Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 4:46 pm | By: Radical Russ
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Amid grim news of record deficits unveiled in the US budget, marijuana advocates are welcoming legislation in US states they say could blossom into billions of dollars in tax revenue.
San Francisco state lawmaker Tom Ammiano introduced a bill last Monday projecting a 14-billion-dollar tax base for the full retail treatment — buying, selling and growing cannabis.
The leading legalization advocacy group behind Ammiano’s bill, Washington-based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), says recession is prompting otherwise skeptical state houses to revisit the ban on marijuana.
Over the last few months NORML has been drafted to work with state lawmakers — even in conservative locales like Texas — on budgetary analysis and review how legalization may enable governments fill yawning deficits.
But legalization opponent Eric Voth is worried “the number of people who will start using or worsen their habit because of the lack of legal constraints is going to cost the system far more than what might be generated through taxation.”
Voth, chairman of the Institute on Global Drug Policy, contends marijuana advocates are “happy to lie to the public” about the gains of their proposals, with an end goal of cannabis legalization “at any cost.”
Uh, Eric? We’re using the government’s own numbers. You are quick to call people liars, for example, the sick, disabled, and sense-threatened people you refer to as the “medical excuse movement”. I think anyone who writes that:
“Pathologic behavior such as psychosis is also associated with marijuana use” and
“Despite arguments from the marijuana advocates to the contrary, marijuana is a dependence-producing drug” and
“The gateway effect of marijuana along with tobacco and alcohol is also well established in research” and
“One must then realize that with marijuana the patient is exposed to a veritable “witches brew” of substances, most of which have never been examined for harmful effects.”
…ought to think about putting the rocks down and getting some Windex for that glass house they’re living in.
But let’s take your argument at face value and try to maintain a straight face doing it. You propose that the legalization of marijuana would end up costing more in social costs through new users and increased use among current users than it would reap in law enforcement savings and direct taxation, plus indirect taxation on the payroll of new employees in this new industry and the economic benefits on ancillary industries that would support the new industry, plus the 800lb. gorilla of legalized industrial hemp farming that would be automatically created (if the marijuana that gets you high is legal, the stuff that doesn’t is going to be, too.)
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 2:39 pm | By: Radical Russ
(CBS) So far, there hasn’t been much negative reaction to the photo showing Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps smoking what appeared to be marijuana.
A few years ago, it might have ruined his career, but so far it hasn’t — perhaps a sign of changing attitudes.
The seeming lack of outrage… may reflect America’s changing attitudes towards marijuana – an estimated $30 billion dollar industry in the United States alone.
While a majority of Americans still oppose the legalization of marijuana use, a new CBS News poll shows a big swing in opinion in recent years.
Twenty-seven percent supported legalization in 1979; 41 percent support it today.
Understand that when you get “41% support legalization”, that’s over 2 out of 5 people when asked, “Should marijuana be legalized” who will say “yes.” That’s without any explanation of how, where, when, or for whom it will be legalized, so that includes the spectrum from “fine-only possession, jail for sales, cultivation, and trafficking” to “pre-rolled joints at the convenience store”.
When you change the question to actually define what you mean by “legalization”, the numbers rise. In a 2001 Zogby poll, ten weeks after 9/11, we found:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Today’s Stash celebrates the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, the end of the Bush Administration, and the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama. Despite some misgivings over Change.gov and cabinet appointments, I am so excited to see the new day dawning in America. Yes, there are dark clouds hovering over us and worse storms ahead, but I can’t help but see the silver lining – that we just can no longer afford to arrest and lock up taxpayers for their cannabis use anymore, and we can no longer overlook an untaxed ecofriendly fuel-producing billion dollar crop anymore. As Obama has said, this wasn’t about him, it was about us. As Change.gov and Change.org have shown, we are ready to talk about legalization of marijuana!
It’s as if enough people who think the war on drugs is stupid have realized that enough people think the war on drugs is stupid. We’ve realized that it’s OK to ask “Why are we arresting potheads?” and “How come we don’t just sell and tax pot?” without everyone thinking we, too, are potheads and even if we are, realizing that nobody gives a damn if you are so long as you do your job, pay your taxes, and be civilized. Enough people have either smoked it, do smoke it, or know someone who smokes it to know the government is peddling nothing but lies to prop up a failed bureaucracy. People know that one slacker stoner, but they also know ten more who are just regular working folks who toke. People also know alcoholics and know they’d rather hang out with the slacker stoner, given a choice, and figure if we can tolerate alcohol, we can tolerate weed.
My guest today is Tom Daubert from Montana Patients and Families United (check ‘em out at http://mtpfu.org*) who is here to warn Big Sky listeners and rally Montanans to contact their state legislator to protest Senate Bill 212, which would strip medical marijuana patient protections for life if convicted of new cannabis DUI standards so strict no patient could ever pass. In short: choose your drivers license or your marijuana license.
Then my full reading (with music and everything!) of my Cannabis Civil Rights essay posted below, if I may indulge, and in doing so, thank George Rohrbacher for inspiring me…
*That URL always cracks me up because the show Meet the Press is often abbreviated “MTP” on progressive lefty blogs I inhabit.
In August I commented on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s revealing interview with CNN, where she called on the public to actively voice their support for marijuana law reform.
“We have important work to do outside the Congress in order for us to have success inside the Congress.” Pelosi said. “[W]e need peoples’ help to be in touch with their members of Congress to say why this (marijuana law reform) should be the case.”
Ask and you shall receive.
In the past few months the public has taken their message to the hallowed halls of Washington, DC in unprecedented numbers:
Over 700 individuals have posted comments to The Hill.com’s influential Congress Blog calling on lawmakers to amend federal marijuana policy;
In December, a question calling for the legalization of marijuana bested over 7,300 public policy issues to claim the top spot in Change.gov’s inaugural ‘Open for Questions’ poll;
In a follow up poll conducted by Change.gov this month, marijuana law reformed was the eighth-most popular question voted on by the public, out of a staggering 76,000 issues.
This week, the question “legalize the medicinal and recreational use of marijuana” finished first (by nearly 5,000 votes) in Change.org’s inaugural “Ideas for Change’ online poll.
And finally, in yet a third poll hosted by the Obama Transition Team, the public’s call for “ending marijuana prohibition” is — you guessed it — polling ahead of all other issues. (To participate in this latest poll, please visit: http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov and click on “popular ideas.”)
In short Madam Speaker, the people have done their part — just as you requested. The question now is: When are your colleagues and the incoming administration going to do their part to end the federal government’s war on marijuana consumers?
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 3:37 pm | By: Radical Russ
The city of El Paso buckled to unusually explicit federal government pressure Tuesday and withdrew a call for a national debate on ending drug prohibition.
Last Tuesday, the El Paso city council voted 8-0 to express solidarity with its sister city in Mexico, Juarez, which has seen its murder rate double this year alone as the Mexican government has waged war on powerful drug cartels. To slow that violence, the resolution called for “an honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition of narcotics.”
That was enough to get Washington’s attention.
Mayor John Cook vetoed the resolution and Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat who represents El Paso in Congress, lobbied each councilmember, making it clear that if the resolution calling for a debate passed, El Paso would risk losing money in the upcoming stimulus legislation. Five Texas House representatives made the same threat.
“Funding for local law enforcement efforts and other important programs to our community are likely being put in jeopardy,” lawmakers warned in a letter to the city, “especially during a time when state resources are scarce.”
Four members of the council switched their votes and supported the veto; three of them publicly cited the funding threat as the reason for backing down.
What is the feeling that goes through your mind when you read that our federal government is openly blackmailing local governments to shut up about even discussing legalization of marijuana? In the piece, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, who represents the Texas district that contains El Paso in Congress, said, “Please let the mayor’s veto stand and put this behind us. We’ve got huge issues that are facing us as a Congress,” as if the mere mention of trying something different in this escalating drug war is going to completely derail working on the economy, fighting terrorism, fixing health care, and creating new jobs, when in fact marijuana legalization would help solve all those issues!
It’s not like we’re asking you to impeach anybody; God knows we can never again put that on the table because it will supposedly grind the country to a screeching halt. The resolution simply called on the city to call on Congress to take a look at potentially forming a commission to study the possibility that maybe perhaps arresting our way out of a drug problem isn’t working and we ought to examine other scenarios for drug control that might include an investigation of the feasibility of considering the regulation and sale of a non-toxic mood-altering herb.
NO! It’s like our Congress are the Knights Who Say “Ni!” and “legalization” is the one word they cannot bear to hear.
So how do you feel? Me, I’m ecstatic. Thrilled, actually. When one little town in Texas calls for a conversation on the drug war and Congress immediately pulls out all stops to shut it up, that tells me the Berlin Wall of prohibition is about to come tumbling down. Americans aren’t too fond of “Just do what you’re told” as a policy justification. Before, the prohibitionists would engage with their silly little slippery slope arguments and trumped up statistics; now they won’t even engage the dialogue because they know they’ve lost before they open their mouths.
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 11:45 am | By: Radical Russ
Our Deputy Director, Paul Armentano, has another piece posted on the influential Capitol Hill blog, “The Hill”, read by the Beltway-insiders. His posts on marijuana legalization are consistently the most-commented-on posts on that blog. Surf on over and leave your own comment for our elected officials to read.
Is it at all surprising to see that the Obama team has decided to hide their collective heads in the sand when it comes to the issue of reevaluating America’s ineffective and antiquated marijuana policies? Not at all. But by doing so, the President-Elect and Congress are missing the bigger picture.
The overwhelming popularity of the marijuana reform issue — as manifested on Change.gov, Change.org (which is conducting its own online poll of the top issues facing America; the legalization of marijuana tops the list), and even here on the Hill (where my most recent blog posts have each garnered several hundreds of readers’ comments, almost all of them supportive) — illustrate two important points.
One: there is a significant, vocal, and identifiable segment of our society that wants to see an end to America’s archaic and overly punitive marijuana laws. Two: the American public is ready and willing to engage in a serious and objective political debate regarding the merits of legalizing the use of cannabis by adults.
Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 9:11 pm | By: Radical Russ
Open for Questions Round 2: Response | Change.gov: The Obama-Biden Transition Team.During this second round, we decided to leave the voting open significantly longer, but even with that extra time we were surprised to see the final totals: 103,512 people submitted 76,031 questions and cast 4,713,083 votes. We can now be confident that the success of the first round was not just about a new trick, but just a hint of the willingness of the public to permanently change the way they interact with their government. There’s plenty of room to grow.
For this round we refined the process to make it more user-friendly, and broke out the questions into categories. We think this made for a more interesting experience, and ensured that a broader array of questions could get exposure. But we also wanted to try a new way of responding to the questions, so this time instead of text answers, we asked incoming White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to sit down with us. Since there were so many popular questions in so many categories, we tried to pull out some of them that had been addressed previously by the President-elect or Vice President-elect in order to focus the video portion on questions that haven’t been as specifically addressed during the Transition.
Oh, fantastic! We were all so concerned when the #1 question in the first round of voting was from a citizen in Denton, Texas, who asked, “Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?” and you dismissed it with a curt eleven-word response:
So this video response must be the chance you were waiting for to explain more fully your opposition to marijuana legalization, right? After all, of the top five questions in the first round, ours was the only one to get a short dismissal with no explanation. This time, legalization placed fourth overall and top in the National Security category. At last, that Obama promise of transparency in government and responsiveness to the public is about to take root! Let’s go to the video:
Hmm. That’s interesting. Oh, wait, right below the video is this part that says “Previously Addressed Questions” and shows some updates on the Patrick-Fitzgerald-as-Bush-Admin-Special-Prosecutor question, the Israel/Gaza question, and the Taxpayer-Wall-Street-Bailout-Accountability question. OK, it looks like the answers to previously addressed questions will go here.
“Will you consider legalizing cannabis/marijuana/hemp so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a multi-billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?”—DJ C, Chicago, IL
Open for Questions Response, 12/15/08: “President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.”
Wow. It’s condescending dismissal I can believe in. Nothing like transparent and thoughtful responses to an issue that has now twice placed in the top five among the citizens who are responding online.
RevRayGreen: I'll post a pic of me and my son....gimme a minute
Missippi Hippy: Guess what... I'm gonna be a new... ummmmm well, my pet piggie Ganja is in labor and they ain't mine in the same sense. See what your wife [...]
RevRayGreen: days they didn't talk back..or act disrespectful..
RevRayGreen: feel so lucky my son is 18 going 19 and my daughter 16 going on 17..relish the days that can't talk back
Urb Age: Congrats Spof thats awesome. My little Clara is about to hit 20 months. Im not the activist I used to be, but its made me a better man.
Urb Age: Heck I was gonna go up there, but just not feeling well this weekend..Dang it, I hate it when that happens..
RevRayGreen: wishing I was hanging at NORML cafe...
JohnH: Just a quick comment about tokin' and sperm motility....been tokin since age 14 and have 8 kids ranging in age from 30 to 9...(what can I say, I found 2 [...]
slash5city: really ..oprah 35 yr or more in the closet toker ...outed ....o my god !!
SneakerPimp: that would be huge news just imagen the headline
RevRayGreen: maybe Oprah smokes and keeps it on the DL...
SneakerPimp: and good afternoon
mr reuben: I could do without seeing Rob K. on tv. But Bruce and Eithan get a big thumbs up from me.
Marijuana-Related Health Costs Minimal Compared To Those Of Alcohol, Tobacco; California Medical Association Says Pot Prohibition Is A "Failed Public Health Policy"; Oregon: State NORML Affiliate Opens First 'Cannabis Café'. […]
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
On the idea that legalized marijuana would cost more than it would reap
NORML’s Deputy Director 
Fresh Stash V RSS Feed
Loading ...
