Shanti’s Dispatches

This Rolling Stone piece talks about how medical marijuana legalization (at the state level only) in California could reap some big rewards for companies that get into the game early.

This is the only hope (greed, or capitalism, at the corporate level, that is) for eliminating the Prohibition of the 21st century. God knows marijuana users themselves will never actually show up at the polls to vote for any amendments.

Decriminalizing marijuana would have the following benefits:

• The US would not longer have the highest incarceration rate in the world, ahead of such countries as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc. (yes, all of them - sometimes being #1 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!)
• We could spend $10-14 Billion instead of enforcing prohibition on things like educating inner city youth, head start programs, etc. Even Ronald Reagan’s homeboy Milton Friedman thinks we should decriminalize pot.
• Allow taxation and regulation on the formerly black-market $35 billion cash crop. Yes, that’s bigger than corn, soy beans, etc. Sure, you’ll always have a black market. But when was the last time you bought booze from a bootlegger that some guy made in his basement?

I used to work with someone from the Netherlands who grew up in Amsterdam. He said he never once smoked pot or took other illegal drugs which were readily available. Meanwhile, over here in the states, for many kids, marijuana is more accessible than alcohol and quite socially acceptable to smoke with one’s peers.

It was also sad in college to see rich white kids get away with tons of illicit activity in the comfort of college campuses and posh apartment buildings.

If the cops busted up a party of young black males in a not-so-affluent neighborhoods, there’s no way they’d get off the hook without incident like the people at school would.

Sadly, this was a joke heard often while driving around near our school.

When a car with a bad paint job, full of several black males, was seen pulled over by police by the side of the road, someone would say:

Oh, busted. DWB.

Someone who didn’t know the joke:

What’s DWB?

The teller:

You didn’t know? Driving While Black. It’s an offense strictly enforced here in Clayton.

You can bookmark this, digg this or check the cosmos