The bill nicked its way through the Senate Appropriations Committee on Monday, passing by a 4-3 vote, including the support of one member who says she’ll vote against it on the Senate floor. “I think the debate on the floor is important,” said Sen. Diane Snelling (R-Chittenden), in explaining her vote.
Senate Appropriations Committee chair Jane Kitchel (D-Caledonia) also voted to send the bill to the full Senate, but said she’s unsure how she’ll vote when it gets there.
The bill would legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and allow state-permitted marijuana growing facilities and retail stores. The state would charge a 25 percent tax on marijuana sales. Money raised by the tax would be targeted for drug treatment and prevention, law enforcement and administration. The bill would not legalize edible marijuana products or home-growing of marijuana.
The Appropriations Committee tussled Monday over start-up costs that the Shumlin administration projects the state will need to pay before tax revenues come in from marijuana sales. Ultimately, the committee trimmed some of those costs, but left about $400,000 in 2017 expenses to be borrowed from the 2018 budget.
Senate Minority Leader Joe Benning (R-Caledonia), who supports legalization, predicted the bill will pass the full Senate. There are 29 senators eligible to vote. Benning said, “I think there’s at least 15 votes [in favor], but there are people holding their cards close to their chests.”
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All the data needed for an informed decision on cannabis legalization has already been collected and can be found at the CDC web site.
When looking at relative products safely the first thing that should be analyzed as how many people are killed.
Figures directly from the CDC dot gov web site on numbers of deaths per year in the USA
* Prescription Drugs: 237,485 + 5000 traffic fatalities
* Tobacco: 390,323
* Alcohol: 88,013 + 16,000 traffic fatalities
* Cocaine: 4,906
* Heroin: 7,200
* Aspirin: 466
* Acetaminophen (Tylenol): 179
* Marijuana: 0, none, not a single fatal overdose in all medical history and almost no traffic problems.
So, which is safer????
I beg to differ. The energy consumed by the states who have legalized marijuana has NOT been collected in Vermont’s discussion and it those states energy use is astronomical….. No legislation until requirements for energy use have been restricted to not grow our electricity generation, be it (man-captured) solar or otherwise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy…
Marijuana grow facilities going outdoors to reduce electricity usage in Pueblo County: http://www.koaa.com/story/29559187/marijua…
Regulation has public safety ad welfare written all over it when cannabis is tested for impurities and available from safe secure outlets. This allows or taxes to be collected while creation of jobs. Stop breeding criminals out of cannabis. Speak out and VOTE GREEN!
While the potential harms of using cannabis are widely publicized (and often exaggerated), little is mentioned of the harms of its prohibition. When making cannabis policy decisions, it would be irresponsible to ignore these harms…and costs.
For this prohibition to be justified it needs to be established that:
1) Cannabis is particularly harmful (at least more than alcohol)
2) The prohibition will significantly reduce problematic usage
And:
3) The direct and indirect costs of prohibition to an American society need to be less than any gains from 1 and 2 (don’t underestimate the value we place on freedom and liberty)
None of these 3 requirements have ever been established. After decades of research, the relative safety and medical efficacy of cannabis have been established well enough to conclude that it is significantly less harmful and more useful than alcohol. The vast majority of preventable harms related to cannabis are caused by the very laws that are supposed to “protect us” from it. Some of these harms are:
•Increased deaths of countless people involved on all sides of the “war”, including those of law enforcement and bystanders
•The spending of 100’s of billions of our dollars seeking out, arresting, prosecuting, and incarcerating otherwise law-abiding citizens
•The loss of billions in tax revenue from cultivation, distribution, and sales, which can be used for all substance abuse treatment
•The redirection of valuable police time and resources from solving and preventing true crime
•The filling of our jails with non-violent offenders, exposing them to true criminals and forcing the early release of dangerous criminals
•All sales, over 10 million pounds per year, are unregulated and placed in the hands of people who never check ID, many of them hardened criminals
•The empowerment and expansion of underground markets as a very popular substance is placed within them
•Increased violent crime as dealers and buyers have no legal recourse to resolve disputes
•Increased exposure to hard drugs as many cannabis consumers buy from suppliers who have access to them, even push them
•Increased likelihood of contamination with anything from harmful pesticides and molds to other drugs
•The prevention of some adults from choosing a recreational substance less harmful than alcohol
•The notion that all illegal drugs are particularly dangerous is weakened
•Increased corruption within the legal system
•The invasion of our civil liberties, which in America we hold in especially high regard
•The prevention of people from receiving effective medicine
•The prevention of people from receiving decent employment, scholarship money, and student aid due to their “criminal” record, which affects not just them but their family as well
•Families are torn apart as members are imprisoned or children taken away in the name of “protecting them”
•Increased support of tremendous multinational criminal networks
•Increased public mistrust, disrespect, and disdain for our legal system, police, and government, which is devastating to our country
Considering these great costs, it is unreasonable to continue this policy against a substance objectively less harmful than alcohol. Why are we forcing police to deal with something that is, if anything, a minor public health issue? Why are we criminalizing people for something that has been safely enjoyed by millions of Americans for decades, something that a majority of Americans believe should be legalized recreationally?
Cannabis prohibition is a travesty of justice based on irrational fears and paranoia from an archaic era that needs to end now. Cannabis must be legalized and regulated similar to alcohol. Prohibition policies do not work for popular things that are safely enjoyed by many…especially not in a country that values liberty, justice, and freedom.
A vote to end cannabis prohibition is a vote to condemn a costly prohibition that causes more harm than it prevents.
Please urge your legislators to implement a cannabis policy similar to that of alcohol. Consider what the following cannabis legalization organizations have to say. Help end this harmful, unjust, unfounded, unpopular, un-American prohibition by joining their mailing lists, signing their petitions and writing your legislators when they call for it.
MPP – The Marijuana Policy Project – http://www.mpp.org/
DPA – Drug Policy Alliance – http://www.drugpolicy.org/
NORML – National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws – http://norml.org/
LEAP – Law Enforcement Against Prohibition – http://www.leap.cc/
This bill is a joke. It’s a bill designed to give over all marijuana profits in the state to large out-of-state companies (growers).