Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mises]

...

[Pluto]

Yes, I saw read this in the Journal on the bus this morning. Hopefully, this rhetoric will eventually turn into a policy shift. The Obama admin. says it will leave medical marijuana dispensaries alone, but we'll have to wait and see. Charlie Lynch may well spend 100 years in jail.

[Pluto]

Somewhat related, but Bush's drug guy who I'm sure was doing a heckava job. Turns out he's full of ...

Walters Key Points:

1. Today's marijuana is far stronger -- and thus more dangerous -- than ever before.

2. More people seek drug treatment for pot than all other drugs combined.

3. Nobody is actually in jail for marijuana-related offenses.WHAT!?

4. Consuming cannabis leads to violent behavior and other criminal acts.
/rolls eyes

5. there are now more medical marijuana dispensaries in the city of San Fransisco than there are Starbucks.
Silly.

[mises]

Fun article.

I liked this:

[Kuros]

[Ya-ta Boy]

You didn't find this on Huffington Post, did you, mises?

I think this is what is known as a trial baloon. Float an idea and get an impression of public response. Back off if there is a firestorm of opposition. Now that the knee-jerk law and order types are out of power, probably for a whole generation if the last election was indeed a realigning election, alternative approaches can probably be discussed. It's high time! Some of us have been waiting since '67 for this.

Repugnance is a word that is too little used.

[Cheonmunka]

I think the main problem of drugs, as well as any war-causing resource in the World, is scarcity. If none of these drugs were scarce then anyone who was involved with it would not offend to get it, and no one would control it / make money out of it ...
By taking the illegality out of it you'd find less problems dealing with gangs and thugs and shootings and could get down to business of dealing with the syndromes that come with the actual drug use.

[mises]

How is the right wing dealing with this? What are the big right wing websites these days?

[cdninkorea]

[bacasper]

From Project Censored:

Marijuana Arrests Set New Record

Sources:
Marijuana Policy Project, September 27, 2007
Title: �Marijuana Arrests Set New Record for Fourth Year in a Row�
Author: Bruce Mirken

National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, September 24, 2007
Title: �Marijuana Arrests for Year 2006�829,625 Tops Record High�
Author: Paul Armentano

Student Researchers: Ben Herzfeldt and Caitlyn Ioli

Faculty Advisor: Pat Jackson, PhD

For the fourth year in a row, US marijuana arrests set an all-time record, according to 2006 FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Marijuana arrests in 2006 totaled 829,627, an increase from 786,545 in 2005. At current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every thirty-eight seconds, with marijuana arrests comprising nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. According to Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), over 8 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges during the past decade, while arrests for cocaine and heroine have declined sharply.

The number of arrests in 2006 increased more than 5.5 percent from 2005. Of the 829,627 arrests, 89 percent were for possession, not sale or manufacture. Possession arrests exceeded arrests for all violent crimes combined, as they have for years. The remaining offenders, including those growing for personal or medical use, were charged with sale and/or manufacturing.

A study of New York City marijuana arrests conducted by Queens College, released in April 2008, reports that between 1998 and 2007 the New York police arrested 374,900 people whose most serious crime was the lowest-level misdemeanor marijuana offense. That number is eight times higher than the number of arrests (45,300) from 1988 to 1997. Nearly 90 percent arrested between 1998 and 2007 were male, despite the fact that national studies show marijuana use roughly equal between men and women. And while national surveys show Whites are more likely to use marijuana than Blacks and Latinos, the New York study reported that 83 percent of those arrested were Black or Latino. Blacks accounted for 52 percent of the arrests, Latinos and other people of color accounted for 33 percent, while Whites accounted for only 15 percent.1

Over the years, roughly 30 percent of those arrested nationally have been under the age of twenty. The Midwest accounts for 57 percent of all marijuana-related arrests, while the region with the fewest arrests is the West, with 30 percent. This is possibly a result of the decriminalization of marijuana in western states, such as California, on the state and local level over the past several years.

�Enforcing marijuana prohibition . . . has led to the arrests of nearly 20 million Americans, regardless of the fact that some 94 million Americans acknowledge having used marijuana during their lives,� says St. Pierre.

In the last fifteen years, marijuana arrests have increased 188 percent, while public opinion is increasingly one of tolerance, and self-reported usage is basically unchanged. �The steady escalation of marijuana arrests is happening in direct defiance of public opinion,� according to Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, DC, �Voters in communities all over the country�from Denver to Seattle, from Eureka Springs, Arkansas to Missoula County, Montana�have passed measures saying they don�t want marijuana arrests to be priority. Yet marijuana arrests have set an all-time record for four years running . . .�

Meanwhile, enforcing marijuana laws costs between $10 and $12 billion a year.

Citation

1. Jim Dwyer, �On Arrests, Demographics, and Marijuana,� New York Times, April 30, 2008.

more at link

[Sergio Stefanuto]

Politicians understand very well the blessings that would be brought by doing away with prohibition (alcohol is the ultimate precedent and prohibition creating the very problem it wants to remove is Econ 101). The problem is, there's no incentive for them to end it or even educate the public as to the destruction caused by it (because they depend on the vote of people who are still totally misinformed and socially-conservative about drugs. Politicians will always trade us living under drug wars if it means them keeping their jobs)

Progress is very slow here, because you're not dealing in a normal dialog where good evidence and rationality is king. You're dealing with hysteria instead. No argument is rational enough, no evidence compelling enough, when dealing with the hysterical.

[visitorq]

^ Exactly. The whole thing is so asinine it boggles my mind (and I don't even do drugs)... Just legalise the whole lot of it (or at the very least weed). Then empty out half our prisons, saving us untold billions (more $ spend on jails than universities last I read). Then tax the drugs on par with alcohol and use the proceeds to bailout the goddam economy. Everyone wins.

[bucheon bum]

If us CA voters shoot down all the referendums tomorrow, it'll make legalization here slightly more realistic.

[mises]

[bucheon bum]