Let's face it, a lot of people smoke pot, especially in California and the majority of them are not causing problems in society. The passing of SB 1449 will make it so that small amounts for personal use will be treated as a traffic ticket with a maximum fine of $100 to be paid by the guilty party. I think that this is a good thing, and will in fact cut down on court expenses and police paperwork, as well as saving people who aren't really criminals from having an arrest and or jail time on their records.
Now this is not to say that marijuana is legal, just that possession of under an ounce will result in a ticket not a misdemeanor and arrest. Prop 19 aka Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 will be on ballot to vote on November 2nd 2010 in California. The proposition will make the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana legal by any person, in conjunctions with SB 1449 it will largely decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, make it taxable by local governments for legal cannabis dispensaries for medical marijuana.
However what it does not do is make it legal to sell pot to just anyone, you must still possess a medical marijuana card given by a licensed physician. That means that if you happen to be a casual smoker but don't have a so-called "medical need" for it, you must still seek out illegal drug dealers. This to me is still a problem, decriminalizing the possession of the small amount is a step in the right direction but not allowing the sale to take place in a regulated fashion not only loses the state money but still forces people to deal with drug dealers. Being a rehabilitated addict myself I know that most ordinary people do not like to deal with drug dealers, they live in bad neighborhoods, usually hang out with more dealers, are armed and a myriad of other sociopathic issues. It would be much better to just be able to go to the store ask for an ounce of koosh, hand over your money, get a receipt and leave. We do the same for alcohol and tobacco every day and no one thinks any different of it. When in fact alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, if you don't believe me here is an experiment. Take two people who are normally competent drivers, give one of them 4 shots of whiskey, give the other a blunt (marijuana filled cigar wrapper for you squares) and allow them to sit for 30 minutes, then administer the typical impairment tests given by police.
It does seem that with these weight limits purposed (1 ounce) that it will give leeway to organized crime to get away with moving large amounts of marijuana with more people, but if you think about it, thats just silly isn't it. No drug dealer or organized party is going to split hundreds of pounds of weed into single ounces and have a person at a time transport it in order to avoid arrests of their employees, thats stupid.
Really when you think about it marijuana should have never been made illegal in the first place, here are a few of the reasons why the plant was really made illegal in the United States, it isn't what you would think.
- Racism
- Fear
- Protection of Corporate Profits
- Yellow Journalism
- Ignorant, Incompetent, and/or Corrupt Legislators
- Personal Career Advancement and Greed
The Marijuana plant has been in use by humans as far back as 7,000 B.C. and it has far more uses than just for smoking. However its history is scattered and obscure. It is unknown the exact arrival in the United States, however Native American's all over the continent grew and used Marijuana for both smoking and other goods. Other possible uses for the plant include; rope, cloth, food, moisturizer and others can all be made using hemp. In 1619 in the colony of Jamestown, Virginia it was actually law that all farms grow Marijuana or "Indian Hempseed", you could literally be jailed for not growing the plant, how the tables have turned. Up until the United States Census of 1850 a counted 8,327 hemp “plantations” (minimum 2,000-acre farm) were in America and it was not illegal. However during the Mexican revolution, many illegal immigrants from mexico were flooding the Texas, New Mexico and California borders and bringing marijuana with them. They offered cheaper labor (surprise?) and many of the locals believed that the plant was to blame for their lower expectations. It was actually California that passed the first laws making the plant illegal. "Other states quickly followed suit with marijuana prohibition laws, including Wyoming (1915), Texas (1919), Iowa (1923), Nevada (1923), Oregon (1923), Washington (1923), Arkansas (1923), and Nebraska (1927). These laws tended to be specifically targeted against the Mexican-American population." (Drug WarRant, 2010) Many if not all of the states which followed the laws were going based on racist reasoning and non-scientific theories, in Texas, a senator said on the floor of the Senate: “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy.” mind you that was said in the Senate.
In the 1930's Dr.'s began submitting writings that colored the plant as being linked to violent behavior, turning a story told by Marco Polo of so-called "Hashashin's" or assassins who were empowered by the drug, into an amalgamation of anyone who uses the drug will become violent and slaughter everyone in their path. This is where the term "Reefer Madness" came from, describing a user of cannibinoids as a crazed psychopath.
Meet Mr. Harry J. Anslinger, the acclaimed harbinger of the dangers of Marijuana and the need for illegality at the federal level, requiring an amendment to the constitution. Anslinger was seeking to make a defining career with the Bureau of Narcotics which was generally against Cocaine and other opiates. However he knew that these drugs simply wouldn't net him enough of a guilty party, so he pulled in marijuana as well, feeding off of the already negative information of links to violence and other racist pleas. Anslinger is famously quoted with the following extremely racist comment;
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.” - Anslinger
or
“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”
In steps
William Randolf Hearst wealthy newspaper owner and acclaimed racist. Hearst wanted to help Anslinger in his quest to make Marijuana illegal because of the possibility of hemp paper taking over the newspaper industry. He did not want this to happen because he also had a large amount of money invested in a lumber company to make the paper to support his newspaper business.
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Hearst and Anslinger were then supported by Dupont chemical company and various pharmaceutical companies in the effort to outlaw cannabis. Dupont had patented nylon, and wanted hemp removed as competition. The pharmaceutical companies could neither identify nor standardize cannabis dosages, and besides, with cannabis, folks could grow their own medicine and not have to purchase it from large companies." (DrugWarRant, 2010) These companies were protecting themselves from lost revenue, not the public from a dangerous drug, they invented the danger in effort to sway public opinion, this is what is known as "yellow journalism". The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, Anslinger's opiate opus was coming to a crescendo, it was about to happen. But
Dr. William C. Woodward, Legislative Council of the American Medical Association, appeared and spoke against Anslinger, stating that his findings were contrived and fabricated by Hearst and that his findings called it "Marihuana" not Cannabis or Hemp. "
At this point, marijuana (or marihuana) was a sensationalist word used to refer to Mexicans smoking a drug and had not been connected in most people’s minds to the existing cannabis/hemp plant. Thus, many who had legitimate reasons to oppose the bill weren’t even aware of it." (DrugWarRant, 2010).
There was some debate in the court room over the evidence presented and that there was no counter evidence nor a side that was rooting for the plant to remain legal, in the end the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed, due to lies, persuasion and yellow journalism. From that point on Anslinger and people like him spread lies and held rallies telling the 'evils' of marijuana and its users. They successfully ended a multi-platform use plant by saying one of its uses cause madness, violence and that it led the white women having relations with other races. It is only now that in 2010, nearly 73 years later that these laws are starting to break down, but the social stigma toward the plant is nearly engraved into our minds. Even users of the drug know how society see's them, and it is because of these men of the past that those stigma's exist at all.
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