Recent Comments
Re: “Another marijuana debate tonight”
American taxpayers are being forced to pay $40 Billion a year for a prohibition that causes 10,000 brutal murders & 800,000 needless arrests each year, but which doesn't even stop CHILDREN getting marijuana.
After seventy-five years of prohibition, it's obvious that the federal marijuana prohibition causes FAR more harm than good and must END! Drug Dealers Don't Card, Supermarkets Do.
Posted by
jway
on 10/01/2012 at 11:14 AM
Re: “Choosing sides on the marijuana amendment”
If Amendment 64 fails Congress will interpret it as SUPPORT for the prohibition. They aren't going to analyze the Amendment and say oh, people wanted a better one. They're going to say "Americans want prohibition", and that's exactly what they'll give us.
Posted by
jway
on 08/29/2012 at 1:57 PM
Re: “CannaBiz: Update on city MMC applications”
Every bud sold legally is one less sold illegally.
Banning supermarkets from selling legally-grown marijuana to adults is a BAD law that causes far more harm than good.
In the end parents have to decide if they want drug dealers selling marijuana to kids or supermarkets selling marijuana to adults. Protect your children - regulate marijuana like wine.
Posted by
jway
on 10/06/2011 at 11:13 AM
Re: “Combative cannabis group kicks off its own safe-driving campaign”
It's odd that we hear about so *few* incidents happening with marijuana-impaired drivers. We know that millions of people in this country use marijuana every day so shouldn't it be common to see evidence of its negative effects - both on the road and elsewhere?
Maybe marijuana isn't as bad as President Nixon said it was? Since we can't stop people buying and selling the stuff, parents have to decide if they want drug dealers selling marijuana to kids or supermarkets selling marijuana to adults.
Posted by
jway
on 09/14/2011 at 2:49 PM
Re: “CannaBiz: The newest on legalization”
Alcohol was legalized in 1933 and marijuana prohibited in 1937 - this gives us several decades' worth of data to determine which is the best policy to control these highly-popular recreational drugs.
While alcohol legalization has successfully kept the alcohol industry free from organized crime, the marijuana prohibition has made marijuana readily available to teenagers and draws criminals into our neighborhoods trying to sell marijuana to our kids.
In addition, the federal marijuana prohibition diverts more than $10 billion a year to the Mexican drug cartels and provided them with an incentive to brutally murder more than 40,000 people in just the last five years - including law enforcement officers, lawyers, children, legislators and journalists. The combination of unrelenting demand and zero legal supply has caused extreme harm to a great many innocent people without yielding any discernible benefit back to society.
It's time to stop the experiment and control marijuana like alcohol. We need legal adult marijuana sales in supermarkets, gas stations and pharmacies for exactly the same reason that we need legal alcohol and tobacco sales - to keep drug-dealing criminals out of our neighborhoods and away from our children. Marijuana businesses should be regulated just like any other business, and home marijuana production should be just as legal as making home brew.
Posted by
jway
on 08/11/2011 at 9:20 AM
Re: “Bruce challenges marijuana legalization on tax grounds”
On June 17, 1971, President Nixon told Congress that "if we cannot destroy the drug menace in America, then it will surely destroy us." After forty years of trying to destroy "the drug menace in America" we still *haven't* been able to destroy it and it still *hasn't* destroyed us. Four decades is long enough to realize that on this important issue, President Nixon was wrong! All actions taken as a result of his invalid and paranoid assumptions (e.g. the federal marijuana prohibition) should be ended immediately!
It makes no sense for taxpayers to fund the federal marijuana prohibition when it *doesn't* prevent people from using marijuana and it *does* incite the awful violence that we read about in the news every day by making criminals incredibly wealthy and inciting the Mexican drug cartels to murder thousands of people every year.
We need legal adult marijuana sales in supermarkets, gas stations and pharmacies for exactly the same reason that we need legal alcohol and tobacco sales - to keep drug dealer criminals out of our neighborhoods and away from our children. Marijuana must be made legal to sell to adults everywhere that alcohol and tobacco are sold.
"There's something extraordinarily perverse when we're so concerned about preventing addicts from having access to drugs that we destroy the lives of many times more people, either through untreated pain or other drug war damage".
Posted by
jway
on 07/21/2011 at 11:22 AM
Re: “Medical marijuana: political meet and greet”
We keep hearing about "legalizing marijuana for recreational use", but what it really appears to be is an attempt to legalize marijuana as a far safer alternative to alcohol.
According to the CDC, alcohol kills 80,000 people every year in the U.S. while marijuana kills none, and marijuana's addiction potential is only about that of coffee.
Since marijuana is far safer and far less addictive than alcohol, we could GREATLY reduce the amount of harm and addiction in society by giving people the right to switch from the more harmful drug, alcohol, to the less harmful drug, marijuana. Paranoid old men keep marijuana illegal and make our children LESS safe!