Neshoba Democrat. February 17, 2022.
Editorial: True medical marijuana?
A powerful medical marijuana invoice is what many native and state leaders had been demanding so we are able to solely hope that’s what SB 2095 is now that it’s legislation.
The marijuana subject has consumed an unlimited quantity of bandwidth largely as a result of leisure customers and the massive cash pot foyer main the cost.
To make certain, there are people in our state who will likely be considerably higher off with entry to medically prescribed doses of hashish.
The pot foyer, nonetheless, was demanding a leisure marijuana card that might have led to extra individuals smoking weed together with all the societal ills informal use brings together with being a gateway to heroin and different medication that trigger overdoses and even loss of life.
Mitigating the possibilities for abuse is noble, however that’s not possible and we will see the place this goes.
Approval of Initiative 65 drops to about 40% when making an allowance for the variety of registered voters statewide. So, there by no means has been a mandate.
The get-out-to-vote marijuana marketing campaign was extremely focused to customers in a digital age and should be a common warning in regards to the affect of huge cash in future initiatives due to the unbelievable energy to focus on sure voters digitally on their units.
Enshrining legalized marijuana within the state Structure shouldn’t be what most Mississippians thought they had been voting for in November, however that’s what Initiative 65 would have completed.
Once more, there’s a warning.
The invoice the governor signed shouldn’t be the one he or most of us would have written, nevertheless it’s the place we’re and it’s now the legislation.
Vital enhancements in in regards to the fiftieth draft had been made giving extra native management of rising and marijuana dispensaries, however will it’s sufficient?
In signing the invoice into legislation — and a legislation could be amended or modified in contrast to the constitutional modification that might have enshrined pot for granted — Gov. Tate Reeves listed a small sampling of the enhancements he and others fought to incorporate within the last model of the invoice. These enhancements included:
• Reduces the overall quantity that anybody particular person can obtain to three oz. per thirty days. This one change will cut back the overall quantity by 40% from the unique model (I requested for 50%). Mentioned in another way, there will likely be a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of fewer joints on the streets due to this enchancment.
• The medical skilled can solely prescribe inside the scope of his/her apply. They usually need to have a relationship with the affected person. And it requires an in-person go to by the affected person to the medical skilled.
• Solely an MD or DO can prescribe for teenagers beneath 18 and solely with the consent of a mother or father/authorized guardian.
• An MD or DO should prescribe for younger adults between the ages of 18-25.
• The MSDH will promulgate guidelines concerning packaging and promoting, and I’ve confidence they are going to accomplish that in a approach that limits the impression on our younger individuals.
• Prohibits any incentives for the Business from the Mississippi Growth Authority.
• Protects our church buildings and faculties from having a marijuana dispensary inside fewer than 1,000 ft of their location.
Rep. Jill Ford, a Republican from Madison, had sponsored her personal invoice with a slower strategy nevertheless it was by no means taken up within the Home.
“My invoice would have taken a slower strategy than the Senate invoice. It was a real medical marijuana program,” Ford mentioned.
Sen. Jenifer Branning, a Republican from Philadelphia, has mentioned her concern is considered one of public security and well being and she or he, like Ford within the Home, didn’t vote for the invoice.
A real medical marijuana legislation is the place we wish to be as a state and it’s good to know we nonetheless have elected officers who’re supportive of the necessity however undestand the hazards and like a slower strategy that addresses public security and well being.
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Greenwood Commonwealth. February 18, 2022.
Editorial: A Violent Crime Comparability
Everybody talks about how crime is up. It positively has risen in some locations — akin to Jackson, the Mississippi capital metropolis that’s battling one of many nation’s highest per-capita murder charges.
Info from 2021 shouldn’t be but obtainable, however a chart on TheWhyAxis web site makes a compelling case that violent crime charges in 1980 and 1994 had been rather a lot worse than at present’s.
The chart is predicated on info from the federal Workplace of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. It tracks the ages of individuals arrested for violent crimes — homicide, “non-negligent” manslaughter, theft and aggravated assault — in 1980, 1994 and 2019. It eliminates inhabitants variations by measuring the arrests per 100,000 individuals.
There are some apparent developments:
– There have been far fewer individuals from age 12 to 63 arrested for violent crimes in 2019 than within the two earlier years. It’s not even shut. Even when there’s been a rise in violent crime since 2019, it’s unlikely the nation is approaching the variety of arrests in 1980 — and at present’s charges are nowhere near these of 1994.
– 1994 was a busy time for legislation enforcement. The variety of violent crime arrests that 12 months is surprising. It helps clarify why Congress and states handed all kinds of laws throughout that decade, akin to truth-in-sentencing legal guidelines, to lock up extra offenders and preserve them locked up for longer stretches of time. The nation had a significant issue with violent crime, however the response that adopted produced its personal complications as a result of the harsher sentencing legal guidelines in some locations, together with Mississippi, focused all crimes, not simply violent ones. That drove up incarceration prices to an unsustainable degree, depopulated low-income neighborhoods of grownup males and put a larger emphasis on punishment than rehabilitation. Mississippi and far of the remainder of the nation have spent latest years attempting to reverse that earlier overreaction.
– 2019 is also totally different from the opposite two years when it comes to the age of these arrested for violent crimes. The story quotes an official with The Sentencing Venture, who famous that in 1980 and 1994, violent crime arrests had been highest amongst 18-year-olds. However in 2019, the height is between ages 25 and 27. That is partly as a result of in 2019 there have been rather a lot fewer 18-year-olds arrested for a violent crime. Nonetheless, provided that a lot of the violent crime in America has tended to be “a younger man’s sport,” as TheWhyAxis put it, a rising age peak is troubling.
– Yet one more merchandise of word is a rise in violent crime in 2019 amongst individuals of their 50s and 60s. These are a much smaller variety of instances than these wherein youngsters and 20-somethings are arrested. However the arrest price for these 50 and older was lowest in 1980, second lowest in 1994 and highest in 2019.
Violent-crime arrest charges in 2019 for these aged 30 to 45 additionally had been larger than in 1980. Sociologists and criminologists may have a area day explaining this sort of info.
This definitely shouldn’t be the definitive phrase on crime charges in 2022. For one factor, what about instances the place nobody bought arrested? And the chart excludes non-violent crimes akin to housebreaking.
There’s little doubt that, regardless of the statistics say, individuals are frightened about crime. It does make a very good case in opposition to defunding the police. Freedom means nothing with out security.
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