The Glade 4.0

And the amount of time, money and resources that we waste stopping marijuana from being smuggled in, used, sold etc...

Jesus ****, just legalize the ****. Then maybe we could concentrate on the harder stuff like meth and heroin and stuff.

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Holy shitsnacks!

No kidding.

Fighting "medical" marijuana is even more ridiculous.

OMG I have cancer, can I get high?

Um... yes. Yes you can. In fact, you relax, let me light that for you.

Yeah, no joke. I guess I can fathom anti-marijuana arguments, in that "if I stand a long ways back and squint really hard, it looks like it might not be insane" way. But medical MJ? #facepalm

That video is 60 seconds of Romney proving he doesn't know **** on the subject and asked someone for cliff notes. Read up on Portugal's 11 staggeringly successful years of legal drugs, Mittens.

Gateway drug, my ***. Poverty and a lack of respect for education are the real gateways to drugs.

Romney says he's against is, Obama's actions belie his words and prove he's against it; I guess the only choice is Gary Johnson.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I used to be dead set against legalization, but I've changed my opinion quite a bit on it. When AZ had a vote on medical marijuana I voted for it.

Alcohol abuse is infinitely more damaging to society than marijuana abuse. There's never been a death caused by marijuana OD. People aren't more likely to be violent. It makes no sense that it is illegal while other things, like alcohol and cigarettes aren't.

Then there is the insane amount of money we spend every year arresting, incarcerating, etc, marijuana users. And the thing is, its use is fairly prevalent, and yet getting caught using it can be disastrous to your life. In the U.S. 40% have used marijuana, twice the percentage of users than in the Netherlands where smoking pot is legal. So making it illegal has done very little to curb its use, and costs us billions.

I've never used it, and likely never will. But its illegalization is so pointless, and costs us so much money, and ends up ruining more lives than just its use ever will.

Legalize it and tax the hell out of it, problem solved.

Mitt Romney is gateway stupid. People who believe the stupid thigs he says will all wind up believing even dumber things later.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

My only tipping point for legalization is how much it would cost to enforce DUI laws against people driving high.

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Those laws are already being enforced, and legalization is unlikely to drastically increase the number of people that drive under the influence. I would expect the increase in DUI enforcement costs to be infinitesimal compared to the cost of enforcing marijuana prohibition laws.

Legalization would increase consumption so if the ratio remains the same it means there will be more on the road. But I tend to agree with you that it would be cheaper than SWAT raids, incarceration costs, legal fees, etc. I'd just like to see it studied.

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Given the complex social interactions invovled, It's hard to say exactly what would happen to consumption. It might go up, but then again it might not. Perhaps without the legal barrier, some people might consume more, or some people who hadn't consumed at all in the past might start. On the other hand, perhaps at least some of the demand might go down due to losing the "forbidden fruit" effect.

Either way, as far as your ultimate concern goes (DUIs), the question isn't just whether consumption would increase, but what kind of consumption would increase. This is purely speculative, of course, but I would suspect that the sort of people inclined to smoke pot heavily enough to be unsafe to drive are probably (for the most part) in the pool of people who are already smoking it regardless of its legality. Those who are currently deterred by its legal status are probably only marginally interested in smoking it in the first place. As such, I doubt they would contribute very much to the incidence of marijuana DUIs.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

That's not exactly an accurate assumption. Maybe a spike in the beginning, but 10 years later Portugal has seen addicts reduced by half and is now among the lowest of usage rates in the EU.


----^

Color me confused, but isn't marijuana non-addictive?

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Portugal legalized nearly all typically illegal drugs, including pot, cocaine, heroin, LSD, etc about 10 years ago.

Best policy would probably be to legalize drug use, and then use a large portion of the money saved and the tax money for treatment programs. Drug use would likely go down in that situation.

Depends who you ask. I've never met anyone with physical withdrawals for not having any, but the case for mental addiction could always be made.

Legalizing the use of marijuana does not necessarily mean legalizing the importation of marijuana. We'd still need to prevent the importation of it because of the cartels. Contrary to what people like to pretend, legalization would not result in the instant annihilation of the Mexican marijuana cartels. We'd just suddenly have rewarded groups of murderous criminals, giving them even more resources with which to turn Mexico into one big corporatocracy. Even if Mexico legalized Marijuana simultaneously with us that wouldn't help; the cartels are already in control of the marijuana production so they'd just have gotten legitimacy handed to them on a silver platter, and that would sure as hell not suddenly cure them of the use of violent means to gain competitive advantage.

Second, Border Wars is entertainment. It's sensationalized. For every marijuana bust you see on there, there are thousands of man-hours just patrolling, looking for illegal immigrants, or dope, or whatever comes your way.. or on hospital duty with some alien that got injured, or processing aliens at the station, or whatever. Those "resources" you see looking for dope would, for the most part, be out there anyhow looking for illegal aliens. Don't get it into your head that Border Wars is representative of how resources are employed overall nor of what the daily work is really like. Border Wars shows you the good ****; the exciting moments where hours and hours of waiting and watching and sweating and walking trails and driving and searching and cutting sign finally come down to chasing people and arresting them.

When you're out there, you catch what comes. If aliens come, you catch aliens. If dope comes, you catch dope. Either way, you're out there... or you're at the station churning out files for aliens that have already been caught as fast as you can because you have 400 people in a station designed for 150 and you need to get them the hell out of there.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

How would the cartels be able to maintain a stranglehold on the market when any John or Jane could grow unhindered across the border? Two plants on rotation is be more than enough for me and my entire group of friends. You say the cartels are "in control of" marijuana production like it's a difficult thing to obtain or grow, but they're not exactly Monsato where the crops only grow for a year and then die out.

Not to mention, if we legalized marijuana, then the sellers would most likely be subject to audits and be required to demonstrate where they got their product. In addition, it's an excellent cash crop, so you'd see a lot of agriculture converting to it domestically, driving the prices down. Lower prices wouldn't maintain a worthwhile margin for illegal sources.

Black market pot and pot smuggling would be as big a problem as black market tobacco and tobacco smuggling if both products were legal. It doesn't matter that the Cartel is already producing pot -- it wouldn't be profitable enough to carry the risks of illegal domestic distribution anymore.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

If marijuana were that easy to supply, there wouldn't be cartels now. Plenty of people grow for personal use here as it is; marijuana farming is not uncommon in the U.S. and yet the cartels still supply an enormous amount. If domestic growing could seriously compete with cartels, there wouldn't be cartels. Why ship marijuana from Mexico allt he way to New York with the associated risk of apprehension if New York, or even West Virginia or Kentucky can meet demand?

If, however, Joe Redneck in Kentucky could grow his own and legally sell it, then he could vastly increase his productivity without any need to conceal it from law enforcement; a major impediment to his commercial success would be gone. The cartels, on the other hand, would still have to rely on getting it past la migra over the border and underground distribution networks. If the assumptions we're making are correct, that would mean that American growers (who are not known to engage in widespread murder, intimidation, and other brutality) would eventually edge out cartel growers (who are known to do those things).

Money starvation should eventually then weaken the cartels to the point that the Mexican government can deal with them. Once they're gone (or, at least, out of the marijuana business; it's not like organized crime in Mexico will just vanish) then we can look at allowing imports from legitimate Mexican farmers.

Essentially, the idea would be to legalize marijuana in order to eliminate the costs associated with enforcement and the human cost of the associated crime, but avoid doing so in such a way that legitimizes the actual criminal that have been running it up to this point. Not only would that reward criminal behavior, but it would be **** Mexico twice; first by creating the problem with our domestic demand for marijuana combined with the ban, second by then legitimizing people that have terrorized their population and corrupted their government. While I always put our own country first, there's no reason to **** a neighbor and an ally over if there's a better way to do things.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

They wouldn't, that's the point. Domestic growing would easily compete with cartels if it were legal. Marijuana really IS that easy to supply, people just don't do it because of the illegality. If marijuana were made legal you'd see gardens pop up like flower shops and the cartels would get zero marijuana-based business from the US. Zero. It's the exact same situation as alcohol prohibition was; forbid something there's demand for and the criminals will be the only ones profiting.

How could a cartel in another country ever compete with or make profits versus local businesses in a country that has legalized its main cash crop? They couldn't. They'd start selling something else.

**** gardens. You'd see tobacco fields converting.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Al Capone isn't running whiskey anymore, and the last time I checked there was no longer a violent gang war being fought on our northern border over it's illegal importation.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Marijuana is just as illegal in Mexico as it is in the U.S., and yet people ship in from great distances with correspondingly greater chances of apprehension rather than grow it locally, so it is not just a matter of it being illegal or legal. You're making a lot of assumptions about how easy marijuana might or might not be to supply in a hypothetical situation of legalization and I don't see any reason to think your idea of "zero business" is even remotely accurate.

You're making it sound like there's a simple solution to a complex problem because you want it to be legalized and therefore you're trying to handwave away any potential issues with legalization by just saying "oh well no one would ever buy cartel marijuana again." There's no basis whatsoever for such an assumption. In point of fact, your chosen example demonstrates the opposite: imported alcohol did not suddenly disappear at the end of prohibition; it remains popular to this day. There's no reason to think there would be zero business for an established supplier with an established distribution network when their distribution just got vastly easier because of legalization.

"End prohibition" is not a magic bullet to solve controlled substance issues. The mafia and organized crime in general did not suddenly do away when prohibition was ended; they moved on into other crimes.

In fact, since we're both agreeing that legalization of domestic production and consumption would be best, there's little reason for you to be making these absurd leaps over the possibility of banning imports, especially when I clearly stated that situation would only obtain long enough for the existing criminal networks to wither and die.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."