Drug Prohibition: Still Stupid

[slatfatf]

Ben Carson wants to intensify stupidity

Because if you try something stupid and notice decades later that it has not been working out as planned, the best answer is to try intensely stupid.

I know this guy is supposed to be smart, but I have yet to see any evidence of that.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

He's slightly smarter than our current law. He sees some benefit to medical marijuana but the Schedule 1 classification still claims there are none.

But being slightly smarter than our stupid cannabis laws is damning with faint praise.

He believes the discredited "gateway drug" theory of why ineffective prohibition laws are a good idea.

 

[Guest]

It seems some top cops are getting on board with the program finally. Interesting read here:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/police-prosecutors-call-fewer-arrests-nonviolent-offenders-952/#transcript

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition has been around for quite a while.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Federal Reserve Won't Allow Cannabis Bank in Colorado

There have been conflicting signals from the federal government but the Fed decided that signals are signals and the law is the law, so they decided to obey the law.

The law says that there is no known medical application for cannabis and it has a high potential for abuse, just like heroin and other Schedule 1 drugs.

The facts about medical uses do not matter. What matters is that Duopoly politicians won't change the federal law. Until they do, there's no reason the banking cartel should want to risk mingling their money with the illegal money generated by (state-legal) cannabis sales. I'd reach the same conclusion if I were on the Federal Reserve board.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Ben Carson wants to intensify stupidity

Because if you try something stupid and notice decades later that it has not been working out as planned, the best answer is to try intensely stupid.

Bernie Sanders has come out against the war on cannabis and now it's looking like the smartest Republican on this issue is...

sigh...

Donald Trump

My reaction: WTF, Rand Paul? You deserve to lose to him just for being slow to realize that libertarians are right on this issue, have been for a long time, and the public is starting to realize it.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Why Banning Smart Drugs for College Students is Impossible, Evil

Should college students be allowed to take Adderall and Modafinil to improve their academic performance, or should universities treat these so-called “smart drugs” the same way Major League Baseball treats steroids? I attended a debate on the subject at George Washington University last night, and came away convinced that banning smart drugs is not only impractical—it’s profoundly evil.

The argument that these drugs must be banned, lest students get an education that is too good, is just plain weird.

Also weird is the idea that college students want to take drugs for some other reason than getting high, but maybe that's just my generation.

 

[Raz'r]

plenty of local high schoolers taking ADD drugs so they can compete with the other kids on ADD drugs.

Some adults doing the same thing.

It's the flip side of the Silicon Valley experience.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Good Christians Against Prohibition

Last Saturday the New England Conference of United Methodist Churches, a group representing 600 congregations in six Northeastern states, voted in favor of Resolution 15-203, which uses Christian principles to call for an end to the War on Drugs.

The resolution begins:

In the love of Christ, who came to save those who are lost and vulnerable, we urge the creation of a genuinely new system for the care and restoration of victims, offenders, criminal justice officials, and the community as a whole. Restorative justice grows out of biblical authority, which emphasizes a right relationship with God, self and community. When such relationships are violated or broken through crime, opportunities are created to make things right.

...

Be it Resolved: That the New England Annual Conference supports seeking means other than prohibition to address the problem of substance abuse; and is further resolved to support the mission of the international educational organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) to reduce the multitude of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ending drug prohibition.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Good Mexicans Against Prohibition

And they're not just any Mexicans. They're Supreme Court Justices.

One in particular seems to grasp the fundamental point of legalization: self-ownership and individual rights.

Arturo Zaldivar, the Supreme Court justice who backed the application and is considered a liberal by many, argued that Mexico’s laws against the personal use and consumption of marijuana are unconstitutional because they suppress the rights of individuals to do as they choose.

“The responsible decision taken to experiment with the effects of this substance — whatever personal harm it might do — belongs within the autonomy of the individual, protected by their freedom to develop themselves,” Zaldivar said.



That is markedly different from legalization strategies pursued in the United States, where marijuana advocates tend to focus on overhauling criminal laws or asserting an exception for medical use.

 

[tuk tuk Joe]

Mexicos Marijuana Ruling Shakes Up Drug Policy

http://time.com/4100747/mexicos-marijuana-ruling-shakes-up-drug-policy/

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Federal Reserve Won't Allow Cannabis Bank in Colorado

There have been conflicting signals from the federal government but the Fed decided that signals are signals and the law is the law, so they decided to obey the law.

The law says that there is no known medical application for cannabis and it has a high potential for abuse, just like heroin and other Schedule 1 drugs.

The facts about medical uses do not matter. What matters is that Duopoly politicians won't change the federal law. Until they do, there's no reason the banking cartel should want to risk mingling their money with the illegal money generated by (state-legal) cannabis sales. I'd reach the same conclusion if I were on the Federal Reserve board.

My issue with this is that the Fedgov can't have it both ways. They can't collect taxes on the revenue sales while at the same time continuing to treat it as an illegal activity.

The Fed is a banking cartel and they're not so worried about collecting taxes. They know that if they mix illegal money with all their legal money, all of it becomes subject to seizure. They'd be fools to take that risk. Not being fools, they refuse. I don't blame them.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Sorry, thought you were responding to my post about the Fed.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Ohio overwhelmingly rejected cannabis legalization

Ohio's most prominent politicians, including Gov. John Kasich, Attorney General Mike DeWine, and Secretary of State Jon Husted, opposed Issue 3, and so did most of the state's editorial boards. But it's not clear whether the rejection of Issue 3 reflects general resistance to legalization or opposition to the initiative's most controversial feature: a cannabis cultivation cartel that would have limited commercial production to 10 sites controlled by the initiative's financial backers. The ballot description highlighted that aspect of the initiative, saying Issue 3 "grants a monopoly for the commercial production and sale of marijuana for recreational and medicinal purposes" and would "endow exclusive rights for commercial marijuana growth, cultivation, and extraction to self-designated landowners who own ten predetermined parcels of land."

I would have had a hard time voting for that crap. Incremental progress can be a viable path but there's no good reason to give these people a monopoly on growing this particular plant. I'm actually glad to see that one go down in flames.

 

[tuk tuk Joe]

Personally I prefer the Mexican point of view to the police state...

“As a country, we are taking a first step, a step that recognizes this important human right, which is dignity and liberty,”

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Sanders is the best of the major party candidates on cannabis prohibition

First ever to say he would support a state legalization effort.

Until last week, Sanders sounded a lot like Clinton on marijuana policy, saying he was interested to see what happens in the states where voters have approved legalization. By publicly admitting his support for legalization, he instantly became the pot-friendliest major-party presidential candidate. Even Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the most libertarian candidate in the Republican field, has declined to take a position on the merits of legalization, saying only that the federal government should not try to force pot prohibition on the states.

If Rand Paul would take a cue from Sanders and say what he actually thinks, I suspect he would say he favors legalization as well. But he doesn't say what he thinks. I guess he hasn't noticed how much support Trump and Sanders have gotten simply by saying what they think.

Another hat tip to Bernie Sanders, who has now introduced a bill to end the war on cannabis at the federal level.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Industrial Hemp Cultivation Becomes Legal in North Carolina

The bill was passed on Sept. 29 in the North Carolina Senate by a vote of 42-2 (6 absent) and has sat on the governor’s desk since. On Saturday, Gov. McCrory allowed the bill to become law without his signature. He explained his decision in a written statement, “After discussion with Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, I have decided to allow Senate Bill 313 to become law without my signature.

...

Bill 313 states in part, “The General Assembly finds and declares that it is in the best interest of the citizens of North Carolina to promote and encourage the development of an industrial hemp industry in the state in order to expand employment, promote economic activity, and provide opportunities to small farmers for an environmentally sustainable and profitable use of crop lands that might otherwise be lost to agricultural production.”

The Governor seems to be concerned that people will grow the mind-altering or medically useful variants of the plant. It would be terrible if people were suddenly able to get hold of those kinds, which prohibition has so successfully kept out of the US for so long.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Head of DEA is a joke

He serves at the pleasure of the President, so I guess having a guy who doesn't know that marijuana has medical uses and who thinks it's more or less the same as heroin pleases the President. Of course, we could always elect someone from the other half of the Duopoly and get more or less the same shit, only worse.

Close to 15,000 of us have already signed the petition calling for his removal from office. Not that it would matter. Obama would just appoint another drug warrior who puts the interests of his agency above those of the people. Just like a Republican President would.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Destroying valuable property instead of selling it is evidence of hoplophobia. Those dumbfucks must really hate taxpayers almost as much as they hate guns.

I think the cops destroy drugs they confiscate too.

That at least makes some sense, as the drugs are generally contraband and can not be legally sold to people.

Of course, drug prohibition is still stupid, but the symptoms don't quite match the symptoms of hoplophobia.

It's a different flavor of fear, leading to different calls for the nanny state to protect us from a different segment of the Duopoly.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Most of us have tried cannabis. Those who have not certainly know someone who has.

Ask yourself or someone you know: were you still high WEEKS after using it?

I wasn't either.

And now, the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously stated that the presence of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) in the blood does not necessarily mean that a person is impaired.

Tests can detect the metabolites for weeks or months, but that doesn't mean impairment lasts for weeks or months. It doesn't. If you don't know this personally, ask someone who does to verify what I have said.