Corruption Of The Government: Cannabis

I have spent the last three months researching cannabis, and why the social stigmas behind cannabis exist for a couple of my classes.

I've looked into international drug businesses, I've talked with dispensary owners, growers, and microbiologists who study cannabis from all over the nation, I've looked into the psychological aspect, social, medical, and torn apart how our drug education programs work.

What really caught my eye however, was the propaganda our government used and still uses, and what is in it for them if they keep it illegal.

Right now, the federal government reaps over double the amount of tax from cannabis, then it does for alcohol or tobacco. Yet, the government still considers those people who own legal dispensaries, criminals, and they can be subjected to raids at anytime; especially if they don't pay the ridiculously steep tax.

This is an example of steep taxes in Washington State.

In addition, they profit off the arrests of about 750,000 non-violent people for cannabis a year; and private prisons currently profit off about 40,000 people incarcerated for cannabis.

So was cannabis always illegal in the United States? Nope. In fact, nearly all drugs were legal until Nixon implemented the Substance Control Act.

Why did he suddenly start a war on drugs? Well, let us not get ahead of ourselves now. The war on drugs actually started in the 1900's in individual states, and it wasn't a war on drugs, it was a war on immigrants; so lets rewind in history real quick.

Early 1900's

The Mexican Revolution was going on, which started an influx of hispanic immigrants to the southern states, especially Texas. 

America was very familiar with cannabis, as it had been widely used in the US for medicine. Mexicans also used cannabis for medicinal purposes, and recreational; only they called it "marihuana."

Jobs became harder and harder to find as the nation lead into the Great Depression, which increased the worry about immigrants coming into the nation. The state of Texas knew they couldn't make being Mexican illegal, just as San Francisco couldn't make being Chinese illegal. So Texas followed the footsteps of San Francisco, who had issues with Chinese immigrants. San Francisco outlawed opium, which was heavily used by Chinese immigrants, in order to control their immigration issue; and it worked outstandingly.

So what did Mexican immigrants use? Marijuana. Which is exactly what Texas outlawed in order to control the immigration of our southern neighbors.

Then fear began to spread across the US, with allegations in court that marijuana makes blacks violent and attracts white women to them. So an attempt at implementing the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 happened and passed; only to get overturned a few years later for being "unconstitutional".

1970's

Then Nixon came around 33 years later with his Controlled Substance Act. Claiming it was a threat to public safety, he rated drugs by how dangerous they are... putting cannabis in the most illegal category. Even though nobody has ever died from cannabis, in the present day it still remains illegal.

Even though Nixon's assistant to Domestic Affairs later admitted in an interview that the intentions behind the Controlled Substance Act was actually to get anti-war protesters and blacks out of their way, it still remains federally illegal. 

“You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people.

You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

- John Erlichman, assistant and counsel to Nixon for Domestic Affairs

Present day

This information is completely out in the open for people to know, so why is it still federally illegal?

Why do people still believe the propaganda put out there in the past?

Because the government is still putting out propaganda and misinformation about all drugs, and they are getting immediate money from it all. They've also projected that within the next nine years, they will profit about $5 billion from just the tax revenue from the few dispensaries that exist thanks to their federal laws; not including people incarcerated or arrested and fined for the use of marijuana. This information comes directly from a letter from congress, to Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado.

Courtesy of Georgetown Law

However, they could make far more if they made it federally legal, taxed a fair amount, but had more dispensaries to tax. Not to mention it would get non-violent offenders out of our prisons and open up room for more violent offenders, as well as get drugs off the streets and safely regulated. The only reason black markets exist is because of outlawing products and forcing the market to go underground; an example of this would be prohibition of alcohol.

How do they keep support for federal criminalization of cannabis?

Anti-drug education. Instead of just presenting factual information about drugs, they use fear-based marketing to control the publics' opinion of drugs.

They do this in a sneaky way, running their ads through non-profits... who gladly accept money and influence from the DEA and various pharmaceutical companies; who would lose money should cannabis become federally legal.

Take the "Flat Sarah" ad from AboveTheInfluence, who is a program through the Partnership For Drug-Free Kids; which accepts money from the DEA, the FDA, as well as having top donors who are pharmaceutical companies. All of which have very good financial reasons to keep it federally illegal.

It's not okay for our nation to continue to allow such racism, and corruption to continue. It's time to change our mindset on drugs and drug policies, and recognize openly that our government continues to lie about various instances in history, and modern day issues in order to push more money into their wallets; without thinking of long-term impacts.

I hope this sparks you to ask more questions.

As always, stay kind... and keep toking :)