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So much for « states rights » > Sessions, who has assailed marijuana as comparable to heroin and has blamed it for spikes in violence Pot smokers aren’t viole

So much for « states rights » > Sessions, who has assailed marijuana as comparable to heroin and has blamed it for spikes in violence Pot smokers aren’t violent people because it tends to chill you out. The growers and dealers can belong to criminal organizations and cause problems. So naturally, keeping the gangs in business by keeping pot illegal is top priority.

imglorp 9y ago
The giant opioid industry--pharma--is the biggest criminal gang, and they oppose legalizing pot. Maybe that's where this political push is really coming from.
jnagro 9y ago
The Trump administration has also been tied to the private prison industry.
- adventured 9y ago
  That's doesn't make much sense as a premise data wise. The prison boom around the war on drugs overwhelmingly involved the government prison complex, from 1980 to 2010. Clinton didn't have meaningful ties to the private prison industry (which barely existed at the time), and a frightening number of people were thrown into prison for drug crimes during his eight years. About ~95% of all people put into prison over those 30 years from 1980 to 2010, went into government prisons. Who benefitted? We spent over a trillion dollars on the government prison complex. Millions of government employees pocketed hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in cash from the scheme. It makes the private prison industry and its meager profits look hilariously tiny by comparison. The US has about a million law enforcement related employees it doesn't need, used to prosecute the war on drugs in various ways. Those are government employees, they benefit from the government prison system, they were made possible by government laws that date back five decades or more. They cost $80-$100 billion per year. Now compare just that one section of the government prison complex, to the private prison complex money. CoreCivic generates $200m in profit per year. That's equal to about the cost of just ~3,000 cops. The US has at least several hundred thousand more cops than it needs, due to the war on drugs. That's how truly massive the government side of this is by comparison. Private prisons only began to meaningfully expand in the middle of George W Bush's Presidency. In the 1990s, when such an extraordinary number of people were put into prison, the private prison industry was miniscule. Blaming any of this mess on the private prison complex, is pretty absurd given the facts of what happened in prisons and the war on drugs in the 30 to 40 years pre ~2005. And this post is in no way arguing in favor of the private prison system, it shouldn't exist.
  - tphyahoo 9y ago
    http://www.dunwalke.com/10_Clinton_Administration.htm http://www.dunwalke.com/10_Clinton_Administration.htm
  - vel0city 9y ago
    You shouldn't look at profits to gauge how big a company is, you should look at revenues. Otherwise, Amazon would until recently be considered a tiny company. CoreCivic generates around $1.7B in revenues, far greater than your $200M figure. If your ratio of 200m = 3k cops, CoreCivic would be closer to ~25k cops.
    - adventured 9y ago
      The profit motive is a common argument about the private prison complex, which is why I used the $200m. I believe it was very justified as the reference point. That $200m goes to the shareholders, owners, in theory. That's the profit motive sum in their business. I don't disagree that also referencing the $1.7b in sales is relevant. It's just as tiny looking when stacked up against the monster that is a million unnecessary government employees costing $80-$100 billion each year, that exist solely due to the war on drugs. I'd like to see someone tabulate up the total cost of all reasonably unnecessary government employees, related to prisons and law enforcement, dating from 1980 to 2010, the prime years of the prison population boom (during which the private prison complex was an averaged single digit fraction of the whole thing). What do we suppose that would come to? $2 trillion inflation adjusted?
      - throwawayjava 9y ago
        A few thoughts: 1. I don't think you have to disagree with vel0city to make your point. Just agree that the private prison complex is large and dangerous to society (as you apparently have) and point out that the unnecessary aspects of the public sector prison complex are also large and dangerous. 2. Any time someone can have a financial stake is something like a prison while also holding immense political power, we should all be very scared and concerned. This is why there's so much well-placed concern over the private prison industry. Of course, it's worth noting that there are also lots of ways to make lots of money off of public prisons. And those mechanisms should also be choked off. 3. Damon Hininger makes about $1M/yr in salary. Presumably if total revenue were only $200M, he'd be making a lot less in salary.
ythn 9y ago
Gangs will always be in business even with legal pot. Just look at cigarettes and alcohol. Both those things are legal and both those things have massive black markets to bypass the heavy regulations and taxes imposed on them.
- indlebe 9y ago
  >cigarettes and alchohol have massive black markets to bypass heavy regulations. Are you speaking on the US or worldwide? A quick search doesn't produce any reliable statistics that indicate this. I have never once heard of anyone purchasing alcohol on the black market. Cigarettes, sure, but even then it's typically only very low-income folks purchasing cheap, illegal tobacco that is generally not of great quality. This is in stark contrast to marijuana where high-grade product can be purchased on the "street". I suspect that once(if) pot goes legal the black-market will consist mostly of cheap, poor quality marijuana. This should take a nice chunk out of the profits that gangs see from marijuana distribution.
  - adventured 9y ago
    Blackmarket alcohol is not uncommon in the US. Particularly among poor white and hispanic populations. Most cultures have their equivalent of moonshine. You can easily buy illegally manufactured alcohol in every corner of Appalachia, basically all of the south, and poorer areas of every blue state including California and New York (most of NY being rural, and not particularly affluent, there's a healthy trade in illegal alcohol there as well, it is then sold in NYC as well). You can get hooked up with illegal alcohol in basically every liquor store in every state in Appalachia, if you know someone that works there. It's commonly sold under the table so to speak. edit: for wherever the downvotes are coming from - yes, I do know this stuff for a fact. I grew up in Appalachia, I know for a fact that what I'm saying is extremely common, I saw just about every aspect of the illegal alcohol trade first-hand. From that I came to learn second-hand the scope and nature of it up and down the east coast of the US and other parts of the country. It's easy enough to google this subject as well if you're skeptical.
    - 9y ago
conductr 9y ago
> Pot smokers aren’t violent people because it tends to chill you out This is not a great argument. I'd say pot smokers aren't violent people because they are everyone as in they are average people not drug addicts, which is mostly true (in my dataless opinion). Most people don't causally or recreationally use heroin, but like alcohol, a large portion of average people do enjoy regular MJ use.
- creaghpatr 9y ago
  The referenced violence in the parent comment is related to the trafficking of rather than the usage of pot, I believe.
  - dmix 9y ago
    You can debate the likelihood of alcohol or marijuana's influence on people to commit crimes all you like - but at the end of the day it's not a useful argument: a) people were still getting both alcohol and marijuana under prohibition, prohibition does not work, so whether or not it makes people more violent doesn't really matter. Especially for the demographics who typically commit crimes are usually the people who have the greatest access to black market products. b) the vast majority of the violence directly related to the drug comes from trafficking, which is ultimately a product of prohibition, not drug use There's not much of a debate here if both a) and b) can't be meaningfully influence by federal policy.
saas_co_de 9y ago
Quite the contrary. I am glad he is doing this. It is a huge tactical blunder that will force the states' rights issue into court and either result in a victory for the states or massive public discontent about federal overthrow of popular state policies. Either way the federal government is going to see their influence eroded here.
- pfg 9y ago
  As I understand it, the Supreme Court already ruled against states' right on this matter in Gonzales v. Raich. That case was about medical marijuana, but I don't think that matters. (IANAL.)
  - saas_co_de 9y ago
    The composition of the court has changed quite a bit since then as has public opinion. Cannabis is now legal for medical use in 29 states. Many of these laws were passed through the referendum process. That is a lot of democracy to overrule from a bench in D.C.
    - vkou 9y ago
      We forget that America cares very little for democracy, being largely an oligarchy.
    - mrkstu 9y ago
      I'm sure conservatives would put up w/cannabis in exchange for effectively overturning Roe vs Wade, which is the effect this would have precedentally.
      - saas_co_de 9y ago
        It was all the "liberals" and the phony "originalist" Scalia who ruled for the government in Gonzales. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich That is all B.S. though. The real issue is federal vs. state power and that has nothing to do with left and right.
0xWilliam 9y ago
So much for << states rights >> with slavery
alexanderstears 9y ago
The doctrine of States' rights is presupposes federal supremacy and a legalistic viewpoint. Marijuana can't be a State's rights issue because it's a federal issue. This is why you often hear the states' rights advocates call for a smaller federal government - states rights can only flourish without the shadow of federal jurisdiction. Right now marijuana is illegal federally - all States' rights proponents acknowledge this. The old policy of being hands off but reserving the right to bring the iron fist down on otherwise legal businesses was a bad policy. The uncertainty and risk profile killed a lot of investment - to this day, the tax burden on pot businesses is insanely high because they're not permitted to deduct business expenses related to growing/distributing marijuana because those activities are federally illegal. Thankfully, Sessions is legalistic. If congress got off their butts and legalized it/returned the legality decisions to the state, Sessions would surely respect their decision. I enjoy marijuana more than most and I suppose Sessions enforcing the law - it's a bad law and collectively we need the motivation to make it better. This legal twilight zone is complete bogus - bring it into the open and drive out the criminal element and let the best organization flourish.
- dmix 9y ago
  Vouched for your dead comment. I believe you're shadowbanned, but I personally don't see a problem with the stuff you've written...
  - alexanderstears 9y ago
    thanks for the head's up - I'm a bad thinker, this isn't the first time I've been shadowbanned.
- chc 9y ago
  > Thankfully, Sessions is legalistic. If congress got off their butts and legalized it/returned the legality decisions to the state, Sessions would surely respect their decision. This is a bit like saying "Thankfully, the black hole hurtling toward us is influenced by gravity, so all we need to do is move a star into its path and it will be flung off course." The fact that a terrible situation could theoretically be saved by something wildly unlikely isn't anything to be thankful for. This isn't going to force this awful Congress we're stuck with to suddenly legalize marijuana. It's most likely just going to lead to a lot of good people being imprisoned.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dmix 9y ago
Technically Obama was saying "I get to choose what laws the feds follow" with the stroke of my pen. To me that sounds more authoritative than what Sessions did here by revoking such an act. I'm all for state rights, but I personally see overreach in executive power as the far bigger problem of the modern era. Executive power exploded under Obama (a trend which Bush started before him, which Obama took much farther). Ultimately the real problem is that congress needs to end prohibition via law. Obama basically took a 'sanctuary city' approach, a "workaround" and not a solution to this problem. Which ultimately still left the law very much up in the air for many people in states running weed businesses. I hate the fact people are going to jail for marijuana but I do see an argument here that Session's change: a) incentivizes congress to put a proper policy together, where before it was left in legal/political limbo b) ended a bad law which typified executive power overreach c) is not yet clear how it will affect states in practice, as it's still up to the state attorneys to act on it In practice this sucks, but I don't think this sucks because it's an extension of government overrearch.

imglorp 9y ago

The giant opioid industry--pharma--is the biggest criminal gang, and they oppose legalizing pot. Maybe that's where this political push is really coming from.

jnagro 9y ago

The Trump administration has also been tied to the private prison industry.

adventured 9y ago
That's doesn't make much sense as a premise data wise. The prison boom around the war on drugs overwhelmingly involved the government prison complex, from 1980 to 2010. Clinton didn't have meaningful ties to the private prison industry (which barely existed at the time), and a frightening number of people were thrown into prison for drug crimes during his eight years. About ~95% of all people put into prison over those 30 years from 1980 to 2010, went into government prisons. Who benefitted? We spent over a trillion dollars on the government prison complex. Millions of government employees pocketed hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in cash from the scheme. It makes the private prison industry and its meager profits look hilariously tiny by comparison. The US has about a million law enforcement related employees it doesn't need, used to prosecute the war on drugs in various ways. Those are government employees, they benefit from the government prison system, they were made possible by government laws that date back five decades or more. They cost $80-$100 billion per year. Now compare just that one section of the government prison complex, to the private prison complex money. CoreCivic generates $200m in profit per year. That's equal to about the cost of just ~3,000 cops. The US has at least several hundred thousand more cops than it needs, due to the war on drugs. That's how truly massive the government side of this is by comparison. Private prisons only began to meaningfully expand in the middle of George W Bush's Presidency. In the 1990s, when such an extraordinary number of people were put into prison, the private prison industry was miniscule. Blaming any of this mess on the private prison complex, is pretty absurd given the facts of what happened in prisons and the war on drugs in the 30 to 40 years pre ~2005. And this post is in no way arguing in favor of the private prison system, it shouldn't exist.
- tphyahoo 9y ago
  http://www.dunwalke.com/10_Clinton_Administration.htm http://www.dunwalke.com/10_Clinton_Administration.htm
- vel0city 9y ago
  You shouldn't look at profits to gauge how big a company is, you should look at revenues. Otherwise, Amazon would until recently be considered a tiny company. CoreCivic generates around $1.7B in revenues, far greater than your $200M figure. If your ratio of 200m = 3k cops, CoreCivic would be closer to ~25k cops.
  - adventured 9y ago
    The profit motive is a common argument about the private prison complex, which is why I used the $200m. I believe it was very justified as the reference point. That $200m goes to the shareholders, owners, in theory. That's the profit motive sum in their business. I don't disagree that also referencing the $1.7b in sales is relevant. It's just as tiny looking when stacked up against the monster that is a million unnecessary government employees costing $80-$100 billion each year, that exist solely due to the war on drugs. I'd like to see someone tabulate up the total cost of all reasonably unnecessary government employees, related to prisons and law enforcement, dating from 1980 to 2010, the prime years of the prison population boom (during which the private prison complex was an averaged single digit fraction of the whole thing). What do we suppose that would come to? $2 trillion inflation adjusted?
    - throwawayjava 9y ago
      A few thoughts: 1. I don't think you have to disagree with vel0city to make your point. Just agree that the private prison complex is large and dangerous to society (as you apparently have) and point out that the unnecessary aspects of the public sector prison complex are also large and dangerous. 2. Any time someone can have a financial stake is something like a prison while also holding immense political power, we should all be very scared and concerned. This is why there's so much well-placed concern over the private prison industry. Of course, it's worth noting that there are also lots of ways to make lots of money off of public prisons. And those mechanisms should also be choked off. 3. Damon Hininger makes about $1M/yr in salary. Presumably if total revenue were only $200M, he'd be making a lot less in salary.

ythn 9y ago

Gangs will always be in business even with legal pot. Just look at cigarettes and alcohol. Both those things are legal and both those things have massive black markets to bypass the heavy regulations and taxes imposed on them.

indlebe 9y ago
>cigarettes and alchohol have massive black markets to bypass heavy regulations. Are you speaking on the US or worldwide? A quick search doesn't produce any reliable statistics that indicate this. I have never once heard of anyone purchasing alcohol on the black market. Cigarettes, sure, but even then it's typically only very low-income folks purchasing cheap, illegal tobacco that is generally not of great quality. This is in stark contrast to marijuana where high-grade product can be purchased on the "street". I suspect that once(if) pot goes legal the black-market will consist mostly of cheap, poor quality marijuana. This should take a nice chunk out of the profits that gangs see from marijuana distribution.
- adventured 9y ago
  Blackmarket alcohol is not uncommon in the US. Particularly among poor white and hispanic populations. Most cultures have their equivalent of moonshine. You can easily buy illegally manufactured alcohol in every corner of Appalachia, basically all of the south, and poorer areas of every blue state including California and New York (most of NY being rural, and not particularly affluent, there's a healthy trade in illegal alcohol there as well, it is then sold in NYC as well). You can get hooked up with illegal alcohol in basically every liquor store in every state in Appalachia, if you know someone that works there. It's commonly sold under the table so to speak. edit: for wherever the downvotes are coming from - yes, I do know this stuff for a fact. I grew up in Appalachia, I know for a fact that what I'm saying is extremely common, I saw just about every aspect of the illegal alcohol trade first-hand. From that I came to learn second-hand the scope and nature of it up and down the east coast of the US and other parts of the country. It's easy enough to google this subject as well if you're skeptical.
  - 9y ago

conductr 9y ago

> Pot smokers aren’t violent people because it tends to chill you out This is not a great argument. I'd say pot smokers aren't violent people because they are everyone as in they are average people not drug addicts, which is mostly true (in my dataless opinion). Most people don't causally or recreationally use heroin, but like alcohol, a large portion of average people do enjoy regular MJ use.

creaghpatr 9y ago
The referenced violence in the parent comment is related to the trafficking of rather than the usage of pot, I believe.
- dmix 9y ago
  You can debate the likelihood of alcohol or marijuana's influence on people to commit crimes all you like - but at the end of the day it's not a useful argument: a) people were still getting both alcohol and marijuana under prohibition, prohibition does not work, so whether or not it makes people more violent doesn't really matter. Especially for the demographics who typically commit crimes are usually the people who have the greatest access to black market products. b) the vast majority of the violence directly related to the drug comes from trafficking, which is ultimately a product of prohibition, not drug use There's not much of a debate here if both a) and b) can't be meaningfully influence by federal policy.

saas_co_de 9y ago

Quite the contrary. I am glad he is doing this. It is a huge tactical blunder that will force the states' rights issue into court and either result in a victory for the states or massive public discontent about federal overthrow of popular state policies. Either way the federal government is going to see their influence eroded here.

pfg 9y ago
As I understand it, the Supreme Court already ruled against states' right on this matter in Gonzales v. Raich. That case was about medical marijuana, but I don't think that matters. (IANAL.)
- saas_co_de 9y ago
  The composition of the court has changed quite a bit since then as has public opinion. Cannabis is now legal for medical use in 29 states. Many of these laws were passed through the referendum process. That is a lot of democracy to overrule from a bench in D.C.
  - vkou 9y ago
    We forget that America cares very little for democracy, being largely an oligarchy.
  - mrkstu 9y ago
    I'm sure conservatives would put up w/cannabis in exchange for effectively overturning Roe vs Wade, which is the effect this would have precedentally.
    - saas_co_de 9y ago
      It was all the "liberals" and the phony "originalist" Scalia who ruled for the government in Gonzales. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich That is all B.S. though. The real issue is federal vs. state power and that has nothing to do with left and right.

0xWilliam 9y ago

So much for << states rights >> with slavery

alexanderstears 9y ago

The doctrine of States' rights is presupposes federal supremacy and a legalistic viewpoint. Marijuana can't be a State's rights issue because it's a federal issue. This is why you often hear the states' rights advocates call for a smaller federal government - states rights can only flourish without the shadow of federal jurisdiction. Right now marijuana is illegal federally - all States' rights proponents acknowledge this. The old policy of being hands off but reserving the right to bring the iron fist down on otherwise legal businesses was a bad policy. The uncertainty and risk profile killed a lot of investment - to this day, the tax burden on pot businesses is insanely high because they're not permitted to deduct business expenses related to growing/distributing marijuana because those activities are federally illegal. Thankfully, Sessions is legalistic. If congress got off their butts and legalized it/returned the legality decisions to the state, Sessions would surely respect their decision. I enjoy marijuana more than most and I suppose Sessions enforcing the law - it's a bad law and collectively we need the motivation to make it better. This legal twilight zone is complete bogus - bring it into the open and drive out the criminal element and let the best organization flourish.

dmix 9y ago
Vouched for your dead comment. I believe you're shadowbanned, but I personally don't see a problem with the stuff you've written...
- alexanderstears 9y ago
  thanks for the head's up - I'm a bad thinker, this isn't the first time I've been shadowbanned.
chc 9y ago
> Thankfully, Sessions is legalistic. If congress got off their butts and legalized it/returned the legality decisions to the state, Sessions would surely respect their decision. This is a bit like saying "Thankfully, the black hole hurtling toward us is influenced by gravity, so all we need to do is move a star into its path and it will be flung off course." The fact that a terrible situation could theoretically be saved by something wildly unlikely isn't anything to be thankful for. This isn't going to force this awful Congress we're stuck with to suddenly legalize marijuana. It's most likely just going to lead to a lot of good people being imprisoned.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dmix 9y ago

Technically Obama was saying "I get to choose what laws the feds follow" with the stroke of my pen. To me that sounds more authoritative than what Sessions did here by revoking such an act. I'm all for state rights, but I personally see overreach in executive power as the far bigger problem of the modern era. Executive power exploded under Obama (a trend which Bush started before him, which Obama took much farther). Ultimately the real problem is that congress needs to end prohibition via law. Obama basically took a 'sanctuary city' approach, a "workaround" and not a solution to this problem. Which ultimately still left the law very much up in the air for many people in states running weed businesses. I hate the fact people are going to jail for marijuana but I do see an argument here that Session's change: a) incentivizes congress to put a proper policy together, where before it was left in legal/political limbo b) ended a bad law which typified executive power overreach c) is not yet clear how it will affect states in practice, as it's still up to the state attorneys to act on it In practice this sucks, but I don't think this sucks because it's an extension of government overrearch.