California: Finally legalizing pot?

POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Sunday, January 19, 2025 19:05
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STORYMARK

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 8:16 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

Pot? Good for chemo and pain. Not addicting and not cancer-causing, but doesn't help you live longer either AFAIK.

Unless you smoke cigs. There was an FDA study a few years back, meant to prove pot was worse than cigarettes at causing cancer.... and it turned out to (seemingly, at least) counteract the carcinogenic effect of the tobacco.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

STORYMARK

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 8:19 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:

What about all the people who are in California jails for pot possession/ sale ? It sure would be a shame to keep them there for something that everyone else would now be able to do. Maybe it would be good to release them and get that much extra budget benefit out of it.

I can see the prisons now - empty echoing halls as the 'pot people' go free.

One of the biggest opponents of legalization if the Prison Guard's union. They want as many folk incarcerated as possible.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

CAVALIER

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 8:19 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
I actually heard a conservative economist admit that the healthcare reform bill absolutely WILL save lives, "but at what cost?" - his words, not mine.

Well in principle, that could be a perfectly sensible point. If it costs a billion dollars per life, it would be wise to find cheaper ways to save lives.

Any politician wjho says "no cost is too great" should be thrown out of office on the spot.

SIGNYM

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 9:10 PM

Heh, if it was legal I'd grow it. Not 'cause I toke, but just because.

FREMDFIRMA

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 11:11 PM

I have a serious issue with taxing/demonization and the like, regarding tobacco, and if they do legalize and tax to death, you know what'll happen ?

Nothing will change.

By driving the price out of range, folk will go right back to the illegal street dealers, and THEN the fight will be over tax stamps instead of the legality of product, but with all the same bullshit.

I know this all too well, since the local steet dealers in detroit have added bulk tobacco to their product list in light of a 1300% Tax increase (that is NOT a typo) on it, and some have recently added common medications for the elderly smuggled in from Canada as well.

What's it say when you have to visit the dope man so you can afford grammas blood pressure medication ?

The modern War on (some) Drugs seems to be more about eliminating Big Pharmas competition and justifying huge budgets for Authoritarian jackboot mall ninjas to act like the stormtroopers they always wanted to be instead of any actual benefit to anyone.

-F

SIGNYM

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 11:18 PM

The nice thing about tobacco, pot, and alcohol is that anyone with an enterprising spirit can grow their own... for personal use, of course.

KWICKO

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 11:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

I have a serious issue with taxing/demonization and the like, regarding tobacco, and if they do legalize and tax to death, you know what'll happen ?

Nothing will change.

By driving the price out of range, folk will go right back to the illegal street dealers, and THEN the fight will be over tax stamps instead of the legality of product, but with all the same bullshit.

I know this all too well, since the local steet dealers in detroit have added bulk tobacco to their product list in light of a 1300% Tax increase (that is NOT a typo) on it, and some have recently added common medications for the elderly smuggled in from Canada as well.

What's it say when you have to visit the dope man so you can afford grammas blood pressure medication ?

The modern War on (some) Drugs seems to be more about eliminating Big Pharmas competition and justifying huge budgets for Authoritarian jackboot mall ninjas to act like the stormtroopers they always wanted to be instead of any actual benefit to anyone.

-F

Good point. Hadn't thought about it like that.

And yeah, that big Lilly heist a couple weeks back wasn't because someone needed their meds - it was because some group decided there was more profit in knocking off the manufacturers than in dicking around with street-level hustling of illegal drugs. So because Big Pharma has driven up the prices, a viable black market has sprung up. And it's going to get worse, I'd bet money on that!

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero, Real World Event Discussions

FREMDFIRMA

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 11:53 PM

Nope, not legally.

I can get away with homebrewing Wine, Beer, Mead - but even for personal use, were I to try brewin some Whiskey they'd be all up in my ass quicklike, and even if you do live somewhere you can wrangle through the super expensive pain in the ass legal hoops, then you've still gotta pay that massive tax hit, over and over again.
(ETA: and didn't we recently discuss a bar savaged by the feds over what beers were and were not federally "approved", neh ?)

Same thing with tobacco.

And of course, Pot will get everything you own seized under asset forfeiture.

Prohibition is Prohibition, no matter what you wanna call it, whether it be by Constitutional Amendment, or by abuse of the tax codes, and all too often it's also a religious or other moral minority attempting to inflict it's values wholesale on the american people, many of whom do not share those values, something THIS Government was intended to help prevent, not support.

Gotta remember, you're talkin to someone who's relatives still brew and run illegal moonshine, and who knows that most of the "dangerous" line of bolus was crap, since the Gov was mostly the ones responsible for even that.

Law or no law, COMMERCE CONTINUES.

And legalize-but-tax-silly will accomplish not a damned thing in the end, since the powers that be will see it as another cash cow like they do tobacco, and drive users to underground, untaxed sources - thus cutting off the revenue and getting into the cycle of higher and higher taxes which'll wind up ever more elusive as the short sighted asshats take a hacksaw to the golden goose.

Not that I much care - just pointin out the blinding, glaring flaw in that great grand plan is all.

-F

RUE

Tuesday, March 30, 2010 11:55 PM

There is a thriving underground economy in buying tobacco on Indian reservations and hustling it on the qt-retail.

I'm all for modest taxes - the way it is now, sometimes it's just ridiculous. And I'm not a smoker.

(Though I bet it can be modeled with a mathematical function. Taxes DO reduce consumption. At a certain point they become counter-productive due to the increase of illegal sales. I wonder if 'they' do that - derive taxes rationally.)

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

FREMDFIRMA

Wednesday, March 31, 2010 12:01 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
There is a thriving underground economy in buying tobacco on Indian reservations and hustling it on the qt-retail.

Oh you bet!

Laughing Buck (not his real name, native or otherwise) is all too happy to help the white man smoke himself right into a coffin, and screw his government out of the taxes besides!

You'd almost think he was holding a grudge about something.

-F

There always has to be a price.

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