Great article linked through at fark.com about legalization and taxation of the Evil Weed.
http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/legalize-it-2
Mr. AND-1 over at the forums has wrapped it up quite brilliantly:
“The problem is it would ruin the wrong people.
Like the pharmaceutical companies that push their substitute legal drugs, the politicians who depend on campaign contributions to keep it illegal, the for-profit prisons that profit from the stock of poor kids they lock up, the corrupt cops that live off the bribes and collars, the towns and cities that profit from the confiscations, the good cops that depend on the easy arrests, the prosecutors that get easy promotions for locking up poor minorities, the judges that need the constant stream of cases to justify their paychecks. The list goes on and on and on.
So it is not that marijuana isn’t already a substantial contributor to the economy. It is just that it is not a particularly conscionable contributor. But if you are part of the corruption and greed, you will fight to keep it illegal.
Unfortunately, the people who can actually change this, are the same people that profit from it being illegal.”
I’d have to chip in that, in 2007, according to the FBI’s “Uniform Crime Report,” a record number of 872,721 people were arrested for marijuana violations, and 89 percent of those Americans were nabbed for “personal use.”
Those people are now slaves working under duress in the Prison Industrial Complex. Slavery in America.
Maybe now that we have a black President, we can get the Slavery ended?
