Planting the Seed for Legal Pot
 

Planting the Seed for Legal Pot

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/polit...-81222877.html

".........The bill, authored by San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, would essentially treat pot the same way alcohol is treated under the law and would allow adults over 21 to possess, smoke and grow marijuana.

The law would also call for a fee of $50 per ounce sold and would help fund drug eradication and awareness programs. It could help pull California out of debt, supporters say, raising up to $990 million from the fees........"

The state/feds are having a had time finding growers right now. Make it legal to grow and the state will find a hard time collecting the $50 per oz fee. If it passes look for every house to have a few plants out back.

I'd move back to CA just to grow pot out my back door. :D

The big money's probably in hard drugs and synthetics, but it's a start. States could license marijuana stores like some have licensed liquor stores. Cartels wouldn't have a chance against Wal-Mart.

cartel slice's off a man's face and stitches it to a soccer ball
 

we can't legalize too soon . . .

"Mexico's drug war reached new levels of brutality at the weekend when a gang member was killed and cut into seven pieces as a warning to members of a cartel.
To drive home the point, the victim's face was sliced off and stitched on to a football.

"Hugo Hernandez, 36, was taken to Sinaloa after being kidnapped on January 2 in neighbouring Sonora state, in an area known for marijuana growing. His torso was found in a plastic container on the streets of Los Mochis; elsewhere another box contained his arms, legs and skull . . . "

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl...#ixzz0cRWXyMQm

If the drug problems are to be mitigated, the economic benefits of trafficking have to be reduced.

Step 1: Don't interdict. Let the traffickers spread around as much as they want.
Step 2: Go after the end user. Make it a "traffic ticket" with steep fines.

Supply up + demand down will lower price to where there's no significant criminal profit.
If the consequences of being a user are made worse, more will seek help or avoid using in the first place.


The end users have less ability to thwart LE efforts.
Go after the soft target.
It sounds cruel, but it would work.

Why bother? Seriously?

Just tax it to a fare-thee-well. It works for alcohol. It works for cigarettes. And frankly, I like the idea of letting users pay a tax so my own taxes stay low. :cool:

Agree in principle, not in practice.
Taxation will create a black market.

Leave it black, fine (tax) the end user.
This gives additional motivation for users to contain their behavior.

Strangle demand, let the supply flow, kill the benefits of trafficking.
This idea is proposed for those who want a law-enforcement approach.

MOO-legalize it, don't tax it, let people suffer in the gutter until they decide to change their behavior and get help.
Let people reap what they sow.

I humbly disagree that letting drug cartels sell with impunity would result in there being "no significant criminal profit" or prevent future Hugo "Wilson" Hernandez's.

My understanding of drug legalization and taxation is that it kills the black market of the substance. I don't see how traffic ticket sized fines for users will strangle the demand.

Sidney Weintraub, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes Mexican drug cartels are making about $25 billion annually from us and about 40% of what they sell is marijuana.Link

Just my .00000002

Mexico drug kingpin arrest highlights new strategy
 

Mexico drug kingpin arrest highlights new strategy

By ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press

TIJUANA, Mexico – Federal troops stormed a seaside vacation home and captured one of the country's most brutal drug lords Tuesday, the second time in less than a month that Mexico has taken down one of its most powerful traffickers.

The arrest was considered another victory for enhanced surveillance techniques that are being cultivated with the assistance of the United States. American anti-drug officials had been helping Mexican authorities track Teodoro Garcia Simental for more than five months.

Garcia, known as "El Teo," was arrested before dawn near the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, where his gang had been bringing in planeloads of drugs to smuggle across the U.S. border, said Ramon Eduardo Pequeno, head of the federal police's anti-drug unit.

Garcia, in his mid-30s, is connected to the deaths of at least 300 people, authorities say, and ordered his rivals disposed of in especially grisly ways: beheading them, hanging their bodies from bridges or dissolving them in caustic soda. He took hefty ransom payments from kidnapping Tijuana business leaders.

He is also believed to be behind many of the dozens of assassinations of Tijuana police officers over the last two years. Pequeno said Garcia had recently stepped up efforts to kill Baja California's attorney general, Rommel Moreno, and Tijuana's public safety chief, Julian Leyzaola.

President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out war upon taking office in December 2006, sending thousands of troops out to combat the drug gangs. But until recently the government had little success in taking down the top kingpins, and Mexicans have been growing increasingly frustrated with a war that has left more than 15,000 casualties.

That changed on Dec. 16, when another drug lord, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed in a raid by Mexican marines in the colonial city of Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City. Authorities said U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials had been helping them track Beltran Leyva as well. On Jan. 2, federal officials arrested his brother, Carlos Beltran Leyva.

"The government is being more subtle with regard to its pursuit of drug traffickers," said George W. Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. "It's relying much more on electronic techniques, eavesdropping, inspection of one's lifestyle. It's also paying pretty good money to informants."

U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual said Garcia's arrest shows the sharing of information between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement is producing results.

"Mexico's operational capacity is growing," Pascual said in a statement. "We continue to improve our sharing of information. The Mexican government is unrelenting in its determination and commitment."

More than 150 federal troops raided a two-story, vacation home near the city of La Paz, shooting at the door and then barging in, said a neighbor who asked not to be identified out of fear the gang could retaliate. The troops quickly escorted Garcia and another man out of the home and into SUVs.

Police seized two rifles, 19 mobile phones, two laptop computers and more than $35,000 in Mexican and U.S. currency, Pequeno said.

Garcia appeared with authorities in Mexico City looking much heavier than in the two photos that have been widely circulated. Another alleged trafficker, Diego Raymundo Guerrero, was also detained.

Garcia joined the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix in 1995, Pequeno said, and rose through the ranks. He broke from the group in an April 2008 shootout, plunging the city across the border from San Diego into a period of unprecedented violence. More than 1,500 people have been murdered in Tijuana since the beginning of 2008.

He ruled by ordering the killings of drug dealers who betrayed him, and buying off corrupt officials.

The arrest marks one of the most significant blows to Mexico's Sinaloa cartel under Calderon — assuming that the Mexican government's claims linking Garcia to that cartel are correct, said David Shirk, director of the University of San Diego's Transborder Institute. Mexican officials say Garcia was the cartel's point man in wresting control of the Baja California peninsula from the rival Arellano Felix cartel.

Garcia represents a new generation of Mexican drug traffickers who are much more savage than their predecessors, Shirk said.

"They play by a different set of rules, or maybe no rules, in terms of how they relate to their rivals," he said.

Shirk speculated that the arrest of Garcia could be a result of intelligence gleaned from the capture of Arturo Beltran Leyva and other leaders of that organization.

"It's quite possible that Beltran Leyva — no friend of the Sinaloa cartel — gave up information that helped track down El Teo," he said.

He said the arrest could also reflect a strategy to hit several cartels at once. That could also bolster public support for Calderon's fight among Mexicans who had been growing frustrated over the escalating violence.

Mexican federal authorities, acting on intelligence provided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said they tracked him down following a five-month surveillance operation.

Police seized two rifles, 19 mobile phones, two laptop computers and more than $35,000 in Mexican and U.S. currency.

nicely done

It would appear that drug cartels already do sell with impunity.
When one is removed, another takes its place. The hydra will not be slain while demand remains.

I don't agree with the choice many Americans have made (buying drugs).
The fact is: they have voted with their dollars.

Why should massive tax revenue be collected from everyone else in order to fund a drug war?
We're just trying to outspend our fellow citizens.

Prohibition was tried last century.
It didn't work.

Let people destroy their own bodies, if they wish.
Just don't use public money to prevent it nor fix their problems later (socialized medicine).