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Legalization of Marijuana
Howie Hawkins supports Legalization of Marijuana |
Howie Hawkins and Green Party supports an end to the war on drugs. The War of Drugs has been a failure. It hasn't reduced substance abuse, but rather has created a culture of violence fueled by profits from the drug trade, similar to the crime wave that accompanied the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920’s. New York has led the way in making the United States the world leader in the number of inmates, with more than 1.8 million people in jail. Under Pataki, New York now spends more state dollars on prisons than it does on the State University. It is time to focus on rebuilding our communities and rehabilitating individuals.
Howie Hawkins supports the removal of all penalties for the private possession and responsible use of marijuana by adults, including cultivation for personal use, and casual nonprofit transfers of small amounts. This is the position that was in advocated in 1972 by President Richard Nixon's National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. The Greens supports a legally controlled market for marijuana, where consumers could buy marijuana for personal use from a safe, licensed source.
Enforcing existing marijuana laws costs taxpayers $10 billion annually, with 734,000 individuals arrested nationwide per year -- far more than the total number of arrestees for all violent crimes combined, including murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Marijuana arrests have more than doubled since 1991, while adult use of the drug has remained stable. Marijuana violations constitute the fifth most common criminal offense in the U.S. Almost 90 percent of these arrests are for marijuana possession only. 60,000 individuals are behind bars for marijuana offenses at a cost to taxpayers of $1.2 billion per year.
Former President Jimmy Carter told Congress in 1977, that: "Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against the possession of marijuana in private for personal use."
Marijuana is the third most popular recreational drug in America (behind only alcohol and tobacco), having been used by nearly 80 million Americans. It is significantly less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning, and more than 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking. By comparison, marijuana is nonaddicting, nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose. The 1999 federally commissioned report by the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine found that "Except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range tolerated for other medications." The European medical journal, The Lancet, stated that "The smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health. ... It would be reasonable to judge cannabis as less of a threat ... than alcohol or tobacco.”
Government studies conclude that marijuana decriminalization has not increased marijuana use. In addition, stricter enforcement of laws against marijuana use has no impact on the use of marijuana. As with alcohol, driving or operating heavy equipment while impaired from marijuana should be prohibited. |
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 *Website by David Doonan, Labor Donated to Hawkins for Senate Campaign* |
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