But then the prohibitionists will have lost! Oh noes!?! We can't let people do what they want when they want. They might do something I don't like!

/sarc

I think this is absolutely hilarious. I doubt that it's going to put MS-13 out of business -- they'll just turn to marketing harder drugs. But it is nice to put the squeeze on them, and maybe it will reduce their influence some when there aren't so many people willing to do business with them.

Mexicans south of the border never really sold much marijuana. It is considered an insignificant crop to the cartels and of cheap poor quality by Americans.

Marijuana has been generally American grown and illegal immigrant picked often times in state parks.

But, oddly, from what I heard, the price of recreational pot has DOUBLED in places like Massachusetts, for one.

(Not that it's legal here for recreational purposes yet, of course. In the meantime, the Democratic mayor of Boston, the Democratic state attorney general and the Republican governor wrote an op-ed together on March 4th in which they opposed legalization.)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2016/03/04/mass-should-not-legalize-marijuana/njYep84wtERutHNIHByu4J/story.html

Not surprisingly, there is NO mention of why alcohol should stay legal, despite being more dangerous. Or the fact that poor people and minorities can get a few years of prison just for possessing a few ounces - and white drug convicts generally don't.

There are more than 240 comments. Here's an excerpt from the top-rated one:

bob-of-brookline:
"...Their cherry-picking of data is at best an example of the logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc and at worst is intentionally dishonest. By their reasoning, the increase in opioid overdoses in Massachusetts was caused by our failure to legalize marijuana."

And:

LR27:
"I tend to smell a rat when the costs of one side of the argument are mentioned, but not the other. What is the cost of making marijuana illegal? Include costs for police, courts and related costs, jails, prisons. Also human suffering, adding another tool for racism, funding large criminal organizations, violation of the fourth amendment, and teaching kids the Bill of Rights means nothing. US trade imbalance, increased hypocrisy, loss of job opportunities for the convicted, increased consumption of alcohol, ad infinitum.

"The kids'll just switch their drug of choice."

And:

beesnana
"When you WASPS put down your single malts, your martinis, your six-packs, and stop driving into innocent pedestrians, mothers with babies in cars, wheelchairs, trees, and pizza shops because you would blow above .08 on a breathalyzer and didn't have the sense to give someone else your carkeys, then I'll listen to you about marijuana. After 25 years as a defense lawyer and dozens and dozens of clients with the brains of a squirrel regarding alcohol, I have never, never had a client convicted of driving due to marijuana intoxication nor to my knowledge has a marijuana user ever killed someone with his/her car after smoking pot."

"I have never, never had a client convicted of driving due to marijuana intoxication nor to my knowledge has a marijuana user ever killed someone with his/her car after smoking pot."

Oh, I can come up with examples, including a guy I knew in college. He had been toking and had a head-on with someone else on a two-lane road late at night; both drivers died. The reason there aren't any convictions is because they almost never (unless the driver held a CDL) test for pot or other drugs in traffic accidents, nor is there any such thing as a breathalyzer for THC.

There are a lot of good arguments for legalization. "No one will ever drive under the influence of pot" is not one of them. It is an issue that will have to be dealt with if legalization is to become widespread.

Same here. I know people who killed someone after getting behind the wheel after smoking one too many. It is an intoxicant. Alcohol is more available and (currently) easier to test for so that will account for the majority of cases. But yes, once pot is fully legal people will toke and drive.

On the plus side most drunk driving laws don't need to be changed. They usually specify driving while intoxicated. So they apply to pot too.

Alcohol is more available
_______________________________________

Then why does everyone say that for TEENS, pot is easier to get?

Not that most kids don't have the opportunity, in theory, to steal alcohol from their parents, but I'm guessing that teens who drink and drive didn't get drunk at their parents' houses first, so they'd have to steal a pretty noticeable amount to take to a party. Which is why they likely don't try to get large amounts of alcohol that way.

I have to say something. Many years ago, I speculated that the (limited) legalization of marijuana would lead to an increase in criminal activity for a period of about ten years before there would be a decrease. I expected turf wars and dispensaries getting burned down in the aftermath. I am glad to say that I was flat out wrong about all that and it didn't take anywhere near that long before we started seeing positive results.

I like to relate anecdotal evidence to refute giant data sets I dislike.

"Then why does everyone say that for TEENS, pot is easier to get?"

Because for teens both are illegal. But hey, you turn 21 and a magical thing happens. You can go buy alcohol. They even have these special building where you can drink alcohol legally with other adults. I believe they are called bars.

The vast majority of drunk driving cases (well over 90%) are not teenagers.

"Well over 90%"? Got a source for that?

Granted, I WOULD be surprised if teens were responsible for more than 40%...

In the meantime, more on racism in sentencing:

"The Great Marijuana Experiment: A Tale of Two Drug Wars"

http://www.rollingstone.com/ politics/news/the-great- marijuana-experiment-a-tale- of-two-drug-wars-20140103? page=3
(page 3 of 4)

By Bruce Barcott
January 3, 2014 9:25 AM ET

...Ezekiel Edwards, director of the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project, spent nearly a year mining data on the racial makeup of marijuana arrests. The ACLU found that black people were 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people. This at a time when white and black marijuana usage rates are virtually identical, about 12 to 14 percent.

That racial disparity has grown worse with time. Over the past decade, the white arrest rate for marijuana possession held steady, around 192 arrests per 100,000 white people. Meanwhile, the black arrest rate skyrocketed. In 2001, it stood at 537 arrests per 100,000 black people. By 2010, it had climbed to 716.

Going into the project, Edwards suspected the numbers might be bad. But not this bad. "We knew about racial disparities in New York," he tells me. "We didn't expect to find racial disparities everywhere, urban and rural, 49 of the 50 states." (Only Hawaii had a nearly even black-white arrest rate.) The war on marijuana, Edwards says, "has been a war on people of color."

To understand what those numbers mean on the ground, you only have to visit the American marijuana gulag that is the state of Louisiana. New Orleans, of course, famously welcomes and celebrates bacchanalian debauchery. But Louisiana lawmakers take a perverse pride in maintaining some of the harshest marijuana laws in the country. One joint can get you six months in the parish prison. Second offense: up to five years. Third: up to 20.

Bernard Noble is one of many caught in the trap. Noble, a 47-year-old truck driver, relocated his family from New Orleans to Kansas City after losing his house to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2010, he returned to the Big Easy to visit his father. On October 27th, two cops spotted Noble riding a bicycle down South Miro Street. They ordered Noble to stop, and frisked him. They found a small bag containing less than three grams of marijuana.

An Orleans Parish jury convicted Noble of marijuana possession. Because he had prior felony possession convictions, Louisiana law called for a mandatory minimum sentence of 13 and a third years. "It doesn't matter how much or how little marijuana is involved," Donna Weidenhaft, Noble's public defender, tells me. "In Louisiana you can get twice as much prison time for marijuana possession as sexual battery."

But 13 years for three grams? That seemed insane. Moved by Noble's record as a providing father, the sentencing judge took pity and handed down only five years in prison. Only.

Outraged by the nickel, Orleans Parish DA Leon Cannizzaro Jr. appealed the ruling. Cannizzaro wanted the full 13 years. And after three appeals, he got it. Earlier this year the Louisiana State Supreme Court declared that a judge could waver from mandatory minimums only in exceptional cases. And Bernard Noble, the court ruled, was entirely unexceptional. "You might think this is a horror story, but not in Louisiana," says Gary Wainwright, a defense lawyer with two decades of experience in the Orleans Parish courthouse. "We've had people receive sentences of 'natural life' for marijuana here."

Louisiana imprisons more of its residents, per capita, than any other state. In many parts of the state, the parish (county) prison is the largest single employer. "You can't run a prison without inmates," says Wainwright, and the easiest way to keep the jails full is to arrest black men for pot possession...

(snip)

More on modern legal slave labor, via the prisons, from Atlantic Monthly (Sept. 2015):

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-labor-in-america/406177/

http://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/drunk-driving-dui-statistics

But you can pull it from the NHTSA data too. Among drivers with BAC levels of 0.08 % or higher involved in fatal crashes in 2008, 90% are over 21.

I did misphrased things. It was exactly 90%. Still the vast vast majority.

I would like to see what percentage of DUIs were under age. But I can't seem to get the number from the data I can access. But best I can tell DUI habits don't change with age. You get roughly the same percentage of the population driving impaired at 60 as you do at 30. Teenagers have less access (hey alcohol is legal for adults) and they have fewer years with access to a car (not many 13 year olds on the road). Hence teen drunk driving is not a significant group.

Pot is easier for teens to get than alcohol. Schools are major distribution centers. Pot is small and easy to conceal. Bottles of alcohol are bulky and obvious. But once you turn 21 alcohol is much much easier to acquire. Stores will openly sell it to you all over the place.

There are good arguments for legalizing pot. But drunk driving is not one of them.

There are good arguments for legalizing pot. But drunk driving is not one of them.
______________________________________

I didn't say it was. I just mean that keeping it illegal only means that it's easier for teens to buy.

And let's not forget that when it comes to students who were getting straight As "until they got hooked on pot," there's a good chance they were sick of the pressure to succeed and just wanted an excuse to fail. Getting hooked on hours of video games or hours of skateboarding would have the same effect. It's been done.

"keeping it illegal only means that it's easier for teens to buy."

Nope. I don't buy that one either.

The war on marijuana, Edwards says, "has been a war on people of color."

Given marijuana was outlawed on fears of 'rampaging niggers raping white women' and the notion that 'white women who used the devils weed would love the black cock' of course it has.

It started out as a war on people of color.

Opium was outlawed on the fears of chinks raping white women.

Every drug has been outlawed on the histrionics of moral scum suckers proclaiming (insert drug here) use will cause (insert racial slur here) to rape white women

Nope. I don't buy that one either.
___________________________________

Why not?

Care to provide any evidence to support your claim Lenona?

Do you really expect us to keep alcohol illegal for anyone under 21 and make pot legal for toddlers and teens?

Earlier you were comparing two illegal goods (for that age group). One was easier to acquire mainly based on size of the product (ease of concealment concerns). In no way does making a formerly illegal product legal make it harder to acquire. And most likely pot will remain illegal for teens, so no theoretical change in availability. If anything it will become easier to acquire because the length of the illegal supply chain will be shortened.