WBUR and MassINC released a poll today, showcasing voter attitudes about the various ballot questions to be voted on in November. The top-line results have been getting a lot of attention, with Yes on 4 garnering 50% to the No camp’s 45%, but the poll also dug deeper into respondents’ thoughts on marijuana more generally. Here are a few of those questions, and the results:
Q: How do you plan to vote on Question 4?
- General public: 50% yes, 45% no
- Democrats: 53% yes, 41% no
Q: Do you think using marijuana is morally wrong, or not?
- General public: 80% no, 14% yes
- Democrats: 83% no, 12% yes
Q: Do you think people using marijuana would present public safety hazards, or not?
- General public: 48% yes, 43% no
- Democrats: 39% yes, 45% no
Q: Do you think people using marijuana makes it more likely they will try other drugs, or not?
- General public: 50% no, 43% yes
- Democrats: 54% no, 37% yes
It’s not surprising to see that Democrats are more progressive on marijuana reform than voters in general. If you still plan to vote no on 4, I’d love to talk to you about your concerns.
…also indicated that Question 2 is not favored by voters 48-41%.
While the general public is 50/45 on marijuana, the crosstabs of the poll shows that people who are voting yes on charters are 53/44, while those voting against are 50/46 and those undecided on charters are 37/47.
Three main reasons:
1. I don’t favor lawmaking via the initiative petition as a general rule. My default vote on these things is “no.”
2. While in principle it’s okay for a state to repeal a law criminalizing something that is also criminal at the federal level, the fact is that marijuana will still be illegal in the United States, including in Massachusetts, even if the question succeeds.
3. I don’t expect marijuana advocates to agree with this, but having attended college and seen pot-heads in their native habitat, I don’t think recreational marijuana use should be encouraged. My sense was that it made people stupider. I know, I know: beer. But my perception was that it was socially acceptable among some for people to be stoned “during the day” in a way it wasn’t socially acceptable for them to be drunk. Call me old-fashioned.
I appreciate hearing where other people are coming from.
1. Fair enough – it’s not a perfect process, for sure. I see petitions as a way for the citizenry to light a fire under the legislature when they fail to act on something. Since it’s only a statute, and not a constitutional amendment, they have the power to tweak it after if there are any major problems, which is a nice fail-safe for initiatives in general.
2. Also fair. It’ll still be illegal federally, which leads to weird problems, but I also think of this as a way to spur federal reform. The more states legalize, the sooner the federal government will let them do so. And to be fair, this is already the case with medical marijuana, which is now getting very close to being legalized federally.
3. You’re right, I do disagree 🙂 While I’ve definitely known some people who were stoned throughout the day (and who would have judged a person for being drunk at the same time), I think that’s a very small minority, and that most people view smoking as roughly equivalent to drinking, as far as when it’s appropriate to do so. Either way, there will be such strict limitations on advertising/marketing that I don’t think it’s fair to say we’d be encouraging recreational use, just allowing it.
In matters like this, federal laws change in response to changes in state law.
As more and more states legalize marijuana, an action will sooner or later be brought claiming that it is unconstitutional to criminalize it. As we saw with gay marriage, this can happen with lightning speed once some tipping-point is passed.
I think that encouraging or discouraging marijuana use is outside the scope of proper government authority. There is a multitude of things that people — especially college-age people — do that make them seem “stupid”. Most get over it it. There is a similar multitude of things that “grownups” do that make US seem stupid to college-age kids.
In my view, government must show a compelling public interest in order to justify or continue the criminalization of a particular substance or behavior. A guideline I’ve always liked is “The government exists to do those things that the people cannot do for themselves”.
Choosing an appropriate level of recreational marijuana use is, for me, a stellar example of something people can do for themselves.
If the Supreme Court of the United States ever holds that the federal government lacks the power to criminalize possession or use of a drug (outside of the religious context, as with peyote), I will eat my shorts. Of course, Gary Johnson is polling at a respectable 9%, so I should probably keep my fingers crossed that this comment doesn’t get archived by the Wayback Machine.
As more and more states legalize marijuana, it places an increasing burden on the federal government to show that the nation has a compelling interest in making marijuana illegal. The existing laws made no attempt to accomplish that, and in a marvelous exercise circular reasoning, made it illegal to perform research to determine the effects of the drug.
I agree that SCOTUS is unlikely to rule that the federal government lacks the power to criminalize the possession or use of some arbitrary drug. I think it is much more likely that SCOTUS will clarify the limits on and requirements for such power.
I believe the current marijuana laws will fail to meet those limits and requirements.
Not everything that is stupid, bad policy, etc. is unconstitutional.
The court determined that consenting adults have a right to have sex with whomever they choose in whatever way they choose, and struck down sodomy laws. The laws were not struck down because they were “stupid” or “bad policy”. They were struck down because the SCOTUS determined that the government has no compelling interest in restricting such behavior.
I suggest that the government similarly lacks a compelling interest in restricting marijuana use. That’s a very different standard from “stupid”, “bad policy”, and so on.
Oh–you think that legislation that lacks a compelling interest should be struck down. In general, that is not true. Courts only ask about compelling interests when they find that a law infringes a fundamental constitutional right. So unless you are saying there is a constitutional right to smoke marijuana, which is kind of loopy, you are not correct about this.
Some people consider liking oral sex “kind of loopy”.
I don’t think it is the place of government — or you — to harass or prosecute someone because you find their choice of how they wish to pursue happiness “kind of loopy”.
I find it difficult to take seriously a view suggesting a right to be intoxicated is justified by the same policies that justify a right to privacy in the most intimate and important relationships in one’s life, though I think that equation speaks to the culture’s hedonism and lack of thought about what constitutes a good life. “Loopy” was meant as a charitable way of saying “utterly lacking in merit.” It is constitutional for a state or locality to prohibit alcohol, so I think your idea about marijuana is necessarily wrong as a legal matter. I’m sorry that “loopy” offended you.
. . . I want some of what tedf has been smoking.
…a constitutional right to privacy, and the matter of discrimination against a certain class of people which does not apply here.
As I understand it, the argument was that consenting adults have the right to do as they choose in their bedroom.
The right to privacy is not explicit in the Constitution. In my view, it is not such a stretch to extend or create a similar right to consume what I like.
For example, a state government cannot arbitrarily decide that pork cannot be eaten by its residents or that dairy products may not be consumed at the same time as meat products. A state government cannot arbitrarily decide to make the consumption, possession, or sale of peanuts or coffee illegal.
I suggest that a similar standard should apply to marijuana.
Sodomy is tied up with homosexuality, at least in the cases I’m aware of, so a case can be made of de facto discrimination (an argument you usually like when it comes to race) against gay people.
The pork/dairy combination may run afoul of the first amendment if the legislative intent can be shown to have religious motivation rather than health motivations. However, I see no constitutional objection to making peanuts or coffee illegal. In fact, jurisdictions HAVE moved to ban certain food-related items such as trans fats.
The laws in question criminalize oral and anal sex. They applied to heterosexual as well as homosexual acts.
The various restrictions on trans fats are a good example of a government demonstrating a compelling interest — such restrictions are based on well-documented and well-presented scientific evidence. That stands in stark contrast to the laws against marijuana use.
My understanding is that equal protection considerations were a factor in the recent marriage equality cases, since LGBT people are now a protected class, but did not play into the sodomy cases, which were based more on privacy.
Sure it can. Several states ban the slaughter of cats and dogs for meat, for example, and California bans consumption of cat or dog meat. In general, the states can enact any legislation meant to protect the health, safety, morals, or welfare of the people. If the state decides peanuts are unsafe, of course they can be banned. To be sure, the constitution could impose limits, e.g., the Church of the Almighty Peanut would probably be able to munch on peanuts for religious purposes. And of course there are constitutional limits to morals legislation, e.g., in cases like contraception, abortion, etc. I do not know where the idea comes from, expressed throughout this thread, that the states lack this power.
I strongly suspect that if, for some reason, large numbers of people began slaughtering and eating dogs and cats (or, for that matter, horses), then we’d see significant pushback against those laws. I’m not sure that any significant portion of California’s prison population is comprised of men and women incarcerated because they sold cat meat.
The point remains that a large number of Americans want to use marijuana. The current laws against it were the result of crass commercial and political considerations during the 1930s (rope makers wanted to eliminate the competition from hemp growers). There has never been any scientific evidence against marijuana, and the current laws prevent the research that might conceivably produce that evidence.
The keyword in the portion of my comment that you quoted is “arbitrarily”. I suggest that, in the presence of a significant number of residents who wanted to grow, slaughter, and eat cat and dog meat, those governments that outlaw it would be forced to demonstrate their compelling interest in banning it. I’m not saying that the bans couldn’t stay. I AM saying that governments would be forced to justify their ban.
The federal and state laws against marijuana are not based on science, nor have the players demonstrated a compelling interest in such bans. That’s the reason that marijuana should be legalized and then regulated.
The federal treatment of tobacco is actually, I think, an excellent starting point.
They would pass a law. You know, democracy. Proponents of the status quo would indeed be forced to justify their view–at the ballot box.
Your view assigns an awful lot of lawmaking to the courts and elevates your preferences to the level of constitutional principle.
…precisely that the people should be able to decide the pot question. I tend to believe that those proposing a change have the higher burden of proof in most cases.
1. Should the ballot question pass.
2. Is there some constitutional right to marijuana.
I have thoughts about (1), but I’m more concerned about (2) in the long run.
That’s the one in front of us today and the one we all have a say in determining. Leave the other question to the courts, law professors and philosophers.
I’ve just been responding to what others have said on it!
I think everyone is actually in agreement here. There is no legal or constitutional problem with marijuana bans that can come to the aid of legalization advocates. Mass or the federal government could ban pork tomorrow; the ONLY restraint on the ability to do so is political.
And so, the ballot question maybe gives the legalizers a bit of political momentum.
You can at least imagine a constitutional problem with the federal government banning pork in light of the limited powers in article I. The states’ powers are actually broader than the federal governments in such respects. But given a broad reading of the commerce clause I think you’re right.
Thanks to the magic of lobbying, it was illegal to buy or consume margarine in lots of states, and still is in Wisconsin. It VT, it was only legal to consume margarine if it was died pink.
With all due respect, what you saw were the few people who confirmed your preexisting prejudices that just happen to stand out, and not the overwhelming majority of people who use pot and don’t.
For anyone who is actually willing to look beyond their personal anecdotes, just about every study on earth has shown that pot is safer than just about every other kind of drug, legal or illegal, and that it’s far less personally destructive or deadly than alcohol and far less deadly than cigarettes.
Finally, legalizing isn’t “encouraging” use. It’s dissuading people from buying from the black market, which causes enormous problems in our society, and bringing marijuana use out in the open so it can be taxed and regulated. Huge swaths of society already use marijuana. Clearly, banning it hasn’t done much of anything to discourage its use, but it has ruined the lives of many poor and minority users who got caught and didn’t have access to expensive lawyers and friends in the right places.
The science seems mixed</a on the safety of recreational marijuana, though I (and perhaps you?) lack the professional competence necessary to judge for myself.
I am amused by the progressives who tout the tax and revenue benefits of marijuana. I thought regressive taxation was on the naughty list.
I agree with you that many minor drug offenses have been prosecuted too harshly. I'm not sure that our shared opinion in that question supports legalization as opposed to reform of the criminal laws.
If there is any actual human being whose view in favor of state-level legalization is motivated by the desire to save state criminal-law resources, but who says, "I recognize that after enactment of this law marijuana possession and use will still be illegal, and I do not think people should break the law by possessing or using marijuana"–I salute that person. I question whether such a person exists.
My link didn’t work. Here is the link.
1) Marijuana is a dangerous drug that is harmful when used immoderately for recreational purposes, has medicinal benefits in other purposes, and is harmful for minors. This is the same with tobacco and alcohol, which are just as harmful if not more so, and entirely legal. Neither of those products has any benefits while the benefits of medicinal marijuana in certain cases has been confirmed in peer review journals.
2) Marijuana taxes are not regressive since purchasing marijuana is a voluntary choice. Same as tobacco taxes, which are used to deter people from smoking while simulataneously mitigating against the social cost of tobacco use by funding public health programs. Marijuana taxes will fund drug treatment and drug prevention programs, and enabled Colorado to fund universal pre-K. These are progressive taxes that lead to funding progressive programs.
3) Black and Latinos are ticketed and fined at four times the rate of whites for marijuana possession in New York City, which also decriminalized, and they are incarcerated at four times the rate for distribution. It is still common in southern states for black men to be put away for decades or even life sentences for marijuana related offenses due to mandatory minimum laws. Massachusetts can send a signal to the rest of the country that we will tread addiction as a public health problem and bring the drug economy above ground where we can regulate, tax, and restrict it to reduce harms and ensure the lost generation of black men from the drug war won’t be repeated.
4) I have no idea what this point means. I am sincere in prosecuting the grey market, prosecuting those they sell to minors, and those that sell unsafe products laced with dangerous additives. Legalization will decrease the risks and costs to society that marijuana poses.
1. You may be wrong in asserting that alcohol has no health benefits when taken in moderation. Again, I (and maybe you?) lack the expertise to judge this on my own.
2. I do not think regressive means what you think it means. Since it may be that the poor are overrepresented in marijuana consumption, a tax on marijuana would be regressive relative to income.
3. As noted above, I agree with you about the need for criminal justice reform.
4. My point is that even if Massachusetts decriminalizes marijuana possession or use as a matter of state law, it will still be illegal as a matter of federal law. So if a person’s view is that we should leave enforcement of the drug laws to the feds (and maybe work for repeal of the federal prohibition on marijuana), fine. But I think most people who favor state decriminalization think that after their measure passes it will be legal to use marijuana, which is unequivocally incorrect.
3.
You offer no data to support your speculation in item 4.
The single most effective way to “work for repeal of the federal prohibition on marijuana” is to make it legal, state by state. It appears to me that you assume away the reason that many or even most supporters support the legalization of marijuana in MA.
Tom, I don’t have any data on this, but I would just point out that your sentence “The single most effective way to ‘work for repeal of the federal prohibition on marijuana’ is to make it legal, state by state” is an almost perfect illustration of my point. You cannot “make it legal” by changing state law.
The whole point is that nothing will happen in the Congress until there is some significant momentum generated from the states.
Also, there is the practical issue of the priorities of federal law enforcement: there is not a lot of evidence to suggest that federal law enforcement is throwing a lot of resources into petty pot possession prosecutions. That is something that is prosecuted at the local level, and in the unfair way elsewhere articulated. So, while passage of the measure does not make pot possession legal, it would eliminate most of the prosecutions for it in MA, which is a significant step in the right direction.
To add one more point to the mix: leaving all other considerations aside, it would be a bad idea for Congress to act, since legalization of marijuana in the United States would likely violate our international law obligations under the drug control conventions.
My understanding is that as more and more states legalized gay marriage, the proponents had an increasing compelling argument that the restrictions against it violated the “due process” and “equal protection” clauses.
I think a similar mechanism will be in play here.
You think there is a substantive due process right to smoke marijuana, or that there is a class of marijuana smokers who should have the same protection under the Equal Protection Clause as racial or religious minorities, women, etc.?
1) Philosophical Point
I do think the individual has an implied right to privacy under the Constitution when it comes to what they put in their body under Roe and Griswold, and more broadly as a liberal I believe in the Lockian/Jeffersonian formation that individuals have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property/happiness while I also believe the harm principle Mill articulated is a good framework for testing the justness of a law or regulation.
Since I’ve given up on pursuing a personal political career l will openly assert here for the first time that I favor full drug decriminalization for possession and treating all forms of drug possession as a public health issue. I wouldn’t legalize harder drugs in a regulated market like marijuana, but it’s hard to argue doing so wouldn’t be anymore futile a public policy than our failed war on drugs. The leading drug killer in Massachusetts is prescription Opiods and I don’t see the Christopher’s of the world calling for Elliot Ness to raid Kendall square.
2) Practical Point
We can’t discuss the drug war without mentioning race and the real disparities that blacks face versus whites which is a clear equal protection issue and one legalization would partly, albeit, incompletely alleviate.
Litigants have raised this issue in the context of medical marijuana, but the Supreme Court has never ruled on it as far as I know. In the Oakland Cannabis case, the marijuana people asked the court to address the constitutional question because, they said, the Controlled Substances Act was ambiguous as to whether a medical exception to the ban on marijuana existed and the statute should be construed to avoid constitutional difficulties. But the Court rejected that argument, holding the CSA was not ambiguous, and that there was no medical necessity defense. I don’t know if anyone has raised the constitutional issue for recreational use of marijuana.
I think the only way we could find a constitutional right to possessing/consuming marijuana would be through the privacy penumbra, rather than any sort of equal protection or interstate commerce case.
Not precedent in the legal sense, but one interesting bit of history is that Alaska’s high court actually ruled that their state constitution’s right to privacy protected people using marijuana in their own home (important to note that it did not legalize selling it, which they had to do by ballot initiative in 2014). So with a different cultural environment and different SCOTUS justices, I could see the same thing happen federally.
While the state’s power to regulate alcohol is limited by the commerce clause in the sense that the state can’t discriminate against out-of-state liquor, “without doubt a state may absolutely prohibit the manufacture of intoxicants, their transportation, sale, or possession, irrespective of when or where produced or obtained, or the use to which they are to be put.” (Ziffrin, Inc. v. Reeves, 308 US 132, 138 (1939)). So all this talk about a constitutional right to marijuana in this threat seems crazy to me.
“I don’t see the Christopher’s of the world calling for Elliot Ness to raid Kendall square.”
at the moment we’re talking about marijuana. I’m trying to stay on topic here and feel distracted when other things get brought up. I don’t know what’s going on in Kendall Square, but from context it sounds like there’s a drug problem there. Maybe if I were aware of it I’d give an opinion.
Saying that the companies in Kendall Square are tied to the legal opiate industry, which kills many but whose producers are not targeted like those making an illegal drug would be.
And drug use rates went down.
It’s not all that shocking, either.
Locking people up and ruining their lives makes them far, far more likely to continue use, or even become dealers.
Not ruining their lives when they get caught with drugs, and instead giving them help and support…. gives many the chance and hope that their life will get better, and tools and resources to help make that happen.
Other countries have experimented tackling opiod addictions with creating centers where anyone can go and actually use the drug — safely, and with no risk of arrest — while having access to services and resources to get off the drug, making it their choice. These programs have been very successful, drastically reducing overdoses and the spread of diseases, and with many people using the resources to get off the drugs totally.
What we do in America does not work. It is idiotic, costly, ruins lives and actually exacerbates the problem. We can do better. Other countries have already showed us the way.
I think that, in a republic, we start with a presumption that each of has a presumptive right to do whatever we choose. That specifically includes the right to have sex with consenting adults in any way we choose and the right to consume marijuana.
I agree that government can and should regulate marijuana. I argue that should not simply outlaw it.
but the theory of that this right might be found in a privacy right emanating from various other things is no more silly than the discovery of the right to contraceptives, abortion, or sex between consenting adults is.
I will grant you that the theory is unlikely to gain traction unless 4 or 5 justices of the SC go hunting with Dick Cheney at a time when Dems have the White House and 60 votes in the Senate.
…would have been the same if zero states had legalized it, or 50 had. Also, there was never a federal ban on SSM, though some did want a constitutional amendment that would accomplish that. Federal laws such as DOMA only said that the feds would not recognize such marriage even if a state did and protected states from being forced to recognize each other. Marriage has always otherwise been a state issue.
would have legalized SSM across the nation if a bunch of other states hadn’t done it first.
There have been SSM cases going back decades and they all went no where before Vermont and MA.
Minds had to be changed on the supreme court before striking down marriage bans would have ever been possible.
1) So we can agree there are studies showing health benefits to moderate alcohol and marijuana consumption, and many studies showing excessive consumption is a danger. All the better to have consumption occur above ground and in the light of day with strict health and safety standards enforced by the law, restrictions to minors, and even the ability for towns to determine whether they want legalized marijuana in their communities.
The Christopher’s of the world can be as NIMBY as they’d like as far as I care, I might even vote against it in my community depending. The point is under this new regimen people won’t be locked up and dealers will go from being unlicensed tax cheaters to licensed taxpayers and job creators. A windfall for the state and the communities that choose to accept dispensaries and small businesses.
2) I do not think tax means what you think it means. The cigarette tax is not regressive since it’s designed to discourage populations from smoking, similarly, marijuana taxes would have the same effect. Nobody is forcing anyone to play the lottery, smoke a cigarette or smoke a joint. To the extent those populations are more vulnerable to marijuana use, the new revenues can be creatively applied to mitigate against that social cost. At present, those poor people of color will be jailed or fined instead of treated and taxes. I strongly think they’d prefer the latter to the former.
3) Ending the drug war is a key component of ending mass incarceration and sentencing disparity. See: my ACLU link and the link to Jay Z’s eloquent 4 minute video on the subject.
4) The Feds have not intervened in Colorado or Washington and would not interfere here. It’s a minor inconvenience for marijuana enterpreneurs who have to be creative to get around interstate banking regulations regarding drug money, but otherwise it is fully legal for the recreational user. I might note that marijuana tourism is a great benefit for a regional first mover, and would be more profitable for Massachusetts then casinos as I outlined in another piece two years ago.
Do we want to continue spending millions locking people up and running their lives or do we want to make millions for our revenue starved state, money that would otherwise go to cartels on the black market? Colorado was able to implement universal pre-K, expanded education funding, a pilot program for women’s health, and expanded drug treatment and drug prevention programming with this revenue. It’s something Massachusetts would stand to make a lot of money off of, especially since we would enjoy a regional monopoly.
I’ve never tried marijuana myself, I got into enough trouble with alcohol in college to avoid anything else. But I’ve been to cookouts and parties this year where people have casually a joint while I’m sipping a PBR and the effect seems to be the same. Marijuana is a dangerous drug, so is alcohol and tobacco. It’s time they were regulated the same way so that adults can use them responsibly, and we can increase funding for education and regulation to keep them out of the hands of our kids.
…there is a middle ground between affirmative outright legalization and the scenario you paint in your first sentence above.
Decriminalization and legalizing medical marijuana still allow average Americans to get locked up for selling a product that is not more harmful than tobacco or alcohol, and they will be disproportionately black. Moreover, it may reduce the costs of fighting the drug war against possessors, but those costs will still be there for distributors while the revenue goes entirely untaxed to the black market.
A well regulated market eliminates the black market while setting prices competitively enough to discourage a grey market and still allow taxable revenue. Let me be clear, if the pot dealer doesn’t have a license they should still be prosecuted, just like you and I can’t make our own moonshine or package our own tobacco products. If you have a license and sell an unsafe product, you should be prosecuted. This is about bringing in sanity and regulation, the hallmarks of progressive governance, not just allowing anything goes like you seem to consistently paint it.
That legitimizes the business and the product and sends the message that this is OK, whether intended or not. My understanding is that decriminalization made this a civil infraction like a speeding ticket, rather than jail time, and if that’s not the case it should be. I have said all along to be reasonable with enforcement, but I do not want either the business or use to become an open activity in an age where we are rightly further restricting tobacco products. It is is the wrong direction from a quality of life and public health standpoint and reject frankly that such is “progressive”.
Using your logic, the government is permitting businesses to flourish that sell these products and is sending the message that this is ok, so why not ban them? Oh wait, we tried it and it failed miserably. Just like the drug war.
You are making a conservatives argument. It’s not one’s body or one’s choice but the state’s to decide, and you support a ham handed moralizing government over one governed by reason and evidence based policy.
The government will stick restrict marijuana if this bill passes. If anything, it will now be substantially easier to prevent minors accessing it, easier to educate the public on it’s real harms and dangers, and easier to crack down on people selling to minors, selling unsafe products, and endangering the public. The high tobacco taxes have funded incredibly successful anti-smoking campaigns and there is nothing stopping us from using marijuana tax revenues to fund anti-marijuana smoking campaigns.
The only thing that will change is that innocent people won’t overcrowd our prisons, the Commonwealth will keep the revenue instead of the cartels, and the folks who are using marijuana now will continue to use it, only they will have to contribute to the community chest rather than enjoying a free ride off the black market. If you dislike pot, legalizing it is the best way to regulate and restrict it’s use and divert the funds from it’s sales to more productive endeavors that benefit all of society.
that never did anything for me. This is bad, so let’s add more bad things. That doesn’t move me.
People are not over crowed in prisons for marijuana possession. You have a better argument if you say arrests, which is true. Not prison, prisons are not overcrowded due to marijuana. People in prison for possession or even distribution is in the hundredths of a percent.
You’re comment is very unclear.
52% of all drug related arrests are for marijuana related offenses, 88% of which are merely for possession. Blacks are nearly four times as likely to get arrested for marijuana offenses than whites. Stats from the ACLU.
You still don’t have to broadcast that pot is OK. The racial stats for me are tangential at best.
Jay Z breaks down the disparities in the drug war in a short and brilliant piece for the New York Times. Black men are still ticketed at four times the rates of whites for drug possessions and I just told you they are arrested for possession at four times the rates of whites in states where those are still crimes, stats from the ACLU. It’s not tangential that hundreds of thousands of black men were locked up on drug charges and ironically are now barred from legal activity in the booming above ground marijuana business.
Where is your data showing it is more harmful than alcohol? Where is your data showing prohibition worked? I am starting to conclude you’re just prejudiced against this drug and its users in a rather unreality based way. Engage with my substance and we can continue this debate.
to me your argument is that since alcohol has harmful effects, why not just add more harmful things and make them legal as well. Don’t like when someone does that. That’s what I’m saying.
Make the case specifically for what you want to legalize.
You are blurring prison and making false statements on overcrowding with arrests. They are two different things In no way, shape or form does our prison system have a problem with people sentenced to prison for marijuana. That doesn’t exist.
I do believe that there is some concern with people who are arrested (not sentenced and doing time in prison) for possession. I do think we need to take a hard look at that.
…was something I read ages ago, possibly before the internets. It stuck with me precisely because I was surprised by it and went against what I thought to be true.
I get it if you’re in favor of banning alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, but it’s pretty clear that banning any one of them while allowing others is inconsistent, especially since marijuana is the least harmful of the three.
As for prisons, it’s true that people in prison for possession is very small (but it does happen, we only have decriminalization of up to 1 ounce). But people in prison for drug distribution is actually pretty huge: drug offenders make up 46.4% of the federal prison population. Of course, this includes drugs other than marijuana, and the federal government doesn’t provide a breakdown by drug, but marijuana is still a substantial piece of it. Meeting the demand for marijuana is a big business, and I’d rather have it done above-board by a licensed facility inspected by state regulators, than a bunch of people trying to dodge police left and right.
You have asked and I have answered this question many times before. If I were dictator I’d ban tobacco in a heartbeat. I see less need to ban alcohol, though I should point out that Prohibition gets a bit of a bad rap. America did not climb back to pre-Prohibition drinking levels until the 1970s. I also advocate this for public health and NOT moral reasons, darn it! If I thought this were just about some abstract “morality” I would never be making these arguments.
I also don’t accept that there will be less access by minors. Most tobacco smokers start before legal age and they can have them bought at the corner store or raid their parents’ supply (or purchase themselves if the merchant is cavalier about ID). Even my generation despite having lived entirely during an era where there was anti-tobacco education still saw a fair amount of my college classmates openly smoking. I did not have to be similarly exposed to gaggles of my classmates smoking pot and I can’t tell you where to just get some off the shelf, and frankly I LIKE it that way, darn it!
I always regret getting into this, but I just had to push back on what I saw as your suggestion that our only other option was lock ’em up.
Your argument means that we should also not have alcohol as a legalized substance.
Prohibition DOES NOT work. Neither does decriminalization.
Alcohol is consumed via beverage, some of which may even have health benefits and unless one is supersensitive to smell does not impact people in the immediate vicinity. Yes, you have to be careful with being under the influence, but that is manageable for most people. Pot is just pure drug and for me the message and the availability overrides other issues.
…doesn’t matter all that much anyway. Alcohol is legal and I don’t see anyone arguing to change that. Pot is bad enough on it’s own merits and whether it’s less bad, more bad, or equally as bad as alcohol strikes me as a bit of a red herring anyway. I say take each substance on its own merits and not worry about how one compares to the other.
The public risks of alcohol and marijuana are barely comparable.
About 10,000 people die in the US from drunk driving and almost 300,000 are injured each year. About 88,000 die from alcoholism
Marijuana is no more a “pure drug” than alcohol, and every study under the sun shows that the personal and public health risks of alcohol is miles worse than marijuana. The medical benefits of marijuana are likely much greater, but we don’t have great data yet because of a truly stupid federal policy on cannabis research.
You keep saying that marijuana is very bad, but if you really look into the issue, the worst things about marijuana come from the illegal trade. If we took each substance on its own merits, we’d legalize marijuana. If we compared it to alcohol, we’d legalize it (if we allowed alcohol to be legal). The reason to compare it to alcohol is to show that just like with alcohol, legalization is the better option than prohibition or decriminalization. It’s not a red herring at all. If as a society we are going to accept much more dangerous things, why wouldn’t we accept much less dangerous things?
The biggest issues (besides ending the disastrous illegal marijuana trade) are keeping out of the hands of kids because it has worse effects on developing brains, and minimizing impaired driving. We have better chances at both (and at proper treatment and education with tax revenue) under legalization. The tax rate should be 2-3X higher than what is proposed, but that should be fixable later.
… because the number of people who (openly) drink alcohol regularly is many orders of magnitude larger than the people who (even covertly) smoke marijuana occasionally… nor is the number of regular marijuana users known to be greater than 2 persons (Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson). The very fact of marijuana’s illegality, at present, has suppressed research and denied correlation: we don’t know that harmful side effects exist because they may be treated as something else by the medical establishment for a patient or patients unwilling to disclose to their doctor their marijuana use; furthermore even ‘regular’ users are using a product of various potencies (dealer and/or supply variability) and differentiated amounts per use (papers, pipes, bongs…?). No attempt to normalize dosages had been made until after Colorado legalized ingestible marijuana leading to emergency room visits for marijuana toxicity shooting through the roof…
We simply do not know the full effects of marijuana, and no study (under the sun or otherwise) can say anything definitive about marijuana by itself or in comparison to alcohol. I do not use this fact to require prevention of either decriminalization or legalization. I use this fact to require more study.
The statement “marijuana is very bad” and the statement “there are worse things” (“or even the worst about it is…”) are both unsupported and, at this time, unsupportable. If something is illegal and harm derives, the likelihood of a deleterious effect being directly correlated with the illegal activity is distinctly low. In a similar way, in Victorian England people would claim to have gout to cover up the fact they had syphilis. It was often more a cultural euphemism to avoid talking about sex, while talking about sex, but it affected a great muddying of the waters for research into, and statistics about, both gout and syphilis.
We simply do not know enough about marijuana.
Marijuana can come in many forms, including beverages and food products, which are becoming more popular precisely because many people don’t like smoking.
Yes, marijuana is a drug, but so is alcohol. Pretending that drinking is “just socializing” and not drug use is just that: pretending. There’s a reason people will pay way more for alcoholic beverages than water or soda: they like the drug’s effects. Both can be used responsibly or irresponsibly, but they’re both drugs.
… LSD is also a drug. It can make you see things that are not there. It can make you hear things that weren’t said. So let us dispense with the notion that “drugs is drugs, so whatever…”
It may be found out, at a later date, that alcohol and cannabis are equivalent and the affect of the latter is no worse, nor better, than that of the former. But we don’t know that now.
We have had thousands of years of experience with alcohol… and, indeed, there is a debate amongst scientist as to the import of alcohol on the early survival of the species: beer and wine having been discovered prior the creation of cities, and therefore the creation of poor hygiene, and having helped our immune systems deal with the unsanitary conditions of co-habitation we inflicted upon ourselves… what is to be known about alcohol, it’s effects, potencies, manufacture, interactions with other substances, etc… is known. We don’t know that about marijuana. He have only scratched the surface after less than 200 years of (various potencies and strains) of marijuana becoming more widely known outside of spiritual practices of (mainly) eastern religions.
We simply don’t have an equivalent amount of experience with cannabis as we do with alcohol. More needs to be known. We’re going to find it out… It’s going to happen. It can be muck-ugly, contentious and haphazard (as was the thousands of years experience with alcohol) or it can be scientific, that is to say deliberate. The choice is ours and it is before us right now.
One is already legal, and I see no reason to deliberately add another to that list.
There are entire aisles of supplements that claim beneficial effects (and hence are “drugs”) and are nevertheless treated as food.
Describing marijuana as “drug” is not nearly enough basis to outlaw it.
You don’t smoke them and I’m not aware of such supplements impairing function. They are also apparently tame enough to be sold over the counter. Obviously, there are plenty of legal drugs with benefits, but to legalize another one for purely recreational use just because we can isn’t compelling for me.
It’s because locking people up for this is morally wrong, dumb policy, and we are leaving millions in the hands of cartels and terrorists that could pay for things we desperately need here while creating thousands of jobs. Really look at the data for Colorado and you see an experiment that has largely worked and we an learn from. What’s arbitrary is continuing this futile war on drugs that leaves the wealthy and white largely unscathed, does nothing to reduce usage levels, and has destroyed a generation of black men.
…that there is room to work on the locking up aspect of enforcement?
How about you let individuals and communities outside of yours decide for themselves on this question and you can vote to maintain the ban in your own community? I’m ok with that.
…just as long as I never again have to travel outside of my community:)
…sure, possession is decriminalized…but the act of buying pot is still a criminal act.
You can advocate all you want for “reasonable” enforcement, but you can’t speak for the thousands of cops who will be making their own decisions as to what is reasonable to enforce or not.
Why do you want to continue making my behavior criminal (buying pot)?
There are always judgement calls being made on what is worth enforcing. Is your last line a confession? How about stop doing that and we wouldn’t have a problem? If we go medicinal only then I assume the penalties would be the same as for the unauthorized purchase and sale of other prescriptions.
There is no need for “judgement calls” here. Your objection to people like pogo buying and then smoking pot is based in your emotion, your prejudices, and your preferences. It is not based in evidence.
My hope is that the voters of Massachusetts will vote overwhelmingly in favor of question 4. I further hope that that sooner rather than later the federal government government will come to its senses, will embrace the will of a majority of its citizens, and will legalize marijuana (with regulations similar to those already in place for alcohol and tobacco.
I think I understand your objections. You’ve made your case, and I think you are mistaken. I hope that you are in the minority when the votes are counted for Question 4.
I hope that Massachusetts and then America will do the right thing with marijuana, just as we have done the right with gay marriage and civil rights.
I’ve presented evidence previously and with my slow computer I’m not inclined to find links again. You may know that I’m not a fan of direct democracy to begin with. I’d rather this not be on the ballot at all. However, if the system provides the chance for each voter to individually state his preference via ballot on a matter of how he wants the society he lives in to be, without any accountability to constituents, then that should be respected. I do not want to live in a society where people are going to use another substance that may pose a risk to themselves and others just because they can. The comparison to marriage and other civil rights is not apt because those refer to who people are rather than what they do, besides which they don’t hurt others. Also, not going there violates equal protections whereas anti-pot laws do not.
The question is on the ballot. If I was going to strike a question from the ballot, it would be question 2 — as it is, all I can do is vote “no” on 2 and “yes” on 4. I’ll be voting “no” on the other questions as well.
It appears to me that you are factually mistaken about the court decision to strike down sodomy laws. Those laws specifically targeted practices, not identity. They were struck down because the court said that each of us has a prevailing right to privacy that forces the government to demonstrate a compelling interest in order to ban such acts — the court ruled that the various states (I believe the deciding case was in Texas) failed to demonstrate that compelling interest. A man or woman smoking or eating marijuana in their home causes no harm to you. Period.
My understanding is that since we are discussing federal, rather than state, prohibition, it is the “due process” provision that is relevant rather than “equal protection”. Once it is made legal at the federal level, then “equal protection” will apply because it will be legal in some states and illegal in others. I am under the perhaps mistaken impression that there are few if any other situations where possession or use of a substance can be a felony in one state and perfectly legal in another.
In this issue, it sounds to me as though we’ve presented our arguments to each other and landed on different sides of the question. I guess that’s what makes democracy great.
That’s what you continue to deny. 70% of Americans have tried marijuana and close to a third are regular recreational users. You and I aren’t among them, though I can attest I’ve had ample access to marijuana since I was 14 and just decided not to try.
That access is proof the law is not working its intended purpose to actually curtail use of this drug, and this the arbitrary enforcement of this law disproportionately comes down on communities of color. Additionally, I had no way of knowing if the stuff I did have access to was safe or not (one of the reasons I choose not to try).
Legalization provides the following benefits that criminalization does not provide:
1) Public Health
The user will have access to recreational drugs that meet stringent safety standards and are not laced. It’ll be substantially easier to limit the black market supply and prevent sales to minors under a well regulated legalization regime.
2) Same rules as alcohol
You don’t have to have legalized pot in your community and can vote to stay a dry town, employees cannot get high on the job, no one can operate vehicles while high, severe penalties for sales to minors, and severe penalties for making pot without a license and with impurities.
3) Tax payers instead of tax eaters
Instead of spending millions locking people up, we make millions, perhaps hundreds of millions as Colorado is, that can go to progressive programs that are woefully underfunded in this state.
4) Job creators instead of prisoners
People making businesses, hiring people, and generating economic activity is demonstrably better than continuing to lock people up arbitrarily and the societal costs that come with it.
For you and I, nothing changes. We still don’t smoke pot and go about our lives, except now we are actually benefitting from the economic activity of the marijuana industry instead of paying to house people in prisons. You still don’t have to smoke it, and you don’t been need to have pot dispensaries in your town. It’s unlike your life changes, for the people ready to make money and ready to get out of jail, it’s a life changer. Think about them. Our own personal tastes don’t have to change.
…that there will not be an increase due to greater availability, of either usage by minors or otherwise legal users operating under the influence, or that I will no more with legalization than without it be likely to walk past or be downwind from someone smoking it and thus be forced to inhale it second hand like I would if I were near a cigarette smoker? Nothing changes? RIIIGHT! If I believed that I might not mind as much.
I want you and the hundreds of thousands of citizens in the Commonwealth who purchase marijuana to do so from legal distributors who are on the books, adhering to safety regulations, not selling to minors, and paying a cut to the rest of us in the form of taxation.
The only difference Christopher between what pogo does with his body now and what he will do if pot is legal, is that you and I, non smokers, will benefit from his purchase in the form of taxes. Instead of all of us paying for it in the form of mass incarceration and the racial disparities and associated social costs that come with it.
I don’t WANT society to benefit from people’s unhealthy habits. (Yes, I know we tax cigarettes which I’m glad we do since they are legal, but my preference is we not have them at all – just pointing that out again because you seem to forget my arguments from one exchange to the next.) It is NOT IMO an acceptable trade-off for the public health concerns and the message it sends. For crying out loud would you get off incarceration and racial arguments with me!? I have said repeatedly that I am not an advocate of the former and don’t see the latter as an argument against the law on the merits.
The marijuana laws have been in place since the 1930s and have a starkly racist impact. That racist impact has gotten worse, not better, and there is no movement from you or anyone else towards changing that.
Reasonable people disagree on the public health concerns, and I don’t even know what you mean by “the message it sends”. When you use language like that, it reinforces my impression that you are speaking to a moral rather than public health concern. The “message” it sends is that each of us is entitled to pursue our own happiness as we choose. In my view, that is a reasonably central premise of America.
pursuit of happiness. The state decides I can enjoy a joint,” do,do,do lookin out my back door”. (The reference is a musical one, tokers of my age category will appreciate). All well and good. We begin to tax consumers, to societies benefit. All well and good.
There are limits to my abilities to produce some items, I can’t make a car, I can’t produce a refridgerator, a television set, etc. I can however grow my own food (and I do), and I can (and back in the day have) grow my own pot. If the state allows me to enjoy it how can they restrict my growing it?
I can make my own beer, wine, why not my own pot. All that revenue up in smoke.
Lookin’ Out My Back Door.
that is worse than the one to which you don’t know the lyrics.
I have said that’s not a good argument on the merits of the law itself. I strongly suspect there are other crimes that everyone agrees should be crimes where non-whites are arrested and convicted at disproportionate rates, but that doesn’t mean they should not be crimes.
The message is mostly about the children, which maybe I’m more sensitive to because I work in schools, but even with the steps we’ve taken to decriminalize I’ve heard from parents and teachers who say they are already having more difficulty than previously discouraging kids from trying since the kids see the laws changing and think it’s not too bad after all.
I’m fairly certain Jefferson would not recognize the interpretation you keep trying to assign to the pursuit of happiness. The intent of that is to allow all people, regardless of station or circumstance, to advance in life as far as their abilities and ambition will take them, to the point where they are content with their lot in life. It is not a license to get artificially high.
N/T
I said “there is no movement from you or anyone else towards changing [the racial disparity”. I’ve not said that you deny the racial disparity of our current drug laws. I don’t see you eagerly and enthusiastically pursing efforts to address that racial disparity.
Elsewhere here, here, and here, you have argued rather strongly that intent is, for you, a key factor in addressing racial disparity in legislation (emphasis mine):
The current sentencing laws do not explicitly state that they are to be applied differently for blacks. By comments like the one I’ve quoted above, you’ve previously indicated that you would therefore oppose changing them.
I’m fairly certain that the founding fathers intended a republic — people can do what they want unless there is a specific law to abridging that. The default condition for things that the founding fathers would not recognize is, in my view, a reason for our success. The founding fathers would also not recognize the device you use to read and write your commentary — surely you would not cite that as a reason to make such use illegal.
Here is a link to an NPR photographer’s gallery exploring contemporary meanings of “the pursuit of happiness”. Do you reject these as well?
Of course, it also needs to be said that “the pursuit of happiness” is in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.
It has always seemed to me that on this issue you are “proof-texting” the constitution and cherry-picking the data — seeking ways to rationalize and defend your bias. I get that you disagree, and as I’ve said earlier, that’s why we each have a vote.
Still, I think mutual respect demands that we accept responsibility for things we’ve each written.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but it sounds like you are trying to catch me in a contradiction where I don’t see one. Whether it’s anti-drug laws or voter ID laws, the disparate racial results per se are not in my view enough to throw out the law on the merits, so I think I’m being consistent on that point. That doesn’t mean there are not other reasons to reform such laws.
1) “cigarettes are legal” is an arbitrary standard. Especially since they are arguably more dangerous and addictive than marijuana. So you’re ok with taxing a less safe, more addictive legal product because it was grandfathered in but not with a similar and arguably less risky product since its been illegal for so long? This is the height of circular reasoning. And if you want to argue for banning those as well you would also have to concede alcohol should be banned as well. And you’re then defending the biggest domestic policy failure in Anerican history.
2) I won’t stop harping on racial disparities as long as you continue to wish then away. We’ve given real evidence and data points showing it exists, showing its disproportionately exacerbated by drug crimes prosecutions, and showing that decriminalization is not sufficient to address this issue. They are linked and pretending they aren’t doesn’t make the problem go away.
3) what’s the goal of policy? You seem to concede the law does not have a deterrent effect as pogo and 70% of the public have amply proven, so what’s the point of keeping it on the books? If he will do the activity you dislike whether you like it or not, whether it’s legal or not, what’s wrong with making him and his dealers tax payers instead of tax avoiders at best and tax eaters at worse in the criminal justice system? These are questions you continue to ignore and refuse to answer, and they don’t make your side of the case any stronger.
I really have tried my best to address them, but you clearly don’t agree with or accept my answers. The truth is, I’m not looking for some grand unifying theory or point of consistency, except maybe that the burden IMO generally should rest with proposals to change the status quo. I haven’t heard any proposals lately to return to alcohol Prohibition. If someone does propose such then you are free to start another thread on that. Until then, I want to take each substance on its own merits. I find it unreasonable for you to expect me to bring up opiates or tobacco or anything else when I’m focused on the matter at hand. You ask why I did not initiate a discussion about opiates – because that’s not what we were discussing at the moment! See my reply to Tom above about race. More than 70% of the public (including yours truly) probably exceeds the speed limit from time to time. Doesn’t mean we should not maintain speed laws.
We don’t ruin people lives by jailing them for speed limit violations.
There is a fundamentally moralistic component to our marijuana laws that make them untenable. It is still against the law in Massachusetts for people who are not married to have sex. I’m pretty sure that at least 70% of Massachusetts residents have had sex with someone they’re not married to. It is also against the law to have oral and anal sex in Massachusetts.
We no longer enforce those adultery laws (in no small part because the SCOTUS ruled them unconstitutional). We SHOULD, IMHO, remove them from the books as well. I will vote “Yes” on question 4 so that we can at least explicitly remove our equally moralistic marijuana laws from the books.
…have I said that the enforcement side needs work, and that jail is probably not the answer in most cases? I get that we disagree, but can you (and jconway) at least PLEASE do me the courtesy of paying attention to my arguments?!
You’ve ignored them and keep asserting the righteousness of your point without providing any evidence for its validity. At least tedf linked to studies and arguments to make his case, all we get from you is you find pot icky therefore it should be illegal. I prove the law isn’t working, it’s losing us money, and it’s enforced in a racially biased way and you say “yeah but it’s still icky and I don’t like it and the onus is on you to prove its a bad law”, well I did. The onus is now on you to refute my data with supporting evidence of your own, that’s how argumentation works.
… if his argument is “marijuana use is immoral and therefore should be illegal,” that’s a position that could be defended. In our system, of course, there are constitutional limits to the argument–pornography and the First Amendment, for example. In my view, recreational marijuana use is not even close to the constitutional line. If you accept that view, then the question of “morals legislation” is really a question of philosophy of law. Read Robert P. George, “Making Men Moral,” for an introduction. My point: if Christopher is wrong he is not obviously wrong.
Of course we have “morals legislation”. I ask that moral opposition be acknowledged as such when it is offered as a reason to perpetuate the prohibition of marijuana.
I think I’ve been reasonably clear in my support for restrictions and regulations on marijuana, just as we have restrictions and regulations on pornography, tobacco, alcohol, and host of other “sins”. Reasonable people may differ about how close ANY of this behavior is to “the constitutional line”. The court has ruled, repeatedly, that nude dancing and consuming pornography are constitutionally protected. A great many people scorn those rulings — that does not, in my view, make the rulings less valid.
I object to a moral opposition to marijuana being disguised as a health issue. I have trouble with pretty much all of the “moral legislation” that surrounds us. I have particular trouble with “moral legislation” that is imposed by a minority of believers on a majority who find nothing objectionable at all.
Most Americans do not have a moral opposition to marijuana. Those who propose to perpetuate marijuana prohibition as a moral stance are, in my view, in the wrong — whether “obviously wrong” or not.
are a complete red herring. The reason to undo the criminalization of pot is not because it is unconstitutional; it isn’t. It is because it is a dumb policy.
In other words, the reason to vote “Yes” is not legal. It is political– in the sense of those who advocate competent and good government ought to oppose stupid, bad, and ineffective policies.
I don’t agree with your vote, but you’re asking the right question.
…but for the record, personal morality alone is not enough for me to want to ban a product, activity, etc. I don’t see any constitutional relevance either way on this issue either.
1) Is it more dangerous than legal substances
2) is the law enforced in a fair way?
3) is the law working as an effective deterrent to reduce marijuana?
4) does upholding the current law make sense from a cost/benefits analysis?
5) does the new law make sense from a cost/benefits analysis?
6) does the new law help or hurt public health?
7) does the new law increase or decrease minor consumption of marijuana?
8) is the new law more or less racially unfair than the old law?
I’ve answered all of these questions with data and supporting evidence. I am still waiting to see you answer any of these questions in affirmation of the existing law with supporting evidence of your own. I haven’t seen it, just a lot of circular logic that lot is bad because it’s illegal therefore it should stay illegal and we can propose laws other than legalization to address sentencing disparities. I haven’t seen you discuss or propose those new laws, nor have I seen you give anything remotely approaching evidence in support of why the status quo is preferable to the change.
Blame my slow computer I guess for my reluctance to retrace much trodden ground. I have previously supported my public health concerns and have said that I do want enforcement to be fair, not just racially, but in the let the punishment fit the crime sort of way. Please don’t refer to this with a childish “icky”. There are plenty of things I find icky that I have no desire to ban.
… the status quo will not be changed. White people can get high, and maybe enjoy the absurdity of the status quo with a stoned insight and less paranoia , but it will not be other than the status quo because of it…
The parade of horribles you suppose results from criminalization of marijuana is many times more pernicious in many other areas of society: most specifically policing, but also including housing, lending, sentencing, zoning and education. Each of the arguments you lay out in defense of getting high is applicable to an offensive against a wider range of bad laws but which you, and others, pursue with much much less enthusiasm. The fact that you don’t attack those social ills directly — social ills that don’t come with a built in reward in the form of a high after their demise– but will attack Christopher with an unreserved zeal for disagreeing with you, suggests an entitlement you neither understand nor deserve.
Put simply, the zeal with which marijuana legalization is pursued, and the comparative laxity in pursuit of the actual parade of horribles, suggests a group of unthinking white guys waiting for their pot o’ cheetos at the end of the marijuana rainbow. That you want us to pat you on the back for your commitment to social justice is a shade too fey for me.
So I make thoughtful public policy arguments linking to secondary and tertiary peer reviewed sources, am not a marijuana user myself and have no desire to get high, and you come back with Cheetos jokes? Got it.
When either of you brings your own evidence to the table we can have a conversation, until then, like Barney Frank said, I refuse to argue with a table.
We’ve discussed plenty of other racial justice issues here and it’s usually Christopher quoting the I have a Dream speech and wishing away the problem and saying he doesn’t see color. I have consistently been pro BLM and ending the drug war is one of that movements too priorities, that’s black people asking the war to stop. Is Jay Z a white kid trying to get high? Watch his thoughtful NY Times Op Ed I linked to above and get back to me before waving the banner of white privilege in my face. I doubt you know a single person whose life was ruined due to a drug possession incarceration, I know classmates and relatives who have been.
This is a perfect example of you thinking your special and better than anyone else… which is a thoroughly white entitled perspective.
No only have I seen many people, black and white, incarcerated for drug possession I’ve seen, first hand lives ruined and, in fact, ended by drugs. My mother is a drug and alcohol abuse counselor and advocate for the homeless in no small part because of my siblings. So take your fake-moral white-boy blinders and shove em up your ass. Sideways.
I was unfair, it was also really unfair to call me a rich white kid who wants to get high and eat Cheetos. My dad was also a 25 year drug counselor, and it’s his belief that marijuana is a dangerous and even psychologically addictive drug, but no more so than alcohol. His horror stories helped keep me away from hard drugs and pot, and our family history has tempered my early run ins with alcohol.
We treat alcoholics, we don’t lock them up. Similarly, we should treat moderate marijuana users like moderate drinkers, as tax payers and responsible adults. When that use becomes irresponsible, we will be out of the shadows and have the resources to fund treatment.
Our cousin went to jail on a pot charge, came out with a record and addiction to harder drugs, and has been in and out of jail ever since. There is an element of personal responsibility and familial responsibility that was absent, and continues to be in many cases. But I’ve seen intergenerationational poverty within my own extended family because of drugs. And locking people up doesn’t seem to be helping them, and maybe if he had a legal outlet to try marijuana and even sell it, he wouldn’t have fallen down the rabbit hole.
I know sons of Harvard professors who were given a warning, and black and poor white classmates in jail for the same offense. It’s time for the drug war to end and for sensible drug policy that heals addicts and taxes the casual user to take effect.
Can I just say, once again for the record that I am more than fine with treating addicts of other drugs, even those more dangerous than marijuana, this way as well, so long as they aren’t part of the distribution. Addiction per se should always be treated as a public health rather than criminal issue, but I still want to throw the book at those who push and get others hooked.
And punish those that sell to minors or were proven to have over served drunk drivers. We ban alcohol ads during children’s television programming, banned tobacco ads entirely from television, and have largely banned alcohol and tobacco ads from mainstream magazines and billboards. It’s called a well regulated and strictly controlled market, and it ensures those that can enjoy these substances in moderation can contribute back to society and help pay for those that need treatment.
I have no problem with banning marijuana ads in general and even banning marijuana distribution in a given locality, this is about moving the law in the right direction and we will need to vigorously enforce the new laws to discourage a grey market and discourage minors from using,
As has been thoroughly demonstrated in this thread and elsewhere, white people are not completely immune from facing criminal sanctions for marijuana use, but they’re pretty damn close. The bulk of the enforcement falls on poor black and brown people, and while that’s true of the enforcement of many other laws and in many other spheres of life, it seems to be ample proof that legalization activists aren’t doing this out of self-interest. The purely self-interested white people are already smoking all they want with relative impunity — legalization will just extend that bit of freedom to everyone, on the books instead of just in practice.
… and if they wanted to extend any freedom to any one, rather than just given themselves a hassle-free high, they would do so. The amount of energy and enthusiasm going into a ballot initiative legalizing marijuana stands in stark and poignant contrast to the dearth of enthusiasms pointed at real injustice. Hey, that’s politics. Just don’t try to cloak the one in the moral ardor of the other and tell me it’s right. It ain’t.
Michelle Alexander is our most prominent opponent of mass incarceration and she has been calling for an end to the drug war for years. I agree with her that the Silicon Valley VCs are Johnny come latelys and its tragic and sad entrepreneurial black men got locked up for something white owned corporations will now profit off of. But continuing the status quo doesn’t help anyone, it continues the disparities on drug charges while preventing new markets and new jobs from being created.
This is an instrumental albeit incremental piece in the longer fight to restore sanity to our criminal justice system, but quit pretending we’re calling legalization a panacea for the whole system and quit arguing that if we fail to legalize it somehow makes that system better. It won’t.
… There is a difference between fighting for a social justice and saying, incidentally, this other thing can be done away with also and saying, hey let’s get this nice thing and call it fighting for social justice… There is, in fact, a world of difference.
“Non omnia possimus omnes” translates to “not all can do all.” It means we all have limitations and we shouldn’t measure ourselves against others. It also means, choose your battles; if you try to fight on all fronts you’ll lose on all fronts. It, therefore, highlights the fact that those battles you choose indicate your values and your priorities.
Louis Armstrong smoked marijuana most every day of his adult life. He didn’t, however, view it as ‘recreational.’ He straightforwardly and seriously termed it medicinal and a balm for the “chronic pain of racism.” Maybe if some had straightforwardly battled racism he wouldn’t have felt the need for the medicine to deal with it. Maybe if you didn’t have the excuse of ready medicine to deal with the symptoms you’d be more apt to tackle the actual disease.
Interesting takeaway. I am saying legalizing pot reduces racial sentencing disparity and replaces a policy that isn’t meeting any of its stated ends with policies that have been proven to work towards their ends in other states.
… than this.
There are many laws that fit your criterion for action. You choose to fight against this one law in particular. You picked your battle, so fight it. Just don’t tell me your anything more than being accidentally just.
I am legitimately not following your argument, I have been a consistent advocate for criminal justice reforms and ending the war on drugs is part of that effort. Similarly, I support Obamacare as part of the effort to mitigate against income inequality in this country. Supporting that and advocating for that does not mean I am also opposed to a living wage or unionized workforce or the host of other policies we need to end income inequality, or somehow ignoring those issues.
No one here is arguing legalization is enough to achieve criminal justice reform, but the onus is on the laws defenders to prove why the status quo is working and how continuing it doesn’t exacerbate these problems. We have linked to substantial evidence showing that it actually exacerbates these problems quite a bit, you’re welcome to submit yours at any time for our consideration.
70% of the adult population has tried marijuana, an absurdly high number of people to lock up while also a very large and eager tax base and market to build out. This number is true regardless of race, it’s about the same level, yet black men are eight times more likely than whites to be incarcerated on a drug charge. Decriminalization didn’t go far enough since we leave the revenue on the table and still leave too many entrepreneurial black men in prison. Let them earn their trade legally, through a new industry that could be as big as biotech, rather than locking them up.
If you think the Cannabis Control Commission is really going to give people like him licenses, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in.
(1) The commission is recipe for corruption and favoritism. Expect all the well connected political hacks to get pot licenses and not your regular guy small business owners.
(2) The mandatory minimum number of licences really runs roughshod over the historical rights of cities and towns to govern themselves. They shouldn’t be forced to conduct a special election just to set the number to something they think is reasonable.
(3) The tax rate is way too low. CO and WA are collecting several times the proposed 3.75% statutory rate.
(4) If you really think that legalization is going to reduce police violence against people of color, you haven’t been paying attention. The product Eric Garner was selling has long been legal, but that didn’t prevent the cops from killing him over it. If anything, now that the political hacks will have a monopoly on legal pot, there will be *more* incentive to use violence to suppress other channels.
1) Yes, all government commissions run the risk of corruption, so we’ll have to be careful about that. The awarding of medical marijuana licenses definitely had a political element in the first round, when there were a strict number of licenses. Now that it’s only limited by cities & towns, that has decreased; that’s the way these licenses will go, so hopefully it won’t be too bad (but risking corruption is a risk of regulating anything, and not a good argument against regulation).
2) They can limit the licenses to a pretty small number – 20% of liquor stores or the same number as medical marijuana facilities – without a vote, and also get control over adding a 2% local sales tax. If the state approves legalizing marijuana, I don’t think a town having to hold another vote to re-ban it is too much to ask.
3) The high tax rates in CO and WA have actually caused a lot of problems. More people kept buying on the black market because it was cheaper than buying in a store, while in Oregon, the black market has shrunk much more because it makes economic sense to buy in a store. On top of the black market selling untested products and being linked to violence, people buying outside of stores also leads to less tax revenue overall. So, low taxes with high buy-in could actually lead to more revenue than high taxes where the black market continues.
4) Our decriminalization law is incredibly strong, so it’s rare for users to be targeted by police. But even with decrim, blacks are arrested more than whites for marijuana use: 3.9x more, according to the ACLU. Legalization, along with broader policing reforms, should help decrease that.
1) Then call your legislator and tell them to adopt the proposal by Rep. Rogers and Sen. Jehlen that would enable a more transparent commission process. Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good or throw the baby out with the bath water.
2) Count me in the “we have too many municipalities and they have too much power” camp to begin with, but it seems modeled off of alcohol licenses and I have nothing against home rule municipalities determining they don’t want legalized pot in their town. This is basically a way for voters to have their cake and eat it too, and I’m fine with this provision.
3) We want to set it high enough to make revenue while low enough to discourage a grey market. Colorado and especially Washington have had to contend with grey markets that defeat the point.
4) I am saying legalizing will help the African Americans disproportionately arrested for pot. Michelle Alexander has eloquently made the point that Silicon Valley VC’s will make millions off a product that jailed a generation of black men, but that doesn’t mean legalization won’t help some form small businesses and reorient some of the inner city drug economies towards an open and productive end. But no, this policy won’t end racism. That’s not a compelling reason to oppose it. And it will help end sentencing disparity.
And has definitely moved me firmly into the “yes” camp. For the most part, the “no” arguments herein seem to reduce to: “I reject your logical argument with facts, they don’t move me; I don’t use this stuff anyway, and besides that one guy in college who flunked out first semester met with my stern moral disapproval. And, my goodness me, we can’t send the signal that something I don’t care for personally is OK!”
In other words, pearl-clutching, led on by the district attorneys.
Put me down for an “aye.”
n/t
Marijuana has led to zero deaths in the Commonwealth this year while Opiods have killed hundreds in our backyard. Where’s the call to ban that harmful substance and lock up the pharma execs like we lock up black men selling weed on the corner? I don’t see anyone here opposing legalization calling for that which is the height of hypocrisy.
The term “opioids” is a generic term covering an array of substances derived from opium, the spectrum of which runs the gamut from the controlled (that is to say, a conditional legalization) to that which is outright banned. (Which banned portion of that spectrum is likely the majority deaths from ‘opioids’)
Your argument approaches hysteria as it flees coherence…
I think it’s clear that tighter controls may be necessary, but they are used for legitimate health purposes. I’ve said I’m open to medicinal use of pot too (though I don’t understand why they need separate dispensaries; seems that pot as medicine should be available at the same pharmacies as everything else). We obviously aren’t locking people up for a legal substance and nobody as far as I can tell is arguing for locking up a bunch of people of any race (though I suppose if we maintained the control level as for other prescriptions the penalties for unauthorized distribution would be similar).
This is an example why I frequent Blue Mass. Thoughtful, respectful, discussion regarding an issue of importance which is relevant today. My libertarian streak determines my position on this issue, but the discussion here has been enlightening, thought provoking, and educational. Not really a partisan issue, maybe that’s why I find the thread so appealing. Carry on.
I post about marijuana policy on a lot of different websites, and the conversations on BMG are consistently of much higher caliber than Huffington Post or any other websites. Lots of smart people discussing the issues, and (mostly) staying polite. Such a great community.
I’ve met a number of people who favor legalization in principle but do not like the phrasing of the ballot question, believing the measure to be poorly framed and contain insufficient safeguards. One of them is my state senator, Jason Lewis. Another data point — a friend who has training in psychopharmacology says medical marijuana should be available in a pill or liquid medication that would make clear its’ medical use and reduce the chances of a child finding sweets laced with marijuana. I personally have not delved sufficiently into the phrasing of the ballot question or the various ways of framing policy on this issue. But I do understand that one can be in favor of legalization (which I am) and unsure which way to vote on Q4 (which I also am).
I sympathize with those who like the idea of legalization but don’t think that this ballot initiative is perfect — I don’t think it’s perfect either, but I do think that it’s a giant step forward from where we are. I’m an incrementalist more generally anyway, so my thought is that passing a very good initiative now will get us to a near-perfect system in 4 years faster than waiting 4 years for a near-perfect initiative.
The initiative itself doesn’t have all of the safeguards spelled out, but it empowers the Cannabis Control Commission to make whatever regulations it feels necessary to protect consumers. So even though the initiative doesn’t ban infused gummy bears, for example (since it doesn’t ban any forms of cannabis), the Commission could easily do that, and I expect that they will (and would be happy with that decision). They can create other regulations, like a maximum potency per container or very bright markings of THC-infused food, that other states have had a lot of success with. I like that it’s so open-ended, which makes it much more adaptable than having to pass a law every time we want to change any little thing.
Vote against 4 and we continue our policy status quo which has done nothing to reduce marijuana use, nothing to keep unsafe products off the streets or the hands of minors, empowers drug cartels instead of creating above board businesses, and incarcerates blacks at four times the rates of whites. Time to move on and learn from the examples of Washington and Colorado, and learn from their mistakes as well.
…but problems with enforcement is not an argument against a law on the merits. What I recall seeing on the news in CO the first day of legalization were long lines of people looking to get legally high, a scenario I’d rather not replicate here. With the exception of enforcement issues previously discussed I am on balance satisfied with the status quo.
You are defending a fallacy where the law somehow stops people from enjoying an activity they are committed to doing. I’d rather them get legally high, pay society back for the privilege, and we ensure they have access to safe pot and minors don’t have access.
Using your logic if we morally oppose abortion, we should legally prohibit it. But I’m pro choice precisely to protect women from charlatans and unsafe medicine, and I trust them to make the best judgment on their bodies and not me. This is a similar issue. People will choose to do these things anyway, might as well have it in the open and with the state directing the profit towards the public good instead of cartels.
People will her high whether we allow it or not, do we want them to get high safely with the money going to the rest of us or underground with toxic additives and the money going to El Chapo and ISIS? That’s the real choice, not between people getting high and people not getting high.
I’d rather not make it easier or safer to do something that probably should be done in the first place, but if it really is just your own use I have said repeatedly decriminalization is fine. I’d rather society say in no uncertain terms this is unhealthy, but if we legalize it then out of the other side of our collective mouth we are saying, yeah, but it’s not really THAT bad.
You’re actually correct I think about the logic of abortion. People who oppose it usually do so because they see a fetus as a human life and terminating said life is the moral equivalent of murder. So yes, if you believe abortion to be murder then it really does logically follow that it be banned and the woman and her doctor face the same consequences as they would if they had pulled out a gun and blew someone’s brains out.
(Kidding.) A few points:
1. Can we discuss this without getting personal?
2. I have trouble with the assumption that legalization is the progressive position. I think it is, and I’m going to vote for legalization, but it’s not progressive dogma (progma?), at least not in the latest pamphlet I got. People of good left-will can disagree.
3. I understand why advocates resist the term “entry drug,” but I think they’re in denial. Beer is the entry drug for whiskey. I know a few (very few) people who have tried heroin, and they didn’t start with it. Better for all concerned, I think, to acknowledge pot’s role; maybe legalization would even lessen the entry drug effect.
4. Actually I think that’s it. Oh wait — I think freedom should be the bottom line. I would even consider opiate legalization, by that standard. But yes it has to be regulated.
Pot is not an entry drug. The studies are clear.
Early studies that suggested otherwise used bad science, including screening out coke users who hadn’t ever used pot (!) and were “racist fearmongering.”
Hell, not only is marijuana not a gateway drug to hard drugs, but studies have shown that it can help get people off hard drugs, and we’re starting to see the results of that come into place in states like Colorado that have legalized pot.
I have developed a few friends over the past three years on the SouthCoast, many of whom are veterans. I meet the best people when I do volunteer work in the local food kitchen, truly good people, but many have pain, mental health and substance issues. They all started on booze, not weed. I have absolutely ZERO experience as a clinical practitioner but I know what I see.
A large portion of them (I won’t guestimate) stabilize with weed. They can function, especially the people with pain and cancer issues. If they don’t have weed they do much worse drugs. When they go to aderol and the opioids, I lose them and sometimes need to bring in law enforcement, which sucks. If you have never had to make that kind of phone call, you do not want to do it.
I want the laws of my country to not turn people into criminals because they are addicted to drugs. I do not want the desire of my fellow citizens for drugs to turn the developing world into a cesspool for drug production. I do not want America’s pursuit of intoxication to further the nexus between drugs and human trafficking (if you have not actually busted a trafficking place you have no idea how ugly it is). Drug trafficking and sex trafficking go hand in hand.
After almost a half century of traveling in the weed world of Latin America, I have no doubt that our state and national laws on weed are f-ing up the lives of US citizens and much of Latin America.
BTW, I do not smoke but have learned what screws the US and Latin economies.
You are right that one cannot say with confidence that marijuana is a gateway drug, but it seems one can’t say with confidence that it’s not. Here is Factcheck.org from April 2015 responding to Chris Christie’s “gateway drug” claim:
Respectfully, I do not feel the need to answer the question of what is a gateway drug. I grew up in an age of weed and wine and have not been able to answer the question of why some people become alcoholics, pot-heads or addicts to deeper drugs. Those issues were never part of my life.
What I know:
the war consigns too many people, mostly people of color and male to jail;
the US war on drugs is killing the developing world (thanks Reagan/Bush/Clinton)
Even in your quote.
If gateway drug doesn’t mean “cause” then what the heck does it mean?
When half the population has tried something, many within the past year, most addicts will have used it at least once prior.
So, sure, most people who have used opiods or cocaine have used pot before… just like they’ve drank milk. Should we ban milk, too?
And your quote actually makes things even clearer:
Unsupported by the evidence.
In science speak, it doesn’t get clearer than “unsupported by evidence.”
That’s my point. “Christie’s definitive statement is unsupported by evidence — there is some evidence in favor of a gateway effect, but the scientific community shares no consensus on the issue and there is little evidence on the underlying cause of that effect.
Unsupported by evidence doesn’t mean “we aren’t sure.” This seems a little like arguing that gravity is “just a theory”– ie sophistry that exploits the careful language of science. There is some evidence? What? Just because some dipshit politician or DA says so? Quoth the DA: in my vast experience, and I’m in the trenches on this issue every day, unlike these scientists, every user of “hard drugs” started with pot.
As capably highlighted by ryepower, this is bullshit, and bullshit spewed as facts by the guys that spend taxpayer money prosecuting it. Of course they don’t want to change; can’t get a budget increase that way!
Maybe we are reading my link differently. I think it is saying that a “definitive statement” on whether a marijuana is a gateway drug is “unsupported by evidence,” but that “there is some evidence in favor of a gateway effect,” i.e., the matter is unclear. Not a big deal.
I will concede that it is not scientifically automatically a gateway drug.
But I still think it has that social role. Your link cites proximity to other hard drugs users. In my (admittedly limited) exposure to hard drug users, they started with pot (or beer even) and escalated from there.
I also agree with you that earlier studies fear-mongered, but if we’re discussing this as a societal issue, we have to discuss its social role.
(Once again, I do plan to vote for legalization. But I do so warily.)
Not definitely.
We can definitely say there’s no medical reason for pot to lead to other drugs.
But we can’t definitively say it doesn’t play that role. We’ve seen it play that role, simply because that’s where we put it.
who’s spent years researching this, over your gut feeling. Especially given that the bulk of independent experts agree with him, too.
Pot is as much of a “gateway drug” as milk or a hairstyle is.
Also, re: “social role” — that is problematic and loaded. It’s essentially why we’ve had the drug war since the beginning — stereotypes and fear-based propaganda directed toward the “social” culture of a narrow subset of people society has viewed in bigotry as undesirables.
If pot was historically viewed as a preppy white boy thing, you’d be able to pick it up at the local 7/11.
Half a notch better.
I appreciate that you’re voting for legalization.
on the issue I raised in the promotion comment — whether it’s true, as the Baker administration is suggesting, that the passage of Question 4 could result in cuts in municipal aid. Bottom line: nah.
From the Times:
It was part of a draft that I thought I deleted and it seems the better version of the post has been lost. Will try again.
You’ll just need unanimous consent to revise and extend your remarks for the record:)
NPR had a good piece this weekend showing that legalization has not substantially affected racial disparities in arrest patterns in Washington.
From the piece:
That said, it does seem stop and smell has gone from the chosen policy to one cops rarely adhere to now:
It is this latter use of marijuana as probable cause that could have been the primary factor in the Charlotte police shooting last week.
From the Times: