Growing Hemp for Our New Green Economy

[Guest Green Jeans]

I think our government should legalize marijuana. Think about how many new jobs it would create.

[Guest Alex_*]

Every year 700,000 people are arrested for possession. 10-15 billion is wasted on enforcing marijuana alone. Furthermore, 87% of arrests on marijuana charges are for possession of minimal amounts.

[Guest Brian_*]

I believe that the Drug War has failed, and needs overhaul.

[Raven]

It would blow the illegal drug trade out the window IF they legalized it. There is to much profit in having it illegal, but IF they did they could tax it like cigarettes are now.

 

There is also the fact that there are so many different medical ailments that can be handled by the use of marijuana. With the fact that it can be grown at home it would greatly diminish the drug companies profit.

 

I think our government should legalize marijuana. Think about how many new jobs it would create.

[Guest Helen]

IN PRESIDENT Obama's first virtual town-hall meeting, questions about legalizing marijuana ranked at the top of the "green jobs," "financial stability" and "budget" sections, and came in a close second in the health care section.

 

Obama took up the question, saying voters wanted to know "whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation"--then joking, "I don't know what this says about the online audience." After the laughter subsided, Obama's answer was "no" to legalizing marijuana.

[Guest Yippie]

Happy Marijuana Day

 

420

[Guest Sweeet]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld8eKY0VRZk

 

This video makes me hungry.

[Guest surf green]

Surfing on 420.

 

[Bluto]

420 Answer

 

[JT Allen]

Legalizing is a few years away - it's not even legal in Amsterdam which most people don't know, but it is, and it is "overlooked."

 

As far as industrial hemp: that's a whole different story. 100,000,000 acres and how quickly it renews ... number one cash crop, no?

[Raven]

Legalizing is a few years away - it's not even legal in Amsterdam which most people don't know, but it is, and it is "overlooked."

 

As far as industrial hemp: that's a whole different story. 100,000,000 acres and how quickly it renews ... number one cash crop, no?

 

That may be true in a few years. It would also help the existing farmers out by keeping the few farms that are left. Help the environment with the green house effect. But I think the one's who will like it the most is the Treasury Department, or better yet the IRS with all that they can tax off of of it.

[Guest CATO]

In 2001, Portugal took the dramatic step of decriminalizing all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. Although it did not receive a lot of attention at the time, Tim Lynch, who directs Cato's Project on Criminal Justice, decided it would be a good idea to commission a study on the Portuguese policy experiment after it had been given a fair chance to work over several years. In 2007, when Lynch met best-selling author and lawyer Glenn Greenwald and discovered that Greenwald was fluent in Portuguese, Lynch's search for the right author was finally over. Greenwald readily agreed to the idea of traveling to Portugal to interview key lawmakers and health officials. Upon his return, Greenwald began to prepare the most exhaustive study on the Portuguese experiment.

 

On April 2, Cato released Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies. The study notes that while other states in the European Union have developed various forms of de facto decriminalization—whereby substances perceived to be less serious (such as cannabis) rarely lead to criminal prosecution— Portugal remains the only EU member state with a law explicitly declaring drugs to be "decriminalized." (Portugal has stopped short of "legalization" because drug dealing remains a criminal offense.) The shift in policy was controversial. Conservatives in Portugal argued that the move to decriminalize would only worsen that country's drug problems.

 

With more than seven years of experience under the decriminalization regime, Greenwald reports that the policy has been quite successful. One of the key findings of the study is that none of the nightmare scenarios predicted by decriminalization opponents—from rampant increases in drug usage among the young to the transformation of Lisbon into a haven for "drug tourists"—has occurred. As a result, Greenwald reports that the political climate in Portugal has changed: there is no longer any serious debate about whether drugs should once again be criminalized.

 

Drug policy experts have seven years of relevant empirical information to examine. Those data indicate that decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal, which, in numerous categories, are now among the lowest in the EU, particularly when compared with states with stringent criminalization regimes. Although post-decriminalization usage rates have remained roughly the same or even decreased slightly when compared with other EU states, drug-related pathologies— such as sexually transmitted diseases and deaths due to drug usage—have decreased dramatically. Greenwald says drug policy experts in Portugal attribute those positive trends to the enhanced ability of the government to offer treatment programs to its citizens—enhancements made possible, for numerous reasons, by decriminalization.

[Guest Michael Boldin]

Thirteen states now have some form of medical marijuana laws – in direct contravention to federal laws which state that the plant is illegal in all circumstances.

[Guest 420]

MSNBC reports the number of those that still use marijuana is up in the 50 and over set of citizens by about one percent. However, use among 55- to 59-year-olds "has more than tripled from 1.6 percent in 2002 to 5.1 percent now.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35519187

[Guest 420]

Hot off the wire.

 

More than 50 people have signed up to testify at a D.C. government hearing on medical marijuana.

 

City lawmakers are holding a hearing Tuesday on a bill that would spell out who would qualify to get medical marijuana in the city and how it would be distributed to patients approved to use it. D.C. voters approved a medical marijuana law in 1998, but Congress had blocked the implementation of the law until recently.

 

The soonest the bill could be voted on in final form by the council is May.

[Guest Uncommon Wisdom]

According to analysis by CNBC, marijuana could be a $100 billion business if it was legal. And a Harvard University paper, "The Budgetary Implications of Drug Prohibition," projects that legalization of marijuana could yield over $20 billion in tax revenues and enforcement cost savings.

 

And it's not like we're winning the war on drugs. If anything, we're losing. Marijuana prohibition is working out about as well as alcohol prohibition did in the 1920s — it enriches criminals, criminalizes users, and robs the public treasury of potential tax dollars.

 

Hey, you don't want your taxes to go up? Neither do I! So legalize pot and tax it. And consider legalizing other underground economies as well. According to Wikipedia, my favorite source of possibly made-up statistics, prostitution is a $108-billion-a-year business. What if we legalized and taxed that as well? Every dollar in taxes a prostitute pays is potentially one less that YOU have to pay.