Slog Comments
What They Said
1
It's time to amend the state constitution.
"The right to possess, cultivate, or sell cannabis to other adults, shall not be violated."
"The right to possess, cultivate, or sell cannabis to other adults, shall not be violated."
2
De-criminalization is not making it legal. We should skip this penny-ante bullshit with a $100 fine and just legalize and tax it.
3
Absolutely, decriminalization is just a half-step - albeit one in the right direction - because it only addresses the issue on the demand-side. Without full legalization to possess AND to cultivate the problem still exists in that, while possession may be reduced to the level of a parking ticket, cultivation is still going to be fully criminalized and local LEA's in concert with the DEA are going to continue to spend an inordinately large amount of public resources going after growers.
5
@2 for the win.
Decriminalize it and specifically state that no city resources of any kind may be used to prosecute the mere possession for anything other than a civil traffic infraction or equivalent penalty. That includes jails, courts, police - except for fire.
Cut them off at the knees and force the feds to do their own dirty work.
Decriminalize it and specifically state that no city resources of any kind may be used to prosecute the mere possession for anything other than a civil traffic infraction or equivalent penalty. That includes jails, courts, police - except for fire.
Cut them off at the knees and force the feds to do their own dirty work.
6
They should do a back door legalization for the revenue. How about this:
The fine is $1000 and N hours of community service. But you can pre-pay $100 per year to reduce the fine to $5 and no community service.
The fine is $1000 and N hours of community service. But you can pre-pay $100 per year to reduce the fine to $5 and no community service.
7
interesting idea, @6. Kids could do the community service hours for their high school grad requirement once they turned 18 too.
8
Though I'm in the minority I still have a problem with this. Simply making the penalties for small possesion lower is only making the problem worse. The is the whole all or none argument and if you decriminalize it you had better do it all the way or you end up like Vancouver with over 100 drug related murders each year (along with tons of people disappearing). If you think these local turf and gang murders don't revolve around pot you're fooling yourself. Make it virtually legal to posses it but illegal to make and sell it is setting the city up for even worse problems though you will ignorantly point at "crack" as the problem.
9
Ok, fine. How do we run an initiative? And what does that mean specifically--a ballot initiative? Seriously, what's the first step here?
10
Here in Massachusetts we had a referendum on doing the same thing with pot ($100 ticket for less than an ounce) and it passed. From what I hear the cops don't even issue the tickets as they've said it's not worth it. And as you'll notice, reducing the penalty on pot possession (along with allowing gay marriage) has caused MA to fall into the ocean and spontaneously combust at the same time. It's a real shame...things went downhill here so fast.
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