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RT has been doing a great job of covering the brewing international crisis in Latin America caused by antiquated US drug policy, something that our media has virtually ignored. Last night Alyona Minkovski had FDL’s Michael Whitney on to discuss the Just Say Now campaign, following up a recent appearance by SSDP’s Executive Director Aaron Houston.
Support for ending prohibition is definitely generational — a recent Pew poll found that 58% of those 18-29 were in favor of legalization. They also found that Independents were slightly more in favor than Democrats (though within the margin of error):
| Group | Yes | No | DK |
| 18-29 | 58 | 39 | 4 |
| 30-49 | 42 | 53 | 5 |
| 50-64 | 40 | 49 | 11 |
| 65+ | 22 | 69 | 8 |
| Republican | 24 | 71 | 6 |
| Democrat | 48 | 47 | 5 |
| Independent | 49 | 44 | 8 |
Looking at those numbers, it’s no surprise that ambitious politicans like Gary Johnson who are trying to build a national constituency are making a play for young voters by supporting legalization.
The bigger surprise, as Peter Guither says, is that the antics of Obama’s drug czar R. Gil Kerlikowske “just keep looking more pathetic every day.” Kerlikowske recently brushed off calls by Felipe Calderon and Vicente Fox to open the debate about legalization as a way to address the drug cartel violence that has killed 28,000 people in the past four years, saying that “drug legalization is a ‘non-starter’ in the Obama administration.”
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so, Mr Kerlikowske, would the VA’s relaxation on Medical Marijuana rules and the TSA’s relaxation of inter state carry rules be ‘semi-starters’ ?
shaking my head at their continuing (and apparently escalating) ineptitude
thanks Michael Whitney – clear, fact packed performance!
Texans, support The Texas State Medical Use of Marijuana Act!
The Obama Administration is the non-starter here, and proving it every day in new ways.
Very nicely done, Michael.
More, please.
Nicely done, Michael.
Any chance Kerlikowske will have the reins yanked back some time soon?
Support for the Obama administration is also a ‘non-starter’.
Thanks Michael. Nice job.
Not likely. That’s pretty much what Obama said himself when asked about it.
It’s disappointing that my age group (50-64) does not show more support. What happened to those 400,000 at Woodstock? They were all stoned, which is why there was no violence.
Unfortunately, logic often has no impact on policy, especially when fear-mongering and demagoguery are available.
thanks cbl! kerli is going to be increasingly isolated. but it’s his job. the drug czar has to fight legalization at all costs, even if it means lying:
http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/drug-czar-required/
@teddy, newton, oldnslow – thanks so much!
Yeah like McCain and Palin would have been so much better. Seriously aren’t you guys late for a Nader meeting or something?
Legal pot is a good idea but it certainly will not end border violence. The drug lords make most of their money in non-pot, higher end products.
We have been hunted into near extinction. Who do you think is filling up those jails? They are not all young black men, there are lots of other people in there too.
It is all about religion, and religious prejudice. I found a petition. Please do not criticize the spelling, just sign it and pass it on to all your friends. Thank you.
Petition 2 Recognize Our Religion (thc-ministries)
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Recognize-Cannais-Sacrament-Religon/
Sincerely,
Reverend Unruh
THC Ministry
Legalizing all drugs is a very bad idea. Just legalize the non addictive ones….pot and acid for starters.
Do you have a take on the actual issue?
Are you arguing the facts?
That may be true but we have to start somewhere. Our kids are going to jail primarily because of pot, not heroin.
That’s not true – cartels get most of the profits (70%) from the sale of marijuana. That’s according to Arizona officials who testified to Congress last year about this very issue.
I notice there’s a bump up in anti-pot feeling among the 30-59 group. That’s the generation that came of age during Reagan’s “Just Say No” era; plus they’re also in their prime parenting years. There’s nothing like having kids to turn daredevils into overly cautious types.
I had a Realtor tell me recently the Mexicans were going to be importing a lot of that once pot was legalized.
I thought, oh boy, a hot shooting war coming to a town near me. The thought is very depressing, but I don’t believe it. I think legalizing pot will decrease violence.
That is why the control argument is so important.
Once pot is controlled like alcohol, it will actually be harder for kids to get. We can use cigarettes as an example, this is a fact based argument. I am not just making it up like they do with their arguments on the other side.
The topic is lealizing pot. The question to Kerlikowske was about pot. I never mentioned any particular drug. I am not now nor have I ever been an advocate of legalizing heroin.
Sorry Lurk. Won’t happen again.
I can’t wait for the last boomer to die so we can have sensible policies and gay people can plan to get hitched and then wait. (the myth of the enlightened generation) i feel kinda bad for gil though- he’s the only cop/drug czar in the country that’s scared of bam or DOJ. and i’m so high right now I almost took a bite of my terror baby. it was next to the scone.
Actually, the other stuff takes up less space and is easier to transport via means that don’t elicit suspicion. One favored means of entry for cocaine is via diplomatic pouch.
Right now most Mexican peasants can barely afford food, thanks to NAFTA. Nope, the big drug market is and will remain in the US.
The idea between marijuana and border violence is that the cartels fuel their war that’s left 28,000 dead through the sale of marijuana. They get 70% of their profits from pot, and use that money to buy guns and harder drugs.
You legalize pot and you cut off their flow of money by a huge amount. They don’t have the money to finance their huge operations anymore.
Right now, half of the pot consumed in America comes from other countries, including Mexico. That doesn’t include what the cartels grow in our national forests.
By legalizing, you move the demand from the cartels’ weed into the regulated market in the US, where people buy pot grown in the US at high quality than what the cartels can package in bricks or get away with growing in the national forests. There’s no more market for what the cartels are selling, and they dry up.
During prohibition, there were tequila runners across the US-Mexico border, and accompanying violence. While there may be a couple people still trying to run tequila across the border, it’s not leaving 28,000 people dead in just 4 years, that’s for sure.
70% of the cartels profits are from pot.
I wont comment on the wisdom of it happening again
And there’s nothing like parents opposed to turn kids into stoners!
Exactly. There will be far less economic incentive to smuggle it, plus there will be penalties for adding adulterants such as PCP or herbicides.
Mexican cartels have no incentive to import illegally when there’s a legal and regulated market.
Thanks, Michael. You did a great job.
I think you just did.
If you’re eating your terror baby you’re gonna die a lot sooner than the last boomer.
Generalize much?
over at a so called progressive site yesterday -
– gah, a long hard climb ahead
thank you twain. much appreciated.
it probably dilutes the legalization message – but at some point do we get to mention that the majority of arms used in slaughtering 28,000 in four years are coming from the U. S. of A. ?
Interesting. And a lot of people drink too much and drive. And a lot of people take too many aspirin and burn a hole in their stomach lining. You could go on and on. “Some People” = straw man.
As Michael says, 70% of their profits come from marijuana.
The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible — and achieve it, generation after generation.
- Pearl S. Buck
Exactly. An example can be found in the effects of Prohibition on Stearns County in Minnesota. While much of Minnesota was controlled politically by Scandinavian Lutheran immigrants and their descendants, Catholics — Germans, Poles and Irish — dominated in Stearns County (as all the place names beginning with “Saint” indicate), and they not only liked their booze, but used wine in the sacraments. Stearns County residents got through the ravages of the 1920s Farm Depression by selling “Minnesota 13″ moonshine whiskey, but once Prohibition ended, so, by and large, did moonshining in Stearns County.
ironically – that appeared in a post pushing back on some Villager’s fearmongering about how legalization would bring about Big Pot and it’s propaganda arm – the writer completely clueless as to the effect 80years of demonizing propaganda had on his own work
Thankfully, not all.
Mr. Whitney, are the you the Michael Whitney who contributes those great articles on the banking crisis to Counterpunch?
It’s just foolish from a practical point of view. I have read that the cost of having someone in prison in Ca is $25,000 a year. We can no longer afford that. We need to get non-violent prisoners out and not add to the cost for pot.
Blue Texan is upstairs!
John McCain Blames Media for Perception That He’s Flip-Flopped on Everything
nope, that’s Mike Whitney :)
Legalizing pot won’t solve the drug cartel war on the US-Mexico border, but it will go some distance to improving the situation. Mexican politicians, even those from the conservative side of spectrum, are calling for legalizing more than just pot bc the drug cartel situation is out of control. If US citizens think that HewEssAay can send in the troops to “solve” drug cartel violence on the border, then they have proven to be even dumber than I thought.
Legalizing pot in the USA will provide additional taxes for our strapped budgets; it will assist in reducing prisoners in jail for non-violent crimes (who should have never been in jail in the first place), which will also end up saving taxpayer dollars for more useful things, like public safety (for ex).
And finally, the hippies of the Woodstock era are still around and many support legalizing pot. It’s all the boomers who used to be Young Republicans who continue to be such Debbie Downers to this very day (only partially snark, mostly true).
Good post; thanks.
Not quite. The 65+ cohort opposes legalizing pot overwhelmingly (3 to 1 against, only 22% support it).
The Summer of Love (1967) bore little fruit. The harvest’s done, and no birds sing (Keats).
California citizens can register to vote at
h t t p s://w w w .sos.ca.gov/nvrc/fedform/
Just take the spaces out of the h t t p s:// w w w part in order to activate the URL. The link will take you to a voter registration form that you can print and mail.
California citizens can vote by mail:
h t t p://w w w .sos.ca.gov/elections/vote-by-mail/pdf/fill-in-vote-by-mail-app-instruct.pdf
Read about voting while in college in California:
http://www.brennancenter.org/studentvoting/states/california
To that 11% undecided in my age group:
I’ve asked myself, “If my child or grandchild got a little off track and got caught with a little marijuana, would I want him or her to go to jail, lose their college financial aid, spend a few days locked up with the sexual predators…?” Or would I rather have the chance to help them work through it WITHOUT a criminal record?
California citizens can register to vote at
https://www.sos.ca.gov/nvrc/fedform/
Does Obama actually think real Democrats are gonna support him in ’12?
Sure, most will probably vote for him – after supporting his opponent in the most bruising primary we can manage. But donate money? Phone bank? Knock on doors? You gotta be kidding. I wouldn’t even put a freakin sign in the yard.
I voted for John Anderson in 1980 – after Carter broke his promise to seriously push for mj legalization (and refused to debate Ted Kennedy.) We got Reagan. I’ve always regretted that. OTOH, when asked what he had learned by his defeat (and this is a fairly accurate paraphrase, I heard him say it) “I learned one thing, you can’t win re-election as a Democrat without the left wing of the party.”
Next election will be another one of those lessons that the “New Republicans” (now calling themselves Democratic officeholders) will have to quickly forget in order to continue to tell the left to go piss up a rope. Apparently Obama thinks he is more powerful than history. He will learn otherwise.
When he was elected, I was fearful Obama would be assassinated – and probably quickly. Now that worry has virtually vanished. Despite the screams of the right-wing-ignorant (as opposed to their puppetmasters), Obama’s only fundamental change has been a right wing health plan that leaves us all in thrall to the HC robber barons and sets the most corrosive precedent since corporate personhood. I guess a monthly tithe to WalMart is next.
Everything else he has done can be undone with a few executive orders. And the good stuff in the HC plan can be undone by lousy administration. This man will eave no footprints. Who would bother?
Right, to look at the 2007 Lancet Study (British public health and police officials ranked drugs from most to least dangerous based on risks of private harm, public harm and addiction)– both marijuana and LSD are less harmful than tobacco.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/drugs-alcohol/drug-ranking.htm
One can disagree with the 2007 study conclusions, but one drug legalization approach would be a federal law requiring (or “bribing”, 10th Amendment and all that) each state to set up a similar commission of its own to decide which drugs should be legal in each state.