12 ms·

Only a matter of time before every state in the union follows suit, like gay marriage last decade. Then we get to work freeing everyone jailed for this.

peteretep 6y ago
> Then we get to work freeing everyone jailed for this Reasonably sure that’s now how the law works
- t-writescode 6y ago
  What is stopping a law from being passed that operates in a similar way to a pardon? "All people convicted of X set of laws have their sentences nullified and this criminal conviction removed from their records" as a law passed, or something like that?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >What is stopping a law from being passed that operates in a similar way to a pardon? Nothing. In fact[0]: "As of this writing [12 March 2020], 26 states, D.C., and one territory have legalized or decriminalized marijuana to some degree. Eleven states and D.C. have done both. Seventeen states and D.C. have enacted expungement, sealing, or set-aside laws specifically for marijuana, or targeted more generally to decriminalized or legalized conduct. Four states have pardon programs for marijuana offenses." [0] https://ccresourcecenter.org/2020/03/12/legalizing-marijuana-and-expunging-records-across-the-country/ https://ccresourcecenter.org/2020/03/12/legalizing-marijuana...
- Hyp3rion 6y ago
  You're right, nobody will be automagically freed as a result. That being said, pushing for amnesty, and pushing for pardons is completely how the law works, and very doable.
paxys 6y ago
*Almost every state. Eventually it'll become a pissing contest for which one can hold off on legalization the longest, until they are dragged kicking and screaming.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Some states will simply not pursue legalization until their voting demographics have turned over sufficiently to elect more progressive representation (and the Marijuana Policy Project, who has championed legalization in many states, has said there are only a few states left where this can be done with a ballot initiative versus state legislature). For many, they’ll need to vote with their feet and migrate to better states. Or the federal government legalizes it.
  - paxys 6y ago
    > until their voting demographics have turned over sufficiently to elect more progressive representation Which for a large number of states is never. Let's not pretend there aren't many states out there that would eagerly overturn all social progress we have made in the last 50 years tomorrow if they could, fully supported by a voting majority of their constituents. We didn't wait for states to abolish racial segregation one by one. Marijuana legalization (and drug laws overhaul in general to favor rehabilitation over criminalization) similarly has to be enacted and enforced at the federal level.
    - Clewza313 6y ago
      Marijuana is a bit different from purely social issues like gay marriage, it has majority support among Republican voters too. (Nationwide, that is, not in every state.) https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisroberts/2020/08/19/poll-republicans-like-marijuana-legalization-too-even-if-its-kamala-harriss-idea/?sh=fd01557420e4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisroberts/2020/08/19/poll-re...
      - fogof 6y ago
        If a majority of Republicans support it and a majority of democrats support it, then why hasn't it passed already? Surely there cannot be enough state level skew on this issue that a majority of Senators don't represent states where legalization is favored by most voters?
mbg721 6y ago
But it's still a federal Schedule I drug, isn't it?? I'm not going to rely on Washington's pinky-swear not to enforce the law, and then there are the big employers that drug-test.
- acct776 6y ago
  Those employers are a net-negative to society, let them die.
  - mbg721 6y ago
    Whether they're bad for society or not, my point was that normalization of pot is more of a climb than "just a couple more states, then progress!".
  - Noos 6y ago
    A lot of the places have legitimate reasons for it. You drug test sometimes because drug users can and will steal you blind if they are addicted enough. You don't want drug users operating heavy or critical machinery, or in any job with a modicum of danger. You don't want your day care provider with workers who show up high; by the time you realize it to fire them, they may have done damage. Not every reason people drug test is invalid.
    - Pfhreak 6y ago
      There are plenty of folks who would fail a marijuana drug test who I'd have no problem in childcare. Your concern is like, "We should test to ensure that someone has had zero alcohol. You don't want your day care provider showing up drunk."
      - refurb 6y ago
        Well yeah. We don’t want drunk people taking care of kids either. That’s pretty standard.
        6y ago
wahern 6y ago
The number of people incarcerated on marijuana possession charges alone is a rounding error. This page suggests 0.1%: http://www.therecoverycenter.org/resources/weed-through-the-myths-get-the-facts/60-what-percent-of-state-prisoners-are-being-held-for-marijuana-possession-only http://www.therecoverycenter.org/resources/weed-through-the-... I'm not sure to what extent that's a political advocacy organization, so let's just call 0.1% a lower bound. The absolute upper bound is ~5%: https://twitter.com/JohnFPfaff/status/985996204986241026 https://twitter.com/JohnFPfaff/status/985996204986241026 But that assumes that everyone arrested for marijuana possession (even if it was only one of the charges) was incarcerated. But that's absolutely not the case. Rather, marijuana arrests are almost always pretextual and used to intimidate; basically, catch & release. There sure are a ridiculous number of arrests, though, and these days having any kind of arrest on your record can be a significant handicap.
- Teever 6y ago
  I think you misunderstand the impetus for freeing the people arrested for breaking marijuana laws. It isn't just to reduce crowding in jails -- it's to free people who were arrested and imprisoned under an unjust and insane law.
  - wahern 6y ago
    Sure, even if it's a merely a fraction of the prison population, the sheer human cost of those remaining in prison is incalculable. Still, from a public policy point of view at some point it sort of becomes indistinguishable from the background population of those unjustly incarcerated for myriad other reasons, and trotting out rare examples of long-term marijuana possession prisoners confuses the debate. We're like 15 years into marijuana decriminalization--actual decriminalization at the state and even Federal level, not simple advocacy. It became a mostly bipartisan endeavor, at least on the national level since at least 2015 when Paul Ryan became Speaker. Though for various reasons most of the GOP remain non-committal, and will only tacitly support passive decriminalization. Nonetheless, that's at least 15 years of slowly emptying our prisons of not only marijuana offenders, but drug offenders generally. The state of affairs today is nothing like the numbers that advocates were throwing around 15 years ago (and what most people still believe is the case), and even then they were exaggerated. There's still a ton more that needs to be done, and some reforms even need to be walked back or reverted because it turns out decriminalization alone exposes some serious problems and deficiencies elsewhere in the system. But if everybody's empathy is focused on the de minimis incarceration problem it's difficult to regroup and shift efforts.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
I honestly think it’ll pass federally before most of the remaining holdout states come on over. I’m saying this from having worked in the industry. There’s very little resistance at the federal level other than inertia, and quite a lot of red state resistance.
- adventured 6y ago
  That's exactly what will happen. There will be at least 10-15 permanent holdout states that will never willingly legalize it. The same was going to be true of gay marriage. As a union we don't have to care about those holdout states, their positions are meaningless, just have to get a strong majority of the states on board and it's going to be taken care of at the federal level.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- kortilla 6y ago
  > and quite a lot of red state resistance. Not really red state resistance. It’s legal in AK and MT but still illegal (but decriminalized) in NY. Illegal in Maryland, Virginia, New Mexico, etc. Likely the only real correlation is with states that give their citizens direct referendums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._jurisdiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._j...
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    You’re right that direct democracy measures are a correlation. My point was not that there’s a red/blue divide in current law, but that my educated experience working in the industry informs me that there’s low political will in many red states to legalize & high political pressure to resist it. I’m very familiar with the legal map, don’t need a wiki link thanks.
    - kortilla 6y ago
dmix 6y ago
Not sure why everyone is so obsessed with the federal elections. Things take time and often bubble up via states. The US needs more decentralization if it want's progress on a realistic timeline (ie, one that reflects the populace). It also helps weeds out the more radical emotion-driven stuff.
- afterburner 6y ago
  Because federal laws can throw a LOT of cold water onto state legalization, if the federal government wanted to. Hence why elections matter.
- roenxi 6y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but California is the US's highest spending state [0] with a budget of around 200 billion. Its entire budget is smaller than the US Federal government's deficit (measured in single digit trillions). The reason everyone cares about federal elections is because there are earth-shattering amounts of money involved. The resources that get consumed have to come from somewhere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets
  - refurb 6y ago
    That money is mostly entitlement spending. You can change a lot of the states level that has nothing to do with entitlements.
    - akvadrako 6y ago
      It's about half entitlements, 27% Medic* + 22% SS, and this percentage will increase quickly. But that's still $3T for other stuff in average years. Plus they just passed $2T of extra one-off spending for the second time in a year. That means the Federal government is basically taking all the spending power of the nation and then redistributing it, giving it enormous power compared to the states.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
hourislate 6y ago
Not just freeing people from jail but to finally stop prosecuting people and wasting 100's of millions in Tax Payer Money. How many young people have had their lives ruined over a joint? When I think of all the poor kids who got fucked over, that was the real crime. Any politician who stands in the way of legalization should be thrown out of Government, including the President.
- lpa22 6y ago
  Straight facts. There is hundreds of millions not only wasted, but also much more than that to be made in tax revenue by legalizing and taxing it. The fact these people focused on petty crime and punishing people is sickening.
  - cmurf 6y ago
    Straight facts, it was all about the racism. And pandering for votes from white nationalists. Some things don't ever change in America. Politicians gave up the tax revenue in order to get racist votes so they could be in power. We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2015/12/big-lie-war-against-drugs https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2015/12/big-lie-war-agains... https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...
    - lightgreen 6y ago
      Sure, because everything in the US is about racism these days. The world is very simple and easy to deal with when every problem is explained by one reason. Some people believe the reason for everything bad is racism. Others believe it is Jews secretly holding power. Thirds blame secret Martian masters directly controlling president heads. All of them have reasonable and consistent explanations of the world with their model. These people are called conspiracy theorists. Also, people reducing the world to such a simple model are always wrong. We have seen it many times throughout history. Often their mistakes led to grave consequences.
darkstar999 6y ago
Idaho is going the other way, the Senate just passed a bill that will constitutionally prohibit cannabis and any other illicit psychoactive drugs if voters pass it with simple majority in 2022.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  > Idaho is going the other way Which is great, for the following reason: a really good way to actually know the value of something is conducting A/B experiments. If Idaho keeps cannabis illegal, we'll be able to actually measure what effects good or bad that has on society, including tax opportunity costs.
  - jillesvangurp 6y ago
    We're talking about a state without big cities, a comparatively tiny population, generally not a lot of crime, and a mostly white population. The only thing we'd be able to learn is whether drug usage in that state is affected at all by not changing a thing (it's illegal now). This would indeed be surprising as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a sign of insanity (to paraphrase Einstein). Also, it would be a good way to characterize decades of drug policy making in the US.
  - curryst 6y ago
    It won't. I'm a legalization supporter, but you can't pretend that being surrounded by states with legal cannabis won't cause the availability of cannabis to be huge. If cannabis causes negative effects, they're going to get hit with a double effect of readily available cannabis and no tax revenue to offset it. Then again, I don't get the impression that it's ever been difficult to find cannabis, even when it was illegal all over the US.
umanwizard 6y ago
Plenty of states never legalized gay marriage until the Supreme Court forced them to. (And I seriously doubt the Court will ever rule that the states aren’t allowed to ban cannabis.)

peteretep 6y ago

> Then we get to work freeing everyone jailed for this Reasonably sure that’s now how the law works

t-writescode 6y ago
What is stopping a law from being passed that operates in a similar way to a pardon? "All people convicted of X set of laws have their sentences nullified and this criminal conviction removed from their records" as a law passed, or something like that?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >What is stopping a law from being passed that operates in a similar way to a pardon? Nothing. In fact[0]: "As of this writing [12 March 2020], 26 states, D.C., and one territory have legalized or decriminalized marijuana to some degree. Eleven states and D.C. have done both. Seventeen states and D.C. have enacted expungement, sealing, or set-aside laws specifically for marijuana, or targeted more generally to decriminalized or legalized conduct. Four states have pardon programs for marijuana offenses." [0] https://ccresourcecenter.org/2020/03/12/legalizing-marijuana-and-expunging-records-across-the-country/ https://ccresourcecenter.org/2020/03/12/legalizing-marijuana...
Hyp3rion 6y ago
You're right, nobody will be automagically freed as a result. That being said, pushing for amnesty, and pushing for pardons is completely how the law works, and very doable.

paxys 6y ago

*Almost every state. Eventually it'll become a pissing contest for which one can hold off on legalization the longest, until they are dragged kicking and screaming.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Some states will simply not pursue legalization until their voting demographics have turned over sufficiently to elect more progressive representation (and the Marijuana Policy Project, who has championed legalization in many states, has said there are only a few states left where this can be done with a ballot initiative versus state legislature). For many, they’ll need to vote with their feet and migrate to better states. Or the federal government legalizes it.
- paxys 6y ago
  > until their voting demographics have turned over sufficiently to elect more progressive representation Which for a large number of states is never. Let's not pretend there aren't many states out there that would eagerly overturn all social progress we have made in the last 50 years tomorrow if they could, fully supported by a voting majority of their constituents. We didn't wait for states to abolish racial segregation one by one. Marijuana legalization (and drug laws overhaul in general to favor rehabilitation over criminalization) similarly has to be enacted and enforced at the federal level.
  - Clewza313 6y ago
    Marijuana is a bit different from purely social issues like gay marriage, it has majority support among Republican voters too. (Nationwide, that is, not in every state.) https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisroberts/2020/08/19/poll-republicans-like-marijuana-legalization-too-even-if-its-kamala-harriss-idea/?sh=fd01557420e4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisroberts/2020/08/19/poll-re...
    - fogof 6y ago
      If a majority of Republicans support it and a majority of democrats support it, then why hasn't it passed already? Surely there cannot be enough state level skew on this issue that a majority of Senators don't represent states where legalization is favored by most voters?

mbg721 6y ago

But it's still a federal Schedule I drug, isn't it?? I'm not going to rely on Washington's pinky-swear not to enforce the law, and then there are the big employers that drug-test.

acct776 6y ago
Those employers are a net-negative to society, let them die.
- mbg721 6y ago
  Whether they're bad for society or not, my point was that normalization of pot is more of a climb than "just a couple more states, then progress!".
- Noos 6y ago
  A lot of the places have legitimate reasons for it. You drug test sometimes because drug users can and will steal you blind if they are addicted enough. You don't want drug users operating heavy or critical machinery, or in any job with a modicum of danger. You don't want your day care provider with workers who show up high; by the time you realize it to fire them, they may have done damage. Not every reason people drug test is invalid.
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    There are plenty of folks who would fail a marijuana drug test who I'd have no problem in childcare. Your concern is like, "We should test to ensure that someone has had zero alcohol. You don't want your day care provider showing up drunk."
    - refurb 6y ago
      Well yeah. We don’t want drunk people taking care of kids either. That’s pretty standard.
      - 6y ago

wahern 6y ago

The number of people incarcerated on marijuana possession charges alone is a rounding error. This page suggests 0.1%: http://www.therecoverycenter.org/resources/weed-through-the-myths-get-the-facts/60-what-percent-of-state-prisoners-are-being-held-for-marijuana-possession-only http://www.therecoverycenter.org/resources/weed-through-the-... I'm not sure to what extent that's a political advocacy organization, so let's just call 0.1% a lower bound. The absolute upper bound is ~5%: https://twitter.com/JohnFPfaff/status/985996204986241026 https://twitter.com/JohnFPfaff/status/985996204986241026 But that assumes that everyone arrested for marijuana possession (even if it was only one of the charges) was incarcerated. But that's absolutely not the case. Rather, marijuana arrests are almost always pretextual and used to intimidate; basically, catch & release. There sure are a ridiculous number of arrests, though, and these days having any kind of arrest on your record can be a significant handicap.

Teever 6y ago
I think you misunderstand the impetus for freeing the people arrested for breaking marijuana laws. It isn't just to reduce crowding in jails -- it's to free people who were arrested and imprisoned under an unjust and insane law.
- wahern 6y ago
  Sure, even if it's a merely a fraction of the prison population, the sheer human cost of those remaining in prison is incalculable. Still, from a public policy point of view at some point it sort of becomes indistinguishable from the background population of those unjustly incarcerated for myriad other reasons, and trotting out rare examples of long-term marijuana possession prisoners confuses the debate. We're like 15 years into marijuana decriminalization--actual decriminalization at the state and even Federal level, not simple advocacy. It became a mostly bipartisan endeavor, at least on the national level since at least 2015 when Paul Ryan became Speaker. Though for various reasons most of the GOP remain non-committal, and will only tacitly support passive decriminalization. Nonetheless, that's at least 15 years of slowly emptying our prisons of not only marijuana offenders, but drug offenders generally. The state of affairs today is nothing like the numbers that advocates were throwing around 15 years ago (and what most people still believe is the case), and even then they were exaggerated. There's still a ton more that needs to be done, and some reforms even need to be walked back or reverted because it turns out decriminalization alone exposes some serious problems and deficiencies elsewhere in the system. But if everybody's empathy is focused on the de minimis incarceration problem it's difficult to regroup and shift efforts.

eyelidlessness 6y ago

I honestly think it’ll pass federally before most of the remaining holdout states come on over. I’m saying this from having worked in the industry. There’s very little resistance at the federal level other than inertia, and quite a lot of red state resistance.

adventured 6y ago
That's exactly what will happen. There will be at least 10-15 permanent holdout states that will never willingly legalize it. The same was going to be true of gay marriage. As a union we don't have to care about those holdout states, their positions are meaningless, just have to get a strong majority of the states on board and it's going to be taken care of at the federal level.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kortilla 6y ago
> and quite a lot of red state resistance. Not really red state resistance. It’s legal in AK and MT but still illegal (but decriminalized) in NY. Illegal in Maryland, Virginia, New Mexico, etc. Likely the only real correlation is with states that give their citizens direct referendums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._jurisdiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._j...
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  You’re right that direct democracy measures are a correlation. My point was not that there’s a red/blue divide in current law, but that my educated experience working in the industry informs me that there’s low political will in many red states to legalize & high political pressure to resist it. I’m very familiar with the legal map, don’t need a wiki link thanks.
  - kortilla 6y ago

dmix 6y ago

Not sure why everyone is so obsessed with the federal elections. Things take time and often bubble up via states. The US needs more decentralization if it want's progress on a realistic timeline (ie, one that reflects the populace). It also helps weeds out the more radical emotion-driven stuff.

afterburner 6y ago
Because federal laws can throw a LOT of cold water onto state legalization, if the federal government wanted to. Hence why elections matter.
roenxi 6y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but California is the US's highest spending state [0] with a budget of around 200 billion. Its entire budget is smaller than the US Federal government's deficit (measured in single digit trillions). The reason everyone cares about federal elections is because there are earth-shattering amounts of money involved. The resources that get consumed have to come from somewhere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets
- refurb 6y ago
  That money is mostly entitlement spending. You can change a lot of the states level that has nothing to do with entitlements.
  - akvadrako 6y ago
    It's about half entitlements, 27% Medic* + 22% SS, and this percentage will increase quickly. But that's still $3T for other stuff in average years. Plus they just passed $2T of extra one-off spending for the second time in a year. That means the Federal government is basically taking all the spending power of the nation and then redistributing it, giving it enormous power compared to the states.
lotsofpulp 6y ago

hourislate 6y ago

Not just freeing people from jail but to finally stop prosecuting people and wasting 100's of millions in Tax Payer Money. How many young people have had their lives ruined over a joint? When I think of all the poor kids who got fucked over, that was the real crime. Any politician who stands in the way of legalization should be thrown out of Government, including the President.

lpa22 6y ago
Straight facts. There is hundreds of millions not only wasted, but also much more than that to be made in tax revenue by legalizing and taxing it. The fact these people focused on petty crime and punishing people is sickening.
- cmurf 6y ago
  Straight facts, it was all about the racism. And pandering for votes from white nationalists. Some things don't ever change in America. Politicians gave up the tax revenue in order to get racist votes so they could be in power. We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2015/12/big-lie-war-against-drugs https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2015/12/big-lie-war-agains... https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...
  - lightgreen 6y ago
    Sure, because everything in the US is about racism these days. The world is very simple and easy to deal with when every problem is explained by one reason. Some people believe the reason for everything bad is racism. Others believe it is Jews secretly holding power. Thirds blame secret Martian masters directly controlling president heads. All of them have reasonable and consistent explanations of the world with their model. These people are called conspiracy theorists. Also, people reducing the world to such a simple model are always wrong. We have seen it many times throughout history. Often their mistakes led to grave consequences.

darkstar999 6y ago

Idaho is going the other way, the Senate just passed a bill that will constitutionally prohibit cannabis and any other illicit psychoactive drugs if voters pass it with simple majority in 2022.

ur-whale 6y ago
> Idaho is going the other way Which is great, for the following reason: a really good way to actually know the value of something is conducting A/B experiments. If Idaho keeps cannabis illegal, we'll be able to actually measure what effects good or bad that has on society, including tax opportunity costs.
- jillesvangurp 6y ago
  We're talking about a state without big cities, a comparatively tiny population, generally not a lot of crime, and a mostly white population. The only thing we'd be able to learn is whether drug usage in that state is affected at all by not changing a thing (it's illegal now). This would indeed be surprising as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a sign of insanity (to paraphrase Einstein). Also, it would be a good way to characterize decades of drug policy making in the US.
- curryst 6y ago
  It won't. I'm a legalization supporter, but you can't pretend that being surrounded by states with legal cannabis won't cause the availability of cannabis to be huge. If cannabis causes negative effects, they're going to get hit with a double effect of readily available cannabis and no tax revenue to offset it. Then again, I don't get the impression that it's ever been difficult to find cannabis, even when it was illegal all over the US.

umanwizard 6y ago

Plenty of states never legalized gay marriage until the Supreme Court forced them to. (And I seriously doubt the Court will ever rule that the states aren’t allowed to ban cannabis.)