Tag: marijuana

Rick Perry looking at how to stop putting potheads in jail.

It’s a touchy subject, to be sure…

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday that he’s for the decriminalization of marijuana use — not legalization, but the softening of punishment for marijuana users in the border state.

Perry made the comment during an international panel on drug legalization while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

His spokesman confirmed that Perry is staunchly opposed to legalization of marijuana because of medical issues, but is committed to policies to lower the punishment for its use in order to keep smokers out of jail.

Continue reading Rick Perry looking at how to stop putting potheads in jail.

Tweet of the Day, Isn’t @barackobama Committing A Federal Crime In This Picture? edition. [UPDATED]

The answer, by the way, is “Yes.”

Since David Plouffe is so concerned about criminality, and all.

 

Continue reading Tweet of the Day, Isn’t @barackobama Committing A Federal Crime In This Picture? edition. [UPDATED]

Colorado gearing up to *jack* up cost of recreational marijuana? (and added evil question)

Oh, wow, man, total bummer:

A draft bill floating around the Capitol late this week suggests that a new ballot question on pot taxes should repeal recreational pot in the state constitution if voters don’t approve 15 percent excise taxes on retail pot and a new 15 percent marijuana sales tax. Those would be in addition to regular state and local sales taxes.

Bolding mine.  But, hey, that reminds me: if you can buy pot legally in Colorado, will that mean that companies can advertise it on Amazon.com?  As you can see here, Amazon already does third-party site advertising for booze; and, hey, the stuff is in fact legal in Colorado now.  Man, that’s going to give the US Postal Service fits…

United Nations wants Feds to go after state pot laws.

I keep getting sent this link, God knows why:

A United Nations-based drug agency urged the United States government on Tuesday to challenge the legalization of marijuana for recreational use in Colorado and Washington, saying the state laws violate international drug treaties.

The International Narcotics Control Board made its appeal in an annual drug report. It called on Washington, D.C., to act to “ensure full compliance with the international drug control treaties on its entire territory.”

I mean, I’m sure that I don’t know why people might suggest that this would have ever been a topic of more than academic (undergrad) interest to me, ya, you betcha. Continue reading United Nations wants Feds to go after state pot laws.

Obama’s War on Some Drugs ticking along… nicely.

If you can call it that.

I assume that Radley Balko was being sarcastic when he wrote this:

I was so very excited about all that sensible drug policy we were going to get out of President Obama in his second term. I mean sure, Obama had spent a good deal of his first term waging more raids on medical marijuana clinics in four years than Bush had waged in eight. And his administration defended DEA agents who point guns at the heads of children during drug raids. And his appointees continued to defend the carnage in Mexico as merely the consequence of good, sensible drug policy.

Sure. There was all of that. But there were also all of these progressive pundits who kept telling drug war reformers that they should go ahead and vote for Obama anyway . . . because they just knew, or at least they were pretty sure, or at least they had heard rumors, that maybe, possibly, Obama would turn the corner and show some leadership.

Continue reading Obama’s War on Some Drugs ticking along… nicely.

Gov. John Hickenlooper (D, CO) to set up task force to stymie pot legalization.

Alternative title: Democrat campaign promises – up in smoke!

I’m translating.

Gov. John Hickenlooper will create a task force to deal with the fallout from the state’s legalization of marijuana use, possession and sales.

‘Fallout.’ See, right there you can determine the tone that the Denver Post was encountering from the office of the Governor. Later on…

The task force is to include state officials, lawmakers, marijuana advocates and other “stakeholders” — likely a reference to law-enforcement, drug-treatment and community representatives.

If you’re familiar with bureaucracy’s little ways, you’re probably snickering at that right now. On the other hand, if you also favor legalizing pot then you’re probably swearing, instead. On the gripping hand, if you’re those two things and ALSO a partisan Republican hack* then you’ve gone right back to snickering.

Continue reading Gov. John Hickenlooper (D, CO) to set up task force to stymie pot legalization.

Q. Will Obama go after new pro-pot laws? A. That’s what people are guessing.

This isn’t a told-you-so. Yet. But it’s a good way to bet:

Votes making Colorado and Washington the first U.S. states to legalize marijuana for recreational use could be short-lived victories for pot backers because the federal government will fight them, two former U.S. drug control officials said on Wednesday.

They said the federal government could sue to block parts of the measures or send threatening letters to marijuana shops, followed up by street-level clampdowns similar to those targeting medical marijuana dispensaries the government suspects are fronts for drug traffickers.

Continue reading Q. Will Obama go after new pro-pot laws? A. That’s what people are guessing.

#rsrh Ron Paul/Barney Frank’s defederalization of pot initiative.

They want regulation of marijuana to be up to the states.  My reaction?

  1. [rank, hideous hypocrisy that is courting a lightning strike from its sheer, brazen effrontery] No-one under the age of 21 should be allowed to smoke marijuana.  Period.  Never, ever, ever, ever. [/rank, hideous hypocrisy that is courting a lightning strike from its sheer, brazen effrontery]*
  2. It is exceedingly unlikely that this is ever going to pass, given that darn few politicians on both sides of the aisle wish to appear weak on what the libertarians call The War on Some Drugs.
  3. I can think of several hundred things that I’d rather see the federal government do than go after pot smokers.  That list includes ‘naming post offices.’
  4. It’d be so worth it, from a vicious partisan point of view, to get this bill passed by Congress – just to hear the screams of outrage on campuses across the nation when President Obama vetoed it.

And… that’s pretty much it.

Moe Lane

*Really, it’s amazing how I still haven’t been struck by lightning.  I wrote that last night.

Not-really-shocker: no pot legalization under Obama.

Via Reason Hit & Run (and Instapundit), a (rare) definitive statement from this administration:

“Legalization is not in the president’s vocabulary, and it’s not in mine,” he said.

Kerlikowske said he can understand why legislators are talking about taxing marijuana cultivation to help cash-strapped government agencies in California. But the federal government views marijuana as a harmful and addictive drug, he said.

“Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,” Kerlikowske said in downtown Fresno while discussing Operation SOS—Save Our Sierra—a multiagency effort to eradicate marijuana in eastern Fresno County.

I hate to be mean-spirited about this, but the man picked Joe “RAVE Act” Biden to be his running mate. Why would any person expect this administration to be anything but more of the same on the War on Some Drugs?

Moe Lane Continue reading Not-really-shocker: no pot legalization under Obama.

Obama is not going to legalize your stash. Ever.

I refuse to believe that Matt Welch doesn’t already know all of what I’m about to write already.

Obama Loses His “Cool”
With his glib dismissal of pot legalization, the president looks less like the man, and more like The Man.

When the generation of Americans under the age of 30 gets around to realizing that this handsome young president might not be nearly as cool as they’d hoped, it won’t be hard to affix a date on when the milk began to sour. It was March 26, 2009, when Barack Obama conducted a live town hall press conference featuring questions submitted online.

Near the beginning of this hip and mildly groundbreaking interaction, the president said this: “We took votes about which questions were gonna be asked.…Three point five million people voted. I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high, uh, and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve, uh, the economy and job creation. And, uh (chuckles), uh, I don’t know what this says about the online audience (laughs), but I just want—I don’t want people to think that—this was a fairly popular question; we want to make sure that it was answered. Uh, the answer is, no, I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow our economy.”

The live audience laughed and applauded. The kids online? Not so much.

To those in a hurry, let me summarize my response: If you’re surprised, you have no right to be. Continue reading Obama is not going to legalize your stash. Ever.