This is probably the issue I give the most shits about, seeing as how I think it ties in with so many of the ills plaguing our country. Corrupt law enforcement? Government waste? Civil liberties violation? Personal freedom? Free markets? The breakdown of the fabric of our societ? It's got it all! Good news out of Portugal - Ending the War on Drugs results in less drug use and less crime! Shocking, I'm sure, to those who delude themselves into thinking prohibition solves more problems than it creates, but just affirmation of what the sane among us have known since we were smart enough to do the math. So why isn't this a more critical issue? Why don't people give as much shits about something that is creating crime, leading to death and destruction, encouraging corruption, and generally fucking up our country hardcore? Why are we so complacent about this shit?
It won't end because it's not profitable for anyone in power for it to end. It gives the government an excuse to funnel money into corrupt and ineffectual organizations and drug convictions are what allow the prison industrial complex to remain so bloated and profitable for the ones that own and run the prisons and profit from prison labor. The realities of crime, poverty, safety, etc don't actually matter. Follow the money and you get your answer.
It's slow, but there does seem to be some movement on this, finally. In the end, when a majority of young people don't support an issue, then unless there's something that's going to turn those people around as they get older, the demographics just change. Legal bigotry against homosexuality didn't weaken and crumble because a bunch of homophobes changed their minds - it's just that the children of those homophobes grew up around plenty of people who were nice and normal and openly gay and thought, hell, what's the big deal? Sometime progress just depends on the march of gravestones. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytime...plurality-support-for-marijuana-legalization/ ...I don't see how that red line starts turning back upward.
By and large you are of course correct, but I dunno. My 64 year old dad used to have a fanatical hatred for "those goddamn fucking faggot queers" the whole time I was growing up, but these days he even supports letting them get married. It's not something us kids harped on him about either. He just sort of said it one day when it was on the news and I was like, what, really? The Bush presidency and the associated stupidity of that era really ended up making him a lot more liberal in general. /random
Legalisation of drugs is a political minefield. However unfairly, the politician who leads the charge on legalising drugs would become responsible in the media for every drug related death, injury and downward life spiral. To get any progress on this issue you'd need to have a 60/40 margin in favour of legalisation in the public at large and probably detoxify it by putting it to some kind of referendum. In the US that probably means state by state with a very confident and persuasive administration that is able to successfully politically argue it is a states rights issue. This point might come sooner than you think for Marijuana: http://www.gallup.com/poll/150149/record-high-americans-favor-legalizing-marijuana.aspx I doubt money really comes into it. None of the players are massive enough to be able to warp reality to that extent, and there are similar issues with drug laws all round the world where things like private prisons are still considered utterly ridiculous. Plus, even if vested money was having an impact, the money you could raise through taxes on currently illegal drugs has got to count as a huge tick in the 'in favour of reform' column.
There's a specific term for this in political science, but I slept poorly so I can't recall it at the moment. Think of it as a network affect as applied to political beliefs. As you identify more with one side, you will start just picking up their positions even on issues that aren't related to those that mainly drive you. In other words, it's not surprising that someone who turned against conservatism for economic or foreign policy type reasons would also turn against it on social issues.
I actually think it will eventually be budgetary issues that drive it honestly. You are correct that a politician that comes out strongly in favor of legalization is going to be crucified. However, a politician that comes out in favor of cutting budgets and taxes by spending less money on futile attempts to punish druggies is going to do okay.
I'm going to take the time to hunt down a link, the link I'm going to go find was from a Rolling Stone article that proved that enforcing Marijuana Laws was more harmful than Marijuana, even when traffic fatalities were included. The same article pointed out that inadequate alcohol laws actually cost us more, for example in counties where alcohol sales were prhobitded after X hours of the vening have far fewer DUI/DWI incidents and few driving fatalities. Oops! Shouldn't/can't do that now.
I drink tons of alcohol and smoke exactly zero pot, but I can't be the only one who thinks alcohol is about 50 times more dangerous than pot.
This New Yorker article should be required reading on the subject. It's an angle I hadn't really considered before and it's pretty wrenching. The stories are unbelievably heartbreaking, but this quote paints the larger picture:
Asset forfeiture laws are an absolute travesty. Some of them are structured in such a way that they can sell the property they've seized before you can manage to prove it wasn't obtained with drug money, before you've even had a whiff of due process.
Funding the War on Drugs through seized money/goods only creates incentive to perpetuate the War on Drugs. Why would you take action to end something that is your very lifeblood?
Looking at the subject through the lens of what pundits are saying, I think that we might be closer to this happening than a whole lot of things. It's gotten to the point now where the only people honestly arguing in support of the criminalization of drug use are hard right values fundamentalists (a significant minority, but a minority nonetheless) and a select crop of weird lefties that want the government to protect every person from ever hurting themselves in any way. It's a shrinking island of support amidst an ocean of indifference and the desire to get high from time to time without having to worry about whether you're going to end up in jail for the rest of your life as a result. I'm also skeptical of the notion that any significant number of "the people in power" are actually making any substantial amount of money off illegal drug activities - maybe the prison system comes out ahead, but I have to think that the lives of the law enforcement officers that get tallied up every year would have to outweigh the marginal monetary gain, and I would think that the potential for farm subsidies (for growers) and federal and local taxation (for users) would be a greater draw for any actual policymaker. I'll be surprised if we don't at least see widespread legalization of marijuana in.....well, let's say your lifetime, because I'll consider myself to be ahead of the game if I make it past fifty intact, and that's not nearly as many years away as I'd like. I kind of wonder if it wouldn't have already happened if modern drug policy hadn't been birthed under Reagan, and thereby rendered sacrosanct to any Republican hoping to one day achieve national office.
Nixon used it as a way to get rid of anit-war protestors. By the late 70's weed was close to being legal, everyone was doing it, if they caught you cops would just take your stuff and send you on your way. Paraphenalia was in every record shop, and them BAM- as soon as Reagan was elected, all the paraphenalia vanished. I think there's way too much money in confiscated goods and in for-profit prisons to do anything about it until public opinion goes much higher and all the old geezers die off.
Uruguay takes a different path. A state monopoly is an interesting approach. Anything's better than the "war on drugs". I'm sure the Americans will press hard to keep that from becoming law though.
Great interview with Peter Christ on a local news station recently. And then something incredibly depressing from the NY Times. A guy with a legit grow operation in Montana gets 80 years in Federal FMITA prison when the feds decide to go against what they'd previously said. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/opinion/the-fight-over-medical-marijuana.html
That's a sad tale. I wonder what the tipping point is for the federal government to switch stances to decriminalisation; 50% of states? According to this map: [Lime Green] State with legal medical cannabis [Dirty Green] State with decriminalized cannabis possession laws [Dark Green] State with both medical and decriminalization laws [Purple] State with legalized cannabis You should already be pretty close. Though several of the remaining hard-line states are also swing states which gives them considerably more influence over federal policy.
I would think probably more than that. It's a sticking point for the federal government beyond just reflecting what the states are doing. At some point it'll turn though if enough states start flipping, and the trend is definitely a good one. I think it's especially encouraging that a number of the states that are colored in on that map are not really the ones you would guess. To me that seems to suggest that states are starting to look at decriminalizing marijuana not because they're hippie dippy paradises but because they're actually assessing the cost/benefit of the policy more realistically and finding it extremely wanting.
Federal drug policy (marijuana in particular) is not going to be changed by popular support by the states. It's going to require Congress and the FDA and the President to change attitudes. I was hopeful that Obama would be 1/3 of that piece; in hindsight I guess I can see why he wouldn't push too hard on it during his first term but now is the fucking time, O!
Well realistically it is. No president in either of the two main parties is like to come into power who feels strongly enough about this issue that he is going to draw the political heat onto himself and his party while legalisation appears to be a vote loser (particularly where it counts in swing states). If you had every state backing legalisation then its a no brainer for congress, FDA and president to change approach. I reckon if a few large totemic traditionally red tinged states flip to drug legalisation in the next cycle though you might see it. Specifically I'm thinking of Florida and Texas.
That's true but Obama and the DEA/HHS could dramatically downgrade its legal status as a nod toward changing attitudes ("changing" meaning both those which have already changed as well as meaning to actively promote more change). This besides Obama telling the DOJ/DEA to leave it alone, which wouldn't change attitudes much but might give a few years of relief to those in the industry and more data on how bad it isn't.
