What Does Legalization Do to Marijuana Business? (by NewsyBusiness)
But then you forget to tell about whose ox would be gored by legalization.
Now this is getting interesting.
Decriminalizing Drugs in Portugal a Success, Says Report - TIME
This article adds on to the often sited Cato Institute report about the end of Prohibition in Portugal
Tell A.G. Holder to let states decide their own cannabis laws
Nine former heads of the Drug Enforcement Administration are standing in our way to legalize marijuana in three states this year.
In Colorado, Oregon and Washington, ballot initiatives will let the voters decide whether they want to legalize marijuana in their states. These former DEA officials are so scared that the public will vote to legalize that they sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to oppose all the ballot initiatives.
In the past few years, the states have been on the front lines of marijuana legalization. We’ve seen 17 states and the District of Columbia legalize marijuana for medical purposes and 15 states have effectively decriminalized marijuana possession in small amounts. More than half of all Americans support marijuana legalization. And the ballot initiatives in Colorado, Oregon and Washington have promising chances of passing.
The people who want to maintain marijuana prohibition are afraid. That’s why supporters of the drug war status quo are urging Holder to speak out against marijuana legalization. They’re desperate to block our progress, and they want to overshadow all the work you’ve done getting to this historic moment. They know if even one of these states legalizes marijuana, it would change the future of drug policy in our country — and we know it would be change for the better.
Call DEA Administrator Leonhart - Ask If She Still Believes 'All Illegal Drugs Are Bad'
A recent study sponsored by the State of California and published in the Open Neurology Journal called the federal classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug “not accurate” and “not tenable” and concluded that marijuana does indeed provide relief to patients who suffer chronic pain.
Can you call DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart and ask her if she still believes marijuana is “bad”, even if government-funded science disagrees?
Decriminalization of Drug Possession Doesn't Increase Drug Use, New Report Finds
And even if it does, people should be able to ingest whatever the fuck they want, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else.
Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol, why are we trying it with drugs? It’s just dumb.
From the Huffington Post:
In the United States, the rise of overdose deaths is increasingly from “legal” pharmaceuticals — showing that the need to change how we regulate and control dangerous drugs is an urgent matter for us too.
What most Americans don’t realize is that drug laws are now changing around the world — step by step and country by country. And a new report concludes that decriminalization of drug possession has not led to increase in drug use.
The report, published by Release, the U.K.’s “national centre of expertise on drugs and drug laws,” reviews the evidence in 21 countries that have adopted some form of decriminalization and finds that the model of enforcement adopted has little impact on the rates of drug use in these countries — but has a profound impact on the use of arrest and prisons for drug users. (In fact, the huge social and economic costs that accompany drug prohibition are a form of violence in themselves.)
The report, “A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalization Policies in Practice across the Globe”, finds that “countries and States as disparate as Belgium, Estonia, Australia, Mexico, Uruguay, the Netherlands and Portugal have adopted different models of decriminalization.” Some countries (Spain and the Netherlands) have been moving towards decriminalization since the 1970s — with the result that their drug use rates are lower than in the United States.
It’s time for the United States to shake its obsession with drug prohibition and join the successful global movement that is reducing the problems that come not from the drugs per se, which are amenable to smart and well tested medical and social policies, but to bad drug policies.
Obama’s New Drug Control Report Calls for More Workplace Drug Testing, Nationwide Zero Tolerance Laws, Prescription-Only Ephedrine Products, and the Return of the “Above the Influence” Campaign
The first thing you should know about President Barack Obama’s 2012 Drug Control Strategy report is that it begins and ends with the declaration that the war on drugs is working and will continue apace.
Obama administration policies have “yielded significant results,” according to the President’s introductory letter, which concludes by saying, “While difficult budget decisions must be made at all levels of government, we must ensure continued support for policies and programs that reduce drug use and its enormous costs to American society.”
The report ends with a familiar refrain: “Legalization of drugs will not be considered in this approach. Making drugs more available and more accessible will not reduce drug use and its adverse consequences for public health and safety. We will continue to educate young
people and all Americans about the science on the harmful health effects of marijuana use.”The pages in between those two statements contain a broad outline for increased drug enforcement, mandatory rehabilitation programs for people who don’t need or want them, and the return of melodramatic Reefer Madness-style agitprop aimed at teenagers.
The worst policy plans contained in the report are outlined after the jump.
The two main pillars of U.S. foreign policy—increasing neoliberalism and increasing militarism around drugs—continue. They feed off of each other and have created a crisis in that corridor, running from Colombia through Central America to Mexico. That’s been a complete disaster, and there’s no change.
