Pot was legal in the 60’s? My, my – my dealer must have missed that memo. I thought I had to hide my plants in the closet and light up in private.
LSD was made illegal in California in 1966 and federally in 1967. (Currently DEA Schedule 3 Controlled Substances Act, previously Schedule 1. Mescaline has been illegal in the USA since 1970.
Federal marijuana law goes back to 1937. Shel Silverstein included a line in “The Great Smoke-Off” about an elderly stoner who had started “back before it was a crime.”
Now you are reverting back to “marijuana possession”, which is a technical term. That stat you originally cited doesn’t say that 18% were in prison for “possession” only, but that they were ‘users only’. Those who are incarcerated for possession only will be a subset of that 18%. Others will have other charges tacked on from that singular act of just having some amount of marijuana.
LSD has always been in Schedule I. You’re probably thinking of LSA (found in Morning Glory seeds, among other flora).
Any way you slice it, it still amounts to relatively few people.
Sorry not legal but not actively enforced. Concerts were awash with it. Do not knoew if they are now.
Thank God for straight lines.
I’ve been told it’s not even decriminalized, just not enforced. Last time I were there, and we asked at a coffeeshop about smoking in public, they told us it was generally ok as long as we didn’t walk up to a cop and ask for a light.
As long as the Government keeps making as much money as they do keeping it illegal, it won’t ever be legal. Hell, court fees and fines from a major bust alone are an insane amount of money generated for revenue.
I am lost, do you mean to tell me that the government makes enough in Court fees and fines to pay for the ridiculous pure money cost enforcing Marijuana laws?
I would need to see some good hard statistics to believe this.
I think you’ve got something here. When I compare Western Europe and America today, as opposed to how they stood in the 60s and 70s, the situation was much reversed. America was the cultural forerunner, and when cultural attitudes relaxed here in the 1960s, Europe followed. In the 1970s, when pot was just about “legal”, at least on college campuses, and when people still spoke of “hard” and “soft” drugs, it was in Europe that people seemed more frightened of the consequences of getting caught with marijuana. At least, that’s how it struck me in a German university town at the time.
Now that seems to be turned around and it’s in places like Amsterdam where pot seems to be almost legal (though it must be admitted that was also the case in 1977).
Social liberalism, since the early 20th century, seems to have come mostly from the older big cities on the coasts–even Los Angeles is an old city in this sense, compared with places like Phoenix. But I see the cultural mindset moving toward one that is centered on family values and the safety of children, and these tend not to be very conducive to the condonement of what is perceived as vice. I wonder if it’s even possible any more to have a President who hails from San Francisco, New York, or L.A. It seems the last several occupants of the White House have been from small towns or the country.
I think what may ultimately happen is that marijuana will be legalized, but most working people will be prohibited by their employers from partaking. More than anything, it’s employer drug testing that lowered the boom on recreational pot in the middle class.
Sometimes, size of government is its own reason.
Besides what Ludovic said, there are plenty of police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and prison personnel who are kept at their jobs by marijuana prohibition.
Is that how you interpreted **diggleblop’s ** post? I did not get all that out of what he wrote.
**Spectre ** & Ludovic what you both posted makes sense and in a cynical way I would guess there is some or much truth to it. But am I really that far off base in thinking that is not what the quote above meant?
Jim
Dude, did you happen to read the conversation between Il Gyan II and I? We just talked about this.
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At my local prison, exactly one guy* would be released if marijuana laws were repealed tomorrow. No one’s going to lose their jobs over that.
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Funding is not based on “per inmate” or “per arrest.” In fact, “business” for the criminal justice system has substantially increased over the last few years while the budget has been repeatedly decreased.
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There’d be plenty of murderers, rapists, theives and other assorted bad guys to keep the criminal justice system just as busy for a long, long time.
- He’s the only guy in a prison of over 2,900 inmates incarcerated just for breaking marijuana laws-- he was trafficking.
Any marijuana laws?
Earlier you said, “As I pointed out, only one person out of over 2,900 at my local prison has been incarcerated for marijunana posession alone.”
I think we both agree that very few people are in for the techncality of ‘marijuana possession’ only. Are you saying there’s only one person in for marijuana-derived activity i.e. transporting, dealing, having a weapon?
I’m not counting “having a weapon” as a marijuana offense.
The guy to which I referred is incarcerated solely because he was caught with large amounts of marijuana with the intent to sell. He did not have any additional weapons charges or anything like that-- just a garage full of reefer.
There are guys in there whose sentences have been augmented by the fact that they had marijuana when they were caught. (As in, a guy who stole a car was in posession with a baggie full of weed when they caught him.)
I hope I’m making myself clear. Sorry about the confusion.