[Peace-discuss] let's put marijuana referenda on the November ballots

[Robert Naiman]

On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 6:34 PM, "E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森" <ewj at pigsqq.org>wrote:

>  Do you think that alcohol and tobacco should be regulated?
>

Yes.


>
> If so, Why?
>
> If you answer yes, it implies that you believe that people
> are individually unable to make right decisions for themeselves,
> and the people need a nanny state to take care of them.
>

1.:While I agree that the bar for "protecting people from themselves"
should be very high, I don't think it should be infinitely high. If you saw
someone preparing to jump off a bridge, wouldn't you try to talk them down?
The odds that a person standing on a bridge has an airtight case for ending
their life are extremely low, probably less than 1%. Why not try to assist
such a person in subjecting such a momentous decision to additional
scrutiny? What's the downside?

2. All these things have "negative externalities," and society has a right
and an obligation to protect people who had no say from people making
choices that negatively impact them. Drunk driving kills people who had no
say. Here's the CDC page on "Secondhand Smoke":
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/secondhand_smoke/general_facts/index.htm

3. As a practical matter, regardless of what I think, the pure libertarian
view on these issues has little social pull and little prospect of
attaining more. I could hold my breath until I turn blue, when I wake up
tomorrow, the legal drinking age in Illinois is going to be 21 and likely
to remain so in the future that we can see.

But laws, policies, and attitudes concerning marijuana control are clearly
approaching an inflection point in the United States. It could well be the
case that the next five years will see as dramatic a change in laws,
policies, and attitudes concerning marijuana control as we've seen in the
last five years on gay rights. When you're approaching a possible
inflection point like that, a humane activist wants to speed up the change,
because a lot of unnecessary human suffering could be prevented.


> It seems reasonable to run experimental societies but
> it is tyrannical and immoral to impose experimental ideas on unwilling
> masses of the society.
>
> I suppose that if you answer yes, you might also believe that
> the "sin tax" on alcohol and tobacco benefits the government
> who needs the money for its programs of social good such
> as militarism and the police state, but actually such taxes are
> regressive and you ought to think that is not good.
>

It's true that such taxes are regressive, as all taxes on consumption are
regressive, in the sense that poorer people spend a greater share of their
income on consumption and therefore will be taxed more highly by a
consumption tax as a percentage of their income. But: 1) while I think it
is quite reasonable to demand that the system of taxation be sharply
progressive overall, that does not require that every single tax be
progressive; and 2) given that most local governments are unable to levy
progressive taxes, a demand that there be no taxes which are not
progressive, in the absence of a deep systemic reform in the national
system of taxation, would mean a demand for no local taxation at all, which
would mean the collapse of all local government and services. Which, again,
even if one thought that would be a good thing - which I most certainly do
not - is not on the cards in any event.

It's certainly true that governments use a lot of the money raised from
taxation for evil things. But I don't think it's likely that a general
attack on taxation will lead to less evil. In the absence of effective
activism which distinguishes good things from bad things, governments don't
seem to have any trouble spending tax money for evil things while claiming
they don't have money for good things. I don't think an anti-tax magic wand
is going to help matters. We're going to have to slog it out on the details
of where the money is being spent.


On 1/22/2014 7:44 AM, Robert Naiman wrote:
>
>
>  let's put referenda on the November ballots saying that marijuana should
> be regulated like tobacco and alcohol.
>
>  http://news.yahoo.com/obama-speaks-marijuana-why-now-174217311.html
>
>  --
> Robert Naiman
> Policy Director
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> (202) 448-2898, extension 1.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing listPeace-discuss at lists.chambana.nethttps://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
>
>


-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898, extension 1.
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