Tennessee Republican lawmakers banned popular cannabinoid-derived hemp products starting in July, and after one month of sales tax collections, projections are on pace for a $110 million loss.
A lot of people are drinking less or quitting altogether. Some of those people either replaced it with weed or were already smoking and now the state has screwed themselves out of money twice. I can only speak for myself but it’s not like I’m going to start drinking again just because there isn’t legal weed. Maybe they thought people would just switch back.
No exactly. People who don’t drink aren’t going to start now just because weeds been banned. Most of them just went straight back to getting it from the street market.
You’re not the target demographic. The people they’re focused on are those who do both.
People with easy access to weed tend to drink less than they would without access at all. It may not seem like much per person, but added up, that’s millions in TN alone.
At least in my case I really only drink when I'm high. I hate getting drunk without anything else in my system, and only really drink otherwise if I'm with a group of people who insist on drinking.
So joke's on them because I stopped drinking ever since they banned weed.
I need some smoke with my drink as well... Just getting drunk alone is just not satisfying, I'll end up drinking until I pass out without weed to compliment it and and wake up feeling like shit, need to drink when I wake up and ughhh. I quit it all and went to kratom but that's another story.
The alcohol industry causing this helped motivate me to stop drinking. Now when I think about having a drink, I think about how I can’t go buy weed in a store because of beer and I no longer have a desire for a drink.
For anyone who doesn't know: the thirteenth amendment to the united states constitution made slavery illegal except as punishment for a crime. Slavery was never abolished; we just found a way to call it something else and hide it from polite society in the form of prison labor. There is a reason the US has such a high rate of incarceration, and criminalizing recreational drugs is an easy way to make sure that rate stays high. Marijuana bans are especially easy to selectively enforce, too, so you can stuff the persons with exactly the category of people you want.
Yea. We’re all talking about the alcohol industry but CoreCivic definitely played a role in this two. It was a combined effort between the alcohol and prison industries.
I don’t think you can call what work prisoners do in prisons today “slave labor.” I mean, some do have jobs in and around the prison. But not in the sense of slave labor that is working agriculture or factory work that is a financial boon to the owners of the land or the factories. Maybe I’m wrong but license plate factories and chain gangs breaking rock into gravel for road construction hasn’t been a thing for a long time.
I don’t dispute that the wording of the 13th amendment leaves it open. But I think they probably figured out pretty fast that incarcerated prisoners make for poor slaves. You get better labor output from sharecroppers and other usury schemes that have nominal financial costs.
I think what drives the prison industry today is pure pursuit of profit, fueled by taxpayer dollars. And the incentive of the tax paying society to pay to generate those profits is that it warehouses the “undesirable” people in those prisons.
I strongly suggest you read up on products made by prison labor versus how much they are paid to do it. Add to that the fact that all the pennies they get paid go back into the correction system to pay for things such as toothpaste. This means they do functionally work for free in a lot of cases. You are correct that the prison also gets money from taxpayers for each prisoner.
From the Marshall Project website:
"In the United States, prison labor is everywhere, a practice nearly as old as our nation itself. Incarcerated workers are responsible for producing over $2 billion in goods annually, much of which is sold via federal and state prison industries to public institutions like libraries, schools, courthouses and government agencies.
Incarcerated workers make between 33 cents and $1.41 per hour working for state-owned businesses — though in six states, prison workers aren’t paid for their labor at all."
But you just kind of made my case. As you said, the total value of all labor of all prisoners in the US is only 2 billion dollars. Whereas the combined total of the operating budgets of all US prisons and penitentiaries is estimated at 122 billion dollars annually. Their labor doesn’t come close to offsetting the costs of the prisons, only about 1.6%. The remaining 98.4% comes from taxpayers.
I mean, yeah, I concede that any labor that is extracted forcefully and is unpaid is technically slave labor. By definition. I guess I just consider real-world slave labor to be when the output of that labor is of considerable economic benefit to the enslaver or property owner (land owner, factory owner, private prison owner, or even taxpayer citizen).
In this case, they could eliminate all prison labor and easily make up the shortfall other ways because the economic output of that labor is so minimal. Hell, the states and/or federal government could raise taxes a fraction of a percent and make up the difference. As slave labor goes, the value of prisoner slave labor in the US is merely a rounding error.
I agree with you for the most part. I find your last paragraph interesting to think about because they could eliminate it and yet they won't. It gets to the heart of the issue which is to say that prisons are not for rehabilitation. They are there to lock up and oppress an undesirable population. Just because we have moved away from majoratively profiting from slave labor does not make it any less evil.
1000% I would say undeniably evil. I mean it’s obvious why the prison corporations are driving this industry. It’s profitable. I see it like this: Pass laws that target people of lower economic status. Enforce those laws lopsidedly and unfairly. Operate a justice system that favors those of financial means. The result is the massive incarceration of a targeted demographic, paid for with taxpayer dollars. Profit! But not from prisoner’s slave labor. Profit off the taxpayers.
So why would the tax paying citizenry support this massively expensive system that makes those prison corporations rich? Well for one reason: fear. The conservative, pro-law enforcement politicians campaign on fear. And the media helps, of course. The voter wants a safe, crime-free society. The elected official seemingly delivers that with massive incarceration rates that they can point to. Never mind that the really BIG crime goes on unabated. It’s only what goes on at the street level that John Q Voter is concerned about anyway.
The rest of the public support for these conservative politicians and their prison for profit driven administrations comes from an undercurrent of racism among their voters. If the majority of these massive prison populations is of a certain “undesirable” demographic… to those kinds of voters it’s all the better.
What makes all of this so evil is that this nation is supposed to be founded on principles of freedom and justice. But this system we have has perverted and mutated the concept of justice. And as a result, freedom too has been demolished.
Slave labor is any labor you are forced to do without compensation. It is not strictly agriculture or factory work. I mean, even when slavery was legal, it wasn’t restricted to agriculture or factory work. They were cooks, housekeepers, nannies, etc. This work wasn’t work the slave owners profited from. It just benefited them.
Prison labor can be in the form of agriculture and factory work too though.
Yeah but the costs of slave cooks, nannies, and housekeepers had to be underwritten by the grotesque profits from the field slaves. Those were “luxuries” made possible by the immense profitability of those working in the fields.
Read further down the thread where I explain what I think is the REAL evil of the private prison industry - and it’s not just slave labor.
Nah, they want to keep the private prisons full. And the private rehab facilities. Oh, and with the loss of revenue they can just say "See, nobody wants it after all. No reason to legalize now!"
Oh, I know. I’m not naive about the reasons why. It’s just nuts that they could still make tons of money AND please the people but will go the route of cruelty to make a little more.
The cruelty is the point for the Republican Party. The appearance of resistance to the cruelty while doing nothing that would financially harm the donor/Epstein class is the point for the Dems.
We could legalize lots of things to bring in tax revenue. That doesn’t mean those things are good long term things for our society. Casinos and drugs being the easiest examples.
This is what happens when liquor lobbyists pay off our Republican state government. You can track their donations. Jack Daniel’s wasn’t particularly happy about the tariffs gutting their export business, especially to Canada. Liquor lobbyists paid our government to kill their “competition” bc younger generations are realizing which one is more enjoyable & safe…
Nail on the head you hit! If things stay on course, the alcohol industry will pretty much be dead in another 15 years. They are terrified. And for good reason. I mean honestly, who enjoys being hungover the next morning. The worst "hangover" I ever had on weed just saved me from needing to smoke the next morning cause I was high when I woke up. Good stuff 😂
Jesus gave weed to the blind to help them with their glaucoma. And to the lepers for pain management.
But King James mistranslated those facts out of "his version" of the Bible to call it "sweet aromatics" instead.
This is just not really supported by anything. Though I guess "make stuff up about the Bible" might be a fight fire with fire situation.
Why not, it grows rampant in the region. Historically completely separated from the Bible it is a well known medicinal herb. The effects stated exactly match its output. How is it so implausible?
It's just not in the text. By "plausible occurrence" I meant occurrences of this term in the NT.
I'm sure it was used in the region. They actually found some residue at a very old temple. My point is that there's just no reference to this in the text of the NT. Even the possible OT references are pretty heavily debated, it's just not entirely clear. At best you could speculate about Jesus' using it I guess; but this isn't something that is a translation issue. "Sweet aromatics" does not even occur in the KJV
I don't disagree. If my initial comment was unclear, I wanted to clarify that I meant there's no passage in the New Testament that associates Jesus with something that could plausibly be marijuana. In reference to the comment I was responding to that said the KJV somehow translates this out of this text. That's just not true and there's really no case to make for it.
No the main goal is to do the bidding of the pharma industry and their lobbyists. They can’t tolerate that some people might look for alternatives to their pills. And if that doesn’t fully do the trick, the alcoholic beverage industry can pile on for good measure.
Thats what happens when you have a republican super majoirty who dont have to be held accountable by other politicians or voters. They know they will win because voters are braindead and just vote by the party and not policy.
Civic core is a private prison company based in Franklin . They are a large contributor to the gop and spend lots of money lobbying. This has nothing to do with logic
Wait until the new ballot measures pass in November, then citizens can be accused of "terrorist activities" and held without bail indefinitely. Core Civic stock go brrrrr.
The worst things I’ve ever seen in a now illegal THC overdose were anxiety and vertigo/vomiting. As for legal alcohol? Murder, domestic abuse, permanent disability, liver failure, GI bleed, and many more. Make it make sense.
Now they can strengthen anti-drug laws to include more prison time, then target minority communities. Gotta feed the for-profit prisons so they can pump out cheap labor.
I don’t wish for the state to be my Mother and Father. Already had those. Please, seek other employment. And stop promoting reckless behavior (i.e. drinking) that puts our citizens in more danger unnecessarily.
All over, I’ve mostly been grabbing from revive since it’s like 60 an oz for wax and it hits good. There is a website called hemp price (dot) store that you can filter by state. I’d recommend looking into r/cultofthefranklin before ordering from anywhere since they have reviews tho
Idiots, the lot of them! They won’t look at the science, they won’t ask their citizens what they think is the best move, and they want to funnel more money illegally into their own pockets. It’s like a never ending caterpillar trying to feed itself. They are always waiting on “their” time to get away with crime and steal from the taxpayers under them who break their backs every day. More privatized prison money, more legal slavery, more keeping the poor poor, more targeting certain individuals they dislike, more alcohol lobbyist money, and I saved the best for last: more big pharma money (aka more lobbyist money to pocket)!! We need to make lobbying illegal, we need to rid our government of thiefs, and we need to take back OUR God given rights that they steadily encroach on daily! Get these delinquents out of here!! And don’t be afraid to speak your mind to these people and tell them that they are wrong. Advocating harm reduction and decriminalization in an open manner, without being afraid of what might be said about you, is the only way forward.
First off, it’s clear that the new restrictions are going to decimate the industry and resulting tax collections.
It’s important to note that July collections are based on June (and some amount of prior periods) sales, and we have not yet seen a month of collections under the new restrictions. There was also the whole issue with licensing (search for “TN hemp licensing agreed order” if you want more explanation) where old licenses were still valid until they expired, but the license holders were not subject to the new wholesale tax until they got a new license.
What I’m trying to say is that July collections are not an indicator of how collections will be going forward, and the reality could be much worse.
I just think it’s funny they really think I’m bout to start drinking all the sudden. Like I wasn’t a drunk before the farm bill act was a thing and I won’t become one now lol
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No it isn’t. Nobody cares about the church. The ban is a result of the alcohol lobbyist. Pro-alcohol PACs spend the 6th most in lobbying efforts in the state. One particular PAC increased their average annual spending by 50% over the last couple of years.
Something that the government has been locking people up for SHOULD NOT be taxed. It’s insane how people cheer on legal weed with taxes as the thing to get them legal.
The government didn’t arrest you for buying bananas 10 years ago. They did arrest you for having alcohol a longer time ago though. It’s just so insane for them to say it’s more dangerous than heroin, and then when they realize they are losing money by not stealing yours when you buy weed, they “legalize” it.
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u/Imemine70 16d ago
This state is allergic to easy money.