Let me preface this by saying that these come to me because I’m still on the mailing list for the Marijuana Policy Project, with whom I applied for a network admin job about a year ago. I’m not a militant pot smoker, it just pisses me off when I see my tax dollars wasted.
You should sign this petition. Here’s my take on the subject:The misbegotten “War on Drugs” continues to drain our treasury, criminalize huge numbers of non-violent offenders, and shift public attention away from genuine threats to our nation. It is time to stop treating drug use as though it were an active threat to the public. It is not use, but sale, trafficking, and artificially inflated prices of drugs that cause harm to the public.The legalization of marijuana for personal use is the first step toward a sensible national policy on drugs. By shifting enforcement resources away from senseless harassment of recreational drug users, those resources are freed to focus on the aspects of the drug industry that are genuinely harmful.Looking forward, it is easy to foresee a day when domestically produced legal recreational drugs overseen by the FDA will easily supplant the illegal toxic slurry that currently seeps across our borders despite the best efforts of our impossibly tasked law enforcement agencies. When other drugs are taxed and regulated in the same manner as alcohol and tobacco, there will be no incentive for the violent and determined drug traffickers who for so long have profited from our shortsightedness and scapegoating.The white house drug policy page makes much mention of the relationship between drugs and other crimes, but let’s look a little deeper. Violent crime related to drugs is about territory, supply, and money. In a regulated environment, this competition would be supplanted by simple commercial competition between various brands, and instead of being expressed with weapons and violence, it would be expressed with logos and advertisements (as regulated). The many property crimes which can be traced back to drug use, stem from a lack of money to pay for what is perceived as a need. With market based prices, drugs would no longer be so ridiculously inflated in price, and your average drug user could afford to support their habit without resorting to the old standby of theft, or the more desperate instances of violent crime. Even the risk of overdose would be sharply reduced by the simple expedient of accurate potency information on the package, and the use of safe inactive ingredients.Lastly, with the decriminalization of drug use, addicts would face an easier route to treatment and recovery and those capable of truly recreational drug use would be supporting a legitimate and profitable system, rather than a deeply corrupt and criminal one.It’s time to stop being hypocritical. We allow hundreds of drugs from nicotine to oxycontin to be used for purposes ranging from recreation to pain relief to the treatment of myriad illnesses. It’s time to admit that chemical compounds are not made inherently evil simply by their appearance on a government list. It’s time to take the staggering profits of the recreational drug industry out of the pockets of foreign criminals and put them into the pockets of Americans, who would rather be profitably on the right side of the law than at risk on its wrong side. Though I have my doubts about conglomerates like Philip Morris, at least they wouldn’t overtly sell their products to children. There wouldn’t even be a motivation for a personal use grower to wrongly dispose of marijuana. With the profit motive sensibly managed, nearly all of the harmful effects of the drug industry can be mitigated or eliminated altogether.Feel free to copy and paste that when you sign the petition here.
Most of you have probably heard me discuss the Of By For web site I plan to start some day. Well, I finally got off my ass and bought the domains of-by-for.com and of-by-for.org. I’ll explain more about why they will be separate sites with separate aims soon, but I’ve afflicted myself once again with a great many plates to keep spinning, and until I have the time and resources to do something about it, I figure I shouldn’t be making any promises or predictions. I went ahead and bought the domains for 2 years, which gives me some time to get in gear.
