War on Drugs' Impact on Minorities

[Stratego]

[Edarmoc]

IIRC, Nixon even explicitly stated that the controlled substances act was designed to target voter groups that threatened the Republican party of the time (the black community and the anti-war crowd both being the biggest users of cannabis). Now, I think it largely exists as a method of continuing a very profitable private prison system and as a means of justification for padding police budgets and maintaining the DEA in perpetuity. Hence the head-scratchingly stupid decision to keep marijuana as a schedule I controlled substance despite many proven medical benefits to epilepsy sufferers (among many others).

The top five contributors to political groups designed to keep weed illegal are pharmaceuticals, police unions, alcohol and tobacco companies, private prison lobbies, and prison guard lobbies. That should be a tip-off to who has the most to gain by its illegality. While it is a powerful political coalition, they're slowly getting chipped away at. Especially in light of the success and profitability of recreational marijuana states.


If the rationale for current drug laws were for public well-being, the illegality of alcohol would be much more prudent.

[Libertarian602]

Weed has been great for the industrial prison complex.
I think its in, and black folks have been devastatingly impacted by these laws.

You gotta stop and ponder, when the main importers of controlled an outlawed substances, and law enforcement agree that this stuff should be illegal.

[John Galt]

[Edarmoc]

[Saz]

It had nothing to do with implementing some bullshit UN treaty, it was the US that pushed through those treaties in the first place. It was completely about keeping down undesirable elements of society, notably blacks, mexicans, chinese, and anti-war hippies, and gave states like the US a very broad purview to intervene in places like South America and Southeast Asia. It's downright fascist has has been about control, foreign and domestic, from day one. The government has shattered the black community by choosing to treat narcotics as a law enforcement issue instead of a medical one.

The reason it is the way today is quite obvious. There are way too many entrenched industries with a stake. Ask any pot smoker what happens when they can easily find weed. They smoke fewer cigs, they drink less alcohol, and they use less OTC and Prescription drugs, from advil to vicodin. Add to that the massive prison industrial complex that needs to keep the cells filled somehow and you have a totalitarian and immoral force lined up behind prohibition, desperately fighting against the rights and individual liberties of individuals across the world.

Quite frankly, they should all be put against a wall and shot. I can find you guys who were hung after nuremberg that have harmed fewer people than those responsible for prohibition.

[John Galt]

[Saz]

[John Galt]

[Edarmoc]

Fine, the paranoid liar of a former president didn't personally say it, but one of the closest members of his white house council did. This doesn't exactly contradict the thrust of the argument I was making.