How to save millions of lives and make billions of dollars: Do like the Dutch who make £300 million a year taxing drugs instead of fighting them
Well, I’ve said it many times before: If all the countries of the world would simply legalise all drugs, it would end a lot of the world’s problems with crime and terrorism. By cutting out the ‘middle man’, which in this case is organised crime, you would rid the world of one of its most dangerous cancers.
Not only that, of course, for it would actually make a Hell of a lot of money too, in taxes, for governments around the world. Instead of losing more and more money and lives fighting this doomed War on Drugs, we could save millions of lives and make millions of easy tax dollars as well.
As the following story about my own home country shows:
Cannabis nets the Dutch treasury more than £300 million a year and has become one of the country’s top cash crops, new figures show. Turnover of the legal ‘coffee shop’ trade in the Netherlands is estimated to be at least £1.6 billion every year “Coffee shops”, where small amounts of cannabis have been legally bought and smoked since 1972, have become a major industry and a popular tourist attraction in cities such as Amsterdam.
Tax on the 265,000kg of soft drugs sold last year in the 730 cafés netted the government £315 million. The true figure may be much higher. “They do not want to know about it in The Hague, as it is all much too politically sensitive,” one anonymous tax inspector told an investigation for the Dutch KRO television channel broadcast last night. Turnover of the legal “coffee shop” trade is estimated to be at least £1.6 billion every year.
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May 6th, 2008 at 01:27
This is a fraud. Legalization will only increase misery and addiction. There ARE sensible alternatives in between the extremes of punishment and legalization.
May 6th, 2008 at 01:43
Where is the fraud?
As has been proven after years and years and YEARS of studies, mostly funded by government prohibitionists, there is no addictive component of cannabis. More than a third of adult Americans have smoked it, making its criminality next to impossible. The answer is obvious.
May 6th, 2008 at 01:47
First off cannabis is not addictive and does not cause misery, that in actuality is the fraud. This drug war does nothing but make the drug dealers and violent gangs wealthy and then in turn punishes average working Americans who may not buy into the Rx and ad council conspiracies. As for legalizing the other more addictive drugs and then taxing them is a good idea for two reasons, the first it makes it way more likely that people will use clean needles as well as not getting tainted or laced drugs and second it allows the billions being spent of enforcement to go to treatment and change our game plan from a short term to a long term solution. Not to mention it will cut the number of people in jail by thousands and again save the tax payers millions of dollars. you need to realize that people are going to do these drugs regardless of enforcement, it is time to change our game plan and legalization along with a increased treatment would save thousands of lives as well as save billions of dollars.
May 6th, 2008 at 01:50
Legalization and education are the answer. Take half the money that we spend on regulation and put it towards addiction programs. Take the rest of the money and use it where its necessary. The sky isnt gonna fall, truth! People are going to use drugs no matter what, and as long as we continue to keep the market in the hands of violent gangs, they will continue to take advantage of the situation.
May 6th, 2008 at 02:43
People who say pot isn’t addictive either a, havn’t ever tried it, or b, don’t have a life and blame their apathy on the drug.
May 6th, 2008 at 03:08
On the topic of selling drugs over the counter - Do like the Dutch who make $3 Billion…
By cutting out the ‘middle man’, which in this case is organised crime, you would rid the world of one of its most dangerous cancers….
May 6th, 2008 at 03:22
What ever the system, whether it restricts or frees distribution of drugs, will still have to contend with a market of huge demand.
And where there is huge demand, people will find it or sell it, whether you think drugs are harmful or not, regardless of the penalties imposed.
Legalisation atleast exercises some form of control and quality. And being legal, it can be treated as a medical issue, where treatment for addiction is available and does not carry any legal implications.
And most importantly, you’ll be cutting out the dealers, who are the main source of crime.
Work with the users instead! don’t imprison them.
Legalisation is the only answer.
May 6th, 2008 at 03:38
Most of the responders will not be old enough to remember when cannabis was almost ready to be removed as an illegal substance in the 1960s.
Every tobacco company had manufacturing set up to create, 20 to the box, cannabis cigarettes.
May 6th, 2008 at 04:30
I’m confused by the people who argue that cannabis is addictive and then state that anyone who doesn’t agree with them has never smoked it. I have smoked. I used to treat medical condition. I got high from it. I no longer use and I feel no pangs of addiction from it and don’t miss it in any way. However what I do miss a great deal is alcohol which because of my health problems I am not allowed to consume. Alcohol is highly addictive and I should know. At the hight of my alcohol abuse I was consuming 3 to 4 40 ounce bottles of Rum a week, plus several bottles of wine. But of course alcohol is legal and so that makes it fine. Sadly that argument is narrow minded, short sighted and hypocritical. But then again, so is the “war” on drugs. Given all the studies on alcohol and its harmful effects when abused there is no way any rational person can say that it isn’t addictive, yet it’s still legal. Then again, most politicians drink so that’s probably why it’s legal.
May 6th, 2008 at 04:52
Even if pot is addictive, it is not addictive in the same sense as, say, cocaine. In addition, addiction is a medical problem, dealing with it as a criminal problem is probably the least efficient way to deal with it. Finally, as for pot, I’ll stop being a proponent of legalization when I hear about a parent beating their child because they were high. As a drug, it’s effect on society is several orders of magnitude less than that of alcohol, so we should treat it as such.
May 6th, 2008 at 06:32
Man, thanks for all the comments. I have to admit to my own addiction here and that’s one to sleep at certain times - which is why I didn’t react earlier to all the comments. Again, thanks for all of them.
A lot of the comments deal with addiction - whether this or that is addictive or not. I’m not so sure that is relevant to the discussion about the legalisation of drugs. My point is more whether prohibition can ever work, and about the terrible (professional criminal) side-effects of prohibition.
To paraphrase Jesus, I think drugs, like the poor, will always be with us - and it’s up to us to, excuséz le mot, deal with this fact. I think regulation and legalisation makes more sense than denial - and most statistical evidence seems to agree with this.
J.
May 6th, 2008 at 08:45
Back 75 to 88 years ago, the USA proved that alcohol prohibition didn’t work. It just didn’t work. Whether using marijuana is moral or not, it just doesn’t mater, because USA tax payers are wasting too much money on the court system and prisons that could be used for more useful purposes. Whether you like it or not, billions of dollars are spent on marijuana every year, and not a dime of taxes are collected from the illegal sales.
I propose the following to make it easier to get a law to pass:
- Sell marijuana at liquor stores and cigarette shops in cigarette-form only by major cigarette manufacturers only, and add a “sin” tax for the local city or county to receive.
- The legal age would NOT be lower than liquor (not beer). Why, in case they lower the beer drinking age.
- You must ONLY smoke marijuana at home, otherwise illegal.
- Marijuana would be included in the drinking-and-driving laws, thus no smoking-and-driving.
- Must have a commercial license to grow marijuana, otherwise it is a felony. Why? To ensure the government collects taxes, which would be the #1 reason to promote the legalization.
- Must have a manufacturer license to make marijuana cigarettes, otherwise it is a felony.
- It would ONLY be legal for an individual to have marijuana in cigarette-form, otherwise the police wouldn’t be able to easily determine if it was purchased from a store or home grown to by-pass the taxes.
- Allow hemp to be grown with another hemp commercial grower license to promote making ethanol for transportation use and other typical uses for low-THC hemp. Any hemp commercial grower that is caught growing HIGH-THC marijuana would be treated as a felony and lose their growers license, unless they also have a HIGH-THC marijuana growers license.
I’m sure some of you will whine about what I propose and want to be able to grow it and smoke it anywhere. Well too bad, because it won’t happen. They need to make the taxes and strong rules otherwise congress would never pass the law. Its all about money (i.e. taxes) to make it pass!!!
Do I smoke marijuana, no! Do I pay taxes, yes, and wish they were lower!
May 6th, 2008 at 09:21
I should be doing my work but this subject is so compelling I had to respond.
Most people are not aware that marijuana is illegal in the Netherlands.
The coffee shops that sell it do not have a legal source to buy it. They buy it from a drug dealer. Their inventory is totally illegal and if the police decide they want to bust them they do. There are no controls over the quality or what might go into the small bag of pot you purchase from an Amsterdam coffee shop. If you don’t believe me then check it out for yourself.
From the following link as one small source on the subject which I found in about 10 seconds of clicking, http://www.expatica.com/nl/articles/news/RNW-Dutch-Press-Review-_-Thursday-6-March-2008.html
“Although most parties agree on tough measures against hard drugs, there are huge divisions when it comes to soft drugs policy.
Some MPs want to take current legislation a step further. They even suggest supplying soft drug outlets with marijuana grown under government supervision. This way coffee shop owners no longer have to buy their wares from illegal sources. This idea has been put forward twice before, even winning a majority in the house, but the government have up to now refused to take it on. Chances seem slim that this government will do any different.”
There is a move afoot right now in the Dutch parliament to toughen up the stand on all the drug growing equipment sold in The Netherlands and earlier this year I read an article that talked of the suggestions of some that all Dutch coffee shops be closed in order to bring the Netherlands into line with the drug policies of the rest of the EU. Some have said that such legislation will actually pass in the next 18 months and that the coffee shops will be closed.
Don’t misunderstand me, I am all for legalization. I think that pot saved my life. I think that prohibition never works and that this experiment with Marijuana and the past experiment at prohibiting alcohol are excellent examples of why it doesn’t work.
But sorry, as much as I love The Netherlands, they don’t got it right either.
May 6th, 2008 at 09:30
Hi
have made some interesting observations about the issue in my life;
- The once who have never tried smoking pot are usually the once who can never accept legalizing it. This I guess is since they put all illegal drugs in one hand, and the legal once like alcohol in another. And even when you tell them that the team of specialist doctors that the UK gov, sanctioned to find out what drugs are dangerous, they found that tobacco and alcohol is way more unhealthy than pot for your body.
In a free society we should use reason to get to results, and reason is usually lost in the discussion about Pot.
Pot is probably not more addictive than Coca Cola and the later probably has much larger health concerns since the WHO put it with McDonnalds on top of the list making the world fat.
Further because of that I have a hard time understanding why we are sending people to the jail for something that is probably less dangerous than smoking cigarettes (according to the world health organization). In california that can mean prison for life : three strikes out.
To convince me that we should still make pot illegal I would like to find this first to be true:
- THC in pot is really dangerous: I guess no smoking is good for your body, but everything I read about it tells me that normal cigarettes are way more dangerous.
- Pot is creating problems in peoples lives: well it has to be a degree to it. When it is illigal we know that many of the smokers are going to have huge problems with the law. On the other side, many of my friends smoke pot every other day. They lack any social problems to my findings today.
- If we criminalize it, we still have to use the principle of proportionality: I guess that if you make people reason about it with facts, It comes down to the level of cigarettes or alcohol. So let´s treat it like that.
May 6th, 2008 at 13:26
Despite what people believe, there is not all that many coffeeshops here, not too many people (percentage-wise) use it here either. The business locations have to be approved by the city and not too many licenses are given.
The shops in Amsterdam are mostly visited by tourists.. There are businesses in the border area that rely on tourists from Germany, Belgium and France. Most of the problems we get come from tourists in the border area btw, simply since they come from those countries where it is illegal so those people are in the grey zone of the community to begin with ;-)
I have smoked for about 6 weeks when i was young to find it didn’t work for me: i always fell asleep while everyone else was having fun..
Don’t think you can walk down the street here smiking pot and not get noticed either: the people that do that are regarded as outcasts also. You do this at your home or in the shops among friends, smoking it on the street will get you noticed and maybe even picked up by the police if they spot you.
Hard drugs (everything heavier then pot/weed) is forbidden here (we call weed/pot soft-drugs) and punishments are hard but depends if it is for personal use (very small amounts) or if you are a dealer.
I, as most here, regard soft-drugs the same as alcohol (obviously one should not drive either when using it.. you get busted for driving under the influence as well) there are people drinking sometimes, every weekend, every day, some get wasted and some drink a little.
If you want to flee from reality for a while you can either use alcohol or pot, wan those people in jail? Thats about everyone..
Should a person who has a job and smokes a joint in the weekend for relaxation be put in jail while not doing any harm?
We don’t have the problem of 10.000 small crooks doing business everywhere, it is mainly regulated so easier to find and apprehend criminal activity associated with drugs (illegal grow plants).
Here you may have 5 plants for personal use in your home. If you have more then that you can get thrown in jail, your property confiscated and thrown out of your house.
May 6th, 2008 at 14:26
i think a lot of people see legalizing drugs the same as advocating them, which is false. i know plenty of people who have never touched a drug in their life who want them legalized for economic purposes. it’s true… a lot of things would definitely change if drugs were legalized, and there will be your hedonists making the entire idea a bad one, but they only have themselves to blame.. let them hurt themselves if they want to.. in the meantime, let the rest of us smoke a J on the front porch and leave us alone.
May 6th, 2008 at 15:35
Again, thanks for all the comments while I was away. Some very good points and observations made as well.
Right now in the Netherands we have a coalition government with two Christian and one very wishy washy centre-left party. The Christians have never liked the tolerating soft drugs law. The centre-left party does in principle but in the last decade this party has thrown overboard every principle it once had in order to be part of the government (or simply in order not to lose too many voters to newer, even more populist parties.)
In orther words, if there ever was a time that one of our governments would be likely to bring Holland in line with the ‘war on drugs’ countires around the world it would be now.
I still think that would be unlikely though. Same with the abortion issue (which the Christian parties also would like to make illegal): the population as a whole has got so used to the fact that these things can be got more or less on demand, that they would not tolerate too much messing about with what the people see as their rights by any government,
So, I think the government will tinker a bit with this and that: like forbidding the sale of certain drugs (like the announced ban on mushrooms - and in case of abortions may want to force women to have offical ‘time-out’ before they can have an abortion) but I don’t think they will be brave enough (or stupid enough) to try and turn back all those clocks altogether,
J.
May 6th, 2008 at 16:42
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May 6th, 2008 at 17:29
I am 64, a grandmother, and a child of alcoholics, whom I loved and lost both due to their addiction. I do not drink nor do drugs. I tried marijuana 3 times
maybe 6 puffs my entire lifetime. I’d rather meditate.
I have witnessed may lives ruined by alcohol, and met every kind of alcoholic from sappy sentimental to raving murderous madman (family and their friends). I did not marry an alcoholic, but alcohol problems are rampant in my family; it is very bad.
Some in my family smoke marijuana. Some functioned less; nobody was cruel or molested or beat anyone. Most were kind and insightful. I realize you might not get great accomplishments out of someone who smokes a lot, but you won’t get the abuse of alcohol or aggression drugs.
Then there’s meth…the devil himself is behind that one. Dissolve your bones and teeth from the inside out…
Then there’s pills. I don’t know why people on pills don’t realize they seem different to others..of course there’s the potential for intestinal blockage
how do you say colostomy bag….can’t anybody get through a day cold turkey for heaven’s sake.
May 6th, 2008 at 17:45
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May 6th, 2008 at 20:06
Prohibition… as well as “the war on drugs”… doesn’t seem to be working for any country around the world… is all this article is referring to. Whether or not the drugs are hard or soft people will, and do, find alternate paths to the drugs, through dealers or gang related situations. The idea several states around the U.S. are adopting to decriminalize small portion of soft drugs, up to half an ounce, is what truly needs to happen. Cannabis hemp, while being able to smoke the buds of it, is also a miracle crop that is able to harvest every 3 months. The stalks of this plant is used to create products ranging from clothing, food, paper and lotion to miracle oils that have been proven to help with cancers and types of blindness. To anyone saying that weed is addictive is anyway, several studies show that the chemical THC is less addictive then caffeine in coffee. Also, to those who say smoking is bad, THC is not a chemical that needs to be inhaled, it can also be eaten through making cannabis butter and using it to cook.
So whether or not drugs are seen as addictive to you, no one can deny the fact that prohibition has wasted billions of tax payers dollars only to make drugs cheaper, more readily available and easier to get a hold of. So rather then allow people to support drug related crimes through gangs and dealers, why not end prohibition and tap into this remarkable natural resource?
Toking Tolkein
May 6th, 2008 at 22:42
Don’t even begin talking about addiction; marijuanna is less addictive than caffene.
May 7th, 2008 at 00:45
You don’t need any statistics to tell you what you should know logically; legalizing drugs is not going to increase the number of addicts.
People who don’t do heroin don’t do it because it seems like a really bad idea. Making the drug legal isn’t going to suddenly change the minds of all the people who have already decided against addiction or substance abuse. What that idea is implying is that people are stupid enough to go ahead and do something just because it’s not illegal to do it anymore, regardless of their previous decisions or personal beliefs.
And the people dealing drugs on the corners and snorting coke off bathroom stalls at night clubs aren’t the only people using drugs. You don’t SEE the responsible drug users, because they’re smart enough to not let their drug use be known. You’d never expect that the best employee at your office is a complete stoner after hours, or that your boss snorts coke on the weekends. Do you think these people would suddenly be coming into work stoned or all cracked out? I doubt most people would even come out about their drug use, even if it was legal - because legal or not, drug use is going to have a social stigma for a long time.
Alcohol is a mind altering substance, and a pretty severe one. How many people would know you drink if you didn’t tell people how wasted you got at the bar last night? Alcohol can be and is used responsibly as a recreational drug without any problem.
Which is funny, because it’s NOT really used responsibly. People get wasted and stupid and inebriated far beyond social acceptability… and no one gives a fuck. You couldn’t even get that messed up on marijuana if you tried.
May 7th, 2008 at 01:11
Thanks for the comment, Steve. Some good points, though I’m not sure you wouldn’t see a rise in drugs use when they got legalised - certainly at the beginning. I think more people could start to experiment with these drugs if they became more readily available. It is often the case that whenever some consumer product is easily accessible, i.e. more visible, it gets bought/used more often as well. I can see how this could happen with some drugs - especially when our so-called role models are using these drugs so publicly already.
The good thing is that junkies do not make a pretty sight. Even normally glamorous pop stars look decidedly less so when they are wasted on drugs. In that sense I think that what I expect to be a rise in the use of these drugs at first, will soon get back closer to the pre-legal period.
We saw this in Holland: almost a whole generation stayed off the needle after having witnessed what happened in the seventies to the ‘old’ junkies. (That success story has now of course led to another problem: because most young kids in Holland will never have seen a needle junkie in his or her final stages up close, more kids are taking up heroin again. Most of them smoke the stuff and we’re talking about a small number of kids but it’s still a worrying trend.)
Anyway, you will always have trends and victims when you’re talking about drugs - and on the whole that hasn’t much to do with the legality or illegality of drugs. I have worked with the homeless for more than seven years now and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably just a fact of life that a certain percentage of any population will never manage to be a part of the society they were born in. No laws, however draconian or liberal and no social security system of any kind will probably change that percentage much. Drugs are just one part of that broader issue and again, it won’t change all that much in the long run whether drugs are legal or illegal, when it comes to the amount of people who won’t know how to handle them.
Hence my argument to make all drugs legal, because that’s the only way to stop the much bigger problems of organised crime, terrorism, slave labour, poverty & starvation, rape & murder in our but mostly in other and much poorer parts of the world.
End of sermon.
May 7th, 2008 at 04:04
There are some valid points made in these comments but most of all you need to look at it like this:
We live in a “free” country and it should be our choice to decide what enters our body.
You can have all the statistics and arguments you want based on how beneficial and benign to our health weed is but it all comes down to our choice to smoke it.
These days it seems like democracy means suppressed freedom.
Also it seems like most of you have no idea what you’re talking about.
May 7th, 2008 at 05:44
Thanks for the comment. Statistics are useful though, if not ill-treated and misused by believers of one Truth or the other.
Nobody has ever lived in a free country though. There are exquisitely weird and absolute horror shows like North Korea or the West’s growing obsession with PC and Health & Safety nonsense but there have not been and probably will never be any kind of successful (that is: sustainable for at least at a little bit) societies without certain rules.
‘Free’ is not what us humans do best. New York seventies black-out anyone?
J.
May 7th, 2008 at 06:27
This column has got a lot of visits thanks to the Reddit and Stumbled-upon crowd. I’m grateful to all of those visitors, of course, but I truly want to thank all the people who commented on the post here.
It is said that the internet is plagued by trolls and other ugly posters. So far, this whole blog of mine has almost been troll-free and this particular column, thanks to all of your comments here, has been a true delight.
This is what I hoped writing these columns could be and could do. So, thank you, to all of you, for visiting and for talking. Life, even internet life, is more than trolls. Thanks for being the living & posting truth of that,
Jan.
May 7th, 2008 at 07:16
Weed is not addictive, doesn’t make monsters out of anyone. I have lost some good friends to drugs, but when we were all just smoking weed in a buddies basement, we were all fine. They all got around the drug dealing crowd and experimented, where i found other friends. I still smoke all the time, I work with a dealer, I buy and leave, nothing else. If it was legalized, I wouldn’t have lost friends because they had to deal with shady people.
May 7th, 2008 at 13:38
The Mafia exists today because of Prohibition. Gun battles were fought in the 1920’s over alcohol “turf-wars”. When was the last time you heard of two liquor store owners shooting it out?
You can’t solve a medical problem by legal means. (While it’s not common, some people do have a habituation [as opposed to true physical addiction] problem with pot.) It makes as much sense to incarcerate that person as it does to incarcerate someone having chest pains. Actually, arresting the person having chest pains makes more sense. If you take a person having a heart attack to jail instead of the ER, they probably won’t have another heart attack. Most people arrested for drugs get out and take drugs again.
May 7th, 2008 at 14:38
Of course, if weed was legalised and made in cigarette form by tobacco companies, it would have to be regulated in terms of nicotine additives. There’s no point in selling a chemically non-addictive drug if you’re gonna add stuff to it to make it addictive. It would certainly deter me from buying it.
May 7th, 2008 at 15:36
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May 8th, 2008 at 01:33
Whether drugs are legal or not, people will use them. In fact in Holland cannabis use is LOWER among teenagers than any other country. Regulating drugs means there is no incentive to illegally traffic them - tobacco seeds can easily be bought and grown at home but nobody does that. Alcohol can also easily be produced at home but nobody bothers with that.
All the official information and statistics on drugs is obviously designed to portray them as dangerous and evil and when someone first tries weed they realise that everything they were told is complete bullshit. That, of course, leads to people becoming inherently distrustful of drug info.
May 20th, 2008 at 17:55
AHHH… Free Adam… the first coffee shop I visited while I lived in A’Dam…. thanks for the memories… (didn’t read the article)
May 21st, 2008 at 02:33
Touchy subject Huh? Its all about parenting and responsibility.Ya get it?
May 21st, 2008 at 02:50
Thanks for the comment. I’m not sure about touchy - unless you want the human animal to be other than it is.
And it’s about parenting, genetics, luck and circumstance - the usual suspects.
All the stuff that statistics are made of but still not quite the mapmakers of the individual heart.
J.
May 22nd, 2008 at 06:03
Cannabis is not highly addictive, although it’s qualities are:
High sense of well-being.
Increased appreciation of anything; big or small.
Mood escalation.
Motivation to be outgoing and friendly.
The list goes on.
A friend of mine was clinically depressed. Diagnosed. When he began smoking, he found that his appreciation for life and everything in it rose.
He is now one of the happiest people I know.
Coincidence?
Maybe it’s subconscious. Either way,
It helped him didn’t it?
Why would I lie? Because I’m a stoner?
Think again.
I respect what cannabis truly is,
and what it can be used for–and with.
The worst part of it that I see:
Cotton-Mouth.
Cheers.
May 22nd, 2008 at 07:58
Being a dutch citizen , having crossed the globe , i can honestly say : all countries where cannabis is illegal - with exception of a handfull of countries- have more cannabis consume per 1000 inhabitants.
They smoke a lot more- only because its forbidden. thats how humans think.
The rate of cannabis smokers is lower in the Netherlands than for example France.
Netherlands has less heroin problems too.
So basically , addiction has not much to do with availability.its a valuable product when illegal ,so people will grow and sell it if this means a lot more extra income.
On itself , cannabis requires little if any attention to be produced.
Its effects have been studied, and turn out to be remarkable benign, compared to its intense effects.
The correlation between mental illness and cannabis consume has already been found shady.
People in a stressfull state of mind seek relief.The relief comes from cannabis.Stressfull state of mind proceeds cannabis intake, not vise versa.
(Athltetes drink more water than average people.Does drinking water make one an athlete?).
May 22nd, 2008 at 23:20
“truth becomes us” knows what he/she is talking about.
As a matter of fact, you took the words straight from my mouth.
Nice work.
May 23rd, 2008 at 00:57
[...] SMH @ Old Close-minded Politics. [Glo-a-Blog] [...]
May 23rd, 2008 at 16:59
The media is really blacking out news about a couple of new bills in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R.5842 &H.R.5843. The week or two after this bill hit the floor it seemed like Barbara Walters was filibustering the news with a bunch of crap about her personal life. Go to loc.gov and look in the Jefferson Collection. Free at last, great God Almighty free at last! No persecution of medical users, $100 fine for public use period. All those slakys that just follow the media and support what ever is legal without really knowing anything about what they’re talking about will all come around when diesal drops back down in price because of hempseed oil competition. When partical board becomes so cheap and strong that no one is ever homeless again. When good quality long lasting hemp clothing that lasts dang near forever becomes commonplace. When the paper pushers can use all the paper they want. When gangs become families again. When we realize that cannabis is far better for your eyes than carrots ever came close to being. When the medical establishment admits that cannabinoids protect the brain from Alzheimers disease. When people realize the whole reason for the Bush families power is to prevent the rest of use from having the receiving the blessings of the vitamins that only come from cannabis. When the oil paint you buy is still good for ten or twenty years, and more. When all those old burnt out cotton fields across the south begin to produce again. Let the small farmers share in the wealth that the oil companies are robbing us of.
May 23rd, 2008 at 19:37
[...] (for all personal thefts) unless you’ve been randomly discovered during an outdoor grow. This Glob-a-log ? Blog Archive ? How to save millions of lives and make billions of dollars: Do like the … is a good read/idea . . . especially the replies. Enjoy! __________________ I dreamed I [...]
May 23rd, 2008 at 19:44
Thanks for all the additional replies - and to the last commentator/link provider: Yes, you are right, the replies have been extremly good and very welcome. I’m grateful to all who took the time to write down their thoughts and stories here,
J.
May 24th, 2008 at 02:00
[...] Glob-a-log ? Blog Archive ? How to save millions of lives and make billions of dollars: Do like the … This may be a repost? Dig the feedback! GREAT read, IMO. Enjoy? __________________ I dreamed I [...]
May 26th, 2008 at 06:03
While I agree that the legalization, taxation, and education of drugs such as marijuana, mushrooms, lsd, and possibly MDMA would be a good idea, I don’t think horrifically addictive and destructive drugs like methamphetamine and crack cocaine should ever be legalized. If you can easily be physically addicted to it and killed by it, it shouldn’t be legal.
May 26th, 2008 at 06:10
Drew, thanks for the comment.
I would agree with you that it might be better to outlaw some drugs (like crack). But I think you could only manage that if you legalise the rest. When all drugs are illegal you can’t really focus on the really horrible stuff. When most drugs are legal though it should be easier to control those few truly horrific ones.
No guarantees, of course but at least a reasonable chance,
J.
June 11th, 2008 at 23:39
In a truely free society, it is none of the government’s business what the citizens smoke, inject or injest, providing the rights of another are not violated in the process.
Also, in a truely free society, it is none of the government’s business how much money the citizen makes, how its made or how its spent, with the same proviso … that the rights of another are not violated in the process.
Free the weed and tax it? Hell with that … just free the weed and forget the taxes.
OP
July 12th, 2008 at 19:52
[...] money, when you come to think of it. For instance, the Dutch government raises three times as much taxing soft drugs each year. Anyway, 114 million Euros translates as around 91 million British pounds and 180 million [...]