Tag: cannabis

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free trade & free markets general freedom nannyism national politics & policies tax policy

Pass/​Fail/​Pass

November 2015 vote, Washington, Ohio, marijuana, legalization, illustration

While the Ohio measure to legalize marijuana did not pass, this week, the Washington State measure to wrest tax limitations out of a recalcitrant legislature did indeed succeed, with a 54 percent win.

Win some, lose some.

But in both these cases, there is some evidence for a general smartening up of the voting public.

With Ohio’s Measure 103, the support for cannabis legalization, a few weeks before Election Day, seemed strong. But the more voters looked at the measure, the more they caught a whiff of stink — and it wasn’t skunk weed. It was crony capitalism and insider favoritism. So, while a solid majority reasonably favors legalization — even in Ohio — it strikes most reasonable people that the measure’s secondary provision of setting up a monopolistic/​oligopolistic production cartel is as anti-freedom as the legalizations is pro.

Smart folks saw through the proposal. Cannabis legalization is proceeding, state by state. Better results for legalization next time?

Perhaps, provided a better measure is offered.

Washington’s I‑1366, on the other hand, had several levels to it, too, but they worked together. Voters seeking a constitutional tax limit, got it — or, if the legislature balks at delivering it as a future referendum (as the measure instructs) then the initiative’s main feature would kick in and the sales tax would be lowered. Low-​tax voters get low taxes either way, legislature cooperating or resisting.

As I’ve explained some time back, repeated legislative betrayal had forced Evergreen State super-​activist Tim Eyman to concoct this rather clever ploy.

In both Ohio and Washington, what voters voted against was against politics-​as-​usual — and that is good, no?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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November 2015 vote, Washington, Ohio, marijuana, legalization, illustration

 

Categories
crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom tax policy

Gold Leaf

cannabis, marijuana, legalization, tax, taxes, federal, Colorado, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common sense

The experiment in legalized marijuana begun by citizens in the states of Washington and Colorado has, from the beginning, faced a huge obstacle: marijuana is still illegal, federally. State nullification of federal law is not merely “problematic,” it’s hard to “get away with.”

Take Colorado’s experience. The Centennial State, which has made the swiftest and most extensive progress regarding marijuana retail sales, has come up to an inevitable problem with the federal government.

Over banking.

Interesting Reason reporting tells us that “Marijuana-​related businesses in Colorado are so profitable that the government doesn’t know what to do with all of the tax revenue they’re generating. But business owners face a more immediate problem: Where to stash their own profits when banks won’t take it.”

Congress has been very active making banking less and less private and less and less free for decades now, in part because of the War on Drugs. Existing banks refused to take new cannabis clients.

So a new credit union was formed, to handle the cash.

And now, NBC News tells us, our central bank, the Federal Reserve (dubbed by NBC “the guardian of the U.S. banking system”), said “that it doesn’t intend to accept a penny connected to the sale of pot because the drug remains illegal under federal law.” Which makes modern banking difficult, even for a credit union, apparently.

What are “weed” businesses to do … other than what they are doing, hiring security guards for all the cash?

Maybe Bitcoin will step in. Or old gold-​warehouse banking, as was not unheard of even in the 19th century.

Or, maybe, the federal government will cease its over-reach?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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cannabis, marijuana, legalization, tax, taxes, federal, Colorado, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common sense

 

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responsibility

Bong Hits, Car Misses

Two social developments are about to collide — for our good?

First up, the relaxing of the Drug War approach, at least against marijuana use.

The Drug War didn’t work. Increased drug use, even in prisons, suggests there was something fundamentally wrong with the strategy.

With medical marijuana legalized in 19 states, and near-​complete decriminalization in Washington and Colorado, we will see what happens when the black market is cut out of the social picture. Will people become less responsible? More? Will there be little change?

The worst thing about drug use is incitement to violence; the second worst thing is decreasing personal responsibility, perhaps especially relating to automobile usage. Marijuana’s violence-​promotion seems completely a factor of the black market. But, like alcohol mis-​use, marijuana imbibing can impair motor functions, and lead to traffic accidents, even fatal ones. That’s quite bad.

How to control this?

Well, Washington State’s decriminalization law, I‑502, had built in a THC indicator for inebriation: the “five nanogram rule.” Alas, evidence suggests it’s, well, the wrong number. Too extreme, too picky, too low, as Jacob Sullum reports at Reason.

Obviously, how to incentivize good driving and responsible drug use, and dis-​incentivize reckless driving and drug abuse, will continue to be a problem.

Still, a second social development may provide a long-​term alleviation of the problem: driverless cars. The successes of the Google self-​driving prototypes, and the legal preparation for this, may soon provide a real and safe alternative to inebriates driving around helter skelter.

Progress comes in unexpected ways.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Monopoly Phony

Why is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie against profit?

You expect such an idea from a leftist. The big man is no leftist.

Christie’s anti-​profit bias came up within a long, rambling answer to the subject of a recent bill in the New Jersey legislature to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. He’s against it. But he’s been for “medical” marijuana. Ed Krayewski of Reason quotes the governor, who insists that legal cannabis distribution “be a hospital-​based program, that way the profit motive is drained out a lot from it.”

I get his logic. He doesn’t want recreational use, but realizes there are legitimate medical uses. To allow the latter but discourage the former, he wants to monopolize the sale of the drug.

It’s the old “monopoly” idea leveraged to discourage over-​use. Post-​Prohibition, many states set up liquor control boards and sold liquor in state-​owned or state-​franchised stores. My state, Virginia, still does. They raised prices on the product, and made it harder to get. More monopoly, higher cost, less product.

But turn the subject on its head.

We want medicine to be cheaper. More accessible and more efficiently delivered.

So why do states limit the setting up of hospitals with hospital boards? Why the prescription system? Why, even, medical licensing? After all, quality controls can be imposed other ways.

Modern medicine has been subjected to monopolistic practices and cartelizing regulations for years. Decades. A century.

Such intervention limits supply and availability, and increases costs.

I suspect that Gov. Christie hasn’t really thought his position all the way through.

(He might be high on government.)

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment

Let Jeff Mizanskey Go

Commuting unjust sentences is the least that should be done for convicted non-​criminals like Jeff Mizanskey, guilty of peaceful offenses in the War on Drugs. The man’s heinous crime? Abetting a friend’s purchase of marijuana. For this, Mizanskey was sentenced to life without parole — more than 20 years ago.

Because Mizanskey had been caught with pot before, prosecutors designated him a “prior and persistent offender,” and sought the most draconian penalty possible. For not doing anything to anybody.

Repeated appeals of his sentence have availed him naught.

His son Chris and his attorney Tony Nenninger have been asking Missouri Governor Jay Nixon for clemency. In his letter to the governor, Nenninger observes that his client seems to be alone in Missouri in serving a life sentence “for non-​violent cannabis-​only offenses.”

Nenninger’s appeal for donations is accessible via the website of Show-​Me Cannabis, an organization that fights to legalize marijuana in Missouri and elsewhere, and which has been helping to publicize the cause. Show-​Me Cannibis explains on its justice-​for-​Jeff page: “Many prisoners make these applications, and it is rare that a case gets enough of a governor’s attention to be seriously considered. This is why it’s so important you speak out!”

Since I disagree with 1,111 out of every 1,112 Obama policies, perhaps I should note here that one good thing the president has been doing, recently, is using his power more often to commute outrageous sentences. It’s a start.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture too much government

What’re They Smokin’?

We live in strange times. The “nanny state” mentality is ramping up into overdrive just as the War on Drugs hits the rock of enlightened public opinion.

And nothing shows this to stranger effect than the contrast between the continuing success of the anti-​tobacco movement while marijuana liberalization proceeds apace.

As “medical marijuana” and even decriminalized recreational marijuana use seem to be gaining ground, the whole “smoking in public” thing has become more draconian.

For years now, state legislatures and town councils and even voting populations have been cracking down on smoking tobacco in public, despite the very shaky science regarding second-​hand smoke.

And now the city council of San Rafael, California, has voted — unanimously — to ban residents of apartments, condos, duplexes, and multi-​family houses from smoking cigarettes and other “tobacco products” inside their homes.

This American Cancer Association-​approved legislation is quite intrusive. And one of the writers of the law boasted how little it matters to her who owns what property: “It doesn’t matter if its owner-​occupied or renter-​occupied,” she said. “We didn’t want to discriminate.”

And yet, contrasted with the cannabis liberalization movement — with medical marijuana legal (in some sense) statewide — there is discrimination here: in favor of the “weed” and against the “leaf.”

Perhaps history repeats itself. The war against cannabis began as the war on alcohol ended, with the repeal of the 18th Amendment. We could be we witnessing, now, another weird and inconsistent trade-​off of paranoid prohibitions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.