Saturday, October 22, 2005
Prohibition has failed. A new idea to control marijuana
I've been thinking about our insane, failing, and foolishly expensive marijuana laws. We must find a better way to deal with this problem.
Below are arrest figures from the FBI, and if we trust those figures I believe they argue for changing the laws on marijuana. Police arrested an estimated 771,608 persons for marijuana violations in 2004, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report. The total is the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and comprised 44.2 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Furthermore the number of arrests has nearly doubled in eleven years. Since 1965 we have arrested 17 million people. Here are FBI arrest figures for the last eleven years:
2004 771,608
2003 755,187
2002 697,082
2001 723,627
2000 734,498
1999 704,812
1998 682,885
1997 695,200
1996 641,642
1995 588,963
1994 499,122
1993 380,689
This is a grave social problem. When will we open our eyes? Imagine, instead of spending thousands of millions in lives and in tax dollars to lockup users and sellers, imagine what it would be like if we taxed those users as we do drinkers and tobacco smokers. Imagine what it would be like if we put the sellers out of business and took control of a situation that has been out of control for half a century. We could empty our jails by nearly half, jails we filled at a cost of about $20,000 a year per convict.
Users will be happy to pay taxes for marijuana. Law enforcement would focus on truly serious problems. Taxes we now need for a failed policy of prohibition could be used to improve education and control the use of marijuana instead of prohibiting, which has failed. Prohibition is a dumb bomb but control is precise and achieves what we have always wanted.
We know punishment does little to change human behavior. It makes people angry, resentful, hard to control. Besides punishment creates a huge expense for the rest of us and controls nothing. Instead of expensive punishment, change the dope laws and take control forgetting about failed policies of prohibition.
Taking control, after all is what we expect government to do, and our governments have failed to make the policies of prohibition work for 70 years. It is only blindness and denial that keeps us spending treasure on a failed policy that never succeeds. Let's face the failure and look at other possibilities.
Many people who have been conditioned by 70 years of propaganda will join the chorus of naysayers who can be counted on to play on our fears. I can hear them now telling us that being sensible will mean more children will become addicted and pot will lead to heroin and all the other cant we’ve been listening to for decades..
Sorry, folks, it won’t happen like that because kids who want to start smoking, start smoking now under prohibition. People of all ages and positions in society who want marijuana get and use this material any time they want to. Why? Because we do not have the marketing or the production of the material under control. We think we are prohibiting. We are not Nor for seven decades have we had this problem under control.
So, when will we start to learn, to open ourselves to a new idea, to an idea that might just work?... an idea that will enable us to take control of the growing, marketing and use of the plant, something we've never before been able to do. How? Set up cafes run by former DEA enforcement agents; café`s that sell marijuana, coffee, pastry. soft drinks. Fit them out with easy chairs, green plants, soft jazz, and no advertising except an icon in the window. Cigarette smoking would be prohibited.
All those brave and loyal police and DEA agents who put their lives on the line would no longer work on grim city streets facing marijuana criminals with guns! All budgets will be determined by marijuana taxes and cafe` profits which will insure that former agents can become cafe operators at the same pay grade they were on as enforcers. Funds from profits will be set aside to educate children in schools about the truth of marijuana, how smoking is bad for the lungs just like tobacco, how it can affect the brain and etc.
The government would set up a US Government DEA franchise: call it Mary Jane's Cafe. Mary Jane's is a nice safe business. No more guns, no more brutal Columbian or Mexican gangsters to deal with. No more criminals in the school yard. And we could be sure former agents would never sell to nine year olds. The police would only have to arrest those selling on the streets, because the DEA would become a government monopoly. We could be sure that way. We will finally get marijuana under control.
All the marijuana criminals would be put out of business because the government shops will always -Like WalMart- ask the customer to pay less because the DEA will control the sources instead of fighting the sources. People in the licensed hemp growing business would sell all their crop to the government using café profits to buy the material. The DEA franchise model will allow for some private but controlled and licensed individual hemp based businesses.
Growers may not make the same kind of money they did in the old days, but it would be steady work and good income. Maybe they'd earn enough to stop growing tobacco which is more hurtful than hemp. And you may grow a few plants at home. What you don't consume, you sell to the agent. Growers might sell only the best grade leaves and buds to the agent and all the rest to rope and cloth manufacturers. Scientists will want to study hemp too. What can we do with the plant? It is not surprising to see stories about the way marijuana is effective medically in this or that disease. Drug companies awaken.
George Washington grew hemp. A model for us all. And he probably inhaled.
We already have a national agency that could set up and run this business so as to keep it tightly under control. So we don't want or need a new agency. And new taxes and profits would support the agency instead of making it a burden as it is now. Some will try to change its name, maybe call it the Dope Enabling Agency and that’d be fine. Let’s not get too anal about these things. A little humor in government wouldn’t hurt anyone.
And there’d be no additional dangers. Driving laws would remain in force to serve and protect us from totally stoned-out-of-their-mind fools on the road. Nobody wants that kind of behavior. Nor would people be any more inclined to pilot planes, ferries, trains or lathes while stoned than they are now. We have the laws we need in place now. And the incentive criminals have to increase their clientele by seducing children would end.
So let's take control the same way we have with tobacco. Let’s collect marijuana taxes and educate people to the dangers. The DEA will buy all material grown at better prices than the black market, thus crashing the black market. The market and the product comes totally under the control of the reformed DEA.
After we're sure the new approach to substance control begins to work we'll consider the character of our thinking about other substances and how they can be best controlled. We've tried to prohibit twice. The policies prohibiting alcohol failed in less than ten years. The unhappy policies prohibiting hemp have lasted about over 70 years.
Below are arrest figures from the FBI, and if we trust those figures I believe they argue for changing the laws on marijuana. Police arrested an estimated 771,608 persons for marijuana violations in 2004, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report. The total is the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and comprised 44.2 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Furthermore the number of arrests has nearly doubled in eleven years. Since 1965 we have arrested 17 million people. Here are FBI arrest figures for the last eleven years:
2004 771,608
2003 755,187
2002 697,082
2001 723,627
2000 734,498
1999 704,812
1998 682,885
1997 695,200
1996 641,642
1995 588,963
1994 499,122
1993 380,689
This is a grave social problem. When will we open our eyes? Imagine, instead of spending thousands of millions in lives and in tax dollars to lockup users and sellers, imagine what it would be like if we taxed those users as we do drinkers and tobacco smokers. Imagine what it would be like if we put the sellers out of business and took control of a situation that has been out of control for half a century. We could empty our jails by nearly half, jails we filled at a cost of about $20,000 a year per convict.
Users will be happy to pay taxes for marijuana. Law enforcement would focus on truly serious problems. Taxes we now need for a failed policy of prohibition could be used to improve education and control the use of marijuana instead of prohibiting, which has failed. Prohibition is a dumb bomb but control is precise and achieves what we have always wanted.
We know punishment does little to change human behavior. It makes people angry, resentful, hard to control. Besides punishment creates a huge expense for the rest of us and controls nothing. Instead of expensive punishment, change the dope laws and take control forgetting about failed policies of prohibition.
Taking control, after all is what we expect government to do, and our governments have failed to make the policies of prohibition work for 70 years. It is only blindness and denial that keeps us spending treasure on a failed policy that never succeeds. Let's face the failure and look at other possibilities.
Many people who have been conditioned by 70 years of propaganda will join the chorus of naysayers who can be counted on to play on our fears. I can hear them now telling us that being sensible will mean more children will become addicted and pot will lead to heroin and all the other cant we’ve been listening to for decades..
Sorry, folks, it won’t happen like that because kids who want to start smoking, start smoking now under prohibition. People of all ages and positions in society who want marijuana get and use this material any time they want to. Why? Because we do not have the marketing or the production of the material under control. We think we are prohibiting. We are not Nor for seven decades have we had this problem under control.
So, when will we start to learn, to open ourselves to a new idea, to an idea that might just work?... an idea that will enable us to take control of the growing, marketing and use of the plant, something we've never before been able to do. How? Set up cafes run by former DEA enforcement agents; café`s that sell marijuana, coffee, pastry. soft drinks. Fit them out with easy chairs, green plants, soft jazz, and no advertising except an icon in the window. Cigarette smoking would be prohibited.
All those brave and loyal police and DEA agents who put their lives on the line would no longer work on grim city streets facing marijuana criminals with guns! All budgets will be determined by marijuana taxes and cafe` profits which will insure that former agents can become cafe operators at the same pay grade they were on as enforcers. Funds from profits will be set aside to educate children in schools about the truth of marijuana, how smoking is bad for the lungs just like tobacco, how it can affect the brain and etc.
The government would set up a US Government DEA franchise: call it Mary Jane's Cafe. Mary Jane's is a nice safe business. No more guns, no more brutal Columbian or Mexican gangsters to deal with. No more criminals in the school yard. And we could be sure former agents would never sell to nine year olds. The police would only have to arrest those selling on the streets, because the DEA would become a government monopoly. We could be sure that way. We will finally get marijuana under control.
All the marijuana criminals would be put out of business because the government shops will always -Like WalMart- ask the customer to pay less because the DEA will control the sources instead of fighting the sources. People in the licensed hemp growing business would sell all their crop to the government using café profits to buy the material. The DEA franchise model will allow for some private but controlled and licensed individual hemp based businesses.
Growers may not make the same kind of money they did in the old days, but it would be steady work and good income. Maybe they'd earn enough to stop growing tobacco which is more hurtful than hemp. And you may grow a few plants at home. What you don't consume, you sell to the agent. Growers might sell only the best grade leaves and buds to the agent and all the rest to rope and cloth manufacturers. Scientists will want to study hemp too. What can we do with the plant? It is not surprising to see stories about the way marijuana is effective medically in this or that disease. Drug companies awaken.
George Washington grew hemp. A model for us all. And he probably inhaled.
We already have a national agency that could set up and run this business so as to keep it tightly under control. So we don't want or need a new agency. And new taxes and profits would support the agency instead of making it a burden as it is now. Some will try to change its name, maybe call it the Dope Enabling Agency and that’d be fine. Let’s not get too anal about these things. A little humor in government wouldn’t hurt anyone.
And there’d be no additional dangers. Driving laws would remain in force to serve and protect us from totally stoned-out-of-their-mind fools on the road. Nobody wants that kind of behavior. Nor would people be any more inclined to pilot planes, ferries, trains or lathes while stoned than they are now. We have the laws we need in place now. And the incentive criminals have to increase their clientele by seducing children would end.
So let's take control the same way we have with tobacco. Let’s collect marijuana taxes and educate people to the dangers. The DEA will buy all material grown at better prices than the black market, thus crashing the black market. The market and the product comes totally under the control of the reformed DEA.
After we're sure the new approach to substance control begins to work we'll consider the character of our thinking about other substances and how they can be best controlled. We've tried to prohibit twice. The policies prohibiting alcohol failed in less than ten years. The unhappy policies prohibiting hemp have lasted about over 70 years.
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Dear Wally,
It seems to me that the laws governing the legality of growing, selling, or buying of marijuana should be up to the culture of the locality, perhaps the county, perhaps the state. Let the majority of the local citizenry decide what the local laws should be. That is the way it was, i.e the "county option", and perhaps still is, regarding alcohol in the state of Tennessee up to the 1960's, and perhaps beyond, for all I know. Some said that it made for an unholy alliance between the Baptists and the bootleggers, but it was up to the locals to decide how to live their life regarding the legality of alcohol sales. That's the way it was in Knox county when I was a student at the University of Tennessee in the 1950's. Eventually the city fathers decided to support legalization since prohibition was bad for business. The laws in Davidson county (Nashville) were different: you could buy alcohol in a liquor store, but you could not buy whiskey or cocktails in nightclubs, and the bringing of your own bottle was the practice. I don't know whether it was legal or not, since I was too young then to go to night clubs. This all may seem quaint and archaic to the progressive mind, but it at least lets the local citizenry decide what the morals and practices should be, consistent with the state constitution and the U.S. constitution,e.g. regarding interstate commerce and all that. I think that's better democracy than having the federal big brother decide what to do.
That's also what I believe about the laws regarding the teaching of evolution and "intelligent design": let the locals decide. If you are worried about the children's minds being warped, I suggest that you consider the case of Michael Faraday. He grew up in a very strict sect of Christianity, the Sandimanians, I believe, and continued to practice it in later life. His imagination was not stunted. I contend that his discoveries in electricity and magnetism and electrochemistry have had much more effect on the conditions of your life than Darwin ever did. (That may change in the age of biotechnology and cloning, but if practical progress and money are to be made using the applications of evolutionary theory, then even the intelligent designers and creationists will use it, no matter what they call it.) Schools should teach you how to think, not what to think. That should be up to one's parents and one's culture. The whole argument about evolution and all that is about whether the Christians or the atheists know how the world began and who's more morally correct. If it was only about the
mechanism of the speciation of warm-blooded mammals, then heated debates would occur in scholarly societies, but we wouldn't have the kind of culture wars as now, but different ones.
In matters of the physical world, short-range order, not long-range order, permits fluidity with a variety of properties. Perfect anarchy, e.g. an ideal gas, is bland and doesn't lead to anything very novel in the physical world. Anarchy is unstable and leads inevitably to the most rigid long-range order in the social world. Long live order in the local community, providing one is free to leave if one doesn't like it, and one even has a better chance of changing the rules locally than counting on changing the big parties. Long live variety and natural selection in the country at large.
A caveat: The gauge of railway tracks needs to be standardized, and the rules of air and sea navigation and the rules of the sealanes and airways need to be standardized. So, some long-range order is needed, for stability and safety. I don't think that standardization of the rules of the consumption of alcohol, marijuana, etc. etc. need to follow the same pattern.
A caution: If my view were to prevail, then you might have to move to the Netherlands or to Oregon to find the locale or choice, regarding marijuana.
I look forward to a spirited rejoinder from you, Wally.
Yours truly,
DOW
It seems to me that the laws governing the legality of growing, selling, or buying of marijuana should be up to the culture of the locality, perhaps the county, perhaps the state. Let the majority of the local citizenry decide what the local laws should be. That is the way it was, i.e the "county option", and perhaps still is, regarding alcohol in the state of Tennessee up to the 1960's, and perhaps beyond, for all I know. Some said that it made for an unholy alliance between the Baptists and the bootleggers, but it was up to the locals to decide how to live their life regarding the legality of alcohol sales. That's the way it was in Knox county when I was a student at the University of Tennessee in the 1950's. Eventually the city fathers decided to support legalization since prohibition was bad for business. The laws in Davidson county (Nashville) were different: you could buy alcohol in a liquor store, but you could not buy whiskey or cocktails in nightclubs, and the bringing of your own bottle was the practice. I don't know whether it was legal or not, since I was too young then to go to night clubs. This all may seem quaint and archaic to the progressive mind, but it at least lets the local citizenry decide what the morals and practices should be, consistent with the state constitution and the U.S. constitution,e.g. regarding interstate commerce and all that. I think that's better democracy than having the federal big brother decide what to do.
That's also what I believe about the laws regarding the teaching of evolution and "intelligent design": let the locals decide. If you are worried about the children's minds being warped, I suggest that you consider the case of Michael Faraday. He grew up in a very strict sect of Christianity, the Sandimanians, I believe, and continued to practice it in later life. His imagination was not stunted. I contend that his discoveries in electricity and magnetism and electrochemistry have had much more effect on the conditions of your life than Darwin ever did. (That may change in the age of biotechnology and cloning, but if practical progress and money are to be made using the applications of evolutionary theory, then even the intelligent designers and creationists will use it, no matter what they call it.) Schools should teach you how to think, not what to think. That should be up to one's parents and one's culture. The whole argument about evolution and all that is about whether the Christians or the atheists know how the world began and who's more morally correct. If it was only about the
mechanism of the speciation of warm-blooded mammals, then heated debates would occur in scholarly societies, but we wouldn't have the kind of culture wars as now, but different ones.
In matters of the physical world, short-range order, not long-range order, permits fluidity with a variety of properties. Perfect anarchy, e.g. an ideal gas, is bland and doesn't lead to anything very novel in the physical world. Anarchy is unstable and leads inevitably to the most rigid long-range order in the social world. Long live order in the local community, providing one is free to leave if one doesn't like it, and one even has a better chance of changing the rules locally than counting on changing the big parties. Long live variety and natural selection in the country at large.
A caveat: The gauge of railway tracks needs to be standardized, and the rules of air and sea navigation and the rules of the sealanes and airways need to be standardized. So, some long-range order is needed, for stability and safety. I don't think that standardization of the rules of the consumption of alcohol, marijuana, etc. etc. need to follow the same pattern.
A caution: If my view were to prevail, then you might have to move to the Netherlands or to Oregon to find the locale or choice, regarding marijuana.
I look forward to a spirited rejoinder from you, Wally.
Yours truly,
DOW
# posted by 
: 9:34 AM
: 9:34 AM
I live in the Netherlands where Marijuana is de-criminalized and you can purchase it over the counter in small coffee shops just as you describe. We don't have the problems that you do associated with Marijuna, teen pregnancy or with drugs in general. Young people do not use Marijuna as they do in the United States. Probably because it is not something that they have to rebel against. Let's face it teenagers instinctively rebel! It is part of their development to rebel. The Netherlands has found a way to make Marijuna less attractive, in a way, by making it available. AND the country doesn''t have to worry about arressting, prosecuting, and jailing offenders. Many of the individuals that you find in coffee shops are from other countries. Just ask an American coming to Holland. For many of them the first stop is a "Coffee Shop". No alcoholic beverages are allowed to be sold in these bussiness places. No mixing of drugs. You rarely hear of other drugs being consumed. And I believe the percentage of hard core "drugies" are present in every society. They are drawn to those drugs. With this system you also skip any possibility of getting into any harder drugs. Why? Because other drugs such as alcohol, cocaine etc. may not be sold there under law. It works here. Perhaps the United States should give it a go. And collect tax revenue in the process.
# posted by : 1:59 AM
: 1:59 AM
Dear Cocobear, glad to have you on our side. And DOW, I am pleased to learn we agree that the current marijuana laws ought be changed. It appears that our disagreement concerns how that might best be done. I would proceed on a Federal level, you would lay your bets on a local approach permitting each community to deal with the problem according to local traditions as we did with alcohol back in the 30s.
The Federal approach would end with a unified national procedure to deal with the problematical aspects of marijuana. Handling the material, its production, marketing, and limitations on a state or county level would produce an unpredictable patchwork. I think that in either case people would find reasons for dissatisfaction. Here in South Carolina, alcohol consumption is controlled by a patchwork of state and local ordinances. State laws seem to control the how spirits are sold having only recently changed the law to allow bars to stop using one ounce bottles. Local laws seem to control the when alcohol is served. Thus in cities like Greenville the city fathers allow for sales in some venues on Sundays. In smaller towns around the state, Sunday is blue. Again people are both happy and unhappy with this procedure and a stranger never knows when to ask for a drink. There is a general dissatisfaction with the laws in place.
I think time and technology -tv & the web, cell phones & iPods - have undermined the old virtues of local rule in some ways. It used to be that a village was a village. Today the nation is a village with neighborhoods from sea to shining sea expressing both old and changing ways. Homogenization has been the tendency for a half century. So, I have doubts about the efficacy of local ordinances being able to adequately grapple with the problems of hemp including illegal growing, black marketing, and the crime that arises from any kind of prohibition that the locals might attempt.
However, all that being said, I’m willing to try anything that weakens the prohibitive mind set that has attempted to deal with the problem for 70 years with consistent failure. ...anything to take our heads out of the sand.
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The Federal approach would end with a unified national procedure to deal with the problematical aspects of marijuana. Handling the material, its production, marketing, and limitations on a state or county level would produce an unpredictable patchwork. I think that in either case people would find reasons for dissatisfaction. Here in South Carolina, alcohol consumption is controlled by a patchwork of state and local ordinances. State laws seem to control the how spirits are sold having only recently changed the law to allow bars to stop using one ounce bottles. Local laws seem to control the when alcohol is served. Thus in cities like Greenville the city fathers allow for sales in some venues on Sundays. In smaller towns around the state, Sunday is blue. Again people are both happy and unhappy with this procedure and a stranger never knows when to ask for a drink. There is a general dissatisfaction with the laws in place.
I think time and technology -tv & the web, cell phones & iPods - have undermined the old virtues of local rule in some ways. It used to be that a village was a village. Today the nation is a village with neighborhoods from sea to shining sea expressing both old and changing ways. Homogenization has been the tendency for a half century. So, I have doubts about the efficacy of local ordinances being able to adequately grapple with the problems of hemp including illegal growing, black marketing, and the crime that arises from any kind of prohibition that the locals might attempt.
However, all that being said, I’m willing to try anything that weakens the prohibitive mind set that has attempted to deal with the problem for 70 years with consistent failure. ...anything to take our heads out of the sand.
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