“Real Time With Bill Maher” is not usually the forum for legislative proposals, but Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) used it to announce legislation in Congress that would strip the federal government of its authority to arrest for some cannabis violations.
Frank said that “It’s time for the politicians to catch up with the public on this [issue].”
The legislation would eliminate all federal penalties prohibiting the personal use and possession of up to 100 grams (3 1/2 ounces) of marijuana. Under this measure, adults who consume cannabis would no longer face arrest, prison, or even the threat of a civil fine. The bill also eliminates all penalties prohibiting the not-for-profit transfers of up to one ounce of pot. This would bring the federal system in line with roughly a dozen 12 states and various municipalities that have passed marijuana decriminalization. New Hampshire’s House recently passed such a measure, click here.
The Frank bill seems unlikely to pass, however, with enough votes to overcome a likely presidential veto.
For the Frank story, click here.
Why should smoking pot be any more criminal than drinking alcohol?
K S Knight,
Your post was a “tour de force” in that it combined the many disparate elements of this issue, arriving at the point that the “War On Drugs” can well mean the death of American liberty. The RICO statutes and their use in areas far beyond their original intent illustrate the dangers. The fact that this phony “war” is based on lies and fraud only underlines the destructiveness of this futile effort. The ultimate silliness is the idea that being high is somehow destructive to society as a whole, when humans have sought this state for at least a documented 10,000 years. Most religions too were put forth by people of altered states of conciousness.
K.S.:
Thanks for the post and I love your sentiments, but, with all due respect, do you have the munchies? Seriously, rest assured that the Republic will survive; it always has because there are enough lovers of liberty who remember the gift from the Founders. The Neanderthals get their day in the sun every generation or so, but they always slink back towards extinction once the public sees them for what they are and is repulsed. They are like vampires, since they wilt in the light of reason and compassion, but await another crisis to rise again and raise the banner of fear. Take heart, and continue to point out the foolishness of their ways. That is truly a stake in the heart to them.
Prohibition didn’t work, can’t work and never will work. Does this country never learn basic fundamental lessons about human nature? Even if you could hire enough cops and build enough prisons to house all the people using one drug or another, someone would find ways to get the drugs into the prisons. There’s just too much money in it to keep the criminal element out.
Here in Calilfornia, we have had a recent spate of corrections officer scandals, all tied to bringing illicit substance into the prisons. As an aside (and rhetorically), let me say: did we really think it was just prisoners’ girlfriends bringing drugs into the prisons in their hoohaws? Particularly nowadays when A) contact visits require full body cavity searches and B) hard core convicts don’t even get them anymore?
I myself do not use pot, so I have no personal axe to grind here. But I am rational human being, and I believe that anyone who actually takes a fair-minded, realistic look at what this War on Drugs has done to our society — and what it has COST — cannot but conclude that it has been an unmitigated disaster. To pretend otherwise is to stuck one’s head in the sand, if not up one’s backside.
The nation’s founding fathers were smart enough not to try to legislate “morality” (in this case, in the sense of personal choice), recognizing that criminalization of basic human desires (when they do not harm anyone else) never works out for anybody. My grandparents’ generation was wise enough to see, after the disaster that was Prohibition, that it didn’t work with booze. Why were the very same people so deluded as to think it would work with any other substance?
In the case of pot (a freakin’ WEED, lest anyone need to be reminded of that), once one steps beyond the Reefer Madness race-baiting hysteria that was whipped up to demonize the substance and it’s users, one finds that of all the illegal drugs (and, I should add the LEGAL ones (cigs and booze)), it is the least harmful to society AND individuals. What kind of insanity is it that you can destroy your liver or your lungs — and inflict the secondary effects of your addiction on others and all of society — but you cannot enjoy a little harmless buzz (from a WEED) in the privacy of your own home? Add in the fact that pot’s only serious side effect is the craving for junk food, and you cannot in any way, shape or form justify this WEED being listed on the same schedule as serious, dangerous narcotics.
It’s crazy, insane, deluded. The War on Drugs is the real Reefer Madness!
And we see the outworking of this delusional thinking in every strata of society. Run amok criminal syndicates, corruption at every level and worst of all, violence ripping at the very fabric of society. Prohibition ultimately came to an end because people woke to their senses and realized that the money being created by criminalization was in turn creating vast criminal empires that threatened the Republic. The same thing is happening today, and has been happening since the farcical and disastrously failed so-called War on Drugs went into high gear.
But the point, again, for those who are sure to have missed it (jonolon, I’m speaking to you) is this: PROHIBITION DOESN’T — AND CAN’T — WORK! That’s just the plain ol’ truth. Deal with it.
You cannot legislate against human nature. And if you need any further proof of this, one must only examine said War on Drugs. It has been a TOTAL FAILURE since day one. And it will CONTINUE TO BE, ad nauseam, until we accept reality for what it is. I ask you, has criminalization caused the end of prostitution, despite the fact that it has largely been illegal in this country for over a century, and in most countries for hundreds of years?
Point proven. Period.
Let me ask you, jonolon, would you rather see BILLIONS of more dollars pissed down a rat hole in a totally pointless and unwinnable “War on Drugs,” or put into something useful, like education, reinvestment or infrastructure? I guess you would answer the former. A rational person would answer the latter — if the money need be spent at all. Heck it would better spent, I guess, in the freakin’ War in Iraq (though that, too, is a farcical disaster that has cost countless human lives). At least there it would “accomplish something” — if you consider occupation and destruction of another country and hundreds of thousands of it’s people an accomplishment.
What scares me is that we are now so far down the slippery slope toward “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” it may be too late to save the Republic. The rot and corruption are so endemic now (simply research the subject on drug whistle blowers, drug-related corruption and the like and you will be appalled), and the organs of power charged with “fighting drugs” so well entrenched, self-perpetuating, self-serving and resistant to change, we may well get what jonolon so fervently wishes for…
Though probably not exactly in the form that he would like to see it!
Isn’t it interesting how the hawks and “law and order” types are always so fervently excited about criminalizing “bad things” they don’t like, without realizing that doing so inevitably leads to the criminalization of things they do like? And dare I mention that most of the recent political scandals in this country have involved “law and order” types engaging in the very behavior they are so afroth to persecute in others?
Prohibition aka the War on Drugs aka criminalization, means more non-violent offenders behind bars (a recent news release stated that 1 in 100 American adults are now in prison), more corruption and much more crime. This means more and better armed armies, cops trained like shock troops and the destruction of the freedoms those very men and women are charged with defending.
The ONLY solution is decriminalization and (as with cigs and booze) taxation and regulation. It would require treating adults as adults, instead of misbehaving children. Clearly, infantilization of the entire adult population by the nanny state hasn’t worked, won’t work and can’t work. Just like Prohibition didn’t work.
In my humble opinion, unless we make big changes and soon, the War on Drugs will lead to nothing less than the Death of America. Literally. I’m not trying to be hyperbolic here, and I certainly hope I’m wrong.
But I don’t think I am.
Bill of Rights. U.S. Constitution. American Republic.
R.I.P.
Aging hippies all!
Whut?
Man, Patty C!
I was just trying to talk their talk, BUT:
You made me laugh so hard, my doobie shot out and landed in my “herb bed” under the Gro-Lite!!
“Maybe the “potheads” have some moles in your camp cause this is really addled thinking.”
———————
DW, you assume certain cannibas ‘negatives’, not in evidence, and which certainly do not explain the widespread and entrenched addleness to which you so freely elude AND to which I must, as freely, concur! 🙂
p.s. Can you guys picture VC smokin’ a bone? 😮 Hah!
To frame this argument in a liberal-conservative context is to be ignorant of the entire issue. William F. Buckley, who helped create the current conservative movement came out for decriminalization more than twenty five years ago, while Bill and Hillary Clinton oppose it. Like Vincent I have some experience in this field. Compared to alcohol and cigarettes marijuana is a benign herb that is relatively harmless. It was legal until the mid 30’s when a government prohibition agent who was losing his job, Harry J. Anslinger began a national campaign to criminalize it. The campaign used lies, phony anecdotes and racism to ensure that the government kept Anslinger on the payroll.Unfortunately, as illustrated by some of the comments above this propaganda has stuck.
Kerm,
Its not as wacky as shield predatory lendors from state regulation. Watch predatory lenders issue and securitize hideously bad loans. Watch economy go down in flames and we’re all out in the streets selling apples and pencils again.
But on the whole, I disagree with decriminalizing marijuana..it is a gateway that leads to worse things.
Jonolan,
“If anything, we need to stiffen the penalties…”
We already have the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world. Do you want to add to the prison population? If so, the care and feeding of the inmates is going to cost the Treasury some more billions.
But wait, you probably want tax cuts too!
Yes, conservative social engineering at its finest: Increase criminalization, increase prison populations, increase revenue drains, decrease revenue.
Maybe the “potheads” have some moles in your camp cause this is really addled thinking.
Jono–no need to be jealous simply because I hung out with cool kids while you were sitting alone in your room back in school. 🙂
You’ll find that ad hominem name-calling generally fails to persuade people once you actually, you know, make a few friends.
Very sorry – typo: It did not included criminal justice professionals, should have read – “IT DID INCLUDE CRIMINAL JUSTICE PROFESSIONALS”
Many years ago, I was a member of a task force that provided the US Congress with a detailed study over a 3 year period of time, was created in order to provide an independent and apolitical study of marijuana, its use, acquisition-distribution, health risks etc…. It did not included criminal justice professionals, however, it was not a law enforcement initiative.
It was a time before the NEOCON broadcast empire had re-defined ‘Liberal’ and ‘Conservative’ as sub-species of in the political hierarchal chart, as opposed to genre of approach that would be applied to a particular problem. That is to say, a Democrat, Republican, Independent could actually describe their approach to an economic problem as conservative, while approaching a legal issue facing their constituency in a liberal manner.
The task force was made up of an eclectic and competent group of people. There was no predetermined outcome. Much to our collective surprise, the research pointed to the decriminalization of marijuana as soon as was legislatively possible. The only reason that the decriminalization plans failed is because Richard Nixon’s Administration equated the legalization of pot, akin to giving the hippies the upper hand in the anti-war movement. That was it, plain and simple. It was not about public safety, in fact the revenuers were gleeful. It was not about watching Reefer Madness on a continual loop, or fearing the night of the living dead. It was about not burdening our courts, police and citizens with laws likely to create the same problems as the Volstead Act.
It was never about Liberals / Conservatives. They didn’t really exist then as a sub-species. They were invented in the 90’s by Roger Ailes.
It’s high time! (pun intended) Wasn’t there a provision in the Magna Carta that prevented the government from arbitrarily or capriciously creating criminal offenses? Whatever one might think about marijuana, there has never been any legal demonstration that it was harmful, certainly not harmful enough to warrant criminality.
People should be worried that this prohibition was enacted and enforced for over half a century. If they can get away with making marijuana illegal, what’s to prevent them from say, making it a criminal offense to grow a moustache? Jonolan and his ilk could add a concern that they legislate against stupidity.
jonolan:
Interesting (but not too original) argument style. When met with a superior logical argument resort to invective. Insights beat insults every time.
ahh the liberal pothead contingent is heard from. You can tell it’s still early, JR isn’t too stoned to type. LOL!
Yeah, spending billions a year to NOT stop the marijuana trade AND to put a higher proportion of our citizens behind bars than any other free country is a MUCH better idea than taxing and regulating a commodity that’s already readily available in every community in America. What was that silly liberal Milton Friedman thinking in advocating such a policy?
Seriously, though, it takes an incredibly high level of self-delusion to think that the war on marijuana is doing anything in this country but locking up more nonviolent offenders and making drug suppliers rich. And it takes an incredibly high level of ignorance to think that marijuana decriminalization represents any real threat to society–the stuff is safer than Pabst Blue Ribbon, and decriminalization will free our law enforcement officers to go after serious criminals.
Loosen up a bit, and enjoy another belt of liver-killing scotch or another drag on ammonia-laced cigarettes. Just because you two were such killjoys that nobody ever offered you a hit of grass doesn’t mean you have to take your frustrations out on society.
Welcome to the wacky world of liberals run amuck!
Rather than face a problem in society they 1)decriminalize it 2)announce the end of the problem 3)hold their breath waiting for the problem the decriminalization caused.
It’s another stupid idea that is thankfully doomed to failure. The last thing this country needs is more tolerance for drug addicts and their dealers.
If anything, we need to stiffen the penalties for such crimes.