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KingEup posted:Can anyone explain why so much spent on trying to stop people from using cannabis, and not so much on trying to stop people smoking tobacco? Because one of those statistics includes the cost of incarceration which is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Money spent on DARE et all is likely comparable if not significantly lower than the money given for tobacco discouragement. There's also the fact that tobacco usage *is* at an all time low and is only dropping further: 
computer parts fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 06:18
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computer parts posted:Because one of those statistics includes the cost of incarceration which is not an apples-to-apples comparison. How do you figure? Money spent on jailing people for marijuana offenses is absolutely "money spent on trying to stop people from using cannabis", which is the comparison he is making.
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Jun 29, 2014 14:45
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:How do you figure? Money spent on jailing people for marijuana offenses is absolutely "money spent on trying to stop people from using cannabis", which is the comparison he is making. Because the goal of jailing people is not to dissuade others from doing marijuana, it's to punish them for doing marijuana themselves. It sounds like a petty distinction but it's a very marked difference. If you include that as "the cost of stopping people from using marijuana" you may as well include how black market prices are x% over a free market value and that's an additional cost to society.
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Jun 29, 2014 14:51
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computer parts posted:Because the goal of jailing people is not to dissuade others from doing marijuana, it's to punish them for doing marijuana themselves. Isn't it the goal of jail to dissuade people from doing illegal things? Not that it actually works or anything like that, but still, when you see a politician advocating stronger criminal penalties for a crime, the rationale provided is that the stronger penalties will reduce that crime because it alters the risk/benefit calculus for prospective criminals, causing some to avoid committing the crime. It might be mostly bullshit, but it's a common concept in government regarding the criminal justice system. Criminal penalties aimed at marijuana users are enforced with the explicitly-stated goal of reducing overall marijuana use. It doesn't work, of course, which is why so many people support legalization, but incarceration is absolutely part of the government's current strategy to reduce marijuana use, so including incarceration expenses makes sense.
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Jun 29, 2014 20:12
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computer parts posted:It sounds like a petty distinction but it's a very marked difference. If you include that as "the cost of stopping people from using marijuana" you may as well include how black market prices are x% over a free market value and that's an additional cost to society. Additionally to what Spoondick said, we're primarily concerned with federal spending here. Those tax dollars could be allocated somewhere else to serve a more noble purpose. We're not trying to figure out the best way to make marijuana economically and legally available to society.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:11
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Spoondick posted:Isn't it the goal of jail to dissuade people from doing illegal things? No, it's to punish people for doing wrong things. At least in practice; in theory it's also for rehabilitation but that's also dealing with "after the fact" stuff. LuciferMorningstar posted:Additionally to what Spoondick said, we're primarily concerned with federal spending here. Those tax dollars could be allocated somewhere else to serve a more noble purpose. We're not trying to figure out the best way to make marijuana economically and legally available to society. Really, because that seems to be a major policy push ITT and anyone who wants to see marijuana discouraged but legal is called out as a prohibitionist. computer parts fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 21:23
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computer parts posted:Really, because that seems to be a major policy push ITT and anyone who wants to see marijuana discouraged but legal is called out as a prohibitionist. Well, there's really little need, I suspect, to go to extra lengths to discourage use beyond some basic regulatory measures not unlike those employed with alcohol. People who are arguing for significantly less than that can't really be taken seriously.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:52
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computer parts posted:
Don't do that thing, and a thing won't happen in response.
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Jun 30, 2014 13:26
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Remember that study on cannabis and PTSD that's been delayed for years and was finally maybe going to happen? Pot researcher abruptly fired by University of Arizona quote:Sisley’s study was designed to involve veterans who would use marijuana in an observation facility on campus. She had lobbied state lawmakers for approval to use state funds collected at medical marijuana dispensaries to help pay for the work. When a powerful Republican senator maneuvered to block that money, some of Sisley’s allies launched an unsuccessful recall effort.
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Jul 2, 2014 20:50
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computer parts posted:anyone who wants to see marijuana discouraged but legal is called out as a prohibitionist. Why would you want to discourage use, except in children and the mentally ill? I encourage use for everyone in our paranoid, fearful, close-minded culture. Until one has a good reason not to use it (increased paranoia, don't like the effects, whatever) I absolutely encourage usage.
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Jul 2, 2014 22:12
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While Alaska is booked in, and DC and OR looking solid for getting legalization on the 2014 ballot, Ohio failed to get enough signatures to get MMJ on the ballot this year: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/elections/2014/07/01/marijuana-voters-bill-of-rights-to-miss-november-ballot/11901311/ . They got 100k of 350k needed, but apparently you can roll petitions over to future elections, so the work so far might not be a total loss. If you're a buckeye, you may want to look into how you can help press this forward.
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Jul 2, 2014 22:46
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:While Alaska is booked in, and DC and OR looking solid for getting legalization on the 2014 ballot, Ohio failed to get enough signatures to get MMJ on the ballot this year: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/elections/2014/07/01/marijuana-voters-bill-of-rights-to-miss-november-ballot/11901311/ . They got 100k of 350k needed, but apparently you can roll petitions over to future elections, so the work so far might not be a total loss. If you're a buckeye, you may want to look into how you can help press this forward. So there's not 350k people in Ohio who support MMJ, or they just didn't ask the right people? How do things like this fail, exactly?
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Jul 3, 2014 04:07
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:Why would you want to discourage use, except in children and the mentally ill? I encourage use for everyone in our paranoid, fearful, close-minded culture. Until one has a good reason not to use it (increased paranoia, don't like the effects, whatever) I absolutely encourage usage. Because I don't like it ("I" being myself and also a significant portion of the electorate).
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Jul 3, 2014 04:18
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A Strange Aeon posted:So there's not 350k people in Ohio who support MMJ, or they just didn't ask the right people? How do things like this fail, exactly? How would you go about collecting 350k signatures with addresses, names, and other verification information? It's a huge number to collect and verify and you are under a tight time restriction.
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Jul 3, 2014 04:25
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computer parts posted:Because I don't like it ("I" being myself and also a significant portion of the electorate). I think it's called being a jackass when you want to discourage the use of things because you don't "like" them
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Jul 3, 2014 04:27
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A Strange Aeon posted:So there's not 350k people in Ohio who support MMJ, or they just didn't ask the right people? How do things like this fail, exactly? I live in Ohio and this is the first time I have heard this was even a thing. I'm not sure who is in charge of getting signatures, but if they ONLY got 100k signatures, they weren't even trying.
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Jul 3, 2014 04:28
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down with slavery posted:I think it's called being a jackass when you want to discourage the use of things because you don't "like" them There's no legitimate interest for the state to promote marijuana use.
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Jul 3, 2014 04:30
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computer parts posted:There's no legitimate interest for the state to promote marijuana use. There's no legitimate interest for the state to dissuade marijuana use.
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Jul 3, 2014 04:44
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computer parts posted:There's no legitimate interest for the state to promote marijuana use. It's called making a lot more money for the state when Republicans and Democrats just steal from the school fund, oh and annoying squares. If the coffers are being emptied, there must be an attempt to fill the gap. I know it's not all corruption for why schools in general are hard pressed. Nonsense fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 05:21
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Salt Fish posted:How would you go about collecting 350k signatures with addresses, names, and other verification information? It's a huge number to collect and verify and you are under a tight time restriction. quote:I live in Ohio and this is the first time I have heard this was even a thing. I'm not sure who is in charge of getting signatures, but if they ONLY got 100k signatures, they weren't even trying. tl;dr: No matter how much popular support you have, you need to either recruit enough volunteers and/or pay enough people to physically stand out on the sidewalk and collect said signatures. This takes time and money even if literally every voter in your state would totally be willing to sign. An Ohio voter initiative campaign must involve a few hundred people and a few million dollars. The actual ratio of popular support is only one factor. Image a scenario, as an extreme example, where every single one of the ~8 million registered voters in Ohio totally supported it, and was willing to sign a public document associating themselves (however indirectly) with marijuana. Cool, great, but how many canvassers do you have?. If you only have a few dozen canvassers, there's simply no way you can physically access and hand a clipboard to enough people to get your sigs in. In DC, generally 20 sigs an hour was a good brisk pace for a volunteer, of which about half are valid. So for 350k sigs, you're looking at 35k man-hours. I don't know what kind of window the OH campaign was on, but my impression was shortish, let's say ~90 days just for kicks. At 40 hours a week for 13 weeks, that'd be 5,200 valids. So you'd need around 70 full-time pro canvassers (ringers) maintaining a good pace throughout the entire 90-day period to make your quota. Ringers charge a buck or two per sig, with some campaigns offering higher rates for those who reach a given quota; our highest rate was $2.75/sig for the collectors pulling in a raw grand or better a week. Even at a cheap $1.50 per sig, you'd be paying over a half-million dollars just for canvassers. You can try hiring random people to become paid gatherers just off the street, but you'll sift through and waste a ton of time on listless deadbeats, or willing people who just have no skills and will quit when their first paycheck comes out to $3/hr. And most temp agencies are very leery to task employees to weed-related canvassing. Using volunteers can save you some money, but probably more than half your volunteers will pick up a clipboard and sheets, get a half-dozen sigs and get discouraged and you'll never hear from them again (you'll get your clipboard back and partial sheet if you're lucky). Of the remaining vols, most of them will turn in 100 or so over a few weeks, a couple will get in several hundred, and a small handful of crazy dedicated believers will pull in 1000+ (saving you a good chunk of ringer money). And all that is just canvassers, you also need a small pretty much fulltime crew to process incoming sheets and tabulate paychecks for ringers, and a separate small fulltime crew to sit their with laptops with the voter rolls loaded up, good lighting, and literal magnifying glasses reading and data-entering all the names to get a ping from the system validating each one as a voter. And then a few more full-timers to be PR guys, accountants, a few lawyers, etc. The DC campaign saved a lot of money in that we only had to have one single office since within our entire "not a state" there are no two points more than 30 minutes drive apart. An Ohio campaign I would imagine would have a dozen or more sub-offices in different cities.
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Jul 3, 2014 06:39
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computer parts posted:Because I don't like it ("I" being myself and also a significant portion of the electorate). computer parts posted:There's no legitimate interest for the state to promote marijuana use. Tax revenue.
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Jul 3, 2014 09:12
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You guys do realize that the status quo in Colorado is okay for me, right? At least in theory; in practice minorities are probably charged with bullshit tickets much more often than white people but that's not an issue specific to drug laws (at least in Colorado). computer parts fucked around with this message at 12:43 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 12:38
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:tl;dr: No matter how much popular support you have, you need to either recruit enough volunteers and/or pay enough people to physically stand out on the sidewalk and collect said signatures. This takes time and money even if literally every voter in your state would totally be willing to sign. An Ohio voter initiative campaign must involve a few hundred people and a few million dollars. This was exactly what I wanted to know and your thorough explanation is greatly appreciated. It's interesting that in the Internet age it still really comes down to these logistical problems. I mean, obviously research was done in Ohio prior to committing to the campaign, to establish that there were enough people for it to succeed. So the fact it failed coming down to all the issues you listed above is so mundane and disappointing; not that I know a better way to get hundreds of thousands of signatures, but I guess I imagined some kind of anti campaign that was spreading misinformation or something as the reason it failed, not just logistics.
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Jul 3, 2014 13:51
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A Strange Aeon posted:This was exactly what I wanted to know and your thorough explanation is greatly appreciated. That sort of thing is why management was seen as useful at one point in time. If you have a good manager you can do stuff really well and if you have a bad manager you can do stuff really really badly.
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Jul 3, 2014 13:58
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computer parts posted:Because I don't like it ("I" being myself and also a significant portion of the electorate). It's OK, what you are is called a "scold." computer parts posted:There's no legitimate interest for the state to promote marijuana use. And an "authoritarian." The state has no legitimate interest for the state to promote lowriders either, but why would you gently caress with people's lives about it? "Waaah-ah; cannabis, which mankind has used since prehistory, might be enjoyed when I don't enjoy it! Others might think, create or relax in ways I don't find interesting. Shouldn't we at least jail children over it?"
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Jul 3, 2014 14:01
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SedanChair posted:
Read the post
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Jul 3, 2014 14:05
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:tl;dr: No matter how much popular support you have, you need to either recruit enough volunteers and/or pay enough people to physically stand out on the sidewalk and collect said signatures. This takes time and money even if literally every voter in your state would totally be willing to sign. An Ohio voter initiative campaign must involve a few hundred people and a few million dollars. Is it legal to collect petition signatures via mail, or does it have to be done in person so the petition collector witnesses the person signing?
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Jul 3, 2014 14:09
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computer parts posted:Read the post Doesn't matter, you still appear to be a busybody and a scold. You should support repeal of the federal laws.
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Jul 3, 2014 14:20
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SedanChair posted:Doesn't matter, you still appear to be a busybody and a scold. You should support repeal of the federal laws. I do.
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Jul 3, 2014 14:53
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SedanChair valiantly saves the day again.
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Jul 3, 2014 15:03
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computer parts posted:I do. Then what methods do you propose for "discouraging" the use of drugs?
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Jul 3, 2014 16:57
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SedanChair posted:Then what methods do you propose for "discouraging" the use of drugs? The same sort of stuff you see for television or video games, I suppose. Commercials when no one is watching and posters on bus stations along the lines of "this thing that you're doing can be habit forming, and may be undermine your quality of life if pursued to the exclusion of other activities".
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Jul 3, 2014 17:12
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:The same sort of stuff you see for television or video games, I suppose. Commercials when no one is watching and posters on bus stations along the lines of "this thing that you're doing can be habit forming, and may be undermine your quality of life if pursued to the exclusion of other activities". That and separate establishments for selling it (like in Colorado or for spirits in general). Also limitations on advertising probably wouldn't be bad either.
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Jul 3, 2014 17:16
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:"this thing that you're doing can be habit forming, and may be undermine your quality of life if pursued to the exclusion of other activities". Are there things that don't deserve this warning? Might as well add a poster like this outside of any leisure-related activity/vendor.
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Jul 3, 2014 17:50
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Is it legal to collect petition signatures via mail, or does it have to be done in person so the petition collector witnesses the person signing? It would vary state-by-state, each makes their own laws for initiatives/referendums. And many states don't have those; iirc it was a sudden popular trend in the last 30 years to set up citizen-based proposals. For DC I think it all has to be done in person, though there's no ID check or anything. And you can't leave a clipboard anywhere where it's not controlled by a canvasser, so no dropping off a clipboard at the headshop unless it's only available when a canvasser-registered clerk is on-duty. People kept asking me about signing online, which DC definitely doesn't have, not sure about other states. I occasionally got people claiming "oh, I signed your petition online"; either they were embarrassed that they were too chicken to sign and so just lied, or they somehow mistakenly thought an upvote on Facebook matters to the Board of Elections. Online would be way easier, but then again state governments probably don't want to further enable/encourage the voter referendum process because it's kind of an end-run around the legislature and they'd probably just prefer you emailed your state congressman and asked nicely. I like initiatives, just noting that the Powers that Be might not be that fond of them. The pipe-dream one canvasser had would be to have like smart tablets the canvassers carry, which have uploaded the official voter rolls, so signers would just tap out their basic info until it keyed in on their exact entry on the rolls, and then they could sign with a finger. That'd be awfully cool, and give you nearly 100% valid rate.
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Jul 3, 2014 17:59
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Is it just confirmation bias, or does it seem like this entire year is full of weed steps forward, big and small? North Carolina, of all states, just legalized what appears to be non-THC cannabis oil for children with seizures. It's a weaksauce minor concession to MMJ, but still significant in that even North Cackalackey is flat out endorsing that (in certain extremely narrow circumstances) cannabis may have legitimate uses. http://www.wfmynews2.com/story/news/local/2014/07/03/governor-nc-signs-hemp-oil-marijuana-extraction-bill-medicinal/12157079/ New poll by Boston Globe (small sample, ~600 likely voters) gives 48% pro legalization, 47% against, 5% undecided. Masachusetts looks to be aiming for a 2016 ballot initiative: http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2014/07/03/half-voters-with-legalized-marijuana/XHWOJ8dS9ohbCzJIfNKIjI/story.html So the overall picture is 2 states legal, 2 more and DC voting in 2014, and as many as 6 more voting in 2016? Also, given that some states let you work up initiatives the same year as the vote, several more states that aren't even considering a legalization measure could decide to take a shot in the next two years. While by no means assured, it's not totally implausible that legal states could hit 10+ by the end of 2016. If the entire West Coast has legal weed, I'd imagine the federal government will feel pretty compelled to make a real decision on the issue. Still secretly hoping for a Executive Order on the way out the door in January 2017: "Cannabis is now Schedule Three, goodnight everybody *drops mic*." TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 20:43
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Is it just confirmation bias, or does it seem like this entire year is full of weed steps forward, big and small? No, no, no. We definitely don't want Schedule III status. We want de-scheduled status.
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Jul 4, 2014 22:26
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Is it just confirmation bias, or does it seem like this entire year is full of weed steps forward, big and small? I think you mean "Cannabis is now descheduled, goodnight everybody *lights USA flag blunt, passes to Biden*"
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Jul 4, 2014 22:31
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People who are interested in actual medical marijuana are very interested in schedule III status.
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Jul 4, 2014 22:32
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Medical Marijuana is a distraction and gradualism shouldn't be a policy tool.
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Jul 4, 2014 23:02
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