Massachusetts decriminalizes owning pot, but not selling it
In their infinite wisdom, the voters of Massachusetts chose to decriminalize the use of pot, but not the sale of it. You get caught with one ounce or less of the chronic, you lose the pot and get a $100 fine. That’s it. Basically, using pot is now considered on par with parking in a handicapped spot, and I hear it’s even more fun. I have no problem with it being decriminalized, and wish that we’d just drop this ludicrous war on drugs (which is really a war on drug users) and legalize everything. However, by decriminalizing owning one ounce, we basically are saying that we’ll still send poor kids to jail for selling it, but rich guys buying it just get a slap on the wrist. So this will drive up the demand for pot, causing more dealers to get caught and sentenced. I’m sure the people supporting the bill weren’t intending to pass an incredibly regressive resolution, but that’s the thing with unintended consequences.
Come on, Massachusetts. Grow a pair and just legalize pot. The war on drugs is doing far more damage to our society than drugs ever could. You’d have to be taking a lot of them not to see that.
Hi Jon,
A thought occurred to me yesterday. I saw a news report on the cartel war on the border going on in Mexico that Americans spend something like $30 billion dollars on cocaine. (I tried to verify this but internet connection is on a military network and lots of sites are blocked.)
Then I did a search to see what we spend on the War on Drugs. I found http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm. Accordin to it, as of March 30, 2009, state and local expenditures on the War on Drugs is $12 billion dollars. So, annualized that comes out to $48 billion.
Now, I know that cocaine is a lot more expensive than pot. But I can’t find reliable statistics on how much Americans spend on weed. I would guess that there are a lot more marijuana users than coke users. So, let’s say that Americans spend another $30 billion on the chronic.
We’re spending almost $50 billion to try and stop people who then succeed in spending $60 billion on illegal drugs? (And that $60 billion is a very rough figure that is probably light several billion since it doesn’t include even an estimate of how much is spent on heroin, speed or ecstay.)
Lunacy!
Alain