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As someone with a friend who, in a different state and different circumstances, foolishly was detained on a road trip in a state with a strict no-tolerance policy, was subsequently arrested and tried by some small prick DA in the middle of nowehre to teach a lesson with his "sorry, I don't make exceptions because we want to look hard on drugs" apologism, I hope decriminalization succeeds at least in the short term.

That friend had trouble finding work and grad school for years because this haunted him, and everyone asks in advance about your criminal record. It was all over a dime bag, and using crooked legal tactics.

Another friend, reminiscent of an article previously posted here, was in the Midwest (we grew up on the East Coast) and stopped for a busted headlight. They then found a negligible amount of weed. He was detained and then arrested on the spot. He was told he either call his parents, as he was a minor, and to pay a wopping 1,000 USD fine, or face charges and a court date, in which case pleading innocent and receiving a guilty verdict would mean doubled fines and potential jail time. You can guess what his parents did when they got that phone call in the middle of the night.

And don't worry, they never had a problem scrubbing this from their record, as youths who had fun. Their record would never ruin their adult (+21) lives, no?

All I have to say is, what the hell is wrong with us as society we penalize people so harshly (let's not kid, the non-white kids I knew got worse variations of these stories) for something so much less powerful than alcohol (I would love to see someone argue with me re this point after four years in the very wet college environment in contemporary America)?

Screw it. I hope this guy, and those like him win. But there is something so disgustingly Puritan and fascist, I feel myself working up the "he was a real reactonary" voice of Big Lebowski, full of snark.

Sorry, end rant.

The mental trauma of being in a US prison and permanent unemployability from a felony record causes far more hardship to a person than the act of smoking. That alone should indicate that the punishment is not fitting the crime.
Why don't employers want to hire people who have smoked weed?
Most neighborhoods I've lived in my life, people drink too much. Every six months or so, there is a DUI arrest where a cop has actually followed the idiot all the way home at (and I've seen people get into/out of the car so drunk they go to the bathroom on the side of their car).

I don't care if people smoke pot in their apartments. But once it's legal, it's not going to stop there and I am not sure what can be done about respecting others, if anything, since that is probably a core problem of personality far beyond pot smoking.

I worry if everyone is going to be walking around everywhere smoking it because they don't think anyone is going to stop them. I personally don't care for it and I suspect my right to not be bothered by it is not going to be respected in the least.

If there is a solution to making others respect smoking only in their homes, I'd love to hear it.

The solution is the same as alcohol: ban smoking in public, then ticket violators. This kind of relatively minor negative effect is a silly objection to a proposal with so many potential positives.

Also, if you've ever visited Venice Beach or San Francisco, you'll know this is not a problem that's solved by prohibition.

"Your right not to be bothered by it" sounds really spurious. Being "bothered" is an extremely subjective judgment. If we outlaw everything that's potentially bothersome, that's complete paralysis... It's not a defensible right. Why should people hide in their homes to partake in something that you don't personally care for?
Doesn't this argument apply just as much to smoking cigarettes? They're banned from pretty much anywhere they might disturb you, transport, restaurants, bars etc. It seems the balance is pretty good between allowing you to smoke and preventing it from disturbing people that don't want to smell it.
Insurance.

If you buy a house in a district, you may or may not buy an insurance against neighbour's misbehaviour. But the first condition of the insurance is that you respect your neighbours yourself according some existing arrangements (specified in your insurance). Now if anyone is too loud when not appropriate, or drunk as hell, or peeing on your lawn, the insurance company will:

1. Pay you a compensation.

2. Make investigation.

3. Penalize the neighbour by raising his insurance fees (or via his insurer as they'd have some mutual agreements) or demanding a compensation from him. If he does not pay, his insurance is simply cancelled without cops and jails.

4. For ugly cases when neighbour is misbehaving too much (killing pets, breaking windows etc.), insurance company may have also agreements with water supplier's, wifi supplier's etc insurance companies that supplier cuts water/wifi/etc until the guy pays a compensation. Again, without cops, laws, police.

And if the guy goes to journalists and alternative insurer to whom he'll prove he wasn't that bad, just someone is exaggerating, then that insurer will make a good PR case and steal customers from abusive insurers. Or highlight the whole neighbourhood as a weird place to be or something.

The main point is, it's all done without guns and jails. This way every party has voice and can communicate their position any time they want to anyone. And insurers would have to strike a good balance between protecting customers and pissing them off. Like any non-monopoly business is doing already anywhere in the world.

So in one district it could be 100% okay to smoke and get drunk, while in another people would prefer less loud activities. The idea of a regional law just does allow this to happen.

It's effectively the same problem as smoking cigarettes and "respecting others."

The gentlemen who live next door to me love to chain-smoke on their balcony. It annoys me but I have no legal recourse. I can only ask them nicely to please not smoke when I have washing on my balcony, or I'm sitting out there enjoying the sunshine, or I have the door open to air out my apartment.

Replace cigarettes with marijuana, heroin, alcohol, cocaine, loud music or any other substance people use for enjoyment and it's the same story. You're 100% right in saying it's a problem of people respecting others.

Read Washington State's laws concerning pot. Then read their laws concerning booze.

Then rest easy.

Every six months or so, there is a DUI arrest where a cop has actually followed the idiot all the way

Really? Shouldn't the police be stopping people driving whilst drunk, rather than just following them around?

Liu is running for mayor, losing badly, and fishing for votes. His campaign treasurer and a fundraiser were also convicted on fraud charges for fabricating donor information.

http://gothamist.com/2013/05/02/john_lius_ex-campaign_treasu...

Hopefully the pushes De Blasio further in the legalization direction. As of now he's waffling on even medical marijuana and he's actually the most conservative of all the Democratic candidates when it comes to marijuana reform. It's interesting that Speak Quinn is so liberal on the matter given her ties to Commissioner Kelly and her love of Stop n Frisk
Even a broken clock can be right twice a day though.
What I want to know is why governments support all illegal drug dealing, and dont get a cut of the action themselves. The illegality is pretty much what makes it profitable. All the "war" on drugs does is keep the prices up. Mean while the government just pours our tax money down the drain, get zero in return.

Legalize it and the government can tax it. Dealers get wiped out, and with them, a lot of the violence. The tax money raised can pay for a lot of rehab, and the police can concentrate on actual crime with the saved resources.

I could go on...

Because they're already making a lot of money from weed and other drugs being illegal. It's the prison industrial complex, man. The government isn't interested in stopping violence. If so, we'd have much saner drug laws. Drug busts are easy and when you do them the DEA and federal government give you money to buy shiny toys like tanks and new body armor.
>What I want to know is why governments support all illegal drug dealing, and dont get a cut of the action themselves

They do get a cut. Property forfeiture, among other things. Right now I am reading Balko's "The Rise of the Warrior Cop" and McCoy's "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade" You'd probably be amazed. I am.

It's considered a conspiracy theory, but many people do believe the government takes a cut of the drug trade. That money would be far more valuable than normal tax dollars because a small group would get to control it without any oversight or tax distribution (off the books it could be used for anything).

I believe the Federal Government will only legalize pot under one of two circumstances: 1) it becomes more profitable to tax it (the theory being that it's not today) and 2) they can no longer keep the cartels under control and they become a direct security threat

"David Simon, creator of The Wire, says new US drug laws help only 'white, middle-class kids'"

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/25/the-wire-creato...

I don't get it. Marijuana laws are used against minorities all the time, not just middle class white kids[1]. Furthermore he talks of decriminalization as the solution, not legalization. Plenty of states have already decriminalized marijuana , but only two have legalized (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decriminalization_of_non-medici...). Decriminalization allows the state to continue using pot as a weapon against the people, legalization doesn't to any appreciable degree.

I get that he wants the whole thing to fall at once (but at the same time wants decriminalization, not legalization?), but that simply isn't something that we can accomplish in any foreseeable future, not for several more decades at least. Just getting the public to turn around on pot (something that is genuinely mild, not physically addictive, and is plainly mis-classified as Schedule I) has taken a ton of effort. Furthermore the only reason that effort has been so successful is because pot is so widely used; somewhere around half of all Americans have smoked pot at some point in their life. You don't have any sort of similar base on which to launch a publicity campaign for crack (in the specific case of crack, at least we've got the Fair Sentencing Act. Certainly a good start, but that has a hell of a long way to go).

[1] Per TFA: "Since Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002, there have been almost 460,000 misdemeanor marijuana arrests. And while blacks and Hispanics make up 45% of pot smokers in New York City, they account for 86% of possession arrests." Saying that legalization of pot only helps middle class white kids is just plain wrong. It is so stunningly wrong that it seems almost maliciously so.

There are two approaches to solving political problems. Make incremental improvements where you can; or let things get so horrible that whatever you are opposed to collapses. The latter typically has far worse side effects.
White, middle-class kids might not be targeted as minority kids are, but I don't see how they're helped.
It is utterly disgusting that the government feels that they can tell us what to do when there is pretty much zero effect on other people.

I can sort of understand government intervention for harder more addictive drugs, though it is horrendously misguided and broken (focus should be on rehabilitation), however for stuff like weed, MDMA, speed, even Ketamine or shrooms, the government has no fucking business locking people up for using, selling, or creating these drugs until they actually commit some sort of crime that affects people.

Looks like the tide is really turning on legalisation - more and more political rats are turning over and claiming they have always been in favour of legalisation. Tacky, but still a sign of progress.
But will it bring back hemp? America lost a billion dollar crop when it lost hemp: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp#Uses
If they did legalize it, what would happen to the thousands sitting in jail / probation for pot offenses. Oh were sry, it's ok now?
I dont mean to say you are insinuating the following, but i feel it is important to say:

Is that reason enough to keep them there? Isn't it better to do the right* thing at some point, than do the wrong thing forever? Should an innocent man be sentenced to death, if at some point before his extinction from this earth, we find out the truth?

Asking for forgiveness, and admitting the wrong had been done, is and will always be, the first step towards rectifying injustice.

<rant>

* Marijuana has never, from its physical effects, killed any one. It is one of the safest substances for humans to ingest on the planet. You would die from drinking too much water before you could kill yourself from a smoking/eating pot (long term smoking effects not included).

For those who insist on the "moral" cough bullshit cough perspective: People do not become menaces, belligerent, and or violent towards their families smoking weed. People don't black out and wake up wondering what happened. For alcohol, the same cannot be said. Yet, marijuana is immoral? Let me hopefully be the last to say, with a smile, fuck you and fuck that :)

Furthermore, as is the case, well in my opinion, with all drugs they are at most: medical problems, not criminal. The criminal system is anti-rehabilitation; and as a result; ensures the propagation of the problem and not the solution.

</rant>

In Washington, some prosecutors threw out all pending pot-related cases after I-502 (pot legalization) passed last November. http://blogs.seattletimes.com/politicsnorthwest/2012/11/09/1...

(Note: Seattle is in King county)

As a parallel, consider Alan Turing. At the time, he was convicted of an offense. Whether or not this led to his premature demise, we must leave for another thread.

Now, that offense no longer exists. There have been attempts to pardon Alan Turing, as yet unsuccessful.

However, I feel it can be sensibly argued that what truly conveys justice is the retroactive abolishment of the crime - that he would be, tragically posthumously, of an untarnished record.

Ought not such be justly applied in these circumstances also?

Hopefully, yes. I think that pardons would be in order for those convicted of only pot offenses (carrying an illegal handgun while also dealing would of course not be pardoned).

In reality I expect we would let them continue to rot in jail since they were technically breaking the law at the time.

Most of them weren't breaking the law in a fight to change the world, they were doing it opportunistically (consciously placing their own financial wellbeing above social rules). Hence, their punishment technically does not depend on current social rules regarding any object accessory to their crimes.

It's also politically hard enough to make people approve full MJ legalization, without having to fight the ghost of a wide-scale amnesty that would likely threaten deeper social repercussions.

In practice, a sort of low-scale amnesty for smaller infractions would likely have widespread support, even just to clean up personal records.

It's important to note that it's not "free the weed, man!"

It would be grown by government approved vendors and taxed. Private growing would likely be illegal. Sales by non-government approved vendors would likely be illegal. I'm certain the government would allow allow a single FDA approved variety: you wouldn't see the higher powered varieties or growing techniques. It would more highly regulated than cigarettes or alcohol. I have no clue about the number of how all this would work out, but it could be more expensive than it is now.

If you get caught with a cheaper variety, or more powerful variety, etc, then what? Probably the same thing that happens today. After all, you can get arrested for carrying around prescription drugs that aren't properly labeled; you'd probably see the same thing with government marijuana. Moreover, you can then be charged with tax evasion.

That isn't what has happened with amendment 64 in Colorado. You can grow up to six plants for personal use, no licence required. Funnily enough, the current situation of having legalised personal use without legalising trade is very similar to what was proposed by Hunter S. Thompson when he was running for Sheriff of Aspen.
I doubt this actually. I assume it would be more like how the laws are in Colorado with Amendment 64. Adults, over 21, can grow up to 6 plants and posses up to an ounce. Growers are regulated, similarly to distilleries, but they are not government run. Sales are still taxed, just as tobacco and alcohol. With this we will still see all the different strains that we see now with medical marijuana in states that allow it. So as long as you are over 21, and not smoking in public and have under an ounce there would no possession charges, regardless of the strength or strain.

That's how I see this happening, and what makes the most sense to me.

Why do you think New York legalizing weed would look drastically different from Colorado or Washington State?
Is there actually a drafted proposed law that is available to read at this point? What you are suggesting would be drastically different than Washington or Colorado.
Yet another datapoint that marijuana vaporizers are a great bet for a hardware startup.
Any basic hardware like this is quickly commoditised by the China manufacturing machine. So no. It isn't a great bet for a hardware startup.
Ploom.com
It obviously bothers me that marijuana is still illegal, but I'm more upset about the lack of marijuana medical research in the past. I'm glad the medical establishment is looking into it more these days. It is just sad it took so long for them to come around b/c of the stigma.

The next thing I'm also very, very upset with is the still illegal nature of hormonal supplementation. People say free the weed? I say free the testosterone and hgh. If anything will give people longer, healthier and more productive lives, it is those.

Note: I know TRT and HRT are becoming big business in the US, but it is still quite difficult to actually get these without the right insurance.

It looks like hacker news is in favor of legalizing marijuana.
Perhaps that's because technical people tend to look at facts when they analyze a situation?
Rationalism and left and right libertarianism will get you there. The same mix is against the high prison population, harsh penalties for non-violent crime with low economic value, e.g. copyright infringement by individuals, expensive wars, continuing to build Cold War weapons, etc. The federal Drug War itself is expensive, but it also a large fraction of local and state policing, prisons, and even the State Department. Lots of expensive economic drag is tied up in that. We would prefer to be more prosperous, in addition to being freer.
The thing is, the owners of the private prisons want to get richer and invest serious money so their cells are kept as full as possible:

http://www.republicreport.org/2012/marijuana-lobby-illegal/

See "2.) Private Prisons Corporations"

Lobbying is legalized corruption, in most cases.

It's obvious that we need to get rid of it if we want to fix the country.

it's been pretty apparent to me for some time now that "the war on drugs" is actually a mechanism to drive _up_ the price of street drugs, and i would go so far as to claim this is done intentionally.

without ridiculously stiff penalties for drug crimes, the sky-high premium placed on the drugs themselves would be unreasonable. a higher price on street drugs leads to a similar near-linear relationship with the amount of USD exported outside the US. in this way "the war on drugs" is actually a mechanism to increase demand and circulation of the USD.

softening the penalties for drug "crimes" makes a lot of sense, just look at portugal and other areas that have decriminalized/legalized possession of small amounts of drugs. i hope the US continues along the current vector of softening its approach with drug "crimes".

I am for legalization of drugs, but at the same time, advertising them should be made illegal.

I am worried about commercialization of it. Look at the tobacco industry and its lies.

I support more strict laws against marijuana.

Why? To give the IQ ≤ 100 voters something scary but harmless to criminalize. We know what happens when you criminalize pot, and it ain't that bad.

Create a punishment vacuum and they will cook up some mad new criminalization scheme, as surely as the dog returns to its vomit. The FSM only knows what insanity they will foist on us. Maybe they'll recriminalize condoms, it got so many votes last time. Inflation busting is always popular too, nearly made FDR president for life.