The Top Five Special Interest Groups That Want America's War on Drugs To Continue Forever
From The Republic Report:
"Last year, over 850,000 people in America were arrested for marijuana-related crimes. Despite public opinion, the medical community, and human rights experts all moving in favor of relaxing marijuana prohibition laws, little has changed in terms of policy.
There have been many great books
and articles detailing the history of the drug war. Part of America’s
fixation with keeping the leafy green plant illegal is rooted in
cultural and political clashes from the past.
However, we at Republic Report think it’s worth showing that there
are five entrenched interest groups that are spending large sums of money to
keep our broken drug laws on the books."
MP: You can probably guess which special interest groups benefit from the War on Drugs War on Peaceful Americans Who Voluntarily Choose To Use Intoxicants Not
Currently Approved of by the Government, Who Will Put Users in
Cages if Caught, and have no interest in declaring a "cease fire."
See the list here.
HT: Jim Forrest
See the list here.
HT: Jim Forrest
13 Comments:
Well now Professor Perry you're taking the word of one Lee Fang regarding the numbers of people arrested supposedly for reefer related crimes and he gets his numbers from NORML who of course have NO bias whatsoever in this situation...
Yet the very same Lee Fang apparently is one of those who seems to be hostile towards what speculators do in another article from the same site...
To me that seems rather ironic...
BTW is it the war on reefer or the war on all illegal drugs?
"War on Peaceful Americans Who Voluntarily Choose To Use Intoxicants Not Currently Approved of by the Government."
Or, War on Lawbreakers who Voluntarily Choose Intoxicants Rather Than Stopping Crimes on Peaceful Foreigners.
"There have been many great books and articles detailing the history of the drug war."
DEA History Book, 1970 - 1975
"Prior to the 1960s, Americans did not see drug use as acceptable behavior, nor did they believe that drug use was an inevitable fact of life. Indeed, tolerance of drug use resulted in terrible increases in crime between the 1960s and the early 1990s, and the landscape of America has been altered forever.
By the early 1970s, drug use had not yet reached its all-time peak, but the problem was sufficiently serious to warrant a serious response. Consequently, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was created in 1973 to deal with America's growing drug problem."
"... pharmaceutical interests would like to keep marijuana illegal so American don’t have the option of cheap medical alternatives to their products ... marijuana can replace “everything from Advil to Vicodin and other expensive pills.”
Active Ingredients In Marijuana Found To Spread And Prolong Pain
Marijuana is not an alternative to any drug currently being marketed by U.S. pharmaceutical companies.
"Prison companies have spent millions bankrolling pro-drug war politicians and have used secretive front groups, like the American Legislative Exchange Council, to pass harsh sentencing requirements for drug crimes."
"In brief, there is a lot of hard evidence of pro-incarceration advocacy by public corrections officers’ unions (though a small part of union advocacy also cuts the other way). (There is also hard evidence that most Departments of Corrections advocate the other way—in favor of alternatives to incarceration.) But there is virtually no hard evidence of private-sector pro-incarceration advocacy. This may simply mean that the private sector advocates secretly. But, in light of the theory, it is more plausible that the private sector simply free-rides, saving its political advocacy for policy areas where the public good aspect is less severe—pro-privatization advocacy."
"... many of [CCPOA’s] contributions are directly pro-incarceration. It gave over $100,000 to California’s Three Strikes initiative, Proposition 184 in 1994, making it the second-largest contributor. It gave at least $75,000 to the opponents of Proposition 36, the 2000 initiative that replaced incarceration with substance abuse treatment for certain nonviolent offenders. From 1998 to 2000 it gave over $120,000 to crime victims’ groups, who present a more sympathetic face to the public in their pro-incarceration advocacy. It spent over $1 million to help defeat Proposition 66, the 2004 initiative that would have limited the crimes that triggered a life sentence under the Three Strikes law. And in 2005, it killed Gov. Schwarzenegger’s plan to “reduce the prison population by as much as 20,000, mainly through a program that diverted parole violators into rehabilitation efforts: drug programs, halfway houses and home detention.” -- Alexander Volokh, "Privatization and the Law and Economics of Political Advocacy", 66 Stanford Law Review 1197 (2008)
Interesting list. The Alcohol and Beer Companies took me by surprise, but it makes sense.
Legalizing marijuana may give tobacco firms new life.
Legalize it to get more of it and tax it to get less of it. So, why isn't government for it?
Government Gets Hooked on Tobacco Tax Billions
August 30, 2008
"In 2007, states collected more than $19 billion in cigarette taxes, and Maryland, which doubled its tax to $2 in January was one of 10 states that voted last year to increase those collections. More states are considering cigarette tax increases this year.
The federal government, meantime, collects nearly $7 billion annually in cigarette excise taxes and would have raised those taxes, effective this year, but for the presidential veto.
But taxes are not the only government revenue from cigarettes. Settlements in the late 1990s to end state lawsuits against tobacco companies mean that the cigarette industry is paying states nearly $250 billion over 25 years. Under the agreement, those payments to states will continue flowing even beyond 25 years as long as the tobacco industry is healthy."
The War on Drugs, the War of Poverty and the War on Terror---all designed to tax trillions of dollars out of your pocketbook, but never to be won.
We spend $80 billion a year on military R&D, when we face no military foes of any consequence. Welfare spending seems never to end. Pot smokers? Who cares?
Waste, waste, waste, waste, waste.
"We spend $80 billion a year on military R&D, when we face no military foes of any consequence"...
I guess you never do get tired of making inordinately dumb comments do you pseudo benny...
It must be the chronic Biden syndrome you're suffering from...
The drug war has failed The benefactors are state employees and the private prison industry.
If the U.S. spends an additional $1 billion on the war on drugs, U.S. social costs may be reduced by much more than $1 billion.
I found a marijuana plant growing along the railroad tracks the other day. If the cops find some there will they confiscate the real property of the railroad and the rolling stock on that line? And if not, why not?
Post a Comment
<< Home