Homeless in Arizona

My view of our mission statement is that we should

1. Completely legalize marijuana. There should be NO limits on the amount of marijuana a persons can possess or limits on the amount of marijuana plants a person can grow.
2. The government should be forbidden from taxing or regulating marijuana, marijuana use, marijuana sales, people that use or deal with marijuana or anything to do with marijuana.
3. Any person in the past who has been convicted of a marijuana, or accepted reduced charges in a plea bargain after being arrested for a marijuana crime should be given an complete and automatic pardon.

And here is my logic behind that.

If the government continues to have marijuana prohibition in one form or another it will allow the criminal cartels to continue to exist, and the crime that exists because of the cartels will continue to exists.

If marijuana is completely legalized and marijuana becomes a consumer product like tomatoes or potatoes that will cause the cartels to go out of business.

If marijuana is treated by the government as potatoes or tomatoes there will not be enough money in it for the cartels to continue selling it.

The cartels will be replaced by Fry's, Safeway, Walgreen's, CVS, Wal-Mart and Target who will fight it out in the free market trying to give marijuana consumers the best quality marijuana at the lowest prices.

If the government is allowed to continue to tax marijuana, government tyrants like U.S. Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema will try to pass outrageous taxes which effectively make marijuana illegal.

Remember when U.S. Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema was a member of the Arizona legislator, she tried to pass a 300%, $900 an ounce tax to effectively make medical marijuana illegal.

Remember this is how the Fed's initially made marijuana illegal in 1937. They slapped a $100 an ounce tax on it. That may not seem like much now, but in 1937 you could buy a brand new car for $600.

And that is the same reason we should forbid the government from regulating marijuana in any way.

Last on the tax issues I think it's wrong for the government to tax some specific subset of the population and force them to pay for running the government.

If the government decided that religious folks were bad and then came up with a scheme to tax the krap out of religious people most of you would think that wrong.

Same if the government decided that gay folks were bad and then came up with a scheme to tax the krap out of gay people most of you would think that wrong.

Well I feel the same way about the government saying pot smokers are bad and taxing the krap out of then.

I think the 15% marijuana tax in the MPP initiative is outrageous. Same for the 10% marijuana tax in the AZfrm initiative.

If we allow government tyrants like U.S. Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema to regulate marijuana they will come up with a bunch of laws which are designed to effectively make marijuana illegal by passing laws which are outrageously expensive to comply with. Or laws which make it next to impossible to use,sell or grow marijuana. And don't laugh, government tyrants are currently passing laws like that for medical marijuana dispensaries.

Here in Tempe pot dispensaries are forced to close at something like 7pm. And they can only be in industrial area. You can bet if we legalize recreational marijuana in Arizona the tyrants on the Tempe City Council will pass a bunch of silly laws making it as difficult as possible for marijuana consumers, sellers and growers in Tempe.

If we forbid the government from regulating marijuana that will fix that problem.

As a Libertarian I think taxes suck. But if you folks think that for political reasons we have to allow the government to slap a small sales tax on marijuana I don't have a problem with that. As long as the tax is capped.

Same goes for driving. If you folks want to allow the government to forbid driving on public roads when people are stoned I don't have a problem with that.

Also I am not a tobacco smoker. As an ex-tobacco smoker I hate tobacco smoke. But I don't have a problem if you folks want to let the government forbid smoking marijuana on any government property where it's also forbidden to smoke tobacco. While marijuana smoke doesn't bother me, I suspect it does bother some people.

Personally I think people should be allowed to use marijuana in prison. It would sure cut down on the violence and crime in prisons.

For political purposes I suspect some of you may want to put a age limit on marijuana.

Personally I think that PARENTS should decide if their kids are allowed to smoke marijuana. I don't think it should be any of the governments business.

But if you are going to make it illegal for kids to smoke marijuana I don't think their should be any criminal penalties for kids that break the law. The most the cops should be able to do is steal their pot. But if you want to add an age limit I won't fight that.

No limits on amount of marijuana you can have

As long as it is illegal to posses large amounts of marijuana or illegal to grow large amounts of marijuana it will create black markets.

And those black markets will be run by criminals who make big bucks in the black market.

If it is legal to possess unlimited amounts of marijuana and grown unlimited amounts of marijuana the black markets will cease to exist over night.

Wal-mart, Target, Walgreens, CVS, Safeway, Frys, Bashas, Albertsons, Circle K, 7-11 and thousands of mom and pop convenience and liquor stores will be able to make big bucks by selling marijuana at razor thing profit margins.

Those stores will put the cartels and other criminals out of business who don't want to waste their time fighting over products that they can only make measly razor thing profits from.

And we should tell the public about that reason to educated them that COMPLETE LEGALIZATION is the ONLY way to go.

This is the exact same thing that happened when the Prohibition was ended and liquor was re-legalized.

Case closed!!! Complete legalization will end most of the crime caused by marijuana prohibition.

Legalizing will save taxpayers big bucks in police costs

We don't need to bribe school teachers with a 15% tax!!!

Some of you want to slap a huge tax on marijuana to bribe the voters in to passing a law to legalize it. You know, like the MPP and AZfmr initiative slap a 15% and 10% tax on marijuana to bribe school teachers to vote for it.

We don't need to do that because simply legalizing marijuana will save the tax payers millions of dollars and probably billions.

In a 2015 article in the Village Voice the ACLU said 50% of all the arrests nationwide are for marijuana.

In most city governments a nice ballpark figure is that 40% of the city budget is spend on the police. The numbers I have for the city of Phoenix say they are spending closer to 50% of their budget on the police.

If the city of Phoenix stops arresting marijuana smokers that means they can reduce their police budget by 50%.

And since the police budget is 50% of the total budget, that means they can reduce their total budget by 25%.

I found one article in the Arizona that said the Phoenix 2016 budget is $1.22 billion. [That sounds rather low, because the budget I found for Tucson is $945 million and Phoenix is a lot bigger then Tucson]

If we legalize marijuana that will save the city of of Phoenix $305 million dollars every year.

For those of you who love taxes, you could give that $305 million that the police get and give it to the schools.

If Tucson is like most cities and only spends 40% of their budget on the police, and marijuana arrests are 50% of the Tucson police arrests, then we could save Tucson 20% of their budget by legalizing marijuana.

The number I found for the Tucson operating budge was $945 million. And that's from the city of Tucson's web page. [I suspect the number I got for Phoenix of $1.22 billion is low, because Phoenix is a lot bigger then Tucson]

So by legalizing marijuana we could save the city of Tucson $189 million every year.

I suspect that the city governments arrest most of the people for marijuana crimes, that the county governments prosecute most of these people. And of course we could save the county government huge amounts of money by not prosecuting the people arrested by the city governments for marijuana crimes.

Also the county governments lock most of these people up in the county jails when they are initially arrested and booked. That would be another huge savings in tax dollars. We could reduce the county jail costs by 50% if the ACLU figures is correct.

I don't know if the ACLU number is correct, but the numbers are HUGE for the people arrested for victimless drug war crimes.

I used to quote Reason Magazine from an article they ran maybe 15 years ago which said two thirds of 66% of the people in American prisons are there for victimless drug war crimes.

That includes ALL drug crimes, but I think marijuana crimes are the bulk of those.

Statistics from the US Department of Prison year in and year out say around 51% of the people in Federal prisons are there for victimless drug war crimes. Again that ALL drug crimes, but marijuana users are the bulk of those.

A 15% tax on marijuana to bribe the school teachers???

Some people want to slap an outrageous 15% tax on marijuana to bribe school teachers to vote to legalize marijuana.

The 15% tax is from the MPP or Marijuana Policy Project initiative to legalize marijuana, and if you ask me amounts to bribing school teachers to vote to legalize marijuana.

The AZfmr initiative had a 10% tax in it which was also a bribe to the school teachers to vote to legalize marijuana.

Personally I think the marijuana laws should be repealed because they are evil, immoral, unjust and at the Federal level unconstitutional.

And I don't think we should be bribing people to repeal evil, immoral, unjust and unconstitutional laws. People should vote to repeal the laws because they are evil, immoral, unjust and unconstitutional.

But if we are going to slap an outrageous 10% or 15% tax on marijuana, the money should not be given the school teachers.

Instead the money from the marijuana tax should be used to pay people who have been arrested for victimless marijuana crimes and have had the Arizona government steal their homes, their cars, their bank accounts and other property using unconstitutional RICO laws.

Every penny from that tax should be used to pay back these people who have been robbed by the Arizona government.

Of course the moral and correct answer to that problem is not for the taxpayers to pay back the money the government has stolen. The elected officials who passed these laws should be forced to pay for the property they stole. Same for the crooked cops who helped the government steal the money. They should be forced to pay for the property they helped steal.