This is not a great argument. I'd say pot smokers aren't violent people because they are everyone as in they are average people not drug addicts, which is mostly true (in my dataless opinion). Most people don't causally or recreationally use heroin, but like alcohol, a large portion of average people do enjoy regular MJ use.

a) people were still getting both alcohol and marijuana under prohibition, prohibition does not work, so whether or not it makes people more violent doesn't really matter. Especially for the demographics who typically commit crimes are usually the people who have the greatest access to black market products.

b) the vast majority of the violence directly related to the drug comes from trafficking, which is ultimately a product of prohibition, not drug use

There's not much of a debate here if both a) and b) can't be meaningfully influence by federal policy.

Either way the federal government is going to see their influence eroded here.

The states already lost; this already went to the Supreme Court before Congress restricted such prosecution, and the feds won completely.

What will go to court next—unless Rohrabacher-Farr fails to be renewed (it's included in the most recent stopgap spending measure, but that expires, IIRC, later this month) before any prosecutions under the new DoJ policy—will not be a Constitutional states rights issue, but a federal statutory interpretation issue over whether DoJ is prohibited by Congress from this action.

precisely. which is why we need the feds to try and enforce the law again in order to relitigate it.

Yes and no. If you have a decision on one set of facts made on one basis just come up with another set of facts and another basis where you can get a opposing result without necessary logical conflict and you are all good.

The rat's nest of federal law and prior opinions makes this trivial, so at the end of the day, all legal opinions are arbitrary, and the only actual basis for any decision is whether or not it serves the interests of the court, which outside of the pet peeves, biases, and corruptions of individual judges, consists mostly of the perpetuation of the institution.

The SC's power is rooted in the federal government, and it is stacked with statist/corporatist hacks, so it will always have a preference for extending federal power, but that instinct must be tempered by the threat of an over-extension which reveals the inherent weakness of their position.

Making a move against a majority of the states now, on a subject where popular opinion is clearly against them, and with an all time low level of trust and respect for the federal government would definitely not be desirable.

Normally they could just refuse to hear appeals, but the 9th circuit is in a pretty feisty mood these days so I wouldn't be too surprised if they sided with the states, which would then force the SC to either let their ruling stand, or expose themselves directly on the issue.

Either way, they either let the states keep this going, or they piss off a lot of people, and either way is bad for them and good for the states.

Even if they also raise the Constitutional argument, a Court that fears public opinion as much as you suggest would likely take the less precedent-disturbing approach to the popular result by resting a decision on Rohrabacher-Farr (even if that took a somewhat expansive interpretation of that prohibition on DoJ use of funds) rather than overturning Gonzalez v. Raich.

It’s time to challenge the feds on the outdated CSA classification of marijuana as schedule one in general, in addition to forcing another states rights debate.

Also as I understand it, the only argument for the constitutional acceptance of the CSA is essentially the feds rights to govern interstate commerce. In this case they’re trying assert that right in an industry which is essentially operating within single states where the legality has been democratically assessed. IANAL, but I think this fact has some weight behind it in the states favor.

(IANAL.)

Cannabis is now legal for medical use in 29 states. Many of these laws were passed through the referendum process. That is a lot of democracy to overrule from a bench in D.C.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

That is all B.S. though. The real issue is federal vs. state power and that has nothing to do with left and right.

But regardless I highly, highly doubt this one law being overturned could be equated to states having free reign to do whatever they like, regardless of federal law. There are tons of these individual issues that are finely regulated between state and federal power balances.

Not to mention the Supreme Court doesn't work like politics where you trade one issue for going easy on another.

OTOH, dodging the Commerce Clause and adopting a broad 10th Amendment interpretation might affect Roe, but a 10th Amendment interpretation powerful enough to affect otherwise Constitutional federal legislation (which Roe is not) would have broad and severe effects on federal power generally, far beyond marijuana policy and Roe.

I'm all for state rights, but I personally see overreach in executive power as the far bigger problem of the modern era. Executive power exploded under Obama (a trend which Bush started before him, which Obama took much farther).

Ultimately the real problem is that congress needs to end prohibition via law.

Obama basically took a 'sanctuary city' approach, a "workaround" and not a solution to this problem. Which ultimately still left the law very much up in the air for many people in states running weed businesses. I hate the fact people are going to jail for marijuana but I do see an argument here that Session's change:

a) incentivizes congress to put a proper policy together, where before it was left in legal/political limbo

b) ended a bad law which typified executive power overreach

c) is not yet clear how it will affect states in practice, as it's still up to the state attorneys to act on it

In practice this sucks, but I don't think this sucks because it's an extension of government overrearch.

Right now marijuana is illegal federally - all States' rights proponents acknowledge this. The old policy of being hands off but reserving the right to bring the iron fist down on otherwise legal businesses was a bad policy. The uncertainty and risk profile killed a lot of investment - to this day, the tax burden on pot businesses is insanely high because they're not permitted to deduct business expenses related to growing/distributing marijuana because those activities are federally illegal.

Thankfully, Sessions is legalistic. If congress got off their butts and legalized it/returned the legality decisions to the state, Sessions would surely respect their decision.

I enjoy marijuana more than most and I suppose Sessions enforcing the law - it's a bad law and collectively we need the motivation to make it better. This legal twilight zone is complete bogus - bring it into the open and drive out the criminal element and let the best organization flourish.

This is a bit like saying "Thankfully, the black hole hurtling toward us is influenced by gravity, so all we need to do is move a star into its path and it will be flung off course."

The fact that a terrible situation could theoretically be saved by something wildly unlikely isn't anything to be thankful for. This isn't going to force this awful Congress we're stuck with to suddenly legalize marijuana. It's most likely just going to lead to a lot of good people being imprisoned.

The prison boom around the war on drugs overwhelmingly involved the government prison complex, from 1980 to 2010.

Clinton didn't have meaningful ties to the private prison industry (which barely existed at the time), and a frightening number of people were thrown into prison for drug crimes during his eight years.

About ~95% of all people put into prison over those 30 years from 1980 to 2010, went into government prisons.

Who benefitted? We spent over a trillion dollars on the government prison complex. Millions of government employees pocketed hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in cash from the scheme. It makes the private prison industry and its meager profits look hilariously tiny by comparison.

The US has about a million law enforcement related employees it doesn't need, used to prosecute the war on drugs in various ways. Those are government employees, they benefit from the government prison system, they were made possible by government laws that date back five decades or more. They cost $80-$100 billion per year. Now compare just that one section of the government prison complex, to the private prison complex money.

CoreCivic generates $200m in profit per year. That's equal to about the cost of just ~3,000 cops. The US has at least several hundred thousand more cops than it needs, due to the war on drugs. That's how truly massive the government side of this is by comparison.

Private prisons only began to meaningfully expand in the middle of George W Bush's Presidency. In the 1990s, when such an extraordinary number of people were put into prison, the private prison industry was miniscule.

Blaming any of this mess on the private prison complex, is pretty absurd given the facts of what happened in prisons and the war on drugs in the 30 to 40 years pre ~2005.

And this post is in no way arguing in favor of the private prison system, it shouldn't exist.

That $200m goes to the shareholders, owners, in theory. That's the profit motive sum in their business.

I don't disagree that also referencing the $1.7b in sales is relevant. It's just as tiny looking when stacked up against the monster that is a million unnecessary government employees costing $80-$100 billion each year, that exist solely due to the war on drugs.

I'd like to see someone tabulate up the total cost of all reasonably unnecessary government employees, related to prisons and law enforcement, dating from 1980 to 2010, the prime years of the prison population boom (during which the private prison complex was an averaged single digit fraction of the whole thing). What do we suppose that would come to? $2 trillion inflation adjusted?

1. I don't think you have to disagree with vel0city to make your point. Just agree that the private prison complex is large and dangerous to society (as you apparently have) and point out that the unnecessary aspects of the public sector prison complex are also large and dangerous.

2. Any time someone can have a financial stake is something like a prison while also holding immense political power, we should all be very scared and concerned. This is why there's so much well-placed concern over the private prison industry. Of course, it's worth noting that there are also lots of ways to make lots of money off of public prisons. And those mechanisms should also be choked off.

3. Damon Hininger makes about $1M/yr in salary. Presumably if total revenue were only $200M, he'd be making a lot less in salary.

I still don't get the hysteria-like concern over private prisons, when the extreme majority of all harm and money has related to the government prison system, which almost never gets tagged eg on HN in conversations like these. I've brought it up a dozen times over the years, and I'm usually the only person in the thread bringing it up. Yet the fear about the private side of it, is dramatic. That upside-down concern doesn't make any sense to me. That isn't to play down the negatives of the private prison industry, rather, it's to highlight that the public system is radically larger and just as financially motivated. Some of the strongest and best funded advocate groups against pot legalization have been government prison & police groups / unions / lobbyists; they all have a truly vast, financial stake in the government prison system.

Those people earn relatively decent wages. There are maybe 2.5 million of them total in the system, across all government prisons and law enforcement related jobs. They vote. Their representatives lobby aggressively. They hold immense collective political influence, far beyond anything the private prison industry could muster.

Hiniger makes $1 million? The total cost of 8 or 12 government cops. We've got 300k or 500k too many. Yet, again, the private side gets a hugely lopsided amount of attention.

What's the total prison population scale difference between government & private prisons, between 1980 and 2017? 20 to 1? More than that?

If we're adding up lives destroyed, the number of people harmed by being unjustly put into government or private prison, the economic value of all those destroyed lives, how would that come out? How many millions of people were put into government prisons over 30-40 years that shouldn't have been and how does that compare to the private industry? We must surely be talking about trillions of dollars more in real cost to society from the government side vs the private side.

The real comedy of the fear? The US prison population finally began to stop rising and began to fall, as the private prison system has gotten larger. And pot is getting legalized during that time as well. Peak war on drugs existed during peak government prison complex. Nobody likes to talk about that.

You claimed that profits, not revenues, constitute "the profit motive sum" for private prison operators. But if revenue is tied to executive compensation, that's clearly not true. I didn't offer the number as a comparative, but rather as a way of refuting your claim that total revenues don't contribute to profit motive.

Aside from this point, I don't really think Hiniger's salary is relevant to this conversation.

> Peak war on drugs existed during peak government prison complex. Nobody likes to talk about that.

So are you really claiming that private prisons caused prison populations to decline? If not, what point are you trying to make by mentioning this obviously-not-causative correlation?

> rather, it's to highlight that the public system is radically larger and just as financially motivated

You'll find just as much "hysteria-like concern" here on hn, and elsewhere, about profiteering in public prisons. And yes, that includes concern over lobbying by prison guard unions.

I agree with your general point that a wave of stupid in the 80s and 90s is more to blame for our current situation than profit motive. And to get back to the article, Sessions has always been in the eye of that hurricane of stupid.

But profiteering -- by unions, by private prison suppliers, by suppliers to public prisons -- certainly helps sustain the present situation. Different people choose different subsets of that Goliath. So what?

Like I said above, I really, really don't understand the battle lines you're trying to draw here. Surely, we can all agree that the solution is putting fewer people in jails, right?

Are you speaking on the US or worldwide? A quick search doesn't produce any reliable statistics that indicate this. I have never once heard of anyone purchasing alcohol on the black market. Cigarettes, sure, but even then it's typically only very low-income folks purchasing cheap, illegal tobacco that is generally not of great quality. This is in stark contrast to marijuana where high-grade product can be purchased on the "street".

I suspect that once(if) pot goes legal the black-market will consist mostly of cheap, poor quality marijuana. This should take a nice chunk out of the profits that gangs see from marijuana distribution.

You can get hooked up with illegal alcohol in basically every liquor store in every state in Appalachia, if you know someone that works there. It's commonly sold under the table so to speak.

edit: for wherever the downvotes are coming from - yes, I do know this stuff for a fact. I grew up in Appalachia, I know for a fact that what I'm saying is extremely common, I saw just about every aspect of the illegal alcohol trade first-hand. From that I came to learn second-hand the scope and nature of it up and down the east coast of the US and other parts of the country. It's easy enough to google this subject as well if you're skeptical.

But large criminal syndicates funded by blackmarket alcohol are very much a thing of the past. At least in the USA.

I guess I technically know quite a few people who make "black market" whiskey. It's not legal to distill without lots of licensing and these people do sell bottles to friends and friends-of-friends.

But it's Really Hard to understate the difference between poor folks running cottage industries around moonshine and the sprawling violent criminal enterprises that flourished around the alcohol trade during prohibition.

(e: also, illegal alcohol isn't just a poor person thing. Plenty of wealthy folks illegally distill, they just normally aren't motivated to sell.)

Certainly. And it's some gargantuan scale different versus the illegal drug trade as a comparison (0.1% as large perhaps). My point was that it isn't particularly uncommon, the underground illegal alcohol trade (it's also not monetarily massive in size as you're noting, which is why it exists at all, local police mostly look the other way so long as it stays small'ish).