The voters of California have voted to allow recreational marijuana but, given the status quo, that’s a huge mess, and it’s dangerous,” he said. “A public bank may be the best way to clean up that mess and the best way to provide financial and physical security to the industry.” Over the last year, there…
Since voters approved Initiative 502, FBI crime statistics show lower rates of violent crime in Washington than before legalization. According to the FBI data, in 2011 there were 295.6 violent offenses reported per 100,000 Washington residents. In 2015, the most recent full year of data available, that rate had fallen to 284.4 violent offenses per…
*Agents destroying a[n] alcohol still in San Francisco during [alcohol] prohibition Most defenders of the drug war can name nowhere were it has succeeded, yet they insist it must be intensified nonetheless. It is true that if you construct a totalitarian police state, you can briefly reduce drug use – although the moment you relax…
Countries like Canada, Uruguay and several states in the USA are going further than this by creating legal markets for cannabis. The government’s claim that liberalisation will inevitably increase drug use and harms is contradicted by its own report, which showed no link between the harshness of punishment and the level of drug use.. In…
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved an amendment to a budget bill on Thursday to protect medical marijuana programs from federal interference in states that have legalized the drug for medical use. The amendment to the 2018 Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill passed by a voice vote and prohibits the Justice Department from using…
Jeff Sessions should reconsider his plan to expand the use of civil asset forfeiture in the service of the so-called war on drugs. If he fails to do so, Congress should reconsider it for him — indeed, Congress ought to act on asset-forfeiture reform irrespective of the attorney general’s views on the matter. Seizing an…
From my years of experience in prosecuting criminals, I have learned that high incarceration alone is ineffective at controlling crime — particularly in the war on drugs. After more than 40 years of attempting to use a criminal justice solution to this public health problem, we have already learned that the threat of incarceration —…
The Oregon legislature passed a bill… that reclassifies possession of several drugs from a felony to a misdemeanor, reducing the punishments and expanding access to drug treatment for people without prior felonies or convictions for drug possession. In Oregon, several law enforcement agencies worked with lawmakers to craft portions of the bill. First-time offenders caught…
“For over a hundred years, people who use drugs have been driven into the shadows, into prisons, driven out of jobs, have been driven out of families, driven out of communities,” said Donald MacPherson, executive director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition. “It’s a big hole we’ve dug for ourselves.” “There hasn’t been a human…
Civil forfeiture allows the government to deprive citizens of their property even when it doesn’t even try to prove that the citizen committed a crime. In 2014 the government took more money from citizens than burglars stole from crime victims. It’s a gigantic law-enforcement scam … and it’s a constitutional atrocity. It’s a constitutional atrocity……
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