Reading the front page of today's Denver Post was downright depressing, and made me much angrier than usual. I felt like hurling my coffee cup across the room, as this nation's policies become ever more contradictory, self-defeating and myopic. The headline and lead story noted that nearly 85 medical marijuana dispensaries - churning out over $2 million a year to state coffers (for licenses, state taxes, property taxes etc.) now stand to go under because of "more rigorous planned federal enforcement" of federal 'controlled substances' laws. A memo from Deputy AG James Cole evidently has ALL Colorado medical dispensaries now in tumult, asserting the feds will come in and raid, prosecute, close dispensaries if they see fit - state laws or no state laws!
This is an abomination. Especially after Obama gave his word merely 2 years ago the Justice Dept. would back off from putting federal heat on the states. So, is he not in control of his Justice Dept.? Or has Obama, a former MJ user, now become a 180 degree changeling such that he seeks to use that Dept. to make a point that no citizens in any state are to use, for any reason, period?
At a time when state budgets are hemorraghing red ink, and deficits are exploding - with teachers being laid off by the tens of thousands, libraries shuttered and hundreds of thousands of citizens now facing reduced Medicaid and other service cutbacks, it is nothing short of madness to be launching memos that threaten one of the few viable revenue streams that have mitigated the budget bleeding! This is nonsense, utterly and totally, while also displaying a total lack of any consciousness of priorities. One wit once opined: "The law is an ass" and all the laws to do with MJ oversight are a true case in point.
This too, after a major international NGO has affirmed the waste (in human resources and money) of drug laws around the world and implored 'law and order' driven governments to lay the fuck off for once, and spend time and resources hunting-fighting real threats: like serial killers, mass murderers, terrorists and other victim-oriented criminals. But it seems, at least in the U.S., the powers that be have blown this NGO off and decreed the stupid drug crusade must continue come hell or high water. And that elicits the question: WHY?
And more explicitly, the question: Cui bono? (Who benefits?)
It actually doesn't require any genius to figure this out, only one who has paid attention to the whole spectrum of news, including drug-pharma news, over the past year or so. What we learn is that the money grubbing leeches of Big PhRma - who already have a stranglehold on our alleged "government of the people" (compliments of their 3,500 lobbyists buying off lawmakers)- are nearing completion of a synthetic cannabinoid which would putatively be used by patients now using bakes and smokes from MJ dispensaries. (Note: for those who are unaware, 99% of cancer MJ patients use medical MJ to be able to eat after chemotherapy, else they'd wither away, having lost their appetites - from 'chemo-stomach'- a constant nausea).
What this obviously means is even more enormous profits from the sales of such a synthetic PhRMA product, just as other drugs (like tamoxifen) have planted huge profits in their coffers - thereby giving the fuckers even more money to run their tawdry, never-ending, irritating commercials on the tube, while using the rest to buy off congress to make fell laws against the people's interests.
It also means that so long as real (natural) MJ dispensaries exist, their serious competition will suck most of the potential profits from PhRMA. Hence they must be either: a) totally stopped, or b) controlled by constant threat of "enforcement" to the extent they can't operate. Hence fail, hence usher in much bigger profits for the corporate drug makers.
In other words, it is BIG PhRMA that the Justice Dept. and U.S. is protecting! It can't be any other reason, moral or legal (the latter expending far more expensive resources and capital than any other targets- in terms of benefit to society). Christ in a cap, a recent survey of the effects of the worst, most pernicious drugs found ALCOHOL at the top! It was responsible for more driving deaths, more crimes - including assault & battery, manslaughter (vehicular homicide) rape and date rape - than all other "controlled substances" on the feds lists. 2nd were legal drugs (available with prescription) like Oxycontin, Vicodin etc. ..which are now driving what we behold as an epidemic of pharmacy robberies - the latest in NY, where 4 people were shot dead. Shouldn't the feds be re-directing their resources there?
What's more, the cost of this idiotic 40 -year old drug war is ramping up our debt like the idiotic occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where is reason and logic? Why is it sane or even moral to piss away more than $40 billion a year (that could be used for enhanced Medicaid accessibility) to lock small time drug users up, or to prosecute them? How does this make sense? Oh right! It leaves in place the secure jobs of 100,000 sheriffs, police, DEA agents, Justice operatives, prison guards, lawyers and others for the prosecution-drug-industrial complex!
Let me make this abundantly clear: I am not an MJ user nor have I ever done so. Hell, I don't even smoke! However, I am intelligent enough to behold the inexcusable squandering of scarce national capital (what with all our debt)and precious resources in a battle that can't be won, just as I see the same squandering by remaining in Afghanistan. Both the drug war and Afghanistan are losing wickets, and it's time to realize that. We lack the luxury of time, money and human capital to continue blindly tilting at these costly 'windmills'. We can't expect a 'died in the wool', hardass, inhuman Repuke president to act on this, so we must depend on Mr.Obama to do it now - as the hope and change person he claimed to be. Or has his being in D.C. changed him, rather than the other way around? Have those entrenched forces in the Beltway told him 'No can do'? Well, time for Mr. Obama to tell them to buzz off and either hop to or hop off the train!
Stopping this drug war foolishness would be the fastest, most expeditious way to put the Mexican drug cartels and their criminal masterminds out of business, while saving money on prosecutions and also enabling states to at least halt some of their own red ink.
Come on, Mr. Obama, make a freaking stand! Stop going back on your own words! (The election is next year, remember?)
Failing that, as a Guardian of Liberty member of the ACLU, I adjure them to commence legal suits in all MJ states (as a class action filing) if and when the next fed raid occurs. It is time (with the celebration of the 'Declaration of Independence' approaching) to bring this nation back to having a government of the PEOPLE, not of corporations, or protectors of corporations. Or bogus laws the enactment of which corporations purchased via lobbying perks to congress critters! The enforcement of which, merely adds to this country's already notorious prison population, the largest in the world. This is not freedom or "liberty", it's a farce!
It is time this bullshit stop once and for all!
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