All drugs should be DECRIMINALIZED! Individuals that are caught with small to medium amounts (30 day supply or less which would be figured out on a per substance basis) of ANY DRUG should only have to pay a fine and have the drugs confiscated.... Individuals that have been given multiple fines 3 or more within a 3 year period should be given the option to enroll in 100% free of charge rehab and addiction treatment facilities both in and out patient and be provided 1 on 1 therapy for at least 6 months or be given the option to do 90 days in county jail but not have a criminal record. Altering your consciousness is not a crime..and if we had more relaxed regulations around drug use, occasional non harmful users wouldn't get caught up in a system that is already overloaded, and people with addiction and mental health problems would get the care they desperately need to enrich there lives..Oh but how would we pay for it you ask??? Well 1) how are we funding the war on drugs in the first place reallocate that money. 2) All money and property seized from larger scale drug rings would be given to a 3rd party and audited and then go into this budget allocation. 3) Reduce drug enforcement spending to just major agencies IE DEA and Homeland Security for large scale operations. 4) Federally LEGALIZE Cannabis and Psilocybin Mushrooms and include a 10%-15% tax on not only those 2 products but also tobacco, alcohol, and gambling. Essentially creating the "Vices Tax" that will pay for and fund any short fall in addiction and mental health treatment. BUT THEY NEVER WILL.... even though it would make sense, there is too much money in criminalizing and disenfranchising people over altering there consciousness. BIG BIG BIG Business generating BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN REVENUE From Private Prisons, abuse on search and seizure laws, bloated legal fines, even the drug screening industry for urine test are racking in BILLIONS... they essentially call urine "liquid gold" because some offenders have to drug test EVERY SINGLE DAY and that cost can range from $5 to $45 per test. The war on drugs has destroyed lives of not only the individual but also future generations of that family... THE WAR ON DRUGS AND THE WAR ON PEOPLE NEED TO BE STOPPED!
ThatDKGuy The response I typed initially "TLDR: The Adam Smith mentality of leaving people up to their own devices doesn't actually work." Actually felt like reading it: the degree I have in economics has taught me that the one motivater is money. Let's not talk about weed when "the war on drugs" is brought up. Talk about the Purdue family who put money infront of HUMAN LIVES. Opiods kill people, not Marijuana. There needs to be a better way to hold people and organizations accountable no matter how much money they have. That being said, I do like your three strike rule, but even as a conservative/libertarian I think that addiction rehabilitation should be free and accessible to every citizen - whether they've been forced or not. As a society, someone who is a hardcore addict is giving nothing back, the quicker they are clean the better we all are (through employment, spending, taxes, charitable work, etc)
Great review of efforts to expunge records I appreciate it a lot! I was pretty surprised that you did not mention Canada at all in this piece with them being the second country to legalize and also having gone through expunging millions of people’s marijuana charges!
Two words Big Pharma These twats want every single american hooked to their legal heroin, and they will lobby infinitely to make sure their turf isnt decimated by a plant thats so easy to grow, one of its nicknames is a plant that grows anywhere and everywhere (weeds btw). We need to make corruption illegal again
@@ghostnoodle9721 there is a simple solution to that issue, get rid of prescription(so people would be able to buy any drugs that they think are gonna work for them, with possible exception of antibiotics and other that can harm everyone being used too much)
I saw a documentary a few years ago about a guy who served federal time for growing weed and now he is legally able to grow weed Oakland CA is encouraging people who served time to legally grow weed. Check out a video called "Why Oakland Wants Ex-Convicts To Grow Weed"
In Brazil this retroactive effects are a no brainer. If a conduct is decriminalized, all the lasting effects are erased, automatically. I thought this was an universal principle among the mildly civilized nations.
What a great explanation. Yeah this is quite the Y(h)uge topic. You didn't even get into 'For Profit Prisons' or taxing the sale of legal weed. Well done Lou.
What? You don't get your sentence revoked automatically if the law makes what you did legal afterwards in the us? I thought this was normal everywhere! Here in austria, if a new law will reduce or remove the punishment for a crime people who were already convicted get to have those benefits too. On the other hand if the punishment gets worse, your sentence will stay the same.
K1ngjulien_ Here in Brazil if any law is revoked, so is the punnishment. The law philosophy goes like this: it's pointless to punish someone for a crime no one can commit anymore; it is useless torture. Also, imagine this thought experiment: a law is created and revoked within one day. Several people go arrested for 30 years for a law they had no chance to understand and now their lives are destroyed. They are the unlucky "caught ones"; several other people committed the same crime but government was unable to arrest everyone.
Expunge all records involving possession and/or usage. Occupational licensure deserves it's own segment. Milton Friedman advocated for both the re-legalization of all substances as well as ending the AMA for their monopoly over medical licensing. Prescriptive authority ought to be with the individual seeking care rather than with a state sponsored puppet/physician.
This channel is great source of news. Its growth is disturbingly slow. You guys need to do some more call to action like/subscribe/call for engagement I don't want to see one of my favorite channels get shut down because CNN is out of time in terms of the channel "doing well enough" for it to pay for itself and even make them some money.
I identify the six experts i spoke to in the body of the piece. I avoid name checking them in the introduction because it interrupts a strong flow to start. If it was some eye-brow raising claim, I'd def say where it comes from. But that most marijuana arrests don't end in jail time is something any lawyer will tell you.
I'll lead with this, I smoke (legal) weed daily. I think anyone with possession should have it confiscated, and maybe even fined if it was illegal, but it shouldn't be in their criminal record. As much as I enjoy weed, if you break the law, you're breaking the law. I believe the law should change, and you should do what you can to move that along in your state. When it comes to dealers, I want to say they were motivated by doing the right thing, but in most cases I don't. They exploited a whole in the market created by our government, and helped escalate the violence surrounding these incidences. Not to mention all the families destroyed by dealers. Users, should be free to roam, but dealers I'm not so sure.
You make some interesting points, but here is a counterpoint: One of the big issues presented in this video, is the fact the LAW is applied unequally. Blacks and Latinos are arrested at much higher rates than whites for doing the same thing, whether it is possession or dealing. And it was noted (and is relatively well known) that whites and blacks and latinos consume marijuana at similar rates.
Also keep in mind while some dealers can be somewhat unsavoury, they are running a business. There are whole slew of unsavoury characters within the LEGAL pharmaceutical industry who profit from pushing the legal opiods that is literally killing people. Plus back when there was prohibition in the 20's and 30s, the illegal act of bootlegging (creating, transporting and selling of alcohol), was done by many people, and when alcohol became legal again, they became legitimate businessmen (see Seagrams).
Unless the shot is something deeply vital to national security or core industries, once you served your time, it should be over. We are not a shame culture. You discharged your debt to society.
Life expectancy on the decline couldn t be related to increased sedentary lifestyles, decreased community involvement, high fructose corn syrup, and removal of animal fats, could it?
update the video to include seizure laws, the amount of money "coming in" is so high that the "war" will never go away... Its all about MONEY in the USA.... no matter what where talking about... whether it be healthcare, insurance, food, drugs, ect, ect...
I don't get it. If you broke the law and smoked marijuana when it wasn't allowed, it's your fault and responsibility and no one else's. Your decisions say something about you.
@@fish9468 Are you going to bring up prohibition mate, cause if you are you should know that I wasn't born in the 20s.... I'm talking about people doing an act that they knew was a crime and didn't care for it anyway.
you have to see it the other way around: If someone is imprisoned for a crime, which is now made legal, what sense does it make to still keep that person in prison? Since it is now legal, you can save a lot of money by letting them go.
@@arminvanbuuren883 no. I'm talking about the actual damage that alcohol causes, while weed just burns your throat. Weed is not a drug, it's like coffee or sugar.
@@fish9468 What kind of a point is that?..I'm not trying to defend alcohol I think it's awfully bad for you, as weed is bad for you if you take it in excess. If it were up to me every drug would be completely legal. That doesn't make people who smoked weed while it was illegal innocent though. It was the law and they should have obeyed it. Having rules is one of the few things that sets us apart from animals mate.
lol understandable they tried to get rid of it but pot is a weed..... good luck... they grow everywhere, and they spread like wildfire... in fact I had a bunch of awery looking seed so I just tossed em in the farmers fields.. moth later the guys got a huge patch besisde his fence lol
But those convicts commited a crime, supported drugs cartels and violence in the streets of the US and other countries (like Mexico). Those consumers basically subsidize criminal cartels all over the world and all the horrible crimes those cartels commit. But, legal weed does not have this problem. Those convicts committed a crime knowingly doing so, as much as robbers do.
And they did their time in prison. When they leave prison they should be given a chance (and encouraged) to pursue a proper life without resorting to crime again. The problem is in the US and I am sure in a lot of places, is that once you have gone to prison, to pursue a life legally it is much more difficult. That is one of the biggest takeaways from this video. It is one of the biggest reasons why a lot of people return to crime after prison. It is just easier. And really it should not be that way. If you served your sentence that should be it. You should not be punished for the rest of your life because of what you did.
@@kuryamtl I agree with you, legal life for exconvicts its very hard, bit the problem its very complex, because at the same time you want to know (as an employer for example) if someone commited a crime. My argument its that their as criminals as the others, just because we are legalizing weed, doesn't mean they didn't commit a crime. Drug crimes are no different than robbery for example. The problem with reintegration of people that serve their sentence its a whole other discussion. If there's a way to expunge the records, it should be done in a whole range of minor crimes.
@@spaced94 Gangs in the US that life of drug money then, because the video victimizes black people but fail to condemn those criminals that spread violence in those communities.
When I look back at the people I met throughout high school the biggest potheads are currently the least successful in life and the people who never bothered to get into recreational drugs have become the most successful. People say it all the time but there's an obvious coloration between recreational drug users and their successfulness. So smoke em if you got em but let's be real you're probably not a productive member to society.
But in order to do that you need do it the singaporean way, you need to have highly efficient law enforcers and you need to bring the dead penalty for possesing drugs.
