
A casino magnate is spending millions to fight legal marijuana in three states - danso
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/26/a-casino-magnate-is-spending-millions-to-fight-legal-marijuana-in-three-states/
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jacquesm
"If you like drinking alcohol and playing blackjack at the casino, Mr. Adelson
wants you to be his guest," Tvert said in an email. "If you prefer to consume
marijuana while playing video games in the privacy of your home, Mr. Adelson
wants you to be in jail."

Ending the 'war on drugs' would be an instant improvement in the lives of
large numbers of Americans.

~~~
lazaroclapp
It would. Also, it would make a huge improvement in the quality and _quantity_
of human lives in Mexico, and the rest of Latin America. Extremely
conservative estimates for Mexico alone put the death toll above 164,000+ in
the past 10 years, and the number of displaced above 1.2 million, >1% of the
country's population. By total number of deaths in 2016, the Mexican portion
of the drug war by itself is the fourth bloodiest armed conflict on Earth[1]
(after Syria, Iraq and Afganistan, above Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and the Boko
Haram multinational insurgency).

Having grown up in Mexico, reading Mexican press and seeing the endless amount
of mass graves people are now finding through the country (e.g. [2]), I am
fairly sure there are plenty of cases not counted in the official estimates.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts)
. Note: If this makes you scared about planning to visit Mexico, please also
remember it is a very large country, and different areas have different levels
of violence. Fourth largest conflict in terms of total yearly deaths doesn't
mean "it feels like Syria" on account of the population being 100 million. But
that doesn't change the vastness of the cost in human lives...

[2] [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-
america-33671636](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-33671636)

~~~
mikeyouse
I'm hopeful but a bit pessimistic that legalizing marijuana will have much of
an impact on the cartel violence in Mexico. There's so much money at stake and
it's easy enough for them to switch to trafficking cocaine / heroin / meth.
Any reason to think it won't just continue on pace?

~~~
lazaroclapp
Sure, and even legalizing all drugs in the U.S. and the Americas won't fix the
problem, since cartels have other sources of income we will likely never
legalize: human trafficking, extortion, etc. The full solution will involve
painful long term reforms to the political and economical institutions of the
countries involved (at least I know it will for Mexico), solving centuries
long issues with structural income inequality[1], access to opportunities,
race and class divisions, etc, etc.

But we are talking about closing a big revenue stream for the cartels, almost
certainly one of the two or three biggest they have, maybe even the largest,
just by lifting the prohibition on marijuana. That's not only a step in the
right direction, it is a rather big one. In the long term, treating drug
addiction as a medical / consumer protection issue in the US rather than
primarily a law enforcement one, will be a huge boon towards the future of
both nations (and, again, other nations in the Americas that I am not
excluding but for which I feel less qualified to speak about).

In short: it won't magically fix the problem, but I do believe it will likely
reduce the number of deaths and put us in a path towards a solution.

[1] For the HN libertarian crowd, I don't mean solving income inequality in
the sense that everybody should make the same regardless of economic output
(although I do believe on a safety net), I mean changing a centuries long
setup in which class mobility is near zero and strongly correlated with race,
and where most large scale "entrepreneurship" in the country is based of
political connections (see telecommunications and media industries in Mexico
for example).

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alistproducer2
Weed makes people far more cautious, analytical and contemplative, which is
not good for businesses that depend on poor impulse control.

Edit: Folks are reading my comment as "weed makes you too smart to gamble"
instead of "weed changes your personality in ways that aren't conducive to
gambling (relative to alcohol)."

~~~
Kenji
I doubt that weed makes you 'far more cautious' and 'analytical'. Weed
severely impairs judgement, motor control and short-term memory for the
duration of the high.

Look, Marijuana is okay, but let us not fantasise about positive effects.

~~~
RickS
You're both right - MJ makes you far more cautious and analytical, but not
necessarily more correct. AKA paranoid

Either way, the "impulse buy" reflex is significantly stronger with alcohol
than MJ, according to myself and the anecdotes of most everyone I've talked
to.

------
mrcactu5
I take it he loses money if gamblers also smoke marijuana?

I live in Puerto Rico. Ostensibly the case is that we are Catholic and
religious. If you read a little more, you get that lots of people __possess
__or __buy __or __sell __, but nobody wants to admit it. Then why is the
government sustaining such a policy?

The truth is, there must be some people who are obliquely or directly
benefiting the sale, distribution and consumption of illegal marijuana. That
these same people lose money once marijuana (even medical marijuana) becomes
legalized.

Smoking, sugar, alcohol, firearms, ... all these guys have lobbyists in DC or
otherwise in order to get their way.

~~~
reverend_gonzo
I'd venture to bet its more likely that people are more likely to go to the
casino and have a few beers than go to the casino and have a few joints.
Marijuana generally makes people more relaxed and content to stay at home
rather than venture out.

Furthermore, someone who is drunk and gambling, will likely make many dumb
decisions that are profitable for the casino. It's a lot easier to get a
gambler to continue gambling (and losing money) by feeding him more booze.
Give him more weed and he'll just fall asleep.

------
dlbucci
"wealthy individual donors and small businesses, along with drug policy
advocacy groups, have funneled far more dollars to the opposition than
casinos..." That seems a bit disingenuous when it goes on to say in the next
sentence "Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is singlehandedly
responsible for roughly one-third of all anti-legalization spending this year,
a total of $3.5 million in three states so far." I understand that at a basic
level, these are private individual donations, instead of donations from some
lobbying group, but when that individual is designated a "casino magnate",
does it even matter?

------
SmellTheGlove
Why isn't he spending money in Maine? Come on dude, throw away some of your
money here too. I love this state - a whopping 79k has been spent in
opposition so far. A guy like him could really make a difference. Come
November, we'd have legal weed and some extra money in our economy.

~~~
Bartweiss
Has anyone proposed legalization ballot initiatives just to suck in out-of-
state ad spending?

~~~
SmellTheGlove
That's a good question. Probably not in Maine. We like to do things our own
way. I'm a transplant and if I learned anything, it's that Mainers really
resent outside interests telling us how we should do things. I'm surprised
they allow me to vote :)

I think there's some out of state money coming in on our Question 3
(background checks for person to person firearm transfers), in support of Yes.
I don't think it has much of a chance of passing, most people I've talked to
are sitting here thinking we have the 3rd lowest crime rate in the US, and we
have bigger problems that actually need solving (opioid crisis, lack of white
collar jobs, etc). Others are skeptical that it's a broadly drafted (some say
poorly drafted) measure to pretext more searches.

------
hnsdwer
Sheldon Adelson is an all around horrible person, in addition to his fight
against marijuana he is also a huge part of the fight against internet
gambling.

Please refuse to use any of his properties for your vacations or conferences.
Avoid using the Venetian, Palazzo, and Sands Expo.

~~~
anexprogrammer
> he is also a huge part of the fight against internet gambling.

Going on the amount of internet gambling that seems incapable of paying out to
winners that doesn't seem a bad starting position.

It's only a couple of days since the UK Gov announced a wide reaching
investigation of the systematic cheating of customers.

~~~
reverend_gonzo
If online casinos were allowed to be run from the US, it would be much easier
to hold them to a legal standard.

Given that the US is willing to arrest any executive from an online casino,
they end up being based in places like Gibraltar. Now that its nearly
impossible for sometime to take legal recourse against them, it makes it much
more enticing to cheat, steal, etc.

Allows those casinos to be run in the US, and regulate and tax them, and
suddenly, you have a lot of legitimate business vying for customers. You will
also gain a lot in taxes, along with a bunch of the religious right claiming
"you're ruining society".

------
g8oz
Adelson is on the wrong side of of quite a few issues if you look into his
many activities. He is almost comically villainous.

~~~
gozur88
"the wrong side"? Is that really how you see people who disagree with you?

~~~
NotSammyHagar
Some issues have a clearly wrong side. Marijuana legalization seems pretty
clearly a public good. Laws restricting marriage and whites and blacks, pretty
clear. People still resist, but laws restricting gay people from marrying are
also similarly obvious right. KKK views about blacks, legal restrictions aimed
at black people voting, extremely clear what the right answer is.

~~~
gozur88
>Some issues have a clearly wrong side.

Very, very few, and pot legalization isn't one of them. Whether or not it
makes sense depends entirely on what you value and what you think the result
will be a decade or two from now.

------
Dowwie
Imagine what thousands of really stoned customers at a casino buffet would do.
It would bankrupt him!

------
gm-conspiracy
How effective are these ad dollars when competing against presidential and
congressional ad campaigns?

------
squozzer
Probably cutting into his revenue stream.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Good.

------
yolesaber
Pretentious old men playing at running the world. But the world left them a
long time ago.

~~~
oldmanjay
I understand how that's an emotionally appealing sentiment, but I'd be
disappointed to learn you actually believe it, since it's so wrong as to be
useless in deal with the real world.

~~~
yolesaber
It's gonna get legalized. And then his efforts will be seen as laughable.

~~~
oldmanjay
Then I suppose your sentiment was expressed as a plural because you don't like
to bother being precise with your thoughts?

Edit: now I see you were just dropping a reference. That makes your post even
less tasteful in my eyes.

~~~
yolesaber
I'm not here to make friends

------
drcross
It's obvious to me that drug lords are paying him to do this. Casinos are
notorious money laundering enterprises. The people who stand to lose the most
are propping him up to say this, the drug gangs. Funneling money through a
casino operator to support your cause make absolute sense.

------
mudil
I know I am in minority here, but I believe cannabis is not good for society
and for individuals using it. I've seen in my own family how chronic cannabis
use stupefied and lowered once smart, energetic and bright individuals, who
now have short term memory issues, constant cough, and reek like skunks.

~~~
jimhefferon
The problem is that it is an on-balance thing.

I don't see how we can make all drugs legal and just say "Hey, if you want to
ruin your life with heroin then go for it" because then we have people being
violent, robbing, etc. That is, the cost of enforcing is worth it, in a big
way.

But with pot, the cost of enforcement is very high, particularly in people's
lives disrupted, for a societal cost that is small. It seems to me, even as a
non-user, that there are a great number of people who use at least
occasionally, and attempting enforcement is sweeping back the tide.

Basically, when everybody does it, then we have effectively decided that it is
a societal norm.

~~~
hx87
> "Hey, if you want to ruin your life with heroin then go for it"

The problem is with the "ruin your life" part, not the "heroin" part. If we
really want government to get involved, they should get involved when people's
lives are being ruined, not when someone is merely making, distributing, or
using a substance.

