The Flat Earth Society Of Drug Laws

[Jim Finnel]

Dissidents used to be burned at the stake for suggesting that the Earth might in fact be round and revolve around the sun, or for uttering other like threats to the natural order of common belief. Well, most of us have accepted those dangerous apostasies by now, though I’m not so sure about Rush Limbaugh.

But these days there are new eternal verities from which one’s dissent will earn him at least political immolation. One of these concerns marijuana. The evidence seems conclusive by now that pot is not a “gateway” drug and is somewhat less personally harmful than alcohol. Does this mean that policies governing it will change? That stores will be licensed for its controlled sale, as they are for hooch? That it will be duly taxed? That the Food and Drug Administration will govern its purity?

Ummm...No. Too many constabulary-related careers are at stake, such as prosecutors, jailers, marshals, cops, clergy and politicians. Imagine their future in a land where marijuana, already America’s largest cash crop, were legally grown on inspected and tested farms, sold in liquor stores at measured strengths, and used freely by fun seekers and by desperate medical patients to control their otherwise intractable pain. While pols and clergy could still rail against “Demon Pot,” their law enforcement allies would be reduced to hunting for real criminals.

Growers and pushers would also be out of business, along with smugglers and thugs. Gun merchants would have to tighten their belts, as would their lawyers. Morticians would take a hit too. The underworld economy would suffer heavy losses, tax revenue from legal sales would zoom, and consumption would likely grow a bit beyond what it is today.

No doubt, you’ve read that some states are finally moving into such decriminalization with commendable baby steps and with steadily diminishing political risk to those who support it. Holland, as usual, leads the world by planning a highly controlled marijuana “plantation,” much as described above. Meanwhile our own new attorney general, Eric Holder, has announced that the Justice Department will no longer pursue medical pot users whose actions are otherwise legal under state law. Duh!

Plainly, other more risky drugs also need attention. Hottest right now are pharmaceuticals, obtainable at your local medicine cabinet. These constitute a terrible problem and good minds are hard at work. Luckily, political vested interests have not yet calcified around them.

One salient reason for American harshness on drug users is that if those lowlifes were not actually felons, they might want to vote. Heaven forefend! They might not want to vote for ME. Approximately 1.7 million citizens are in that boat today, barred from the voting booth by their failure to keep an arms length from the drug trade. They’re mostly poor and black. Not much ferment in prosperous white legislatures to make voting citizens out of “them.”

And so our nation suffers from these self-inflicted wounds: jammed prisons, bloated taxes, and rampant crime, all because powerful people make a nice living off the drug war. It’s criminal.

*some content has been edited to meet posting guidelines



News Hawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: CITIZEN-TIMES.com
Author: William A. Collins
Copyright: 2009 CITIZEN-TIMES.com
Contact: CITIZEN-TIMES.com Website Feedback | CITIZEN-TIMES.com | Asheville Citizen-Times
Website: The flat earth society of drug laws | CITIZEN-TIMES.com | Asheville Citizen-Times

 

[lkeller]

The title made me chuckle.

 

[michaelkaer]

Future generations will look back at this time in history as the time of willful ignorance.All the great things we have accomplished with the manipulation of matter (fossil oil being the main feedstock) and the technologies like the internet will show them how much we learned so quickly, but we did not have the emotional capacity to keep up with those changes. They will also see how we tried a grand experiment of globalism, which in the end would fall apart to the sustainable regional approach to living. We are the generation that went to the moon, but then wasted the rest of our rescources on wars of all types. They will see the devision of people due to greed. What will really get them to shake their head I finding out we where stupid enough to war against a plant, not just any plant but the most lifegiving plant on the planet. They will most likely conclude that the poisons we injected into our environment must have made us insane. I mean really, how smart is it to load up our food supply with growth hormones and such? How stupid do you have to be to start tinkering with the genes of plants and not expect some kind of problems. Selective breeding is the safest method that is time tested and honoured to get a desired result. But no- we need to take short cuts and do it in the way that makes slaves out of the people to a few seed companies and at the same time patent it. This will be seen as a time of stupid greed and gluttony. The future generations will wonder how any of us managed to survive this long enough to reproduce.