OT: Cannabis sales opening up in NJ
- Thread starter newell138
- Start date
It exists solely because local government allows it to exist and in many ways supports it
Should I post the videos of those camps in Texas and Florida or is it just easier to concede you have no proof?
Weed was legalized in CA after the 2016 referendum. Skid Row existed long before that.
Here is how you provide proof: numbers. In year before legalization the rate was X, post it was Y.
That would be an easy thing to do if you had proof. But you do not.
And PS, in the proof I provided, NJ has a lower rate of homelessness than unfree states like Texas and Florida. One of the states with the most homelessness is Hawaii which has no gambling or weed.
Could it be that- get this- homeless people congregate in places with a high combined COL and non-lethal weather to sleep outside?
I have lived in NJ the bulk of my life, it's always been expensive, and especially in my city- but there's no tents here despite weed being prolific.
^^^^ Way too many facts in that post.
I wonder sometimes what world people live in...I would love to know where these NJ homeless encampments are.
There's only one I'm aware of- in Lakewood- one of 3 of 565 towns in NJ to vote no on legalization. And the other 2 towns have barely any people.
I have yet to hear a good argument for regulating marijuana any differently than alcohol. I would tell a kid to use either in moderation, and never to drive while under the influence of either.
Proof that homelessness is worse than it was 20 years ago? Open your window and look around.
That's interesting because the DEA in Los Angeles, during the Bush presidency, was ordered not to start any investigations into medical marijuana clinics (to just leave them alone). And the US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles had prosecution thresholds (in the early 2000s) of 100 lbs of marijuana (or 100 plants); so if DEA Agent X or FBI Agent Y arrested a drug dealer with 99 lbs of marijuana, the AUSA would order his release and refuse to bring charges. In the mid-2000s, this threshold jumped to 200 lbs and/or 200 plants. The only way the federal government would close down a medical marijuana clinic in Los Angeles in the 2000s was if a violent crime could be directly tied to that specific clinic.
At the same time, the Los Angeles County Prosecutor's Office was willing to prosecute any provable drug dealer that could be caught (regardless of the amount of marijuana they were caught with), but the LAPD was told to leave all marijuana crime alone. So if there were no arrests, there were no prosecutions. The Sheriff's Department generally followed whatever the DEA policy was at the time. And non-drug dealer marijuana users (and the medical marijuana clinics) were ignored completely by the county prosecutor, the LAPD or the LA sheriffs.
And Skid Row exploded right after this Bush-era policy went into effect. And it wasn't 2016. That's a fact.
Other factors that didn't help included the psych holds (5150) being released in front of City Hall every Friday at 5 PM (so they wouldn't have to take care of the patients on the weekends), the massive influx of illegal immigration, the import of homeless from other areas of the country (who were being told they could do almost anything in LA and not be arrested), and of course the weather.
Now explain the homeless explosion in "non-lethal weather" resort towns of San Francisco, Seattle and Portland.
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The best sellable-to-the-public argument is because it is much harder for a police officer to prove a driver is driving under the influence of marijuana than it is to prove a driver is driving under the influence of alcohol. The second best argument is because it is a gateway drug to harder controlled substances.
I don't subscribe to either of these arguments, but they are the best ones you can pitch to the general public.
The actual best argument is because every drug dealer in the United States selling fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, meth, or MDMA are also selling marijuana. And it's a lot easier to catch them with the marijuana than it is to catch them with the other drugs. So a prosecution for a small amount of marijuana can get a guy selling MDMA to kids in your local high school off the streets.
So now the argument is MEDICAL marijuana is causing homelessness?!
LMAO
Bro the Soviet Union collapsed and then homeless increased! Wow! Must have been Gorbachev!
In San Fran it rarely goes below 50 degrees and much above 70-75. That's perfect sleeping outdoors temps.
Homelessness in Hawaii is #4 nationally but #32 In NJ...must be they have legal weed. Oh right they don't we do
Oh this is too rich.
It's easier to catch people with guns than actually in the act of murdering, raping or stealing, so let's ban guns!
Oh I can see that going over REAL well.
The argument you make in your third paragraph is a good one, assuming that what you say about drug dealers is true (and I don't know either way). But it seems to me that it shows only a need to prosecute dealing, not possession. It also seems to me that the last thing New Jersey would want is for there to be anyone other than authorized retailers selling marijuana.So efforts against unauthorized dealers will continue -- and in fact perhaps get even more aggressive so that the state doesn't lose potential revenue.
Also, the quality in the store is 10x what it would be on the street. That is why people use the store and NJ is making money hand over fist...and still without any kind of a homelessness issue lol.
You might want to consider the huge jump in the cost of housing on the West Coast over the last generation. That strikes me as a more likely cause of the increase in homelessness than marijuana.
It's definitely a factor. The house I rented in Los Angeles was purchased in 2001 for approximately $350,000. In 2004, I had guys knocking on my door (walking door to door) offering $800,000 to buy it. Due to the cost of living, some first year federal agents around this time (making $60k/year) qualified for welfare - it was a big office scandal when someone in HR sent an email out to the entire office suggesting those having difficulty contact various welfare programs in the area.
I should also add that perhaps the best way to deal with meth and other drugs is to legalize possession of them, too, thus destroying the illicit market and driving out of business the murderers (there's no better word) who lace their products with deadly substances like fentanyl.
Edit: During Prohibition, there was a tremendous problem with wood alcohol, which is poisonous of course, being sold as alcohol. That ended when selling alcohol became legal and regulated. The same kind of thing will happen here as pot becomes legalized and sold through regulated channels.
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There is a very interesting article in today's Inquirer about the high cost of legal weed in New Jersey. The article downplays the most important reason: that, because marijuana use and sale remains illegal under federal law, marijuana cannot be shipped across state lines. Instead New Jerseyans are dependent on marijuana grown here. At the same time, the large marijuana farms in Washington, Oregon and Northern California are going broke because they produce much more than local demand. Anyway, here's the article: https://www.inquirer.com/business/w...rices-marijuana-20230421.html?query=marijuana
Familiarize yourself with the chart below if you are looking for the root cause of homelessness.
I spend about 100/nights a year in Seattle which is an epicenter of homelessness. I have an apartment there. Would you be surprised to learn that some of the folks who work at the post office in Seattle are homeless? A mail handler in Seattle makes $52k/year. That makes their net pay $3403/month .The average rent in Seattle is $1500/month. Those numbers don't work.
I don't know if these postal workers smoke pot, but I sure as s--t know that the rising cost to rent (or buy) in that market over the past 20 years has had a greater impact on homelessness than legalization.
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They should have taught you the difference between causation and correlation in your DEA job.
Correlation: "I smell weed when I walk by a homeless encampment"
Causation: "Since 2000 the average US worker salary has increased by 65% while the average US rent has increased by 300%."
Not all weed dealers sold other stuff. That’s false.
So you basically don’t want weed to be legal because it makes cops’ jobs harder. Aka because you were lazy and not good at your job. Thank god you’re retired. Not only are you delusional but you weren’t very good at your job. And who cares about MDMA…..another relatively harmless drug. Focus on fentanyl, heroin and meth.
I can tell how lazy you were when you were a DEA. Get the low hanging fruit (marijuana) to hit your quota because fentanyl is too hard. Wow, thank god we legalized marijuana to focus the DEA. What a joke.
Here is a very interesting piece on how police detect marijuana use by drivers and, more important, on the development of a breathalyzer for marijuana. You'll note that it was developed by researchers at Pitt, so for the first time in my life, I will say "Hail to Pitt!"https://www.addictioncenter.com/news/2019/09/new-breathalyzer-marijuana/
Couldn't be. Hawaii is ranked #4 in homelessness and has no legal weed, but it must be because skid row and Bush 1 not cracking down on medical marijuana, not the weather there and COL.
And still he hasn't addressed NJ being 32 in homelessness while having legal weed, which is actually pretty impressive when you consider NJ has to be top 10 if not top 5 in COL.
The person i get my ganja from....and have for many, many years....only sells herb...and only to people she knows.
I've yet to visit one of those new pot stores.
No, that's the exact opposite of what I said. I said all dealers of everything else also sell weed. It's not as easy to catch a guy with a baggy of 50 ecstasy pills as it is to catch them putting 10 lbs of weed in their trunk.
Sounds like the police might actually need to do real work, the horror
Yeah, but you said there hadn't been any increase in homelessness ... and then quickly shifted the goal posts to "prove homelessness was caused by marijuana legalization" (paraphrase) after I posted videos demonstrating the increase in homelessness. You've got 70,000 homeless people in Los Angeles and you think it's normal; it wasn't always like this.
The answer to your question about homelessness in NJ is simple and three-fold: (a) The homeless congregate in NYC because of the available social services, (b) the state has only had legalized marijuana for a year and a half, unlike LA that has had it for over two decades, and (c) far less illegal immigration because it is 2,000 miles from the southern border.
Wait, you’re still trying to make the case for weed causing homelessness? Take the L buddy. Boomers are absolutely insane
It's a gateway drug. The hard drugs (particularly anything opiate-based) result in increased homelessness.Wait, you’re still trying to make the case for weed causing homelessness? Take the L buddy. Boomers are absolutely insane
Alcohol is a gateway drug. Caffeine is too. Living is certain to lead to a bad outcome.
To a certain extent, they are - alcohol far more than caffeine; marijuana far more than alcohol.
Gateway drug. Dude is going straight out of the 1980’s playbook
Careful, he might become a homeless heroin addict.