Ron Paul, others to introduce marijuana bill
June 22, 2011 11:03 PM
By Joshua Norman

In early June, a 19-member international panel of luminaries called the so-called "war on drugs" a failure, and recommended the United States consider legalizing marijuana in order to better undermine criminal organizations and stop punishing those who "do no harm to others."

It apparently only took a few weeks for Congress to hear them, as Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), along with other congressmen, will be introducing legislation in the House on Thursday to "limit the federal government's role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or inter-state smuggling," reports Reason.com, which claims to have gotten its information from the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP.)

The bill is not an attempt to legalize pot, the authors insist, but is instead intended to clear up the conflicts between federal and state law that exist throughout the country. As many as 16 states currently allow the use of medical marijuana, an allowance that falls into direct conflict with federal law.

According to the MPP: "Rep. Frank's legislation would end state/federal conflicts over marijuana policy, reprioritize federal resources, and provide more room for states to do what is best for their own citizens."

While GOP presidential candidate Paul and the very liberal Frank might seem an odd pair, this legislation is right up Paul's libertarian alley, as it focuses on allowing states to do what they want without interference from Washington, D.C.

The legislation is co-sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland).

While some, including the MPP and The Los Angeles Times, claim it is the first legislation of its kind to be proposed in Congress that would end the 73-year-old federal marijuana prohibition that began with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, there have been other marijuana-related bills in Congress in recent years.

In fact, Rep. Frank himself introduced as many as two marijuana-related bills in 2009 alone, both of which appear to have died in subcommittee and never even been considered for a vote. H.R. 2835 sought to "provide for the medical use of marijuana in accordance with the laws of the various States." H.R. 2943 sought to "eliminate most Federal penalties for possession of marijuana for personal use, and for other purposes."

While it is very likely the current piece of marijuana legislation will end up in the same place as Frank's previous two efforts, it is still part of a growing chorus of voices seeking to alter the debate on the war on drugs. With the U.S. spending $15 billion per year on the war on drugs, and with little to no apparent gains made in the last 40 years since it started, theirs will surely not be the last prominent voices to question why marijuana is illegal.


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Yeah this whole thing of having pot a level 1 drug in the same step with heroin and coke is just BS

Part of the 15 billion they spent so far would be way more better spent in social housing / schools / edjucation in general and whatnot.


Oh Well here my take on it

Actually cocaine is a level 2 substance, according to the Federal Gov't, it is less dangerous then pot, which is listed as level 1.

Rory how nuts is that huh?

Coke on 2 and pot on one. Well they had to get the hemp out the way to intradouce their cotton. Thats all it was.

I think they should come observe the pawnshop and see which one(pot or coke) does society more harm. I honestly i am tired of getting my hopes up for legaliziation too many special interest groups benefit from it being illegal. I got busted once for like 3 grams cost me like 600.00 now imagine how many times that scene alone plays out throughout the country. How much local LEO time is invested into taking people on a ride to downtown Ft. Lauderdale over minute amounts of pot??? There will never be full blown legalization in this country.

Ha I do not care if the whole country get it legal. Miami Dade is sufficient

Scott I couldn't agree more. Too many pockets are lined through keeping it illegal.

lobbyists and legislators and government people in general make massive use of coke, those fuckers don't mess with stinky weed...

That is so right. I remember back in Germany sitting in the bar/movies "thing we had in the village" and rolling it up with the Major and a Orthopaedic surgeon and a firend who was with the Police over there.

New a Judge/Doctor/Laywer who were heacy on coke. Same judge put one of my friends in the slammer for a weekend because of pot.

Check the #s of non violent offender's that are in prison for pot right now. Nationwide the # is staggering and disputed. The more credible sources put it at about 500.000 +/- nationwide. The cost is estimated at about 5000 per inmate per month. But again it's really hard to say because there has never been an accounting of #'s and cost's of just that one group. The cost of the current policy is even more so. Gil Kerlikowske the current US durg Czar has a budget of just under 20 billion dollars. The attitude being, "The war on drug's is unwinnable, but it's infinitely fundable".
The 17 states that have already legalized and regulated it, are realising substantial revenue increases and lower crime rates. Mostly due to a drop in pot related arrests. The down side is the larger organized gang's are moving into other drug's like Meth, Coke, crack, & Heroin. As will the Mexican cartel's. Short term however they would take about a 40% hit. At the same time LE is better able to refocus resources on those market's.
It's not a problem that will be solved over night. But decriminalizing pot is a good start.

You are amazing Pat!

Stop funding the terrorist groups

I for one would love to see where you got those numbers Pat , one of James propaganda sites I bet. In two years of working in the jails and 8 years on the road I have never seen anyone with less than trafficing amounts ( lbs not grams ) spend more than a day in jail in Broward.. Even with the trafficing it is usually a slap on the wrist at best. As far as cops wasting time on taking those with pot to jail also BS . If it is under 20 grams you get a notice to appear at best unless your are a jackass. Legalize it or keep it as it is it doesn't matter to me. As far as hemp being illegal to further cotton sales also BS. Hemp wasn't outlawed til 1937 well after cotton had reached its peak and was on the decline due to synthetics.

Yeah I know the cotton thing was not so good

It had to do with nylon

Seriously that is what I read. I"m not BS'n ya. Funny story tho

Quote
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.

This all set the stage for…

The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.

After two years of secret planning, Anslinger brought his plan to Congress — complete with a scrapbook full of sensational Hearst editorials, stories of ax murderers who had supposedly smoked marijuana, and racial slurs.

End Quoute "Source http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why ... a-illegal/

Chris; I never said a word about weight. I said non violent offenders. Florida is only one state. I'm talking on a national level. Truth is compared to Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Michagan, New york, Minnesota and Alaska, Florida is a cake walk. Individual state possesion laws differ greatly. What you're saying is a simple ticket here has mandatory jail time in nevada, texas, and a few other's.

As far as the 1937 tax act, that did not make hemp illegal. It just taxed it's growers.

The head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), Harry J. Anslinger argued that (FBN) in the 1930s had noticed an increase of reports of people smoking marijuana. He had also, in 1935, received support from president Franklin D. Roosevelt for adoption of the Uniform State Narcotic Act, state laws that included regulations of cannabis.

The total production of hemp fiber in the US had in 1933 decreased to around 500 tons/year, then cultivation of hemp began to increase 1934-1935 but still at very low volume compared with other fibers.

Hemp, bast with fibers. The stem, that can become hemp hurds, in the middle.Some parties have argued that the aim of the Act was to reduce the size of the hemp industry largely as an effort of businessmen Andrew Mellon, Randolph Hearst, and the Du Pont family. The same parties have argued that with the invention of the decorticator, hemp had became a very cheap substitute for the paper pulp that was used in the newspaper industry. These parties argue that Hearst felt that this was a threat to his extensive timber holdings. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury and the wealthiest man in America, had invested heavily in the Du Pont families new synthetic fiber, nylon, a fiber that was competing with hemp. In 1916, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) chief scientists Jason L. Merrill and Lyster H. Dewey created a paper, USDA Bulletin No. 404 "Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material", in which they concluded that paper from the woody inner portion of the hemp stem broken into pieces, so called hemp hurds, was "favorable in comparison with those used with pulp wood". Dewey and Merrill believed that hemp hurds were a suitable source for paper production. However, later research does not confirm this. The concentration of cellulose in hemp hurds is only between 32% and 38% (not 77%, a number often repeated by Jack Herer and others on the Internet). In 2003 95 % of the hemp hurds in EU were used for animal bedding, almost 5% were used as building material.

The American Medical Association (AMA) opposed the act because the tax was imposed on physicians prescribing cannabis, retail pharmacists selling cannabis, and medical cannabis cultivation/manufacturing; instead of enacting the marijuana Tax Act, the AMA proposed cannabis be added to the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act. The bill was passed over the last-minute objections of the American Medical Association. Dr. William Woodward, legislative counsel for the A.M.A. objected to the bill on the grounds that the bill had been prepared in secret without giving proper time to prepare their opposition to the bill He doubted their claims about marijuana addiction, violence, and overdosage; he further asserted that because the word Marijuana was largely unknown at the time, the medical profession did not realize they were losing cannabis. "Marijuana is not the correct term... Yet the burden of this bill is placed heavily on the doctors and pharmacists of this country."

The bill was passed on the grounds of different reports and hearings. Anslinger also referred to the International Opium Convention that from 1928 included cannabis as a drug, and that all states had some kind of laws against improper use of cannabis. Today, it is generally accepted that the hearings included incorrect, excessive or unfounded arguments. By 1951, however, new justifications had emerged, and the Boggs Act that superseded the marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed.

And if you check history you'll find certain cotton states had made hemp illegal before the civil war. That ended when they lost.

Chris, weren't you the one who posted before that there are 2 rules in life...never get involved in a land war in Asia, and don't get in an argument with Pat

Well to be fair to my Bro, with respect to Florida he's absolutely right. But not long ago that same amount in New York carried a min of 15 to life and a 25 to life max. Check out the 1973 Rockefeller drug laws. Michigan had the 650 lifer law in 1978. It called for mandatory life for 650 grams of any class 1 substance. Both have since been repealed and convicts sentenced under them were allowed to apply for resentencing. Many had their time cut by half but just as many didn't. Nevada, Texas, and a couple other's I don't recall which, have mandatory time for a second offense. Get busted twice with any amount and you're going to jail. I just read about California having the most overcrowded prison system in the country. The state is facing hundred's of millions in wrongful death lawsuits because of it. The main source of the overcrowding started in 97 with much harsher possession law's.

A new Justice Policy Institute study states that California leads the nation in drug offender imprisonment with a rate of 115 per 100,000 (the national average is 44 per 100,000). In the past three years, more Californians were imprisoned for simple drug possession (38,716) than for sales and manufacturing drugs (35,276).
According to the study, in 1980, only 379 Californians were imprisoned for drug possession offenses as opposed to 12,749 in 1999. The study also found that counties with stricter drug law enforcement policies did not experience greater crime or drug use declines, and in most instances, drug arrests and imprisonment rates coincided with crime increases or slower crime decreases.
The authors stated that rising rates of drug imprisonment in California were not associated with changes in crime rates. For example, Riverside County's drug possession imprisonment rate is 500 percent greater than Contra Costa County, yet the violent crime rate is 30 percent lower in Contra Costa.
"The findings cast serious doubt on prison advocate claims that strict and harsh drug enforcement is effective crime control policy," said Daniel Macallair, co-author of the study. "It is also good news for counties that adopted a more balanced approach to their drug problem."

Just seem's to me that house arrest and ankle monitor's would be a much better way to go. Think about it, Hinkely tried to kill Reagan and he get's 4 month's a year of house arrest. I think it would be safe to say he's a violent offender. If nothing else, house arrest and work release would take the support burden off the tax payer. Just saying.