Gateways

Marijuana is not a Gateway Drug. Marijuana Prohibition creates a Gateway Crime.
Caffeine gets you high. That doesn't mean it's a gateway to heroin which also gets you high. But when you buy a joint, you are entering the black market & engaging in the criminal underworld where all sorts of stuff is bought & sold.
Going to the grocery & picking up some Coke does not introduce anybody to the whole criminal underworld thing.

Happy 420 Day!

It's looking like legal marijuana finally might have a chance. There are competing measures to legalize marijuana in Ohio. The best one looks like Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis, not to be confused with Responsible Ohio.
Responsible Ohio gives all production rights to 10 lucky farmers, doesn't allow for home growing and appears to address the employer testing nor people incarcerated for simple possession. It does stipulate the distribution of tax revenue & provide for testing/quality control.
Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis addresses the employer testing nor people incarcerated for simple possession, allows for home growing and uses simple licensing for production. Their tax rate is lower & no stipulations are made for tax revenue distribution.
Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis's plan is a lot more free & competitive than Responsible Ohio's, but I don't think home growers should be selling and I like Responsible Ohio's provisions for quality control.
Unfortunately, Responsible Ohio is getting a heap of press and Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis is getting fairly ignored. This seems to indicate BIG $$$$ is behind Responsible Ohio and, as such, a money grab. Using a name so similar to the original's is kinda stinky, too.
Hopefully people ill consider these 2 bills and vote for the one that seems better and not just go off & spastically vote for the first bill to come along.

Legal Pot - WTH ?

While Ohio is facing 2 - 3 competing ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana, Washington & Colorado are having their growing pains with the legal stuff.
Figuring out your federal taxes on something the feds still treat as illegal is only one issue.
The price on the open market is another issue. This statement kinda knocked my socks off.

"In the early days, we were able to get, like, $1,700 to $2,200 a pound, wholesale. Now it's like $700, $800 a pound,” he said. "That's not profitable at all. I've got most of my stuff stashed away for later."

OK, checking for inflation a pound of pot should go for about $800 nowadays. But part of the high price for, remember, a weed, was due to it being contraband and risky to grow, move & sell. Now it's legal, a weed that anybody can grow & this guy needs about $2,000 a pound to be profitable?
Granted, that's about what it costs me to grow a pound of tomatoes, but something ain't right here.

Read all about it at NBR.

Who Wants Pot in Ohio ?

In a recent announcement Responsible Ohio said it was launching a ballot initiative to provide for legal marijuana production & sales. Our intrepid research intern immediately pounced on the website for Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis and found some differences in the plan. No surprise because it was a different group with nearly the same name. Indeed, on their FAQs page, there's a message

12/22/2014
Whoever is proposing the 10 growers plan is not us, we are not affiliated with them or even know who they are at this point, other than the fact that they are apparently calling themselves Responsible Ohio. Since we are the Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis, it is extremely suspicious that they have chosen such a similar name.

Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis allows for home growers, a lower tax rate, unlimited licensed commercial growers & amnesty for convicted pot people. Responsible Ohio provides for none of that & limits production to 10 operators.
Responsible Ohio wants to be on the ballot in 2015. Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis is shooting for 2016. The 2016 election sounds more likely to succeed as 2015 will likely have a majority of liberty hating Republicans voting.
I like the Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis plan a lot better but looking at their sites, Responsible Ohio appears to have the $$ advantage & choosing a similar name as the older organization can only muddy the waters. Indeed, our mistaken intern has been reassigned to stable duty, milking the goats.
Personal liberty, new tax revenue, de-criminalizing victimless activity are all good reasons to pursue either initiative. Personally I'd go with a mish mash of the two but I gotta admit, Responsible Ohio looks kinda shady.

The Next Governor of Rhode Island

Ohio Governor Candidates

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Cincinnati Mayoral Candidate Supports "Re-Legalizing" MarijuanaCincinnati's Libertarian candidate for Mayor, Jim Berns stated in a press release that he supports legalizing marijuana in Cincinnati and that he also supports Ohio Representative Robert F. Hagan’s proposal to legalize marijuana for medicinal use and a second proposal which would allow people 21-years-old and older to purchase and use marijuana.

The vast majority of Americans do not realize that the USA became a great country before marijuana was criminalized in the 1930s as a way to discriminate against Mexican-Americans and Blacks moving from the south to the north.

More at WCPO

Happy 420 Day Everybody !

Studies by the CDC show about 23% of American teens smoke marijuana. They compare it to smoking cigarettes, which makes no real sense - comparing the number of teens drinking would be more logical.
But still, do the 50% of Americans who oppose the legalisation of marijuana believe we should brand almost a quarter of our teens criminals & prosecute, fine & jail them?

Kasich & Obama Save Ohio
The State of Ohio, with help from the Feds has been stepping up it's efforts to bust outdoor pot farms.
I guess this is to be expected when the pot market is in direct competition with the state's alcohol market.
This DDN article goes on to say it costs us a minimum of $5,000 per acre, or $50,000 to $100,000 to shut these operations down. With a value of approximately $1,000 per plant the tax revenue from legalized pot cultivation & sales could likely generate enough money to eliminate the state income tax, pave a few roads and maybe even build a bridge.

'Suspects have included everyone from retirees to teachers.'

When one considers the diversity of the pot users & growers it certainly makes a good argument for legalization.
Glad the messiahs of Kasich & Obama can work this out together….

Happy 420 Day Everybody !

910-23 & Budget Woes
On WLWT Judge Nadine Allen was interviewed to discuss the idea of throwing out some pointless laws in an effort to help balance the budget. (And, of course, I can't find it on their website.)
The idea is that the police won't have to spend time on minor violations and can concentrate on more serious violations. Additionally the county charges the city to incarcerate people whose actions might not be a crime in other cities in the county.
Judge Allen suggested littering ordinances but the police already don't enforce that. Cincinnati's marijuana ordinance, 910-23 immediately sprang to my fevered mind. From the beginning the law has not been what it is purported to be as council members have stated the law will be used to harass only selected social groups.
The ordinance, which increases penalties on possession of small amounts of marijuana, has been pretty much a failure, has cost Cincinnatians cash, led to jail overcrowding, hasn't achieved it's stated purpose and has screwed up lives of some of the young people in Cincinnati.
Seems like a good place to start.
For more info on this ordinance & it's effectiveness and it's waste, here's more info:
Prioritize Cincinnati
Hemprock
The Cincinnati Asylum

Civil injustice strikes Ohio

Cleveland Plain Dealer
Bob Ewing

For 40 years, Meredith and Luther Ricks did everything the right way. They worked hard, saved carefully and raised a family in their modest Lima home. They were poised to enjoy their retirement years in peace.
Despite their four decades of hard work, however, an absurdly unjust law has turned their hope for the American Dream into an outrageous nightmare at the hands of the Cleveland FBI.
Both of the Ricks spent their careers at the Ohio Steel Foundry, eschewing lavish spending to save for a comfortable retirement. Not trusting banks, Meredith and Luther kept their life savings in a safe inside the house.

Last summer, two violent intruders broke into the Rickses' house. Luther and his son fought with the burglars. After his son was stabbed, Luther broke free, got his gun and saved the family by shooting one of the intruders and scaring the other off.
When Lima police arrived, the Ricks' nightmare should have been over - but it was just beginning.
The police entered the house and discovered the family safe. Because a small amount of marijuana was inside the home - used by Luther to ease his painful arthritis, hip replacement and shingles - the officers decided to confiscate Meredith and Luther's entire life savings, more than $400,000.
Shortly afterward, the FBI got involved - not to help the stricken family, but to claim the money for the federal government.
Such is the result of civil forfeiture laws, which represent one of the most profound assaults on our rights today.
Civil forfeiture can apply to virtually any property: cars, houses, boats and, as the Rickses' case demonstrates, even money. The property can be seized merely on suspicion that it was used in connection with a crime or resulted from criminal activity.
The police did not charge Luther for the shooting - he acted in self-defense - or for the small quantity of marijuana he used as medicine. Under civil forfeiture, the government can confiscate money or property without proving that a person is guilty of criminal misconduct.

While criminal forfeiture requires that a property owner be found guilty of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, civil forfeiture does not require that the owner even be accused of a crime, much less convicted. The government proceeds directly against the property it wants to take, which means owners are not entitled to any of the protections they would receive if they were accused of a crime.
This bizarre practice was not widespread in the United States until alcohol prohibition and has been used extensively since drug prohibition stiffened in the 1970s and 1980s.
The FBI's adoption of the Lima police's forfeiture is not unusual - the federal government regularly seizes property that was originally confiscated by local authorities and then splits the resulting profits. In Missouri, for example, authorities were recently caught turning forfeitures over to the federal government in order to avoid a legal requirement that proceeds go to schools.

The abuses don't stop there. In the 1990s, police in Louisiana were stealing innocent people's property by fabricating drug crimes. They used the proceeds for ski trips to Aspen.
Civil forfeiture is now a nationwide epidemic with proceeds from federal civil forfeiture alone reaching hundreds of millions of dollars each year. This is part of a larger trend over the past several decades of weakened property rights protection.
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Kelo case that government officials can use eminent domain to buy your home, business, church or farm and then hand your property over to another private entity so long as the new owner promises to generate more tax revenue with your land.
Importantly, a nationwide backlash is under way. Ohio leads the country with a historic unanimous ruling in 2006 by the state's Supreme Court that reined in the awesome power of land confiscation. Forty-two states have now reformed their laws on land grabs, making it harder for governments to take your property to boost their tax revenues.
We desperately need a similar backlash against the abuses of civil forfeiture. Thankfully, Meredith and Luther Ricks are fighting back. With free legal help, this week they filed a notice with the Cleveland office of the FBI, demanding the return of their life savings.
Governments should protect, not plunder, our property. Common sense and justice demand that the rampant abuse of civil forfeiture must end.
Ewing is the assistant director of communications for the Institute for Justice, the nation's leading legal advocate for property rights.

Story here.