The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations
cato.org
cato.org
No kidding - let me just quote Kofi Annan's excellent essay on the subject (published a couple of months before the UN failed to course correct at UNGASS 2016):
"Nowhere is this divorce between rhetoric and reality more evident than in the formulation of global drug policies, where too often emotions and ideology rather than evidence have prevailed."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/kofi-annan-on-why-...
The conversation shown here within HN is fascinating, from an outliers perspective.
The benefits and effects of the legalisation of Marijuana I would assume, have been well documented by now though the quantity of these reports, I would assume to be small in number. Surely it's a benefit if the number of these reports and articles were increased.
Surely the reports from Canberra (Australia, where plant ownership is legalised) and Amsterdam are quite numerous? And they would back the sentiment shown in this article?
The argument about the 'divorce between rhetoric and reality' around drug policy has enough merit to renew the conversation on drug legalisation by it's self.
Once that conversation begins, the number of reports and articles such as this will increase and potential arguments about a single report being either biased or anecdotal will be minimised as the scientific method is leveraged.
The conversation should steered towards why drug policy is inaccurate and what we need to do to have laws and systems changed, socially and politically, to cater for more evidence based studies on drug use.
Edit:
A TED talk on the topic that I found interesting.
https://www.ted.com/talks/ethan_nadelmann_why_we_need_to_end...
Disclaimer: occasionally I like to smoke weed. So by the sentiment of everyone here, I'm probably biased and my arguments should be subjected to criticism and be entirely disregarded as lacking merit.
(see what I did there? ;-D)
both pro and cons arguments were wrong. absolutely nothing relevant has changed.
crime didnt go up nor down. neither did taxes. etc. nada.
also, ted is only relevant to rich pot heads ;)
One area where legal marijuana has reaped unexpectedly large benefits is state tax revenue.
For example, issues that cause crime. Wouldn't that be nice? Or at least advancement of science and engineering. Someone gets to fund the space program.
Alcohol (especially wine) is very easy and cheap to make at home but the Liquor Control Board of Ontario still managed to pull in $1.8 billion last year taxing it.
If prohibiting something doesn't help anything, even if it doesn't hurt anything, then we shouldn't prohibit it.
I would like to hear an counter example, I can't think of one.
However as a counter example, even if the murder rate didn't change by de-criminalizing murder, I'd still argue that there should be a law against it.
If the murder rate didn't change by de-criminalizing murder at all, then it would be more rational to spend the resources on other ways that could help lower the rate or help deal with the facts that they are happening.
Then there is the huge investment in thing that only catch people with drugs. Drug sniffing dogs, housing for literally millions of non-violent offenders, training on finding drugs.
In addition to the victim which others have commented on this is an extremely poor analogy.
In a legal system whose premise is that one should be free to do anything so long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others, it it consistent to legalise pot and keep murder illegal.
And while you're there, will need to find a way to get rid of the smell for everyone in a 500 feet radius (im exaggerating, of course).
While I'm absolutely ok with it being legal, and it certainly should not be a criminal offense...it at least should follow rules similar to tobacco with a twist. That shit can seriously ruin the day of everyone living around. Entire city parks are becoming impossible to go through unless you're looking for a contact high.
So it definitely does not deserve to be a crazy SWAT team involved criminal offense, but victimless, not quite.
The parent question asked for a counter example of where the law makes no difference in the offence.
The parent question appeared to me to be making that statement irrespective of what the law was. So I just picked the most extreme form of law I could think of.
Which is the whole point of the inquiry, we can't start taking it for granted -- whereas for murder, it's a pretty safe bet by now, 3 millennia plus into written human history.
And if banning murder did not lower the murder rate than banning murder would be a piece of legislation with no benefits and only costs. Not sure why we want to pass legislation that puts innocent people in jail and sets money on fire for no benefit.
The Cato report just shows that we don't have to give anything up in order to get that big win -- it's free with no downside.
I'm not exageratting... I've never met a caucasian person who's been arrested for marijuana posession. Never. And yet here in NYC alone, on the order of 50,000 people (almost exclusively of color) are arrested every year for marijuana possession. This gives them a record. This means they can't get jobs or take financial aid.
This Cato report, quite frankly, is a painfully long bore that ignores the dynamics at play that make Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska uniquely atypical test-beds.
Wish that was also true for TED.
A policy which has no significant impact, except to stop law enforcement from wasting time on trivialities, is fine by me.
I happen to know someone (Caucasian) who was just arrested and let me say that skin color isn't always an issue. I think your point would stand more firmly on a basis of states that are more or less likely to criminalize the drug.
Edit: To early to speak correctly
Now at the time two of my friends were black, and one was Sikh, and they stopped smoking first out of all of us, because if they so much as smelled vaguely of pot, they'd get hassled. When we all get together now over dinner or drinks, we still go back to the old joke my Sikh friend came up with, "Being white is like a superpower in this country."
It's not that simple of course, and the factors which determine whether the police will bother you are also based on socioeconomic status, and if you have a criminal record or not. In terms of actually catching the eye of the police though, my white friends and I just never did, while any of my friends who couldn't have passed the infamous "paper bag test" always seemed to have to explain themselves a lot more.
Note: NorthEast US, I cannot speak for the rest of it.
Sidenote: My Sikh friend normally has a decent time of it, but after 9/11? He and his family who had moved to Georgia, ended up moving back East.
You can meet one now, on HN! I was arrested in 2011 for having ~3 grams of marijuana in rural Maryland. I am Caucasian. Got cavity searched and sat in jail for about 18 hours. Without going into too much detail, the charges were still dropped - apparently the police officer who arrested me had a bad track record of illegally detaining people. (It is questionable if my race had anything to do with their willingness to drop charges of course, but that is a totally different discussion.)
In any case, I wonder if this would have happened to me if MD had passed their decriminalization laws earlier? I've since moved to Washington State.
With "hard" drugs, things are different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_Netherlands
It is true that cocaine and heroin are very serious drugs that can do a lot of harm. It is also true that prohibition and the prosecution of users only seems to make matters worse. For some scientific evidence in cartoon format :) :
Never work in USA though since the Police work with the Healthcare system and so if a offender stops going to treatment at their doctor's office the office calls the Police and the Police give notice to the user. They also give clean needles (could happen in certain states) and crack pipes (never).
There is definitly something there that could help in US but I can't imagine in my lifetime anything even close to this happening across the country. Personally I think we do focus on users more then dealers for police action and I wish we could get to a point where we can stop the neighborhood dealers working in almost every neighborhood in my city.
You are correct, but there are a few nuances. An important one is that methadone started being provided to treat heroin addiction. Providing a pharmacological-grade opiate to make the addict's life bearable was an important shift in mentality. It also worked really well in solving the actual social problems caused by hard street drugs.
I tell you this from first-person observation. I grew up in Portugal and have several friends from the generation before mine, which was the one strongly affected by rampant heroin addiction.
> Never work in USA though since the Police work with the Healthcare system [...]
To my European ears this sounds extra-creepy. Are people in the US ok with this sort of thing overall?
On a side note: Portugal is the most religious country in the EU. More than 80% of the population identify as catholic. Drug decriminalization was achieved by subtle political action, not as a result of overwhelming public opinion. Portugal is in no way more liberal than the US. So maybe there's some hope for rational policy.
Another side note: this "subtle action" holds to this day. My guess is that most Portuguese citizens are not aware of the extent of decriminalization. I have had several Portuguese people look at me in disbelief when I tell them that it is no longer a crime to consume any drug in Portugal, including heroin and cocaine. The New York Times talks about drug decriminalization in Portugal more than the Portuguese press does. I suspect this is somewhat intentional.
Both crack pipes AND needles are given out in Canada. Not sure why you think crack would be treated differently? Harm reduction is harm reduction, I doubt they are selective about which drugs are used.
Although Canada is progressive and even has safe heroin injection sites in Vancouver staffed with nurses. I just read an article saying that it's now coming to other provinces because it was successful in reducing the spread of diseases and overdoses. Plus we are legalizing marijuana.
Not sure about the US harm reduction policies though, they are known for some silly drug policies.
If they know it's a drug house, then why not shut it down instead of arresting an endless stream of customers?
It just feeds my inner (morbidly obese) cynic. I have a sneaking suspicion that these drug laws are about more than preventing harm.
For heroin at least, when it's pure and in controlled doses (such that one would get if it was legally prescribed from the state) there are few adverse effects, and nothing of the kind of dire side-effects we see in people using the crappy, mixed, stuff sold in the streets.
If you're going to argue that we as a country of laws should deport them all back, then I hope you and your family never smoked pot because you broke a law. And since we are a nation of laws - including minimum sentencing laws which the prison industrial complex loves - how would you like it if they looked for you and put you in jail for a victimless crime? Drop your double standard. The Mexican immigrant is better than the potsmoker because they fled violence, wanted to make a better life for their family AND helped do the jobs no one else would. The potsmoker chose to smoke and helped no one except the drug dealers.
Plus we did that already, and it was a disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation -- an estimated 1.2 million US citizens were deported. Plus until 1965, immigration was unrestricted from Mexico and Canada so many of the 11 million broke a law by staying, but not by coming.
You have heard all these myths. The fact is, immigrants have higher labor participation, lower crime rate than the native born population. Especially the illegal immigrants who are afraid of being caught by police and deported. Illegal immigrants do NOT get money from the federal government - if your city pays them take it up with your city. But they pay taxes like everyone else, including sales tax and property taxes. So they pay into the system and get nothing back. You want to deport them all and break up their families so you will end up picking crops, and think this is the way to bring jobs to USA?
Easy.
Relevant: https://twitter.com/kjhealy/status/781557015843856385
I think a more sensible approach than saying "lawbreaking is OK" is for the parties on Capitol Hill to forge a compromise that involves (1) easier legal immigration (2) better funding and more enforcement of existing immigration laws (yes, including significant deportation for illegal immigrants that moved to the US as an adult)
The only way to make progress is to move further away from casual law breaking, not to continue encouraging it. (And yes, a "one time amnesty" as you suggest would encourage more people to break the law.)
Side note: My own personal opinion is that legal immigration should be so easy that virtually anyone can come to our country who doesn't have a criminal history, but that's not on the table as a viable option.
This used to be how the US operated, how both majorities (women) and minorities got the right to vote, and more.
Apparently certain countries have no such problems, with near full employment. For instance, South Korea, and it's a pretty rich country. So it is not impossible to do legally.
> This used to be how the US operated, how both majorities (women) and minorities got the right to vote, and more.
You might be giving a bit too much credit to company lobbyists and not enough to law-breaking activists. Both examples involved extensive illegal actions to accelerate change.
The "apologize, pay a token fine, get a work permit" crowd thinks violating immigration laws are like speeding, pot, or jaywalking laws. The "deport them all" crowd thinks violating immigration laws is like stealing or committing fraud.
That's why this issue won't be resolved any time soon. If liberals get a big enough majority there may be a one time amnesty or a change that allows new immigrants in. If the right got a big enough majority there would be a one time mass deportation or maybe a stupid wall. But the bottom line is that some people see it as no big deal, the others see it as a heinous crime, and it's a Rorschach test: agreement on who's right will never happen.
Similarly, illegal immigration may be a misdemeanor, but you can't continue doing it after you're caught.
Deportation is not meant to be punative, it is simply the mechanism needed to bring you back in compliance with the laws you've knowingly broken.
Whether deportation is meant to be punitive or not, it is harsh. Not just for the deported person, but also their employer, family, landlord, etc.
This gets back to my point, does the crime deserve a harsh punishment or not is something that our society doesn't agree on.
I was actually pretty impressed with the immigration reform GW Bush tried to pass, but failed. Increase enforcement along with a process to legalize the ones already here. My memory is hazy on the details, but unless you've lived illegally in the US for more than X years (those people get legalized within the US), you need to leave the country, then apply and return. Of course this is dependent on having a good enough process to let them back in (which I remember it was), but it seemed a good compromise between enforcement and increased immigration.
Do you believe their higher labor participation is due to the pressures we put on them? What about their children?
At face value, the proposition for wholesale legalization of illegal immigrants is to create several million low income Americans.
That said, to be fair to all potential immigrants, we should grant all of them equal potential access (i.e. someone from South Africa having the same chance to legally ingress into the US as a Canadian or Mexican who are right next door --it might also take into account their population, so someone form Indonesia has the same odds as someone from Belize.
And, to be fair to the American population, we should ensure those who come here are here to fill gaps in our society --so ensuring they don't undercut Americans jobs (that is let meat packers have to pay $25/hr to get locals to do that job rather than say have them say that no American wants to do that job. I'd bet many poor whites as well as many poor blacks would take those jobs at those wages.
Also, any underdeveloped population which moves to the US (or Kuwait or Chile) will typically increase their own per capita consumption (from a global perspective) also if they come from a country wallowing in economic mismanagement (say Albania) allowing Albanians (or Georgians) to flee means even less stability for those locales as it takes their motivated people and transplant them into a place that doesn't need them as much. There are many incidental things which a policy can affect. We're not a nation of 120 million or 200, we're at 330 and climbing and most with a voracious appetite for consumption (including the fast learning newcomers).
That said, fairness in immigration should be a priority rather than just allow those who runt the gauntlet successfully. And in addition, tie it to the ease of Americans's ability to migrate into these other countries, if we choose.
It's not as if we don't have our own poor --blacks and whites.
Let's also remember, up and till WWi we were not a rich country. We were quite rural and not all that excellent. Many of today's poor countries were not that far behind the US.
Saying the civil war US was an example of a great army is like saying Syria has the greatest armies in the ME just because so many people are armed.
The US was rural, technologically backward, compared to some european powers, and not that far ahead of others.
Some of the issue comes down to fairness.
We set the rules. We have not achieved WH Bushes thousand points of light new world order single government. We look out for ourselves just as China, Mexico, Singapore do.
As an immigrant, this is one of those things that still perplexes me about Americans despite my having grown up here. Nobody in Bangladesh thinks they should care as much about people in Africa as they do about their own neighbors. I see that attitude in the US, but it seems to mostly be an excuse not to really care about anybody except at the most diffuse level.
Additionally, if government officials are supposed to be governing the nation for the benefit of all mankind rather than looking after the interests of the people whom they theoretically represent, we might as well dispense with the pretense of representative government and try to formulate some other basis for state legitimacy.
You could honestly make a solid argument in favor of slavery using the same exact points. Go to a poor, dangerous country like Yemen, offer someone a contract saying they can live in a safe country so long as they accept that they get zero benefits, they'll be deported should they mess up their job, and a large portion of their income will support their citizens. Of course, this sounds terrible, because you're making them sign a contract and this is seen as taking advantage of them, when it's entirely their choice to go for it. But when no written contract is involved, we sweep it under the rug and even get people saying it's great because it boosts our economy.
You do them no favors by keeping them out because they never had access to "benefits" in the first place
The current status quo of mandating that legal visitors to the United States adhere to the terms of their visas, but looking the other way for anyone entering illegally seems just a tiny bit hypocritical to someone on the Mexican side.
This is a particular piece of rhetoric I find distasteful. If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take, that job should not exist in that form or at that pay rate. Full stop.
So the fact that jobs that "no one else would take" exist and are being taken by illegal immigrants isn't a good thing. If you're in favor of expanded immigration, making that claim doesn't help your case. It substantiates the case that anti-immigration proponents have always made, which is that immigrants take the bottom out of the labor market and help keep salaries down.
After all, if nobody would take a job doing some particularly onerous job at a pittance per hour, then the employer would have to pay more, or automate, or find a more efficient way of doing the job. Refusing to do these jobs is the correct response when they are clearly undercompensated.
There are lots of people in the legal labor market who do terribly unpleasant, physically strenuous, or frankly dangerous jobs, but they typically (outside of illegal or exploitative markets) do them for reasonable wages. Someone who SCUBA dives in raw sewage or nuclear waste, for instance, is probably going to demand a fair compensation for the unpleasantness of the job. The same should be true with people who work in slaughterhouses or picking strawberries or tarring asphalt roofs. The narrative that "Americans just won't do" certain jobs is one that is created by cheapskate, exploitative employers who don't want to pay the market rate for particularly ugly jobs. Parroting it is water-carrying for these exploitative industries.
> If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take
Typically, that statement also refers to jobs that are perfectly legal, but most Americans wouldn't take anyway. For example, many of the experienced people reading this wouldn't drive a cab, deliver pizzas, work as unskilled construction labor, a dishwasher or a janitor if they became unemployed. They'd continue to look for their next IT job. And they'd be choosy about that - not selling computers at Best Buy, for example.
(I'm not putting down those jobs; personally I respect any work.)
I suspect that's not all that uncommon here (well, maybe not having done as many of the less-skilled jobs you talk about, but not being unwilling if it was genuinely the best prospect.)
When the economy goes into a recession, or our current line of work is down sized; we take a chit job.
Only the elite can wait around until something palatable opens up.
My problem with people so desperate for money, is they come here illegailly, or just happen to somehow get some bogus paperwork by the federal government, and will do practically any job.
A large swath of American employers know they can use these people, treat them poorly, and make a better ROI in their particuliar business venture.
Construction trades--love them. It's gotten so bad, if I took my general contractor's licence out of non-op status, I honest don't know if I could be competitive without hiring the people who will work for minimum wage, or less.
("How do these workers manage to live on the U.S., if you pay them so little? They have different cultural norms than the average American. They see nothing wrong with bunk beds, and four, or more to a residential bedroom. Maybe the average American should get used to living like this; that's another debate.)
So basically, my gripe is certain employers are thrilled they can get away with underpaying their employees. If they do it shroudly, they can live the American Dream--nice house, happy wife, a bunch of spoiled kids.
There are so many business that use this business model.
I have very wealthy neighbors in Marin County. Yes, that liberal enclave north of San Francisco. Literally every landscaper on this block doesn't speak English, nor do most of the plumbers, and handymen. The DINK's like to gab, and a lot of the talk is just how cheap they get their jobs done. My next store neighbor literally brings two low wage helpers to Home Depot in her Mercedes. Their job is to follow her around, in her high heals, and carry her stuff to the car. Then they spend the rest of the day at her disposal. (I'm glad they are doing this job.)
In the end, it makes chit jobs hard to find when Americans are layed off, or fired.
Before we had this huge sector of society that will literally do anything, for practically noting; chit jobs were better. That was in the 80's, and 90's. By the 2000's it was over. They were here, and spoiled the low wage job sector even further.
That's where the anger comes in. It has nothing to do about Trumps claims of "Rapists--and sometimes, good citizens", etc.
So, just like silicon valley programmers then?
http://boingboing.net/2013/12/21/live-in-a-san-francisco-ike...
People will do what they need to, to improve their lives. I don't completely disagree with your post, but this comment was unnecessary and off base. You make it sound like they wouldn't be happier with more space and a nicer living quarters. They are human beings, of course they would be. Yet, they are willing to risk everything and put up with pretty desperate living conditions to come to the US. Maybe there is a reason.
Why have a problem with those people? To me, that makes about as much sense having a problem with the relative economic success of the United States, which is why the US has been (until the recent economic crisis) an attractive place for such people to seek to go.
Why not, instead, have a problem with the features of the system in the US that fail to address (or actively make worse) the social costs of such desperation, including, but not limited to:
(1) a legal immigration system with, in most immigrant visa categories, hard per-country numerical limits which are not aligned with demand, creating the incentive for illegal immigration (simply eliminating per country limits in most visa categories and assigning available slots from one global pool would vastly reduce illegal immigration; removing hard numerical limits and charging fees to mitigate the social costs of excess immigration beyond existing caps would reduce it even further and allow surplus immigration demand to be a source of public revenue rather than a cost hole.)
(2) poor enforcement of labor rules, both where it comes to enforcing who-can-legally-work requirements, but also wage, hour, tax, and benefit rules (without poor enforcement on both sides of this equation, the effect of illegal immigration on wages and working conditions would be far less, and the draw for illegal immigrants would be far less.)
"I'd say sod it and drive around the country side for a few months."If Americans won't take jobs at $2 an hour that doesn't mean Americans are big assholes who leave food on the table, it means that companies are big assholes that want to profit seek at the cost of legal employment. If you actually noticed a shortage of employees in these jobs, their salaries would necessarily go up to attract more. This is the natural process of the labor market.
These people make the risky and grueling trip to the US and try to make it as an illegal immigrant, for a reason: they feel the alternative is worse. They'd rather be picking crops and remitting money to their family back home, doing the jobs Americans don't do. You should be blaming the drug war that caused the Sinaloa cartel and others to take over entire cities, and resort to violence we now know from ISIS.
It's a bit like blaming the Koch brothers for hiring convicts for jobs because the convicts would be happy with less. When properly you should be blaming all the other employers whose refusal to hire convicts leads to them CHOOSING to take these jobs.
In short, even though I am a liberal, I recognize that these arguments about "exploitation" are myopic. They don't look 1 step beyond the "exploiter" to see whatconditions make people CHOOSE to be "exploited". Always, the real fix is to fix the conditions at large, not the employer.
So it is with the jobs that "no one wants". I would rather Mexicans come and do them for less, and American citizens get freed up to study other subjects and get higher paying jobs.
In fact I'd advocate for taxing 20-30% of the money saved from hiring overseas workers and automating jobs away and redistributing it as basic income on the federal level. That would help transition our economy from the one we had 20 years ago to one where aggregate demand for human labor has droppd by 10x.
Agreed. There was a pretty good article on this in N+1 magazine a few months back that I found insightful enough to copy down:
> Both American and Mexican labor are cheaper for being divided, and there is no obvious reason to believe that more labor laws, like raising the minimum wage, will change the fact if there remains a surplus of undocumented workers to whom these laws technically apply, though in practice they are unenforced. The real wage, calculated as the average rate paid to documented and undocumented workers alike, explains Trump's rise more than his virulent racism does. Racism is a side effect of a regime that keeps labor laws on the books only to look the other way when millions of brown people are subjected to conditions far beneath these standards.
> The wall isn't racist; the border is racist. The wall is an effort to force a broader recognition of the privileges the border grants to professionals, who are the primary beneficiaries of American immigration and trade policy, and to redistribute some of its racist benefits downward. The only solution to this problem is to raise the price of labor power in Mexico, and then everywhere else. But given the limited political horizon of the professional left, for whom a higher minimum wage for American citizens is the best that can be hoped for, perhaps the unemployed people of Indiana can be forgiven for thinking that the wall is more realistic.
Then, you used Mexican immigrant and illegal immigrant interchangeably. Not all Mexican immigrants are illegal or financially distressed, or seeking to do jobs that no one else wants to do.
This pisses me off.
The US entertainment industry is hostile towards Mexico in a very passive aggressive way. It spends significant resources reinforcing the idea of Mexico being poor and unsafe, as well as Mexicans being poor, violent and unattractive by designing characters and casting for actors with substantially different traits.
I've met people from other countries who really think we live in a desert (old west style), with a poncho and a sombrero. I can't really count all the American movies or shows where they show Mexico in a old west style, sepia background, sand and cactus everywhere, women using old style dresses, people armed everywhere. I love Terminator and Breaking bad, but the way they show Mexico, wow, it's so laughable.
People tend to think we all Mexicans are just looking for an opportunity to go to the US, they don't stop for a second and think that that might not be true for most cases, I have family over there that would give everything to come back to Mexico if they could find a good job.
You know it's not easy crossing a desert risking your life, leaving your whole family behind, knowing that you might never see them again, just to take an unpleasant job cleaning someone's else toilet, just to live in a small house in an ugly neighborhood, experiencing racism, facing cultural and language barriers, praying God for good health.
I'm a developer so I have a reasonably good job over here, I've had a lot of offers from American companies but I've rejected all of them because I just don't see it as a necessity, right know money is not a factor to consider facing all the downsides a Mexican will face in the US, here I have everything that I need and want.
- they're more motivated (they have people lives depending on them making money and sending it back, they actually want to move here rather than just being born here)
- they're often richer (i.e. they don't come to live off the state) than those that stay in their own country as they have to have the money to pay the people to get them across [1]
- the fact that they got through demonstrates a level skill and intelligence. It's not just luck that means people survive 5,000-mile, 2-month journeys illegally
I'd say any of these tasks are way above what would be asked on The Apprentice.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160305124312/http://www.rescue.org/blog/mapping-syrian-refugees-danger-filled-journey-europePerhaps I'm way off base, but would appreciate some clarification on these issues.
Aren't all jobs meant to require minimum wages and benefits now? Just kidding, of course not! We have immigrants to do those jobs!
"Until 1913 marijuana was legal throughout the United States under both state and federal law. Beginning with California in 1913 and Utah in 1914, however, states began outlawing marijuana, and by 1930, 30 states had adopted marijuana prohibition. Those state-level prohibitions stemmed largely from anti-immigrant sentiment and in particular racial prejudice against Mexican migrant workers, who were often associated with use of the drug. Prohibition advocates attributed terrible crimes to marijuana and the Mexicans who smoked it, creating a stigma around marijuana and its purported “vices.”"
One century later, the prejudices haven't changed.
Though, the video sort of failed to elaborate more on science evidence than just death tolls etc.
California doctors’ lobbying group formally backs marijuana legalization
http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/california-weed/...
After backing Gavin Newsom, California nurses group gets behind pot legalization
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert...
There's a small scale experiment here http://health.spectator.co.uk/the-case-for-prescription-hero...
Excerpt:
>Inspector Michael Lofts studied 142 heroin and cocaine addicts in the area, and he found there was a 93 per cent drop in theft and burglary. ‘You could see them transform in front of your own eyes,’ Lofts told a newspaper, amazed. ‘They came in in outrageous condition, stealing daily to pay for illegal drugs; and became, most of them, very amiable, reasonable law-abiding people.’ He said elsewhere: ‘Since the clinics opened, the street heroin dealer has slowly but surely abandoned the streets of Warrington and Widnes.’
It's been quite a success and the program is now nation-wide and backed by laws.
They pointed out crime didn't go down. Fine. All that could mean is that the police etc focused on other crimes instead of the mostly victim-less marijuana crimes from when it used to be illegal.
Even if expenditures on crime don't change the fact that whatever money that was being spent catching, processing, and incarcerating marijuana users and dealers can now be spent on something else seems like a huge win
There are indeed significant changes in some marijuana-related statistics. The Cato institute report has selected indicators that are relatively stable and do not show these effects. It does not discuss the limitations of the data, discuss data sources that were considered but not used, or include illustrative anecdotes. It can be summarized as "we carefully picked these graphs that didn't show anything, and we still can't rule out any effects of legalization".
One major argument about crime I didn't see addressed was the revenues going to organised criminal gangs before and after.
I'm also not sure about the paper's claim that advocates claim a fall in crime, in general, from Cannabis legalisation. I can see the argument that decriminalising and medicalising heroin addiction may decrease various forms of crime, particulary acquisitive crime. But with cannabis?
A felony conviction almost guarantees you'll do time. You will go to jail. You will probably lose your job and have trouble getting a new one. Life changes in significant ways. But in jail, you will have met people, and those people may have opportunities for you. Some people decide that since they already have a criminal record after that first conviction, they might as well take risks to get by.
Let me be clear about this. I'm not saying marijuana criminalizes people. I'm saying outlawing marijuana criminalizes people. And it's easy for me to believe that legalizing marijuana is likely to result in an overall fall in the rates of incidence of other types of crime.
Yes, what you describe is a travesty and needs to be writ large - legalisation may not change much but it does reduce the number of people who get their lives ruined by the state for no good reason
https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_64,_Marijuana...
http://www.thecannabist.co/2016/07/14/definitive-guide-us-st...
Four more states have medical marijuana on the ballots.
That said, I fully expect the upcoming initiative to result in recreational legalization. It was a near miss on the last shot a few years back, and the political climate is significantly friendlier now.
I oppose the use of sin taxes to fund our government. I hope most people would agree with me on that.
Tax revenue is used as a benefit for legalization. It feels like a flawed argument, but it still aligns with where I would like to be.
The slippery slope argument applies here too: should our freedom be tied to tax revenue? Sure, it works for some drugs. Does it work for our other inalienable rights?
We can't even agree on cap and trade which is so watered down that it essentially gives polluters a free pass. Can we really have a serious discussion about 'user fees on things with significant social costs"?
Maybe we ought to disincentivize marijuana use. I agree. I don't know what to do with that money. However, I strongly believe that we should not take that money and use it for anything beneficial to the society or to the tax collector. Doing so will mean we will no longer disincentivize what we said we'd disincentivize. It just becomes a tax on a minority.
"One area where legal marijuana has reaped unexpectedly large benefits is state tax revenue. Colorado, Washington, and Oregon all impose significant excise taxes on recreational marijuana, along with standard state sales taxes, other local taxes, and licensing fees. As seen in Figure 25, Colorado collects well over $10 million per month from recreational marijuana alone.91 In 2015 the state generated a total of $135 million in recreational marijuana revenue, $35 million of which was earmarked for school construction projects. These figures are above some pre-legalization forecasts, although revenue growth was disappointingly sluggish during the first few months of sales.92 A similar story has unfolded in Washington, as illustrated in Figure 26, where recreational marijuana generated approximately $70 million in tax revenue in the first year of sales93—double the original revenue forecast.94 Oregon only began taxing recreational marijuana in January 2016, so data are still preliminary; however, state officials report revenues of $14.9 million so far, well above the initial estimate of $2.0 million to $3.0 million for the entire calendar year95 The tax revenues in these states may decline."
Significant growth of tax revenue after legalization will only happen if the delta of people interested in cannabis and people who already have medical marijuana cards is large enough.
I am not opposing legalization by any means, but in the age of $49 medical evaluations via Skype what are the chances there's a huge market that's not been covered under current, fairly liberal, regime?
> The data so far provide little support for the strong claims about legalization made by either opponents or supporters.
Many supporters, like myself, don't need data. It's wrong to put people in jail and fine them without reason. If there are no significant changes after legalization, then prohibition should be ended. There's no clear benefit to society and enforcement clearly harms the individuals impacted by these laws.
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information...
It's true federal penitentiaries have a larger percentage of inmates in for simple possession, but the federal prison population is a tiny fraction of the number of people incarcerated by the states.
And while I don't have any evidence to back it up, the comparatively small number of people in federal prison for MJ possession suggests they're either the most unlucky people on the planet or they're really there for some other reason even if the government could only make the drug charge stick. Think Al Capone and tax evasion.
tl;dr: Legalizing pot isn't going to affect the prison population very much.
More people are able to use cannabis when it is legal, so this number would be expected to increase.
Of course a libertarian think tank would argue for drug legalization; that's not surprising at all. (I say this as one who also supports drug legalization, whose politics are in many ways diametrically opposite to libertarianism.)
Especially since we all have agendas, and I like to think I'm fairly objective.
Wikipedia cites Cato as being critical of neo-con foreign policy and the Iraq War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute#Libertarianism....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute#On_foreign_poli...
Do you know what neo-con means? Serious question
Neoconservativism and libertarianism are very different ideologies, by the way. Perhaps the out-group homogenity bias is at work? [1]
Unless it's a big corp causing harm to people in which case they fight tooth and nail to prevent any kind of legislation that might fix the issue see discouraging tobacco smoking, global warming, coal pollution, fracking and so on.
I don't mean that in a partisan way; you might love them, hate them, or not care one way or the other, but it's always useful to know who is talking.
(Don't take me the wrong way, I absolutely agree with you with respect to not filtering our input, I go out of my way to find people biased against my topics to see how they look at things and for me at least the labeling _assists_ with gathering a more diverse viewpoint, and understanding the true motives at play)
Not at all; this is the "ad hominem" logical fallacy. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem)
The claims being made are objectively true or false entirely independently of any personal attributes of the person making them. In other words, who is saying something is entirely irrelevant to the merit of what they are saying.
To bring this very hand wavy generalization back to the topic, look at many arguments posed in the anti-marijuana camp (as discussed in this very writeup) being based on extremely pessimistic to the point of unrealistic assumptions in order to derive the conclusions they prescribed; conclusions in isolation that could be seen as terrifying but if you consider author bias can be accounted for more reasonably.
(Sister post Linkregister says it better than I did, frankly)
People lie and distort facts for their own personal gain all the time.
See for example, the scientists paid by the cigarette companies that produced data showing that smoking was safe.
Knowing who said something (and knowing who is paying someone to say something) allows you to better calibrate your skepticism to see if what they are saying might be biased by their financial or other interests.
If ad hominems become acceptable then you quickly open the door to worthless discussions around things like climate change because everyone can point out that the scientists behind the research are motivated to advance anthropogenic climate change or risk being ostracized.
Evaluate the content, not the messenger. Anything else is lazy.
If you are concerned the content is a lie, ask for the backing data, don't dismiss it.
Entirely true. The value in pointing out potential biases by bringing up the background of the speaker, however, is in inviting others to consider aspects of the argument (or the argument as a whole) in a critical manner.
It's not a magic spell you can use to discount a premise. Indeed, blind use of "fallacies" is just an appeal to ancient Greek authority!
For non-expert HN commenters, we have to use authority, preexisting bias, and past actions of the speaker to give us more information without fully delving into the article. Unless you're willing to spend hours or days evaluating the accuracy of every data point mentioned in the article, it's expedient to use available information. In fact, even if you completely evaluated the accuracy of the study, it would absolutely be of interest who is making the article.
Also known as the fallacy fallacy:
Precisely. So an argument is not logically consistent if it's just attacking the messenger instead of the content. Here's a hint: if your argument in any way relies on discounting the messenger, it's pretty weak and you should not make it.
How many times have you been swayed by someone that says, "Well I would disregard this study because it's been done by a liberal."
If you find that you don't have the time to evaluate an argument based on its merits, don't evaluate it at all. Otherwise your 'gut reaction', which is all an ad hominem is, is just dead weight on the discussion.
Eg Ken Ham/AiG, Donald Trump, all conspiracy theorists.
Incorrect. Ad hominem can be non-fallicious.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
When a statement is challenged by making an ad hominem attack on its author, it is important to draw a distinction between whether the statement in question was an argument or a statement of fact (testimony). In the latter case the issues of the credibility of the person making the statement may be crucial.
The statement that Cato Institute is a libertarian organization is a statement of fact, and may indeed be relevant when judging their credibility.
It's intellectually lazy and it's why blind peer review is a thing.
For example:
- Only criminals smoke weed in the US. (true by definition, federal law doesn't allow it)
- Looking at prison population, black people commit more crimes than any other race in the US. (true, missing context of who gets to go to prison, and race ratios in population)
- Obama introduced the best patient protection and affordable care act in the history of the US. (true, but also the only one)
- In the US there are more people who brush their teeth who have cavities than those who have never brushed. (true, because only tiny fraction never brushed their teeth)
I think you've got it the other way around. Claims like that would not exist in the first place if someone wasn't either ignorant or purposefully trying to mislead you.
> identifying the author doesn't automagically lift the responsibility of coming up with a refutation.
I never said it does. But what it changes, is that once you figure out what their biases are, you know what kind of facts are they may be omitting, or know where to look for opposing opinions.
No, that's being lazy. If you follow that guideline you would only scrutinize things which fit into your preconceived notion of what the biases of the author would be. You should scrutinize everything rigorously. Just because someone is voting for Hillary doesn't give them free reign to say any negative thing they want about renewable energy since they "aren't biased that way".
But unless I'm going to write a report and spend a few hours/days doing a complete research, finding opposing views (and opposing views to those views) is a good approximation.
Easier said than done. It's easy to dismiss, but hard to verify.
Science found hard! News at 11! ;) http://www.theonion.com/article/national-science-foundation-...
...
> Who cares who said it so long as what they said has merit?
But how do we know how much merit it has? I don't believe anyone has the capability to answer that question on their own (unless they already possess the expert knowledge in the field), or the time to verify it.
Therefore, to a great degree we must trust the authors, so it helps to know who is speaking. No author is without bias; it helps to know their biases. Some authors are more honest than others and some more accurate than others. If an author has tried to deceive me before, I won't trust them again. If I've seen an author be diligent about accuracy, I'll trust them more next time.
...
... and so I do want to filter dishonest and inaccurate arguments, for obvious reasons. And for a less obvious reason: I don't have time to read all the exceptionally well-informed, highly accurate, honest, brilliant arguments out there; I resent someone wasting my time with their bullsh*t.
In order to fully understand politicized writing—its assumptions, its impacts, its expectations and its motivations—it can often be necessary to have that context. Writing that isn't even consciously propaganda can often be heavily influenced by jargon and premises that are not apparent to the reader, but being familiar with the ideological background can help clear up that cloud.
see how most tailored "news" aggregators such as facebook or yahoo or reddit will mostly show you only what you want to read.
its perfect for the fear mongering ways of the two party system.
It looks like Reason.com argues that pay-for-service modern law is equivalent to debtors' prison, but I haven't heard of libertarians supporting the restoration of proper debtors' prison (where the state imprisons someone for failing to pay a debt to a non-state contracting party). Of course, there's no canonical list of libertarian principles, so I'm sure some do support that...
As for the Middle Ages, I'd still recommend the books I mentioned; they make a number of interesting references to village law, and the right of peasant farmers (both serfs, who owed labor service, and freemen, who owed rent) to self-regulate.
_A Farewell to Alms_ mentions that farmland in the Middle Ages returned 10% per annum at basically zero risk in England and relatively little on the Continent (the only risks being war and bad harvests); if libertarianism wants to return to that economic arrangement, perhaps with the US government selling bonds returning 10% adjusted for inflation, then perhaps it has a silver lining.
A massive amount of publicly funded services would be cut. So if we take as a given the ability of these elites to capture the cost savings of that for themselves, you end up with the average worker receiving no more money (since it's been captured) yet receiving fewer services (since the public ones were cut).
All the leverage[0] is in the hands of the owners, not the workers.
[0] excluding leverage such as "there are more of us so we can outvote you" and "there are more of us so we could revolt" - the first is presumed to have not happened, for whatever reason, by the assumption of the existence of this libertarian state, and the second would be a violation of the property rights that USA-libertarians hold so central.
Words have meaning, and they also evolve. You'll have a much easier time understanding others' meaning and communicating with them in kind if you recognize that in many contexts:
- Social democracy has largely been associated with the word socialism.
- Communism has largely been associated with the word socialism. (Side-note: this is the association you appear to be making; many communists would wholesale reject the notion of the state seizing the means of production, or for that matter the notion of the state as a legitimate institution.)
- Communism basically doesn't exist in the broader vocabulary, except as an historical marker for the Soviet Union, and a geopolitical classification of countries like China or Cuba; to the extent it can be associated with any word today, it's anarchism and only among self-identifying anarchists.
- Anarchism has always been aligned with communism except in terms of the question of the state.
- Big-L Libertarians are largely an ideological faction of the right-wing/Republicans.
- Democrats and Republicans occupy a narrow spectrum of corporatism (though that is increasingly expanding rightward).
- Small-l libertarians are more frequently associated with the word anarchism, which is resented by pretty much everyone who cares.
(Full disclosure since at least my clarity if not my characterization displays a bias: I am an anarchist, of the communist variety, and I tend to view social democracy as harm reduction.)
As an Anarcho-Capitalist, I must disagree with this assertion.
I don't think we need to accept the _entire_ agenda of the Koch brothers in order to appreciate that sometimes they're doing the right thing.
Consider the work of the Libertarian Party to, for example, free people to braid hair without requiring a year of training to get a license.
Or consider that big corporations love regulations as a way to put barriers in the way of competitors. That's the whole point of the economic idea of "rent seeking", and what public choice economists are talking about when they refer to "regulatory capture".
Or for another example, consider that the despite pandering by politicians, economists pretty consistently agree that the minimum wage causes unemployment - the only controversy is by how much. And the origins of the minimum wage came during Jim Crow, when it was first conceived as a way to price minorities out of the job market.
So it's silly to say that libertarian's opposition to government regulation is obfuscation to cover screwing the little guy.
Regulatory capture is a different beast from actual regulation. It is what happens when corporations get to stack the government against everyone else via all sorts of lobbying and economical pressure. Regulation now, that is a good thing, which happens when credible issues are detected.
Drug prohibition is more law than regulation - there was no real issue with abuse of THC originally.
If the issue was, say, low quality or highly addictive drugs, which also damage life, then the proper regulation would be to apply correct scheduling.
THC and likely MDMA should probably barely make it to schedule III. (With additional control due to abuse.) There are known medical uses of those and proper guidelines for dosage. (Former is used for pain in cancer patients and more, latter an adjunct in psychotherapy and for recurrent migraines.) Reclassified alcohol would be on the order of schedule II and tobacco as schedule I, with pure nicotine in schedule III. On the other hand, something like GHB would remain in schedule I or less likely move to schedule II, as there are much better and safer hypnotics. Etc. and more.
Instead of public safety, someone made "potential to abuse" a priority, based on no or scant data, suppositions and politics. Random crisis handling, where no crisis is present.
Making these drugs correctly and usefully regulated should be the main aim of the DEA.
No. You do not understand the concept. Regulatory capture can happen even with the purest of intentions.
The problem is that for effective regulation, you need experts. Where are you going to get experts, if not people who have experience in the industry? The problem with this is not that they may try to corrupt the process, favoring their former employer or whatever (although that is also a potential problem, but that's outright corruption, not "regulatory capture").
The thing about people from the industry is that they have a set way of looking at things - they're going to have a hard time "thinking outside the box", and because of the very fact that they spent so much time gathering their expertise, they're going to have a world view in which that area is more important than it probably is to the rest of us. With people that are used to thinking about the system in a set way, and who think it's more important relatively than other things, the flavor of the output regulations is going to tend to be to reinforce the way the industry does things, you'll rarely get something that really pulls the industry out of problematic ruts.
From what I've read, the Navy actually recognizes this problem in their nuclear fleet, and so refuses to use nuclear experts from the power generation industry. Being the Navy, they can afford to train their own experts, but this obviously can't scale to every place in our lives where regulation shows its face.
On the one hand, I've heard the term "libertarian" applied to what could also be called a classic liberal position (ala Adam Smith), which favors minimal government interference but recognizes the need for government structure for many things. (In which case, a decentralized government could be part of such a vision.)
On the other hand, I've heard the term "libertarian" applied to what also is called anarchism, which favors no government at all because reasons / The Man or something. I've also heard libertarian being used to describe what I would call fascist-capitalism (if you are the type of "libertarians" who also hates democracy, you possibly fall in this category).
The former I personally find naive, the later I find repulsive, and neither frankly has much to do with the Adam Smith position at all.
Yes there are factions of it just like other parties, but the core is that ideas are good if they don't infringe on other people's rights. Making a law which compels someone to provide a service to another is anti-liberty and most libertarians would not support it. Even then, many might support that measure at the local level because state rights is a big component and democracy is respected.
Anyway, what I like about libertarianism is that it provides a framework which is basically the Constitution at the core. Republicans and Democrats have no framework in how they go about things and we're in a big mess at many levels. There's been very little leadership and vision. If you look at what the two parties have done over the last few decades - they aren't that much different in practice and people are getting frustrated.
Like the police, who, due to smart phones, are finally being held accountable for the brutality they've been getting away with for decades?
Or maybe you mean civil asset forfeiture, which the police use to steal money from people accused of criminal activity, with no effective mechanism for non-rich people to get it back?
Or maybe the current public school system, which encourages mediocrity and is remarkably ineffective for poor students?
Or maybe you mean the current welfare system, which has the long-term effect of keeping entire populations in destitute poverty even across generational lines?
Or maybe you mean gun control legislation intended to target black populations?
Or maybe you mean the PATRIOT act, which I'm sure has been very helpful in "protecting the poor" (and the rich! Great!) from the apparently ever-present and very serious threat of terrorism?
Because the Koch brothers and the Cato institute have done a great deal of work to improve all of these things.
> re-create feudal Europe
Feudal Europe wasn't libertarian at all. Feudal lords had legal privileges that everyone else didn't. Libertarians believe in a legal system that doesn't afford special privileges to anyone, and they generally believe in government functions like a public police force (although typically a very reserved one compared to present day military-style police forces/SWAT/DEA/etc.).
Such a system wouldn't even be sustainable with current levels of technology. Guerrilla warfare is now too effective compared to the kind of military forces a feudal lord could muster up, and global food production is so high that feudal lords can no longer use food production as a metaphorical (or literal, I suppose) carrot.
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread."
Because I have a hard time reconciling your strawman description with http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/13/koch-bros-t... as just one example. Or http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/08/15/clemenc... or http://cjonline.com/news/2015-10-15/forfeiture-reform-aligns... for that matter. Those are not rich people problems they're trying to address there... In fact, I would argue that in the area of criminal justice they are _precisely_ trying to do more to protect the poor from the wealthy.
Now I agree that on some issues they do want to remove government functions that I would prefer remained in place. But that's not the sum total of what they're doing, and while I disagree with them rather strongly on a lot of their views and preferred policies I agree with them quite strongly on some others. As does the ACLU, and our current president, for that matter.
Why should two voters have so much more influence than 310 million others? It's anti-democratic.
I also think this the parent post presents an overly-moderated depiction of their views - but I'm too busy to look it up myself right now.[0] Certainly the existence of a few things I agree with among their extensive activities wouldn't mean much.
[0] Wikipedia, which I wouldn't put much faith in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Ko...
and: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Maze_of_Money.png
[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/01/26/koch-...
Our political funding system is broken, I agree. So is our general electoral system: elections are _way_ too long, which makes them more expensive, of course.
> I also think this the parent post presents an overly-moderated depiction of their views
By no means am I saying that everything, or most of, or a large part of, what the Koch brothers do or think is good. I'm just saying that the claim that all their political activity is guided by the basic principle "let's see how much we can screw poor people" is a caricature, and not a terribly accurate one, and providing one simple counterexample.
I'm not asking you, or anyone else, to like them personally, the sum total of their activities, or any particular activities. All I'm asking for is that we don't jump from "these people are doing a bunch of stuff I disagree with" to "these people are pure evil, so anything they do must be evil, hence anything they are involved in is evil by association and must be fought against". Unfortunately, this last bit of reasoning is far too common in politics recently, all across the political spectrum. Just like the related "This organization is good, so whatever it does must be good" line of reasoning that seems to be so common... and usually indicates that the organization should be terminated before it does some serious harm. :(
In my opinion, it largely succeeds. The fact that it was partially funded by someone I may not like is irrelevant (the ad hominem fallacy).
That's the entire purpose of the scientific method -- to bypass the ad hominem arguments you have made, to seperate the data and the claims from questions of whether we happen to like the person or group making the claims on a personal level.
Without commenting on this particular study, I'll point out something I've learned from long experience reading think tank material:
Some think tanks are created to provide 'intellectual cover' and credibility (in the eyes of people like you and me, who care about the things you listed) to whatever ideas their political masters desire, regardless of the ideas' true legitimacy. This isn't a conspiracy theory, but a well-known (in political circles) tool in the political toolkit. And they do it in exactly the ways you identify, by appearing to make "a sincere effort to be objective and evidence-based, with proper citations and such." Unless we have time to check the citations and expertise to evaluate the quality of the citations and the arguments, we have little chance of detecting it.
Other tools are used to persuade other audiences: Anonymous, slandering robocalls are used for some (probably not you and me), blog posts for some, newspaper op-eds for some, astroturfing on Internet forums for others; some think tanks (not all) are just another tool for another audience.
Though honestly if this is a scientific study it is very strange that they omitted their methodology entirely(how did they select the data, how did they compare the statistics before and after, how did they account for confounding factors, etc). That is pretty fundamental to this kind of analysis and in its absence I would be hesitant to put much faith in even their weak conclusions.
The graphs themselves are definitely interesting though and I would not at all be surprised if they were on the right track.
Thus the rule is no real obstruction to dialogue.
Lack of methodology is a valid argument, as opposed to just pointing out the funding. Why not contact them about it? Or perhaps they have used some base sources, which could be made available to make their argument even stronger when exposed.
for me the biggest reason to have gange legal is it frees policing resources up from processing fairly ridiculous prosecutions of people dealing in what is basically just plant material.
so while it is nice to see there is no real impact on "other crime" the fact they missed the impact of freeing up resources directly related to weed is a major ommission.
and also.
god damn you americans pay a lot for it. $250 an ounce. that's ridiculous. like more than three times the price I used to pay as a teenager for prime amsterdam skunk.
->28.3495 grams in an ounce
Prices in the coffee shops range from about €168/$188 to €280/$340 an ounce.
So yeah - gotta agree with that "pretty expensive" in the same way US at $250 an ounce is expensive.
iirc we used to pay around $50 for a half ounce of green (Been a decade or two since I bought any though), or 9 ounces of resin was $325
I was in Egypt a month ago or so and they were trying their luck at $25 a gram.
I wonder how long until wholesale prices pop up in the commodities indices :p
I'm still surprised how marijuana posts are so frequently pushed in HN. My take is that the effect is negative, I've seen just a ton more brazen usage out in public once this thing hit with a bunch of phony Dr prescriptions given to perfectly healthy people. It's all a ruse in my book, you're either growing in virtue or backsliding. At best drug use is suboptimal for a thriving philo-generative culture to borrow Daniel Hannan's phrase.
Is that bad? You menition "backsliding" later in your comment, do you mean to imply drug use is regressive? If so, that's probably why many people on HN disagree with you.
As far as recreational use, fundamentally, should it be the responsibility of the government to tell you what you can and can't ingest?
I don't think it is. I think sin taxes are stupid too. But I do understand drug usage is a concern and suboptimal for a lot of people. I don't smoke nor have I ever tried it, except for one cigar.
I'm asthmatic and I didn't like people smoking cigarettes in public places because smoking sections back in the day weren't contained. Now - smoking is generally considered uncool and it's hard to do in most public places. I've been to smoke free cities which is their right and I think that's how it should be.
Whatever side you're on - the evidence doesn't back up all the claims to keep it criminal.
They do work for health benefits though. Tax on tabacco for example does limit the number of people who smoke, which does in turn limit the number of people with cancer and public spending on helping them.
Same for sugary drinks tax and obesity.
(that said, I tend to be "pro sin tax")
That said, most drugs that are schedule I have much more immediate side effects.
I.e. someone who dies at age 60 from lung cancer is less cost to the system than someone who live to 95 and dies of "natural causes."
That's not saying lung cancer is good, but it is saying that reducing health care costs is not a good reason to try to reduce smoking.
The problem with that sentence is "drug use" shoves everything under one umbrella. Your typical sativa high is a sensitivity to music in the way that sounds are broken down spatially, rhythms and bass seem more appealing, an intensity of thoughts - as in the small things now take on more meaning, imagery seems more interesting, colors pop, and it provides a general sense of relaxation as long as you're in a fairly predictable environment, yet you're in total control. Depending on the inclinations of the user it can be used as a tool or abused like anything else. To compare it to hallucinogens, opiates or amphetamines would be quite silly, despite those substances sharing some of those characteristics.