6 ms·
> Black and brown people are left out of the windfall and continue to be arrested for selling weed illegally. I would hazard a guess that if they were instead
by dgfitz 6y ago
> Black and brown people are left out of the windfall and continue to be arrested for selling weed illegally.
I would hazard a guess that if they were instead selling bootlegged booze illegally they would also be arrested. I’m not clear what point you’re trying to make.
- refenestrator 6y agoI hear you, but: 1) Selling bootleg booze has health/quality risks that selling weed doesn't. You don't see crackdowns on people selling other plants without a license. 2) Legalizing possession and then only giving licenses to well-connected people who are excellent at getting paperwork through the system is, well, a lot better than nothing but doesn't really solve the whole problem.
- OJFord 6y agoWhy does the business of selling cannabis need to be so accessible? If someone wants to do it, they can put in the work to 'get the paperwork through the system'; if they just want it to be available to them and their friends, well, now it is, because someone else has put in that work. I don't really see the issue? (But then, I'm glad to live in a country that hasn't legalised it, so what do I know.)
- refenestrator 6y agoIn most states the licenses are extremely hard to get, it's not a matter of just 'putting in the work'. They're effectively out of reach for your standard weed dealer.
- ineedasername 6y agoA standard weed dealer is not on the same level as the person that would get the license. A standard dealer is part of a very large organization. They're the equivalent of a person working a cash register. I expect it's extremely hard for someone who starts out working the register at a McDonalds to become a franchise owner. That's not to say that getting a license isn't harder than starting a fast food franchise, but the metric of difficulty we use here shouldn't be the typical weed dealer. Probably a better comparison would be an entrepreneur trying to start a liquor store. Even then, it makes sense to me that as society tries to figure out the best way to do this, it goes carefully & with a lot of scrutiny to figure out how to do it right. It's not the sort of thing that should have a "move fast & break things" approach.
- refenestrator 6y agoLife isn't 'the wire', your standard dealer is a dude with a medium-grade connect and some friends. As far as 'move fast and break things'.. in one sense, preserving the status quo is conservative, but it is also continually breaking things all the time. Glass, ribs, lives, etc. Compared to the status quo, we could break fewer things.
- mulmen 6y agoThe issue is that legalization is a new development and the effects of asymmetric enforcement continue to disadvantage racial groups. Drug laws were not created in a vacuum. They are just one step on a long journey of racially motivated oppression.
- ineedasername 6y agoSelling is different, I think, than possession because dealers are often not just selling one thing like marijuana, but more dangerous drugs as well. I can understand an arrest in the case of dealing.
- bigfudge 6y agoWorth remembering that Alcohol is more dangerous than most illegal drugs, including meth, ecstasy, hallucinogens etc.
- ineedasername 6y agoBy what metric is meth less dangerous?
- bigfudge 6y agoMissed this so late reply, but there are a bunch of papers concluding both personal and social harms are higher for alcohol and I think also nicotine Results: Alcohol, heroin and crack emerged as the most harmful drugs (overall weighted harm score 72, 55 and 50, respectively). The remaining drugs had an overall weighted harm score of 38 or less, making them much less harmful than alcohol. The overall weighted harm scores of the EU experts correlated well with those previously given by the UK panel. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881115581980 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881115581980