(CBS News) The state with the toughest three-strikes law in the land and a prison population of more than 150,000 is facing the real possibility of having to release tens of thousands of inmates early in order to pare its $10 billion annual correctional budget. At the same time, an increasing number of the state’s political figures are challenging the basic tenets of the “war on drugs,” the culprit most responsible for the spike in prison populations over the past thirty years; they argue that the country’s harsh drug policies are not financially viable and no longer command majority support among the voting public.
For Betty Yee, chair of California’s Board of Equalization–the office responsible for collecting sales tax in the Golden State–the changes, especially around drug-law enforcement, can’t come soon enough.
Sitting at her conference table high up in one of downtown Sacramento’s few sky-rises, Yee has marijuana on her mind. Specifically, she has become an outspoken advocate for legalizing pot for residents older than 21. Her friend Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a former San Francisco city councilman, is pushing just such a bill in the State Legislature. Yee wants to levy fees on business owners applying for marijuana licenses, impose an excise tax on sellers and charge buyers a sales tax. Do it properly, and the state could reap about $1.3 billion a year, she has estimated. “Marijuana is so easily available. Why not regulate it like alcohol and tobacco?” she says, and gain additional tax revenue into the bargain?
Over the past three decades, California has tripled the number of prisons it operates, has more than quintupled its prison population and has gone from spending $5 on higher education for every dollar it spent on corrections to a virtual dead-heat in spending. That puts it in the same boat as Michigan, Vermont, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware–all of which, according to estimates by the Pew Charitable Trust, spend as much or more on prisons than on colleges. California is also under federal court order to implement costly improvements in the delivery of medical and mental healthcare services in prisons and to release close to a third of the prison population–about 55,000 inmates–to improve conditions for those remaining behind bars.
You can spend money to arrest us, try us, and lock us up for marijuana, and we’ll continue to spend our money lining the pockets of black marketeers. Or you can legalize marijuana and save the money on arresting, trying, and incarcerating us, and we’ll continue to spend our money filling the coffers of the state treasury. What you cannot do is ever – EVER – stop us from smoking marijuana. We can get marijuana in your federal SuperMax prisons. We can get marijuana even in countries like Malaysia that have the death penalty for trafficking.
Drug war causes long-term historical memory loss for most politicians
Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. For 39 years, you’ve declared war on your own citizens, ignored our civil liberties, shredded our Constitution, sent police terrorists into our homes, murdered our pets, destroyed and stolen our property, and warehoused us in prisons, all in the service of eliminating the “marijuana menace”, and yet marijuana is as plentiful, as potent, as profitable, and as popular as ever.
The Netherlands learned that people like to smoke pot and generally they don’t cause a lot of problems. They learned to not be “hard” on drugs or “soft” on drugs, but to be “smart” on drugs. They realized that some people have an innate desire to alter consciousness and they’ve been doing so for 10,000 years. So they learned to tolerate cannabis use.
The Netherlands this year had to close eight prisons for lack of criminals. Are you listening, California?
Topics: Betty Yee, CA Assem. Tom Ammiano, California, CBS News
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..and what’s easier to change, the behavior of 15 million people or the policy we use to control cannabis?
I’m not quite sure but it seems to me that maybe cannabis prohibition is not a fringe topic. When I can go to Google and see a dozen or more fresh reports of people being busted w/pot..EVERY HOUR !!
Putting this story rite after the ‘Fringe’ one is the best Russ…..