“circuitsmith” you are circuit smith on my self correcting iPad and difficult to get my finger cursor between the syllables on the touch screen. So I get lazy sometimes. Excuse me.
I’m going to combine the affects of both alcohol and tobacco at their worse. The effects of alcohol are cumulative, the effects of pot are immediate and the long term affects of cigarette smoking are deadly including anyone nearby. I’m not arguing for or against, but vote no, as if anyone cares, because the overall implications are so unknown. I really don’t like the money angle and have no respect for that arguement. That line of thinking to me, makes just about any activity with an a profit potential, arguably legal.
I appreciate " jt’s " concern if I read it correctly and am equally concerned about subsidizing healthcare for cigarette smokers and alcoholics. I am in the minority and know it sounds terrible but I feel that forced quarantinment to dry out both smokers and alcoholics is not unreasonable medically but probably unconstitutional in practice.
Methamphetamine is currently the drug celebre in Mississippi and I cannot imagine such a concoction could ever be under consideration for legalization. It seems to often be a Jekyll to Hyde transformation for users and often the users attempt to cook up the junk to support themselves while staying stoned. Houses, mobile homes, and even vans and 18 wheeler trailers have become bombs when Meth labs are put in them. A few down on their luck businessmen have found that they could put themselves back on top making the junk and those who were careful made their fortunes and walked away. But what can law enforcement and the law makers do to stop the problem? And what can be done with the idiots who take the trash and become Mr Hyde other than prison where the state can pay dentists to pull all the rotted teeth.
“You already are subsidizing it. That’s how health insurance works, a shared pool of risk. So that wouldn’t change.”
If marijuana is legalized, I think it is reasonable to expect more users than there are now. That would increase health costs. Also, those that use it might use more because it would be more affordable and there would be many more places to smoke it.
But those that don’t have health insurance would not be part of the risk pool, would they? Who pays for the poor without insurance that show up at the emergency room? What about the homeless and illegal immigrants whose only recourse for health car is the emergency room? I know! The hospitals do! and they pass it on to the health care insurers as part of the cost of doing business. And you know who the insurers pass the cost to. No one is turned away - everyone is treated. And the most expensive treatment is through the emergency room. Kinda makes you wish for universal heath coverage so that treating the uninsured would be less expensive.
“But those that don’t have health insurance would not be part of the risk pool, would they?”
Yes, they are, as your sentences following make clear.
“Who pays for the poor without insurance that show up at the emergency room? What about the homeless and illegal immigrants whose only recourse for health car is the emergency room? I know! The hospitals do! and they pass it on to the health care insurers as part of the cost of doing business. And you know who the insurers pass the cost to.”
As you make clear, you are already subsidizing it. But uninsured stoners are a rounding error in the health insurance game.
And if the dozen or so people in West Butterfudge, Anystate who can’t get pot now start using it, that’s not going to skew the figures. Countries that have legalized it find that rates of use go down, not up.
Please check on this great experiment in the Netherlands and others who have legalized pot. The use in young between 18 and 25 has tripled, park areas where people gather in some places show a big increase in crime. This is just one of a few reports I have read. I’m sure there are other studies that may indicate success. But, except for a revenue source, some one will have to point me to studies that support it. I have not looked that hard…,but I haven’t found any.
Littlemouse, I laughed when I read your comment “how many really healthy 50 and 60 year olds do you know?”. I was in pretty good shape heath-wise when I was 50. That ten year span can be a doozy. That’s when the degenerative disc disease, the coronary artery disease, the glaucoma, and all that other stuff begins. That’s when life really catches up to you. Every time I bend over to pick up my nitro pills my back goes out.
And I don’t do drugs, except for that line of prescription bottles in my medicine cabinet. Or alcohol.
So I argue for the end of the current "war on drugs" and legalization too; some of these drugs (marijuana for instance) are no more harmful than alcohol, if these sales becamse above-board considerable taxes could be collected to help balance the budget. Others (heroin, crack, etc.) the users are going to buy them no matter what, they could be by prescription, with the goal of weaning the user off... at the very least, with a known purity it should reduce deaths from OD'ing. This has worked in the Neterhlands from what I've read.. don't get me wrong, there's still lots of junkies there, but actually fewer than there were before decriminalization.
But, as for the original topic -- the police here are absolutely in the wrong, they HAVE to have a warrant to track via GPS. Sorry, but "you can't expect privacy in public" is not an argument towards unlimited police tracking. I'm glad they at least initially got a warrant, but they f'ed up by letting it expire and that is their problem.
Hwertz…this has not worked in the Netherlands depending upon your point of view. Addiction in the 18 to 25 year old range has tripled and crime in parks where drug use is practiced has risen dramatically. Have there been good effects…sure, if you consider all the new addicts are “safer” then they would have been. So, as “same” asks.; you got kids ?
“#dagosa November 25 Report
Hwertz…this has not worked in the Netherlands depending upon your point of view. Addiction in the 18 to 25 year old range has tripled and crime in parks where drug use is practiced has risen dramatically. Have there been good effects…sure, if you consider all the new addicts are “safer” then they would have been. So, as “same” asks.; you got kids ?”
Are we still talking about marijuana? Hard drugs are illegal in the Netherlands, marijuana technically so, but in practice not. It sounds like you’re saying people go to parks to smoke pot? Why go to a high crime area to smoke pot when you can just duck into any coffee shop or the local reggae bar and do it in perfect safety? My experience in Holland is that high schoolers don’t view pot as particularly interesting, except the ones who like to smoke pot. Pretty much the same as here.
“Addiction in the 18 to 25 year old range has tripled…” I’d be interested to see those statistics. I bet they don’t deal with marijuana addiction.
You know who has kids? George W. Bush (alcoholic), and Bill Clinton (pot smoker). The late Gerald Ford (son smoked pot in the White House all the time). Jimmy Carter’s son Jack (was that the one they called “Chip”? I think that was another pot-smoking Carter child) “received a general under honorable conditions discharge from the Navy in late 1970 after he and 53 classmates were caught smoking marijuana at the Navy Nuclear Power School in Idaho Falls, Idaho.” And the kids are alright.
You know who else has kids? Snoop Dawgg. He helps coach his son’s football team.
You can’t raise kids in a bell jar. You either instill your values or they go in a different direction.
I don’t know if Carl Sagan had kids, but he loved his reefer.
There is a country with rather draconian laws against heroin and opium (that’s real addiction) and at the same time a large percentage of addicts. What country you ask? Iran. It just doesn’t work.