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TBIts too coomnplace an occurrence for gloating.chimes in, crawling out of hiding in the woodwork, with his stalking of The Great Boutons, who has really ed up TB
Its too coomnplace an occurrence for gloating.
TBIts too coomnplace an occurrence for gloating.
Whatever gets you through the day litttle fella.
IRS awards tax exempt status to the First Church of Cannabis
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/irs-...e+Raw+Story%29
war on drugs related:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_7503878.htmlIn a significant blow to the United States' decadeslong war on drugs, House lawmakers voted Tuesday to strip $23 million from the embattled Drug Enforcement Administration's budget, diverting the funds toward community outreach programs, fighting police abuse and ending the DEA's controversial bulk data collection programs.
With simple voice votes, lawmakers approved four amendments offered to the fiscal year 2016 Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill that would cut into the DEA's budget.
One amendment offered by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) would move $10 million from the agency's salaries and expenses to the Department of Justice's body camera program.
"These additional resources will help increase law enforcement accountability, mend police-community relations, and improve the safety of cities and towns across America," Castro said. The pilot version of that program has a budget of $25 million.
An amendment from Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) would move $4 million from the DEA budget to increase funding for rape testing kits. On the House floor, Cohen said trauma inflicted on victims of rape can be "compounded when they know that they're assailants roam free and critical evidence remains untested."
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) offered an amendment that would shift $9 million earmarked for the DEA's cannabis reduction and eradication program to initiatives aimed at helping victims of domestic abuse, child abuse and sexual assault.
"We need to focus our resources where they are actually needed: standing up for children who have been victims of abuse and assault, not spending taxpayer dollars on going after people who grow marijuana plants in states that have legalized marijuana," Lieu told The Huffington Post.
And an amendment from Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) would prevent the DEA and DOJ from using federal funds to engage in bulk collection of Americans' communications records.
Texas related, so much for Republicans moving in lockstep:
https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-...ize-marijuana/
Congress tells the DOJ to keep its hands off medical weed in states where it is legal:
http://www.laweekly.com/news/congres...usades-5648137
There may be a maverick TX Repug with a brain and humanity, like Simpson, but who still uses "using God and Scripture" bul instead of his brain and science, but mj legalization in TX doesn't have a chance.
Abbott just signed a bill allowing an CBD (Abbott pandered to the Bible humpers and puritans than there is no HIGH involved) to be used EXCLUSIVELY for kids with high rates of seizures, and ONLY after time has been wasted trying all other known-unsuccessful drugs, prolonging the victim's + family's pain.
Abbott: "“I remain convinced that Texas should not legalize marijuana,” Abbott said, “nor should Texas open the door for conventional marijuana to be used for medicinal purposes.”"
so "Not on Abbott's watch", another 3 years of no mj decriminalization, which puts TX inbetween bi-annual lege sessions, so maybe 4,5 years at least before the next non-Abbott gov signs mj into law. Or maybe Abbott will reverse course and WALK away from his current STANCE?
So 2 more years waiting doing nothing while The Greatest State In The Nation honors its 150-year, hide-bound tradition from Indian days of bi-annual, too-brief sessions, instead of working every year to actually govern a complex state of 27M people.
They need to go all in in 2017 and go for full legalization on the Colorado model.
If Congress, esp Repugs, were really serious, instead of "talk"-ing, they'd "walk" vote to remove mj from DEA's insane Schedule I, and why not completely off-schedule, like alcohol and addictive, toxic, carcinogenic tobacco? and of course, Obama has already instructed DoJ not to go after mj, but DEA didn't get the memo.
As long as mj is Sched I, DEA and friends will go after mj sellers and possessors, because the War on Drugs is a business and job,pension creator.
boutons, the drug war is dying and you don't even know it.
It's more of a surrender on our part, not any sort of victory over the cartels. Too much money to be saved/earned by legalization. The cartels will move into other rackets, but they will have trouble earning what they do now. The cartel bubble is beginning to burst, and the pharma companies will be there to greedily pick up the slack and grease the political wheels.
one doesn't need to pay a doc for a presciption for alcohol or tobacco, only a driver's license.
money by whom? Somehow, BigPharma, already researching mj analogues, extracts, BigMed, police, govt, will stand between mj and users.
Booze is heavily taxed. Tobacco is heavily taxed. Recreational drugs are/will be heavily taxed. Pharma drugs are expensive, thus heavily sales-taxed. Compared to flushing money down the toilet with the DEA and the penal system, you're talking about a huge windfall for state and federal coffers. The pilot programs are working just fine so far, so it's only a matter of time before other states decide they want some of that money, too.
As for it being free to grow weed, or cheap to brew beer... it's also incredibly inconvenient and time-consuming. Smokers could grow tobacco, but they smoke too much to make it feasible/desirable to do it. Companies will step in to offer simpler alternatives, and they will be taxed. Vigorously.
mj will probably be taxed PUNITIVELY, not just heavily. WA, OR, CO prices are still over $200/oz for a ing weed.
Key Findings
- Because marijuana can be purchased as a cigarette, an edible, a liquid, or vapor, all with a wide variety of concentrations, a specific excise tax is untenable.
- Colorado collects tax revenue from marijuana sales through a 15 percent excise based tax on the average wholesale market rate; a 10 percent state tax on retail marijuana sales; a state sales tax of 2.9 percent; varied local sales taxes; and local marijuana taxes such as a 3.5 percent tax in Denver.
- Washington State collects tax revenue from marijuana sales through a 25 percent tax on producer sales to processors; a 25 percent tax on processor sales to retailers; a 25 percent tax on retailer sales to customers; a state Business & Occupation (B&O) gross receipts tax; a state sales tax of 6.5 percent; and varied local sales taxes. The total effective tax rate to be about 44 percent.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/tax...ado-experience
Booze and tobacco are not taxed so heavily to be out of reach.
Yeah, but the actual cost of production is so low that compe ion will drive down the cost to the point that the tax is higher than the production. I think pot is currently being sold at vestigial illegal drug prices ($100 for a bag last I checked, to cover the risk, and to make shipping a bulky, inexpensive product worth the effort) by "artisanal" entrepreneurs. What will ultimately happen in the marketplace is that only high-volume producers will be able to profit, and only they will be able to make the product cheaper, more convenient, and better-distributed than illegal pot. Indies will probably be priced out, or aim at a niche segment. ...But just looking at those taxes, can't you see how eager governments are to get the ball rolling? And do you really think they are going to prefer a cautious systematic approach to regulation over their gold-rush fever? As for the excise tax in relation to potency is concerned, I expect the government, producers, and retailers will hammer out a standard over 10-15 years. Retail alcohol has to state its alcohol % by volume and be distilled and sold according to govt standards, for example. And the law uses BAL to determine a citizen's level of sobriety and has a framework of protocols to prevent or punish abuse. It took decades of work to put together those still-in-flux standards, tax structures, regulatory processes, etc. but alcohol was legal through most of them because it was simply too lucrative (and too costly to fight bootleggers). So just because there is no current test to determine how stoned somebody is, for example, doesn't mean there won't ever be. They may also piggyback on precedents put forward by big tobacco to make regulations fall into a grey area. It could go any number of ways, but as long as that tax revenue carrot is dangling, I'd bet the legislative momentum will tend toward legalization.
Sorry for block of text... my formatting didn't go through.
Looks like the pothead n!gg@ communist Muslim non-citizen is using, as promised, his "phone and pen" to make PROGRESSIVE changes
The feds just made it a lot easier to research marijuana
- The federal government removed a substantial barrier to conducting scientific and medical research on marijuana.
- The government previously required three major approvals for marijuana research not funded by the government: a Food and Drug Administration review, a Public Health Service (PHS) review, and approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Marijuana is the only schedule 1 drug that had to go through the special PHS review.
- The federal government's decision, which is effective immediately, eliminates the PHS review, which in some cases added months or years to a study's approval.
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/22/8824025...health-service
Thanks, Obama!
May Harry Anslinger burn in .
partial legalization in the US is already hurting the cartels:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...g-war-couldnt/The latest data from the U.S. Border Patrol shows that last year, marijuana seizures along the southwest border tumbled to their lowest level in at least a decade. Agents snagged roughly 1.5 million pounds of marijuana at the border, down from a peak of nearly 4 million pounds in 2009.
The data supports the many stories about the difficulties marijuana growers in Mexico face in light of increased compe ion from the north. As domestic marijuana production has ramped up in places such as California, Colorado and Washington, marijuana prices have fallen, especially at the bulk level.
"Two or three years ago, a kilogram [2.2 pounds] of marijuana was worth $60 to $90," a Mexican marijuana grower told NPR news in December 2014. "But now they're paying us $30 to $40 a kilo. It's a big difference. If the U.S. continues to legalize pot, they'll run us into the ground."
Nixon Aide Reportedly Admitted Drug War Was Meant To Target Black People
“Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Ehrlichman provided some shockingly honest insight into the motives behind the drug war. From Harper’s:
“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect.
“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.”
In other words, the intense racial targeting that’s become synonymous with the drug war wasn’t an unintended side effect — it was the whole point.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b03a640a6bbda1
Repugs, The Party of Racists, from top to bottom, for decades...
Last edited by boutons_deux; 03-23-2016 at 09:20 AM.
The whole piece on Harper's is great stuff. Really worth the read.
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
DEA Plans To Decide Whether To Reschedule Marijuana By Mid-Year
The Drug Enforcement Administration plans to decide whether marijuana should reclassified under federal law in “the first half of 2016,” the agency said in a letter to senators.
DEA, responding to a 2015 letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and seven other Democratic senators urging the federal government to facilitate research into marijuana’s medical benefits, doesn’t indicate whether it will reclassify marijuana as less dangerous.
“DEA understands the widespread interest in the prompt resolution to these pe ions and hopes to release its determination in the first half of 2016,” DEA said the 25-page letter, obtained by The Huffington Post.
The letter, signed by Acting DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenberg, explains in great detail the marijuana supply available at the University of Mississippi, the federal government’s only sanctioned marijuana garden.
The Food and Drug Administration has completed a review of the medical evidence surrounding the safety and effectiveness of marijuana and has forwarded its rescheduling recommendation to the DEA, according to the letter. The do ent didn’t reveal what the FDA recommended.
If demand for research into marijuana’s medical potential were to increase beyond the the University of Mississippi’s supply, DEA said it may consider registering additional growers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0537661881644
Will citizens' pe ions and medical science win?
or will BigAlcohol's, BigPharma's, BigPoliceState's $10Ms in lobbying win again?
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