2 quick newspaper reports to present together to show how Freedom and common sense are on the march, despite the best efforts of mean people to maintain a crappy, backwards status quo.
It is appearing like marijuana RE-legalization will be on the California ballot in 2010
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California voters will decide whether to legalize recreational marijuana use for adults, after the secretary of state on Wednesday certified the initiative for the November ballot
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Secretary of State Debra Bowen certified that the petitions seeking to place the question on the ballot had more than 433,971 valid voter signatures, the minimum number needed to qualify.
If approved, the initiative would allow those 21 years and older to possess up to one ounce of marijuana, enough to roll several marijuana cigarettes. Residents also could cultivate the plant in limited quantities.
A couple objections to the wording: First "legalize" MEANS "regulate", to make available according to certain enforceable rules, just like the far more dangerous alcohol and tobacco.
Also, it's misleading for rolled marijuana smokables to be called "cigarettes" as cigarettes mean rolled smokable filled with carcinogenic tobacco.
The ignorant folks who still - for whatever ridiculous reason - oppose common sense reform will be confused, and think, wrongly, that marijuana is similar to tobacco, which is not true
A Stimulus Plan for Mexican Cartels
And really the End (of cannabis prohibition" IS near: those who seek and conspire to keep marijuana illegal have lost the Wall Street Journal
Regarding an upcoming the recent meeting between SOS Hillary Clinton and forces in Mexico:
Mexico hasn't always been an important playing field for drug cartels. For many years cocaine traffickers used the Caribbean to get their product to their customers in the largest and richest market in the hemisphere. But when the U.S. redoubled its efforts to block shipments traveling by sea, the entrepreneurs shifted to land routes through Central America and Mexico.
Mexican traffickers now handle cocaine but traditional marijuana smuggling is their cash cow, despite competition from stateside growers. In a February 2009 interview, then-Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told me that half of the cartel's annual income was derived from marijuana.
This is especially troubling for Mexican law enforcement because marijuana use, through medical marijuana outlets and general social acceptance, has become de facto legal in the U.S., and demand is robust. The upshot is that consumption is cool while production, trafficking and distribution are organized-crime activities. This is what I called in a previous column, "a stimulus plan for Mexican gangsters."
No objections there: cannabis prohibition JUST LIKE ALCOHOL PROHIBITION - you can't overstate this fact - nurtures the worst criminals humanity can produce.
Demand + prohibition = Big Trouble.
Legalize and regulate.