Roughly half of the money raised to oppose a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana in California is coming from police and prison guard groups, terrified that they might lose the revenue streams to which they have become so deeply addicted.
Drug war money has become a notable source of funding for law enforcement interests. Huge government grants and asset-seizure windfalls benefit police departments, while the constant supply of prisoners keeps the prison business booming.
Opposition to the marijuana legalization initiative, slated to go before voters in November, has been organized by John Lovell, a longtime Sacramento lobbyist for police chiefs and prison guard supervisors. Lovell’s Coalition for Responsible Drug Policies, a committee he created to defeat the pot initiative, raised $60,000 during the first three months of the year, according to a disclosure filed earlier this month.
The funds came from groups representing law enforcement, including the California Police Chiefs Association, the Riverside Sheriffs’ Association, the Los Angeles Police Protective League’s Issues PAC, and the California Correctional Supervisor’s Organization. Other donors include the California Teamsters union and the California Hospital Association, as well as Sam Action, an anti-marijuana advocacy group co-founded by former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum.
Law enforcement officials in Minnesota, Washington, and other states that have debated relaxing the laws surrounding marijuana have said that they stand to lose money from reform. Police receive federal grants from the Justice Department to help fund drug enforcement efforts, including specific funding to focus on marijuana.
Asset forfeiture is another way law enforcement agencies have come to rely on marijuana as a funding source. Police departments, through a process known as asset forfeiture, seize cash and property associated with drug busts, including raids relating to marijuana. The proceeds from the seizures are often distributed to law enforcement agencies. From 2002 to 2012, California agencies reaped $181.4 million from marijuana-related asset seizures. As the Wall Street Journal reported in 2014, pot legalization in Washington state led asset forfeiture proceeds to go up in smoke.
Law enforcement lobbyists in Sacramento, including Lovell, have steered Justice Department grants into marijuana eradication. Last year, Lovell successfully worked to defeat measures to reform asset forfeiture in California.
Prison guard unions have also played a part in defending lucrative drug war policies. In California, the prison guard union helped finance the “three strikes” ballot measure in 1994 that deeply increased the state prison population. In 2008, the California prison union provided funds to help defeat Proposition 5, a measure to create prison diversion programs for nonviolent offenders with drug problems.
For their part, the groups say they fear the dangers of legalized pot for non-selfish reasons.
“The membership of the CCSO opposes the full-blown legalization of marijuana,” Paul Curry, a lobbyist for the California Correctional Supervisor’s Association, told The Intercept. Curry said prison guard supervisors do not want to see a society that encourages pot use and said many of his members are grandparents who are concerned about their children. “If marijuana is not a dangerous drug, the federal government would have made a change, but the fact remains that it’s a federal crime,” he added.
California is only the latest state in which law enforcement unions have led the opposition to ending marijuana prohibition across the country in recent years. During the 2014 election, Florida law enforcement officials successfully campaigned against a medical marijuana ballot measure by arguing that the initiative would promote a range of problems, from teenage use of the drug to respiratory disease.
In 2010, Lovell successfully organized a campaign to defeat a similar marijuana legalization ballot measure in California. That year, he raised funds from police unions, local prosecutors, and the California Beer and Beverage Distributors Association, in addition to several individual donors. (Presumably the beer distributors see legal pot as cutting into their business.) The initiative was defeated, even though Lovell was outspent by pro-legalization campaigners.
This year may be different. Supporters of legalization have already raised more than $2.25 million for the campaign — 40 times what opponents have — and recently secured a number of high-profile endorsements, including Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif. and the California Medical Association. Polls show Californians are even more in support of legalization this time around, with around 60 percent of likely voters claiming they will back the measure.
The primary function of government is the looting of the governed.
All police forces and governments are violent criminal gangs. This is why the police and the cartels are on the same page. This is why Eric Holder was running them Fully Auto weapons only for them to be used to murder Americans, Mexicans, enabling rape, human trafficking, and theft. The Ex DOJ belongs in prison for life if not given the death penalty. Instead, they lock Ross Ulbright for life for being a creator and innovator. Wake up people. The American government has been bought off by Globalist to steal our money, take our God given rights, and to cause chaos. This is why Obama took us to $20 trillion in debt and over $100 trillion in obligated debt. Now bringing in “refugees of his religion” because he knows the financial collapse is coming. It is manufactured along with all this rioting and racist talk. Destroy America and they can destroy everything it was built on.
Wake up people!!!
You know, this article is a bit shallow and dismissive. For one thing, it isn’t necessarily that people are against “legalization”, but rather that they are against the horribly-written, and monumentally self-defeating, AUMA.
For another thing, it is not by a long shot just “police and prison guards” who oppose the AUMA, but rather Prop 215 patients, and regular folks who want REAL legalization – the ability to grow a few plants outdoors without any “reasonable regulations”.
Bad “legalization” laws are a real problem, and are more “over-regulation” than they are legalization”.
In CA, the AUMA is a disaster waiting to happen. People are mistaken in the claims it will “let you grow your own”, when it will really permit local governments to flat out ban outdoor grows, and will permit “reasonable regulation” of your indoor grow (and we all know what THAT will mean – besides, most folks cannot grow indoors for many reasons).
This thing is a huge conglomeration of give-aways of power to storefronts and big farms, as well as litigation-ready employment for cops and lawyers.
We can’t let the crappy be the enemy of the decent law we know is out there. The trick seems to be convincing some moneybag like Parker to back something worthwhile, and to convince the “pro pot lobby” to demonstrate a modicum of selectivity with their endorsements.
The incremental “is it ANY better than what we have now?” (somewhat subjective, I might add) is threadbare at best, and probably harmful.
We are not beggars. Demographics are shifting fast. We don’t need to settle for a crap sandwich.
http://californiacann.org/compare-initiatives/
http://www.mikedonaldsonlaw.com/blog/2015/12/12/adult-use-marijuana-act
http://reformca.org/freedom/2015/12/11/dear-sean-parker%E2%80%A6-go-fuck-yourself%E2%80%A6.-love,-weed/
http://www.thedailychronic.net/2016/52452/marijuana-legalization-2016-is-it-better-than-prohibition/
It is time that not the consumers and producers of this beneficial plant, but the instigators of this war on the people, be but behind bars.
These people have caused so much suffering and damage to society, all for their own selfish interests. They are the worst type of criminals and deserve punishment, at least as severe as they’ve inflicted on their victims.
This is the biggest problem facing America. We have a renegade law enforcement community that is as corrupt and crooked as any of the real CRIMINALS they put behind bars. The other problem they have is that they have been providing a false narrative of lies for 45 years now that is under increasingly intense scrutiny as cannabis becomes legal in state after state. The law enforcement community from coast to coast are being exposed as the liars and sociopathic pieces of crap they are. They know this. At best they have been the ignorant brainwashed stooges of the system, at worst they are the Hells Angels in police uniforms preying on the weak and innocent for revenue rather than protecting them. Most of them is in the latter category. They better hope they can stall progress. When the masses get the picture there will be bloodshed. Pablo Escobar, one man assassinated five hundred police in Colombia by paying anyone of his killers recruited from the same stratum of society the American police have been tormenting, robbing and killing for years. Pablo Escobar was a folk hero to the poor who supported and protected him as he blew up the department of justice killing many justices. Pablo Escobar was a complex and in many cases psychopathic individual but the truth remains that when there is systemic and criminal behavior sanctioned by the oligarchs by a paramilitary force against the people, the people will eventually rise up and get their vengeance. Just a little food for thought for any cops listening who are behind on their gambling debts and are thinking about putting on their thief clothes (uniform) and ………… Better get some cyanide capsules ready for your judgment day. It is coming.
Fascist uneducated skinheads trying to mold our future. Sounds like everything’s running right on schedule.
What soul-less monsters. They either have no shame, or don’t realize people see their motives very clearly. They want to make money off of ruining peolples lives. Monsters.
I’m a retired school teacher. Back in the mid 90’s I had this discussion with my AP government students. 24 hours hadn’t passed before I was called on the carpet to “explain” why I was advocating drug use in the class room. I assured her and the school resource officer nothing we discussed had anything to do with advocating drug. The discussion was the outcome of a question raised by one of my students wanting to know why there were so many barriers to legalization of marijuana. The administrator seemed satisfied with my explanation but the uniformed school resource officer wasn’t having any of it. How dare I infer law enforcement opposition to legalizing marijuana had anything to do with job security and funding. I dare say things haven’t changed much. I continued to have this discussion with my students until I retired in 2009.
“. . . the school resource officer . . .”
I just love these charming euphemisms.
“How dare I infer law enforcement opposition to legalizing marijuana had anything to do with job security and funding.”
You and Upton Sinclair.
I’m surprised the Border Patrol isn’t behind this, too. If pot is legalized in Cali, who is going to want to buy any of the Mexican crapweed the cartels pay the border goons to smuggle into the US?
A lot of us have been wondering, for a looong time, who’s buying it now.
Probably Nebraska.
From the article:
>>>”Huge government grants and asset-seizure windfalls benefit police departments, while the constant supply of prisoners keeps the prison business booming.”
They also reap more treasure from easy overtime, easy arrests, easy convictions and easy promotions.
Kick the fox out of the hen house. The police should be forbidden to weigh in on marijuana policy – in any way!
It is only normal for the police and prison guards to oppose marijuana legalization. There jobs are at stake. A long time ago when Holland legalized all drugs, the overall crime rate dropped 85 percent. They were able to close prisons and reduce the police budget.
The war on drugs is like a Smedley Butler book War is a Racket.
War is a protection racket…Jim Johnson
Of course. Just another of the billion very good reasons to hate cops.
Cannabis is in our DNA
https://youtu.be/aWXuaMXfbJA
May I offer an alternate view? My dear American cousin, did you know all this in Canada? Yep, 1923, The Opioum Act where you find Cannabis, Hemp introduced into legislation, passed without debate. Finis!
Harry Anslinger got his start from Colonel Charles Sharman of the Northwest Mounted Police now RCMP. Anslinger needed a new Prohibition and used Negroes and Mexicans as scapegoats, hence Reefer Madness.
Together, they took it to another level – League of Nations, now the Unitie Nations. However, once again Canada was first. Check out Emily Murphy and her Black Candle aka Janey Canuck 1921 The Writing on the Wall. Know your history.
Cannabis in Canada – The Illustrated History, Dana Larsen
Fun stuff
What??? I truly don’t know what you are trying to convey here?
This is the new reality of and for the DEA, Law Enforcement and the private prisons corporations.
When you tear down all the propaganda they’ve lied about and used against us for the last 40 years, you find out that it was really all about the money, all along!! All that caring touchy feely crap they used against us was all just smoke and mirrors or better known as a lie.
They arrested over 20 MILLION Americans and destroyed their lives and the lives of their families. If they don’t get all that “Marijuana money” from the taxpayer added to their annual budgets, they’ll start having to deplete their resources.
Sux for them, but who cares, after what they’ve done to us and our country.
Its a matter of BILLIONS of dollars worth of savings for the taxpayer on every level. Federal, State, City and County.
Cuts could and should be as deep as 25%.
check it out, it’s CLEARLY happening in Siskiyou county, where I live (Mount Shasta, California)… We have Measures T & U on the ballot which would SEVERELY restrict any growing here at ALL… Simultaneously, we have Measure S on the ballot – to build a much larger JAIL here. WHAT THE HELL! http://www.siskiyouforward.org/no-on-measure-s/
Revenge of the reactionary rednecks.
It should be noted that the Siskiyou ballot measures were promoted by pro-cannabis folks who were responding to the redneck county supervisors enactment of ridiculously restrictive measures, in December.
It will be interesting to watch this one. Do the backwards, right-wing ranchers and loggers still rule Siskiyou with iron fists, or are times changing?
And how many heads will explode when California legalizes cannabis for general use, in November? ;^)
Unfortunately for you, the AUMA will not help there, as it specifically continues the ability for local govts to ban outdoor grows, and to “reasonably regulate” your supposedly “guaranteed” indoor grow. Take a look at this guy’s analysis on that language:
http://www.mikedonaldsonlaw.com/blog/2015/12/12/adult-use-marijuana-act
In your case, a quick google came up with all sorts of absurd propaganda in the local rag from your sheriff, Lopey, talking about a huge crime wave (of about 3%, lol) engulfing you guys, and then he states without any proof, that its due to a full jail (that he claims only holds “felons”. What a crock.
The worst addiction in the world is the addiction to money!
That is true. Rather than drugs (particularly non-addictive), the problem is Money – a motivation that is not an end in itself because it’s use is dependent on knowledge.
Money should be made illegal and those who have too much of it, locked up. (There aren’t that many of them, so it wouldn’t cost much to feed them).
Alternatively, most of their money could be taken away from them, for their own good.
Wealthy politicians should be the first to be dealt with, then banksters and those heading industries that contaminate, plus those that drive up the cost of health care, education and food production.
That would solve a lot of problems and be a cartharsis for society.
Whos game?
Advice and counsel from the rather stern and inflexible Apostle Paul to his younger colleague in the Christian community at Ephesus.
land of the free? read the book “the age of acquiescence” to see how that’s another myth from the warmonger’s who now have put the jobs in our prisons. I’m seeing global warming and fukushima as what the 1% who rule over us deserve, not the 90% of us or the earth’s creature’s. we have been under-educated by the new slaveowners, who have they’re sick and ignorant thugs rob us of all they can, while the whores who pose as legislator’s, laugh..
Legalization of marijuana is a win, win in my opinion. The state can tax the shit out of it from the growers to the dispensaries. We all know how California loves to do that!!
Excellent example of corruption….law enforcement is voting for law enforcement’s interests. Proving an actual conspiracy against the people
$7,500,000 in Asset Forfeiture in Mendocino County with the DA and his “pay to Play” Policy incredibly corrupt. The war on Drugs is a War on Freedom not Drugs.
Search and Seizure was a rallying cry in the 1970s. But nobody listened … Bridges are needed, not walls.
The AUMA does nothing at all about asset seizures. ANything that would have gotten something seized before will still do so if it were to pass – that’s one of the things that suck about it.
We’re a medical family with 100 years of OR experience and general medical care. We’ve never seen or HEARD of a single incident where Marijuana alone caused severe injury or death.
Sadly many people die everyday from legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco – which are infinitely more deadly than anything.
You want to know what the gateway drug REALLY is? Cigarettes.
You can thank our government for keeping us all safe from the dangers of the Marlboro man!
The irony – a Kennedy and a former Bush aide working together to stop medical marijuana .
Cops who try to influence the law have a fundamental Constitutional-level conflict of interest. They want to write laws? FINE. BUT THEY NEED TO STOP BEING COPS BEFORE THEY DO THAT. IT’S IN THE CONSTITUTION. Separation of the Judiciary and the legislative branches is a fundamental tenet of what makes our country great. Cops have no business writing laws, just as the rest of us have no business enforcing them.
It’s too bad that none of their arguments hold water. It’s the same old, tired, “my god protect the children”, and “it’s illegal under federal law, so therefore it’s illegal” arguments that are growing increasingly vapid as new studies show that safely regulated medicine DOES NOT fall into the hands of children, and that people realize the federal argument is simply a circular one.
It’s obvious that the biggest beneficiaries of the War On Medical Marijuana Military Industrial Complex don’t want to see their cash cow go away. This cow is based on a cruel and greedy hoax – long past time we did away with this archaic law and these archaic views. marijuana is valid medicine – the people of the state of California decided that almost 20 years ago. Time for Lovell and the rest of these union clowns to stop being cruel and greedy and grow up.
Police are actually part of the executive branch.
Ring the bell for the failed drug wars, after all the hand wringing, moralizing, and warnings since Nixon and Regan about the evils and dangers of marijuana, it really boils down to who ??? profits. Pity the poor crooks and lawyers, enforcers, and prison guards.
New industries, jobs, and opportunities await those smart enough to find a way to be part of the honest money available to those willing to adapt, but easy money is hard to let go of for criminals and governmental agencies grown dependent upon the outlaw status of marijuana, this one plant used by humans for thousands of years.
As usual good work from Lee Fang.
Police and prison guards are the lowest on the wrung of this police state trying to usurp public control of the our behavior. Drinking and alcoholism is good, but any other form of so-called inebriation is bad.
Surprised! Of course not.
You as an American cant figure it out already the police and prison guard groups and agencies alike are at war with the American people and we just let them continue to abuse and imprison us. These people and agencies are not American and don’t stand for anything America stands for, make sure to Fuck’em really good in the future when their time comes have no mercy on them as they had non for you… Yes it will come.
“The federal gov’t would have made a change”. I guess this guy doesn’t get it. We don’t TRUST our various levels of gov’t anymore. From bottom to the top. After 65 years, who am I going to believe them or my own eyes. In the meantime the number one cause for addiction, misery and death, alcohol, continues on it’s merry way. I’m in favor of full legalization. Like tomatoes or apples or corn. Grow as much as you like and sell it at your farm stand.
I enjoyed my first article, in The Intercept. Written by Mr. Fangs! I look forward to reading more articles, as I submitted my email to receive The Intercept in my email!
Thank you
DeAnne Roberson
I’m not in favor of drug use but imprisoning people for it is unfortunately consistent with our society’s immorality.
“I’m not in favor of drug use . . .”
That’s fine; don’t use drugs. And don’t attempt to interfere with others’ decisions.
Ccpia just got a big asteroid raise,what are these overpaid babysitters crying about? Mental health workers at mental health hospitals for the criminally insane are at much more risk at getting injured than these overweight green Martian only get required guard pisitions.
Trump stands with the incarceration profiteers
WTF. THEIR IN PRISON..THEY HAVEMO RIGHTS…NO THATS THE ANWSER.NO U CAN NOT HAVE MEDICAL POT IN JAIL…ITS THAT FUCKING SIMPLE
What?… Are they high?
Cops For Pot
http://paloaltofreepress.com/cops-for-pot/
Unfortunately California cannabis users are already screwed and they don’t know it yet…. AB 2740 has passed all committees and is headed to the main legislature for voting…. This bill will allow law enforcement to swab your mouth when they pull you over for any reason to check if you have an amount of THC in your body so low that you will still test positive a week or longer after using cannabis resulting in a DUI…..This is a major cash cow for law enforcement and the media blackout on this bill has helped it pass through unnoticed. As a health care provider that recommends medical cannabis to many patients (I also use it to treat my own epilepsy) this bill will unfairly classify unimpaired drivers as criminals. It will also provide market protection to the alcohol, cigarette and pharmaceutical industries to continue to peddle their flawed products.
15-0103 the Adult Use of Marijuana Act is ALSO NOT SUPPORTED BY MEDICAL MARIJUANA PATIENTS IN CA. Please take a look at the fb page created in support of AUMA. The endless comments by patients says it all. This Act provides absolutely NO EMPLOYMENT, PARENTAL, OR PATIENT PROTECTIONS. Everyone in CA has a constitutionally protected right to possess & use marijuana for themselves for any medicinal reason simply by getting a doctor’s approval, under Prop. 215 (Compassionate Use Act ). If 15-0103 (AUMA) qualifies & passes, it turns those rights into REVOKABLE PRIVILEGES. The Legislature can & will revoke everyone’s AUMA given privilege to grow with a simple majority vote. For a legal annotation of 15-0103 by Letitia Pepper, Director of Legal & Legislative Analysis for Crusaders for Patients’ Rights go to http://marian0208.wix.com/4pepper
Um. I’m an employer. 215 cards don’t do anything but keep you out of jail for having a little weed on you. It doesn’t save you from being fired for being high on the job. If you are under the influence of ANYTHING -legal or legal-and as a result your job performance is degraded or are involved in an incident or accident where NOT being under the influence could have avoided it, I most certainly can: 1)Ignore it and open myself up to a lawsuit if there’s injuries 2)Send you home for the day with or with out a drug test (insurance requires one if operating heavy, high speed machinery, as does certain technical and especially medical fields) 3) have you tested and fire you for not passing a test and 4) suspend you for a period so you can sober up and come back to work. I have options. Insurance and law require drug testing at times. I do not have to hold your job because you have “medicinal” weed in you and you’re high as a kite on the job. There is no law that saves you from being fired, whether it’s weed or percocet for pain following an injury. Working high or drunk is still under the influence. That said, I don’t care if you smoke up. Just do it on your own time and for God’s sake be careful. Insurance claims are expensive and I may be out of a job too if workers comp says I was required to test you after an injury and chose not to. Expensive as in hundreds of thousands of dollars if it goes to court. So play it safe, don’t believe that 215s will save you from your activities and just keep that stuff at home.
That person is saying nothing contrary to what you are, but is instead pointing out that a pee test for employment purposes will demonstrate a “positive” for cannabis that has nothing to do with impairment. One toke can be tested positive weeks later; how is that fair?
Great stuff Lee. I’d lean toward profoundly addicted vs seriously addicted, look for that when you see my stuff published. The worst effect of the prohibition from my view is the corrosion/corruption of patriotism. Under threat of the draft, I served, USN in VN, and can honestly say that I cheer when the enemies of my enemies land a blow. This prohibition makes my governance my enemy. Too many of my peers/friends have been captured and caged for this racist construct. 1914 – Chinese and Blacks, 1937 – Blacks and Mexicans, 1971 – Blacks and anti-war hippies. Of course our law enforcement apparatchik wishes the cash cow to remain healthy with much milk. The laws will fall, but there will be no apologies for the prohibition – our worst mistake since slavery.
Don’t worry, there are plenty of Prohibitions left. This is a totalitarian corporatist democracy after all.
Hillary stands with the incarceration profiteers.
True Dat
to “Fellow Citizen,”
The original “values,” the principals of the birthing US, were not, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” (every law-school-student learns this). It was, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property,” (the right of private ownership). That was/is the tenet of Capitalism of which we are engrossed.
I like your spirit and courage
I stand properly corrected!
It should be kept in mind that, when Jefferson wrote the Declaration, the word “property” had a connotation in Europe of “special privileges for aristocrats” and a connotation in America of “slaves.”
With Zionist Jews (NEOCONS) who prefer Israel over the US being the greatest threat to the US, the next in line are the corrupt thieves who call themselves the POLICE. Black people have been spot on in their critique of murderers and thieves in uniform from the beginning. As a cannabis user and advocate for my entire life, might I critique the anti drug thugs (POLICE) who have lined their greasy pockets and filled their for profit prisons with kids for 50 years now. These people are the SCUM of society and all deserve to be in the prisons themselves (where many of them already are.) To be exposed as sold out PIGS who use the authority society grants to TORTURE, MURDER, STEAL is bad enough. These PIGS are living through their worst nightmare, they are watching their rationale for their crimes dissolve into successful legalization movements conclusively exposing their false posturing as public servants to be a complete and total lies. So, given the fact that Cannabis WILL BE LEGALIZED these PIGS have no recourse but to do everything they can to sabotage the American public’s RIGHT to use non-toxic beneficial herbs. The POLICE have their work cut out for them STAYING OUT OF PRISON for their endless CRIMES against the public.
What’s with the bigotry and anti-Semitic horse sh1t?
What is antisemitic about Jordan Martin’s post?
damn!
imagine how much better the police unions and prison guard unions and privateer prison owners could do if they made eating corn illegal.
they’re just like Wall Street, “Forget about Glass-Steagall , all it will do is cut into out ill-gotten profits.
“terrified that they might lose the revenue streams to which they have become so deeply addicted”
+5 points for irony!
Greed, pure and simple.
Make’s you think about who the real “addicts” are.
Some of our lawmakers and police officials are terrified by the prospect of cannabis legalization. They know cannabis is safer than booze, tobacco and pills and that cannabis consumers almost never give cops trouble. What scares them is losing soft easy targets cannabis users provide and the money from federal grants and personal property they’ve wrongly confiscated. These cops are addicted to that money and scared witless of losing it. Get a clue cops, and start looking for a new horizon where officers fight real crimes like murder, rape and grand theft. Your days of easy money, soft targets and low hanging fruit are almost over.
Figures from the Center for Disease Control on numbers of deaths per year in the USA:
* Prescription Drugs: 237,485 + 5000 traffic fatalities
* Tobacco: 390,323
* Alcohol: 88,013 + 16,000 traffic fatalities
* Cocaine: 4,906
* Heroin: 7,200
* Aspirin: 466
* Acetaminophen (Tylenol): 179
* Marijuana: 0, none, not a single fatal overdose in all medical history and almost no traffic problems.
So, which is safer???? Legalize, regulate and TAX!
You lost me on the regulate and tax. Instead why not just let people grow and use of their own free will? Or is that too much freedom?
The God given right to grow cannabis is a slam dunk. Most folks will prefer to purchase cannabis and that where the tax comes in.
There’s a real struggle going on right now over how legalization will be implemented – as with the end of alcohol Prohibition, it’s about the desire to control markets. Home-brewing beer in small batches for personal use (without obtaining a commercial license) wasn’t legalized until 1978; before that a few large corporation controlled the market (with watery low-hop pilsners).
Similarly, there’s an effort to ban small-scale cannabis cultivation for personal use in many states, from California to Ohio. Those efforts are designed to create a corporate system where all sales will go through a few large corporations who make all the profits. One could imagine Monsanto getting in on the business and making patented GMO cannabis that’s grown industrially and doused with pesticides and herbicides (i.e. the tobacco model) and locking all the small-scale growers out.
As someone once said to me when we were discussing legalization around 1970, I’d rather buy pot from my friends than from RJ Reynolds.
Another issue is the greedy politicians drooling over massive tax revenues they fantasize about from legalization. This tax BS is a big problem. Of course anything that’s sold should be taxed, but pot shouldn’t be taxed more than anything else. One of the benefits of legalization of any drug is supposed to be a large reduction in price, because no one is risking arrest and prison by selling it. If they blow that benefit, there will still be the very environmentally destructive illegal grows in places like our National Forests. So please do NOT support the tax thing beyond normal sales tax.
But it definitely should be legal.
1) – In California, the prison guard union helped finance the “three strikes” ballot measure in 1994 that deeply increased the state prison population.
2) – In 2008, the California prison union provided funds to help defeat Proposition 5, a measure to create prison diversion programs for nonviolent offenders with drug problems.
These two self-serving amoral examples of special interest influence are very telling as to how low these “interests” bring down the fabric of our American society; The people doing this are not just the psychopathic greedy billionaires, they are working people that have union jobs making their less than comfortable living at the expense of cramming fellow citizens into rape ridden for profit dens of hell.
It is beyond comprehension that a nation that was founded on the principle of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness has become such a travesty of those very values.
The corrupting influences of money in politics combined with the cancer of corporate personhood have destroyed both this Republic and the future of our youth.
Never mind Pascal Sauvage’s plan for England, America is already the planet’s largest prison colony. All we need is a DNA predicter and we can immediately take charge of newborns who are destined for the bars. And do what with them? I have no idea.
Don’t forget they just received a very good raise with perks ,more benefits, thanks to the good old governor
Colorado Governor Hickenlooper, who was against Colorado legalizing marijuana for recreational use, now says “it is not as vexing as we thought it would be.”:
http://www.thecannabist.co/2015/04/29/hickenlooper-colorado-pot-marijuana-vexing-video/34193/
Of course the taxes, in the millions, being brought into the state’s coffers must be making him smile, plus new businesses and families are moving to Colorado too.
I live in California and regardless of what scare tactics the opponents of the marijuana legalization proposition use, I believe it will pass easily.
Um, it’s Frackenlooper to some of us here. He’s a hardcore energy-industry neoliberal and DINO.
Two signs of the deep moral rot that’s settled into our bones?
1. Double tap drone strikes in the GWOT
2. Turning incarceration of American citizens into a profit center
There you go folks. Clear and simple. They want to keep money in their department by ruining other people’s lives. And cannabis consumers tend to be some of the best folks out there. I run a cannabis tourism company in Colorado and most of our clients are retired professionals who are now grandparents. They know it relieves pain and frankly, they like how it makes them feel.
what a sick sorry bunch that’s why most people distrust cops they all need to be sent to head doctors that’s just like them to protect and serve themselves they think they are better then everybody else but they are the sick ones. that’s why they all hang out together no one can or will trust them
I have a few friends who are former cops. They became cops because they thought it was about helping people. They quit as soon as they saw what it really was (oppressing and bullying people).
In related news, funeral directors are starting a lobbying group to support legalization of assisted suicide.
I can’t imagine anything more cynical and disgusting than prison guards advocating for laws that put more people in prison.
If passed it will require a reduction of personnel running the prisons and county jails, can’t have that can we.
i assume you are joking.
if not, there will be a huge market for FINAL VOYAGE on cruise ships to nowhere in particular. YourLastMeal.com?
WOW what a surprise.
Thanks for the informative article and point of view.
Hope all goes forward positively in California.
States are joining the growing legalization platform….needs to be
The feds need to be pushed by the people of the states to change federal policy for drug classification ,decriminalization, and legalization.
On a side feds should be allowing hemp crop growth as a business, and this does not need to be a 23% THC level! It is a viable productive business and will make other business’.
Every police officer who uses his official status to try and keep laws on the books should be fired. No exceptions.
Agreed! Their job is to enforce laws that our ELECTED politicians passed, and no one elected the damn cops.
“If mj is not a dangerous drug the fed govt would have made a change but the fact remains that it’s a federal crime”. Welp-there has never been a better example of pretzel logic.
Disappointing. We need a lot more room for all of the rapist, child abusers and domestic violence offenders who too often get an early release. These are a lot more serious crimes.
No doubt making more of these tax cheats to support their country and the education of our young people can help with budget problems. As usual, everyone goes after the target of least resistance instead of the targets who have most of the money. A better education might fix this problem?
If you are dealing drugs to kids then you earned your right to a prison cell. Farmers shouldn’t be in jail who are following the rules.
The money is going to disappear eventually so they need to rethink their future plans. The cry to invest more in education then in our prison system is getting louder. Even those without children need educated employees. They need educated parents raising children instead of drug dealers or checked out adults.
It’s amazing how no one sees the correlation between the prohibition era and the present day marijuana situation. The difference is today’s gangsters are the same type as those who had previously tried to stop a popular drug. (booze) Politicians, military and civilian law enforcement. Today’s profits are much larger because basically the whole world, with few exceptions, is in a prohibition state. Now today’s gangsters can become even richer and will see that “prohibition” never ends and anyone in their way will be taken care of. If ever the powers that be, loved a law for their own sake then the drug laws are it. It has nothing to do with your safety or well being just like all the ridiculous traffic, licensing and vehicle laws. To top it off this drug, marijuana, has many beneficial effects. Booze can and will kill you or your brain cells. Today’s gangsters have a new player the AMA. who also for their own good will do everything to stop ‘prohibition” as it’s real bad for their business not yours. Marijuana legalization has the potential to cost them multi $billions and they know it very well. Marijuana is about all the global power players control of one of the most worldwide lucrative products that could end up as $O for them as in “grow your own.” Even easier than “bathtub gin.”
“It’s amazing how no one sees the correlation between the prohibition era and the present day marijuana situation.”
Almost everyone see that.
Excellent article as usual, Lee.
Is it fair to say, in a nutshell, that the market-based demand for continuing this industry is the essence here? It’s not an issue of morality, but a fear of losing various pockets of jobs n funds?
Essentially, market interests are bolstering the demand for useless jobs that harm humans via the “justice” industry. It’s like having coal miners who don’t want to destroy the planet, but can’t afford to lose their living. Market-driven immorality.
The entire war on drugs was always market-driven immorality, and a lie, but especially the insane hemp eradication. That was a crime against the planet that needs to be rectified. Non-THC NON-GMO hemp should be sown wild everywhere possible world-wide for the quickest possible soil remediations and to help recapture carbon in an easily spread twice a year renewable. It’s not only completely harmless but extremely beneficial to the Earth and many of its creatures.
The DEA should end their hypocritical lying about cannabis this year, as they’re supposed to make some decision on it by July anyway, especially while deadly tobacco and alcohol remain unscheduled. And they should also immediately begin having to scientifically prove any dangers they’re claiming supposedly prevents complete descheduling.
Sorry if I get preachy, I live in Colorado. The feds and “pot cops” are full of shit on cannabis and ALWAYS have been.
And I completely agree Lee’s article is excellent and timely! Thank you, Lee!
I agree growing hemp could solve a lot of the world problems but politicians can’t figure out how they could personally profit from it. As for drug dealers they should be tried for murder as their sales are killing people the same as if they shot them, then you would not need to lock up the users
So then you’re for summarily executing all manufacturers of pharmaceuticals, tobacco and alcohol products? Because any one of those “drug products” actually kill far more people all the illegal ones combined.
Or is it just anybody that sells a little weed or cocaine is a scumbag that deserves to die? You sound too much like a cop, and your logic’s severely lacking any true thoughtful concern for OUR society.
Sorry I got hung up on your “shot them” thing, russ, you didn’t actually suggest shooting anyone.
But wanting murder trials for drug dealers though is just more of the same old failed drug war logic. If recreational drugs weren’t actually illegal like has been done in Portugal then police, courts and prisons are no longer involved, and those drugs would still kill far less people than currently legal pharmaceuticals, tobacco or alcohol. For Portugal it’s ALL becomes a public health issue – only. The drug war industry must die.
Perhaps we should start returning the property the police stole from citizens during the “drug war”. A loss of revenue may allow them to reconsider their posiiton
Just getting started, but there’s a major typo… [edited, N/C]
“…and former George W. Bush speechwriter [and renowned fucking TOOL] David Frum.”
African Americans are the ones who are still suffering and dying in prisons. The real killer is the meth and heroin epidemic. Those are very destructive .drugs ..but oh that’s a white American problem. All the lives that were destroyed over the 3 strikes bill that the so called first Black president enacted but what’s worse is how African Americans blindly support them in the 2016 election.
Really? Whoever thought G.W. Bush was black?
Great question regarding why blacks still supported Clinton despite his throwing thousands of Willy Horton stereotypes into prison after stealing the massively racist law enforcement playbook of his Republican predecessor, George H.W. Bush.
I think there are two reasons for that: 1) In those years, African Americans had no place to go after the Democratic Party, and, of course, Clinton knew this and cynically exploited their plight for stark, political gain. 2) I think blacks themselves may have bought into the stereotypes created by white America, and just went along to get along. I think Spike Lee might refer to this phenomena as being “bamboozled,” the title of what I think is his best movie. These are just my opinions.
I think it should be noted that the cynical, manipulative, utterly self-serving and calculating Clinton Cabal has come forth contritely only since Hillary has been a presidential candidate. Where was their contrition last year, two years ago, anyfuckingtime ago?
yeh. she couldn’t F her husband, maybe she can F everyone else.
totally reject her marriage to wallstreet.
The real killer are these corrupt bootlicking fascists in the government. And we keep electing them! Americans seem to have shit for brains, on the whole.
Simple Economics: Legal Marijuana = Less Convicts = Less Money For Prisons and the Police. Just follow the money !
Hi Emily:
A while ago I mentioned that the police and prison Industrial Complex were supporting the opposition to legalization. The folks at DPA disagreed with me. Here’s more info about that ongoing opposition.
Cisco
I guess Police officers up here in the Northwest are much better at their job than California cops, Its legal here in Oregon, and up North in Washington; and we are doing just fine.
Too true… the opposition doesn’t want any mention of the successes in neighboring states. Their self serving arguments/lies fall apart when you ask… “Gee, I didn’t see that happen in {Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado] ” If I remember correctly Colorado was talking about tax rebates?
why do we need ’em (cops)/at all?
There is a case where the police look to line the pocket planned to raid a seize a pot operation. The plan did no go as they hoped. The alleged pot drying in the trees turned out to be Raccoons. But it get darker because during the raid the shot and kill the lady of the house when she walk out of the bathroom with her blowdryer.
The Presidents advance Secret Service detachment are experts at locating cocaine and hookers – maybe they should consult with them? But they already know that. It’s not about the POT – it’s about the almighty dollar!
The usual enemies of freedom.
“If marijuana is not a dangerous drug, the federal government would have made a change, but the fact remains that it’s a federal crime, …”
I’d like to see a truer example of craven authoritarianism than Mr. Curry’s befuddled observation .
“It’s hard to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends upon him not understanding it.”
~Upton Sinclair
We should be asking why we have a prison lobby? Or, why do we have a for-profit prison system?
So well said in so few words.
“You know all those people who you shackled and stripped of their rights, and used as foils for you own sense of self-worth as the jailers? Yeah that was all bullshit.”
For people who are characterized primarily in their value for rules, their subservience to rules, their inability to function without authoritarian rule upon them, I imagine it’s a pretty hard strike to the sense of identity to say that not only was their life’s work useless, but morally unsound. The cognitive dissonance this must provoke drives some people to drive in their heels hard.
This story has enlightened me and informed me so that I now see a benefit to legalizing recreational and medical marijuana instead of just decriminalizing. Thank you :)
Of course the police and prison guards would oppose legalization. The police will lose millions of asset seizures they use to buy new toys to use against the people. With decriminalization, prisons public and private will no longer be locking up thousands of non violent offenders which will cause layoffs since they will not need the bloated system.
Private companies that make millions through privatized prisons will see their bottom lines decimating profits by locking human beings in cages.
ACLU Petition for asset forfeiture reform: https://action.aclu.org/policing-for-profit
Wow that’s weak. Civil forfeiture should be stopped entirely as an unconstitutional human rights violation and a perversion of the legal system. Our government owes the lower class billions in illegally seized property with interest and punitive damages.
But if they get grants to fight pot, then they have to spend that on fighting pot. So if it’s legalized they’d loose the income, but also the expense. Leaving the police at zero. So what’s the problem then?
Of course the asset seizures is lucrative, but the grant thing doesn’t make sense.
The expenses they would no longer have to and on are jobs. If there is no “war on drugs” there is no need for “soldiers” to fight the war.
They’ll have to find a new fictitious mortal enemy to justify their jobs.
Count De Craville: “But sire you will have lost your excuse for war”.
Duke of Burgandy: “I shall find another”.
All marijuana laws are unconstitutional laws to begin with.
So what we really need to do is reform asset forfeiture laws, as well as get the federal government to stop funding drug enforcement efforts. Very enlightening article!
Sounds like the authorities are addicted to drugs.
Opposed for “non-selfish reasons” my ass. Their claims hold no water, otherwise they would be fighting for making alcohol, a significantly more destructive drug than marijuana, illegal. What’s their excuse going to be when the DEA is forced to reschedule MJ after it’s shown to successfully treat PTSD in military veterans?
Even a broken clock is right twice a day! I am a marijuana smoker voting against Sean Parker’s legalization proposal because it is sixty pages of bad lawmaking. If you want to legalize it just erase the laws against it, don’t add sixty more pages of laws and regulations that will just get folks like me in trouble. AUMA is just an attempt to lock in black market pricing at the point of a gun. It even creates new revenue streams just for busting potheads. Dumb, dumb, dumb!
Why not just erase the laws against pot (CA HSC 11357, 11358, 11359, 11360, 11361, etc.) and defund prohibition? Send Elliot Ness and the Untouchables and Al Capone and the speakeasies off into the sunset. That would be legalization I would vote for. Why doesn’t the Intercept focus on the big western banks that are handling all the money stolen from the working poor by the Mexican drug gangs selling pot and cocaine and heroin in every city and town in this country? How can they operate so blatantly with no news coverage whatsoever? Billions and billions of dollars redirected where? By whom?
You haven’t done a good job of explaining why you want to blow another chance to legalize it in Cali, Bill.
Explain why “folks like you” will now get in trouble. Be specific: maybe you will be more convincing.
& How many times do you think this is going to show up on the ballot, Bill? Cali already blew a legalization initiative in 2010…
First, it is legal in California. Has been since 1996.
Second, Under an ounce non medical possession was downgraded to an infraction without any initiative and could be further downgraded at any time.
Third, AUMA replaces all of this with a new system that includes new penalties, in many cases more severe than the current system. This is because AUMA is a specific model for legalization which is designed to allow for state control of the business from top to bottom with the goal of extracting tax revenue and using that revenue to prosecute those who attempt to circumvent it’s controls for any reason.
Fourth, AUMA is bad for California marijuana smokers no matter what label it is marketed as. Read all sixty pages and think about it. Even the state legislature could do better than this. And they did,by the way. For profit pot clubs are now legal in California, once again sans initiative.
Here you go:
http://www.mikedonaldsonlaw.com/blog/2015/12/12/adult-use-marijuana-act
http://reformca.org/freedom/2015/12/11/dear-sean-parker%E2%80%A6-go-fuck-yourself%E2%80%A6.-love,-weed/
(Originally posted by Oliver Steinberg)
That old claptrap about “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the
good” is a warning sign that the so-called “good” is not what it’s
cracked up to be.
NORML, of which I’m a member, led the reform movement’s short-sighted strategy of so-called decriminalization in the 1970’s. and consumers went into the closet, leaving growers and dealers
still in jeopardy, which inevitably was an invitation to gangs and
cartels to dominate the illicit commerce.
There was plenty of momentum for legalization in the 1970’s. There was far more popular consciousness of cannabis as a political issue, and awareness of the importance of grassroots political participation—rather than leaving politics up to the rich and well-connected, as so many are willing to do today.
But NORML’s leadership deflected the momentum. The rationale was the same as now. I thought then and believe now that
“decrim” was a political miscalculation, one that was rooted in failure to understand the political process of true reforms, and failure to comprehend the implications of the racist origins and profound totalitarian purposes of drug prohibition.
In calling decrim a mistake, I intend no aspersions. Anyone can make mistakes—I’ve made more than my share. The thing is, what can we learn when a mistake is recognized?
It was said then, “These laws are not what we really want but they are all we can get and if we settle for this half-a-loaf, then full legalization is just around the corner, just a matter of a few years at most.”
Then the Reagan administration whipped up the “war on drugs” witch hunt, and it took sixteen years to begin to reverse that terror.
It wasn’t NORML, nor the counterpart of today’s johnny-come-lately millionaire speculators who reversed it; it wasn’t political trimmers and opportunists.
It was the despised homosexual victims of the fearful plague of AIDS, led originally by the incorrigible Dennis Peron, who put medical marijuana on the ballot, first in San Francisco and then in California in 1996, and let the voice of the people make the decision.
That first successful statewide ballot measure set the template for reform–give citizens the chance to vote for legalization, whether medical or personal-use; and the results showed that even when it lost, cannabis reform was always much more popular with the voters than with politicians and the power structure.
The 1986 Oregon initiative got nearly 40% even during the
most vicious days of drug hysteria.
If you seek reform, pay heed to the words of an incorruptible reformer, “Fighting Bob” La Follette:
“It is usually better to be beaten and come right back at the next
session and make a fight for a thoroughgoing law than to have written on the books a weak and indefinite statute. . . I believe in going forward a step at a time, but it must be a full step.”
The problem with “half a loaf” in legislation is that it can dull the hunger pangs without supplying the legislative nutrition needed to satisfy the community’s needs. Citizens think a problem’s been resolved and lose interest in it, or are distracted by the clamor about other issues. And so with merely a modest adjustment, the machinery of oppression grinds on.
The enemies of a reform know that they can often discredit it by enacting something under its name which is deliberately weakened
or distorted so it will fizzle and fail when put into practice.
We saw that happen in Minnesota where the police lobbyists dictated the final version of the so-called medical cannabis law–a travesty which exploits the few patients who “qualify” and further criminalizes the 98% who are excluded.
So although I understand the rationale for Mr. Stroup’s opinions [in support of the AUMA], I can’t agree. We are right to oppose those
so-called legalization schemes which leave the police state in place.
They don’t get to the root of the problem. Fortunately, the majority of voters showed more sense in Ohio than the persons and organizations who endorsed and promoted that fatally-flawed 2015 referendum.
Differences of opinion and approaches to the task of reform should be resolved with open debate, not attempts to impose conformity and squelch diversity. When we have the wind of public favor in our sails, there’s no political need to retreat when we encounter the blustering of the prohibitionists.
Let’s decide which FULL STEPS are essential to the people’s interests. If after a fair debate among ourselves we don’t have consensus, then let the voters choose.
As I stated at the 2013 DPA convention in Denver, the sine qua non of reform has two basic parts:
We must establish the right of home cultivation for personal use;
and we must demand complete pardons and full amnesty for all present and past victims of marijuana prohibition laws, with total expungement of criminal records and no post-conviction civil penalties or other discriminatory treatment.
These are the fundamentals for which we should be fighting—the starting points. These are the essential FULL STEPS.
All of the issues of commerce and taxation and other regulations
should be tailored around, and be politically subordinate to, these two basic human rights demands.
I have other goals of course–restitution for confiscated property; curtailing employment drug testing; abolishing the DEA; repealing the rest of drug prohibition; but much more education is needed before one can dream of those reforms.
For here and now in 2016, I reiterate: Marijuana is not the problem, prohibition is. The voice of the people calls for legalization, therefore let’s fight for it in a form which will serve the real needs of the people and the sacred nature of the herb.
The vegetable kingdom is ancient, inscrutable, and enigmatic.
If we capitulate to the forces which seek to utterly commercialize
and economjcally cartelize the cannabis plant, in twenty-five years it may well become as toxic as tobacco.
2016 would be an excellent time to plant the seeds of a happy and free future society.
Let’s weed out the profiteers and political schemers from the
legalization equation, and do so for the sake of our communities, our families, our planet, and our liberties.
Wasn’t it Bob Marley who taught us:
“Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; Wisdom is better than silver or gold.”
I agree. I assume they wrote the proposition this way in order to get more conservative people to vote for it. All drugs should be legal for consenting adults; it’s a civil liberties issue. It’s no one’s business, including the government, what consenting adults do with their own bodies. But again, politics is about compromise. There’s no point in putting a measure on the ballot that can’t pass because too many jerks are against legalization.
Big corporate interests are involved, transferring wealth from tax payers to corporate treasuries. The owners of the private prison industry are almost certainly the same ones who own the likes of Booze Allen, it’s a natural business expansion for them and they already have the necessary officials in their pockets.
It seems like the private prison industry has discovered yet another way to extract profits from the bodies of black people. Arrest them put them in prison and charge the public for keeping them caged.
There is nothing capital will not do to extract profit.
I feel like you’re willfully ignoring the PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS who are engaged in lobbying for continued marijuana prohibition as well in order to someone make this a problem of capitalism.
When you have government bureaucracy that is for sale, there will be crony capitalists there to take advantage of it.
It’s certainly true that the private, for-profit prison industry has been flourishing, but it’s a minor player in California.
As of the latest population reports from CDCR, there were a total of 128,229 prisoners in custody. Only 5,742 were in contracted privately-operated facilities in-state and 4,987 in facilities in Mississippi and Arizona operated by the Correctional Corporation of America.
Until very recently, the most powerful interest, by far, in California crime, punishment and prison politics and policy has been the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) — the prison guards’ union — which is, believe it or not, was long widely considered the most powerful lobby in Sacramento.
That reality is changing, because CCPOA had made it all too obvious to the public and the courts that it was a bulldozing special interest group. That’s why we see the opposition to cannabis legalization being led by the relatively-weak law enforcement organizations cited by Lee, above.
BTW, $60,000 in a California initiative election wouldn’t even buy lunch for the top level of political consultants and organizers you’d need to mount a campaign.
Example: We have a proposition on this year’s November ballot that, if passed, will implement price controls on prescription drug sales. As of March, Big Pharma had already spent about $53 million opposing the measure.
Oh, those numbers are encouraging. And yet, this lobbying should strike fear into our hearts. Because there are indeed prison guards and prison cells that risk being left with nothing to do, and they will be looking for an excuse – any excuse – that can delude us into allowing them to be occupied with someone else no more deserving.
California has a massive prison complex, and the drug war has fed it for decades. At the same time, California public education has steadily gotten worse and worse. Once legalization is implemented, incarceration rates will plummet, many prisons will be shut down, country ‘narcotics task forces’ will be defunded, and funds will be freed for use in infrastructure, education, and other needed programs.
This of course makes the police and prison unions unhappy, but then they wonder why so many minorities hate the police – it’s because the aggressive drug war always targets poor white and minority communities; the wealthy white drug addicts are never treated that way. The drug war is the primary reason prisons are full of brown and black and poor white people, and the narcotics police are the most racist and corrupt of the lot.
“Once legalization is implemented, incarceration rates will plummet, many prisons will be shut down, country ‘narcotics task forces’ will be defunded, and funds will be freed for use in infrastructure, education, and other needed programs.”
Don’t count on it. Prop 13 caused the decline in the quality of education in California, not cops or prisons, as much as I hate those things.
Thanks for this, Lee. One of the dark and little-recognized realities of California politics is the extent to which police and prison guard organizations drive our laws and policies WRT crime and punishment.
More crimes = more “criminals” = more jobs, money and power for the police-prison-industrial complex.
I’ll be surprised if the Prohibition for Profit™ brigade wins this one, though. Over the past year, polls show that support for legalization has grown from about 54% to 60% or more.
Mendocino County CA seized $7,500,000 in Assets last year alone, only behind Los Angeles County in seizures. There are currently articles in Local Press re “Pay to Play” District Attorney corrupt practices. Current Law in County 93.1 just put back on line yesterday was found to be in Violation of Federal Law and is run by corrupt Capt. Randy Johnson.
Mendocino County CA second in the State with Asset Seizure at $7,500,000 last Year alone. Police use the ” War on Drugs” to self fund and violate the Rights of Citizens.
The “go up in smoke” link is broken.
If you can’t “suspect” somebody of possession, you won’t be able to create a “probable cause”.
The pipeline of incarceration would soon dry up.
-Fewer people arrested
-Fewer people held for trial
-Fewer people making plea deals (which is HUGE!)
-Fewer people posting bond
-Fewer people who have convictions
-Fewer people sitting in jails
Plus, the possibility of having all past convictions being erased. I would love to see the “trumped up” charges get washed away too, but I don’t ever expect a prosecutor to have the balls to say “we made a mistake”, and then we compounded that mistake by pilling on (additional charges).
Too bad that an industry which profited by the wholesale destruction of communities needs to retrain. It’s not like the system is working. Ask these same people if they ever came up with a resolution for the overcrowding or failure to provide adequate health care? (CA is still under Federal receivership for operations of their prison system)
It looks to me like the rats are bitting at the ankles of their keepers.
You forgot to mention the millions a year local law enforcement receives from seizures.
I was playing nice… That entire forfeiture racket raises my blood pressure, it is the most un-American practice that I’ve ever seen. I believe that we declared independence from the British for less egregious activities.
I’m really sick of emailing her but that picture was a good one!