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rscott posted:Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have laws in effect elevating smokers to a protected class. It's illegal for companies to impose smoking bans on their employees when they are off duty. Jesus Christ, there are literally more states where it's illegal to fire someone for smoking than there are where it's illegal to fire someone for being gay.
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Oct 11, 2012 09:20
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:People are referring to the stereotypes of the worst case scenarios. Most people can drink just fine, a few will end up violent, abusive, and with a serious case of liver damage. Most people can smoke pot just fine, but a few will end up unemployed or in dead end jobs spending all of the leisure time smoking and eating Taco Bell. The worst that a drug can do should be relevant to how it is regulated. To be honest, it's more than just "a few" for alcohol. Almost all the arguments prohibitionists made were true: alcohol is by far the most destructive drug in our society, and as much as I personally enjoy alcohol, it would greatly improve society and save countless lives if we could eliminate drinking. Unfortunately, we can't, because prohibition doesn't work, and it had disastrous side effects on top of not working. With marijuana, of course, in addition to the fact that prohibition doesn't work, the drug already one of the safest drugs with the fewest ill effects in the first place, making the comparison to alcohol strangely invidious. I know that it's a losing proposition for any legalization campaign, but it would genuinely be a great benefit to public health if there were a concerted effort to destigmatize marijuana in order to convince people who self-medicate with alcohol to use marijuana instead.
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Oct 13, 2012 20:46
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Jazerus posted:Who isn't a hardcore Republican that would have this opinion? I'm serious. The "angry black man" and "president choom" stuff where Obama supposedly has to avoid being a scary black thug doesn't matter to anyone except people who already hate him for the color of his skin. Would Drudge run a race-baiting headline? You bet. Would it matter? Only for people who already pay attention to Drudge. Even George Wallace never professed to hate black people. This "America isn't racist anymore" idea dates back to well before 1964.
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Oct 15, 2012 09:45
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JollyGreen posted:They actually are a marginal case nation-wide (however awful they are) - not to mention the forces that made marijuana illegal and continue to keep it illegal existed well before 'for-profit prision' was even a concept. The system doesn't need to be "fixed at every level"--whatever that even means--for there to be an entrenched (and even a popular) interest in maintaining an institution like the War on Drugs that plays a crucial role in post-Jim Crow disenfranchisement of minorities.
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Oct 16, 2012 23:40
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Less common than you may think. Also I'm pretty sure drugs use to pay informants are drugs that were never reported as seized in the first place.
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Oct 17, 2012 02:16
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RichieWolk posted:It's also because the therapeutic index (the difference between effective dose and lethal dose) of heroin is waaay smaller than morphine, 10 vs 100. It's much more likely that a recreational user of heroin will overdose and die on heroin, mainly because of the uncertainty of the purity of street drugs, but also because of a handful of other factors like metabolism, tolerance, etc. Even so, in our insane system we still have drugs where a child could probably walk into a pharmacy and buy a potentially lethal dose, like acetaminophen.
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Nov 12, 2012 20:03
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Preem Palver posted:Are tobacco, ethanol, coca, salvia, DMT, mescaline, psylocybin, khat, caffeine, opium, and a host of other recreational and medicinal drugs not drugs either? Because these are all natural products as well. Some of those are drugs and some of those are substances that contain drugs. In a certain context it's just being pedantic, but there is a real point for example to saying something like "beer is not a drug." As dangerous as beer is, as a means to deliver alcohol it is a LOT safer than vaporizing or injecting alcohol, which carries a much higher risk of death. It's also relevant in the case of marijuana that it isn't just arbitrary plant + THC; see for example how Marinol does not have the same efficacy as marijuana. Coca is another good example: really the only reason it is illegal is because cocaine exists, not because people are getting hosed up on coca.
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Nov 14, 2012 20:41
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Pope Guilty posted:Here in Indiana, we gently caress up a lot of things, but we do alcohol sales quite alright. Pfft call me back when they repeal the blue law.
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Dec 9, 2012 12:32
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Makarov_ posted:If the WA law is followed through to fruition, I eagerly await the state treasurer being indicted for money laundering. I wouldn't be surprised if they asked for a change of venue and looked for jurors unfamiliar with the state laws. There has been at least one case I know of in CA where all 12 jurors immediately recanted after they learned they had convicted a doctor for prescribing medical marijuana instead of a regular drug dealer.
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Dec 11, 2012 02:07
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Patter Song posted:Ergo, making it Schedule IV rather than Schedule I would put the medicinal marijuana crowd in the clear, but Schedule IV drugs are still illegal to be sold over the counter for recreational purposes so the full legalization for recreational use crowd would still be outside the bounds of the law. Putting it on a lower schedule would absolutely help the ill, but it would also encourage a lot of the bullshit pseudo-docs handing out prescriptions to those not actually ill, a precedent I'm very uncomfortable with (how long until some homeopathic witch doctor who is legally allowed to prescribe medicine start prescribing heart medication to someone without disease and put someone in cardiac arrest?). The precedent is already set, though. Rescheduling and then just ignoring states that legalize it (though still probably shutting down any sort of open large-scale non-medical grow operations) would be a good move that's actually feasible.
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Dec 11, 2012 23:58
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Install Gentoo posted:No that is not how money laundering laws work. They could still charge dispensaries under RICO if they wanted to be especially cruel. It wouldn't even be such a flagrant abuse of the law on its face.
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Dec 20, 2012 20:58
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Radbot posted:Outdoor weed sucks. Weed is expensive e because it takes lots of energy and expensive fertilizers to grow *well*. Nobody in California or Colorado is smoking Mexican dirt weed anymore. What's funny is that there is even some weed being smuggled from America into Mexico now because of the lack of high quality domestic weed in Mexico.
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Dec 26, 2012 09:08
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Dusseldorf posted:So he's basically arguing that heavy drinking is a public health menace completely orthogonally to anything to do with cannabis? Honestly it would be an enormous, enormous boon to public health if we could convince even a small portion of the people who self-medicate with alcohol to do so with marijuana instead. Just because Prohibition didn't work doesn't change the fact that alcohol is the most destructive drug in America.
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Dec 28, 2012 22:57
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spengler posted:I take great exception to the idea that "the benefit-cost analysis of cannabis legalization turns crucially on its effect on heavy drinking". I think it is nanny-state nonsense. That is a non-sequitur. Even if you believe that the state should be minimally involved in people's lives, and therefore account the cost of even minor restrictions on liberty as extraordinarily high, such costs are nonetheless clearly not infinite; otherwise there'd be no difference in the affront the liberty posed by regulation and summary execution! As such, you can measure costs and benefits even if you don't believe that cost-benefit analysis is a legitimate basis for policy. So even if you believe that a cost-benefit analysis of legalization is immaterial to whether or not marijuana should be legalized, that doesn't mean that the cost-benefit analysis of cannibis legalization doesn't turn crucially on its effect on heavy drinking.
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Dec 29, 2012 18:44
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hobbesmaster posted:Would he go to trial in California? I'm sure it won't actually go to trial, but jury nullification here would be amazing. So much as breathe a word about state law and there would be a mistrial. It's less likely now, but I remember a news story about a jury who recanted within minutes after they left the courtroom when they were told they had convicted a doctor for prescribing medical marijuana according to state law.
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Jan 16, 2013 00:04
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hobbesmaster posted:How can a judge overrule an acquittal from a jury? Some sort of Scalia like mental gymnastics of "the constitution assures a right to a trial by jury, not that the jury's decision would be binding". A judge cannot overturn an criminal acquittal at his own discretion, but he could grant a motion to set aside judgement, which is fairly rare, but this situation would be a textbook example of when it might work: the judge might ask the jurors how they reached their verdict, and if they admitted they decided to make the ruling based on nullification or based on inapplicable laws, it could happen, and there would have to be another jury trial.
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Jan 16, 2013 05:15
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redshirt posted:Oh, I don't care at all either. Marijuana should be 100% legal. I'm just pointing this out - it seems a rather obvious point. Most of the people I've met with medical marijuana cards are doing it more for recreation than any pain issues. Doesn't bother me one bit. On the other hand, a lot of people take alcohol for pain/stress/depression they would rather not pathologize, i.e. "non-medically", who would be a lot better off using marijuana as a mild analgesic/anxiolytic. Marijuana really is unique in having a basically infinite therapeutic index, so it isn't terribly important to distinguish between recreational and medicinal use. While it's true plenty (if not most) prescriptions for it are not for legitimate medical reasons, the legitimacy of what constitutes medical reasons for things that aren't easily diagnosed are also kind of bullshit in the first place.
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Jan 18, 2013 21:42
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Install Gentoo posted:The people being stigmatized are already actually using it legally though? There's nothing illegal about taking prescribed medicine yet that's what they're being treated as criminals over. Sometimes it is illegal to take prescribed medicine or to legally prescribe medicine for pain, and that's a bigger part of the problem than stigma.
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Jan 24, 2013 08:33
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Jeffrey posted:Businesses in some states can do this with cigarettes. There are literally companies who will not hire smokers. It saves them money on health insurance and promotes healthy living you see! This is illegal in many states however. There are states where it is illegal to discriminate against smokers, but perfectly legal to discriminate against gay people.
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Feb 7, 2013 03:35
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Install Gentoo posted:He's saying that there's no conceivable way to stem a potential flood of legal weed from Washington State into Oregon along a major commuter and long haul trucking route. The Oregon cops (who are supposed to enforce laws against marijuana) can't do poo poo to all of the hundreds of thousands of people who cross the state line around Portland daily. It isn't legal to bring it from Washington into Oregon anyway, so it's not really "legal weed". There probably will be a bunch of people who drive to Washington to get their own personal stash, but in terms of any trafficking for sale it's going to be pretty much the same in 2013 as it was in 2012 or 1937. I mean there are already people getting "legal weed" from California and it's not a huge issue.
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Feb 19, 2013 08:11
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Radbot posted:Why doesn't Obama get ahead of the libertarian wing of the GOP and just reschedule it to IV or something? He doesn't even need to deschedule it completely yet. Hell, I'd imagine even the Fox News' of the world wouldn't have a total field day with a rescheduling attempt if only because it's absolutely critical for the GOP to win over the libertarian side of the part if they want to stay viable in national elections. While he would take a lot of flak for this, he should just say, "Out of concern for recent state efforts we feel a need to seriously consider the negative effects of marijuana," etc. and just commission a study that isn't rigged to come up with bullshit that really would recommend Schedule V or whatever, then say that he appreciates non-partisan science but is still concerned about the Demon Weed so he'll only move it to IV.
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Mar 7, 2013 19:43
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Install Gentoo posted:Because if it was Schedule IV: Realistically though it would take some pressure off the government to do anything about it, in part because simply growing would not ipso facto violate the law.
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Mar 7, 2013 20:08
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computer parts posted:In the end though the CRA was passed from the top down. A Government can't really function if it's not bound to follow the laws, and acting arbitrarily in terms of laws that it deems "just" or not seems like a scary precedent. The government isn't bound to follow all the laws. They do not. This is reality. This is for real. This is real life. Posing this as a hypothetical is false. It's like saying, "What if Hitler killed himself, so he never faced trial for his crimes?" He did.
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Mar 8, 2013 09:37
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Red_Mage posted:This is correct, there is no compelling reason to go after everyone who breaks every federal law that is still on the books. The point that the letter is making though is that there is a compelling reason to go after Colorado and Washington at the moment. And to be quite honest it is right. If the DoJ decides to not give a poo poo (like they are doing currently) and more and more states legalize it, if a time comes around when a new DoJ staff do give a poo poo, they are going to have a much harder time doing something about it. It might have to go to the Supreme Court again, and the longer they wait, the more likely Gonzales is to be overturned. If that happens their anti-marijuana stance is pretty hosed. On the other hand, the scenario you describe is the most plausible way for the Feds to eventually say, "Welp, nothing we can do about it" while being able to claim to be anti-pot the whole time, which is by far the most realistic scenario for legalization.
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Mar 8, 2013 21:27
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the black husserl posted:My evidence is only anecdotal but it was way way easier to get weed than alcohol in high school and that was the case for everyone I knew. I had the same experience, though I think part of it is just the physical nature of marijuana vs. alcohol. It's a lot easier to discreetly hand someone an eighth than a fifth.
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Mar 29, 2013 02:54
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The Insect Court posted:There are statistics, it's just that they tend to be self-reported ones. And there have been methodologically sound studies indicating probable links between marijuana use and harm to foetal development and the reproductive system, among other things. There are a non-trivial percentage of cannabis users who develop clinically recognized dependence symptoms, and cannabis dependency is listed in the DSM-IV. The point is that marijuana isn't completely safe, it's just far safer than deadly drugs like acetaminophen that we let people buy with hardly any regulation.
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Mar 31, 2013 08:39
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NathanScottPhillips posted:A few paragraphs down and it blows the whole blood testing idea for THC out of the water: Is this a joke or something? I thought studies were supposed to avoid being facetious.
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Apr 3, 2013 18:32
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echinopsis posted:But seriously that is interesting, and good to know. My point still stands somewhat however. No drug is benign, and it's use will have a cost to society. Forget freedom. If we could get even a small fraction of people who self-medicate with alcohol to choose marijuana instead, it would be a tremendous boon to public health. And consider it as an analgesic: it's pretty damned benign compared to opiates. I find it difficult to envision a scenario where legalization isn't a net benefit from a health perspective.
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May 30, 2013 10:39
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echinopsis posted:I oppose cannabis use from a long term health perspective, but it's not too bad in the short term and yeah people shouldn't be punished for it. But who pays for the ambulance when johnny 16 eats too many cannabis cookies and gets scared? We live in a social society and this drug use is going to have a cost. It might be small. It's likely smaller than the cost of prohibition and/or the cost of alcohol to society. Doesn't mean it's "all good" If a total cost is negative we call it a "benefit". We don't tax caffeine and use the money to pay for treatment of caffeine-related illnesses even though caffeine has negative health effects because we don't consider keeping caffeine legal to have a significant cost. The only reason marijuana is different is because it is illegal right now. It is precisely because legal marijuana will be a more ready alternative not only to alcohol, but to other dangerous drugs such as acetaminophen and aspirin and ibuprofen that legalization is good from a health perspective.
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May 30, 2013 21:12
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echinopsis posted:isn't the receipt of drugs incriminating? like if I got drugs sent to be from overseas and customs intercepted it, pretty sure i can get criminated. either that or pretend they didn't intercept then jump on me at my house in a week I'm pretty sure you actually have to receive them, not just be the intended recipient: i.e. they would have to allow delivery of the package and then do a sting and swoop in and arrest you and kill your dog when you actually take the package.
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Jun 14, 2013 06:56
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computer parts posted:That's not the point. The point is that we keep things legal that are simultaneously discouraged all the time. There is no contradiction in that. There are also things that are legal and not discouraged. Kind of like how most people agreed it was silly to bring up Mitt Romney's recreational drug use during his campaign.
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Jun 23, 2013 09:57
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Idran posted:What recreational drug use? I never heard about anything like that, and I followed the race pretty closely. He ate coffee-flavored ice cream that contained caffeine. His campaign sensibly said that Mitt Romney can have whatever kind of ice cream he wants and it's not an issue.
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Jun 23, 2013 22:45
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Space Gopher posted:The problem is a system which encourages shady doctors to sign off on recreational "medicine," delegitimizes actual medical use, and fails to separate recreational and medicinal use. Yes, good doctors can exist under this system; acknowledging that is not moving the goalposts in a structural critique. Least-of-evils arguments in its favor are looking increasingly threadbare, because (as we've seen) a well-run campaign for actual legalization can succeed where the loosely regulated "medical" system exists. We should look to implement a system which makes life easy for good doctors (and their patients) but which addresses the problems caused by the pseudo-medicinal grey area surrounding it. Real legalization is politically feasible, and can solve the problems, but doesn't affect genuine medical providers and patients. As long as that's true, I have a hard time believing that the pseudo-medicinal system is a good option, or even an acceptable status quo. In reality, medical marijuana being a gateway to full legalization isn't so bad. Sure, it's an argument against medical marijuana being approved in the first place, but at this point the number of people who would be swayed by such an argument is probably smaller than the number who would tacitly approve of quasi-legal weed as a more realistic measure than outright legalization in the first place. It seems unlikely that abuse is going to affect anyone's access to legitimate use for a drug that, by legal definition, has no legitimate uses. And on top of all this, marijuana is safe enough that it really isn't so irresponsible to use it for minor pain or stress.
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Jul 21, 2013 23:07
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Install Gentoo posted:The US is plenty powerful, but its power in the area and on this subject is being backed by deliberate approval and lack of contravention of those actions by other powers. And on top of that there's no indication that ending the drug war against some drugs in the US is going to result in letting those other countries legalize it. For once the Monroe Doctrine would actually work in Colombia's favor in this instance. The U.S. ending the drug war wouldn't be all roses and it wouldn't end the the international drug war, but it would be a huge step and Russia and China aren't gonna pull some Tom Clancy poo poo in South America.
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Jul 28, 2013 20:17
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Install Windows posted:A South American country who does that certainly might find encouragement to change their mind in the form of proposed development contracts and aid. Right, and those developments might be burned down and the contractors kidnapped and/or raped and/or murdered by well-trained and financially encouraged death squads. I don't think that the U.S. legalizing drugs would so radically upturn the whole state of international relations as you are saying it would.
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Jul 31, 2013 23:54
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The Warszawa posted:That a "conflict weed" provision be part of a comprehensive legalization statute. I was asking as to what the present advocacy's position on it was, as well. I think that's been pretty clear, though! Even if importing marijuana were to become legal at all (which it probably wouldn't), it would certainly be at least as strictly regulated as alcohol (if not more (which it would be)). It's not going to be like medical cocaine today, where pharmaceutical companies are directly supplying money to purchase arms to FARC (which of course they aren't).
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Aug 20, 2013 04:30
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EBT posted:Coke and Del Monte have both sponsored murder squads to kill labor leaders in South America, And Hersey's practices factual chattel slavery to harvest it's chocolate. In practice corporations are above the law when they perform their illegal activities outside of the US. Even without any moral considerations, it would be economically preferable to grow bananas domestically, rather than having to go to all the trouble and uncertainty of having banana republics.
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Aug 21, 2013 20:47
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twodot posted:What's the point of this post? Maybe the specific wording presented wouldn't alter the status quo (it plainly would because public intoxication laws would fall), but even assuming that's the case it's obvious that we could construct a wording that would alter the status quo. The desired outcome of the proposal is obvious, and since we aren't passing an actual amendment, legal precision isn't helping anything. It looks like this post is just a lame attempt to dodge admitting your post about drunk driving was both dumb and a strawman. It actually isn't obvious at all that any particular wording would change the status quo by all that much in this case, however. I mean, the First Amendment has consistently failed since not long after its passage to protect all political speech, for example, and that's a lot more straightforward. Some sort of amendment to decriminalize all drugs would be a different story of course.
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Oct 27, 2013 20:18
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TenementFunster posted:Because they are the Drug Enforcement Agency. It's not theirs to wonder why. It's even a written requirement that the drug czar take the stance that all rescheduling of schedule i drugs is unplusgood.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:07
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BottledBodhisvata posted:This shouldn't be allowed. Well in more than 20 states employers can say "Hey, you're gay, and I hate gay people. so you're fired for being gay," so it's not like at-will employment is a great thing. In fact I'm pretty sure at one point there were more states that protected smokers.
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Jan 7, 2014 00:12
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