California Bill Would De-Felonize Drug Possession

There is too much money at stake for the court, prison and law enforcement communities to pass up. They would have to go back to stopping kid's Lemonade stands, public smoking and drinking other crimes against society for revenue. The Nanny State has to have income to exist.

There are pros and cons to every law that reduces penalties, yet retains the right of the government to dictate consensual behavior. This bill seems like a step in the right direction, if liberty is the goal. 

you mean there is still such a creature as a politician that thinks?????? thank you for even trying to get some semblance of truth out there. when will we wake to the facts that it is the laws that kill and cause the troubles not the drugs themselves!!!!!! 2 million inside what is the cost of that?? and not just in dollars! the cost is just too damn high!

 

During alcohol prohibition, all profits went to enrich thugs and criminals. Young men died every day on inner-city streets while battling over turf. A fortune was wasted on enforcement that could have gone on education, etc. On top of the budget-busting prosecution and incarceration costs, billions in taxes were lost. Finally, the economy collapsed. Sound familiar? It's possible that many of the early Prohibitionists did not actually intend to kill hundreds of thousands worldwide and put 1 in every 30 American adults under supervision of the correctional system while bringing shame upon what was once a shining beacon of liberty and prosperity. But predictively similar to our "Great Experiment" of the 1920s, this foolish and counter-productive 're-run' has once again spawned rampant off-the-scale criminality, corruption, a bust economy, mass unemployment, the world's highest incarceration rate, a civil war in Mexico, an un-winnable war in Afghanistan, and an even higher rate of drug-use (both legal & illegal) than in all other countries that have courageously refused to blindly follow us down this sadomoralistic, dystopian rat hole.  Should we wait for complete and utter economic ruination before demanding a return to sanity and the restoration of our unalienable­ rights?  Surely it's high time we all stood up and told our dysfunctional government that we're totally pooped at being abused, beaten and jailed in order that unconscionable Transnational Corporations - and their Media Enablers - can continue to dupe, addict and poison us for obscene profits. According to the CATO Institute, ending prohibition would save an annual $41 billion of expenditure while generating an estimated $46 billion in tax revenues.