Arizona congressman calls for legalized marijuana in Arizona

[Uncle Joe]

PHOENIX — An Arizona congressman called for the legalization of marijuana in his state on Monday, saying it would cause a drop in crime and provide economic benefits.

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) is the first congressman to officially support the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, an effort to legalize, tax, and regulate the drug.

“The products will be tested, packaged and labeled, to insure the marijuana is not contaminated, and consumers know what they’re getting,” Gallego said.

Gallego said that, by legalizing marijuana, a dangerous underground market that holds an economic incentive for criminals would be eliminated and Arizona communities would thus be safer.

(snip)

http://ktar.com/story/1128470/arizona-congressman-calls-for-legalized-marijuana-in-arizona/

This is way past due, too many lives have been destroyed because of the ludicrous prohibition against cannabis.

[Warpy]

1. We need it desperately here in NM

A major street near me is getting repaved. It's needed it for over 20 years.

It would be nice to have revenue coming in from pot sales that might cut the wait to 15...or even 10 years.

[randr]

2. DEA is set to remove marijuana from the Class I drug list

making medical use legal in all 50 states on Aug.1.

[Uncle Joe]

3. It never should have been on Class 1. The evidence is overwhelming in regards to

cannabis' medicinal value, not to mention the "gateway drug" wizard being exposed for the fraud it is.

[randr]

4. It was put there merely as a weapon against poor and minority citizens

The private prison industry is the result and anyone who does not call for an immediate stop to the war against drugs is probably on the private prison industry payroll.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Nixon coined the "The War on Drugs" and used it primarily to attack his political enemies;

the anti-war left and blacks.

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

—?John Ehrlichman, Nixon White House Domestic Affairs Advisor, on the War on drugs in a Harper's Magazine interview in 1994[35][36]

Although Nixon declared "drug abuse" to be public enemy number one in 1971,[37] the policies that his administration implemented as part of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 were a continuation of drug prohibition policies in the U.S., which started in 1914.[38][39]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs

[Uncle Joe]

8. P.S. Nixon overruled his own appointed drug commission on the issue.

Thirty years ago the United States came to a critical juncture in the drug war. A Nixon-appointed presidential commission had recommended that marijuana use not be a criminal offense under state or federal law. But Nixon himself, based on his zealous personal preferences, overruled the commission's research and doomed marijuana to its current illegal status.

This newly revealed information comes from declassified tapes of Oval Office conversations from 1971 and 1972, which show Nixon's aggressive anti-drug stance putting him directly at odds against many of his close advisors. Transcripts of the tape, and a report based on them, are available at www.csdp.org.

Congress, when it passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, temporarily labeled marijuana a "Schedule I substance" -- a flatly illegal drug with no approved medical purposes. But Congress acknowledged that it did not know enough about marijuana to permanently relegate it to Schedule I, and so they created a presidential commission to review the research and recommend a long-term strategy. President Nixon got to appoint the bulk of the commissioners. Not surprisingly, he loaded it with drug warriors. Nixon appointed Raymond Shafer, former Republican Governor of Pennsylvania, as Chairman. As a former prosecutor, Shafer had a "law and order," drug warrior reputation. Nixon also appointed nine Commissioners, including the dean of a law school, the head of a mental health hospital, and a retired Chicago police captain. Along with the Nixon appointees, two senators and two congressmen from each party served on the Commission.

The Shafer Commission -- officially known as the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse -- took its job seriously. They launched fifty research projects, polled the public and members of the criminal justice community, and took thousands of pages of testimony. Their work is still the most comprehensive review of marijuana ever conducted by the federal government.

(snip)

http://www.alternet.org/story/12666/once-secret_%22nixon_tapes%22_show_why_the_u.s._outlawed_pot

[tblue37]

5. National legalization would also do a lot to solve the opioid epidemic and the

Last edited Tue Jun 21, 2016, 11:49 PM - Edit history (1)

new problem with those who have turned to street heroin because of being cut off suddenly from their prescription pain meds.

Furthermore, most adults who need relief from chronic pain are not necessarily interested in getting high. Lifting the federal suppression of pot (including the suppression of serious research) could lead to safe, effective pain relievers that eliminate the high. I would love to have access to a marijuana based pain medication that did not cause one to become high.

[Uncle Joe]

7. I agree, tblue37.