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The Damage

(Add or replace sources as you please. Thats definitely the most help.)

I claimed that no evidence exists for the dangers that cannabis poses, and this is true

physiologically, psychologically, and in regard to society as a whole. Ill take the evidence in reverse

order, as the effects on society have been so devastating that they deserve attention above any possible

medical ramifications of inhaling cannabis smoke. One only has to look at the federal agencies which are

nearly bursting at the seams with money reaped from self-sustaining evidence seizure which actually

takes the form of federal police literally confiscating the money from the pockets of patients at state

medical dispensaries. These are legitimate and legal medical establishments, mind you, though the

Executive Branch occasionally forgets the en vogue states rights argument when convenience is too

convincing. The money is bloody and greasy, and its odor so repugnant as to be unbearable to any lover

of liberty. In May of 2010, the Seattle Weekly ran a piece explaining that police took $80 cash from a 9-

year-old girls Mickey Mouse wallet in one of these infamous trash-and-dash faux-sting operations.

What could I write that would exemplify the horror and cruelty of Prohibition than this under-reported

and absolutely shameful act of civil savagery?

Overall, the War on Drugs has cost an estimated $2 trillion, a staggering amount compared to

the piddling $700 million Congress saw fit to retract from National Public Radio. The DEA itself has an

annual budget of $2.5 billion which is so clearly a waste of money that words seem to fail me. Add to

this cocktail the individual lives ruined and we have ourselves a senselessly swarthy potion. Imagine

being arrested three times for cannabis possession (again, a clearly victimless crime) and, on the fourth

go-around, you are imprisoned for life. A life in prison is no life at all, and the suffering of one of these

poor individuals weighs heavily upon our collective conscience, whether or not we choose to

acknowledge them. Robin Spottedcrow, a mother from Kingfisher, OK, was handed a 10-year prison

sentence for selling $31 worth of cannabis to a police informant. Entrapment or not, the suffering this

woman has endured at the hands of unscrupulous lawmakers (more breakers) is chillingly Orwellian.

Cannabis prohibition truly is sensory prohibition, and it was not just a literal authoritarian regime that

we were warned against. Rejecting 1984 in 2012 must be one of our main priorities. There are no

boogey men, but grey suits can be just as terrifying. Lawrence Krauss put it perfectly when he claimed

that there is no size pre-requisite for tyranny. What we can see are well-armed paramilitary groups

barging into legitimate and licensed medical practices; this must cease immediately.

There is a measurable way to assess the damage Prohibition has done; not quite an equation,

but a metric for equality it can be. The three variables are Users, Preventers, and Liberty; the balance

between these has been skewed and skewered so that Users vastly outnumber Preventers, and Liberty

is lost almost completely in the tussle. This is why the United States currently has the highest prison

population in the world. Second place goes to Rwanda. Minorities are ten times as likely to be

imprisoned rendering Prohibition, almost impossibly, just that much more insidious. Beneath the

civilized veneer of our dusty legal system lies the ever-present threat of arms. How can a legal maneuver

called rational review possibly stand up for itself when the little guy is threatened by unprecedented

firepower? Cannabis smokers are allegedly not a protected class but a law which persecuted

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drinkers would be just as unwelcome as the ban against smokers is. Jazz musicians in the 1920s

referred to fellow musicians who enjoyed cannabis as vipers and those who preferred alcohol This is

what I mean when I call Prohibition a charade. We pretend to honor the heroes who have perished in

the line of duty with flowery parades while steadfastly refusing to address the rotten core of chronic

miscalculation. We have to choose one of two options: either we impose stricter penalties for users and

dealers--similar to Singapore or Malaysia--or we act adult and assume that individuals can best decide

what is proper to put in their own bodies. Our interdiction efforts have served only to galvanize

criminals into submarine-piloting super villains, the ugliest capitalism the world has ever seen.