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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

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.
    - singhrac 6y ago
      I'm afraid I don't understand your comment. I think you're trying to say that it wasn't just racism that caused the war on drugs (and in particular on marijuana). But I do think the quote in the parent comment makes it pretty clear that the Nixon administration engineered the war on drugs in order to incarcerate black people (for political power, not necessarily racism, though the two are very difficult to divide here). "Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." The linked article quotes the head of the proto-DEA making an extremely racist comment showing the reasons why he attacked marijuana. I think the specific targeting of drugs used by the black community (marijuana and crack were and are significantly more prosecuted than opioids and heroin) gives this weight above a conspiracy theory.
      - lightgreen 6y ago
        If it was black who were incarcerated the most because of drug laws, it doesn’t make it racist. Moreover, even if you know upfront that black people will be incarcerated the most because of drug laws, it doesn’t make that war racist. (Moreover the quote in the linked article clearly states that hippies were also the target of the war on drugs, which, even if the quotes are correct and not taken out of context etc., make this war at least not fully racist.) If we of course use the dictionary definition of the word racism, not extremely wide interpretation used today. Some people were racists of course. But most people just thought harsher law on drugs would make communities safer. And most government actors just wanted more power regardless of who is going to get in jail. It is much much more complicated issue than (quoting the comment I replied to) “Straight facts, it was all about the racism”.
        lukeramsden 6y ago
        Cannabis was named "marijuana" by American newspapers for the express purpose of associating it with Mexican immigrants. The criminalisation of cannabis was started by racism, and has been solely for the purpose of racism ever since. How else can you explain demonising a mostly harmless plant without any evidence?
- fedreserved 6y ago
  The reason I feel federally they will delay legalizing it as much as possible is due to tax revenue. Due to it being illegally federally, the irs does not allow anyone to write off their expenses accept expenses that contribute to the cost of goods sold. This increases the effective tax rate drastically
com 6y ago
I’ve been involved in dealing with pre-employment criminal background check red flags, and the number of times I’ve had to tell our (US) HR people that we don’t care if someone got busted for smoking low-quality pot in their college town once, it’s just one of the things that people learning about the world may try and do. I know I did. The gratefulness of these hires is awful to see. And these are the middle class ones. Poorer and more disadvantaged groups have even less likelihood than otherwise of being in our hiring funnel because of this. Strike these victimless “crimes” from the public record.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
Barack Obama called using cannabis his greatest moral failure. I refuse to believe that there is but a single politician on the planet whose greatest moral failure can be willingly consuming any substance.
- drenei 6y ago
  Do you have a quote for this? This is the first I’m hearing of it and a simple search online doesn’t pull anything up.
  - tiagod 6y ago
    He never said it. > "As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life," Mr Obama said. >But he added that in terms of its impact on the individual consumer "I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol".
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/obama-mccain-admit-greatest-moral-failings-of-their-lives/articleshow/3374550.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/obama-mccain-ad... This came out on top when searching for it. To be fair, he phrased it it as “experimenting with drugs”, but as far as I know only the Cannabis is publicly known.

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.
  - singhrac 6y ago
    I'm afraid I don't understand your comment. I think you're trying to say that it wasn't just racism that caused the war on drugs (and in particular on marijuana). But I do think the quote in the parent comment makes it pretty clear that the Nixon administration engineered the war on drugs in order to incarcerate black people (for political power, not necessarily racism, though the two are very difficult to divide here). "Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." The linked article quotes the head of the proto-DEA making an extremely racist comment showing the reasons why he attacked marijuana. I think the specific targeting of drugs used by the black community (marijuana and crack were and are significantly more prosecuted than opioids and heroin) gives this weight above a conspiracy theory.
    - lightgreen 6y ago
      If it was black who were incarcerated the most because of drug laws, it doesn’t make it racist. Moreover, even if you know upfront that black people will be incarcerated the most because of drug laws, it doesn’t make that war racist. (Moreover the quote in the linked article clearly states that hippies were also the target of the war on drugs, which, even if the quotes are correct and not taken out of context etc., make this war at least not fully racist.) If we of course use the dictionary definition of the word racism, not extremely wide interpretation used today. Some people were racists of course. But most people just thought harsher law on drugs would make communities safer. And most government actors just wanted more power regardless of who is going to get in jail. It is much much more complicated issue than (quoting the comment I replied to) “Straight facts, it was all about the racism”.
      - lukeramsden 6y ago
        Cannabis was named "marijuana" by American newspapers for the express purpose of associating it with Mexican immigrants. The criminalisation of cannabis was started by racism, and has been solely for the purpose of racism ever since. How else can you explain demonising a mostly harmless plant without any evidence?
fedreserved 6y ago
The reason I feel federally they will delay legalizing it as much as possible is due to tax revenue. Due to it being illegally federally, the irs does not allow anyone to write off their expenses accept expenses that contribute to the cost of goods sold. This increases the effective tax rate drastically

com 6y ago

I’ve been involved in dealing with pre-employment criminal background check red flags, and the number of times I’ve had to tell our (US) HR people that we don’t care if someone got busted for smoking low-quality pot in their college town once, it’s just one of the things that people learning about the world may try and do. I know I did. The gratefulness of these hires is awful to see. And these are the middle class ones. Poorer and more disadvantaged groups have even less likelihood than otherwise of being in our hiring funnel because of this. Strike these victimless “crimes” from the public record.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

Barack Obama called using cannabis his greatest moral failure. I refuse to believe that there is but a single politician on the planet whose greatest moral failure can be willingly consuming any substance.

drenei 6y ago
Do you have a quote for this? This is the first I’m hearing of it and a simple search online doesn’t pull anything up.
- tiagod 6y ago
  He never said it. > "As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life," Mr Obama said. >But he added that in terms of its impact on the individual consumer "I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol".
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/obama-mccain-admit-greatest-moral-failings-of-their-lives/articleshow/3374550.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/obama-mccain-ad... This came out on top when searching for it. To be fair, he phrased it it as “experimenting with drugs”, but as far as I know only the Cannabis is publicly known.