cannabisnews.com: Law Officers Divided on Fight Over Legal Marijuana
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Law Officers Divided on Fight Over Legal Marijuana
Posted by CN Staff on September 21, 2010 at 05:29:35 PT
Opinion
Source: Salinas Californian
Los Angeles, CA -- California's fall ballot battle over legalizing pot is drawing law-enforcement officials to both sides of the issue. Beer sellers want to stop legal marijuana, too, but say it's not because they fear competition.Proposition 19, which if approved by voters in November, would make marijuana legal for recreational use by those 21 and older, though possession would still be a federal violation.
The first state in the USA to make marijuana legal for medical use, California would again set a new course for the nation on drug use if Prop 19 is approved.The sponsor of the proposition, Tax Cannabis 2010, says it will provide as much as $1.4 billion in tax revenue to the state, citing state estimates. Opponents say it would invite a public-safety nightmare with stoned workers and motorists.Local law-enforcement leaders, including Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and the California Police Chiefs Association, oppose the measure. Obama administration drug czar Gil Kerlikowske has urged opposition, joined by his predecessors under three previous presidents."No country in the world has legalized marijuana to the extent envisioned by Proposition 19," they wrote in a Los Angeles Times column. "We can say with near certainty ... that marijuana use would increase if it were legal."But supporters of Prop. 19 have some law officers on their side. Former Seattle Police chief Norm Stamper argued for passage, saying current laws don't make marijuana less available but have made the trade profitable for Mexican drug cartels."This is really a law and order initiative," Oakland City Attorney John Russo said last week in endorsing Prop 19. "Arresting and criminalizing tens of thousands of Californians every year for misdemeanor possession diverts police ... from arresting and convicting violent criminals."California Beer and Beverage Distributors, a trade group, gave $10,000 to the opposition campaign Public Safety First this month.Backers of Prop 19 say the alcohol industry is trying to keep people drinking rather than puffing for recreation."They see this as competition," says Steve Fox, of the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington-based group that advocates legal marijuana. "By keeping one illegal, . . . it increases the likelihood people will use alcohol.""Absolutely not," responds Rhonda Stevenson, political coordinator for the California beer group. She says the proposal fails to establish state control over pot sales along the lines of alcohol laws and instead leaves pot regulation to cities and counties. "We have a [regulatory] structure they could have used but they chose not to," she said.Source: Salinas Californian, The (CA)Published: September 21, 2010Copyright: 2010 The Salinas CalifornianWebsite: http://www.thecalifornian.com/URL: http://drugsense.org/url/wBfXCkyWContact: http://drugsense.org/url/pQFlma8HCannabisNews -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml 
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Comment #11 posted by museman on September 24, 2010 at 09:13:45 PT
"I want control"
Gee, no surprise there!LEGALIZE FREEDOM
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Comment #10 posted by Paint with light on September 23, 2010 at 22:29:14 PT
support the corporations and the rich if you want
I am for control.I don't want big corporations to take over and monopolize the business.I want small farmers and individuals to have a chance at earning a decent living.I want control.I don't want big corporations to use whatever toxic sludge and pesticides they want just cause somebody wants total freedom.I want control.I want cannabis that is medicine, graded, inspected, and safe from mold and other substances. I want the tax on medical cannabis to be controlled into non-existence.I want control.I want the recreational use to be as free as alcohol, for now, with lessening control as time goes on.I want control because that is the only way we will ever have anything resembling freedom.I want control because that is the only way they will stop locking people up and destroying lives.I am for the good. Perfect is my enemy.I don't want to turn the cannabis industry over to the big corporations and the rich to ruin while poisoning our planet even more than they do now.I don't want to make the rich richer.Liberty for one is liberty for all.As Patrick Henry found out you will get death long before you get liberty.Legal like alcohol........regulated, controlled, and taxed in 2010.
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Comment #9 posted by museman on September 23, 2010 at 07:43:18 PT
I repeat
"Any argument against Liberty is Prohibition"LEGALIZE FREEDOM
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Comment #8 posted by FoM on September 23, 2010 at 07:05:55 PT
OT: Agent Orange Hearing
http://veterans.senate.gov/index.cfm?IsTextVersion=0
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Comment #7 posted by Paint with light on September 22, 2010 at 21:58:48 PT
A lesson from Voltaire
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.There is a direct translation and some interpretations of meaning.The better is the enemy of the good.The "perfect" is the enemy of the good. (True words from around 1700)The best is the enemy of the good.Or as most said in modern times......Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.Legal like alcohol.
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Comment #6 posted by Paint with light on September 22, 2010 at 20:49:21 PT
total freedom
About a year ago someone on the board ask me, "How's that tax, regulate and control thing going for you?".A little over a year later the regulate, control, and tax act is going to voted on in November and has a good chance of passing.I can say it is going even better than I envisioned.How's that total freedom thing going for you?Sounds like with the number of cops it is going in the opposite direction.I don't see any movements by anybody towards total freedom and I haven't heard of any bills even coming close.It may be a great idea but until you can make it happen it will remain just that....an idea and a dream.I deal with reality.Legal like alcohol.
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Comment #5 posted by museman on September 22, 2010 at 07:55:10 PT
Any argument
against Liberty, is Prohibition.LEGALIZE FREEDOM
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Comment #4 posted by Paint with light on September 21, 2010 at 15:13:02 PT
legal like alcohol
Some people prefer to keep locking people up and destroying lives instead of making a compromise.That is what will keep happening until we get a better system such as prop 19 proposes.Hold out for complete freedom and generations will dance on your grave before that happens.Legal like alcohol.
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Comment #3 posted by The GCW on September 21, 2010 at 14:03:27 PT
Wink, wink.
"Beer sellers want to stop legal marijuana, too, but say it's not because they fear competition."I don't believe that.
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Comment #2 posted by museman on September 21, 2010 at 10:32:15 PT
absolutely
"By keeping one illegal, . . . it increases the likelihood people will use alcohol."I've seen 40 years of it.I've lost more friends to fermented poisons, than anything else including war. 100% of the motor accidents had to do with alcohol.There are still some alive -who look and act like zombies, mere shadows of their former selves- who if not for cannabis prohibition, would I AM CONVINCED have chosen herb over poison. The loss of many folks with great potentials and even great deeds before they succumbed to the death (beer and alcohol) sellers. Because cheap rot-gut is not a crime. Slow death is preferable to the status quo than conscious awareness and action.How many times have we (those who take the chance of liberty instead of the easier road of imbibed insensibility, and mindless, animalistic behavior, resulting in a numbed/dumbed population at all times except in the work place, and since the worry is all about pot, alcoholics have been drinking on the job since forever)seen a drunk cop or Sheriff? I have seen few -up until the past decade or so of recruiting super cop- who weren't noticeably intoxicated on something, often its the adrenaline rush they all go for, but I do guarantee that the addictions of cops make heroin look rather benign. And cops get to fulfil their personal fantasies of handcuffing naked women, beating up their husbands and boyfriends, going through all your stuff, breaking drawers and doors because they can, leaving quite a destructive mess wherever they get in to do their thing. Cops are the thing that should be outlawed. We need to go back to a citizen police force, and get rid of all these mercenaries recently hired to mess with pot growers.In the status quo services like cops and the 'justice' dept. -at least at the local levels- alcohol is considered almost a sacrament to the job. Can't sleep at night? Have a sixpak or two.I personally have no interest in feeling my brain cells die (the 'high' of alcohol) -and the last time I had about an 8th of a glass of beer, within 1 minute I could imagine (or was it imagination?) the death screams of those unfortunate cells dying on the edges of consciousness, and within 3 minutes I had a screaming headache! And that was 'good' beer.I guess people who have been killing their brain on a steady basis over the years have no sensitivities in that dept. any more.Power, greed, and self importance of semi-brain dead social 'leaders' is the real issue. Alcohol is the best thing to happen for the rulers since, before, and during gladiator games. Keeps the populace unable to rise and toss those bastards on their ears.legal like alcohol? Bah!LEGALIZE FREEDOM
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Comment #1 posted by dongenero on September 21, 2010 at 08:47:45 PT
Oh Gil, where is your head at?
"No country in the world has legalized marijuana to the extent envisioned by Proposition 19,"I think he means RE-legalized. No country in the world had ever prohibited marijuana like we did in the US.
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