This week Mexico gained a few dubious titles, most violent city in the world (Ciudad Juarez), highest single-day murder rate (69) and drug cartel capitol of world; that being said, Mexico’s neighbor to the north, California has started its march toward legalizing marijuana and collecting taxes in order to close the states’ chronic budget shortfalls.
In a narrow vote along party lines California Democrat Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D- San Francisco), who sponsored the bill, successfully did what no other city or state has been able to do and that is legalize, regulate and tax marijuana. If the legislation is able to make it through both California legislative bodies, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has indicated he will sign such a bill.
"This is a significant vote because it legitimizes the quest for debate, legitimizes the quest for discussion," Ammiano explained. "This is far from over. Not only did we get it out of (the) public safety (committee), but members are now willing to say, yes, this is worthy of discussion."
The overly liberal delegation from San Francisco was instrumental in pushing the legalization of marijuana as a way to earn extra money for the budget shortfalls that plague California.
"This is an absurd proposal on the part of those in the Legislature that just don't get it. They've spent years raising taxes, and yes fees are taxes, too, and then spending the daylights out of it. They have yet to find a tax they don't like,” says Andy Ramirez a border security expert. “In this case, they truly believe they can balance the budget off dope, which is stupid. There are many consequences to messing with narcotics and those who support it contribute to the consumption by the masses. What else can one expect from elected officials serving the People's Republic of San Francisco?"
According to the Drug Policy Alliance Network, this is just the formal beginning of the end of getting pot off the streets and into the local liquor stores.
However the legislation drew heavy concerns from opponents. “We are going to legalize marijuana and then tax it and then educate our kids on the harms of drugs? You got to be kidding me,” Danny Gilmore, assemblyman (R-Hanford) said.
It appears that some state lawmakers wish to tap into the regulation process before a similar ballot initiative reaches the November ballot in California.
The Democratic bill that passed out of committee would rescind laws on the books regarding the penalties enforced regarding green plants (pot). If passed, California residents would be able to cultivate, transport, purchase and sell marijuana to anyone over the age of 21.
Lawmakers behind the push for legalization see this as a potential $14 billion windfall enabling Sacramento’s spending spree.
Marijuana activist, Aaron Smith of the Marijuana Policy Project said, “Prohibition has failed to stop or curb marijuana use or availability. This legislation would end this insane policy of allowing this huge market to go completely unregulated and free of taxes.”
Disputing Smith’s claim is the acting President of the California Police Chiefs Association. “It’s not only naïve but patently dangerous.”
Since America consumes 80 percent of the world’s drugs several critics don’t see the logic in teaching children about the perils of drug use and then turn around and say it okay when you are 21.
The old arguments also remain in place from parents, “the use of marijuana can lead to the use of hard core drugs. I also believe that if adults can purchase pot legally what is going to stop them from purchasing a larger quantity and sell it to kids for a profit,” Nancy Dillinger said. “It’s ridiculous to think legalizing a drug would prevent kids from using it.”
Back in Mexico the drug cartels are profiting from a thriving drug business, one that has led to more murders in a year than the entire eight-year war in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. It’s hard to believe the cartels will step back a say, ‘hey California has made it legal so I guess we will look for a new line of work, who needs billions of dollars.’
Speaking of the cartels, in an effort to curtail marijuana apprehensions in Mexico the government legalized the right to own small amounts to pot in the country. The result –crime and murder rates have continued to escalate.
Since the legalization of drugs in Mexico the country has seen more than 15,000 murders and there hasn’t be a slow down in the war against the drug cartels. In fact, last year Forbes magazine put cartel kingpin Joaquin Guzman on the list of the world’s wealthiest billionaires.
As long as the demand remains, the brutality of the cartels will remain, and if then cartels remain so does the violence associated with the drug trade. Does California really want to be responsible for the perpetual cycle the drug trade fosters?
For more stories; http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-10317-San-Diego-County-Political-Buzz-Examiner
Comments
It’s pretty amusing that drug cartels need drugs to stay illegal as much as the DEA and police associations in order to survive. How much do cartels make from selling alcohol and cigarettes? And mexico did not legalize drugs, they decrimed small personal use amounts to separate traffickers form users. Get your facts straight, the time has come for legalization and regulation, these old scare tactics only scare the old, not the educated.
The stuff from Mexico is, well, mexican. With all of the horticulture tech out there and the various strands, it will all be homegrown for many years. The cartels are going to loose bussiness.
I agree with the comments. The articles main point that legalizing marijuana in Cali would favor the cartels in Mexico doesn't make much sense. It also doesn't jive that legalizing it equals condoning it and sending the wrong message to our kids. Think of alchohol and cigarettes, which are very harmful to our health and legal to consume. I think there are numerous educational campaigns about the harms of these substances. It's time students were educated honestly on just how much damage marijuana causes instead of fed scare tactic lines that keep them blind folded about what the drug really does until they try it, which most do so keeping it illegal isn't much of a deterrent anyway.
This woman clearly has a childlike understanding of how drug cartels, drug regulation, american culture, and marijuana work. The holes and misinformation in her argument are so numerous that I won't even begin to waste my breath. All I will say is look at the European states who have legalized and controlled marijuana. There's no drug cartels, there's no more stoned kids than anywhere else in the world, and use of hard drugs is significantly less.
Just another narrow minded conservative with too much time on her hands
It never ends. One more conservative writing about something they don't understand. The facts speak for themselves. Not one death from the use of Pot. Thousands a thousands of dead from the war on drugs!
And Eric is correct on the point of the DEA, being as addicted to the war on drugs, (and as violent), as any addict on Heroin.
Are there any adults here writing articles?
If you can't grasp the big picture, don't bother commenting, much less attack Kim. For those who have never been to aztlan, let me just say that meztisos are NOT Europeans, & Cali is NOT Europe. If pot is made legal, it will be EVERYWHERE and the cartels will be selling & growing even more of it.
Ms. Dvorak, your logic is confusing. You say "as long as the demand remains, the brutality of the cartels will remain". That's true, but then you conclude that we should keep marijuana illegal?!! How does that make sense? We've proved that we can't stop people smoking, so preventing a legal supply only serves to maintain the high demand for illegally-sold cartel weed. This is what feeds the cartels! According to the ONDCP the prohibition provides the cartels with two-thirds of their incomes.
California is trying to end the demand for cartel weed by allowing legitimate business to undercut the cartels' marijuana prices and eliminate two-thirds of their incomes.
In Mexico it is not the cartels who are cheering for legalization it is the Mexican people. The people who have lived in fear while their loved ones have been shot and tortured and mutilated by the cartels seeking to protect their profits. Eliminate two-thirds of the cartels' incomes and you destroy them.
"Kim is a cutie" you don't know what you're talking about. How will the cartels "be selling & growing even more of it" if they can't match the prices in the liquor stores? It costs *more* to produce a commodity illegally than it does legally, and that's even with taxes!
And do you really think customers will prefer to buy ILLEGAL weed of dubious quality from violent criminals in dark alleys rather than LEGAL weed of certified quality in attractive and safe establishments? Where do you buy your alcohol today, "some guy" slanging it out the back of his car or Walmart?
Legalization will destroy the cartels and save thousands of innocent lives. Just because it's not *your* mother and father and children being butchered and dismembered doesn't mean they're not people!
So you really think that the US gov can grow and sell dope cheaper than illegal gangs? HaHaHa, Probably they're favorite trick will be selling their dope in gov bagsfor half the price.If they are such fine people, maybe you wuold like to explain why they do the atrocious things they do?
Portugal Decriminalized LSD, Cocaine, Heroin, shrooms, weed and meth in 2001.....5 years later a study was done that showed the number of users and overdoses for ALL drugs decreased by close to 40%....look it up.
Anybody who wants to live in a free-for-all drug zone deserves what they get.
What planet did this writer come from? Needs to be fired as Examiner, anybody agree?
She's still here, are you still an idiot
"The figures for cannabis use among the general population reveal the same pictures. The Netherlands does not differ greatly from other European countries. In contrast, a comparison with the US shows a striking difference in this area: 32.9% of Americans aged 12 and above have experience with cannabis and 5.1% have used in the past month. These figures are twice as high as those in the Netherlands."
Source:
Netherlands Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, Drug Policy in the Netherlands: Progress Report September 1997-September 1999, (The Hague: Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, November 1999), pp. 7-8.
The drug cartels get rough 60+% of their revenue from the illegal sale of marijuana. If every marijuana user in the United States could grow their own, or buy it from a dispensary, the cartels lose billions.
Nobody is going to buy crappy Mexican weed, when they can buy homegrown sensimilla.
"Kim is a cutie" what planet do you come from? You must be a very uneducated person from the back woods listening to the same crap from the Bush and Reagan era. The facts are you yourself just don't see the big picture drugs are already everywhere. We as a country have tried prohibition with alcohol may I ask "Did it work"? The same sill stands true today. If cali will have a better product at lower prices what will happen? Oh ya the cartels will not make as mush money. Think about it a little and take your blinders off. Legalization Now and Save The Country.
vas are you a high school dropout or libtarded lemming......"drugs are everywhere" WHY? LA for crims and losers?
Pot Good.
"Jillian is confused", not the US government, private businesses (of course).
Illegal suppliers require extra compensation to reward them for risking getting caught. Legal growers don't take this risk so don't require this extra compensation, and this allows them to produce their product at a *lower* price than their illegal counterparts. Add to this the fact that criminal suppliers will continue to be constantly hounded by the police and their customers will desert them for the lower-priced, guaranteed-quality, LEGAL product sold in safe and attractive establishments, and the result will be zero sales for the bad guys and an extra tax revenue for our country of $10 BILLION a year.
I don't know what you're talking about in your last sentence, legal businesses *aren't* growing yet (except in MMJ states where they bend over backwards to operate legally). Sounds like you're a bit confused.
R U living in a cloud of dope haze.....Do U think or can U think,...legal workers are cheaper than 3rdworld illegalzz... U love dope go home or move to LA...
The comments here illustrate why we need to teach economics in school with the same emphasis as the other sciences. Some of the statements here regarding supply and demand are beyond ignorant.
perhaps a lesson on fiat money... who controls it...who your amigos in de carrtelz really work for ...please elucidate
Some commenters seem to have an indoctrinated, unthinking mindset. If you are unfamiliar with the antics of illegals, please take a trip to Los Angeles, or Juarez. On the other hand if you are a multi-cult liberal who loves illegals behavior, perhaps Cali and dope are the right mix for you.
Unfortunately, California has been a gang-infested slime-hole ever since "special order 40". Legalizing narcotics and/or gateway drugs will only make things worse, but maybe they can be the gay marriage state too!
I advocate the legalization of marijuana in the USA. This would divert money from the drug cartels to the USA economy.
"Kim is a cutie" does not seem to have the big picture and grasp that the legalization of marijuana would, in effect, sidestep the drug cartel. Why would a person go to a drug cartel down in Mexico to purchase marijuana if it can be grown and sold in the Good USA. For a drug that is safer than alcohol and tobacco - and if it is vaporized or eaten it is completely safe - it is a no brainer.
no brainers for nobrainers...de carrtelz have been here longer than some nobrainers...maybe dope is good for an idiocracy... LA will never die just multiply
no brainers for nobrainers...de carrtelz have been here longer than some nobrainers...maybe dope is good for an idiocracy... LA will never die just multiply
This article and the arguments put forth are a great example of the lack of intelligence and critical reasoning skills in much of public thought! It makes absolutely no sense to say that increasing supply will somehow increase the demand for an illegal substance. And, how can anyone say that it is ridiculous to make something legal and then educate youth on the danger of overuse of that substance!!!! HELLO, it is called alcohol and it is legal and we do and should continue to educate the youth of the negative consequences of abuse!!!! This kind of thinking is absolutely and completely bass ackwards. AMERICA F__K Yeah!!!!!!
Happy to be in the next 3rdworld hell hole? Or maybe a trained killer from the USSA proxy war machine? Like a lot of dope, they got it in Af-Pak-Iraq & so-cal
This article is absurd! It's whole premise is ridiculous. To top it off, there's this bit...
Mexico has more murders in a year than the entire eight-year war in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
Really? More than 889,795?
Article is perfectly sound, go to rehab
If you are a braindead , cali and dope are for you. The cartels are ALREADY growing it in the former US
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