Legalize Marijuana, Because God Says So
Millions of North Americans are hoping California re-legalizes the relatively safe, God-given plant cannabis (marijuana). Tom Danehy (April 1) likes to lump cannabis in with “drugs,” but upon observation, many citizens notice it’s a plant. Plant, as in Christ God Our Father, The Ecologician, indicates He created all the seed-bearing plants, saying they are all good, on literally the very first page of the Bible (Genesis 1:11-12 and 29-30).
It’s time to stop caging responsible adults for using what God says is good.
Stan White
Legalizing Drugs Leads to Lower Drug-Use Rates
I’m writing about Randy Serraglio,‘s outstanding column (April 15). Of course, many drug-war cheerleaders will proclaim that if we re-legalized all of the drugs the cartels deal in the United States, drug use and abuse will skyrocket.
In the Netherlands, where marijuana has been quasi-legal for several decades, the Dutch use marijuana at less than half of the rate Americans do. And they use heroin at less than a third of the rate Americans do. (See www.drugwarfacts.org/thenethe.htm.)
In 2001, Portugal abolished all criminal penalties for personal possession of all drugs. Have the rates of drug use and abuse skyrocketed in Portugal? No, they have fallen.
In 1994, Switzerland started an experimental program to sell heroin addicts the drug at very low cost, even giving it to the addicts who couldn’t afford it. In 2008, 68 percent of the Swiss voted to make the program permanent. Have Swiss heroin-addiction rates skyrocketed? No, they have fallen dramatically. So has their overall crime rate.
So, claims that if our now-illegal drugs are re-legalized, drug use and abuse will skyrocket are totally bogus.
Kirk Muse
Vote Against Prop 100 to Help Us Balance Budgets … Wait, What?!
The proponents of Proposition 100 whine about Arizona losing jobs and $442.5 million in federal matching funds if it’s not passed. Jim Nintzel refers to Goldwater Institute studies about job losses as bullshit (“Pass the Sales Tax, and Save Jobs!” The Skinny, April 15). The proponents also whine about unfunded costs being passed on to the counties and cities if Prop 100 doesn’t pass.
Isn’t this very deceiving and hypocritical? Who’s bullshitting who? It’s apparently OK for Arizona to pass on costs to the feds, but not for the state to pass on costs to the counties/cities. At least 53 percent of us pay federal income taxes to help support the 47 percent who don’t. In addition, our leaders in Washington, D.C. (both parties) have run up a current national debt of $12.4 trillion—that’s more than $40,000 for each of the 307 million Americans. Furthermore, we have unfunded entitlements on the books, e.g., Medicare and Social Security, which have a present value of $60 trillion, or $195,000 per person of four. Double these amounts if you are part of the half of the country who actually pays income taxes.
We’ll be the ones paying off the federal debt after corporation taxes are reduced to zero. If we really cared about our children and grandchildren, we would balance the budgets now and pay off the debts we created. Vote no on Prop 100.
Tom Sander
Both Dems and Republicans Have Supported the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan
Thank you for your recent coverage on the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (“Protection With Teeth,” Currents, April 15). This set of policies, which integrate habitat and species protection with urban growth and development throughout Pima County, has transformed the way that the county does business, and has been a breath of fresh air after decades of facilitating sprawl from mountain range to mountain range.
However, there was a glaring misstatement attributed to me. The sentiment that the success of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan is due to the Democrats alone is false. For their many differences on policy issues, Republicans and Democrats alike have stood together as fierce supporters of the conservation plan policies since their adoption into the county’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan in 2001. This broad support is perhaps the most shining example of the SDCP’s vision.
With the endangered-species permit approval looming in the near future, and the “devil being in the details,” I can only hope (and assume) that this Board of Supervisors will continue its longstanding support for strong and permanent conservation measures.
Carolyn Campbell
Executive director, Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection
Correction
In the photo caption for the Live review of Okie Dokie Karaoke (April 22), we mixed up the two people identified. Tony McMillen was the gentleman in white, and Paul Jenkins was the gentleman wearing brown. We apologize for the mistake.
This article appears in Apr 29 – May 5, 2010.
The staunchest supporters of keeping cannabis, heroin, etc. illegal are the drug dealers and cartels. To make big bucks, they need to be illegal, but the laws only loosely enforced, at least against trafficking and sale. And that is exactly what our policy in this country is.
Mr. Tom Sander,
I think you are clueless! My sister IS in jeopardy of losing her job. I am a citizen of Ohio but my sister moved to the wonderful town of Tucson about 4 years ago. She teaches your children and she is a great asset to your community. Without this passage of Proposition 100 she is losing her job and future generations could be at a great lose without great teachers like her. I work for the State of Ohio and we all had to take pay cuts in our contract to save jobs and save state money. Please understand that a small sacrifice can save another fellow American. When it doesn’t hit home, it is easy to make comments like you did. Ignorance is blind sometimes! PLEASE SUPPORT PROPOSITION 100. Thank you for your time and God Bless you fine people of Arizona!!
SUPPORT PROP 100! Yeah, we should balance the budget and pay off our debt but right NOW we can’t and right NOW our education is sorely in need of a transfusion. We are one of the worst of the 50 states (I believe 49th is what I read) in terms of quality of education. It’s embarassing! VOTE YES TO HELP OUR KIDS!
Please see the following doc and article for an explanation of how AZ got to this point. Continued taxes on the middle class is not the answer. Source: http://www.azleg.gov/jlbc/09taxbook/09taxb… (pages 14-19) http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/article_… There are other solutions.
The sun will shine if Prop 100 fails and the jobs will get done with less breaucrats.
P.S. The counties and cities will follow-up with increased taxes and fees, school boards will ask for budget overrides, and then there’s the bond overrides that they like. These bills eventually have to be paid back with interest by our kids and grandkids who will receive little or no benefit from all of the spending.
Tom Sander
Sales tax increases hit the poor the hardest — and the number of poor and working poor is increasing all over the country, here too. I support education, art, and music programs for our region’s schools; I think our bigger-picture problem lies in the halls of the state Congress, and the office of the Governor.
It wasn’t right for them to hold a gun to our student’s and teacher’s heads for the voters to fix their inability to account for their piss-poor management of our state’s resources and programs.
Although my children are near the top of their classes, I think we should vote no and make the Congress make a better budget **with** the schools and parks prioritized, tax the rich their fair share, and stop this right/left crap theater. The time for BS is now over, and it’s time for them to get to work or they should be kicked to the curb.
I say vote no, and strongly tell Congress to do it over, without the special interests.
Oh, and about legalizing marijuana, I am all for stopping prohibition of all drugs. The same social effects that occurred in the 1930’s is happening today, but much larger, richer, and much more deadly. It would be better to bring them out of the shadows, especially the entrenched corruption on our side of the border; the pols, cops, jails, and corps who feed off the profits of it all. Our police would no longer need to be militarized, and should go back to keeping the peace — and not entrap and steal the assets of low-level drug users, while taking away their freedom and stigmatizing them for life. ITS BEEN MORE THAN 70 YEARS OF THIS, AND PROHIBITION HAS FAILED MISERABLY: STOP THE STUPIDITY, PLEASE.
Allow the Americans, Canadians, and the Mexicans to compete in an open and regulated cannabinoid market, with price and quality controls. The quality and cleanness of even the ‘ditchweed schwag’ would improve, creating more low-cost/high quality domestic products, not just drugs (hemp will become cheap to produce, it grows like a weed, and is easy to clone and cultivate).
This would force South (and North!) of the Border ‘manufacturers’ to make a better, lower cost product, and defund the more hidden criminal trafficking and violence that that illegality of the market spills like blood and tears onto our streets.
It would also create much-needed jobs on **both** sides of the border, and the eventual result of a freer market (since so many people will do it anyway, regardless of its legal status) will make the socially desired plant, fungus, root, seed, cacti, extract, or derived chemical less available to children, less time-stealing fodder for our jails and courts — freeing up the police time and court dockets for more violent crimes.
You can’t legislate the appetites of mammon, any attempt will fail every time; however you can punish those who make poor choices with what they take/use/abuse regardless of what it is.
I don’t favor taxing hemp (marijuana/cannabis) at all; I happen to believe like the late Jack Herer’s last public speech. I think those who were wrongly convicted by this near-century scam of lies and profiling should be compensated, and those who willfully advanced the breakdown of our rights and property, i.e., the federal and state proponents of the drug war, should be jailed, or pay reparations.
There will always be someone trying to skirt taxation, and a different kind of black market would surface. Look at the cigarette market, for example. If anyone anywhere can grow it (most won’t beyond the first few years of repeal) then there is no huge illicit profit margin for cartels or congressmen to get fat on.
Do you agree?
C Kisor–As a teacher who HAS lost my job (well, in TUSDspeak, I’m “in the transfer pool”), thanks for your support. TUSD made 10% cuts in the hope that the sales tax will pass, and a couple hundred of us lost our jobs. But they have not made cuts with the assumption that the tax will not pass (like many other districts have done already) and if the tax gets voted down, they will be over TWENTY MILLION dollars in the hole. I can’t even imagine what the fallout will be.
Also: eggypann, we are 49th/50th (depending on who’s generating the numbers) in per-pupil spending. In terms of quality we are actually somewhere in the middle range among the states, which is a testament to the Arizona teacher’s ability to do a lot with little. Imagine where we could be if we were properly funded, and if our legislators weren’t ok with mediocrity.
There is NO such thing as a TEMPORARY TAX people……if it is enacted, it will be here to STAY……I came out here from NY, where we had a TEMPORARY 1% TAX added over 20 years ago, its still there and always will be…………
I respectfully disagree with your position in the article:’Vote Yes On Prop 100′ The extreme Right-Wingers running this state(into the ground) are not about saving education,health-care and social services-its about destroying state government.
They are glued to their ideaology without a shred of common sense or compassion for those who are suffering. If this sales tax increase goes through, don’t they have a plan to then pass even ‘more’ tax-cuts for wealthy corporations?
I don’t trust this legislature as far as I could throw them