In a society awash in alcohol, he dares to ask the pivotal question:
Why do our laws embrace and celebrate the use of alcohol, an intoxicant that directly contributes to tens of thousands of deaths annually and countless social problems, while stigmatizing and criminalizing the use of cannabis, a substance that is incapable of causing lethal overdose and is associated with far fewer societal costs?
Yes, we know that the Drug Czar is required by law to lie, but given the abysmally low standards set by Gil Kerlikowske’s predecessor we certainly expected better than this.
According to a financial analysis by the Oakland City Auditor, Oakland’s new cannabis business tax will generate an estimated $300,000 in additional annual tax revenue.
Representatives from the Oakland City Council, the California Nurses Association, and the dispensary community publicly advocated for the new tax, which had no formal opposition.
History shows that mood governs society’s tolerance for recreational drugs. A rising social mood produces prohibition of substances such as alcohol and marijuana; a falling mood produces tolerance and relaxed regulation. In the case of alcohol, the path from prohibition to decriminalization became littered with corruption and violence as the government waged a failed war on traffickers.
About 350 people signed up to testify at the Colorado Board of Health’s meeting today about proposed changes to the state’s medical-marijuana laws.
The most controversial of those planned changes would effectively shut down medical-marijuana dispensaries and could potentially cut off access to the drug for some of the 7,630 Coloradans registered as patients who can legally use marijuana.
A New York Times article on Sunday discussed the debate over whether more and more potent types of cannabis affect the levels of addiction to the drug. This particular issue has become part of the larger debate over whether marijuana should be legalized or decriminalized.
During a time of immense cannabis law reforms and major shifts in public opinion in favor of such, emerges now a throwback to the dark ages of America’s war on some drugs from the 1980s: The Congressional Anti-Cannabis Caucus.
I took the call and it was in fact Mr. Cronkite, who wanted to talk about his concerns regarding America’s so-called ‘war on drugs’. We talked for about half an hour and he asked me to fax him some data and/or reports to support some of the information I’d related to him regarding arrest rates, racial disparity and I think the efficacy of medical cannabis.