The Obama Administration's war on weed is about money and the people behind the money

[DainBramaged]

you don't think for one toking minute the Police Chiefs of America want to see the war on drugs ended? They'd stop getting their Federal candy and toys, and the privatized prisons would be emptied. You think they can afford license plate scanners on local taxes?


It's all about keeping the money flowing top down, none of them give a shit about the guy caught with a joint in jail in some backwater county, none of them. And they don't give a shit about medical marijuana either, no matter how good it is.



The people that drink control the courts and drug enforcement. We need one more generation to change that.




Don't bogart that joint my friend......

[patrice]

1. Wouldn't that mean, therefore, that they have a natural ally in those who traditionally

have controlled those cannabis markets and that would be an alliance AGAINST legalization, because of the ways that it will change income streams?

Q. What BIG political lever issue is currently on the scene right now that might appeal both to War on Drugs professionals, especially those swearing NOT to enforce any kind of government weapons ban, and Drug Lords?

A. Well regulated assault weapons.

[madrchsod]

2. most cops do`t give a shit about pot smokers

unless you do something really stupid to attract attention or carry more than a few grams most cops just as soon as let you go than deal with the paper work.

[bigwillq]

3. Yup

I know a cop who said the same thing.

[patrice]

4. Not sure that we're talking about "most cops" here, because they are too close to the worker class.

The problems could be quite a bit higher up and snychrony of the type I sketched in my previous post would not have to be explicit to be effective.

[kestrel91316]

5. Had an LAPD officer tell me as much once in an unrelated conversation that drifted onto pot.

They truly don't care about casual cannabis users, even if they don't have their medical recommendation. They have bigger fish to fry (and I surmised that many of the are users on the side).

About the only GOOD thing about LAPD. They completely suck otherwise. Buncha egomaniacal authoritarians who hate victims as much as perps.

[Bluenorthwest]

10. Police made 757,969 arrests in 2011 for marijuana-related offenses. 757,696.

In NYC: . "And, of the nearly 12,000 16-to-19-year-olds arrested last year, almost 94 percent had no prior convictions and nearly half had never before been arrested. More than 80 percent of those arrested were black and Hispanic young people."

More than 80% black and Hispanic youth! That about 10,000 'shits given' in one city alone, each arrest by a cop.
And the idea that what cops think of a law should matter in enforcement is a sick idea. Why:
" Commissioner Raymond Kelly of the New York Police Department issued a memorandum in September ordering officers to follow a 1977 state law that bars them from arresting people with small amounts of marijuana, unless the drug is publicly displayed. Yet a lawsuit filed in state court in late June charges that the police were still arresting people illegally — in clear violation of both the law and the memo — as recently as May. State data show that the number of marijuana arrests declined in the months after the directive was issued but began climbing again this spring."http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/opinion/the-marijuana-arrest-problem-continued.html?_r=0

Key phrase: Arresting people illegally.

[dreamnightwind]

12. Great post.

And thanks for those numbers, they really say it all.

[Scuba]

6. Follow the money. When Cal put legalization on the ballot there were two lobbies that spent big:

Alcohol and Private Prisons

[Live and Learn]

8. +1 nt

[Yavapai]

9. I wonder if "big pharma" also spent money against it?

After all, many people would use pot instead of the medicines they advertise with a million disclaimers at the end of the ad.

[green for victory]

13. The Feds are in the process of awarding Big Pharma the Pot patent they took out in 2003

patent

first company to be awarded part of the patent: Kannalife

story here:
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2011/12/cannabinoid_patent_exclusivity_only_applies_to_one.php

this is why Pat Kennedy is out there saying stuff like this:

Kennedy wants cancer patients and others with serious illnesses to be able to obtain drugs with cannabinoids, but in a more regulated way that could involve the U.S. Food and Drug Administration playing a larger role.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/05/us-usa-kennedy-marijuana-idUSBRE9040AF20130105

If every US Citizen knew that the Federal Government was taking out a patent on the use of the main ingredient in Pot while busting legal dispensaries in California how many jurists would convict people for growing an herb?

As it stands, in a federal trial, medical marijuana cannot be *mentioned*.

But they hold a patent on the use of the main ingredient.

This is uniquely American, no?

[StrictlyRockers]

7. There are a lot of people with vested interests in this debate.

There are LOTS of people earning a living from the fact that marijuana is illegal. For sure that was part of the issue with our last attempt to tax and regulate MJ via ballot initiative Proposition 19 here in California in 2010. Many felt it was poorly written, and many supporters of the MEDICAL marijuana industry refused to get on board with it. It certainly did not get much support, financial or otherwise, from the growers or dispensaries. It failed by about 6 points.

Some say that we will just need the oldsters to slowly die off so that the baby-boomers who grew up in the 1960s can take over with their more liberal attitude towards the herb. Others say that people grow more socially conservative towards drugs as they become parents and get older. So, it may be a more gradual shift as mores change and people become aware of the relatively benign nature of cannabis.

No matter how you slice it, the times they are a'changin'. There are an estimated 2,500 cannabis clubs nation-wide already, and that is set to balloon as Rhode Island, Arizona, Connecticut, Washington D.C. and some others are set to start allowing clubs this year. Let us not minimize the fact that herb will basically be made legal for all adults in Colorado and Washington State this year, as well.

[rhett o rick]

11. I think it is a distraction while they steal our treasury.

[yurbud]

14. it's at least as much about keep drug money flowing into banks

money laundering is very profitable, rarely punished, and very lightly when it is.

[Egalitarian Thug]

15. First, last, and always. This whole scam is about money and control for the select

few that are making everything from their barely middle class lives to millions per year, and we have a whole government mechanism that is utterly dependent on keeping this obscenity going.