Legalize Marijuana Now To Pay For The Reconstruction Of The Gulf Coast!

[DistressedAmerican]

My sis was suggesting it today.

End the silly and ineffective interdiction efforts, put that money back in the pool. Release all those imprisoned for MJ possession, that is a bunch more money back in the coffers.

Not sure what the raw numbers are. But, legalize and tax it, it would be effective.

Not only is keeping MJ illegal a proven failed social policy, it is wildly costly.

Of course this is just one of many ways to offset the cost without doing any appreciable harm to society.

Cutting the hell out of pork would really help. Drag their snouts right out of the trough and listen to them squeal!

ITS PURE ECONOMICS PEOPLE!

[crispini]

1. Nice!

It's creative, it's innovative, it'd bring in a helluva a lot of tax dollars. I like it!

[bleever]

9. Hemp could be a huge industry, even if there wasn't any smokable

marijuana created.

But I say, lift all the restrictions.

It's a super-renewable resource.

[daninthemoon]

2. It is an elegant solution. First politician to openly suggest this gets

my devotion for life. Even a repug.

[DistressedAmerican]

11. Dennis Kucinich Firmly Supports Legalization! Once Wes Was Out, He Got My

vote for having the guts to openly discuss the downside to this pointless and moralistic policy.

Probably still on his website. He had a lot on it around primary time. I was floored when I saw it.

I never thought a national politician would ever be that bold!

[bee]

15. wha wha what???! Seriously?! For real???

:wow: youre pulling my leg right??

on edit.. holy crap its true! how did I not know this??

No on the patriot act and Yes on legalization?

well Ill be damnded. speechless.

[eridani]

57. Yep. He even uses the term--

--"prison-industrial complex" on his website.

[TroubleMan]

3. Plus think of all the snacks we could sell

Implement a "snack tax" and pay off the national debt at the same time!

Great idea.

[Kolesar]

10. We could have a bake sale to raise money for hurricane victims

or just sell bags of Doritos

[Horse with no Name]

37. I'll take a dozen brownies please

:evilgrin:

[KamaAina]

4. Outstanding! All the heads in N.O. heartily agree...

...which is to say, about three-fourths of all of N.O.!

[HeeBGBz]

5. Works for me

eom

[Kolesar]

6. I'll bet the US Coast Guard is distracted these days w/ Katrina

They must be stretched thin with their patrols around the Florida coast. Just sayin'

[SmokingJacket]

7. It would be so great.

The righties would be running around flapping their wings, "The sky is falling, my neighbor's smoking pot and no one's going to arrest him!"

[Kazak]

8. Yeah!

I'm out... ;)

[mitchtv]

12. Got my vote

I am waiting for someone to win office on that platform. It's coming.

[bee]

13. man... I hope youre right. its long overdue. IMO n/t

[daninthemoon]

14. OK dem leaders, who's listening?

[mitchtv]

20. But , but, what about the children?

Prohibitionists' main argument. I am so sick of being denied my freedom because someone else can't control their brats.

[Gabi Hayes]

16. shhhhhweeeet!

[Gabi Hayes]

19. lookeee here. lenny lives

http://www.ukcia.org/potculture/61/idiom.html

[crispini]

17. recommended!

[sweetheart]

18. yes

nominated

[Kralizec]

21. Someone wake me up when it's 4:20 again. Thanks. n/t

[BQueen]

22. Agreed, but don't you mean "Legalize...now to pay..."

sorry to be a grammar policeperson, but you wouldn't want people saying you're high or something. :7

[DistressedAmerican]

24. Inserted the Now On Edit. Must Have Misclicked.

Besides, I am dyslexic.

The freeps that try to dog me on other sites (well one douchebag in particular) never stop posting on my typos. Ineffectual losers!

You'd think they would be out killing a cat, pulling the wings off flies, or something with all that extra freep time on their hands!

[BQueen]

28. such busy schedules they have

I am a big one for grammar, etc. but I rarely call anyone on it on line unless there is a fun point to it (and since I have my own typing problems, glass houses, ya know...). Here, it was fun, and I figured there'd be someone out there who *would* use that as a silly reason to disregard a perfectly reasonable position.

Even before this epic disaster, there were plenty of economic reasons to legalize, and I won my pro-legalization argument in a class on legislating morality almost twenty years ago (yoiks!) Back then it was just about saving agriculture, reducing the trade imbalance by no longer importing weed and other products that could be replaced with hemp, and generating government revenue through taxes and regulation.

Not that long ago, a southern sheriff won election by saying he would NOT enforce the mj laws against local farmers trying desperately to save their land with a good cash crop. The moral police are losing to the realists on this one, both on the economics and on the medical fronts. Unfortunately, the majority no longer really rules this country (for now).

[daninthemoon]

23. I hate it when you guys get my hopes up like this. Don't play with

my emotions.

[firefox]

25. Just what is your problem with a police state?

We would not have a near military police force that really looks awesome in movies if we start unraveling the drug war. It is important that the government have someone to demonize so that some have a reason to feel superior.

We need stress to kill people off to save social security. We need people not to take up eating hempseed and getting that mercury-free omega-3 in the most ideal ratio to omega-6 known to nature. We can kill some people off with pollution, but it helps to have a national shortage of omega-3 in the diet to keep heart disease and Alzheimer's working on people. You would see an end to the seizure of much property that was ground broken with the drug laws. We are set to improve on the seizure laws and all that hard work will go down the drain.

It will cut down on the push for drug testing as a panacea. We can drug test our way to success in global competition. We are way ahead of the world in that regard and it is an American product. The way it is now, a factory can drug test everyone and get rid of half their employees and bring in cheaper labor. Prohibition saves workmen's compensation by being able to test for this long lasting metabolite. Why do you think companies spend green to drug test for employment. It is the workmen's comp people, although the federal contractors have to do it to tap into that easy federal money.

So far we do not send people off shore and keeping those prisons full are necessary for jobs. We can incarcerate our way to a higher standard of living or don't you know anything. You have those drug testing people making a killing testing people in jail. Just because only 30,000 people are in prison over laughing grass, you cannot ignore that you are attacking the center pole in the drug warriors circus when you start about legalizing laughing grass.

And if you start cutting the lawyers out of all that money making those pleas to avoid the onerous laws, we will see an affluent profession having to frivolous lawsuits to keep that $100 an hour minimum.

And if you shatter the fraud of cannabis prohibition, the thoughtherders will only try harder to sell the fascism that the wealthy demand. Now they have the satisfaction of knowing that the greatest medicinal plant in history is still regarded as "an dangerous and addictive drug" that does not enhance activities, but only makes people high and go senseless. You do not want the thoughtherders putting the real screws on reality to you?

And if you legalize recreational laughing grass that automatically means that hemp will again be grown and that will hurt a lot of people. People might even find out that the cure for migraines was in hempseed all along and that the cannabinoid CBD never, ever even came close to its schedule 1 classification.

You are asking people to live in a reality where facts mean something, when what we must do is perpetuate America is #1 in its medicine, its legal system, its politics, and its protection of unalienable rights. All fantasy must continue. I mean, where would we be if you start unraveling all of this. Sure, seventy years of harm, injustice, corruption, waste, fraud, and fantasy come with a heavy price. Sure it is a giant conspiracy keeping the fraud going and preventing challenges using the Sherman Anti-trust laws, but it is America's gift to the whole world. And you want to change all of that over 6 or 7 billion dollars. That is nothing. Just ask the pill industry that could lose 10 times that in sales if people return to using cannabis as a natural remedy.

We need zero tolerance. We need a uniform message. We need even tougher penalties, although that is hard considering a seed can get you car taken from you, get you thrown in jail, get you fired and only employable at minimum wage, get your kids taken from you, cost you the right to a student loan, and get your license taken from you automatically upon conviction.

Don't you know America would be perfect if we could only amend the Constitution to keep those gays from marrying and interpreting it so that abortion is murder?

[bread_and_roses]

40. great post (n/t)

[Warren DeMontague]

26. Dude, you should know by now, ideas like that

Make WAY too much fucking sense to ever happen.

But I agree, 1000%.

[Wizard777]

27. How about legalizing it because Anslinger was a bigger liar than Bush?

I mean really how many people have smoked Marijuana and choped up thier family with an axe? It's one of the known effects. When it's not making you listen to that evil Jazz music or consort with coloreds and hispanics.

[firefox]

29. They had to call them "vipers" for a reason

There had to be a reason they called those jazz people high on laughing grass vipers. Just imagine how great of musicians they would be if they did not have that laughing grass interfering with their brains.

[MadisonProgressive]

30. OK, I will.. Next question?

[frictionlessO]

31. hehehehehe

yep, what you said...

:smoke: :hug: :woohoo: :applause: uh huh...:hi:

[LeftyMom]

32. I'd be all for that even though I don't indulge. nt

[Freedomfried]

33. Legal marijuana cofeeshops in the French Quarter

use the tax on the hash and bud to pay for the first class maintenance on the levee and pump system.

The international tourist draw would be HUGE!

[Sivafae]

34. Where do I sign up? n/t

[LaPera]

35. Legalize it, cuz, it's right for eveyone!

Sincerely!!!

:toast:

[spacelady]

36. That is an idea the times demand. n/t

[Freedomfried]

38. Tell the Republicans we will call them "hemp PLANTATIONS"

they'll like that

[DistressedAmerican]

39. We'll Have to Find Them Some Cheap Labor. Maybe Some Undocumented

foreign workers.

Maybe we should liberalize the immigration laws for Jamaicans and Morroccans. They already have the know how!

[Douglas Carpenter]

41. Agree totally -- but I'm not sure it will sell in Peoria (the idea) I mean

I'm sure the dope would though

[catmandu57]

42. I was just going to post on this

when I came into gd, and there at the top of the page was your post, great thinking. Yes lets chop out the fucking dea, quit wasting so damn many resources putting people in jail for smoking a herb.

I've got the perfect place to grow enough reefer to last me through a year, only trouble is if i did, my neighbor the town pig and I do mean pig he had b/c yard signs on his corner lot last year. He'd cow me quick.

When it comes down to it it's probably a drop in the bucket moneywise, nowhere near the billions we've thrown away killing people around the world, but, we have to start someplace.

[K-W]

43. Well, alot of the billions we spent killing latin americans

were justified based on the drug war, which is itself justified by marijuana prohibition. Lumping pot together with heroin, coke, etc allows them to massively inflate the numbers associated with the 'drug problem' and justify massive spending, incarceration, and the drug war.

[the other one]

44. What will you do for the cops and courts and rehabs that lose work?

The spilloff unemployment from ceasing pot prosecution will be far more expensive than the revenues that buds could bring in if there was no prohibition.

No Prohibition = Cheap pot = little taxable income.

Lets face it, if they made it legal then it would be available like tomatoes at roadside produce stands. How in the hell can that bring in money for the feds?

On the other hand, a perpetual war on drugs allows the feds to take our tax dollars in order to employ an army of cops to keep us all in line.

GOOOOOOOO FASCISM!!!

[Wizard777]

45. It would do a lot to end the corruption of our legal system.

The 60% of the police that deserted the NO police force were more than likely the departments drug dealers. A few years ago they were under federal management. There was a drug ring operating out of the department. There was a hit put out on one family. The hitmen showed up. One person managed to get to a phone and call the police. The dispatcher taking the call was in the ring and sent an on duty officer in the ring to do the hit.

[DistressedAmerican]

46. Simple. Put Controls On It. Make it like tobacco.

You do not find cigarettes of home grown tobacco at the farmers market.

Implement controls and a set tax rate. Any product sold without the tax stamp would be illegal. Just the way it is illegal to sell untaxed smokes.

Mainly it is the big tobacco companies that would be growing the most. They have the infrastructure to grow, roll and distribute on a large scale.

If you think we should keep something illegal just so that we have an excuse to pay more cops and court officials, your logic is unsound. People should not be jailed so that the jailers keep their jobs. That is simply immoral.

[Blackwater]

47. How are you going to make money

on something that is so easy to grow?

[DistressedAmerican]

48. See post 46. We tax the hell out of tobacco. It is illegal to sell it

untaxes.

Restrict it like tobacco. Make it a source of revenue.

On top of that the biggest problem is the money we are spending to interdict and incarcerate. About 50,000 dollars per year to house and feed a prison inmate. Put that money to work in other ways. And tax it.

[Blackwater]

50. Don’t get me wrong,

I’m all for legalization, but is it not legal to grow tobacco for ones own consumption? And while growing and curing tobacco is somewhat difficult, growing some killer bud is really quite simple.

But, what the hell, let’s give it a shot.

[K-W]

51. Growing tobbacco is legal and not that difficult.

And you dont have to cure it, or you can just air cure it. Curing is done for preservation and flavor. Marijuana is often cured for the same reasons.

[Blackwater]

52. Growing good tobacco is not that easy.

After all, the best tobacco in the world is grown in Cuba.

Conversely, some of the best bud in the world is grown indoors under artificial light.

[labelette]

54. You can grow cucumbers at home, too...

But that doesn't stop people from shopping in the produce section.

[DistressedAmerican]

55. Welcome To DU labelette!

We are hopping with newbies today! Great to see ya!:toast:

[K-W]

49. There are alot of things you can grow,

people still make money from them.

Most people dont have the time or inclination to grow crops.

[DistressedAmerican]

53. Was about to say the same thing.

Yes, many would grow their own if allowed. Some have lots of land to do so. Others would be willing to get an indoor setup. But, that is labor intensive. Most would be more than happy to buy a pack pre-rolled from the corner store.

And let me remind people how much money we spend on interdiction and incarceration. Even if every smoker were growing their own and it did not generate a dime in revenue (not gonna happen but, for the sake of argument), we would still be saving enormous sums of money just de-funding the drug war and ceasing to prosecute and incarcerate.

Also, there would be a lot less cases of violent felons getting early releases to ease the burden on the prison system.

IMO, it is a win, win, win...

[north houston dem]

56. man, don't i wish......