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posted 03/07/11 11:05 AM | updated 03/07/11 11:05 AM
Featured Post! | Views: 0 | Comments : 8 | Politics

It's High Time, Seattle Times Repeats, for Marijuana Legalization

By Michael van Baker
Editor
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Back in February, the Seattle Times editorial board decided to come out in favor of the legalization of marijuana, and two days later they got a call from Gil Kerlikowske, current U.S. "drug czar" and former Seattle police chief, asking for a meeting. Bruce Ramsey says the visit, which happened last Friday, was cordial and laid back. 

In another Times story, though, Kerlikowske didn't leave much doubt where he stood on the issue: "If legalization is a way to fund the country and states and cities, I think we're making a significant mistake when we think it's just a benign drug." He also alluded to a public backlash against medical marijuana. Previous SPD chief Norm Stamper, an advocate of legalization, popped up to say that Kerlikowske was "being less than honest with us, but that's in his job description."

Legalization, despite the apparent failure of Mary Lou Dickerson's bill, H.B. 1550, to make it out of committee, remains a hot topic, even at the Times. They get letters, and they also created a Rewind live chat debate, with two pro and two con, and Ryan Blethen moderating. 

Over on the Seattle City Council, ex-cop Tim Burgess says, "on the legalization of marijuana I say 'yes,' it should be legal, regulated and taxed." On his blog he argues that the criminalization of marijuana and the bankrupting policy of mass incarceration are linked. Besides the actual costs of incarcerating millions of people, prison has longer term consequences, argues Burgess:

Those consequences are tied directly to the stigma of being a convicted felon—lower chances of finding a meaningful and family-supporting job, lower chances of finding housing, lower chances of becoming an active participant in our democracy.

He says he gave everyone on the Council a copy of Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. From the sound of things, he won't have to do much persuading. On the Slog, Dominic Holden writes, "Every officeholder at City Hall—from the mayor and city attorney to each member of the Seattle City Council—is now on the record supporting legal pot."

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marijuana law
I think it's time people took a stand for the legalization of marijuana. Too many good people are being imprisoned by this stupid law. Too much time is spent on breaking lives and families apart when it could be spent on much more serious drug users. Smokers of pot don't rob or kill, you never hear of any of them being violent. My opinion is that the govt hasn't quite worked out how to get their hands on all the taxes and income of it, so they are trying to hold off as long as they can from legalizing it. Go after something serious guys and stop tormenting the people who need this herb
Comment by Deava
3 days ago
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Do Not Legalize it, decriminalize it.
Most people think that legalization of pot would make it cheaper somehow. They talk about how taxes on pot would fill in our state coffers. If the current taxes on cigarettes are high what do you think the taxes on pot would be? How much pot would you sell per person per week? How would you stop access to juveniles? It is one thing for an adult to waste their life away smoking in their parent's basement vs juveniles still burglarizing to get enough money to buy pot. I don't want to see potheads toking out in public or on the road in a car. For all the blather about medical marijuana NONE of it has been proven to work any better than the prescribed drugs one can take for the various "ailments" people suffer from. If you want to go through life stoned, fine, let's make it a misdemeanor so you won't go to jail for having a personal stash. Legalizing it just open up a Pandora's Box of problems.
Comment by Buzzsaw
3 days ago
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mj
Prohibition is the evil. The only thing that evil needs to exist is for good people to ignore it. Given the evidence it seems quite clear that the continued prohibition of marijuana serves only to alienate a vast portion of our population against our government. People are tired of one choice to recreate with. Years of living with the alcohol monopoly and it's resulting toxicity, violence, domestic abuse, black outs, vomiting, stumbling, and slurred speech is no longer what a large segment of America wants anymore. They want a choice. A safer choice. One that won't kill them if they happen to use to much. Anyway marijuana is compared to alcohol, marijuana seems to be the safer of the two. Maybe if mj were to be legalized millions of people would give up the booze? Gasp...could that be the reason pot stays illegal even in light of current science that pretty much says the government is full of feces in it's continued efforts to demonize marijuana. "People get ready, for there's a train a comin". Politicians who choose to ignore that train may find themselves a few votes short on election day. Fear, lies and intimidation are tools of the ignorant and we, the internet generation, are not fools. We know the truth and truth is a powerful thing as America is about to see.
Comment by denbee
3 days ago
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RE: mj
denbee -

I'm in complete agreement with your first point. Having a law that everyone feels free to ignore is a very bad thing. That leads to all kinds of other anti-social behavior.

Which leads us to 2 choices: let people imbibe, or enforce the law rigorously. I'm for the former - full legalization, and the latter seems insane. Our current yeah-but model is arguable worse than strong enforcement in the long run.
Comment by bilco
3 days ago
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RE: mj
Someone, I forget who, wrote (or said), "Laws that cannot be enforced undermine the integrity of the rule of law." Or something like that. In general, the consensual, adult use and/or sale of sex and drugs (including marijuana, nicotine, alcohol, & caffeine) seem to fall under this rubric. What I don't understand is why this is not a "conservative" POV. Baffling.
Comment by Constance Lambson
3 days ago
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RE: mj
& it turns out to be from St. Augustine. I knew I like that man.
Comment by Constance Lambson
3 days ago
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It's Prohibition versus the economy
Alcohol prohibition in the US run from 1919 to 1933 - Now google 'The Great Wall Street Crash' and see when that happened!

During alcohol prohibition, all profits went to enrich thugs and criminals. Young men died every day on inner-city streets while battling over turf. A fortune was wasted on enforcement that could have gone on education etc. On top of the budget-busting prosecution and incarceration costs, billions in taxes were lost. Finally the economy collapsed. Sound familiar?

http://1929crash.com/

China has recently been in negotiation with a number of countries, asking them to replace the Dollar with the Chinese Yuan as their reserve currency. This, when it happens, will remove the Federal Government's ability to keep printing cash to cover the trillions it costs to fund prohibition. It’ll mean true freedom but the transition period may well bring consequences that are far more horrific than a slasher movie. -- It never had to be this way; we should have learned our lesson from studying the mayhem that alcohol prohibition wreaked on us.

We all have our victories and defeats as regards fear, but most of us strive not to let fear rule our hearts or our minds. Being free means being free to live and love as if death and fear had no power over us. Freedom also means that we have an ethical and moral responsibility to expose blind hate, lies and ignorance by shining eternal light, truth and love, sending such dark forces fleeing to the shadows from whence they came.

We explore outer space with various forms of space craft, but many choose to explore inner space via nature's abundant chemistry - an infinite journey into the heart of God. Whatever, we are here to explore this glorious universe. The Prohibitionist's brand of hateful, choking pseudo-Conservatism is the antithesis of all that. Like a lion who cannot grasp that he can do more than walk in a circle the size of the cage he's recently been freed from, the prohibitionist is incapable of exploration beyond the boundaries of his own fear, prejudice and loathing. We are all free to choose how we walk our own path, but when we choose to go beyond this by supporting drug-war demagoguery, to the point of even threatening others with imprisonment and physical violence, we loose the right to expect any form of respect from the once free and prosperous society that we are helping to totally destroy.

Thanks to prohibition we're about to lose all semblance of that once ordered, prosperous and safe society. Myself, along with many others, have been debating prohibitionists on this for many years. We have shown what destruction prohibition has wrought on all the civil institutions of this once great nation, -we've always provided facts and statistics - they, the prohibitionists, have countered with either lies, personal abuse or even serious threats of violence.

Ending the insanity of drug prohibition by legalized regulation, respecting the rights of the responsible users and focusing on addiction as a sickness, like we do with alcohol and tobacco, may save what remains of our economy and civil institutions along with countless lives and livelihoods. Prohibition continues unabated for shameful political reasons. It cannot, and never will, reduce drug use or addiction.

Prohibition has permanently scarred our national character as well as our individual psyches. Our national policies and cultural practices have become pervaded by the fascistic, prohibitionist mind-set which has turned our domestic police force into a bunch of paramilitary thugs who often commit extra-judicial beatings and executions while running roughshod over our rights in order to "protect us from ourselves".

When we eventually manage to put the horrors of this toxic moronothon behind us, we'll need to engage in some very deep and honest soul-searching as to what we want to be as a nation. Many of our freedoms have been severely circumscribed or lost altogether, our economy has been trashed and our international reputation for being "free and fair" has been dragged through a putrid sewer by vicious narrow-minded drug warrior zealots who are ignorant of abstract concepts such as truth, justice and decency. We'll need to make sure that such a catastrophe is never ever repeated. This may mean that public hearings or tribunals will be held where those who have been the instigators and cheerleaders of this abomination will have to answer for their serious crimes against our once prosperous and proud nation.

Each day you remain silent, you help to destroy the Constitution, fill the prisons with our children, and empower terrorists and criminals worldwide while wasting hundreds of billions of your own tax dollars. Prohibition bears many strong and startling similarities to Torquemada­'s inquisition­, it's supporters are servants of tyranny and hate. If you're aware of but not enraged by it's shear waste and cruel atrocities then both your heart and soul must surely be dead.

Prohibition engendered black market profits are obscenely huge. Remove this and you remove the ability to bribe or threaten any government official or even whole governments. The argument that legalized regulation won't severely cripple organized crime is truly bizarre. Of course, the bad guys won't just disappear, but if you severely diminish their income, you also severely diminish their power. The proceeds from theft, extortion, pirated goods etc. are a drop in the ocean compared to what can be earned by selling prohibited/unregulated drugs in a black market estimated to be worth 400,000 million dollars. Without the lure and power of so much easy capital, it's also very unlikely that new criminal enterprises will ever fill the void left by those you successfully disrupt or entirely eradicate.

Millions of fearless North Africans have recently shown us that recognizing oppression also carries the weight of responsibility to act upon and oppose that oppression. Prohibition is a vicious anti-constitutional assault on ALL American citizens by a criminally insane and dysfunctional government, which left unchallenged will end with the destruction of the entire nation.

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country… Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
– Abraham Lincoln, November 12, 1864

"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government…"
- The Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776
Comment by malcolm kyle
3 days ago
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Jesus said...
Jesus said to do unto others as we would have them to do unto us. None of us would want our child thrown in jail with the sexual predators for using a little marijuana. None of us would want to see our parent's home confiscated and sold by the police for growing a couple of marijuana plants to ease the aches and pains of growing older. It's time to stop putting our own families in jail. It's time to let ordinary Americans grow a little marijuana in their own back yards, and it's nice to see our culture coming to terms with this in a more wholesome fashion. This will go a long way toward putting the criminal drug gangs out of business for good!
Comment by Conservative_Christian
1 day ago
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