Biden/Harris Legislative/Policy Discussions - Now with a Republican House starting 2023

[TradeTheBeal!]

I did a long weekend in Chesterfield county jail for a half-smoked joint in 1993.

[Cooked Crack]

22 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

I'll even go further and bet you at least 95% of the people that have been convicted by the federal government for simple marijuana possession in the last decade and 99% of the people in prison actually committed worse crimes and struck a plea deal to simple possession.  

Former federal prosecutor seems to disagree

Spoiler for language

Spoiler

 

Thread goes on further

 

Edited October 7, 2022 by Cooked Crack

[goskins10]

32 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

I don't think there are thousands of people in federal prison for simple marijuana possession.  A pardon affects everybody that have ever been convicted.  When they say thousands are being affected that means everybody that is living that has ever been convicted.

 

If he was commuting jail sentences, that might be a different thing, but that's not what is happening.  And I'll guarantee that would be a much smaller number.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/bidens-marijuana-pardons-wont-free-many-currently-in-federal-prison-2022-10

 

In 2017, 92 people were in federal prison for simple marijuana possession.

 

I'll even go further and bet you at least 95% of the people that have been convicted by the federal government for simple marijuana possession in the last decade and 99% of the people in prison actually committed worse crimes and struck a plea deal to simple possession.  

 

I suspect in a time when many people are concerned about higher crime rates this is going to be a negative in terms of the election.  Somebody is going to go through these people he's pardoned and some of them are not going to be good people, and there are going to be ads on how Biden has pardoned them.

 

Does anybody here know somebody that went to jail that was actually only guilty of simple marijuana possession?  That didn't happen when I was in high school in the late 1980s.

 

 

 

Fair enough - I misunderstood the 6500 number. There were 2000 in federal prisons 2015 but was down to 149 in June. But the rest is still valid - rescheduling pot and encouraging states to do the same is still a good plan and will impact a lot more people. 

 

As for the bolded yes. I was in HS in the mid 70's but still know people who indulge. I realize it's anecdotal, but in my experience pot acting as a gateway drug is greatly exagerrated. Have people experiemented with more? Yes. But a lot of people I have known never move past pot and alchohol. Some have but the majority did not. 

 

As for doing other crimes, not many I know have but I can see that being skewed. I tend not to hand out with criminals 🙂  

Edited October 7, 2022 by goskins10

[PeterMP]

27 minutes ago, China said:

 

From our Criminal Justice Reform Thread:

 

 

 

And he has a history of crimes, including at least one that was considered a violent crime.

[China]

5 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

And he has a history of crimes, including at least one that was considered a violent crime.

 

Yes, in the past, but he was in jail (this time) for just possession.  He did not get a plea deal to simple possession after committing other crimes which is what you asserted.

[PeterMP]

54 minutes ago, Cooked Crack said:

Former federal prosecutor seems to disagree

Spoiler for language

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Thread goes on further

 

 

I don't think he really disagrees with what I'm saying.   I didn't say violent or intent to distribute.

 

Reading the thread, I don't think he disagrees.  In most cases, the federal government doesn't prosecute for simple possession.  The exception is border areas where they will plea importing drugs down to simple possession.

 

That is the people are guilty of something more than simple possession.

28 minutes ago, China said:

 

Yes, in the past, but he was in jail (this time) for just possession.  He did not get a plea deal to simple possession after committing other crimes which is what you asserted.

 

First, when I said most and plea to simple possession, I did say federal.  Yes some states still have rather strict laws.

 

And he's going to jail because of his whole criminal history.

 

https://apnews.com/article/mississippi-0e463c390bedc7f6b25fb7e54b955b74

 

"The Court of Appeals disagreed in its majority opinion, stating that Russell’s life sentence is in accordance with Mississippi law. Russell is not being sentenced solely for having marijuana, but for being a habitual offender, the judges said."

Edited October 7, 2022 by PeterMP

[PeterMP]

This is older but I think things like this are still general federal policy which also is inline with what was in that thread:

 

https://nebula.wsimg.com/62cb1683489b4abe45e5a969b76f71a0?AccessKeyId=E182DB42669F4079B8C2&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

 

"Under this policy, prosecutors are instructed to decline to charge a drug quantity necessary to trigger a mandatory minimum sentence, if each of the following criterion are met: (1) The defendant’s behavior did not involve violence, threats of violence, possession of a weapon, trafficking to minors, or the death or serious bodily injury of any person; (2) The defendant was not a leader, organizer or supervisor of others; (3) The defendant does not have significant ties to large-scale drug organizations or gangs; and (4) The defendant does not have a significant criminal history"

 

That is if you don't have a history of doing something worse it is very hard to end up in federal prison for simple possession.  I guess my first post was incomplete that I did say plea and not have a history of worse things.  But I'll stand by the general point.  Very few people are being prosecuted federally for simple marijuana possession and even fewer are going to jail.  I should have left out the plea part and simply said have/had committed worse crimes.

Edited October 7, 2022 by PeterMP

[PeterMP]

34 minutes ago, goskins10 said:

.I realize it's anecdotal, but in my experience pot acting as a gateway drug is greatly exagerrated. Have people experiemented with more? Yes. But a lot of people I have known never move past pot and alchohol. Some have but the majority did not. 

 

This depends on how many people think it acts a gateway drug.  To be exaggerated, that would seem to me to require that a lot of people think that it is heavily a gateway drug.  My personal experience is a lot of people seem to completely discount it as a gateway drug.  But I'm not sure if I'd generalize that to the whole population.

[Cooked Crack]

 

[goskins10]

11 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

This depends on how many people think it acts a gateway drug.  To be exaggerated, that would seem to me to require that a lot of people think that it is heavily a gateway drug.  My personal experience is a lot of people seem to completely discount it as a gateway drug.  But I'm not sure if I'd generalize that to the whole population.

 

We have clearly lived seperate existences 🙂 All I heard through the 1970s (I will be 62 in a few weeks) and 80s (see Nancy Reagans "just say no" campaign) and into the 90s was how pot was a gateway drug to harder drugs without much proof. It was and still is the primary reason people fight against legalizing pot. And while the numbers of people thinking that may be going down as more people accept pot, especailly for medicinal purposes, the loudness of those that do believe it is very loud. Maybe it's just where I live and have lived. But I clearly remember PSAs with the scare tactics, if not directly stated then implied, of don't let your kids smoke pot, they will be doing herion, etc next.  

 

As for if it actually is a gateway drug, here is an article from from NIH in July 2020 that discusses it. They start by saying yes pot is a gateway drug but then classify that to mean to alchohol. But it also goes on to say there is no evidience pot leads to harder substances. By that definition alchohol and tobacco are gateway drugs. For me, I was specifically speaking of pot leading to harder drugs like cocaine, herion, LSD, etc. This article and study would suggest that pot is not a gateway drug based on that definition. 

 

https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/marijuana-gateway-drug

 

Here another article, this one from the CDC that agrees with the one above, that there is little evidence that pot use leads to use of harder drugs, again, right or wrong, that what I was referring to as a gateway drug.

 

https://www.cdc.gov/marijuana/health-effects/risk-of-other-drugs.html

 

Back to the issue at hand, Biden pardoning people convicted of simple possession. I still believe it has a lot of potential positive outcomes that outweight any negatives, the primary negative being that by pardoning/releasing those with simple possession convictions, most of those have or will commit more serious crimes and/or move to harder drugs with the resulting crime that typically comes with it. I have nothing to prove that definitivly, mostly just my view of it. 

 

[LD0506]

Yanno what the real "gateway drugs" are? Despair, hopelessness, poverty. The rise in serious endemic drug abuse has paralleled the corrosion of the American dream, the theft of options and opportunities from the masses. We live in a time where people struggling for basic survival are bombarded with advertising flaunting the wealthy diversions of the lucky. Add to that the bad actors in the world subsidizing and enabling major drug trafficking as a means to undermine America out of spite or their own self interest, along with our own bad actors seeing it as a way to rationalize a "war" on drugs as a means to enrich themselves.

[PeterMP]

1 hour ago, goskins10 said:

 

We have clearly lived seperate existences 🙂 All I heard through the 1970s (I will be 62 in a few weeks) and 80s (see Nancy Reagans "just say no" campaign) and into the 90s was how pot was a gateway drug to harder drugs without much proof. It was and still is the primary reason people fight against legalizing pot. And while the numbers of people thinking that may be going down as more people accept pot, especailly for medicinal purposes, the loudness of those that do believe it is very loud. Maybe it's just where I live and have lived. But I clearly remember PSAs with the scare tactics, if not directly stated then implied, of don't let your kids smoke pot, they will be doing herion, etc next.  

 

As for if it actually is a gateway drug, here is an article from from NIH in July 2020 that discusses it. They start by saying yes pot is a gateway drug but then classify that to mean to alchohol. But it also goes on to say there is no evidience pot leads to harder substances. By that definition alchohol and tobacco are gateway drugs. For me, I was specifically speaking of pot leading to harder drugs like cocaine, herion, LSD, etc. This article and study would suggest that pot is not a gateway drug based on that definition. 

 

https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/marijuana-gateway-drug

 

Here another article, this one from the CDC that agrees with the one above, that there is little evidence that pot use leads to use of harder drugs, again, right or wrong, that what I was referring to as a gateway drug.

 

https://www.cdc.gov/marijuana/health-effects/risk-of-other-drugs.html

 

Back to the issue at hand, Biden pardoning people convicted of simple possession. I still believe it has a lot of potential positive outcomes that outweight any negatives, the primary negative being that by pardoning/releasing those with simple possession convictions, most of those have or will commit more serious crimes and/or move to harder drugs with the resulting crime that typically comes with it. I have nothing to prove that definitivly, mostly just my view of it. 

 

 

You're misreading what you you've linked too.

 

"Some research suggests that marijuana use is likely to precede use of other licit and illicit substances⁴⁵ and the development of addiction to other substances. "

 

I've added the bold and the underline  You've ignored the ilicit part (alcohol and nicotine not being ilicit) and then focused on the and that they then given an example of as alcohol.  They have the reference there of 45.  You can get it and read it.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4291295/

 

I'll just cite the conclusion from the abstract:

"A large proportion of individuals who use cannabis go on to use other illegal drugs. The increased risk of progression from cannabis use to other illicit drugs use among individuals with mental disorders underscores the importance of considering the benefits and adverse effects of changes in cannabis regulations and of developing prevention and treatment strategies directed at curtailing cannabis use in these populations."

 

Though, I'm not really sure why that really matters.  They aren't talking about people using alcohol.  They are talking about people developing alcohol disorders.  It isn't like alcoholism isn't an issue in this country, is a prize, and isn't something we should be trying to minimize.

 

You've also then ignored the part below by THC and morphine and cross-sensitization which again they've used as an example.  I think everybody considers morphine a harder drug.

 

Realistically, many of the major drugs (including alcohol and nicotine, but also THC) cause changes in the brain that make at least young rats more sensitive to harder drugs later.  Controlled studies on humans are not normally done (due to ethical issues), but we see similar changes in regular users of drugs in humans, especially young people.  And then things like THC are also being tied to psychological issues (e.g. schizophrenia) which is consistent with changes in the brain.

Edited October 7, 2022 by PeterMP

[Fan since a Fetus]

.

Edited October 24, 2023 by Fan since a Fetus

[PeterMP]

21 minutes ago, Fan since a Fetus said:

From personal experience, I know that does not translate to the population as a whole, but, my drug use after weed was directly related to the people I hung out with and who I bought from. Once I stopped hanging out with those people, I went back to just marijuana. I found some dealers that didn’t sell anything else.

 

if we legalize marijuana and get it into shops, then we can better control it and stop people from getting it on the streets where tons of other dangers exist. 

 

Just to be clear, I'm for decriminalization and even legalization especially if legalization isn't associated with commercialization.  I think having state run stores where there is no advertising and the money can be put directly back into education programs probably makes sense.  Though, I don't think that will happen anywhere and isn't what is happening the US.

 

I also think this particular move by Biden is a political loser due to what I suspect is the nature of most of the people that he's pardoned (where most people that have only been guilty of simple possession haven't been charged by the federal government and even fewer have been put in jail and the ones that have are people that have pretty bad criminal histories).  The re-classification of marijuana makes a lot of sense on a number of fronts, including making it easier to do research on its effects and there's no reason to have it treated at the same level as many much harder drugs.

 

I suspect the vast majority of the people that he's pardoned and in some cases presumably will release from jail have extensive criminal backgrounds, and while he's not pardoning every crime those people have committed the optics are going to look bad.  Especially at a time when there is a lot of concern about violent crime.

Edited October 7, 2022 by PeterMP

[PeterMP]

I'm going to add one more thing and then let this go.  The Democrats have a problem (I think).  There are good studies that show that "broken windows" policing works.  It might not be very efficient or cost effective, but unless you can build the case to put money into those other programs to replace of offset the lose of broken windows policing there are likely going to be issues.  And I don't at least see yet, large scale public buy in or even Democrats affectively making the argument to use that money or to build those programs.  

 

Democratic led cities have/are removing the broken windows model of policing and to my knowledge without substantially putting the resources and infrastructures in place likely needed to keep crime down in the absence of the broken windows policing.

 

I think you've also seen similar things with homelessness.  Enforcing vagrancy laws isn't a very efficient or very ethical way to prevent or minimize vagrancy.  But if you can't garner the resources used to enforce vagrancy laws to put other programs in place to minimize vagrancy, you are going to end up with problems.

 

And in both cases, those problems are going to cause you to lose elections.  While the Democratic base might not like enforcing vagrancy laws or broken windows policing, if you can't capture the resources used to do those things and implement other programs to minimize the loses of enforcing vagrancy laws and broken windows policing, long term you are going to lose elections.

[Fan since a Fetus]

On 10/7/2022 at 9:50 AM, PeterMP said:

 

Just to be clear, I'm for decriminalization and even legalization especially if legalization isn't associated with commercialization.  I think having state run stores where there is no advertising and the money can be put directly back into education programs probably makes sense.  Though, I don't think that will happen anywhere and isn't what is happening the US.

 

I also think this particular move by Biden is a political loser due to what I suspect is the nature of most of the people that he's pardoned (where most people that have only been guilty of simple possession haven't been charged by the federal government and even fewer have been put in jail).  The re-classification of marijuana makes a lot of sense on a number of fronts, including making it easier to do research on its effects and there's no reason to have it treated at the same level as many much harder drugs.

 

I suspect the vast majority of the people that he's pardoned and in some cases presumably will release from jail have extensive criminal backgrounds, and while he's not pardoning every crime those people have committed the optics are going to look bad.  Especially at a time when there is a lot of concern about violent crime.

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 24, 2023 by Fan since a Fetus

[LadySkinsFan]

1 hour ago, Fan since a Fetus said:

From personal experience, I know that does not translate to the population as a whole, but, my drug use after weed was directly related to the people I hung out with and who I bought from. Once I stopped hanging out with those people, I went back to just marijuana. I found some dealers that didn’t sell anything else.

 

if we legalize marijuana and get it into shops, then we can better control it and stop people from getting it on the streets where tons of other dangers exist. 

 

In the early 70s, I used a cornucopia of drugs except heroin and crack. Powder coke was a drug of choice among with psychotropics. It really had to do with who I hung around with. When I was pregnant, I stopped every drug, never drank alcohol, and stopped seeing all of my friend group that weren't really my friends anyway. After I gave birth, I developed new friends who either didn't do drugs or smoked pot only. So I bet a lot of people my age who did this in the 80s. 

[Fan since a Fetus]

On 10/7/2022 at 11:05 AM, LadySkinsFan said:

 

In the early 70s, I used a cornucopia of drugs except heroin and crack. Powder coke was a drug of choice among with psychotropics. It really had to do with who I hung around with. When I was pregnant, I stopped every drug, never drank alcohol, and stopped seeing all of my friend group that weren't really my friends anyway. After I gave birth, I developed new friends who either didn't do drugs or smoked pot only. So I bet a lot of people my age who did this in the 80s. 

 

I've Googled people I hung out with in the past online. They have all been busted for something. Dealing, stealing and battery.

 

Edited October 24, 2023 by Fan since a Fetus

[The Evil Genius]

A reason for Beal to be against it.

 

 

[skinsmarydu]

9 hours ago, LD0506 said:

Yanno what the real "gateway drugs" are? Despair, hopelessness, poverty. The rise in serious endemic drug abuse has paralleled the corrosion of the American dream, the theft of options and opportunities from the masses. We live in a time where people struggling for basic survival are bombarded with advertising flaunting the wealthy diversions of the lucky. Add to that the bad actors in the world subsidizing and enabling major drug trafficking as a means to undermine America out of spite or their own self interest, along with our own bad actors seeing it as a way to rationalize a "war" on drugs as a means to enrich themselves.

I'm glad you're retired and can still type what I think before I can even get it together.  

[Jabbyrwock]

9 hours ago, LD0506 said:

Yanno what the real "gateway drugs" are? Despair, hopelessness, poverty.

 

James Blunt

[Cooked Crack]

 

[CousinsCowgirl84]

Something that is slightly annoying to me, is quite a few times when president Biden says something geopolitical there are tons a news articles saying “Biden’s words cauggt government officials by suprise”… just thinking recent with the nuclear tensions and with China over tawain. 
 

I understand there are checks and balances in government but a the same time these guys caught off guard aren’t elected officials… and he is the president. I don’t think these “government officials” should be squawking like seagulls every time the President says something a little provocative. 

Edited October 8, 2022 by CousinsCowgirl84

[Ball Security]

11 hours ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

“A guy named Paul Gosar.”  Sick burn, Brandon. 🤣

[Tundra scout]

And this administration won’t reverse itself on fossil fuel production.

If they dropped the war on fossil fuels and made the long term decision to increase production of fossil fuels, we could begin to reverse this hole that the Brandon Administration has put us in.

But they won’t b/c it would be an admission of failure. They‘d prefer to let Americans suffer while they force this fantasy of becoming 100% renewable energy to continue.

They should immediately renege on the relief of student debt and stop all new deficit spending.