In the Silicon Valley town of Los Gatos, California, many residents work in the headquarters of high-tech companies such as Google, Apple, and Facebook. The town boasts a median family income of $150,000 and is known for its upscale housing developments, which even now sell for $1 million a piece on average. The town is also a hotspot for marijuana-related violence. In 2005, police officers entered a violent gunfight on a marijuana farm atop Los...
photo from Wikimedia Commons Jose Mujica, Uruguay’s notoriously rebellious president, has recently proposed what some may call a radical bill, legalizing and monitoring marijuana sales, with the government becoming the sole legal seller. For President Mujica, this bill, far from being outrageous or amoral, is simply an “anti-crime” measure: Monitoring marijuana production and sale would greatly reduce the criminality surrounding the illegal pro...
...ment costs are we willing to put up with to try this out? Shall we double our prison population by filling them with gun-owners who want to own 30 round magazines? They can commiserate with all of the individuals arrested for marijuana possession. Meanwhile taxes increase to fund more police to find all of the magazines, and rights against unreasonable search and seizure are infringed upon. It will not stop the majority of crime, but if we try re...
...Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly justify stop-and-frisk as a way to recover guns and reduce crime, but police find guns in fewer than 2 percent of stops. Most arrests during stop-and-frisk are for possession of marijuana. Over 1.5 million people are arrested annually not for violent crimes, but for non-violent drug charges – 750,000 are for nothing more than possession of marijuana. Black people are arrested for drugs at 13 times t...
...deep contempt for aspects of the criminal justice system, Booker cracked jokes – which were very well received – throughout his speech. Most poignant, Booker hypothesized that many of those drug dealers in jail probably sold marijuana to some of the students in the audience at one point or another. Closing out, the Mayor cautioned against becoming cynical: “Don’t play small”. Humbling himself, Booker retold one final anecdote about a woman he en...
...cause any casualties, images of the action circulated worldwide and represented a major setback for Columbia’s military. The government immediately reacted by alleging that the Nasa are allies of the FARC, who purchase their marijuana. However, at the same time, the Nasa announced that they had captured four FARC members (carrying rifles and explosives) and put them to trial. Their court convicted the members for “disrupting the harmony of the...
...nerally more liberal than the average American is certainly true—in the last mayoral election, the top seven candidates belonged to the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Green Party, the Marijuana Party, and the Socialist Party. San Franciscans are also culturally more willing to “spread the wealth.” According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, in 2006 the average charitable donation in San Fr...
...be downgraded to a misdemeanor for those who are underage. A system such as this one, said longtime Camden political activist Frank Fulbrook, would “put the drug dealers out of business because the cost of growing cocaine and marijuana is very little.” Of course not everyone agrees with the suggestion that legalizing crack will bring the city resolution. Former City Attorney Morris Smith argued that his “community has more important things to do....
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