Note: This post is dedicated to the memory of Roger "Bones" Ranch a personal friend, and inspiration who passed away earlier this month. We'll miss you old timer, this one is for you.
On November 24, 2010, 77-year-old country music icon Willie Nelson was arrested at a border patrol checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, TX after agents found six ounces of marijuana on his tour bus. This occurred only eleven months after Nelson and his band members were issued citations in the state of North Carolina for possessing moonshine and marijuana, and four years after an incident in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana where authorities seized 1.5 pounds of cannabis, and three ounces of hallucinogenic mushrooms.
For anyone who's chanced across a country music station or any other venue featuring classic Americana music, Willie Nelson is a living legend, and national hero to individuals lobbying for the legalization of marijuana. A lifelong user of cannabis, when arrested in 2006 Nelson's take on the situation puts the mess regarding the prohibited status of marijuana into perspective -
"Both bus drivers were over 50 years old. The other guys were 60 years old, my sister is 75, I'm 73, so it's like they busted an old folks home."
Louisiana police services, paid for with taxpayer monies, expended precious emergency services and resources to accost a bus full of pot-smoking senior citizens, and prosecute them rather than focus those energies on more dangerous offenders. Currently, Nelson is facing up to 180 days in Hudspeth County Jail, if convicted of possession. Yet, should prosecutors actually take the time to convict an old man who has been an unapologetic advocate of the legalization of marijuana for forty years, and someone who is unlikely to cease using the substance? Even better, should we even bother to prosecute anyone who grows, sells, or uses cannabis for recreational or medicinal purposes?
For the past 74 years, the legislative branches of government have embarked on a mission to prosecute and incarcerate people who have committed no crime other than the sale or personal use of a plant. Not to mention the expenditures necessary to enforce said incarceration and prosecution when there are individuals on the street selling far more detrimental substances, and engaging in activities that are a significant threat to the safety of those living in the communities in which they operate. I am especially opposed when, during election season, I have to listen to politicians and political pundits alike decry excess government spending, and champion conservative financial habits while doing slash and burn budgeting to vital community services.
Dan Sullivan, anyone?
Individuals opposed to the legalization of marijuana argue that it is a "gateway drug" to "harder" substances like crystal methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and others. However, to make this argument is to ignore the dangerous and addictive qualities of tobacco and alcohol, or any other legalized substance that has the ability to induce narcotic effects. One needs only to look at the effects of Oxycontin on human physiology to come to this realization. Although, I've yet to see a lobbyist call for the prohibition of an FDA-approved pain medication earning manufacturers billions through the international sale and distribution. Current drug laws prohibiting the sale and distribution of substances that have a profounddetrimental effect on users such as crystal methamphetamine, cocaine, LSD, PCP, heroin, and countless others are necessary and good. It's not hard to see that the use of these chemicals can and will cause addiction and death.
This is true for alcohol and tobacco. The difference is that they're more profitable in regards to sales, management, licensing, and revenue than their more volatile counterparts found on the streets. Marijuana has the same potential as its legalized brethren, especially given its ability to be used in a variety of industrial applications, but it remains illegal because of the myths propagated in the early 1930s before being outlawed in 1937.
When cannabis was classified as a federally prohibited substance, the decision was not based on scientific research, or any other method of standard testing or experimentation. There were no hearings, no government studies, or any other process used to define or identify contraband chemicals. Instead racism, fear, and pseudoscience were the factors used to engender its current status. For example, in 1934 newspapers were publishing headlines stating -
"Marijuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows, and look at a white woman twice."
This, during the height of Jim Crow and miscegenation laws, and when segregation was an accepted social norm. Other myths included black men and women using cannabis to "snare" or "steal" white children, that it was given to assassins prior to completing a hit, and in 1930 Dr. A.E. Fossier claimed in a journal article that marijuana was responsible for violent behavior. A claim put forth at a time when physicians believed menstruation in women was cause for mental infirmity, children's thyroids - which are naturally large - were destroyed with radiation because the size was deemed to be part of a disease process, and lobotomies were used to treat homosexuality and mental illness.
Indeed.
In truth pot is no more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. Overuse can lead to injury from impairment, and respiratory diseases. Like Prohibition, outlawing marijuana has been 100% ineffective in decreasing or eliminating its use, and has become a monetary black hole. According to CaliforniaMarijuanaCard.com, if the government would replace the prohibition system with a regulatory one it would save roughly $7.7 billion in government expenditures geared towards enforcing its illegality, $2.4 billion at the federal level, and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels. Imagine how many programs and services could benefit from those extra monies, and just how much of it could go towards paying off our trillion dollar national debt.
I'm amazed our fiscal conservative counterparts who spend countless hours decrying fiduciary waste, haven't latched onto this egregious waste of taxpayer dollars to incarcerate and prosecute citizens for sale, growth, or usage of pot. Not to mention countless man hours and resources wasted, instead of being used to target more dangerous deviants. Marijuana is legal in certain Canadian provines, and parts of Western Europe. As far as I can tell they haven't experienced an international underground market trading in Caucasian children stolen by individuals of African descent, violent mobs of crazed stoners, or any of the nonsense claimed by supposed "experts" in the 1930s.
That said, given the expense of prosecuting people for using weed, I'm more inclined to have the police spend their time reducing the gang activity here in Anchorage, than busting some hippie in his or her pad for smoking a bong, and contributing to the annual profits of the Hostess company. Pot-smoking-twinkie-eating-pothead vs. homicidal-cap-busting-violent-criminal. Which would you prefer to have in jail?
***
Marijuana Fact and Fiction
http://www.lycaeum.org/paranoia/marijuana/facts/mj-health-mythology.html
Willie Nelson Arrested for Pot Possession
http://culturemap.com/newsdetail/11-27-10-what-a-shocker-willie-nelson-arrested-for-marijuana-possession/
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/willie-nelson-arrested-for-pot-possession-20101127
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/willie-nelson-arrested-marijuana-posession/story?id=12255712
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
http://norml.org/
California Marijuana Card
http://californiamarijuanacard.com/2010/08/legal-cannabis-price-drop-propagandaor-fact-2/
A History of the Vilification of Marijuana
http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal/
U.S. Government Sanctioned Torture of Homosexuals In Mental Institutions (Blog)
http://www.davidmixner.com/2010/07/lgbt-history-the-decade-of-lobotomies-castration-and-institutions.html
On November 24, 2010, 77-year-old country music icon Willie Nelson was arrested at a border patrol checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, TX after agents found six ounces of marijuana on his tour bus. This occurred only eleven months after Nelson and his band members were issued citations in the state of North Carolina for possessing moonshine and marijuana, and four years after an incident in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana where authorities seized 1.5 pounds of cannabis, and three ounces of hallucinogenic mushrooms.
For anyone who's chanced across a country music station or any other venue featuring classic Americana music, Willie Nelson is a living legend, and national hero to individuals lobbying for the legalization of marijuana. A lifelong user of cannabis, when arrested in 2006 Nelson's take on the situation puts the mess regarding the prohibited status of marijuana into perspective -
"Both bus drivers were over 50 years old. The other guys were 60 years old, my sister is 75, I'm 73, so it's like they busted an old folks home."
Louisiana police services, paid for with taxpayer monies, expended precious emergency services and resources to accost a bus full of pot-smoking senior citizens, and prosecute them rather than focus those energies on more dangerous offenders. Currently, Nelson is facing up to 180 days in Hudspeth County Jail, if convicted of possession. Yet, should prosecutors actually take the time to convict an old man who has been an unapologetic advocate of the legalization of marijuana for forty years, and someone who is unlikely to cease using the substance? Even better, should we even bother to prosecute anyone who grows, sells, or uses cannabis for recreational or medicinal purposes?
For the past 74 years, the legislative branches of government have embarked on a mission to prosecute and incarcerate people who have committed no crime other than the sale or personal use of a plant. Not to mention the expenditures necessary to enforce said incarceration and prosecution when there are individuals on the street selling far more detrimental substances, and engaging in activities that are a significant threat to the safety of those living in the communities in which they operate. I am especially opposed when, during election season, I have to listen to politicians and political pundits alike decry excess government spending, and champion conservative financial habits while doing slash and burn budgeting to vital community services.
Dan Sullivan, anyone?
Individuals opposed to the legalization of marijuana argue that it is a "gateway drug" to "harder" substances like crystal methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and others. However, to make this argument is to ignore the dangerous and addictive qualities of tobacco and alcohol, or any other legalized substance that has the ability to induce narcotic effects. One needs only to look at the effects of Oxycontin on human physiology to come to this realization. Although, I've yet to see a lobbyist call for the prohibition of an FDA-approved pain medication earning manufacturers billions through the international sale and distribution. Current drug laws prohibiting the sale and distribution of substances that have a profounddetrimental effect on users such as crystal methamphetamine, cocaine, LSD, PCP, heroin, and countless others are necessary and good. It's not hard to see that the use of these chemicals can and will cause addiction and death.
This is true for alcohol and tobacco. The difference is that they're more profitable in regards to sales, management, licensing, and revenue than their more volatile counterparts found on the streets. Marijuana has the same potential as its legalized brethren, especially given its ability to be used in a variety of industrial applications, but it remains illegal because of the myths propagated in the early 1930s before being outlawed in 1937.
When cannabis was classified as a federally prohibited substance, the decision was not based on scientific research, or any other method of standard testing or experimentation. There were no hearings, no government studies, or any other process used to define or identify contraband chemicals. Instead racism, fear, and pseudoscience were the factors used to engender its current status. For example, in 1934 newspapers were publishing headlines stating -
"Marijuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows, and look at a white woman twice."
This, during the height of Jim Crow and miscegenation laws, and when segregation was an accepted social norm. Other myths included black men and women using cannabis to "snare" or "steal" white children, that it was given to assassins prior to completing a hit, and in 1930 Dr. A.E. Fossier claimed in a journal article that marijuana was responsible for violent behavior. A claim put forth at a time when physicians believed menstruation in women was cause for mental infirmity, children's thyroids - which are naturally large - were destroyed with radiation because the size was deemed to be part of a disease process, and lobotomies were used to treat homosexuality and mental illness.
Indeed.
In truth pot is no more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. Overuse can lead to injury from impairment, and respiratory diseases. Like Prohibition, outlawing marijuana has been 100% ineffective in decreasing or eliminating its use, and has become a monetary black hole. According to CaliforniaMarijuanaCard.com, if the government would replace the prohibition system with a regulatory one it would save roughly $7.7 billion in government expenditures geared towards enforcing its illegality, $2.4 billion at the federal level, and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels. Imagine how many programs and services could benefit from those extra monies, and just how much of it could go towards paying off our trillion dollar national debt.
I'm amazed our fiscal conservative counterparts who spend countless hours decrying fiduciary waste, haven't latched onto this egregious waste of taxpayer dollars to incarcerate and prosecute citizens for sale, growth, or usage of pot. Not to mention countless man hours and resources wasted, instead of being used to target more dangerous deviants. Marijuana is legal in certain Canadian provines, and parts of Western Europe. As far as I can tell they haven't experienced an international underground market trading in Caucasian children stolen by individuals of African descent, violent mobs of crazed stoners, or any of the nonsense claimed by supposed "experts" in the 1930s.
That said, given the expense of prosecuting people for using weed, I'm more inclined to have the police spend their time reducing the gang activity here in Anchorage, than busting some hippie in his or her pad for smoking a bong, and contributing to the annual profits of the Hostess company. Pot-smoking-twinkie-eating-pothead vs. homicidal-cap-busting-violent-criminal. Which would you prefer to have in jail?
***
Marijuana Fact and Fiction
http://www.lycaeum.org/paranoia/marijuana/facts/mj-health-mythology.html
Willie Nelson Arrested for Pot Possession
http://culturemap.com/newsdetail/11-27-10-what-a-shocker-willie-nelson-arrested-for-marijuana-possession/
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/willie-nelson-arrested-for-pot-possession-20101127
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/willie-nelson-arrested-marijuana-posession/story?id=12255712
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
http://norml.org/
California Marijuana Card
http://californiamarijuanacard.com/2010/08/legal-cannabis-price-drop-propagandaor-fact-2/
A History of the Vilification of Marijuana
http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal/
U.S. Government Sanctioned Torture of Homosexuals In Mental Institutions (Blog)
http://www.davidmixner.com/2010/07/lgbt-history-the-decade-of-lobotomies-castration-and-institutions.html