Damien Johnson makes the case for legalizing the green:
In Missouri, Show-Me Cannabis activist are circulating a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana for in Missouri. As I explain in my August 27th article, 55% of Missouri’s arrest are related to marijuana. These arrest divert law enforcement resources away from more important issues to deal with like murder and rape.
That doesn’t mean that 55% of all arrests in Missouri are for weed only, it’s just that 55% involve weed. Someone popped for a serious violent crime and also weed dealing or possession is counted in this stat as a “weed arrest.”
Johnson quotes the ballot language:
The ballot language reads as follows:
* legalize cannabis (commonly known as marijuana) for individuals 21 years or older;
* make medical cannabis available to individuals with a physician’s recommendation including those under 21 with parental or legal guardian consent and physician supervision;
* create licensing processes for operation of cannabis establishments;
* release individuals incarcerated or on probation or parole for non-violent, cannabis-only offenses which would no longer be illegal and expunge all records related to such offenses; and
* allow the legislature to enact a tax on the retail sale of dried cannabis up to $100 per pound
The CA’s offices in St. Louis and Kansas City are (begin sarcasm) really going to love item number four (end sarcasm), because a lot of people in the can for “non-violent, cannabis-only offenses” are in jail for those because they and the CA pled down all their violent charges in exchange for a guilty plea on the weed and actual hoosegow time for the weed. Like I have said in this space numerous times, there is no human victim in a drug offense that is either too scared to testify or doesn’t want testify for racial solidarity. The CA gets to avoid risky black juries in STL and KC. Releasing those “weed only” convicts would really be releasing a lot of violent criminals.
Point being, next to nobody gets jail or prison time for pot possession alone. You might find the “once in a blue moon” story of a young white man from rural Missouri getting some prison time for possessing weed and that alone, with no other prior charges or rap sheet. But if you dig deep into those kind of narratives, you’ll find out that the young man was a ne’er-do-well, and everyone in the town and county knew it. The judge, jury and prosecutors just want to get rid of a thorn in their side.
There is a paradox in this ballot measure. At law, individuals who are 18, 19 or 20 years old are adults for the purposes of medical treatment. We can’t treat them as fully consenting adults for everything else but as “minors” needing their parents’ permission to get medicinal marijuana.
I think our current drug policy is wacky and in drastic need for reform, mainly because it wrecks the sensible relationship between citizen and state. But this ballot measure is not the answer. I won’t sign to put it on the ballot, and I won’t vote for it if it makes the ballot.
AND…Music.
Decrminalize, make possession a summary offense first, but don’t outright legalize it, then maybe 10 years from now look further into legalizing.
You got it right when you said there are real bad criminals in prison that are there because the only thing the prosecutor could hang on them was the possession charge.
Same thing with some gun regulations — Their sub rosa intent, I’m sure, is to create a web of procedural entanglements so that prosecutors in black cities can use and manipulate against habitual black violent thugs either to snitch on each other or have a fallback “crime.” How many times have you heard about suburban or rural whites being brought up on failure to fill out a piece of paper to purchase a shotgun?
I don’t know much about buying guns other than in West Virginia, of which I am a legal resident, although I do have a residence here in Chicago.
In West Virginia, if I want to buy a guy, it takes about 30 minutes – it’s cash and carry after the background check goes through. I could go across the river to Ohio, but I don’t know if I can walk the same same day.
As far as I know, if I buy a gun from my neighbor, no paperwork needs to be filed, now if this has changed, I am not aware. It isn’t odd to buy so-and-so’s old shotgun or deer rifle after discussing in a bar the night before. A West Virginian would be leery of anyone they do not know trying to sell them a gun (in a bar) or offering to buy one of theirs (unless somebody was vouching for him (i.e. brother-in-law, co-worker, etc).
And I would never use my status to acquire guns for inner city people.
And I would never use my status to acquire guns for inner city people.
This is why I don’t buy the notion that TV and certain politicians and quasi-politician cops peddle about straw purchasers being a big problem. If you’re the non-felon buddy of a felon, and he comes to you asking you to buy him a gun, would you? Would most people in that situation? Not even the average black person in that situation would agree to do that. In fact, it might be MORE likely a black would refuse to do that, because it’s easier to make them think that getting their name “on the grid” as having bought a legal gun would make them more likely to be prosecuted for a “gun crime” of giving a gun to a felon. When we both know that that sort of thing is extremely rarely prosecuted because it’s hard as hell to prove.
I think the most common way that firearms migrate from the legal ecosystem to the illegal ecosystem is residential and business burglaries, and supply chain diversions.
[...] again defends the weed proposal that might be on the ballot next year. Like the last time, he goes down the bullet points of the ballot language, but unlike last time, he further [...]