I would personally like to add my suspicions on the real reasons behind this ridiculous prohibition:
I agree that there is a definite law-enforcement influence on the irrational prohibition - one only has to imagine a greedy cop who can confiscate houses, vehicles, cash, valuables, etc. - and then try to imagine him/her giving all this up just because it makes sense. Greed is a very powerful drug.
(There is, of course, L.E.A.P., but that is only a small percentage of those people.)
Since Pres. Reagan's escalation of the problem, the law enforcement community has been given more and more in the way of overbearing police power. They love the activity, the drama, the opportunities for "action" and bullying.
I believe they are drunk with power and filled with greed for more power and money and resources - which they are given, over and over, by our legislators who want to show people that they are "tough on crime".
Good grief. What a mess that is! There's more, but I won't go on about it.
But I also believe in another possible reason for this long-standing and irrational prohibition of cannabis: the fact that we're all here, in this place, talking seriously about legalizing cannabis.
Why should so many people do such a thing? It's not all greedy self-interest, like they experience in law-enforcement.
No, I believe that using cannabis liberates our minds in a very curious and interesting way.
I believe that cannabis is a very potent weapon of defense where psychological warfare is involved.
Psychological warfare is a very real part of the political world, of the real world. PsychOps, as it is called in some circles, is not some mysterious, far-out paranoid fantasy. It is a very real and powerful political tool.
Propaganda and 'spin' are large parts of psychological warfare, but there are many other mind-twisting tricks in the professional's arsenal that rarely see the light of public scrutiny.
"Oh," you might say, "don't go off on some rant about government mind-control!"
OK. I won't rant too much. Don't worry.
Consider a member of some strange, extreme religious cult:
How did this person
ever get to be like this?
It's amazingly easy. For the sake of saving space, I will just skim over the basics.
One: find a person under stress. The more extreme and emotional, the better. Physical stress works, too. Spiritual stress as well. This makes the person vulnerable to 'brain-washing'. I know this sounds ridiculous. But I am
absolutely not bull-sh**ing here.
If you'd like to check up on this, go ahead and get a good college-level psychology textbook. It's real. It happens.
Two: While your victim is vulnerable because of all this stress, fill their head with whatever line of crap you want. At least some of it will probably stick in their heads. The wilder the crap, the more times you need to 'rinse and repeat'.
Three: make sure that your mind-slaves know enough to hold fast to their new faith/ideas/orientations. So much so that they won't listen no matter what anyone says. Interestingly enough, this is an actual indicator of brain-washing. (Ever meet an extreme right-wing "believer"? They seemed mind-blocked against listening to anything you had to say, right? It's like that.)
Demagogues, hatemongers, and the like,
rely on such methods to sway their listeners, etc.
People living in fear and terror, living under severe stress are easily swayed.
You can drive people like sheep to whatever crazy corner you want them in - just as long as you keep them riled up. That's all. Just "riled-up". Anger, fear, hate, etc. That is all it takes.
Remember 9/11? Remember how everybody was so freaked out afterwards?
I hope you can also remember how certain people and groups took advantage of that:
*for the first time in history (as far as I know) the survivors and relatives of the victims became millionaires because of the donations that poured in. Why? No one did that for other survivors of other disasters before or since!
*Bush gave his cronies everything on their wishlists that he could. Remember Ashcroft's wishlist that became the Patriot Act? Even the name is a propaganda tool. Bush grabbed at everything, with a little help from 9/11. And got away with it because so many people, for some reason, were in severe shock over 9/11. I wasn't. We've had bombings and such before.
*Everything became "Patriot" this and "War against terror" that. Bush had a blank check and used it again and again. Flags were everywhere. Where are all those flags now?
Face it. The whole USA was running around like a herd of terrified, mindless sheep. It was shameful. People were herded in directions they would never have gone otherwise.
Bush even took a moment to try to tie drugs with terrorists. Remember that?
Psychological warfare, people.
"Wait!" you might say, "Where are you going with this? Aren't you just rambling now?"
No. Well, maybe.
My point, (and I do have one somewhere around here...ah, here it is!) is that I believe that cannabis has been found (secretly) to ....wait for it....reduce stress in such a way that a lot of mind-manipulation is difficult to accomplish.
Ah.
If this were true, then what of it? So what if some PsychOps people from the War College get their knickers in a bunch over people using weed!
But it wouldn't be just them, you see.
Consider a hatemonger, whether he/she is a preacher, talk-show personality, political hack, or whatever.
They already know that if they don't get the people riled up about what they are saying, then they won't get any converts to their ridiculous point of view. People under stress are sometimes the only ones who
do things.
If you control what they do, you have power of a sort.
Now consider the irrational, cult-ish stance of prohibitionists the world over.
Doesn't it seem like they might all have a real, reasonable, and yet well-hidden agenda for such a wild stance?
Some of them, I'm sure, are merely brain-washed against cannabis. But why would it be so wide-spread if there wasn't a reason? A reason that politically motivated people might glom onto with both hands?
We have dictators in many countries who hand out death penalties for possession. We have communists, socialists, military regimes, etc...ALL joining in cannabis prohibition.
Why? These different political systems mostly differ in their political stances, ...so what connects them in this strange, atypical way?
Greed for power, greed for wealth and money. What else do they have in common that might work here?
A need to keep people unhappy, oppressed, uneducated, - what have you.
Then you let up a little bit and the peasants love you. You control them. They have no choice. The more oppressed and stressed they are, the easier they are to control.
Especially if they are ignorant. Education of the masses only gives a limited advantage in the political arena. Dumb, ignorant peasants can be handled much easier.
But it's all about control.
And if the peasants are having fun, then they probably aren't working hard enough.
Putin (of Russia or whatever they're calling it these days) doesn't seem to have learned the lesson. Oppression is growing throughout the world.
Sure, as we all know, prohibition gives governments wealthy returns all out of proportion to the nominal value of the contraband. But, Op*um Wars aside, mere wealth doesn't explain, to my satisfaction (although I could be wrong), the incredibly long-lived and widespread insanity known as cannabis prohibition.
But, to be fair, I don't think it's all black-and-white, either.
It's just a mess, and I'm tired. I've been at this for a while, now.
At this point, I'm going to leave the rest of that point as an exercise for the reader. I hope I'm not too rambling and unprofessional so far.
I had another possible reason for prohibition somewhere.....let me see.....
Ah.
Some of you might agree with me here:
There are people out there who
absolutely hate to see other people taking it easy or being happy or enjoying themselves.
It's true, isn't it? I've done it myself a number of times. Sometimes I'm so miserable that I want others to be miserable too. Misery loves company.
Enjoy something? Sex? Drugs? Rock 'n roll? Something frowned upon by certain types of people? With certain opinions about things?
Don't worry. Whatever makes you happy will soon be illegal or frowned upon.
These people are under considerable stress, I guess. They have to take it out on someone. Why not you? You don't have a big enough church behind you, a big enough business, or a big enough circle of powerful friends who owe you favors. You are a (gasp) dirty ole hippie!
(gasp!)
They need people to oppress. There's a lot of bad karma out there. Life is stressful anyway. Hate your job? "You're
supposed to hate your job. It's
normal!" - misquote from Doonesbury.
There's a lot of people who, somehow, came to the conclusion, sometimes subconsciously, that if they put other people down it will lift them up.
The Man will keep you down sometimes, eh?
Who's ever been bullied by a cop? I have. Many, many times. And I'm not even black.
OK, now I'm ranting. Sorry.
There's a LOT of reasons why people out there support (so to speak) cannabis prohibition. Very, very few of them, or so I believe, have anything like a reason that makes any kind of sense, logically speaking.
And here
WE are. We are not bereft of all reason in opposing prohibition. We are struggling and fighting for our rights. We fight together in the name of our common humanity and our common interests. Unlike an oppressive government, we are not forcing some hysterical views down the throats of defenseless people.
No. We are just people from all walks of life who happen to like cannabis, who see the truth about how weed can help people in an amazing number of ways.
(kind of sound like I was preaching there for a moment, eh?)
Well, I was.