I just spent an hour and fifteen minutes engaged in a class discussion about whether or not the government should be allowed to make drugs illegal on the basis of regulating our health. Questions were posed such as "should the government then make food that makes us fat illegal?" But what if that's not the issue? The evidence indicates to me that perhaps health and public safety have absolutely nothing to do with drug laws in the United States. Our economy is capitalist and our government cares more about the economy than anything else (often because they are compelled to). Drugs are illegal because their very illegality helps to generate classism, a capitalist society and politics as usual.
Name a single commodity that the government does not ensure a result in personal profit on. That is the very purpose of taxes, it is the purpose of many of the laws that have been constructed in this nation including drug laws. The base price for cigarettes is ridiculously low in contrast to the amount the consumer pays for them after taxes. Additionally, the government receives literally millions of dollars a year from tobacco interest groups and corporations and the GDP increases rather significantly from the sale of tobacco products. Hence, cigarettes are legal.
So why is it that marijuana is illegal? Marijuana is distributed via independent dealers, not corporations in the pockets of the government that have to pay corporate income taxes. The black market does not contribute to the annual GDP and the government cannot tax the consumer for its purchase because it is being sold through the means of underground sellers.
Making drugs illegal ensures that the government is capable of generating profit off of them as well. Arrest a upper middle class who uses marijuana, make him pay court fines and so on and the capital has been collected. Arrest a poor person with inadequate representation in the judicial system and you can send them to jail or prison (depending on the mandatory minimum).
How are prisons beneficial to the government? At the very least, in two ways. First, they are fundamental economic stimulants. The expansion of prisons yields the growth of several sectors in the economy—law enforcement, legal, construction, private security and prison operation companies, etc. Secondly, unemployment statistics are manipulated to the benefit of a nation with prisons. Economic disparity is evident in drug laws and conviction rates, let alone the prison population. The urban poor are often heavily unemployed. Warehousing them in prisons removes them from the economic definition of the unemployed, the basis of which requires an individual is actively seeking employment. For example, under Bill Clinton's employment boom, blacks were unaffected. If one were to take the number of blacks in prison into account, the black unemployment rate in the United States would have been near a horrific 40%
If the government cared about our health then why does the crack versus powder cocaine disparity exist? I challenge the notion that they do. Instead, I think this disparity exists because the elite in the government do not wish to prosecute their fellow aristocratic members of society, they want to target the individuals who cannot afford adequate defense, who will almost certainly contribute to the economy directly through their arrests.
The American Cancer Society: "Cigarettes kill more Americans than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide, and illegal drugs combined."
That's quite a bit of killing. Sort of a detrimental health effect, wouldn't you say? Still, no Surgeon General's warning on marijuana. And by the way, Amsterdam isn't rampant with gang crimes. The correlation between drugs and violence that conservatives try so desperately to make does not exist. The war on drugs, like all wars, is a war on the already oppressed, the disadvantaged and those without arms that could possibly combat their opponents.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
Wow you really opened my mind on this so called war against drugs. I for one am a firm beliver that marijuana's bennifits outway the health "risks". besides who is to decide whats good for us and whats not? have we as humans in america lost the ability to make any type of decision for ourselves without being influenced by commercials or people who call themselves "proffesionals"? i know i only live by what i see and hear for myself, and i never take prescribed "medication" that would see my body to become dependent on these fake medicines. let alone illegal manufactured drug concoctions.~}chatiks si chatiks{~
You know, the solution to the government not getting profit from the sale of marijuana is to make it legal so places that sell cigarettes can also sell pot. Charge a ridiculous amount for it and you've got it made.
~C
Check out the latest entry in the Between The Lines column!
Want the highest rated list to change? RATE those blogs, then!
It keeps it relatively clean.
Look at what's in a cigarette now vs what was in it in the 1700s when people grew tobacco themselves. Formaldahyde, arsenic, and ammonia are just a few of the four thousand additives in cigarettes added by the big tobacco companies, most of which are known to cause cancer.
Pot, on the other hand, doesn't have to be cut with anything. Hell, it's a weed, anyone can grow it in pretty much any condition. Don't trust local suppliers? Grow your own.
If you think about it, the Black Market is the free market economy at its best.
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
"It keeps it relatively clean."
Not in Europe it doesn't. In fact, illegality has resulted in the flooding of the market with adulterated weed. This adulteration involved the sand blasting of weed with microscopic silicone beads, sand, glass and other as yet unidentified substances. The sand blasting technique makes sure that the material being infused into the buds penetrates right to the core.
This is done by unscrupulous suppliers, mainly in Holland as far as I know, to increase weight. It also makes the weed look really crystal heavy to the eye. But a simple lick-test reveals hard sand-like grit, not crystals.
In France, the government has conducted studies on seized cannabis shipments and has concluded that the dominant adulterant is made up of microscopic silicone beads. Some studies say that the average size of these beads is too large to enter the lungs, others have contested this, saying that a percentage of the beads are small enough to sink into the lungs and remain there, posing the threat of potentially serious health complications later on.
"Don't trust local suppliers? Grow your own."
I second that, but there are a lot of risks involved in doing that; far more than are associated with picking up a bag of weed from a dealer. Thanks to nonsensical drug laws, you are safer putting your cash into the coffers of organized crime cartels than you are growing a couple of plants in your wardrobe. You'd seriously think that even a baseline idiot would realise that botany is a far healthier activity for the average stoner than bankrolling violent criminal organisations.
_____________________________________________________________
I am the people my mother warned me about.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tuffgong
TUFFGONG
Senior Executive Administrator™
This adulteration involved the sand blasting of weed with microscopic silicone beads, sand, glass and other as yet unidentified substances.
I don't know how hot pot burns, but if I remember right, silicone's not a savory thing to burn.
Thanks to nonsensical drug laws...
That's half the problem, unfortunately. And I should have posted this when I had more time to elaborate more on my mindset, since you are right about not only the laws, but the zeal with which the government enforces drug laws on all but the biggest crime bosses. Nothing like having SWAT show up on your doorstep ready to use you for target practice because you're growing a couple of weed plants in your basement.
My husband actually brought up a good idea. Make it legal to have, but not to sell on a large scale (or at all). Like I said before, the issue with big corporations getting their hands on things of this nature is that they tend to cut it with things that make your list of European pot additives look like candy (note the list I linked earlier). While unscrupulous sellers would still tend to cut things into it, that would be the point of banning selling, but not growing.
It's unlikely to get implemented, but it's a nice idea.
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
True, then they could generate profit AND regulate health. That's actually the two main ideas behind the cigarette tax.
Right on Man! This is what i have been thinking the entire time. Everything the government does is about money, and laws that are supposed to "keep us more healthy" are no different. The tax on legal marijuana would be great, but the amount of money you get from the legalization of it is astonishing when you factor in the jobs created, creating income for people who buy things, and the whole economic cycle gets stronger.
However, the only problem is that with the people who you put in jail, how many are non criminals (IE drug offenders) that could work as well as the people who have to guard them. These people are taken away from the jobs, so they don't even break even when it comes to the percentage of employment.
However, this has to be taken with a grain of sand, for although the job to job ratio may not be even, the caliber jobs that are held do vary between the two choices. The way the government has it now, the cops, and prison prison guards, and the parts of the government/police force that deals with drugs alone (IE the DEA), they would get a far higher salary (generally speaking of course) than your average pot smoking teenager (i don't have proof to back up that they are the majority, but this is my best guess)