The Return of Reefer Madness

[unhappycamper]

The Return of Reefer Madness
Marijuana, Prohibition, Prop. 19, California
In Crime, War, business, drugs, law, marijuana, money, police, politics, prohibition, propaganda, regulation, smoking, students on August 22, 2010 at 11:01 am

At this very moment on America’s west coast, there’s a war on and everybody’s picking sides.

The lines have been drawn in the battle over California’s Proposition 19, which would permit adults over 21-years-old to possess and cultivate marijuana for recreational use. As all such important political issues tend to develop in the run-up to an election, the pro and con arguments have already taken on media narratives of their own.

The line for pot, you’ve heard before: the substance is generally safer than alcohol and regulation would result in the accumulation of an enormous amount of tax revenue. Many argue that regulated sales in storefront environments would even make purchasing cannabis more difficult for teens.

Then there’s the very real and growing threat posed by the increasingly brutal and well-armed Mexican drug cartels, who’ve turned Mexico’s border states into one of the hottest war zones in the world … And their principle source of profits, according to all estimates, is the black market sales of marijuana in the United States.

Legalize it, regulate it and tax the sales, advocates say, and U.S. growers could rip the legs right out from under the cartels while generating funds for public services.

[Bobbieo]

1. What the hell are we waiting for? :Legalize pot and make money on our side - finally!!!

[Nay]

2. Indeed. I have no idea why this has taken so long to figure out.

Except, of course, there are plenty of for-profit prisons and cop shops making money off its illegality.

[tavalon]

3. There are a lot of people making a lot of money around not figuring it out

Actively not figuring it out.

[Bobbieo]

4. A good share of them are politicians!

[tavalon]

5. Absolutely!

Edited to add: Let's not leave Big Pharma out. They are shitting in their collective diapers that Americans may dump an awful lot of their drugs in favor of cannabis.

[Nay]

10. Didn't think about that. Who needs mood elevators, if you can take

the edge off harmlessly with pot? Hey, why aren't the snack food companies behind legalization?

[geckosfeet]

6. great - we can be inmates or work in prisons - there's a viable economy for you

[Javaman]

7. We are waiting for the last of the old guard obstructionists to drop dead. nt

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

9. Because it's not and has never been just a money thing.

It's also a CONTROL thing- it's an easily found excuse to arrest and control certain segments of the population.

It helps to understand the money part of it when you realize it's one hell of an effective healing drug on many levels, and the legalization of it would most definitely take a chunk o' change from the pockets of big pharm. They don't want you self-medicating unless it's via their nostrums. How DARE you think to heal yourself without their permission, using a drug they don't control!

[MattBaggins]

8. Big fracking load of horse shit

The key is in the stupid mantra, "regulate it". How does the whole tax nonsense work if people can just grow their own? What they want is for only certain stores and producers to be able to do this. As fast as Phillip Morris is able to get into the pot selling business; they will make so that the laws are the same as now, and if you or I grow the shit we go to jail.

[spanone]

11. it never left.