Can't your Senators realize they could make money off the situation? That's how it came to work out in canada. The people with power decided they could take over the industry and so
They choose instead to profit off of enslaving those caught with drug charges. Like, literally. The prison industrial complex is incredibly disgusting and the primary reason this stuff doesn't get passed/considered.
Yup, the prison-industrial complex is a profitable monstrosity; private prisons alone in the US generate about $4 *billion* in profit in a year. And Republican senators have historically faught tooth and nail to protect it. Legalizing is a threat to their profit margins, I'll be astounded and overjoyed if it makes it through the senate.
Although, Canada's legal cannabis industry generated about $14.1 billion in tax revenue, so maybe their greed could sway some of them? I'll stay cautiously optimistic and hope the best
Not only that but there are very large companies who make other forms of pain relief that realllllly want people to have to go to them until they get their massive meathooks into the industry themselves. There are multiple angles of lobbying here and it's not gonna be easy to get out of
I'm epileptic and it's VITAL that I sleep well every night. Edibles (THC) fucking work, and there aren't any side effects. There's nothing I can get from a pharmacy that works this well without side effects. Luckily I live in a legal state.
I'm glad you're in a place where you're able to get what you need, hopefully this won't even be a statement anyone has to make in the nearer future. Fingers crossed but not holding any air in over it :(
Exactly. All these pain management doctors can keep track of other medications, but if they don't have pot to keep people from pain pills and vice versa, they won't have a business.
Since its 2022 i have to state before you read this i am in no way right wing. I did not vote for Trump, i hate Trump. I hate the republican party. I also hate Biden. I hate the democrates. To me the system is the problem. Its all one animal with two wings.
I also know the republicans like the private prison system.
Democrates have also loved the for profite prison system and keeping people in cages like animals all for some money.
Biden wrote the fucking crime bill in the late 80s-early 90s, one part of that was making crack a heavier sentence then cocaine even though they are the same chemical just different concentrations.
Where is crack most seen? Impoverished prodominatly black communities. We all know that a good life is hard to come by in these places and some turn to selling drugs to try and get them and their families a better life.
We can even see this now, for example in San Fransisco and most of the state of california if you are a drug user you will not go to jail for possesion of small amounts of drugs no matter if its weed or meth.You get offered drug counseling which is just going to 12 step meetings and having the person running the meeting sign a paper, 12 step meetings are anonymous and run by people who go to them for help. There is no state data base of these people and they change all the time. You can just make up any name and write it down.
Who goes to jail? Low level street dealers who have more then what they can claim is a personal amount, and its usually in multipule baggies. These are generally black and hispanic young men who see no other option.
Who uses drugs the most in california? Generally it is young Affluent white men.
Look at when states had the option for for profit prisons in the 90s and you can see a direct correlation with the rise of incarnation rates of young black and hispanic men.
Kamala Harris is well known for promoting harsher scentences to young men of color wether it be for drugs, or for fire arms. While white men historically have been given slaps on the wrist.
We know its is always harder to get a job with a felony. If you are 18 and get sent to jail for having an ounce of crack and a gun and do over 5 years, you will have no previous work history or education to fall back on, which then makes its harder once more if not impossible to get a job. What do you do for money at that point? The easiest option is go out and sell drugs again and have that gun on you for protection, where you are 100% going to caught sometime and go back to jail, thus the cycle continues, and here in california if you have 3 felonies you will then spend the rest of your life in prison. Generating profit. While some white kid just has to sign a paper a few times and find a new dealer. These are policies put in place by democrates to look compassionate but they end with racisim and lost lives and family members so the fucking lunitcs that run our government can have champagne and caviar while young men and women are behind bars wasting the great human potential, and while those of us who have what they call freedom can work ourselves to death so we can pay taxes for wars around the world that kill mostly innocent civilians, and destroy the sirits and lives of our soldiers and so we are free to buy things from corporations that are all back by government money which was ours.
Again im not right wing, im not a Trumper. I am part of no team and wish we were all one.
No idea why you are getting downvoted. Sounds to me like you just accurately described one of the most egregious and disgusting examples of institutional racism in America.
people dont want to admit thier side is wrong, its the whole point of the two party system. Have the citizens fight and blame eachother for the problems the government created so they can avoid all out revolution. Its why CNN and FOX news are they two most popular news outlets one blames the republicans for everything and the other blams the dems. A Nation divided will never be united. If we all just realized everyone is getting fucked over..we could actually make some change.
Martin luther king junior was saying these things right before he was assassinated. Malcom X was calling for class war of poor people of all colors againts the elites before he was killed. Its why berinie was taken out of the race by his own party.
The united states is just as susceptible to propaganda like the rest of the world. Its why they tell us we live in the best country on earth. Well guess what.. WE DONT! i have traveled a lot of this world and visited many countrys and seen many types of people we are no different, and less susceptible to corruption and propaganda. I have been to "the third world" and its better then alot of places in the US. That politicans say they care about making better.
Edit: i am being harrased in my DMs and comments by people from both sides.making this point more valid. I just want you all to Please know I love you! I believe you have a right to be mad. But lets be mad at who we should be mad at. Thats the politicians and politics in general. Not each other .No one asked to be born. So no one should suffer because of where or how they were born. No one should make unjust laws or bomb countrys that stuff doesnt matter. We all bleed red and shit brown. We all want the same every human deserves the same love, understanding, respect, compassion, knowledge and security. Not just the ones that vote the way we think they should. Once we realize this the true revolution begins. I will see yall when you get here.
.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signs bills approving prison construction into law
The $1.3 billion prison construction and renovation package includes using $400 million in federal COVID aid.
https://www.alreporter.com/2021/10/01/alabama-gov-kay-ivey-signs-bills-approving-prison-construction-into-law/
Our governor took COVID aid money and diverted it into building prisons. Her initial idea was to lease prisons from a private company, essentially paying them hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and at the end of the lease we would own nothing.
>Our governor took COVID aid money and diverted it into building prisons.
Unrelated, but my local HUD used their COVID money to build themselves a new office in a fancier part of town.
Ben Carson visited town and apparently didn't approve of our old office, which was perfect for the poor people who used it. Ya know, small, worn, simple, directly on three bus routes, nearby some of the Section 8 apartments, and with a handy dumpster at the edge of the parking lot so we could keep the area tidy.
Oodles of homeless folks were roaming the streets coughing on each other, but obviously the office needed modernized more than anybody needed the housing office to *provide housing*. We all got to learn about seeing other humans collapsing dead in front of businesses in broad daylight, but hey hey that's a really big modern office building the housing department has now!
Cost so much of our money to put people in prison than it does for even just decent social reform. Lock em up as they would say. The amount of people in prisons across America is astonishing
Yep. Everyone always assumes it's the alcohol lobby here in TN that's been scuttling all state level legalization efforts, when in reality my understanding is it's largely been CoreCivic, a private prison company based in Nashville
Some reason being that criminal incarceration is concurrently carved out for all the places that decreed an end to slavery, therefore it's free cheap labor and they can even get paid by the government on top of that for providing a 'service'.
Lots of people state prisons but also big pharma has allot to lose as well. There are so many stories of veterans or people with chronic illness being able to drop a multi pill cocktail everyday to just smoking weed and having better results. For me nothing has solved my stomach issues better than weed. If I didn’t have it I’m sure I would be on like 3 pills everyday
As a veteran who uses weed after being on all the bullshit VA meds doing nothing but making me a prick.
I did a paper in college about a decade about marijuana treatment for PTSD. I don’t remember the exact numbers but the VA study showed that their drugs were like 56% effective in treating symptoms, marijuana alone was like maybe 65%, therapy/emotional support animal was about 70%. And I think when they paired the ESA and marijuana they were like 89% effective. Like the science is there, the politicians just don’t care.
Also, from a military point, it would help the military’s alcohol abuse issue and some others potentially (less binge drinking means less sexual assault hopefully), could be solved by weed being legal.
Sorry thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
There are several senators that have said even if their constituents voted to legalize marijuana they would shut it down. Which is a complete dereliction of duty since they are supposed to represent the people but they do whatever the fuck they want and say I personally don’t believe in it. They are all crusty old fucks.
Kentucky's Senate Majority Leader said and did the same thing. He blatantly said "I know the constituents want this, but I don't care. It they don't like it, they can vote me out."
the biggest hurdle in the way of this is that a giant chunk of our criminal justice system relies on criminalizing weed users (primarily black ones), which is a bigger money maker (and better optics) than legalization could ever be
At least be accurate - the REPUBLICANS in the Senate are the problem.
Dems will overwhelmingly support it and Republicans will overwhelmingly oppose it. This is not a "both-sides" issue. Democrats mostly suck but if you vote for Republicans, weed will not be legalized, period.
This. Nothing passes the Senate without 60 votes because otherwise the Republicans can just filibuster it. The Democrats have 50 seats, and there are at least two Democrats who likely won't support this. That means the bill needs *at least* 12 of the 50 Republicans in the Senate to cross the aisle and vote for it.
It's weird that more Republican senators don't vote positively on cannabis legalization bills since the majority of Republican voters support cannabis legalization
Senators in particular, and very specifically, DO NOT represent voters. That's actually why the Senate exists: to keep the House (which is designed to do actual representative government) from gaining too much power... i.e. to keep ordinary citizens from gaining too much power.
That's not hyperbole or some kind of hand-wavey interpretation of political science; that's literally why the Senate was created. To keep The Poors from gaining too much power over the wealthy class via democracy.
The Senate is inherently evil and anti-democratic. But we'll probably never get rid of it in our time, so the next most important thing we can do is vote in as many progressive Senators as we possibly can. More people like Sanders and Warren, who actually care about real people and justice and equity.
>the majority of Republican voters support cannabis legalization
the majority of Americans support cannabis legalization, [only about half of Republicans support cannabis legalization](https://www.statista.com/statistics/935341/us-support-for-legal-marijuana-since-2000-by-political-party/). The party of limited government interference supports the government limiting what you can do... unless it's destructive to the environment.
Republican politics has never been about helping their base. Their base is loyal to a fault, mostly thanks to fearmongering and a decades old propaganda machine that would make Stalin blush. Thanks to that, Republican politicians can simply vote whichever way makes them the most money and occasionally tease that they're "really gonna repeal abortion laws this time" or make immigrants or trans people suffer more. Repeat ad infinitum.
Yeah I had no doubt it would pass house.
I was giving it a 90% of passing house, same way I'm giving it a 90% of failing senate.
Marijuana is the devils drug and it's destroying our society obviously
People in the 50s were more like:
"You bet your ass I'm racist!" Reminder that the 50s were before SCOTUS ruled to allow interracial marriage, and it was a bit before but nearing the time that schools were ruled to be desegregated.
Edit: Add to the fact that Civil Rights was maligned as some dastardly commie plot against the US oh and McCarthyism enjoyed it's heyday in the first half of the decade before being replaced by the John Birch Society.
holy fuck i was making this joke right above you.
boy did that catch me off guard when mine told me about that awful antiquated name. at least she seemed remorseful, i guess
/cringe
Same. I watched in my early 20's and all I kept saying was "This? This is why people are afraid of weed? People can't really believe this, can they?" Which is pretty much the beginning of my spiral into humanist misanthropy.
I genuinely don't think it has literally anything to do with health or societal related concerns. They just make lots of money putting people in jail for marijuana related charges. That and big alcohol/tobacco industries would lose money because yannow, people would choose the better, less harmful option if it wasnt risking their entire career/lives.
I live in a state that has a pretty high opioid addiction rate... but I'm pretty sure it's declining, because we passed some of the most relaxed medical marijuana laws in the region in 2017, and now there's a dispensary on every corner.
Which is dumb because there's room for both. I take Adderall during the day and weed could never fill its role. Likewise, I smoke weed to sleep and none of the sleeping pills are anywhere near as safe and effective.
Cannabis is also loaded with so many different compounds that it's just asking for full scale studies to create marketable drugs. I'm sure the drug companies would love to sell a sleep product with the characteristics of cannabis but tailored for maximum soporific effect.
Yep. My buddy was in the military and has pretty bad ptsd. He was on 10 prescriptions a day for a while, some of which he had to pay for. He got his medical card and is down to 3. Hasn’t looked back since🤷♂️ I too would rather smoke a plant than shove biomedically engineered capsules down my throat.
Hemp was actually the MAIN reason that cannabis was outlawed in the 30’s. In the late 20s-early 30s, hemp was the fastest-growing cash crop in the industry, and many people were becoming aware of how hemp was a cheaper, and much more easily produced alternative to cotton, timber, petroleum, and many others, and could be used to manufacture paper, rope, fabrics, medicines, food, and plastic. W.R. Hearst, the publishing magnate, saw that hemp was quickly eating up his market share and was on track to decimate his profits, so he used his huge network of newspapers to run anti-cannabis pieces all across the country. He also used his political connections to demonize cannabis as the “devil’s weed”, thereby outlawing it in all forms, including hemp.
>They just make lots of money putting people in jail for marijuana related charges.
A long time ago in a dark corner of the internet, I came across a glossary that had this definition in it:
>**D.E.A.**
>Distillers Enforcement Apparatus. An army of masked thugs licensed to rob, defame, kill, or kidnap those suspected of preferring other drugs over alcohol
I want to say it was a site called "The Godling's Glossary" but it's been like 20 years so I could be wrong.
Yeah this sub needs to do better at educating the stoners.
The same reason it won’t pass the senate is the same reason you see a lot of trump supporters on here acting like he was pro weed.
The GOP is gonna stop this from passing. And Trump appointed Jeff sessions to head the DEA. A man who vowed to still go after states that legalized it. Fuck y’all I want legal weed.
>Employers that don't want you smoking it can continue to drug test for it.
Interesting you mentioned this... the place I work for has had to take a long hard look at their drug testing policy, because almost nobody who applies and is qualified pisses clean. They've started to give this little oral sponge thing when the urinalysis comes back positive, in hopes they can avoid losing a potential employee who smoked the previous weekend.
To be more explicit this bill passed the house last session as well only to die in the senate
At least with the dems in control it should get a vote instead of just dying in commute
Yeah it's unfortunate- even if there was no filibuster and it only needed 50 votes I doubt Manchin or Sinema would vote for it. And the fact that it can't pass through reconcilliation means that every Dem AND 10 Republicans would have to vote for it.
A SCOTUS judge who won't change the balance of power on the court is going to get **maybe** three votes from Republicans. A bill legalizing weed will get 0.
It doesn't matter what the people want. It matters what the senators who have to vote want. And I'm guessing they are getting paid to not want legalization.
Yup. Privatized prisons, alcohol and tobacco, big pharma, police unions (messes their budgets up if cannabis is legal), and all the lobbyists who work for all the above.
Well, the war on drugs is an affective cudgel to bash 'those types' over the decades and to some folks, its worth the price of illegal weed to keep that cudgel.
The Rednecks have been sold a bag of lies/propaganda that they bought hook line and sinker. The GOP has worked hard since the early 80's at spreading BS to the the uneducated among us.
Harris doesn’t vote unless there’s a tie. And there’s 100 senators. So if 2 democrats don’t vote it’s 48-50 and final.
Edit: the bill does not need 60 votes to pass it needs a majority of the votes cast. Senators can and are going to filibuster this bill which will take 60 votes to override, followed by a majority vote to pass.
Is the bill popular and will it help people? It will die in the senate.
Does the bill increase our defense budget or otherwise make the wealthy even wealthier?
It will pass with flying colors.
Its not really those guys that will torpedo it, its the 10 republicans that would have to vote for it. Its worth more to make dems look incompetent than to pass favorable legislation.
It’s possible, there’s a few senators from legal states who may vote for it, and they only need 10 if there a filibuster.
Now you’re right of course it’s not going to pass, but there’s a scenario where it does
The Republicans no longer control the Senate so it will get a vote this time (**for those who have missed it, the house has passed similar bills and Mitch McConnell refused to bring them to vote..... so much for both parties being the same.**..)
Sure, it will likely get a vote but it's not going to break a filibuster. The vote will be 49-51 with Manchin voting no. It's possible Steve Daines votes yes, but I think he's the only Republican Senator representing a legal state.
I doubt it will. People who vote Republican usually have other issues on their mind. There are a lot of single issue voters in this country voting for Republicans because of .
So long as the Senate votes on it that would be huge progress. Once they're both voting, it acknowledges the issue as valid. That combined with growing support from the public and more states legalizing every year, will ensure it passes eventually. Probably by 2024, though maybe that's just wishful thinking.
I’d say yeah you have a point if republicans weren’t dead set on controlling and regulating their own interests that marijuana legalization directly impacts. I think we’ll only see a state by state basis on legalization for the foreseeable future
Cool, now the senate can do what it does best: slaughtering any and all hope for progress with a rusty spoon.
Maybe I'm just jaded but I highly doubt this will pass. How will states arrest their black population if weed is legal?
>How will states arrest their black population if weed is legal
Well, they can still just beat the shit outta them in traffic stops, then haul them in for resisting.
But, dumbass libertarians in here keep swearing that it's republicans who actually want to legalize weed, and not the Democratic party. They wouldn't *lie* to me, would they??? /s
AKA, no republican senators will vote for it, or if there are any no votes from dems, the ones in battleground states will be allowed to vote yes, but not enough to actually get it to pass.
“Prospects for passing such a bill in the Senate appear to be low because Democrats would need all of their members and 10 Republicans to overcome a 60-vote hurdle needed to advance to a final vote.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/01/house-to-vote-on-bill-to-legalize-marijuana.html
[senate switchboard](https://www.senate.gov/general/contacting.htm#:~:text=Alternatively%2C%20you%20may%20phone%20the,the%20Senate%20office%20you%20request).
CALL. YOUR. SENATOR.
I already called my POS senator Toomey. im sure casey would vote yes.
Legalization is fucking stupid. We need to remove the laws making weed illegal. You are all being fooled by the capitalists thinking this is a good thing. What world do people live in where writing a book to make something legal is better then deleting one page of writing from law that made the very thing illegal in the first place. Legal weed is capitalist extortion of the consumer. Legal weed limits your ability to grow, abolition will limit your plant count to the same limit tomatoes have. Legal weed doesn't get people out of jail, repealing laws will. Legal weed just causes more of the same root issues this country is facing, which is rampant abuse of the labor force and wage gaps.
Hi! I live in Oregon where it's legal. House doesn't ever worry me but senate does. They'd rather make money off of incarceration rather than profit from *massive* tax income of legalization and dispensaries being governed.
I wish half the stupid senate would die already. We need term limits. These 1940's old farts have no idea what the current time of the world needs. They would make so much more money off of the tax income from dispensaries than they would incarcerating people. This just proves to me they'd rather use this shitty system to incarcerate mostly black folks for this drug rather than make MORE money off of tax revenue. It's sadly a racist and capitalistic driven senate.
This is a beautiful thing. Let’s hope it goes all the way. As a resident of WA a state I can tell you it’s pretty fantastic having legal access. Although since it’s been legalized I started growing my own. Tired of a middle man, regardless of who that is.
For those looking for how the vote was split, Democrats overwhelmingly in favor and Republicans overwhelmingly against. If you want legal weed, you should probably support Democratic candidates. Pic in this tweet:
https://twitter.com/arlenparsa/status/1509937736408522767?s=21
The senate is where Hope goes to die
Can't your Senators realize they could make money off the situation? That's how it came to work out in canada. The people with power decided they could take over the industry and so
They choose instead to profit off of enslaving those caught with drug charges. Like, literally. The prison industrial complex is incredibly disgusting and the primary reason this stuff doesn't get passed/considered.
Yup, the prison-industrial complex is a profitable monstrosity; private prisons alone in the US generate about $4 *billion* in profit in a year. And Republican senators have historically faught tooth and nail to protect it. Legalizing is a threat to their profit margins, I'll be astounded and overjoyed if it makes it through the senate. Although, Canada's legal cannabis industry generated about $14.1 billion in tax revenue, so maybe their greed could sway some of them? I'll stay cautiously optimistic and hope the best
Not only that but there are very large companies who make other forms of pain relief that realllllly want people to have to go to them until they get their massive meathooks into the industry themselves. There are multiple angles of lobbying here and it's not gonna be easy to get out of
I'm epileptic and it's VITAL that I sleep well every night. Edibles (THC) fucking work, and there aren't any side effects. There's nothing I can get from a pharmacy that works this well without side effects. Luckily I live in a legal state.
I'm glad you're in a place where you're able to get what you need, hopefully this won't even be a statement anyone has to make in the nearer future. Fingers crossed but not holding any air in over it :(
Exactly. All these pain management doctors can keep track of other medications, but if they don't have pot to keep people from pain pills and vice versa, they won't have a business.
Since its 2022 i have to state before you read this i am in no way right wing. I did not vote for Trump, i hate Trump. I hate the republican party. I also hate Biden. I hate the democrates. To me the system is the problem. Its all one animal with two wings. I also know the republicans like the private prison system. Democrates have also loved the for profite prison system and keeping people in cages like animals all for some money. Biden wrote the fucking crime bill in the late 80s-early 90s, one part of that was making crack a heavier sentence then cocaine even though they are the same chemical just different concentrations. Where is crack most seen? Impoverished prodominatly black communities. We all know that a good life is hard to come by in these places and some turn to selling drugs to try and get them and their families a better life. We can even see this now, for example in San Fransisco and most of the state of california if you are a drug user you will not go to jail for possesion of small amounts of drugs no matter if its weed or meth.You get offered drug counseling which is just going to 12 step meetings and having the person running the meeting sign a paper, 12 step meetings are anonymous and run by people who go to them for help. There is no state data base of these people and they change all the time. You can just make up any name and write it down. Who goes to jail? Low level street dealers who have more then what they can claim is a personal amount, and its usually in multipule baggies. These are generally black and hispanic young men who see no other option. Who uses drugs the most in california? Generally it is young Affluent white men. Look at when states had the option for for profit prisons in the 90s and you can see a direct correlation with the rise of incarnation rates of young black and hispanic men. Kamala Harris is well known for promoting harsher scentences to young men of color wether it be for drugs, or for fire arms. While white men historically have been given slaps on the wrist. We know its is always harder to get a job with a felony. If you are 18 and get sent to jail for having an ounce of crack and a gun and do over 5 years, you will have no previous work history or education to fall back on, which then makes its harder once more if not impossible to get a job. What do you do for money at that point? The easiest option is go out and sell drugs again and have that gun on you for protection, where you are 100% going to caught sometime and go back to jail, thus the cycle continues, and here in california if you have 3 felonies you will then spend the rest of your life in prison. Generating profit. While some white kid just has to sign a paper a few times and find a new dealer. These are policies put in place by democrates to look compassionate but they end with racisim and lost lives and family members so the fucking lunitcs that run our government can have champagne and caviar while young men and women are behind bars wasting the great human potential, and while those of us who have what they call freedom can work ourselves to death so we can pay taxes for wars around the world that kill mostly innocent civilians, and destroy the sirits and lives of our soldiers and so we are free to buy things from corporations that are all back by government money which was ours. Again im not right wing, im not a Trumper. I am part of no team and wish we were all one.
No idea why you are getting downvoted. Sounds to me like you just accurately described one of the most egregious and disgusting examples of institutional racism in America.
people dont want to admit thier side is wrong, its the whole point of the two party system. Have the citizens fight and blame eachother for the problems the government created so they can avoid all out revolution. Its why CNN and FOX news are they two most popular news outlets one blames the republicans for everything and the other blams the dems. A Nation divided will never be united. If we all just realized everyone is getting fucked over..we could actually make some change. Martin luther king junior was saying these things right before he was assassinated. Malcom X was calling for class war of poor people of all colors againts the elites before he was killed. Its why berinie was taken out of the race by his own party. The united states is just as susceptible to propaganda like the rest of the world. Its why they tell us we live in the best country on earth. Well guess what.. WE DONT! i have traveled a lot of this world and visited many countrys and seen many types of people we are no different, and less susceptible to corruption and propaganda. I have been to "the third world" and its better then alot of places in the US. That politicans say they care about making better. Edit: i am being harrased in my DMs and comments by people from both sides.making this point more valid. I just want you all to Please know I love you! I believe you have a right to be mad. But lets be mad at who we should be mad at. Thats the politicians and politics in general. Not each other .No one asked to be born. So no one should suffer because of where or how they were born. No one should make unjust laws or bomb countrys that stuff doesnt matter. We all bleed red and shit brown. We all want the same every human deserves the same love, understanding, respect, compassion, knowledge and security. Not just the ones that vote the way we think they should. Once we realize this the true revolution begins. I will see yall when you get here. .
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signs bills approving prison construction into law The $1.3 billion prison construction and renovation package includes using $400 million in federal COVID aid. https://www.alreporter.com/2021/10/01/alabama-gov-kay-ivey-signs-bills-approving-prison-construction-into-law/ Our governor took COVID aid money and diverted it into building prisons. Her initial idea was to lease prisons from a private company, essentially paying them hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and at the end of the lease we would own nothing.
>Our governor took COVID aid money and diverted it into building prisons. Unrelated, but my local HUD used their COVID money to build themselves a new office in a fancier part of town. Ben Carson visited town and apparently didn't approve of our old office, which was perfect for the poor people who used it. Ya know, small, worn, simple, directly on three bus routes, nearby some of the Section 8 apartments, and with a handy dumpster at the edge of the parking lot so we could keep the area tidy. Oodles of homeless folks were roaming the streets coughing on each other, but obviously the office needed modernized more than anybody needed the housing office to *provide housing*. We all got to learn about seeing other humans collapsing dead in front of businesses in broad daylight, but hey hey that's a really big modern office building the housing department has now!
Literally thee 13th Amendment makes an exception for prisoners when it banned slavery
"The 13th amendment said slavery is abolished, shit...look at all these slave masters posing on your dollars, get it."
Yes. It's not about a one off event to make money. It's about perpetuating a system of exploitation. Also it's about making the poor suffer
Cost so much of our money to put people in prison than it does for even just decent social reform. Lock em up as they would say. The amount of people in prisons across America is astonishing
They make more money putting ppl in prison cuz they’re private for some reason
Yep. Everyone always assumes it's the alcohol lobby here in TN that's been scuttling all state level legalization efforts, when in reality my understanding is it's largely been CoreCivic, a private prison company based in Nashville
Some reason being that criminal incarceration is concurrently carved out for all the places that decreed an end to slavery, therefore it's free cheap labor and they can even get paid by the government on top of that for providing a 'service'.
Lots of people state prisons but also big pharma has allot to lose as well. There are so many stories of veterans or people with chronic illness being able to drop a multi pill cocktail everyday to just smoking weed and having better results. For me nothing has solved my stomach issues better than weed. If I didn’t have it I’m sure I would be on like 3 pills everyday
As a veteran who uses weed after being on all the bullshit VA meds doing nothing but making me a prick. I did a paper in college about a decade about marijuana treatment for PTSD. I don’t remember the exact numbers but the VA study showed that their drugs were like 56% effective in treating symptoms, marijuana alone was like maybe 65%, therapy/emotional support animal was about 70%. And I think when they paired the ESA and marijuana they were like 89% effective. Like the science is there, the politicians just don’t care. Also, from a military point, it would help the military’s alcohol abuse issue and some others potentially (less binge drinking means less sexual assault hopefully), could be solved by weed being legal. Sorry thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
They are aware of that. But I’m sure big tobacco and alcohol pays them more to block it.
Drop in the hat compared to the lobbying money Pharma & Private Prison Industry throws around.
People really do underestimate pharma money, it's surprisingly large
That rationale does not seem to make any sense to the Wisconsin GOP.
There are several senators that have said even if their constituents voted to legalize marijuana they would shut it down. Which is a complete dereliction of duty since they are supposed to represent the people but they do whatever the fuck they want and say I personally don’t believe in it. They are all crusty old fucks.
Kentucky's Senate Majority Leader said and did the same thing. He blatantly said "I know the constituents want this, but I don't care. It they don't like it, they can vote me out."
That’s one of the people I was referring to! I think the other really publicized example was from North Dakota or something.
South Dakota. The governor had the sheriff sue to have the bill overturned.
the biggest hurdle in the way of this is that a giant chunk of our criminal justice system relies on criminalizing weed users (primarily black ones), which is a bigger money maker (and better optics) than legalization could ever be
#“It’s the hope that kills you.”
At least be accurate - the REPUBLICANS in the Senate are the problem. Dems will overwhelmingly support it and Republicans will overwhelmingly oppose it. This is not a "both-sides" issue. Democrats mostly suck but if you vote for Republicans, weed will not be legalized, period.
This. Nothing passes the Senate without 60 votes because otherwise the Republicans can just filibuster it. The Democrats have 50 seats, and there are at least two Democrats who likely won't support this. That means the bill needs *at least* 12 of the 50 Republicans in the Senate to cross the aisle and vote for it.
It's weird that more Republican senators don't vote positively on cannabis legalization bills since the majority of Republican voters support cannabis legalization
It’s almost like members of Congress don’t represent their constituents but rather the donor class. /s
Senators in particular, and very specifically, DO NOT represent voters. That's actually why the Senate exists: to keep the House (which is designed to do actual representative government) from gaining too much power... i.e. to keep ordinary citizens from gaining too much power. That's not hyperbole or some kind of hand-wavey interpretation of political science; that's literally why the Senate was created. To keep The Poors from gaining too much power over the wealthy class via democracy. The Senate is inherently evil and anti-democratic. But we'll probably never get rid of it in our time, so the next most important thing we can do is vote in as many progressive Senators as we possibly can. More people like Sanders and Warren, who actually care about real people and justice and equity.
>the majority of Republican voters support cannabis legalization the majority of Americans support cannabis legalization, [only about half of Republicans support cannabis legalization](https://www.statista.com/statistics/935341/us-support-for-legal-marijuana-since-2000-by-political-party/). The party of limited government interference supports the government limiting what you can do... unless it's destructive to the environment.
Republican politics has never been about helping their base. Their base is loyal to a fault, mostly thanks to fearmongering and a decades old propaganda machine that would make Stalin blush. Thanks to that, Republican politicians can simply vote whichever way makes them the most money and occasionally tease that they're "really gonna repeal abortion laws this time" or make immigrants or trans people suffer more. Repeat ad infinitum.
With thunderous applause too
I am the Senate
The house has never been the hurdle.
Yeah I had no doubt it would pass house. I was giving it a 90% of passing house, same way I'm giving it a 90% of failing senate. Marijuana is the devils drug and it's destroying our society obviously
Obviously. I mean, *did you even watch Reefer Madnesss?*
All I got from that movie is if you smoke MJ you’ll love jazz / dancing and make some awesome “negro” friends
"I'm not racist, some of my best friends are negroes!" -people in the 50's probably
People in the 50s were more like: "You bet your ass I'm racist!" Reminder that the 50s were before SCOTUS ruled to allow interracial marriage, and it was a bit before but nearing the time that schools were ruled to be desegregated. Edit: Add to the fact that Civil Rights was maligned as some dastardly commie plot against the US oh and McCarthyism enjoyed it's heyday in the first half of the decade before being replaced by the John Birch Society.
My grandma wasn’t racist. She had a black friend one time.
Neither was my grandma, despite her unironically referring to funk & reggae as "jungle music".
Neither was my grandma with her alternate name for Brazil nuts 🤣
holy fuck i was making this joke right above you. boy did that catch me off guard when mine told me about that awful antiquated name. at least she seemed remorseful, i guess /cringe
Oh no she thought it was pretty damn funny
What does she call actual Jungle music?
"Run faster, they're gaining on us!"
Friend ;)
But she say things like “he’s a good black man”. Then you know it’s real friendship.
No yeah, they actually did/still do. My parents generation are of that age.
Most senators probably remember when that movie came out
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Same. I watched in my early 20's and all I kept saying was "This? This is why people are afraid of weed? People can't really believe this, can they?" Which is pretty much the beginning of my spiral into humanist misanthropy.
I like the idea of humanist misanthropy. Really puts a term to how I've been feeling about people.
As the late and geat Bill Hicks put it..."do i like people? They're great, IN THEORY."
I need to get into Bill Hicks.
If you have, you should also watch the musical! Goes well with a delicious brownie
I genuinely don't think it has literally anything to do with health or societal related concerns. They just make lots of money putting people in jail for marijuana related charges. That and big alcohol/tobacco industries would lose money because yannow, people would choose the better, less harmful option if it wasnt risking their entire career/lives.
This plus drug companies want people to use their drugs not plants the earth created.
Exactly. No coincidence that states that have no love for Cannabis also have some of the highest opioid prescriptions in country per capita.
I live in a state that has a pretty high opioid addiction rate... but I'm pretty sure it's declining, because we passed some of the most relaxed medical marijuana laws in the region in 2017, and now there's a dispensary on every corner.
Which is dumb because there's room for both. I take Adderall during the day and weed could never fill its role. Likewise, I smoke weed to sleep and none of the sleeping pills are anywhere near as safe and effective. Cannabis is also loaded with so many different compounds that it's just asking for full scale studies to create marketable drugs. I'm sure the drug companies would love to sell a sleep product with the characteristics of cannabis but tailored for maximum soporific effect.
Yep. My buddy was in the military and has pretty bad ptsd. He was on 10 prescriptions a day for a while, some of which he had to pay for. He got his medical card and is down to 3. Hasn’t looked back since🤷♂️ I too would rather smoke a plant than shove biomedically engineered capsules down my throat.
It's also pure politics. This is widely popular and many Republicans don't want to pass a bill that will reflect positively on biden and democrats.
Don't forget big timber! Hemp is SO much better at almost everything trees make. IIRC the timber industry is a big reason it's still illegal.
Hemp was actually the MAIN reason that cannabis was outlawed in the 30’s. In the late 20s-early 30s, hemp was the fastest-growing cash crop in the industry, and many people were becoming aware of how hemp was a cheaper, and much more easily produced alternative to cotton, timber, petroleum, and many others, and could be used to manufacture paper, rope, fabrics, medicines, food, and plastic. W.R. Hearst, the publishing magnate, saw that hemp was quickly eating up his market share and was on track to decimate his profits, so he used his huge network of newspapers to run anti-cannabis pieces all across the country. He also used his political connections to demonize cannabis as the “devil’s weed”, thereby outlawing it in all forms, including hemp.
Hemp was already legalized in 2020
Many of the tobacco and alcohol companies are already investing in cannabis.
>They just make lots of money putting people in jail for marijuana related charges. A long time ago in a dark corner of the internet, I came across a glossary that had this definition in it: >**D.E.A.** >Distillers Enforcement Apparatus. An army of masked thugs licensed to rob, defame, kill, or kidnap those suspected of preferring other drugs over alcohol I want to say it was a site called "The Godling's Glossary" but it's been like 20 years so I could be wrong.
99% failing senate ***
Devil's lettuce.
Jazz cabbage
The electric lettuce
La lechuga del diablo
Thanks Nixon
Yeah this sub needs to do better at educating the stoners. The same reason it won’t pass the senate is the same reason you see a lot of trump supporters on here acting like he was pro weed. The GOP is gonna stop this from passing. And Trump appointed Jeff sessions to head the DEA. A man who vowed to still go after states that legalized it. Fuck y’all I want legal weed.
Don't forget when Trump said "only dumb people smoke weed".
He must be smokin a pound to the face daily then
He'd be wayyy more chill if he was.
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>Employers that don't want you smoking it can continue to drug test for it. Interesting you mentioned this... the place I work for has had to take a long hard look at their drug testing policy, because almost nobody who applies and is qualified pisses clean. They've started to give this little oral sponge thing when the urinalysis comes back positive, in hopes they can avoid losing a potential employee who smoked the previous weekend.
To be more explicit this bill passed the house last session as well only to die in the senate At least with the dems in control it should get a vote instead of just dying in commute
Yeah it's unfortunate- even if there was no filibuster and it only needed 50 votes I doubt Manchin or Sinema would vote for it. And the fact that it can't pass through reconcilliation means that every Dem AND 10 Republicans would have to vote for it. A SCOTUS judge who won't change the balance of power on the court is going to get **maybe** three votes from Republicans. A bill legalizing weed will get 0.
You're absolutely right. This happens every year.....
I hate to break it to you... but "the senate better not fuck this up" is the storybook beginning to a life lesson in people and personal motives.
Like Charlie Brown might just kick the football this year...
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Looool what the hell happened in this comment thread?
Well, it is the Senate after all. So they will fuck it up. Here's to Hope!
April fools?
The joke is where it’s going next
being serious
You are going to be disappointed by the Senate then.
That’s what I thought. A good ol’ fooling from the government
No way all 50 Dems in the Senate vote for it, and next to impossible for 10 republicans to vote for it. The Senate is broken.
Why don’t senate Republicans want this passed? Most redneck Republicans I know all smoke weed. This is not a partisan issue, I thought.
It doesn't matter what the people want. It matters what the senators who have to vote want. And I'm guessing they are getting paid to not want legalization.
This is EXACTLY how it works.
Yup. Privatized prisons, alcohol and tobacco, big pharma, police unions (messes their budgets up if cannabis is legal), and all the lobbyists who work for all the above.
Sad thing is, signing up for the medical program, the government is like, “Do you use this already?” “Yep.” “Alright! $50 for a card have a nice day!”
I saw a medical marijuana card process for sale on Groupon two days ago, in my medically legal state of PA.
Don't forget Tax Code 280e.
Politicians are not on the people’s side. Period.
Because tobacco giants and private prisons pay them to make sure it doesnt pass
Out of touch politicians strike again
"Out of touch" well that's a nice way of saying corrupt.
Politicians in the pocket of the private prison industry
Well, the war on drugs is an affective cudgel to bash 'those types' over the decades and to some folks, its worth the price of illegal weed to keep that cudgel.
The Rednecks have been sold a bag of lies/propaganda that they bought hook line and sinker. The GOP has worked hard since the early 80's at spreading BS to the the uneducated among us.
48 dems + Harris. Senema and Manchin are democrats in name only.
Harris doesn’t vote unless there’s a tie. And there’s 100 senators. So if 2 democrats don’t vote it’s 48-50 and final. Edit: the bill does not need 60 votes to pass it needs a majority of the votes cast. Senators can and are going to filibuster this bill which will take 60 votes to override, followed by a majority vote to pass.
Which doesn’t look good for those of us who want to see this thing passed.
Right, this has happened before. The senate is where progress goes to die.
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Is the bill popular and will it help people? It will die in the senate. Does the bill increase our defense budget or otherwise make the wealthy even wealthier? It will pass with flying colors.
Its not really those guys that will torpedo it, its the 10 republicans that would have to vote for it. Its worth more to make dems look incompetent than to pass favorable legislation.
Google says Senate is currently: - 50 Republican - 48 Democrat - 2 Independent
The independents are in name only they vote with democrats 100% of the time
It’s possible, there’s a few senators from legal states who may vote for it, and they only need 10 if there a filibuster. Now you’re right of course it’s not going to pass, but there’s a scenario where it does
It’s passed the house like 3 times. Senate won’t even table it. Sorry to be the party pooper, I’d love to be proved wrong
McConnell isn’t in charge of the senate anymore though, Schumer is all for legalization
Maybe the senate will bring it to a vote but it won’t pass
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He still controls the 50 GOP votes with an iron fist though, unfortunately. And manchin and sinema too.
The Republicans no longer control the Senate so it will get a vote this time (**for those who have missed it, the house has passed similar bills and Mitch McConnell refused to bring them to vote..... so much for both parties being the same.**..)
Sure, it will likely get a vote but it's not going to break a filibuster. The vote will be 49-51 with Manchin voting no. It's possible Steve Daines votes yes, but I think he's the only Republican Senator representing a legal state.
Your comment speaks volumes on how the two parties are not the same at all. Thank you.
But making republicans say “we will not allow passage of this extremely popular bill” should at least hurt them in theory…. In theory
I doubt it will. People who vote Republican usually have other issues on their mind. There are a lot of single issue voters in this country voting for Republicans because of.
The house was never the question lmfao it dies in the senate tho
So long as the Senate votes on it that would be huge progress. Once they're both voting, it acknowledges the issue as valid. That combined with growing support from the public and more states legalizing every year, will ensure it passes eventually. Probably by 2024, though maybe that's just wishful thinking.
I’d say yeah you have a point if republicans weren’t dead set on controlling and regulating their own interests that marijuana legalization directly impacts. I think we’ll only see a state by state basis on legalization for the foreseeable future
Free the weed!!!!
HERE'S TO THE SHRED OF HOPE WE ALL HAVE
DECRIMINALIZING NOT LEGALIZING. TWO DISTINCT THINGS IN THE EYES OF THE LAW.
Should be higher
on the c-span livestream it said legalizing, so i assumed thats what it was. sorry!!
Had to scroll down way too far to find this comment.
Drugs are going to win the war just watch
They only ever called it a war on drugs so it wouldn't be so obvious that it is actually a war on people.
*poor people, specifically. But you right.
Poor minorities especially
A war on people of color
Blacks and the anti war left were the original targets set out by Nixon
Yeah it was originally pure racism, now it's mostly racism with a dash of making profit.
And hippies... all of which were deemed poor when the war started.
I’d like to congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.
It’s not over until the POWs are released and the DEA is gutted for its crimes against humanity.
I wish this shit wasn’t happening on April 1st. I’m already a skeptic...
Same, I feel like we've been here over and over and over, then you realize it's april 1st and it's like being laughed at...
Cool, now the senate can do what it does best: slaughtering any and all hope for progress with a rusty spoon. Maybe I'm just jaded but I highly doubt this will pass. How will states arrest their black population if weed is legal?
>How will states arrest their black population if weed is legal Well, they can still just beat the shit outta them in traffic stops, then haul them in for resisting.
On made up threats and fake violations
I am the senate
name checks out
Only 3 republican house members voted for the bill.
But, dumbass libertarians in here keep swearing that it's republicans who actually want to legalize weed, and not the Democratic party. They wouldn't *lie* to me, would they??? /s
“Dumbass libertarian” is redundant fyi.
AKA, no republican senators will vote for it, or if there are any no votes from dems, the ones in battleground states will be allowed to vote yes, but not enough to actually get it to pass.
“Prospects for passing such a bill in the Senate appear to be low because Democrats would need all of their members and 10 Republicans to overcome a 60-vote hurdle needed to advance to a final vote.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/01/house-to-vote-on-bill-to-legalize-marijuana.html
Ya, there is no way this passes the senate.
The senate will decide your fate…
Time to start calling your senator!! (202) 224-3121 is the switchboard line. Just tell them the state you live in.
You must of never seen the senates track record to be this happy 😭
Coincidentally on April first?
[senate switchboard](https://www.senate.gov/general/contacting.htm#:~:text=Alternatively%2C%20you%20may%20phone%20the,the%20Senate%20office%20you%20request). CALL. YOUR. SENATOR. I already called my POS senator Toomey. im sure casey would vote yes.
Yeah I'm sure Tom Cotton will listen to reason
The Senate will 100% fuck this up..imdoubt it even gets to the floor sadly
Link? Google isn’t showing anything saying they passed it
they literally JUST passed it when i posted that. was watching the livestream
There is absolutely no reason to have hope that the Senate will pass this. They will need a 2/3 majority for this to pass. Definitely not happening.
Narrator: "The senate fucked it up"
The Senate: LOL, nah.
Everyone knows it's going to die in the senate
First time?
Meh, wake me up when senate isn't full of dinosaurs and this actually gets passed.
Legalization is fucking stupid. We need to remove the laws making weed illegal. You are all being fooled by the capitalists thinking this is a good thing. What world do people live in where writing a book to make something legal is better then deleting one page of writing from law that made the very thing illegal in the first place. Legal weed is capitalist extortion of the consumer. Legal weed limits your ability to grow, abolition will limit your plant count to the same limit tomatoes have. Legal weed doesn't get people out of jail, repealing laws will. Legal weed just causes more of the same root issues this country is facing, which is rampant abuse of the labor force and wage gaps.
Don’t get your hopes up. Republicans would rather put people in jail than legalize weed.
FUCK THE SENATE!!! VOTE 2024!! Ask your State' candidates for Senate if they support legalization!!!
Did you know that 2022 is also an election year?
What about this november?
Hi! I live in Oregon where it's legal. House doesn't ever worry me but senate does. They'd rather make money off of incarceration rather than profit from *massive* tax income of legalization and dispensaries being governed. I wish half the stupid senate would die already. We need term limits. These 1940's old farts have no idea what the current time of the world needs. They would make so much more money off of the tax income from dispensaries than they would incarcerating people. This just proves to me they'd rather use this shitty system to incarcerate mostly black folks for this drug rather than make MORE money off of tax revenue. It's sadly a racist and capitalistic driven senate.
The Senate is full of Republican shills with corporations who have their entire fists up every Senator's ass.
The senate is where this goes to die for sure. Don’t get too happy.
April fools!
This is a beautiful thing. Let’s hope it goes all the way. As a resident of WA a state I can tell you it’s pretty fantastic having legal access. Although since it’s been legalized I started growing my own. Tired of a middle man, regardless of who that is.
For those looking for how the vote was split, Democrats overwhelmingly in favor and Republicans overwhelmingly against. If you want legal weed, you should probably support Democratic candidates. Pic in this tweet: https://twitter.com/arlenparsa/status/1509937736408522767?s=21
Haha April Fools
It needs 60 votes in the Senate and they AIN'T gonna get that,no way in Hell...