Only a matter of time before every state in the union follows suit, like gay marriage last decade. Then we get to work freeing everyone jailed for this.
Not just freeing people from jail but to finally stop prosecuting people and wasting 100's of millions in Tax Payer Money. How many young people have had their lives ruined over a joint? When I think of all the poor kids who got fucked over, that was the real crime. Any politician who stands in the way of legalization should be thrown out of Government, including the President.
I’ve been involved in dealing with pre-employment criminal background check red flags, and the number of times I’ve had to tell our (US) HR people that we don’t care if someone got busted for smoking low-quality pot in their college town once, it’s just one of the things that people learning about the world may try and do. I know I did.
The gratefulness of these hires is awful to see. And these are the middle class ones. Poorer and more disadvantaged groups have even less likelihood than otherwise of being in our hiring funnel because of this.
Strike these victimless “crimes” from the public record.
Straight facts. There is hundreds of millions not only wasted, but also much more than that to be made in tax revenue by legalizing and taxing it. The fact these people focused on petty crime and punishing people is sickening.
I honestly think it’ll pass federally before most of the remaining holdout states come on over. I’m saying this from having worked in the industry. There’s very little resistance at the federal level other than inertia, and quite a lot of red state resistance.
That's exactly what will happen. There will be at least 10-15 permanent holdout states that will never willingly legalize it. The same was going to be true of gay marriage. As a union we don't have to care about those holdout states, their positions are meaningless, just have to get a strong majority of the states on board and it's going to be taken care of at the federal level.
I'm not sure to what extent that's a political advocacy organization, so let's just call 0.1% a lower bound. The absolute upper bound is ~5%: https://twitter.com/JohnFPfaff/status/985996204986241026 But that assumes that everyonearrested for marijuana possession (even if it was only one of the charges) was incarcerated. But that's absolutely not the case. Rather, marijuana arrests are almost always pretextual and used to intimidate; basically, catch & release.
There sure are a ridiculous number of arrests, though, and these days having any kind of arrest on your record can be a significant handicap.
First, those sources are terrible. The first is a single treatment center, with an obvious bias, that provides zero methodology. The second at least seems like a decent authority, but provides no reason to believe his statement.
Second, the actual number of people in for marijuana far outnumbers those charged with possession. Both sources ignore those arrested for "drug trafficking" violations which would still be misdemeanors at best under the new laws, neither considers what various three strike laws have done, and god knows how many people took a plea for something not labeled possession.
I think you misunderstand the impetus for freeing the people arrested for breaking marijuana laws. It isn't just to reduce crowding in jails -- it's to free people who were arrested and imprisoned under an unjust and insane law.
Even take it at face value .1% of 2.3 million people incarcerated is 2000 people. Then you have to consider the number of people who get criminal charges on the record and face employment issues in the future because of it
What about all the people who are harassed and/or killed in situations where cops would otherwise have no reason to? What about the extreme race disparity in who is charged with marijuana+other crimes?
Your dubious metric, if true, does not capture the essence of the problem.
When talking about the prison population in America, keep in mind that America has the largest prison population in the world both in absolute numbers and per capita.
So when you talk about the percentage of people locked up for X is small, this is skewed by the vast amount of people we lock up in general. If X is small compared to the prison population as a whole, it may still be an awful lot of people.
Not sure why everyone is so obsessed with the federal elections. Things take time and often bubble up via states.
The US needs more decentralization if it want's progress on a realistic timeline (ie, one that reflects the populace). It also helps weeds out the more radical emotion-driven stuff.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but California is the US's highest spending state [0] with a budget of around 200 billion. Its entire budget is smaller than the US Federal government's deficit (measured in single digit trillions).
The reason everyone cares about federal elections is because there are earth-shattering amounts of money involved. The resources that get consumed have to come from somewhere.
If anything, the US’s progress is being held back by
federal government inaction. The freedom to move across state lines causes many problems that require taxpayer subsidies to solve.
For example, no state can offer taxpayer funded healthcare, because it would attract benefit recipients and would repel taxpayers.
And no state can offer housing for homeless, for the same reason as the above.
*Almost every state. Eventually it'll become a pissing contest for which one can hold off on legalization the longest, until they are dragged kicking and screaming.
See South Dakota, where a constitutional amendment passed on the ballot but the asshole governor is still trying to block it in court. One of her main reasons? Setting up the new licensing laws would cost ~$4 million dollars and the predicted tax revenue of $10 million a year won't come in til 2022 at the earliest. How they can make that argument with a straight face is beyond me.
See Idaho attempting to pass a constitutional amendment banning any legalization, even medical.
Passed the senate with a 2/3 supermajority a couple days ago, about to go to the house for a supermajority vote, then a simple majority ballot measure in 2022.
Some states will simply not pursue legalization until their voting demographics have turned over sufficiently to elect more progressive representation (and the Marijuana Policy Project, who has championed legalization in many states, has said there are only a few states left where this can be done with a ballot initiative versus state legislature).
For many, they’ll need to vote with their feet and migrate to better states. Or the federal government legalizes it.
Plenty of states never legalized gay marriage until the Supreme Court forced them to. (And I seriously doubt the Court will ever rule that the states aren’t allowed to ban cannabis.)
But it's still a federal Schedule I drug, isn't it?? I'm not going to rely on Washington's pinky-swear not to enforce the law, and then there are the big employers that drug-test.
Idaho is going the other way, the Senate just passed a bill that will constitutionally prohibit cannabis and any other illicit psychoactive drugs if voters pass it with simple majority in 2022.
You're right, nobody will be automagically freed as a result. That being said, pushing for amnesty, and pushing for pardons is completely how the law works, and very doable.
What is stopping a law from being passed that operates in a similar way to a pardon?
"All people convicted of X set of laws have their sentences nullified and this criminal conviction removed from their records" as a law passed, or something like that?
hourislate|5 years ago
com|5 years ago
The gratefulness of these hires is awful to see. And these are the middle class ones. Poorer and more disadvantaged groups have even less likelihood than otherwise of being in our hiring funnel because of this.
Strike these victimless “crimes” from the public record.
lpa22|5 years ago
Blikkentrekker|5 years ago
I refuse to believe that there is but a single politician on the planet whose greatest moral failure can be willingly consuming any substance.
eyelidlessness|5 years ago
kortilla|5 years ago
Not really red state resistance. It’s legal in AK and MT but still illegal (but decriminalized) in NY. Illegal in Maryland, Virginia, New Mexico, etc.
Likely the only real correlation is with states that give their citizens direct referendums.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._j...
adventured|5 years ago
wahern|5 years ago
This page suggests 0.1%: http://www.therecoverycenter.org/resources/weed-through-the-...
I'm not sure to what extent that's a political advocacy organization, so let's just call 0.1% a lower bound. The absolute upper bound is ~5%: https://twitter.com/JohnFPfaff/status/985996204986241026 But that assumes that everyone arrested for marijuana possession (even if it was only one of the charges) was incarcerated. But that's absolutely not the case. Rather, marijuana arrests are almost always pretextual and used to intimidate; basically, catch & release.
There sure are a ridiculous number of arrests, though, and these days having any kind of arrest on your record can be a significant handicap.
boomboomsubban|5 years ago
Second, the actual number of people in for marijuana far outnumbers those charged with possession. Both sources ignore those arrested for "drug trafficking" violations which would still be misdemeanors at best under the new laws, neither considers what various three strike laws have done, and god knows how many people took a plea for something not labeled possession.
Teever|5 years ago
s1artibartfast|5 years ago
elif|5 years ago
Your dubious metric, if true, does not capture the essence of the problem.
ModernMech|5 years ago
So when you talk about the percentage of people locked up for X is small, this is skewed by the vast amount of people we lock up in general. If X is small compared to the prison population as a whole, it may still be an awful lot of people.
seibelj|5 years ago
dmix|5 years ago
The US needs more decentralization if it want's progress on a realistic timeline (ie, one that reflects the populace). It also helps weeds out the more radical emotion-driven stuff.
roenxi|5 years ago
The reason everyone cares about federal elections is because there are earth-shattering amounts of money involved. The resources that get consumed have to come from somewhere.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets
afterburner|5 years ago
lotsofpulp|5 years ago
For example, no state can offer taxpayer funded healthcare, because it would attract benefit recipients and would repel taxpayers.
And no state can offer housing for homeless, for the same reason as the above.
paxys|5 years ago
boomboomsubban|5 years ago
scrooched_moose|5 years ago
Passed the senate with a 2/3 supermajority a couple days ago, about to go to the house for a supermajority vote, then a simple majority ballot measure in 2022.
toomuchtodo|5 years ago
For many, they’ll need to vote with their feet and migrate to better states. Or the federal government legalizes it.
umanwizard|5 years ago
mbg721|5 years ago
Clewza313|5 years ago
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisroberts/2020/08/19/poll-re...
acct776|5 years ago
darkstar999|5 years ago
ur-whale|5 years ago
Which is great, for the following reason: a really good way to actually know the value of something is conducting A/B experiments.
If Idaho keeps cannabis illegal, we'll be able to actually measure what effects good or bad that has on society, including tax opportunity costs.
peteretep|5 years ago
Reasonably sure that’s now how the law works
Hyp3rion|5 years ago
t-writescode|5 years ago
"All people convicted of X set of laws have their sentences nullified and this criminal conviction removed from their records" as a law passed, or something like that?