Wow! Delegate Morhaim is the master of the obvious.

There should be complete agreement that a different approach is needed in Baltimore.

I do wonder if anyone knows what dealers will do if their current moneymaking enterprise is short circuited. Will they turn to gambling? Will they become Eagle Scouts? Or will they simply find another justification, no matter how trivial, for inflicting violence on one another and their neighbors?

I believe it is terribly naive to assume that decriminalization by itself will yield more productive social outcomes. Something constructive needs to fill the vacuum.

Dan that "work force" is as stratified as in any other industry facing a shutdown of operations.

The lower level and least skilled workers will have the hardest time adapting their thin skill set to another industry but if those industries are actually hiring will have an equal chance as anyone else (who finished high school).

The smartest and most talented have removed themselves from day to day operations a LONG time ago (even if their investment remains).

The middle are in the middle of that.

In short though, the failure of the school system to have educated these people better and the overall weakness of the economy make very poor arguments to continue the waste and wrong headedness of prohibition.

One more time:
legalize natural state agricultural product
medicalize pharmaceutical product

One need not travel to China to find indigenous cultures lacking human rights. America leads the world in percentile behind bars, thanks to ongoing persecution of hippies, radicals, and non-whites under prosecution of the war on drugs. If we’re all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance global credibility.

The drug czar’s Rx for prison fodder costs dearly, as life is flushed down expensive tubes. My shaman’s second opinion is that psychoactive plants are God’s gift. Behold, it’s all good. When Eve ate the apple, she knew a good apple, and an evil prohibition. Canadian Marc Emery is being extradited to prison for selling seeds that American farmers use to reduce U. S. demand for Mexican pot.

Only on the authority of a clause about interstate commerce does the CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) reincarnate Al Capone, endanger homeland security, and throw good money after bad. Administration fiscal policy burns tax dollars to root out the number-one cash crop in the land, instead of taxing sales. Society rejected the plague of prohibition, but it mutated. Apparently, SWAT teams don’t need no stinking amendment.

Nixon passed the CSA on the false assurance that the Schafer Commission would later justify criminalizing his enemies. No amendments can assure due process under an anti-science law without due process itself. Psychology hailed the breakthrough potential of LSD, until the CSA shut down research, and pronounced that marijuana has no medical use, period. Drug juries exclude bleeding hearts.

The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) allows Native American Church members to eat peyote, which functions like LSD. Americans shouldn’t need a specific church membership or an act of Congress to obtain their birthright freedom of religion. John Doe’s free exercise of religious liberty may include entheogen sacraments to mediate communion with his maker.

Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? The Mayflower sailed to escape coerced conformity. Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction.

Common-law must hold that adults are the legal owners of their own bodies. The Founding Fathers undersigned that the right to the pursuit of happiness is inalienable. Socrates said to know your self. Mortal lawmakers should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. Persons who appreciate their own free choice of path in life should tolerate seekers’ self-exploration.

If you support prohibition then you’ve helped trigger the worst crime wave in this nation’s history.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped create a black market with massive incentives to hook both adults and children alike.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped to make these dangerous substances available in schools and prisons.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped raise gang warfare to a level not seen in this country since the days of alcohol bootlegging.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped remove many important civil liberties from those citizens you falsely claim to represent.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped put previously unknown and contaminated drugs on the streets.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped to escalate Theft, Muggings and Burglaries.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped to divert scarce law-enforcement resources away from protecting your fellow citizens from the ever escalating violence against their person or property.
If you support prohibition then you have abandoned American children to the morals and ethics of gangsters and terrorists.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped overcrowd the courts and prisons, thus making it increasingly impossible to curtail the people who are hurting and terrorizing others.
If you support prohibition, then you also support the black market economy that funds most of the terrorist groups in the world today. Including the Taliban and alQaida.
A regulated and licensed distribution network would put responsible adult supervision in between children and premature access to drug distribution outlets. Regulated and licensed distribution would reflect and respect society’s values, thus preventing children obtaining easy access to theses dangerous substances. What we need is legalized regulation. what we have is a non-regulated black market to which everybody has access and where all the profits go to organized crime and terrorists.