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March 1, 2020 at 15:38 · I went to an interesting seminar on the “The Controlled Substances Act at 50 Years” at the ASU College of law in downtown Phoenix last week. I think the CSA or “Controlled Substances Act” replaced the “1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act” and the “1937 Marihuana Tax Act”. I know good old Timothy Leary got the “1937 Marihuana Tax Act” declared unconstitutional in his trial. I'm not sure if the “1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act” was declared unconstitutional or just phased out. I was unhappy because none of the sessions on marijuana legalization addressed the fact that most of the marijuana legalization seems to be about giving special interest groups a government monopoly on growing and selling medical marijuana or recreational marijuana, rather then legalizing marijuana completely and ending the insane “War on Marijuana”. Here in Arizona, Prop 203 or the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act seems to be mostly about making millionaires out of the people that wrote it. Same for the phony baloney 2020 Smart and Safe initiative to legalize marijuana. Cat Packer a government bureaucrat with the Los Angeles Department of Cannabis Regulation mentioned that the city of Los Angeles uses zoning laws to terrorize marijuana businesses they don't like. I can relate to that. I have been terrorized by both the Phoenix and Tempe messy yard cops. Beau Kilmer, the director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center said that all of the THC used in America could be produced on two dozen farms in Idaho. I thank that validates the statements that I have made many times that if marijuana is legalized 100% it would lower the cost of recreational marijuana to the neighborhood of the price of tomatoes and potatoes. I'm often ridiculed for that statement but, if the law of supply and demand is allowed to play in the production and sales of marijuana the price will drop significantly. A reoccurring theme at the seminar was that the “War on Drugs” is a racist war on people of color. Deborah Small a lawyer from Oakland addressed that issue beautifully. In fact I think she gave the best talk at the conference. Like me Deborah Small wants to legalize all drugs. Since high school when I first read up on drugs, I have been saying that opiate drugs like heroin are more or less harmless with the exception that you can over dose on them and that they are addictive. Other then that they don't cause the illnesses and diseases that people get from tobacco and alcohol. Sure dirty needles spread diseases, but that's not because of opiate drugs, that's because needles are often illegal like drugs and shared. Legalize needles and that problem will go away. Dr Jeffery Singer a Phoenix medical doctor and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute seemed to agree with that and said something like “alcohol is much more dangerous then heroin”. I don't know if he agrees with my statement that opiates don't cause diseases and illnesses like tobacco and alcohol do. Allister Adel the Maricopa County Attorney didn't show up for her talk. Instead she sent a representative who lied to us. As an answer to a question from the audience she said something to the effect that Arizona doesn't have any laws which give draconian prison sentences to people who are arrested for victimless drug war crimes and are in possession of guns. If I remember correctly Chris Martian was arrested for a victimless marijuana crime and because he had a gun he inherited from a relative he received a mandatory prison sentence in the Arizona State prison. Maybe Eric Johnson or Rain Baker can comment on that. I talked to an ex-cop named Neill Franklin for a while. Neill Franklin is the executive director of LEAP. LEAP used to be “Law Enforcement Against Prohibition” I liked that name. Sadly LEAP changed it's name and is now “Law Enforcement Action Partnership”. I think their new name sucks. Like me Neill Franklin wants to legalize all drugs. That's coming from a cop who used to be a narc. Neill Franklin also told me that cops frequently have arrest quotas. He said they are not written down, but there are quotas and cops who don't meet their quotas are punished. Dr John Molina spoke there too. While I have driven thru Guadalupe many times, I have never met anybody that lived there, much less a medical doctor. Guadalupe has an interesting history because it is mostly Yaqui Indians who fled to Arizona during the 1910 Mexican Revolution as political refuges. Same for the Yaqui Indian community in Scottsdale near El Dorado Park. The good thing was most of the people at the conference seemed to want to legalize all drugs to one degree or another. Sadly many of these people seemed to think that that police and government can be worked with to fix the problem. I disagree with that 100%. I like to think of the “War on Drugs” as a full employment jobs program for cops, prosecutors, judges, probation officers, drug counselors and all the other people who are currently involved in it. I suspect a huge number of those people who currently have high paying jobs fighting the insane and failed “War on Drugs” don't want to end it because ending the “War on Drugs” will end their high paying jobs. Dr Keith Humphreys of Stanford mentioned it wasn't Nixon who expended the “War on Drugs”, it was Eisenhower. He said Nixon actually rolled back the “War on Drugs” a little. I have heard that Nixon expanded the “War on Drugs” so he could use it against the pot smoking hippies like me who were against the Vietnam War. I wanted to ask a question about that but didn't. Dr Keith Humphreys mentioned that there were 7 million deaths a year from tobacco, 3 million deaths a year from liquor and less then one million a year from illegal drugs. From those numbers it sounds like the drug problem is relatively minor compared to the tobacco and liquor problems. Of course we had a “War on Liquor” which was call the Prohibition. It was a dismal failure. I'm sure if we decide to have a “War on Tobacco” it will also be a dismal failure like the “War on Drugs”. If you ask me it's time to admit the “War on Drugs” is a dismal failure and end it. Or maybe we could do what we did with the War in Vietnam. We declared victory and went home. Sure I remember North Vietnamese tanks storming the Presidential palace in Saigon a week later. Same for the air lift from the American Embassy in Saigon. But nobody really seemed to care that we used winning the War in Vietnam as a lame excuse to get out of it. Even me. I gripe about everything. I didn't even gripe about how the government lied about winning the Vietnam War. |