Round 2 - KY

1ac
 Plan
Plan: The United States should legalize nearly all marihuana in the United States through
conditional federal policy waivers.
 Warming Adv: 1AC
Warming

Conflict between state and federal marijuana laws threatens cooperative federalism
unpredictable shifts in federal enforcement antagonizes states and destroys cooperation
Grabarsky 13 (Todd, J.D., Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law; B.A., University of Pennsylvania. The author has previously served as a law clerk
to the Honorable Edward J. Davila of the United States District Court, Northern District of California, CONFLICTING FEDERAL AND STATE MEDICAL
MARIJUANA POLICIES: A THREAT TO COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM West Virginia Law Review, 116 W. Va. L. Rev. 1, Lexis)

IV. Shifting in Federal Executive Enforcement Policy: A Threat to Cooperative Federalism This Article now turns to the situation on the ground, exploring
the ways in which the federal executive - through efforts of the DEA and DOJ - has sought to enforce the federal drugs ban on medical marijuana despite
its limited legalization in California since the passage of the CUA in 1996. This Part then argues that these changes in federal enforcement
policy threaten state autonomy and federalism itself because they unfairly subject the states to the whims of the
federal government. This is especially true in an area - drug enforcement - with extremely limited federal
resources, and which, arguably, was envisioned as a joint state-federal cooperative enforcement scheme. In other
words, these federal executive fluctuations are a threat to cooperative federalism. A. Recent Changes in Federal Enforcement
of the CSA June 29, 2011, marks a mid-Obama Administration shift in the federal executive policy concerning enforcement of federal drug laws against
distributors and dispensaries operating in full compliance with state regulations. On that date, the DOJ released the Cole Memo, which sought to clarify
confusion among United States Attorneys regarding the Ogden Memo. n75 Specifically, the Cole Memo revitalized the drug enforcement focus to
prosecution of "commercial operations cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana," making no distinction between the cultivation, sale, or distribution of
marijuana for non-medical purposes and that for medical purposes. n76 The memo also stated that the illegality of medical marijuana at the federal level
- as well as compliance with state laws - provides no defense from federal prosecution and punishment. n77 Finally, in a foreshadow of the reality to
come in the next months, the Memo noted that individuals as well as banking institutions "who engage in transactions involving the proceeds of such
activity may also be in violation of federal money laundering statutes and other federal financial laws." n78 Since the Cole Memo, the federal
government markedly shifted its policy and execution of drug laws in California, an about-face which has resulted in a crackdown some commentators
consider to be more severe than the pre- [*17] Ogden Bush Administration policy. n79 The most pointed illustration of this new policy was a press
conference on October 7, 2011, during which four of the top United States Attorneys in California announced a series of new measures they were
planning to undertake to combat the spread of medical marijuana. n80 The group announced that distribution cooperatives have availed themselves of
the CUA and MMP in order to earn profits on the sale of medical marijuana. n81 They also iterated that compliance with state laws is not a defense or
justification for immunity from federal prosecution. n82 The measures the group outlined included filing civil lawsuits against owners of property that
allow the distributors to operate, in addition to filing criminal charges. n83 Right after the press conference, federal law enforcement agents began to
take increased action. Since October, federal agents have closed nearly two-thirds of the more than 200 medical marijuana distributors in San Diego.
n84 Within a month after the press conference, sixteen California dispensaries received warning letters from federal prosecutors to stop sales or risk
criminal charges or property seizure. n85 The U.S. Attorney in San Diego announced that she would target media outlets that advertise for medical
marijuana dispensaries. n86 [*18] And most recently, federal authorities in Oakland raided four sites of Oaksterdam University - an organization on the
front lines of the movement to legalize, tax, and regulate medical and recreational marijuana. n87 Other executive departments have come to the aid of
the DEA and DOJ: The Treasury Department has pressured banks to close accounts of medical marijuana businesses; the IRS has imposed additional
taxes on dispensaries; and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has ruled that card-carrying patients who receive medical
marijuana cannot purchase firearms. n88 B. The Threat to Cooperative Federalism As was shown in Part III.A, the state medical marijuana
laws are here to stay. Due to the state-federal cooperative aspect of the CSA, it is unlikely that Congress will
attempt to preempt the state drug laws, and there have been no inklings that federal appellate courts will find an
implied preemption. n89 Moreover, it remains unlikely that the federal government will be able to commandeer or
coax the state executive agencies into increasing enforcement or abandoning the state policies regarding
medical marijuana. n90 With reconciliation unlikely to come about via the federal legislature or judiciary, the
federal executive has attempted to subvert the state medical marijuana laws through increased federal
enforcement. This attempt, however, is an unsustainable, short-term fix to reconcile the conflicting state-federal
laws because the federal government simply does not have enough resources to continue prosecuting all
medical marijuana dispensaries acting in compliance with California state law. Therefore, the Cole Memo's federal
policy shift and increased federal enforcement of the CSA can only be seen as an attempt to disrupt state
medical marijuana laws through the federal executive branch. The policy of unpredictable, increased
enforcement has resulted in antagonizing states like California which were designated - under the CSA and
comprehensive federal drug policy - as allies in fighting the War on Drugs. Examples of this range from the idiosyncratic to the more
serious. Pertaining to the former category, after an increase in raids on

California medical marijuana dispensaries in the early years of the Bush Administration, the mayor and several city council members of [*19] Santa Cruz
observed a medical marijuana giveaway, specifically in protest of a federal raid on a local cannabis collective. n91 More seriously, though, in 2008,
California state legislators introduced a bill that would bar state law enforcement officials from assisting federal executive agents in executing the federal
drug policy that diverges from state law. n92 And, as described, the official policy of the California Department of Justice is also one of non-cooperation:
In light of California's decision to remove the use and cultivation of physician-recommended marijuana from the scope of the state's drug laws, this Office
recommends that state and local law enforcement officers not arrest individuals or seize marijuana under federal law when the officer determines from
the facts available that the cultivation, possession, or transportation is permitted under California's medical marijuana laws. n93 In response to a
statement by a spokesman for the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney General that "at the end of the day, California law doesn't matter," the California State
Attorney General expressed concern that "an overly broad federal enforcement campaign will make it more difficult for legitimate patients to access
physician-recommended medicine in California." n94 In the context of the CSA and nationwide drug enforcement, cooperation
between the state and federal governments is crucial. Federalism in this sense, can be viewed as a cooperation
between the states and the federal government, or, as noted, what one scholar characterizes as a "state-federal partnership
in carrying out federal policy." n95 The term "cooperative federalism" is particularly apropos in this context, given the federal government's
dependency on state enforcement and regulatory efforts to carry out the CSA. n96 The federal executive's disruption of the state drug
enforcement and regulatory scheme abrogates the cooperative effort whereby the state and federal government
have a unity of interests - for example, enforcing the marijuana prohibition against non-medical recreation users
or users and distributors of other drugs that remain [*20] prohibited on both the federal and state levels. In
essence, the federal executive's unpredicted and unrestrained shifts in enforcement policy - with their disruption
of the state regulatory scheme and antagonizing of the state governments - threaten cooperative federalism . If
federalism is to be viewed as a cooperation between dual-sovereigns, then increased federal enforcement measures can even be viewed as a threat to
federalism itself. Some scholars have even deemed this decriminalization and regulation of medical marijuana an example of "uncooperative
federalism," where states like California attempt to assert their autonomy vis-a-vis the federal government despite the fact that the federal drug laws
were set up as a state-federal cooperative enforcement scheme. n97

This dispute over marijuana is the most important in a generation and has broader
implications for cooperative federalism
Grabarsky 13 (Todd, J.D., Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law; B.A., University of Pennsylvania. The author has previously served as a law clerk
to the Honorable Edward J. Davila of the United States District Court, Northern District of California, CONFLICTING FEDERAL AND STATE MEDICAL
MARIJUANA POLICIES: A THREAT TO COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM West Virginia Law Review, 116 W. Va. L. Rev. 1, Lexis)

A looming problem with the changes in the federal executive policy involves the way in which the federal drug
prohibition is enforced. Essentially, federal enforcement agents rely on the assistance, infrastructure, and know-
how of the states; just one example of this is the estimate that 99% of drug-related investigations and arrests are
carried out by state agents. n10 As such, the regulation of marijuana can be seen as a cooperation between the
states and the federal government - what this Article will refer to as " cooperative federalism ," a term that refers
not just to a state-federal cooperation, but also a collaboration where states preserve authority to make policy
and enforcement decisions. n11 However, conflicts and changes in marijuana laws and enforcement policy -
especially as blatant as the Ogden-Cole Memos' shift - pose a potential disruption of this scheme of cooperation.
The 2012 Election heightened the stakes for the way in which marijuana is regulated. On November 6, 2012, voters in two states, Washington and
Colorado, approved ballot initiatives, which essentially legalized the limited cultivation, distribution, possession, and usage of marijuana for recreational -
in contrast to medical - purposes. n12 Since then, these two referenda were signed into law, making Washington and Colorado the only two states to
have legalized non-medical marijuana. But the legalization of recreational marijuana in Washington and Colorado is but one chapter in the history of the
drug in the United States. Novel [*5] about those ballot measures is that they legalize marijuana for recreational purposes; medical marijuana has been
legal in California since 1996, n13 and is now permitted in one form or another in twenty-one of the fifty states as well as the District of Columbia. n14 As
states began to take control of legislative policy with regard to medical marijuana by passing laws permitting its limited usage, a gray area of legality
precipitated. On the one hand, the cultivation, distribution, and usage of medical marijuana is permitted and,
arguably, encouraged, by many of the states through their systems of taxation and regulation; yet on the other
hand, it remains categorically forbidden at the federal level. n15 This nebulous zone of legality has broader
implications for the United States' system of federalism. Indeed, one prominent scholar deemed the state-federal
conflict of marijuana laws to be " one of the most important federalism disputes in a generation ." n16 This Article
focuses on this nebulous zone of law enforcement, in which an activity remains both a violation of federal law and one that is permitted and even,
perhaps, encouraged by states and their regulatory schemes. The about-face in federal executive policy as shown by the shift from the Ogden to Cole
Memos suggests that state regulation of medical marijuana can be de facto undermined by the federal government through prosecution of individuals
who are otherwise following state laws and guidelines. n17 This can be seen as a threat to cooperative federalism: at one moment, state legislative acts
and the voter referenda assure states that they will be permitted to regulate medical marijuana and implement the necessary bureaucracies and
infrastructure to do so; at the next, changes in federal law enforcement initiatives disrupt states' regulatory schemes.

Legalizing marijuana by allowing states to conditionally opt-out of the CSA creates a robust
framework for cooperative federalism
Erwin Chemerinsky et al, Jolene Forman, Allen Hopper and Sam Kamin March 19, 2014 "Cooperative Federalism and Marijuana Regulation"
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2411707 Erwin Chemerinsky is a professor at the University of California and Irvine School of Law.
Jolene Forman works for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. Allen Hopper works for the ACLU of Northern California. Sam Kamin
is a professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law

We propose, below, an amendment to the CSA that would allow states and the federal government to cooperatively
enforce and regulate marijuana. As with the CAA, CWA, and ACA, state law would be govern in states that have legalized recreational or
medical marijuana, and federal law would supplement state law only when states defer to federal law or fail to satisfy federal requirements. 165 Just as
the EPA works with states to enforce air and water pollution laws, federal agencies could continue to cooperate with opt-out states
and local governments to enforce marijuana laws. However, state laws and regulations would control within those
states borders, rather than the CSA. Much as AEDPA incentivizes states to adopt federal priorities related to state habeas proceedings,
amending the CSA to include a cooperative federalism framework for marijuana laws would give the federal
government influence over the enforcement and regulatory priorities of those states that choose to ease
prohibitions on marijuana. By requiring opt-out states to comply with specific federal marijuana enforcement and
regulatory priorities, such an approach would incentivize states which have much greater drug enforcement
resources than the federal government166 to use local law enforcement resources to help enforce federal
priorities. Simply stated, the federal government can incentivize state marijuana enforcement and regulatory
priorities by requiring opt-out states to comply with enumerated guidelines in order to avoid CSA oversight
within their borders.

Cooperative federalism is key to solve climate change

Snyder and Binder 09 (Jared, Assistant Commissioner for Air Resources, Climate Change and Energy, and Jonathan, Office of General
Counsel, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation,"The Changing Climate of Cooperative Federalism: The Dynamic Role of the
States in a National Strategy to Combat Climate Change" UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy, 27 UCLA J. Envtl. L. & Pol'y 231, accessed 8-
26-14, Lexis)

The inactivity of the Bush Administration in the area of climate

The Case for Federalism: Application to Global Climate Change
change over the past eight years has led to a flowering of state actions, like those described above in New York State, from state
r enewable p erformance s tandards and energy efficiency programs to the development of RGGI and other
emerging state cap-and-trade programs. These programs have had, and will continue to have, tremendous value as
they reduce GHG emissions , build a thriving green energy economy , and serve as the laboratory for further
efforts at the federal, international or multi-state level. Once the federal government finally begins meaningful
action - whether in the form of federal cap-and-trade legislation, administrative regulation of GHG emissions, or otherwise - the role for
continued state and local efforts will be equally critical, or even more essential. A federal program should take advantage of the
progress that has been demonstrated at the state level. The recent history of climate regulation demonstrates that many of the
traditional economic incentives that have led to a so-called "race to the bottom" in some areas of environmental
policy are reversed in the case of climate change , as it is often in a state's self-interest economically and
otherwise to work towards additional GHG emission reductions. Furthermore, there are collective benefits that will
accrue to the nation as a whole from allowing states to continue to operate unfettered in the climate change
context, even after the federal government finally establishes its climate change policy. Finally, there is no legitimate federal policy
reason for preventing a state or region from implementing additional climate change policies that impose
additional costs only on its own sources. Indeed, a state's interest in positioning its sources to compete effectively in an interstate
marketplace provides a sufficient constraint on state exuberance. When determining the appropriate roles for the different levels of government in
climate change policy, the question is not simply whether or not federal climate change legislation should preempt state and local laws. Instead, the
question is whether the federal government can enact policies that fully address climate [*247] change in the most effective manner possible.
Undoubtedly, the most efficient and effective method of addressing climate change includes state and local
governments continuing to operate in a manner that is long-accepted under our system of federalism, wherein
they are collaborative partners with the federal government in working to address a complex and wide-ranging
problem. Without this kind of cooperative federalism, solving the climate change crisis may be further delayed or even
become impossible , and powers traditionally left to the states will be precluded by the federal government without any resulting collective benefit.
A. Climate Change and the Dynamics of Cooperative Federalism While the climate change crisis may differ from other environmental problems in many
ways, it is similar in that the best approach to mitigate and adapt to the problem requires a comprehensive approach involving
multiple levels of government. Over the past several decades, many of the major success stories in
environmental law contain some type of cooperative federalism approach; restraining one or both levels of government in the
overall equation often has negative results. n24 Recognizing the value of state action, Congress has rarely enacted laws that preempt state and local
action completely, especially when that state and local action supplements the protection of public health and the environment provided by the federal
statute. n25 In the rare instances that Congress has preempted state action, its policy choice has been dictated by the interstate and international nature
of commerce at issue. n26 [*248] The fairly short history of environmental regulation in the United States has been characterized by an ebb-and-flow of
action at the state and federal levels. Prior to the enactment of the major federal environmental laws starting in the 1960s, the states were the primary
forces in protecting environmental quality, relying on nascent state laws as well as the common law of public nuisance. After Congress passed a
multitude of federal laws and created the Environmental Protection Agency in the 1960s and 1970s, the space for states to act seemed less important.
But times change, and as Washington became gridlocked on environmental policy in the 1990s and continuing into this decade, the initiative returned to
the states, especially in the realm of climate policy. n27 Although it appears that we are moving into another period of federal action, the pendulum will
undoubtedly swing back again in the future. The recent history of climate change regulation has defied the conventional
wisdom that states, left to their own devices, will engage in a so-called "race to the bottom ," in which some states eschew
environmental requirements in order to gain a competitive advantage economically over the other states. Federal environmental laws have been seen as
necessary to counter the "race to the bottom" by the states. Under this scenario, a federal response to the environmental problem is often necessary to
set a uniform regulatory "floor" that requires each state to at least meet a minimum level of environmental protection. In fact, it is largely because of this
dynamic that the major federal environmental laws of the early 1970s, including the Clean Air Act, came to fruition. n28 Instead
of a "race to the bottom," climate change has engendered what may be called a "race to the top. " n29 In many ways,
the reasons for the "race to the top" are similar to the reasons for the "race to the bottom," in that states are
trying to gain an economic [*249] advantage. n30 In fact, states have seen many policies that address climate change
not as a burden on commerce, but as an economic opportunity. Research, manufacturing and deployment of
"green" technologies can generate well-paying jobs in the short term and create new anchor industries in the
long term. These technologies can then be sold to the rest of the country and the world, providing additional
economic and environmental benefits. Part of the reason for a particular state to act even in the absence of federal action is to be a leader
in new and emerging markets. In the event Congress finally enacts some form of comprehensive climate change legislation, states will still have many of
the same motivations to engage in a "race to the top," with potential changes only in terms of degree. With a properly designed piece of legislation, the
continuing "race to the top" can have numerous positive effects, in terms of national and state economic benefits, as well as national and state GHG
emission reductions. B. Collective Benefits of State and Local Government Action to Combat Climate Change State and local efforts to
reduce GHG emissions have already played a valuable role in reducing GHG emissions in the United States. Such
efforts have also helped in developing strategies for reducing GHG emissions that can serve as a model for
federal and international action, and in positioning the U nited S tates to join in and lead international efforts to reduce
GHG emissions . Even if the federal government finally implements real measures to address climate change, state and local action will continue
to have substantial benefits. 1. States as "Laboratories" and the Need for Ongoing Innovation One of the primary benefits of state environmental action
is that it enables states to develop new and more effective or efficient models of environmental regulation. As Justice Brandeis observed, while a state
may incur additional expenses or decide to impose extra risk on itself, "it is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous
State may, if its citizens [*250] choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." n31
In this sense, allowing states the ability to develop their own strategies to further reduce GHG emissions operates as a sort of insurance policy for the
national economy. This is because an innovation that fails at the state level will, of course, have less of an impact on the national economy than a federal
attempt at innovation that fails. State efforts to date are influencing the development of a federal program profoundly. In particular, RGGI has provided an
important template for action by the federal government and other states in several ways. It is demonstrating the mechanics of developing a cap-and-
trade program for carbon dioxide. This is especially true in areas such as offsets and the auctioning of CO(2) allowances. Prior to the development of
RGGI, there was little discussion in Washington about auctioning CO(2) allowances. Now, given RGGI's example of auctioning nearly 100 percent
ofCO(2) allowances, the only debate seems to be how quickly to move to 100 percent auctioning of allowances. n32 In fact, President Obama's recent
budget proposal makes clear the administration's intent for the forthcoming federal cap-and-trade program to include 100 percent auctioning of
allowances. n33 The actual process for conducting RGGI auctions will also serve as a detailed model for federal legislation or regulation, particularly
given the success of the RGGI auctions to date. Once comprehensive federal climate change legislation is finally enacted, the need for ongoing
innovation and additional development of policy mechanisms will not just disappear. Continued improvements in policy will likely be necessary to
develop new means of further reducing GHG emissions. State and local level action is often the most effective way to accomplish this continual policy
enhancement. Even if a particular state innovation does not result in net reductions within a federal cap, it [*251] could provide a policy model for
reducing emissions further into the future. 2. State and Local Programs Can Reduce the Cost of Meeting a Federal Cap State and local programs can
facilitate compliance with a federal program by reducing the overall cost of a given level of nationwide emissions reduction. Even advocates of
preemption recognize the value of complementary policies at the sub-national level, including in areas such as "appliance efficiency standards, building
codes, land use decisions, performance standards, public transit, and incentives to increase efficiency." n34 These policies address market
imperfections and barriers such as lack of consumer information about the financial benefits of efficient products, disconnect between the buyers and
users of equipment (e.g., rental housing), entrenched energy systems, research and development spillover effects, and other related issues. By reducing
the demand for carbon-intensive energy, these state programs and policies reduce the pressure on achieving a given federal GHG goal. Ignoring these
barriers could potentially result in the federal program accruing higher costs and higher allowance prices than necessary. State programs that reduce the
demand for carbon-containing energy through measures such as state efficiency programs and standards,
improved land use and transportation planning, renewables deployment and cap-and-trade n35 will reduce the cost of federal allowances by lowering
the demand for such allowances. n36 Reduced federal allowance prices will result in reduced consumer price impacts and reduced costs for other [*252]
covered entities outside of the state. Because costs of compliance and consumer price impacts are both significant political variables in policy design,
these effects could create the political opportunity for the federal government to further ratchet down the federal cap over time. In other words,
aggressive state action, even if it is more expensive for the state, can lead to additional benefits by facilitating more stringent federal action. Certain
redundancies that result from an overlapping cooperative federalism approach are actually desirable. Many federal laws contain some form of
redundancy in authority among the different levels of government. Although such redundancy may not be perfectly efficient, it is sometimes more
effective than a less redundant approach.
n37 Other approaches - including those that are more purely federal, exclusively state-controlled or more precisely divided between the two levels - have
certain benefits, but also notable flaws. A cooperative and sometimes redundant approach still realizes these benefits - including a reduced overall cost
of a given level of national GHG emission reductions - while also avoiding most of the costs. n38 3. Enabling Further Action in the Future Allowing
for the possibility of continued state innovation also gives states the ability to encourage and affect further
federal action. With climate change, this has happened over the past several years in an environment of federal
inaction. Even if Congress finally does pass some form of comprehensive GHG emission reduction legislation,
additional efforts may become necessary in the future. New technologies will likely be needed on an ongoing
basis. Just as the auction of allowances was a new [*253] policy innovation, so too might a new policy mechanism be developed by state or local
governments once a federal cap-and-trade program is in place. But if Congress decides to preclude ongoing progress by the state
and local governments, such necessary future innovation may be impossible. As explained above, the history of
environmental regulation has been characterized by an ebb-and-flow of action between the federal and state
governments. We appear to be entering an era of federal action on climate change after a lengthy period in which
states filled the vacuum left by federal inaction. But the pendulum is sure to swing back in the future, and the
possibility - even likelihood - of the return of a period of federal gridlock a decade or two in the future dictates the
need to keep all the tools in the toolbox, including the ability to act at the state level. Furthermore, states are able to
respond more quickly than the federal government to new information and scientific and technological
developments. New information is always being developed in the climate change area , including information regarding the
scope and timing of the response needed, the technological options available for mitigating climate change, and the economics of responding to climate
change. In areas of environmental protection, states are often able to act more quickly to adapt to new
circumstances. n39 We must be mindful of the possibility - indeed the likelihood - that a federal response will be
inadequate from the outset. It is virtually certain that any federal legislation will not be completely
comprehensive; it will probably not apply to 100 percent of the nation's GHG emissions. Additionally, a federal bill
might not be sufficiently stringent to avoid the most damaging effects of climate change in its first incarnation.
This could be due to a variety of factors including political compromise, poor policy design choices, or lack of
information. This is particularly relevant to the changing nature of climate science. As we learn more about the
earth's climate system and our impact upon it, it is possible we will have to accelerate reductions beyond what is
deemed to be "necessary" today. [*254] In this regard, the reduction targets in all the major federal bills are based on the scientific consensus
on the need to keep atmospheric CO(2) concentrations below 450 parts per million, which requires emission reductions in the developed world of 80
percent by midcentury. However, there is a growing minority view - led by Dr. James Hansen and the writer Bill McKibben - that contends that we have
already exceeded the safe level of 350 ppm, meaning that much more dramatic action is needed. n40 Five to ten years from now, this minority view may
become the majority view, sparking recognition of the need for more action. By then, however, power in Washington may have returned to less
progressive leadership, requiring states to fill the void once again. It is difficult to predict exactly what further action, if any, may be
necessary in the future. But this is precisely the reason for allowing the states to take further action if it does
become necessary. The dynamic of the last eight years - in which states act in an environment of federal inaction
- could very well happen again. Ignoring this history will make it even more likely that this history will be
repeated, to the detriment of the nationwide environment and economy.

Warming is real, human caused, and causes extinctionacting now is key to avoid
catastrophic collapse
Dr. David McCoy et al., MD, Centre for International Health and Development, University College London, Climate Change and Human Survival,
BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL v. 348, 4214, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g2510, accessed 8-31-14.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its report on the impacts of global warming. Building on its recent update of
the physical science of global warming [1], the IPCCs new report should leave the world in no doubt about the scale and
immediacy of the threat to human survival , health, and well-being. The IPCC has already concluded that it is virtually certain
that human influence has warmed the global climate system and that it is extremely likely that more than half of
the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 is anthropogenic [1]. Its new report outlines the
future threats of further global warming: increased scarcity of food and fresh water; extreme weather events; rise in sea
level; loss of biodiversity; areas becoming uninhabitable; and mass human migration, conflict and violence. Leaked
drafts talk of hundreds of millions displaced in a little over 80 years. This month, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
added its voice: the well being of people of all nations [is] at risk. [2] Such comments reaffirm the conclusions of the Lancet/UCL
Commission: that climate change is the greatest threat to human health of the 21st century. [3] The changes seen so farmassive
arctic ice loss and extreme weather events, for examplehave resulted from an estimated average temperature rise of 0.89C since 1901. Further
changes will depend on how much we continue to heat the planet. The release of just another 275 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide
would probably commit us to a temperature rise of at least 2Can amount that could be emitted in less than eight years. [4] Business as
usual will increase carbon dioxide concentrations from the current level of 400 parts per million (ppm), which is a 40% increase from
280 ppm 150 years ago, to 936 ppm by 2100, with a 50:50 chance that this will deliver global mean temperature rises of more than 4C. It is now widely
understood that such a rise is incompatible with an organised global community. [5]. The IPCC warns of tipping points in the Earths
system, which, if crossed, could lead to a catastrophic collapse of interlinked human and natural systems. The AAAS
concludes that there is now a real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with
highly damaging impacts on people around the globe. [2] And this week a report from the World Meteorological Office (WMO) confirmed that
extreme weather events are accelerating. WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud said, There is no standstill in global warming . . . The laws of physics
are non-negotiable. [6]
 Marijuana Industry Adv: 1AC
Advantage 1 is the Marijuana Industry:

State-level legalization is inevitable and will lock us into an unregulated system dominated by
big marijuanaconditional policy waivers are key to solve
Kleiman 14 (Mark, professor of public policy at UCLA, March/April/May 2014, "How Not to Make a Hash Out of Cannabis Legalization" Washington
Monthly) www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/features/how_not_to_make_a_hash_out_of049291.php?page=all

Maybe you think the gains of legalizing marijuana will outweigh the costs; maybe you dont. But thats quickly
becoming a moot point. Like it or not, legalization is on its way , unless something occurs to reverse the current trend in public
opinion. In any case, it shouldnt be controversial to say that, if we are to legalize cannabis, the policy aim going forward should
be to maximize the gains and minimize the disadvantages. But the systems being put in place in Colorado and
Washington arent well designed for that purpose, because they create a cannabis industry whose commercial
interest is precisely opposite to the public interest. Cannabis consumption, like alcohol consumption, follows the so-
called 80/20 rule (sometimes called Paretos Law): 20 percent of the users account for 80 percent of the volume . So from
the perspective of cannabis vendors, drug abuse isnt the problem; its the target demographic. Since we can
expect the legal cannabis industry to be financially dependent on dependent consumers, we can also expect that
the industrys marketing practices and lobbying agenda will be dedicated to creating and sustaining problem
drug use patterns. The trick to legalizing marijuana, then, is to keep at bay the logic of the market its tendency to
create and exploit people with substance abuse disorders. So far, the state-by-state, initiative-driven process
doesnt seem up to that challenge . Neither the taxes nor the regulations will prevent substantial decreases in retail prices, which matter
much more to very heavy users and to cash-constrained teenagers than they do to casual users. The industrys marketing efforts will be
constrained only by rules against appealing explicitly to minors (rules that havent kept the beer companies from sponsoring
Extreme Fighting on television). And theres no guarantee that other states wont create even looser systems. In Oregon, a
proposition on the 2012 ballot that was narrowly defeated (53 percent to 47 percent) would have mandated that five of the seven members of the
commission to regulate the cannabis industry be chosen by the growersindustry capture, in other words, was written into the proposed law. It remains
to be seen whether even the modest taxes and restrictions passed by the voters survive the inevitable industry pressure to weaken them legislatively.
There are three main policy levers that could check cannabis abuse while making the drug legally available. The
first and most obvious is price. Roughly speaking, high-potency pot on the illegal market today costs about $10 to $15 per gram. (Its cheaper
in the medical outlets in Colorado and Washington.) A joint, enough to get an occasional user stoned more than once, contains about four-tenths of a
gram; that much cannabis costs about $5 at current prices. The price in Amsterdam, where retailing is tolerated but growing is still seriously illegal, is
about the same, which helps explain why Dutch use hasnt exploded under quasi-legalization. If we too want to avoid a vast increase in heavy cannabis
use under legalization, we should create policies to keep the price of the drug about where it is now. The difficulty is that marijuana is both relatively
cheap compared to other drugs and also easy to grow (thus the nickname weed), and will just get cheaper and easier to grow under legalization.
According to RAND, legal production costs would be a small fraction of the current level, making the pre-tax value of the cannabis in a legally produced
joint pennies rather than dollars. Taxes are one way to keep prices up. But those taxes would have to be ferociously high, and theyd have to be
determined by the ounce of pot or (better) by the gram of THC, as alcohol taxes now are, not as a percentage of retail price like a sales tax. Both
Colorado and Washington have percentage-of-price taxes, which will fall along with market prices. In states where it was legal, cannabis taxes would
have to be more than $200 an ounce to keep prices at current levels; no ballot measure now under consideration has taxes nearly that high. Collecting
such taxes wouldnt be easy in the face of interstate smuggling, as the tobacco markets illustrate. The total taxes on a pack of cigarettes in New York
City run about $8 more than the taxes on the same pack in Virginia. Lo and behold, theres a massive illicit industry smuggling cigarettes north, with
more than a third of the cigarettes sold in New York escaping New York taxes. Without federal intervention, interstate smuggling of
cannabis would be even worse. Whichever state had the lowest cannabis taxes would effectively set prices for
the whole country, and the supposed state option to keep the drug illegal would fall victim to inflows from neighboring states. The other way to
keep legal pot prices up is to limit supply. Colorado and Washington both plan to impose production limits on growers. If those limits were kept tight
enough, scarcity would lead to a run-up in price. (Thats happening right now in Colorado; prices in the limited number of commercial outlets open on
January 1 were about 50 percent higher than prices in the medical outlets.) But those states are handing out production rights for modest fixed licensing
fees, so any gain from scarcity pricing will go to the industry and encourage even more vigorous marketing. If, instead, production quotas were put up for
auction, the gain could go to the taxpayers. Just as a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions can be made to mimic the effects of a carbon tax,
production quotas with an auction would be the equivalent of taxes. The second policy lever government has is information: it can
require or provide product labeling, point-of-sale communication, and outreach to prevent both drug abuse and
impaired driving. In principle, posting information about, say, the known chemical composition of one type of cannabis versus another could help
consumers use the drug more safely. How that plays out in practice depends on the details of policy design. Colorado and Washington require testing
and labeling for chemical content, but techniques for helping consumers translate those numbers into safer consumption practices remain to be
developed. The fact that more than 60 percent of cannabis user-days involve people with no more than a high school education creates an additional
challenge, one often ignored by the advanced-degree holders who dominate the debate. The government could also make sure
consumers are able to get high-quality information and advice from cannabis vendors . In Uruguay, for example, which is
now legalizing on the national level, the current proposal requires cannabis vendors to be registered pharmacists. Cannabis is, after all, a somewhat
dangerous drug, and both much more complex chemically and less familiar culturally than beer or wine. In Washington and Colorado, by contrast, the
person behind the counter will simply be a sales agent, with no required training about the pharmacology of cannabis and no professional obligation to
promote safe use. A more radical approach would be to enhance consumers capacity to manage their own drug use with a program of user-determined
periodic purchase limits. (See A Nudge Toward Temperance.) All of these attempts by government to use information to limit abuse, however, could be
overwhelmed by the determined marketing efforts of a deep-pocketed marijuana industry. And the courts creation of a legal category called commercial
free speech radically limits attempts to rein in those marketing efforts (see Haley Sweetland Edwards, The Corporate Free Speech Racket). The
commercial free speech doctrine creates an absurd situation: both state governments and the federal government can constitutionally put people in
prison for growing and selling cannabis, but theyre constitutionally barred from legalizing cannabis with any sort of marketing restriction designed to
prevent problem use. Availability represents a third policy lever. Where can marijuana be sold? During what hours? In
what form? Theres a reason why stores put candy in the front by the checkout counters; impulse buying is a
powerful phenomenon. The more restrictive the rules on marijuana, the fewer new people will start smoking and
the fewer new cases of abuse well have. Colorado and Washington limit marijuana sales to government-licensed pot stores that have to
abide by certain restrictions, such as not selling alcohol and not being located near schools. But theyre free to advertise. And theres nothing to keep
other states, or Colorado and Washington a few years from now, from allowing pot in any form to be sold in grocery stores or at the 7-Eleven. (Two years
before legalizing cannabis, Washingtons voters approved a Costco-sponsored initiative to break the state monopoly on sales of distilled spirits.) To
avoid getting locked into bad policies, lawmakers in Washington need to act, and quickly. I know its hard to imagine
anything good coming out of the current Congress, but theres no real alternative. Whats needed is federal legislation requiring states
that legalize cannabis to structure their pot markets such that they wont get captured by commercial interests .
There are any number of ways to do that, so the legislation wouldnt have to be overly prescriptive. States could, for
instance, allow marijuana to be sold only through nonprofit outlets, or distributed via small consumer-owned co-ops (see Jonathan P. Caulkins,
Nonprofit Motive). The most effective way, however, would be through a system of state-run retail stores. Theres plenty of precedent for this: states
from Utah to Pennsylvania to Alabama restrict hard liquor sales to stateoperated or state-controlled outlets. Such ABC (alcoholic beverage control)
stores date back to the end of Prohibition, and operationally they work fine. Similar pot control stores could work fine for marijuana, too. A state store
system would also allow the states to control the pot supply chain. By contracting with many small growers, rather than a few giant ones, states could
check the industrys political power (concentrated industries are almost always more effective at lobbying than those comprised of many small
companies) and maintain consumer choice by avoiding a beer-like oligopoly offering virtually interchangeable products. States could also insist
that the private growers sign contracts forbidding them from marketing to the public . Imposing that rule as part of a vendor
agreement rather than as a regulation might avoid the commercial free speech issue, thus eliminating the specter of manipulative marijuana
advertising filling the airwaves and covering highway billboards. To prevent interstate smuggling, the federal government should
do what it has failed to do with cigarettes: mandate a minimum retail price. Of course, theres a danger that states themselves,
hungry for tax dollars, could abuse their monopoly power over pot, just as they have with state lotteries. To avert that outcome, states should avoid the
mistake they made with lotteries: housing them in state revenue departments, which focus on maximizing state income. Instead, the new
marijuana control programs should reside in state health departments and be overseen by boards with a majority
of health care and substance-abuse professionals. Politicians eager for revenue might still press for higher pot sales than would be
good for public health, but theyd at least have to fight a resistant bureaucracy. How could the federal government get the states to
structure their pot markets in ways like these? By giving a new twist to a tried-and-true tool that the Obama
administration has wielded particularly effectively: the policy waiver. The federal government would recognize the legal status
of cannabis under a state systemmaking the activities permitted under that system actually legal , not merely
tolerated, under federal lawonly if the state system contained adequate controls to protect public health and
safety, as determined by the attorney general and the secretary of the department of health and human services.
That would change the politics of legalization at the state level, with legalization advocates and the cannabis
industry supporting tight controls in order to get, and keep, the all-important waiver. Then we would see the
laboratories of democracy doing some serious experimentation.

Scenario 1: Environmental Justice

Unregulated marijuana cultivation has a massive environmental impactfederal legalization is

key to enable regulatory oversight
Zuckerman 13 (Seth, journalist, 10-31-13, "Is Pot-Growing Bad for the Environment?" The Nation) www.thenation.com/article/176955/pot-growing-
bad-environment?page=0,2

As cannabis production has ramped up in Northern California to meet the demand for medical and black-market marijuana, the
ecological impacts of its cultivation have ballooned . From shrunken, muddy streams to rivers choked with algae
and wild lands tainted with chemical poisons, large-scale cannabis agriculture is emerging as a significant threat
to the victories that have been won in the region to protect wilderness, keep toxic chemicals out of the environment, and rebuild salmon runs
that had once provided the backbone of a coast-wide fishing industry. River advocate Scott Greacen has spent most of his career fighting dams
and the timber industry, but now hes widened his focus to include the costs of reckless marijuana growing. Last year was a time of region-wide rebound
for threatened salmon runs, but one of his colleagues walked his neighborhood creek and sent a downbeat report that only a few spawning fish had
returned. Even more alarming was the condition of the creek bed: coated with silt and mud, a sign that the water quality in this stream was going
downhill. The problem with the weed industry is that its impacts are severe, its not effectively regulated, and its
growing so rapidly, says Greacen, executive director of Friends of the Eel River, which runs through the heart of the marijuana belt. That
lack of regulation sets marijuanas impacts apart from those that stem from legal farming or logging, yet the 76-
year-old federal prohibition on cannabis has thwarted attempts to hold its production to any kind of
environmental standard . As a result, the ecological impact of an ounce of pot varies tremendously, depending on
whether it was produced by squatters in national forests, hydroponic operators in homes and warehouses,
industrial-scale operations on private land, or conscientious mom-and-pop farmers. Consumers could exert
market power through their choices, if only they had a reliable, widely accepted certification program , like the ones
that guarantee the integrity of organic agriculture. But thanks to the prohibition on pot, no such certification program exists for
cannabis products. To understand how raising some dried flowersthe prized part of the cannabis plantcan damage the local
ecosystem, you first have to grasp the skyrocketing scale of backwoods agriculture on the redwood coast. Last
fall, Scott Bauer of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife turned a mapping crew loose on satellite photos
of two adjoining creeks. In the Staten Islandsized area that drains into those streams, his team identified more
than 1,000 cannabis farms, estimated to produce some 40,000 small-tree-sized plants annually. Bauer holds up the maps, where each
greenhouse is marked in blue and each outdoor marijuana garden in red, with dots that correspond to the size of the operation. It looks like the
landscape has a severe case of Technicolor acne. In the last couple of years, the increase has been exponential , Bauer says. On the
screen, you can toggle back and forth between the 2010 aerial photo and the one from 2012. Where there had been one or two sites, now there are ten. Each of those sites represents industrial
development in a mostly wild landscape, with the hilly terrain flattened and cleared. When someone shaves off a mountaintop and sets a facility on it, Bauer says, thats never changing. The topsoil is
gone. The displaced soil is then spread by bulldozer to build up a larger flat pad for greenhouses and other farm buildings. But heavy winter rains wash some of the soil into streams, Bauer explains,
where it sullies the salmons spawning gravels and fills in the pools where salmon fry spend the summer. Ironically, these are the very impacts that resulted from the worst logging practices of the last
century. We got logging to the point that the rules are pretty tight, Bauer says, and now theres this whole new industry where nobody has any idea what theyre doing. You see guys building roads who
have never even used a Cat [Caterpillar tractor]. Were going backwards. Then theres irrigation. A hefty cannabis plant needs several gallons of water per day in the rainless summer growing season,
which doesnt sound like much until you multiply it by thousands of plants and consider that many of the streams in the area naturally dwindle each August and September. In the summer of 2012, the two
creeks that Bauers team mapped got so low that they turned into a series of disconnected pools with no water flowing between them, trapping the young fish in shrinking ponds. Its a serious issue for the
coho salmon, Bauer says. How is this species going to recover if theres no water? The effects extend beyond salmon. During several law enforcement raids last year, Bauer surveyed the creeks
supplying marijuana farms to document the environmental violations occurring there. Each time, he says, he found a sensitive salamander species above the growers water intakes, but none below them,
where the irrigation pipes had left little water in the creek. On one of these raids, he chastised the grower, who was camped out onsite and hailed from the East Coast, new to the four- to six-month dry
season that comes with Californias Mediterranean climate. I told him, Youre taking most of the flow, man, Bauer recalls. Its just a little tiny creek, and youve got three other growers downstream. If
youre all taking 20 or 30 percent, pretty soon theres nothing left for the fish. So he says, I didnt think about that. While some growers raise their pot organically, many do not. Once you get to a certain
scale, its really hard to operate in a sustainable way, Greacen says. Among other things, youve got a monoculture, and monocultures invite pests. Spider mites turn out to be a particular challenge for
greenhouse growers. Tony Silvaggio, a lecturer at Humboldt State University and a scholar at the campuss year-old Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research, found that potent poisons
such as Avid and Floramite are sold in small vials under the counter at grower supply stores, in defiance of a state law that requires they be sold only to holders of a pesticide applicators license. Nor are
just the workers at risk: the miticides have been tested for use on decorative plants, but not for their impacts if smoked. Otherwise ecologically minded growers can be driven to spray with commercial
pesticides, Silvaggio has found in his research. After youve worked for months, if you have an outbreak of mites in your last few weeks when the buds are going, youve got to do somethingotherwise
you lose everything, he says. Outdoor growers face another threat: rats, which are drawn to the aromatic, sticky foliage of the cannabis plant. Raids at growing sites typically find packages of the long-
acting rodent poison warfarin, which has begun making its way up the food chain to predators such as the rare, weasel-like fisher. A study last year in the online scientific journal PLOS One found that
more than 70 percent of fishers have rat poison in their bloodstream, and attributed four fisher deaths to internal bleeding triggered by the poison they absorbed through their prey. Deep in the back-
country, Silvaggio says, growers shoot or poison bears to keep them from raiding their encampments. The final blow to environmental health from outdoor growing comes from fertilizers. Growers dump
their used potting soil, enriched with unabsorbed fertilizers, in places where it washes into nearby streams and is suspected of triggering blooms of toxic algae. The deaths of four dogs on Eel River
tributaries have been linked to the algae, which the dogs ingest after swimming in the river and then licking their fur. The cannabis industryor what Silvaggio calls the marijuana-industrial complexhas
been building toward this collision with the environment ever since California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996, legalizing the medicinal use of marijuana under state law. Seven years later, the
legislature passed Senate Bill 420, which allows patients growing pot with a doctors blessing to form collectives and sell their herbal remedy to fellow patients. Thus were born the storefront dispensaries,
which grew so common that they came to outnumber Starbucks outlets in Los Angeles. From the growers point of view, a 100-plant operation no longer had to be hidden, because its existence couldnt be
presumed illegal under state law. So most growers stopped hiding their plants in discreet back-country clearings or buried shipping containers and instead put them out in the open. As large grows became
less risky, they proliferatedand so did their effects on the environment. Google Earth posted satellite photos taken in August 2012, when most outdoor pot gardens were nearing their peak. Working with
Silvaggio, a graduate student identified large growing sites in the area, and posted a Google Earth flyover tour of the region that makes it clear that the two creeks Bauers team studied are representative
of the situation across the region. With all of the disturbance from burgeoning backwoods marijuana gardens, it might seem that raising cannabis indoors would be the answer. Indoor growers can tap into
municipal water supplies and dont have to clear land or build roads to farms on hilltop hideaways. But indoor growing is responsible instead for a more insidious brand of damage: an outsize carbon
footprint to power the electric-intensive lights, fans and pumps that it takes to raise plants inside. A dining-table-size hydroponic unit yielding five one-pound crops per year would consume as much
electricity as the average US home, according to a 2012 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Policy. All told, the carbon footprint of a single gram of cannabis is the same as driving seventeen miles
in a Honda Civic. In addition, says Kristin Nevedal, president of the Emerald Growers Association, the tendency indoors is to lean toward chemical fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides to stabilize the
man-made environment, because you dont have the natural beneficials that are found outdoors. Nevertheless, the appeal of indoor growing is strong, explains Sharon (not her real name), a single
mother who used to raise marijuana in the sunshine but moved her operation indoors after she split up with her husband. Under her 3,000 watts of electric light, she raises numerous smaller plants in a
space the size of two sheets of plywood, using far less physical effort than when she raised large plants outdoors. Its a very mommy-friendly business that provides a dependable, year-round income,
she says. Sharon harvests small batches of marijuana year-round, which fetch a few hundred dollars more per pound than outdoor-grown cannabis because of consumers preferences. Sharons growing
operation supports her and her teenage daughter in the rural area where she settled more than two decades ago. Add up the energy used by indoor growers, from those on Sharons scale to the
converted warehouses favored by urban dispensaries, and the impact is significantestimated at 3 percent of the states total power bill, or the electricity consumed by 1 million homes. On a local level,
indoor cannabis production is blocking climate stabilization efforts in the coastal city of Arcata, which aimed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent over twelve years. But during the first half of
that period, while electricity consumption was flat or declining slightly statewide, Arcatas household electrical use grew by 25 percent. City staff traced the increase to more than 600 houses that were
using at least triple the electricity of the average homea level consistent with a commercial cannabis operation. The city has borne other costs, too, besides simply missing its climate goals. Inexpertly
wired grow houses catch fire, and the conversion of residential units to indoor hothouses has cut into the citys supply of affordable housing. Last November, city voters approved a stiff tax on jumbo
electricity consumers. Now the city council is working with other Humboldt County local governments to pass a similar tax so that growers cant evade the fee simply by fleeing the city limits, says City
Councilman Michael Winkler. We dont want any place in Humboldt County to be a cheaper place to grow than any other. And since this is the Silicon Valley of marijuana growing, there are a lot of
reasons why people would want to stay here if theyre doing this, he says. My goal is to make it expensive enough to get large-scale marijuana growing out of the neighborhoods. A tax on excessive
electricity use may seem like an indirect way of curbing household cannabis cultivation, but the city had to back away from its more direct approacha zoning ordinancewhen the federal government
Attempts in neighboring Mendocino
threatened to prosecute local officials throughout the state if they sanctioned an activity that is categorically forbidden under US law.

County to issue permits to outdoor growers meeting environmental and public-safety standards were foiled when
federal attorneys slapped county officials with similar warningillustrating, yet again, the way prohibition
sabotages efforts to reduce the industrys environmental damage. Indeed, observers cite federal cannabis
prohibition as the biggest impediment to curbing the impacts of marijuana cultivation , which continues to expand despite
a decades-long federal policy of zero tolerance. We
dont have a set of best management practices for this industry, partly
because of federal prohibition, says researcher Silvaggio. If a grower comes to the county agricultural
commissioner and asks, What are the practices I can use that can limit my impact?, the county ag guy says, I
cant talk to you about that because we get federal money.

Lack of industry regulation causes widespread use of banned pesticides

Gabriel et al 13 (Mourad, Greta Wengert, Mark Higley, Shane Krogan, Warren Sargent, and Deana Clifford, 4-11-13, "Silent Forests?
Rodenticides on Illegal Marijuana Crops Harm Wildlife" Wildlife Society News) news.wildlife.org/twp/2013-spring/silent-forests/
Problem Spreading Like Weeds Illegal
marijuana growing is not just a problem for wildlife. The High Sierra Volunteer Trail
Crew is a nonprofit trail-maintenance crew that has spent the past seven years maintaining and cleaning trails
throughout the Sierra Nevadas national forests. In the mid-2000s, the group realized that risks associated with
large-scale marijuana production throughout most, if not all, California national forests threatened backcountry
use of public lands. Since then, the trail crews Environmental Reclamation Team ( ERT) has remediated more
than 600 large-scale marijuana cultivation sites on public lands. The numbers are daunting , especially when
considering that these 600 sites were in only two of Californias 17 national forests and may constitute only a fraction of the
actual marijuana cultivation sites that exist in these forests. Tommy Lanier, Director of the National Marijuana Initiative, a White
House supported program, states that 60 percent to 70 percent of the national marijuana seizures come from California annually, and of those totals,
about 60 percent comes from public lands. Based on data from ERT-remediated sites, at least 50 percent of them have
SGARs. Beyond finding anticoagulant rodenticides, the team and other remediation groups frequently find and
remove restricted and banned pesticides including organo- phosphates, organochlorines, and carbamates as well as
thousands of pounds of nitrogen-rich fertilizers. Many of the discovered pesticides have been banned for use in
the U.S., Canada, and the European Union, specifically certain carbamates, which gained notoriety worldwide after an
explosion of public awareness about their use to kill African wildlife. Unfortunately, these same malicious uses are occurring in
California, where marijuana cultivators place pourable carbamate pesticides in opened tuna or sardine cans in
order to kill black bears, gray foxes, raccoons, and other carnivores that damage marijuana plants or raid food caches at grow-
site encampments. In many cases, law enforcement officers approaching grow sites observe wildlife exposed to what officers call wildlife bombs
due to their high potential for mass wildlife killing. For example, as federal and state officers approached a grow site in Northern
California, they discovered a black bear and her cubs seizing and convulsing as they slowly succumbed to the neurological effects of these pesticides.
Because toxicants are usually dispersed throughout cultivation sites, it is remarkably difficult to detect and remove all pesticide threats.

Pesticides have a disproportionate impact on low-income communities, communities of color,

and farmworkers
CPR No Date (Californians for Pesticide Reform, "Environmental Justice") www.pesticidereform.org/section.php?id=10

Environmental Justice (EJ) concerns coincide with many pesticide issues throughout the state of California. Low
income communities and communities of color suffer the greatest risks and impacts of pesticide use in
California. Everyone in California is not affected equally by pesticides: certain communities, especially
farmworkers, bear the brunt of greater risk of and greater illness from pesticide exposure. Farmworkers in
California - over 700,000 and mainly people of color - live and work on the front lines of a toxic barrage and
experience more reported acute pesticide poisoning cases than any other segment of California's population.

Scenario 2: Worker Exploitation

A. Women: Exploitation of and violence against women in the marijuana industry is common
nowlegalization is key to eliminate the culture of secrecy that facilitates abuse
Fendrick 13 (Sabrina, staff writer, 5-30-14, "Marijuana Prohibition Puts Industry Women at Risk" NORML) blog.norml.org/2013/05/30/prohibition-
puts-women-at-risk/

As more women are drawn to Humboldt Countys marijuana trade and off-grid lifestyle, a local battered-womens
shelter has noticed a growing trend of violent encounters . The Standard-Examiner reports that, The bulk of cases
involve single young women aged 18 to 26, who may travel to the area and are lured to farms by promises of work, money and, often,
romance. The women are hired for trim work, which involves cleaning freshly harvested pot and preparing it for
sale. Most women who survive violence are hesitant to seek help in general. The women in the pot-growing
business however, are under even more pressure to keep quiet because they are part of a culture that promotes
secrecy. There is no doubt the pot-growing industry supports the local economy by pumping much-needed cash into the community. The problem is
however, that because
farm owners and managers (most of whom are male) are running illegal operations under
federal law, standard employment regulations such as working conditions and sexual harassment laws do not
apply . The Director of W.I.S.H (Womens Crisis Center of Southern Humboldt), points out that, Men managing the farms can
be paranoid over the threat of raids or people stealing the plants. Womens cell phones may be taken away and
they may not be allowed to leave until seasons end. Some are forced off farms at gunpoint without being paid.
Women may be beaten or psychologically controlled. The cycle of violence is perpetuated by an underground,
black market economy. This is just one more reason marijuana needs to be legalized and regulated. Moving the entire
marijuana industry above ground will protect workers rights , hold employers accountable, and remove the
culture of secrecy that continues to foster female exploitation.

B. Migrants: the marijuanas quasi-legal status allows for the exploitation of migrant works
full legalization solves
Burns 13 (Ryann, investigative reporter, 11-14-13, "Smoke Organic" North Coast Journal) www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/smoke-
organic/Content?oid=2421570

It's widely assumed that when Mexicans get arrested at a pot grow, they must be members of a drug cartel. That assumption is often wrong. As with
every other crop grown and harvested in California, you can't identify where the profits go based on the ethnicity of the laborers in the fields. According
to Bruce Hilbach-Barger, one of the volunteers who helped organize last week's cleanup , many of the men tending local grows are
exploited migrant workers, men who get picked up at the border or maybe a Home Depot parking lot and
told that if they come do "agricultural work" for a year, their families back home will get paid $10,000 up front.
After a year's work the workers may get paid another $15,000. In the meantime, they're captive. They can't leave
in search of a better gig because a) they're in the middle of nowhere, and b) their employers know where their
families live. And laborers aren't the only victims of exploitation in this system. Our public lands are being dammed, graded and sprinkled with
poisonous chemicals. On both fronts, marijuana's quasi-legal status actively promotes exploitation. The threat of arrest and asset
forfeiture drives grows onto remote public lands, where there are no assets (beyond the crops) to be seized, and where the ultimate profiteers may
rarely step foot. Obviously, law enforcement busts haven't slowed the "green rush." Destructive outlaw grows won't go away until
marijuana is fully legalized and regulated . But in the meantime, local tokers can at least make sure we're not contributing to the problem.
How? By doing what we do with food: Find out where it comes from, who's growing it and how. Support environmentally responsible growers. They do
exist.

Scenario 3: Racism

Despite state-level legalization, harsh federal penalties for marijuana remain on the books that
are disproportionately applied to people of color, causing numerous negative impacts
Wegman 14 (Jesse, member of the NYT Editorial board, 7-28-14, "The Injustice of Marijuana Arrests" New York Times)
www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/opinion/high-time-the-injustice-of-marijuana-arrests.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0 **this card edited for ableist language

the criminalization of marijuana has been perhaps the most

Americas four-decade war on drugs is responsible for many casualties, but
destructive part of that war. The toll can be measured in dollars billions of which are thrown away each year in the
aggressive enforcement of pointless laws. It can be measured in years whether wasted behind bars or stolen
from a child who grows up fatherless. And it can be measured in lives those damaged if not destroyed by the
shockingly harsh consequences that can follow even the most minor offenses. In October 2010, Bernard Noble, a
45-year-old trucker and father of seven with two previous nonviolent offenses, was stopped on a New Orleans
street with a small amount of marijuana in his pocket. His sentence: more than 13 years. At least he will be
released. Jeff Mizanskey, a Missouri man, was arrested in December 1993, for participating (unknowingly, he said) in
the purchase of a five-pound brick of marijuana. Because he had two prior nonviolent marijuana convictions, he
was sentenced to life without parole. Outrageously long sentences are only part of the story. The hundreds of
thousands of people who are arrested each year but do not go to jail also suffer; their arrests stay on their
records for years, [destroying] crippling their prospects for jobs, loans, housing and benefits. These are
disproportionately people of color, with marijuana criminalization hitting black communities the hardest.
Meanwhile, police departments that presumably have far more important things to do waste an enormous amount of time and taxpayer money chasing a
drug that two states have already legalized and that a majority of Americans believe should be legal everywhere. A Costly, Futile Strategy The
absurdity starts on the street, with a cop and a pair of handcuffs. As the war on drugs escalated through the
1980s and 1990s, so did the focus on common, low-level offenses what became known as broken windows
policing. In New York City, where the strategy was introduced and remains popular today, the police made fewer than
800 marijuana arrests in 1991. In 2010, they made more than 59,000. Nationwide, the numbers are hardly better.
From 2001 to 2010, the police made more than 8.2 million marijuana arrests; almost nine in 10 were for
possession alone. In 2011, there were more arrests for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes put
together. The costs of this national obsession, in both money and time, are astonishing. Each year, enforcing laws on
possession costs more than $3.6 billion, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. It can take a police officer many
hours to arrest and book a suspect. That person will often spend a night or more in the local jail, and be in court
multiple times to resolve the case. The public-safety payoff for all this effort is meager at best : According to a 2012
Human Rights Watch report that tracked 30,000 New Yorkers with no prior convictions when they were arrested for marijuana possession, 90 percent
had no subsequent felony convictions. Only 3.1 percent committed a violent offense. Continue reading the main story The
strategy is also
largely futile. After three decades, criminalization has not affected general usage; about 30 million Americans use
marijuana every year. Meanwhile, police forces across the country are strapped for cash, and the more resources they devote to enforcing
marijuana laws, the less they have to go after serious, violent crime. According to F.B.I. data, more than half of all violent crimes nationwide, and four in
five property crimes, went unsolved in 2012. The Racial Disparity The sheer volume of law enforcement resources devoted to
marijuana is bad enough. What makes the situation far worse is racial disparity. Whites and blacks use marijuana
at roughly the same rates; on average, however, blacks are 3.7 times more likely than whites to be arrested for
possession, according to a comprehensive 2013 report by the A.C.L.U. In Iowa, blacks are 8.3 times more likely to
be arrested, and in the worst-offending counties in the country, they are up to 30 times more likely to be
arrested. The war on drugs aims its firepower overwhelmingly at African-Americans on the street, while white users
smoke safely behind closed doors. Only about 6 percent of marijuana cases lead to a felony conviction; the rest are often treated as misdemeanors
resulting in fines or probation, if the charges arent dismissed completely. Even so, every arrest ends up on a persons record, whether
or not it leads to prosecution and conviction. Particularly in poorer minority neighborhoods, where young men are more likely to be
outside and repeatedly targeted by law enforcement, these arrests accumulate. Before long a person can have an extensive criminal
history that consists only of marijuana misdemeanors and dismissed cases. That criminal history can then
influence the severity of punishment for a future offense, however insignificant. While the number of people behind bars
solely for possessing or selling marijuana seems relatively small 20,000 to 30,000 by the most recent estimates, or roughly 1 percent of Americas 2.4
million inmates that means nothing to people, like Jeff Mizanskey, who are serving breathtakingly long terms because their records contained minor
previous offenses. Nor does it mean anything to the vast majority of these inmates who have no history of violence (about nine in 10, according to a
2006 study). And as with arrests, the racial disparity is vast: Blacks are more than 10 times as likely as whites to go
to prison for drug offenses. For those on probation or parole for any offense, a failed drug test on its own can
lead to prison time which means, again, that people can be put behind bars for smoking marijuana. Even if a
person never goes to prison, the conviction itself is the tip of the iceberg. In a majority of states, marijuana
convictions including those resulting from guilty pleas can have lifelong consequences for employment,
education, immigration status and family life. A misdemeanor conviction can lead to, among many other things, the
revocation of a professional license; the suspension of a drivers license; the inability to get insurance, a
mortgage or other bank loans; the denial of access to public housing; and the loss of student financial aid . In
some states, a felony conviction can result in a lifetime ban on voting, jury service, or eligibility for public
benefits like food stamps. People can be fired from their jobs because of a marijuana arrest. Even if a judge
eventually throws the case out, the arrest record is often available online for a year, free for any employer to look
up.
2ac
 T
We meetconditional policy waivers are a method of legalization
Mark Kleiman 14, Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis,
March/April/May 2014, How Not to Make a Hash Out of Cannabis Legalization, The Washington Monthly,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/features/how_not_to_make_a_hash_out_of049291.php?page=all
How could the federal government get the states to structure their pot markets in ways like these? By giving a new
twist to a tried-and-true tool that the Obama administration has wielded particularly effectively: the policy waiver. The federal
government would recognize the legal status of cannabis under a state system making the activities permitted
under that system actually legal , not merely tolerated, under federal law only if the state system contained adequate controls to protect
public health and safety, as determined by the attorney general and the secretary of the department of health and human services. That would change the politics of
legalization at the state level, with legalization advocates and the cannabis industry supporting tight controls in order to get, and keep, the all-important waiver. Then we would
see the laboratories of democracy doing some serious experimentation.

2. Counter-interp: Legalization includes a regulatory framework

OHear 04 (Michael, Assistant Professor, Marquette University Law School. J.D., Yale Law School, 1996; B.A., Yale College, 1991, April 2004,
Federalism and Drug Control Vanderbilt Law Review, 57 Vand. L. Rev. 783, Lexis)

Legalization refers to legalization of the use, possession manufacture, and distribution of drugs; note, however, that
a legalization policy may include significant taxation and regulation of drugs, much as alcohol and tobacco, though legalized, are
subject to taxation and regulation.
 Wilderson
Legalizing marijuana will not end the drug war, but it is a step in the right direction that has
tangible positive effects and can build momentum for broader movements
Franklin and Title 14 - Neill Franklin is the Executive Director at Leap, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition; Shaleen Title is a social justice
activist for marijuana legalization and author of Ending the Drug War: A Dream Deferred (Neill Franklin and Shaleen Title, 3 Reasons Marijuana
Legalization in Colorado Is Good for People of Color, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neill-franklin/marijuana-legalization-race-racism-
minorities_b_4651456.html)

As the president acknowledged, marijuana

prohibition targets black and brown people (even though marijuana users are equally or
passing legalization laws, as Colorado and Washington have, will reduce this racial
more likely to be white). Ending prohibition through
disparity. The war on drugs, as we all know, has led to mass criminalization and incarceration for people of color. The
legalization of marijuana, which took effect for the first time in the country in Colorado on January 1, is one step toward ending that
war. While the new law won't eradicate systemic racism in our criminal justice system completely, it is one of the most
effective things we can do to address it. Here are three concrete ways that Colorado's law is good for people of color. 1. The new law
means there will be no more arrests for marijuana possession in Colorado. Under Colorado's new law, residents 21 or older can
produce, possess, use and sell up to an ounce of marijuana at a time. This change will have a real and measurable impact on people of color in
Colorado, where the racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests have been reprehensible. In the last ten years,
Colorado police arrested blacks for marijuana possession at more than three times the rate they arrested whites , even though
whites used marijuana at higher rates. As noted by the NAACP in its endorsement of the legalization law, it's particularly bad in Denver, where almost
one-third of the people arrested for private adult possession marijuana are black, though they make up only 11% of the population. These arrests can
have devastating and long-lasting consequences. An arrest record can affect the ability to get a job, housing, student loans and public benefits. As law
professor Michelle Alexander describes, people (largely black and brown) who acquire a criminal record simply for being caught with marijuana are
relegated to a permanent second-class status. When we make marijuana legal, we stop those arrests from happening. 2. Unlike
under decriminalization, the new law means there will be no more arrests for mere marijuana possession in Colorado,
period. In the Jan. 6 article "#Breaking Black: Why Colorado's weed laws may backfire for black Americans," Goldie Taylor mistakenly suggests that
Colorado's new legalization law may "further tip the scales in favor of a privileged class already largely safe from criminalization." Much of the
stubborn "this-changes-nothing" belief about the new law stems from confusion between decriminalization and
legalization . There is a profound difference between the hodgepodge of laws known collectively as "decriminalization" passed in several states over
the past 30 years, and Colorado's unprecedented legalization law. Decriminalization usually refers to a change in the law which removes criminal but not
civil penalties for marijuana possession, allowing police to issue civil fines (similar to speeding tickets), or require drug education or expensive treatment
programs in lieu of being arrested. Because of the ambiguity in some states with decriminalization, cops still arrest users with
small amounts of marijuana due to technicalities, such as having illegal paraphernalia, or for having marijuana in "public view" after asking them to
empty their pockets. One only need look as far as the infamous stop-and-frisk law in New York, where marijuana is decriminalized, to
see how these ambiguities might be abused to the detriment of people of color. InColorado, however, the marijuana industry is now
legal and above-ground. People therefore have a right to possess and use marijuana products, although as with alcohol, there are restrictions
relating to things like age, driving, and public use. Police won't be able to racially profile by claiming they smelled marijuana or
saw it in plain view. 3. We will reduce real problems associated with the illicit market. As marijuana users shift to making purchases at regulated
stores, we'll start to see improvement in problems that were blamed on marijuana but are in fact consequences of its prohibition. The
violence related to the street-corner drug trade will begin to fall as the illicit market is slowly replaced by well-guarded stores with
cameras and security systems. And consumers will now know what they're getting; instead of buying whatever's in a baggie, they have the benefit of
choosing from a wide variety of marijuana products at the price level and potency they desire.

Wildersons argument is denies agency and links to anti-politics

B 11 (Dr. Sar Maty, Professor of Film University of Portsmouth and Co-Editor The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, The US
Decentred: From Black Social Death to Cultural Transformation, Cultural Studies Review, 17(2), September, p. 385-387)

Wildersons blackassocialdeath
A few pages into Red, White and Black, I feared that it would just be a matter of time before
idea and multiple attacks on issues and scholars he disagrees with run (him) into (theoretical)
trouble.This happens in chapter two, The Narcissistic Slave, where he critiques black film theorists and books. For example, Wilderson
declares that Gladstone Yearwoods Black Film as Signifying Practice (2000) betrays a kind of conceptual anxiety with respect to the
historical object of study ... it clings, anxiously, to the filmastextaslegitimate object of Black cinema. (62) He then quotes from
Yearwoods book to highlight just how vague the aesthetic foundation of Yearwoods attempt to construct a canon can be. (63) And yet
Wildersons highlighting is problematic because it overlooks the Diaspora or African Diaspora, a key
component in Yearwoods thesis that, crucially, neither navelgazes (that is, at the US or black America) nor pretends to properly engage
with black film. Furthermore, Wilderson
separates the different waves of black film theory and approaches
them, only, in terms of how a most recent one might challenge its precedent. Again, his approach is
problematic because it does not mention or emphasise the interconnectivity of/in black film theory. As a
case in point, Wilderson does not link Tommy Lotts mobilisation of Third Cinema for black film theory to Yearwoods idea of African
 Diaspora. (64) Additionally, of course, Wilderson seems unaware that Third Cinemaitself has been fundamentally
questionedsince Lotts 1990s theory of black film was formulated. Yet another consequence of ignoring the African Diaspora is that it
exposes Wildersons corpus of films as unable to carry the weight of the transnational argument he
attempts to advance. Here, beyond the UScentricity or social and political specificity of [his] filmography, (95) I am talking about
Wildersons choice of films. For example, Antwone Fisher (dir. Denzel Washington, 2002) is attacked unfairly for failing to acknowledge a
grid of captivity across spatial dimensions of the Black body, the Black home, and the Black community (111) while films like Alan and
Albert Hughess Menace II Society (1993), overlooked, do acknowledge the same grid and, additionally, problematise Street Terrorism
Enforcement and Prevention Act (STEP) policing. The above examples expose the fact of Wildersons dubious and
questionable conclusions on black film. Red, White and Black isparticularly undermined by Wildersons
propensity for exaggeration and blinkeredness. In chapter nine, Savage Negrophobia, he writes: The
philosophical anxiety of Skins is all too aware that through the Middle Passage, African culture became
Black style ... Blackness can be placed and displaced with limitless frequency and across untold territories, by
whoever so chooses. Most important, there is nothing real Black people can do to either check or direct this process ... Anyone can say
nigger because anyone can be a nigger. (235)7 Similarly, in chapter ten, A Crisis in the Commons, Wilderson addresses the issue of
Black time. Black is irredeemable, he argues, because, at no time in history had it been deemed, or deemed through the right historical
moment and place. In other words, the black moment and place are not right because they are the ship hold of the Middle Passage: the
most coherent temporality ever deemed as Black time but also the moment of no time at all on the map of no place at all. (279) Not
only does Pinhos more mature analysis expose this point as preposterous (see below), I also wonder
what Wilderson makes of the countless historians and sociologists works on slave ships, shipboard
insurrections and/during the Middle Passage,8 or of groundbreaking jazzstudies books on cross
cultural dialogue like The Other Side of Nowhere (2004). Nowhere has another side, but once Wilderson
theorises blacks as socially and ontologically dead while dismissing jazz as belonging nowhere and to
no one, simply there for the taking, (225) there seems to be no way back. It is therefore hardly
surprising that Wilderson ducks the need to provide a solution or alternative to both his sustained
bashing of blacks and anti Blackness.9 Last but not least, Red, White and Black ends like a badly
plugged announcement of a bad Hollywood films badly planned sequel: How does one deconstruct
life? Who would benefit from such an undertaking? The coffle approaches with its answers in tow. (340)

And, his approach is reductionist and essentialist

Ellison 11 (Mary, PhD, Fellow, African American and Indian American history and culture, Keele University, Review of: Red, White and
Black: cinema and the structure of US antagonisms
http://rac.sagepub.com/content/53/2/100.full.pdf+html?rss=1, Acc: 8/5/12, og)
These are two illuminating, but frustratingly flawed books. Their approaches are different, although both frequently quote Frantz Fanon and
Jacques Lacan. Frank Wilderson utilises the iconic theoreticians within the context of a study that
concentrates on a conceptual ideology that, he claims, is based on a fusion of Marxism, feminism,
postcolonialism and psychology. He uses a small number of independent films to illustrate his theories .
Charlene Regester has a more practical framework. She divides her book into nine chapters devoted to individual female actors and then
weaves her ideological concepts into these specific chapters. Both have a problem with clarity. Regester uses less complex language than
Wilderson, but still manages to be obtuse at times. Wilderson starts from a position of using ontology and grammar
as his main tools, but manages to consistently misuse or misappropriate terms like fungible or fungibility.
Wilderson writes as an intelligent and challenging author, but is often frustrating. Although his language is complicated, his
concepts are often oversimplified. He envisions every black person in film as a slavewho is suffering from
irreparable alienation from any meaningful sense of cultural identity. He believes that filmmakers, including black
filmmakers, are victims of a deprivation of meaning that has been condensed by Jacques Lacan as a wall of language as well as an
inability to create a clear voice in the face of gratuitous violence. He cites Frantz Fanon, Orlando Patterson and Hortense Spiller as being
among those theorists who effectively investigate the issues of black structural non-communicability. His own attempts to define
what is black?, a subject?, an object?, a slave?, seem bound up with limiting preconceptions , and
he evaluates neither blackness nor the red that is part of his title in any truly meaningful way.

Progress key to positive change of the world and uncovering bad institutions Turns the K
(
Bronner 4 Stephen Eric, Professor of Political Science and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, Reclaiming the Enlightenment Columbia
University Press p. 18-20)

Forged amid the scientific revolution, the birth of modern idealism, and the struggle for political liberty, the term progress is usually seen as
having been coined by Fontenelle. But it is unnecessary to employ the word to believe in its feasibility. Progress is the crucial
category for talking about change, autonomy, and even making sense of reality. The current understanding of
progress, however, has become impoverished. The category has been flattened out. It is a travesty to reduce progress to
the disenchantment of the world, the dissolution of myths, and the substitution of knowledge for
fancy.2 Progress is, above all, an attack on the illusion of finality:3 closure, certainty, and utopia.
 Enlightenment thinkers believed that they were changing the world by formalizing empirical data under the abstract laws of nature
that were open to testing and observation. But these thinkers also knew that normative concerns were intertwined with
the quantitative extension of knowledge.4 They recognized that religion rested on revealed claims and
that the aristocracy justified its privileges by invoking a mythical past. Acceptance of such beliefs no
less than social evils now became understood less as the result of original sin than ignorance and
prejudice or those assumptions and opinions, customs and traditions, preserved from critical
reflection.5 With this change in the causation of misery and the new emphasis on reason came , quite
logically, the desire to better the condition of humanity. In the first instance, this meant throwing off the veils of
ignorance imposed by centuries of ideological oppression. The Magic Flute indeed expressed this fundamental
assumption of the Enlightenment that no dialectic would ever fully ruin: The rays of the sun Drive away the night;
Destroyed is the hypocrites Hidden might. The Enlightenment idea of progress ultimately implied
something very simple and very dramatic: transforming the invisible into the visible, the ineffable into
the discursive, and the unknown into the known. Hobbes put the matter well when he noted in De Cive (1642) that there is
a certain clue of reason whose beginning is in the dark; but by the benefit of whose conduct, we are led, as it were, by the hand into the
clearest light. It is secondary whether this meant clarifying the workings of electricity, translating ethical intuitions
into discursive statements, the activities of the market into economic laws, or fears about human nature into
institutions capable of constraining arbitrary power: Hegel only rendered absolute what had been the guiding impulse, the
regulative principle, of the general trend toward enlightenment when he based his Phenomenology of Mind on the famous assumption that
there is nothing in the essence of object that does not become evident in the series of its appearances. Marx would echo this sentiment
and provide it with an even more radical material formulation in the second of the Eleven Theses on Feuerbach where he writes: The
question whether objective (gegenstaendliche) truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of
theory but is a practical question. In practice man must prove the truth , that is, the reality and power, the this-
sidedness (Diesseitigkeit) of his thinking. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is
isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question. The Enlightenment envisioned progress as the process of bringing
what had once been shrouded in darkness into the light. This meant not simply recognizing existing differences
among people of different cultures as morally legitimate ,6 but also what is institutionally required in
order that people may safely exercise their differences. The crucial issue was , for this reason, never the
subjectivity of the subject. Advocates of the Enlightenment instead sought to foster the moral
autonomy of the individual over established traditions and the critical use of rationality against what Ernst
Cassirer termed mytho-poetical thinking. This enabled them to link progress with the extension of
freedom and the exercise of the intellect.
We should combine state-level efforts to slow climate change with the alternative
Christian Parenti, Professor, Sustainable Development, School for International Training, Graduate Institute, Climate Change: What Role for
Reform? MONTHLY REVIEW v. 65 n. 11, 414, http://monthlyreview.org/2014/04/01/climate-change-role-reform, accessed 4-24-14.

These measures could be realistic and effective in the short term. They are not my preferred version of social change, nor do
they solve all problems. And achieving even these modest emissions reducing reforms will require robust grassroots pressure. If capitalism
can transition off fossil fuels over the next several decades, that will merely buy time to continue struggling on
all other fronts; most importantly, on all other fronts of the environmental crisis. The left needs to have credible
proposals for dealing with the short-term aspects of the climate crisis as well as having a systematic critique
and vision of long-term change. Both should be advocated simultaneously , not pitted against each other. We are
compelled by circumstances to operate with multiple timeframes and at multiple scales . Reforms and reformism is
an important part of that. Given the state of the left globally, which outside of Latin America is largely in disarray, achieving socialism will take a
very long time indeed. Thus, the struggle for climate mitigation and adaptation cannot wait for revolution.

Use of debate as a space for critical consciousness-building sustains settler colonialism.

Tuck and Yang, 12
Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, State University of New York at New Paltz; University of California, San Diego; Decolonization is not a metaphor,
Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, Vol. 1., No. 1, 2012, pg. 19 //bghs-ms
Fanon told us in 1963 that decolonizing the mind is the first step, not the only step toward overthrowing colonial regimes. Yet we wonder whether
another settler move to innocence is to focus on decolonizing the mind, or the cultivation of critical
consciousness, as if it were the sole activity of decolonization; to allow conscientization to stand in for the more
uncomfortable task of relinquishing stolen land. We agree that curricula, literature, and pedagogy can be crafted to aid people in learning to see
settler colonialism, to articulate critiques of settler epistemology, and set aside settler histories and values in search of ethics that reject domination and
exploitation; this is not unimportant work. However, the front-loading of critical consciousness building can waylay
decolonization , even though the experience of teaching and learning to be critical of settler colonialism can be
so powerful it can feel like it is indeed making change. Until stolen land is relinquished, critical consciousness
does not translate into action that disrupts settler colonialism. So, we respectfully disagree with George Clinton and
Funkadelic (1970) and En Vogue (1992) when they assert that if you free your mind, the rest (your ass) will follow.
 Death
Value to life always exists
Frankl (Holocaust Survivor) 46 (Victor Frankl, Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna, Mans
Search for Meaning, 1946, p. 104)

But I did not only talk of the future and the veil which was drawn over it. I also mentioned the past; all its joys, and how its light shone even in
the present darkness. Again I quoted a poetto avoid sounding like a preacher myselfwho had written, Was Dii erlebst, k,ann keme
Macht der Welt Dir rauben. (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but all we have
done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being.
Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind. Then I spoke of the many opportunities of giving life a meaning. I told
my comrades (who lay motionless, although occasionally a sigh could be heard) that human life, under any
circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering
and dying, privation and death. I asked the poor creatures who listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to face up
to the seriousness of our position. They must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that
the hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and its meaning . I said that someone looks
down on each of us in difficult hoursa friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a Godand he would not expect us to disappoint him. He
would hope to find us suffering proudlynot miserablyknowing how to die.

Death imagery key to value to life

Fox, Philosophy Professor at Queens, 85 (Michael Allen, Nuclear War: Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Fox and
Groarke, p. 127)

There remains but one choice: we must seek a reduction of world tensions, mutual trust, disarmament, and peace.35 Security is not the
absence of fear and anxiety, but a
degree of stress and uncertainty with which we can cope and remain mentally
healthy. Forsecurity, understood in this way, to become a feature of our lives, we must admit our nuclear fear and
anxiety and identify the mechanisms that dull or mask our emotional and other responses . It is necessary to
realize that we cannot entrust security to ourselves, but, strange as it seems and however difficult to accept, must entrust it to our adversary
Just as the safety and security of each of us, as individuals, depends upon the good will of every other, any one of whom could harm us at
any moment, so the security of nations finally depends upon the good will of other nations, whether or not we willingly accept this fact. The
disease for which we must find the cure also requires that we continually come face to face with the
unthinkable in image and thought and recoil from it. 36 In this manner we can break its hold over us and free ourselves to begin new
initiatives. As Robert J. Lifton points out, confronting massive death helps us bring ourselves more in touch with
what we care most about in life. We [will then] find ourselves in no way on a death trip, but rather
responding to a call for personal and professional actions and commitments on behalf of that wondrous
and fragile entity we know as human life.

All lives are valuablemeans you should prefer util

Cummisky 96 (David, professor of philosophy at Bates, Kantian Consequentialism, p. 131)

even if one grants that saving two persons with dignity cannot outweigh and compensate for killing one
Finally,

because dignity cannot be added and summed in this waythis point still does not justify deontological constraints. On the
extreme interpretation, why would not killing one person be a stronger obligation than saving two persons? If I am

concerned with the priceless dignity of each, it would seem that I may still save two ; it is just that my reason cannot be that the two
compensate for the loss of the one. Consider Hill's example of a priceless object: If I can save two of three priceless statutes only by destroying one, then I cannot claim that saving two makes up for the
even if dignity cannot be simply summed up, how is the
loss of the one. But similarly, the loss of the two is not outweighed by the one that was not destroyed. Indeed,

that I should save as many priceless objects as possible ? Even if two do not simply outweigh and thus
extreme interpretation inconsistent with the idea

compensate for the loss of the one, each is priceless; thus, I have good reason to save as many as I can. In short , it is not clear how the
extreme interpretation justifies the ordinary killing/letting-die distinction or even how it conflicts with the conclusion that the more persons with dignity who are saved, the better.8

Climate apocalypticisism leads to activism that averts catastrophestudies prove robust

correlation
Veldman 12 doctoral candidate in the Religion and Nature program at the University of Florida (Robin Globus, Narrating the Environmental
Apocalypse, Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2012, Ethics & the Environment, online, MCR)

Environmental Apocalypticism and Activism As we saw in the introduction, critics often argue that apocalyptic rhetoric induces feelings of hopelessness
apocalypticism also often goes hand in hand
or fatalism. While it certainly does for some people, in this section I will present evidence that
with activism. Some of the strongest evidence of a connection between environmental apocalypticism and activism comes from a
national survey that examined whether Americans perceived climate change to be dangerous . As part of his analysis,
Anthony Leiserowitz identified several interpretive communities, which had consistent demographic
characteristics but varied in their levels of risk perception. The group who perceived the risk to be the greatest , which
he labeled alarmists, described climate change [End Page 5] using apocalyptic language, such as Badbadbadlike after
nuclear warno vegetation, Heat waves, its gonna kill the world, and Death of the planet (2005, 1440). Given such language, this would seem to be
a reasonable way to operationalize environmental apocalypticism. If such apocalypticism encouraged fatalism, we would expect
alarmists to be less likely to have engaged in environmental behavior compared to groups with moderate or low
levels of concern. To the contrary, however, Leiserowitz found that alarmists were significantly more likely to have
taken personal action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

(ibid.) than respondents who perceived climate change to pose less of a threat . Interestingly, while one might expect such
radical views to appeal only to a tiny minority, Leiserowitz found that a respectable eleven percent of Americans fell into this group (ibid). Further
supporting Leiserowitzs findings, in a separate national survey conducted in 2008, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, and Leiserowitz found that a group they
labeled the Alarmed (again, due to their high levels of concern about climate change) are the segment most engaged in the
issue of global warming. They are very convinced it is happening, human-caused, and a serious and urgent
threat. The Alarmed are already making changes in their own lives and support an aggressive national response
(2009, 3, emphasis added). This group was far more likely than people with lower levels of concern over climate change to have engaged in consumer
activism (by rewarding companies that support action to reduce global warming with their business, for example) or to have contacted elected officials to
express their concern. Additionally, the authors found that [w]hen asked which reason for action was most important to them
personally, the Alarmed were most likely to select preventing the destruction of most life on the planet (31%) (2009,
31)a finding suggesting that for many in this group it is specifically the desire to avert catastrophe , rather than some other motivation,
that encourages pro-environmental behavior . Taken together, these and other studies (cf. Semenza et al. 2008 and
DerKarabetia, Stephenson, and Poggi 1996) provide important evidence that many of those who think environmental
problems pose a severe threat practice some form of activism, rather than giving way to fatalistic resignation.
The state is inevitable and an indispensable part of the solution to environmental degradation
Eckersley 4 (Robyn, Reader/Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Melbourne, The Green State:
Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty, MIT Press, 2004, Google Books, pp. 3-8)
While acknowledging the basis for this antipathy toward the nation- state, and the limitations of state-centric analyses of global ecological degradation, I
seek to draw attention to the positive role that states have played, and might increasingly play, in global and
domestic politics. Writing more than twenty years ago, Hedley Bull (a proto-constructivist and leading writer in the English school) outlined
the state's positive role in world affairs, and his arguments continue to provide a powerful challenge to those
who somehow seek to "get beyond the state," as if such a move would provide a more lasting solution to the
threat of armed conflict or nuclear war, social and economic injustice, or environmental degradation .10 As Bull
argued, given that the state is here to stay whether we like it or not, then the call to get "beyond the state is a
counsel of despair , at all events if it means that we have to begin by abolishing or subverting the state, rather
than that there is a need to build upon it."" In any event, rejecting the "statist frame" of world politics ought not
prohibit an inquiry into the emancipatory potential of the state as a crucial "node" in any future network of global
ecological governance. This is especially so, given that one can expect states to persist as major sites of social and
political power for at least the foreseeable future and that any green transformations of the present political order
will, short of revolution, necessarily be state-dependent. Thus, like it or not, those concerned about ecological
destruction must contend with existing institutions

and, where possible, seek to "rebuild the ship while still at sea." And if states are so implicated in ecological destruction, then an inquiry
into the potential for their transformation even their modest reform into something that is at least more conducive to ecological sustainability would seem
to be compelling. Of course, it would be unhelpful to become singularly fixated on the redesign of the state at the
expense of other institutions of governance. States are not the only institutions that limit, condition, shape, and direct political power, and
it is necessary to keep in view the broader spectrum of formal and informal institutions of governance (e.g., local,
national, regional, and international) that are implicated in global environmental change. Nonetheless, while the state
constitutes only one modality of political power, it is an especially significant one because of its historical claims to exclusive rule over territory and
peoplesas expressed in the principle of state sovereignty. As Gianfranco Poggi explains, the political power concentrated in the state
"is a momentous, pervasive, critical phenomenon. Together with other forms of social power, it constitutes an
indispensable medium for constructing and shaping larger social realities, for establishing, shaping and
maintaining all broader and more durable collectivities ."12 States play, in varying degrees, significant roles in
structuring life chances, in distributing wealth, privilege, information, and risks, in upholding civil and political
rights, and in securing private property rights and providing the legal/regulatory framework for capitalism. Every
one of these dimensions of state activity has, for good or ill, a significant bearing on the global environmental
crisis. Given that the green political project is one that demands far-reaching changes to both economies and
societies, it is difficult to imagine how such changes might occur on the kind of scale that is needed without the
active support of states. While it is often observed that states are too big to deal with local ecological problems and too small to deal with global
ones, the state nonetheless holds, as Lennart Lundqvist puts it, "a unique position in the constitutive hierarchy from
individuals through villages, regions and nations all the way to global organizations. The state is inclusive of
lower political and administrative levels, and exclusive in speaking for its whole territory and population in
relation to the outside world."13 In short, it seems to me inconceivable to advance ecological emancipation without
also engaging with and seeking to transform state power. Of course, not all states are democratic states, and the green movement has long
been wary of the coercive powers that all states reputedly enjoy. Coercion (and not democracy) is also central to Max Weber's classic sociological
understanding of the state as "a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given
territory."14 Weber believed that the state could not be defined sociologically in terms of its ends* only formally as an organization in terms of the
particular means that are peculiar to it.15 Moreover his concept of legitimacy was merely concerned with whether rules were accepted by subjects as
valid (for whatever reason); he did not offer a normative theory as to the circumstances when particular rules ought to be accepted or whether beliefs
about the validity of rules were justified. Legitimacy was a contingent fact, and in view of his understanding of politics as a struggle for power in the
context of an increasingly disenchanted world, likely to become an increasingly unstable achievement.16 In contrast to Weber, my approach to the state
is explicitly normative and explicitly concerned with the purpose of states, and the democratic basis of their legitimacy. It focuses on the limitations of
liberal normative theories of the state (and associated ideals of a just constitutional arrangement), and it proposes instead an alternative green theory
that seeks to redress the deficiencies in liberal theory. Nor is my account as bleak as Weber's. The fact that states possess a monopoly of control over
the means of coercion is a most serious matter, but it does not necessarily imply that they must have frequent recourse to that power. In any event,
whether the use of the state's coercive powers is to be deplored or welcomed turns on the purposes for which that power is exercised, the manner in
which it is exercised, and whether it is managed in public, transparent, and accountable waysa judgment that must be made against a background of
changing problems, practices, and under- standings. The coercive arm of the state can be used to "bust" political
demonstrations and invade privacy. It can also be used to prevent human rights abuses, curb the excesses of
corporate power, and protect the environment. In short, although the political autonomy of states is widely
believed to be in decline, there are still few social institution that can match the same degree of capacity and
potential legitimacy that states have to redirect societies and economies along more ecologically sustainable
lines to address ecological problems such as global warming and pollution, the buildup of toxic and nuclear wastes
and the rapid erosion of the earth's biodiversity. Statesparticularly when they act collectivelyhave the capacity to curb the
socially and ecologically harmful consequences of capitalism. They are also more amenable to democratization than cor-
porations, notwithstanding the ascendancy of the neoliberal state in the increasingly competitive global economy. There are therefore many
good reasons why green political theorists need to think not only critically but also constructively about the state
and the state system. While the state is certainly not "healthy" at the present historical juncture, in this book I nonetheless join Poggi by offering
"a timid two cheers for the old beast," at least as a potentially more significant ally in the green cause .17
 1ar
State decrim inevitable
By David Francis, The Fiscal Times, Legalizing Pot Makes Mexican Cartels Even More Dangerous January 7, 2014
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/01/07/Legalizing-Pot-Makes-Mexican-Cartels-Even-More-Dangerous ac 5-19

The growing movement to legalize marijuana is radically altering the way Mexican drug cartels do business, forcing
them to seek other revenue streams through increased illegal activity. Right now, only Washington State and Colorado
have decriminalized pot. Taken together, they account for just a small portion of the American marijuana market. But
thats just the start of a trend thats growing like a weed. Peter Reuter, a professor at the University of Marylands School
of Public Policy and Department of Criminology, said he expects the decriminalization movement to grow rapidly in the coming
years. Ive always been quite skeptical that anything would come of these movements to decriminalize pot, he said. I think now that in five
years half the country will be living in states that have decriminalized marijuana. Wider decriminalization would
push the price of pot down, taking away a key revenue stream for cartels like Los Zetas and La Familia. Its pushing them
to dive deeper into illegal markets for other drugs. Its also forcing them to adopt tactics used by militant groups
in Africa, upping the ante with the Mexican government and putting them at odds with powerful energy interests.
Role playing as public actors shatters apathy and political alienation which is critical to check
inequality and exploitation
Mitchell 2k - Gordon Mitchell, Associate Professor of Communication at University of Pittsburgh, Winter 2000, Stimulated Public Argument As
Pedagogical Play on Worlds, Argumentation and Advocacy, vol 36, no 3, pq

When we assume the posture of the other in dramatic performance, we tap into who we are as persons, since our
interpretation of others is deeply colored by our own senses of selfhood. By encouraging experimentation in identity
construction, role-play "helps students discover divergent viewpoints and overcome stereotypes as they examine subjects
from multiple perspectives. . ." (Moore, p. 190). Kincheloe points to the importance of this sort of reflexive critical awareness as an essential
feature of educational practice in postmodern times. "Applying the notion of the postmodern analysis of the self, we come to see that hyperreality
invites a heteroglossia of being," Kincheloe explains; "Drawing upon a multiplicity of voices, individuals live out a variety of possibilities, refusing to
suppress particular voices. As men and women appropriate the various forms of expression, they are empowered to uncover new dimensions of
existence that were previously hidden" (1993, p. 96). This process is particularly crucial in the public argument context, since a key
guarantor of inequality and exploitation in contemporary society is the widespread and uncritical acceptance by citizens of
politically inert self-identities. The problems of political alienation, apathy and withdrawal have received lavish treatment as perennial topics
of scholarly analysis (see e.g. Fishkin 1997; Grossberg 1992; Hart 1998; Loeb 1994). Unfortunately, comparatively less energy has been
devoted to the development of pedagogical strategies for countering this alarming political trend. However, some scholars
have taken up the task of theorizing emancipatory and critical pedagogues , and argumentation scholars interested in expanding the
learning potential of debate would do well to note their work (see e.g. Apple 1995, 1988, 1979; Britzman 1991; Giroux 1997, 1988, 1987; Greene
1978; McLaren 1993, 1989; Simon 1992; Weis and Fine 1993). In this area of educational scholarship, the curriculum theory of currere, a
method of teaching pioneered by Pinar and Grumet (1976), speaks directly to many of the issues already discussed in this essay. As the Latin
root of the word "curriculum," currere translates roughly as the investigation of public life (see Kincheloe 1993, p. 146). According to
Pinar, "the method of currere is one way to work to liberate one from the web of political, cultural, and economic influences
that are perhaps buried from conscious view but nonetheless comprise the living web that is a person's biographic
situation" (Pinar 1994, p. 108). The objectives of role-play pedagogy resonate with -the currere method. By opening discursive
spaces for students to explore their identities as public actors, simulated public arguments provide occasions for students
to survey and appraise submerged aspects of their political identities. Since many aspects of cultural and political life work
currently to reinforce political passivity, critical argumentation pedagogies that highlight this component of students' self-
identities carry significant emancipatory potential.