Marijuana legalization is a new challenge for state governments.
The state of Washington recently legalized marijuana. The Washington State Liquor Control Board is responsible for implementing regulations by this December. Medbox has offered to help the state with implementation by installing inventory management systems and robotic dispensaries that comply with both present and future regulations.…
Article comments
26 - Zingzing
Baronius, most people don't go to prison for simple possession, which I assume is what you're talking about, as people do go to prison for drug offenses of the distribution variety. But possession can make you break parole, or it can be used to make you a multiple offender, or it can be used in those "three strikes" laws.
27 - Dr Dreadful
Zing, the point Baronius is making, if I read him correctly, is that it's rare for someone to have a criminal record only for drug use offences, and that this supports the anti-decriminalization argument that drugs cause crime.
I'm doubtful that there is any hard data of the kind he's talking about, for the simple reason that the counterargument you and I are making requires navigating a logical blind spot. And because it is a blind spot, many people, including people who gather crime statistics, don't even realize it's there.
This blind spot is, of course, that drugs go hand-in-hand with crime because they are criminalized.
This simple truth is so obvious to those who've grasped it that it can seem incredible that others don't get it. A bit like those magic eye pictures that were a fad back in the 90s. (I never was able to see those.) And like magic eye, you can show it to people endlessly and some of them will never see it, no matter how clear the explanation of how it works.
I'm not saying that Baronius is one of those. Just offering an explanation of why this is difficult to back up statistically.
28 - Dr. Joseph S. Maresca
Would legalization bring down the price of pot on the streets; such that, people would not have to commit crimes to be able to afford the substance in the first place? Soon enough, we'll know the answer to this and related questions when Washington provides guidance.
29 - Baronius
I get that connection, Dread. But I also know that I've never met anyone who stole a parking meter because he thought it'd be funny to have one in his living room, and wasn't high.
Take gmabling as an example. When it was illegal, some people got caught up into crime because of it. Some, because it was illegal, but some because it's a destructive action. It turns out that legal gmabling leads to credit card fraud, too, because gmabling puts people into a state where they make bad decisions.
Take a different example: huffing paint fumes. We wouldn't waste our time looking for cause-and-effect if someone who sniffs paint committed a crime. Whatever social stigma may be attached to paint sniffing probably isn't the driving force behind the crime. It's a substance that causes brain damage, so we make the reasonable assumption that his brain isn't working right. Well, marijuana causes brain damage. Why should we assume that it's the illegality of marijuana that's leading to crime?
Now, there is another complicating factor, the same one that was complicating our recent discussions about guns: mental illness. The fact is that a good number of drug users are self-medicating. And mental illness does lead to crime. There's more of a chicken-and-egg problem in the question of drug use and mental illness than I think there is in the matter of drug use and crime.
30 - Glenn Contrarian
Baronius -
Yes, you're right that my blame of conservatives would carry more weight if I used it more sparingly - but doggone it, there's a heck of a lot to blame conservatives for!
To be fair, I blame liberals for quite a bit, too - for instance, I hold liberals to blame for allowing our schools to become too lenient. I blame liberals for being too afraid of nuclear power. But when it comes to the War on Drugs, I blame liberals for not standing up to the conservatives when it was started, and all along the way...
...and remember, for most of the War on Drugs, I was a conservative.
31 - Glenn Contrarian
Baronius -
You're using the chicken-and-egg metaphor for drug use and mental illness. FYI, there's a proven link between alcohol use and mental illness - I know this because the Foster child I've cared for for 14 years (he turned 18 last month) has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which has symptoms almost identical to Fetal Drug Syndrome (severe developmental delay, g-tube, trach, etc.) - and we cared for such a Foster child at the same time as our current Foster child.
Okay? Alcohol is bad, too - and has resulted in many more American deaths than drug use ever has.
I agree that meth and crack and PCP and the like should be illegal, but marijuana? Please.
32 - Dr Dreadful
But I also know that I've never met anyone who stole a parking meter because he thought it'd be funny to have one in his living room, and wasn't high.
I guess we should make secondary and higher education illegal, then, Baronius, because that's exactly the sort of caper that students get up to, especially in the context of fraternities and sororities and their closest British equivalent, Rag Week.
There was a legend at my high school about an incident that was supposed to have taken place about 15 years before my arrival. It seems there was a metalwork teacher who was a kit car enthusiast, and was building his dream car utilizing the school's facilities and also, in the guise of a special project, its student body.
The students waited until the project was complete except for painting. They then somehow managed to "borrow" the teacher's shop keys and make copies using the casting foundry. Then, that weekend, they broke into the shop, dismantled the car, carried the pieces up to the roof of the school, carefully selected a prominent location that would be seen by everybody, reassembled the vehicle in perfect working order and spray-painted it.
I imagine that was the merriest Monday morning my school had ever witnessed.
Human beings, especially young exuberant ones, are inexhaustibly capable of stunts like that, and no alcohol or other drug is necessarily required.
33 - Irene Athena
Funny stories both of you! Anyway, it's not ingestion that makes the most dangerous criminals associated with the illegality of drugs. That would be the folks in rival cartels, in turf wars, trying to control the best smuggling routes, for example. And the violence extends to law enforcement countering them in the War on Drugs, and to the tens of thousands of innocents who get caught in the crossfire.
The tricky thing is, to eliminate the black market that motivates that violence, you'd have to decriminalize all drugs they trade in, including cocaine.
People are looking to Portugal for statistics about how across-the-board drug decriminalization has worked to reduce drug use and prison population. Here's an evaluation that seems fairly balanced.
What is stressed in the article is that the decriminalization in Portugal stopped working as well as it had in the first six years (2001 - 2007.) As the country fell on hard economic times in 2007, there was a depletion for funding for the programs that were key to decriminalization's success: resources that had been formerly devoted to prosecuting users that had been redirected to drug treatment programs and other social supports.
34 - Irene Athena
Regulations for the distribution of medical marijuana were part of the new Washington law, and none of us have been talking about medical marijuana on this thread.
And overall, that should be the way it is. The legality of medical marijuana and the legality of recreational pot use should be different discussions. We don't forbid the use of controlled substances used in psychiatry because they might be abused, accidentally or intentionally. We just control them.
It's adding insult to injury to people who had been counting on medical marijuana as a way to control nausea during chemo, for example, to be suspected of being potheads who are just looking for an excuse to get weed. None of us have been making that accusation here, but the national conversation on legalization of medical marijuana has veered that way sometimes.
35 - Dr. Joseph S. Maresca
At some point, a medical body like the AMA is going to take a position on the appropriate doses of marijuana for medicinal use. There will be articles in the New England Journal of
Medicine, as well as other places. The American Psychiatric Association will probably weigh in on the issue also.
36 - zingzing
crossing "shenanigans" off of my list of things baronius knows something about. besides, stealing a parking meter takes a whole lot of determination... maybe some pcp or meth would make that possible, but i doubt marijuana would do the trick. bath salts? i dunno. we're getting into strange territory here.
37 - Dr. Joseph S. Maresca
Recreational use limits are going to be set by the Washington State Alcohol Authority this December. I'm waiting patiently to see what they recommend. This will not change what employers require in the workplace as is the practice with alcohol and tobacco right now.For instance, many workplaces are smoke free.
38 - clavos
The students waited until the project was complete except for painting. They then somehow managed to "borrow" the teacher's shop keys and make copies using the casting foundry. Then, that weekend, they broke into the shop, dismantled the car, carried the pieces up to the roof of the school, carefully selected a prominent location that would be seen by everybody, reassembled the vehicle in perfect working order and spray-painted it.
Interesting. A nearly identical story has circulated here in the US for as long I can remember.
39 - Dr Dreadful
Yes, well, I did say it was a legend. :-) I wonder if the germ was a real incident or if it came purely from someone's imagination?
40 - clavos
Doc, I tried to find it on Snopes, but it doesn't turn up, so maybe there is at least some truth in there...
41 - mr.marijuana
fuc all you pot hating people it has many uses and those of you not able to comprehind that are stupid
42 - Marijuana Philippines
Can i post our very own Philippine Marijuana Community Forum.
43 - Glenn Contrarian
"Marijuana Philippines"
I think that the legalization of marijuana there might detract from the problem of shabu (meth)...
...and I'd just about require that the kamikaze bus drivers (especially those of the oxymoronically-named bus line "Safeway") there drive stoned - at least when they crash, it'd be at a much lower speed than they drive now....
44 - Marijuana India
Lets Hope it will be legalized in the whole US so the whole world will follow. Including India.
Indian Marijuana Community Forum
www.HIGHisCOOL.in