T.D. Strange: You know what I want to see?At street values, wouldn't this stash run about $500M or so? At a 5% sales tax for example, that'd be $25M in tax revenue.
The tax revenue on the legal sale of 121 tons of marijuana
Proposition 19, a ballot initiative in California that would give local authorities the ability to legalize and tax marijuana for personal consumption, appears to have lost ground in the polls.posted by Rhaomi at 9:18 PM on October 21, 2010
Calculating a trendline from all surveys on the initiative suggests that about 46 percent of Californians plan to vote in favor of Proposition 19 — a yes vote would legalize marijuana in the state — but 47 percent plan to vote no. This reflects a reversal from before, as the ballot measure had led in most surveys prior to this month.
The trend is fairly robust across different polling companies. Although SurveyUSA still has the yes vote favored, 48 to 44, their previous polls had shown the measure leading by a larger margin. The Public Policy Institute of California meanwhile, has the measure trailing by 5 points now after having led by 9 points before. And Ipsos, which had the “yes” side trailing by 2 points in its June survey, now has the initiative trailing by 10.
> How did we get to the point that we've legalized morphine and...heck, I could list a thousand addictive, sometimes dangerous drugs here, yet we've demonized pot...?The story that places the blame on Hearst has always made sense to me. He owned a whole lot of newspapers and a whole lot of wood-pulp paper mills, and used the former to eliminate some of the latter's competitors. As FOX has shown us in modern times, a media empire can readily reshape the commonly-accepted-truth if it wants to. Hearst was not known for his scruples.
"What we found instead was no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect," says Tashkin, whose research was the largest case-control study ever conducted. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.posted by symbioid at 10:45 PM on October 21, 2010 [3 favorites]
Tobacco smokers in the study had as much as a 21-fold increase in lung cancer risk. Cigarette smokers, too, developed COPD more often in the study, and researchers found that marijuana did not impair lung function. Tashkin, supported by other research, concluded that the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, has an "anti- tumoral effect" in which "cells die earlier before they age enough to develop mutations that might lead to lung cancer."
However, the smoke from marijuana did swell the airways and lead to a greater risk of chronic bronchitis.
"Early on, when our research appeared as if there would be a negative impact on lung health, I was opposed to legalization because I thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects," Tashkin says.
"But at this point, I'd be in favor of legalization. I wouldn't encourage anybody to smoke any substances, because of the potential for harm. But I don't think it should be stigmatized as an illegal substance.
"Tobacco smoking causes far more harm. And in terms of an intoxicant, alcohol causes far more harm."
Also: the masked soldiers have their names on their uniforms.
I could list a thousand addictive, sometimes dangerous drugs here, yet we've demonized pot...?
Can't speak to the man-boobs, but as long as you don't inhale, you should still be in the running for POTUS. For two terms, even.
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posted by condour75 at 7:43 PM on October 21, 2010 [7 favorites]