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Marijuana Legalized In Oregon, Alaska, and Washington DC
Robotron23 writes: Coinciding with the midterm elections yesterday were state ballots proposing the legalization of cannabis. All three territories where full legalization was tabled approved the measure, joining Washington state and Colorado. The narrowest vote was that of Alaska at a roughly 52% to 48% margin. Washington D.C. meanwhile saw the vote strongly tipped in favor of legalization, at about 69% to 31% opposed. Oregon passed its measure by a vote of 55% to 45%. Buoyed by the news, advocates of legal cannabis are already contemplating the next round of state ballots in 2016.
This is true. Hearst demonized marijuana because hemp fiber threatened his tree based paper products.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's still Federally illegal. Even in any state that it is "legal" it can still be prosecuted. It won't be under the current president, but that can change in 2 years.
It means it is no longer a violation of state law, only federal. The federal government can still enforce the laws without using local resources but they don't really want to spark a fight between state governments and the federal.
Washington, D.C.'s proposal, while scaled back compared to the Oregon proposal, allows for a person over 21 years old to posses up to two ounces of marijuana for personal use and grow up to six cannabis plants in their home. It also allows people to transfer up to one ounce of marijuana to another person, but not sell it.
(from cnn.com)
weinersmith
This. Not just this but this sort of moralizing and racism really goes well with jobs programs.
Lets not forget, when prohibition ended, it left a number of federal employees with budgets to burn and fuck all to do. They were not stupid, that is no recipe for job security. Harry Anslinger, one of the most vocal proponants of the marijuana laws of the day, was head of the FBN, the very people who were left with fuck all to do after prohibition ended.
Who better to justify law enforcement jobs than people who are seen as "immoral" or inferior and in need of being kept in their place? The thing about it is.... its a story so crazy you almost can't make shit like this up.
Good ole Harry spent years writting letters to police chiefs, asking them to keep their eye on "jazz musicians"....seriously.... claiming one day, they were going to have an operation to round them all up. One great quote of his that sums it all up:
This is from a man who testified before congress and was taken seriously.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I like the quote but it's pretty easy to prove that banning cannabis was race related when they gave it the Spanish name rather than the proper English term when referencing it in legal documents. See Marijuana is that scary stuff those dirty spics and negroes use, if they had called it by the proper English name, Cannabis, convincing the public would have been far harder because Cannabis was used to make hemp rope, the highest quality rope available at the time.
oh there are a lot more decriminalized than 5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
As we discussed last time marijuana came up on Slashdot, that particular Anslinger quotation is hard to substantiate. The first attestation comes from decades after he supposedly said it. There are already plenty of rigorously sourced statements on marijuana with similar hyperbole, and trotting out that weakly sourced one only undermines the legalization cause.
Legalization of marijuana is by definition smaller government because it means that A) The government no longer has to police Marijuana, so it can scale down (or at least reallocate) that portion of its law enforcement activities, and B) We now have fewer laws.
B) We now have fewer laws.
Umm ... It doesn't really work that way. We (here in Oregon) now move from the realm of criminal law to regulatory law.
I already do. Most employers in my field have figured out that there's no reason to test if there aren't signs of a problem.
Not everyone that smokes pot is a "pothead". That's like saying everyone who likes a beer or two is an alcoholic.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
In most states over 10% of the voters register as Independent. How do you gerrymander those to vote Republican?
It doesn't matter what they're registered as. What matters is what they vote for and most will vote predictably.
Democrats cluster in large cities. How do you evenly distribute their votes out into Republican districts on the other side of the state?
You don't have to distribute the democratic votes in the major cities. You assign as many as you can to majority Republican districts and then fit the rest into a district that is as close to 100% Democrat as you can.
Imagine a state with 800 people. Let's ignore the geographical distribution for simplicity. 59% (470) of the people vote purple, 41% (330) will vote orange, and you are in charge of drawing 4 districts such that the orange politicians remain in power. How will you do it?
3 districts with 110 orange people and 90 purple people (that's a 10% lead in elections which is plenty).
1 district with 200 purple people.
Congratulations! The orange people get 3 seats and the purple people get 1 despite the purple voters being a clear majority of the total. Here is a good illustration on wikipedia that also illustrates drawing the borders around geographically distributed voters.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
Yeah... ...and there is overlap in the above numbers. My state, MN, is in the Medical and Decriminalized category. We've been tolerant (Decrim) for longer than most states but our recently passed Medical law is the most restrictive in the nation. For whatever reason straight up legalization didn't end up on the ballot this year but when it does, at least according to recent polls, it will pass by a landslide. We'd have it already if it weren't for the prick we currently (just reelected grr...) and most recently before him had in the governors office.
5 = Legalization.
23 = Medical
18 = Decriminalized
Because it happens in the house based on the Census.................... Republicans controlled redistricting in 17 states controlling 173 Congressional districts, while Democrats controlled redistricting in just 6 states with 44 Congressional districts (four states with 21 Congressional districts featured split control of the process). Independent or politician-led commissions, state and federal courts, drew the maps for 15 states, and another 7 have no Congressional redistricting process because they only have one at-large seat.
The Florida measure failed at 58% yes vs 45% no.
In 2006 a constitutional amendment was passed requiring 60% to pass a constitutional amendment...It passed with 57%.
60% was chosen because nothing EVER reaches that number, never once.
So Florida, even though the majority wants this passed, we don't get it. Yay democracy!
On another note, the congressional districts were re-drawn such that with an exit poll with 60% participation indicated a heavy loss for Rick Scott (like 30%), but because of the re-draw, he won by ~1%.
But no, tell me how this is legitimate and for our safety again.
So what happens when my neighbor and his "friends" all start smoking weed and stinkin' up my home?
Same thing you would do today if they all start smoking tobacco and stinkin' up your home. You would tell them to stop, and if they don't, call the police and complain about public disturbance.
I'm still undecided whether now I'll have to contend with stoned people on the road
About as much as you would about drunk people on the road (and both would qualify as DUI, with all the legal penalties that entails). Having said that, stoned people are not as dangerous as drunk people - while both slow down reaction time, drunk people are not aware of that fact (and, in fact, often perceive it as improved), while stoned people are. In other words, a stoned guy is more likely to drive slowly and carefully to offset the influence of the drug, while a drunk guy is more likely to drive even more aggressively than usual.
Awesome. Go ahead and provide the citations for all those claims.
Citation.
Citation.
Citation.
There are dozens more. Dope makes you stupid. It also lowers reflex response time, and it makes you apathetic.
Marijuana should be legal, because people should be free to be stupid. But using dope is stupid.