{"id":50,"date":"2002-02-04T09:58:54","date_gmt":"2002-02-04T14:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/marijuana_or_econ_101"},"modified":"2002-02-04T09:58:54","modified_gmt":"2002-02-04T14:58:54","slug":"marijuana_or_econ_101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2002\/02\/marijuana_or_econ_101.html","title":{"rendered":"Marijuana (or: Econ 101)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nWell, it looks like
\nKen Lay
\nhas chickened out of his Senate hearing<\/a> appointment, and now they’re going to
\nhave to subpoena him. The article ends with a nice quote from the
\nChairman of the SEC, Harvey Pitt:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nPitt lamented the impact of Enron’s dissipation on regular people who trusted the company.
\n“It is these Americans whose faith fuels our markets, who have no lobby and no trade
\nassociations, whose interests are, and must be, paramount,” he said. “I am appalled at
\nwhat happened to them as a result of Enron’s collapse.”\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nChairman Pitt’s concern for the average American investor would be truly
\nheartwarming… if only he hadn’t played such a large part in
\ncreating the legal
\nenvironment that let Enron rip off those investors in the first place<\/a>.
\nOops!\n<\/p>\n

\nWell, the Superbowl is over, and the Patriots, 14-point underdogs, beat the
\nSt. Louis Rams 20-17 in an exciting last-minute field goal. But even more exciting,
\napparently, were the Partnership for a
\nDrug-Free America<\/a>‘s Superbowl TV commercials, which pointed out that the drug trade
\nsupports criminals and terrorists.
\nWell, the PDFA was sloppy; they conflated the tens of millions of dollars of
\nTaliban
\nheroin funding<\/a> with the six hundred million dollars of
\ncocaine
\nmoney that went to the FARC<\/a> with the rest of the illegal drug industry.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis of course
\nprompted<\/a>
\nnumerous<\/a>
\nself-righteous<\/a>
\nscreeds<\/a>
\nfrom the other side that managed to muddy the issue further, claiming that
\nthe government is trying to tie marijuana to Al-Qaeda. I admit, the screedists did a good job.
\nThe straw-man argument that “smoking a joint supports terrorism!” can now be considered
\nOfficially Knocked Down.\n<\/p>\n

\nOn the other hand… according to NORML<\/a>,
\nAmericans consume at least 1200
\nto 1800 metric tons<\/a> of 6% THC cannabis per year. Here’s the bad news: those
\nhundreds of metric tons were not<\/em> grown by your
\ngoofy slacker college roommate in his dorm room closet. No, I’m afraid the bulk of the revenue
\nwent to some very anti-social men in Northern California or Mexico. Men with guns and bear traps
\nand dogs trained to kill. And what products and services did these men purchase
\nwith their profits? As much as I wish otherwise, methinks they did not<\/em>
\ninvest in Enron.\n<\/p>\n

\nWe Americans have spent the last few months bitching and moaning about “the root causes”
\nof terrorism. Where do these grievances come from? “Why do they hate us?<\/em>”
\nWell, we can debate whether the Arab world is justified in hating us from now ’till
\nDoomsday. In the meantime, I’ll tell you who does<\/em> have real grievances
\nagainst the USA. The Colombians, that’s who.\n<\/p>\n

\nOf course, if we legalized all drugs, this problem would go away.
\nAnd I’ve got no objections to that. That’s the best way to cut the legs out
\nfrom under the organized criminals who profit from the business.
\nHowever, just because you support drug legalization, don’t
\nfor a second think that means you’re pure as the driven snow when you consume
\nthem. Your choices have consquences;
\nunfortunately, you don’t usually end up paying them<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, we can debate whether the Arab world is justified in hating us from now ’till Doomsday. In the meantime, I’ll tell you who does have real grievances against the USA. The Colombians, that’s who.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}