Sighs of it is "about
time" rippled through the country when Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman
Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) announced that the Committee would hold a hearing on the
conflict between state and federal marijuana laws. The hearing is set for
September 10. (Leahy,
2013)
The outcry against marijuana
prohibition has been growing for years and getting increasingly louder as state
after state has declared an end to the insanity, and what marijuana prohibition
is doing to the people in this country.
As of this writing, twenty states
have legalized marijuana for medical use. Washington and Colorado have also
legalized it for personal use. Others have legislation pending. While only 12
states have voted the legislation down,
the activists in those states have already regrouped and are working
toward change (ProCon.com).
In the meantime, Attorney General Eric Holder just made an announcement and a
memo was released saying that his department would recognize the changes instate law when it comes to the legalization of marijuana. It was just a memo
though, and not a change in law, so it is to be seen how it will
all work out.
With 52% of the US population now favoring
full legalization of marijuana (Pew Research
Center), a growing majority of American citizens from every race, religion,
political party, and career field, including medical and law enforcement
professionals, all feel that it is time for change.
However, even as the states have
passed legislation, mostly for medical use, the conflict has remained between
state and federal law and the
prosecutions continue.
A recent report by Americans for
Safe Access (ASA) estimates that at
least $180,000 has been spent per day during the Obama Administration just in
targeting medical cannabis patients and dispensaries. In the last 17 years, the
DEA conducted over 528 raids on sick and injured individuals and the
organizations dispensing their cannabis medication; 270 of those were during
the Obama administration. The Obama Administration has already spent nearly
$300 million on enforcement efforts in medical marijuana states alone. The Bush
Administration spent $200 million total. (ASC Report)
Leahy pointed out what many already
know:
It is important, especially at a time of budget constraints, to determine whether it is the best use of federal resources to prosecute the personal or medicinal use of marijuana in states that have made such consumption legal... I believe that these state laws should be respected. At a minimum, there should be guidance about enforcement from the federal government. (Leahy, 2013)
Medical marijuana prosecution
has continued despite assurances otherwise, and despite the damage to the
lives of so many of our citizens. Marijuana prohibition laws have done more
damage to more lives than marijuana ever has—in all of the recorded history of
humankind.
Leahy has pressed the Obama
administration to determine its enforcement policy in light of these state
actions, including writing in December to the Director
of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) about the issue. Leahy
has also asked what assurances the administration can give to state officials
responsible for the licensing of marijuana retailers to ensure they will not
face criminal penalties for carrying out their duties under those state laws. (Leahy's office, 2013)
The rapidly aging hippies and baby
boomers have been working toward change for a long time. It brought a lot of hope to a
lot of people when Dr
Sanjay Gupta came out recently and took a stand as to these wrongs in his
"Weed" documentary.
The thing is, there is not going to
be any real change until we as a country have a serious conversation and make
some changes in the laws. But way too often, it is considered a laughing
matter. The stoner jokes are old and they are not funny. Marijuana prohibition
has destroyed too many lives and done a whole lot of damage to a whole lot more
people than much of anybody wants to admit, unless perhaps it was your
loved-one who was somehow affected.
News of study after study confirming the medical
benefits of cannabis have been trickling out for a while now. This is even
as citizens gather to mourn the death of yet another loved-one, or to raise
money to fund research to find cures for diseases, such as cancer, that have
touched so many of our lives. But instead of our taxpayer dollars being spent
to find real cures, they are being spent to fund the War on Drugs, to persecute
our people, and to spend even more of our very limited dollars, in our already
devastated economy to prove the harm of an herb, which may well hold the cure,
and for which there is not a single case of known death—in the recorded history
of humankind. And still the nonsense
propaganda continues.
By now, most people in this country
are well aware that the whole marijuana
prohibition thing was a farce, a political maneuver to line some fat cat
wallets. We are over it. Lining one's wallet is one thing, but the lives that
have been destroyed both by our legal system and by hog tying our doctors and denying
our citizens effective medical treatment is beyond the realm of civilized
and moral consciousness.
Hell, yes, it is time for a
conversation.
Innocent children are being taken
from good parents whose only crime was the use of a weed that grows wild in the
field, only to see those children
die of abuse in foster care. Good honorable citizens by anybody's standards
have been sentenced to death when the courts ordered that they would not be
allowed their cannabis medication, even when their lives
depended on that medication. Call it what it is, a death sentence is a
death sentence.
Whether it is because of an
addiction, or a need for medical marijuana, we are locking up way too many
seriously ill individuals. Is that what our justice system has turned into? We
have all heard our esteemed politicians say they only go after the dealers, and
the drug lords, but by the time they finish building their cases against these
patients, they all sound like drug lord king pins. That is old news.
But it really hit home with the most recent
fallout from the Snowden incident. They are using NSA information to build
illegal cases, with illegally obtained information, which they pass
on as tips to various law enforcement agencies, who then build/invent their
supposed/alleged investigations. The other thing they are famous for is after
they arrest these otherwise good citizens, who other than their drug use don't
have a clue about anything criminal, so they get them in there, present the so
called end results of these illegally
fabricated investigations, that they never honestly tell them where it came
from, although by law they are supposed to, and then they offer them a deal if
they plead to lesser charges.
A whole lot of good people have to
make some hard choices, frequently plead guilty to something they never did,
and end up doing some hard time when they are pressured with the likelihood
that they will get a whole lot stiffer sentence if they go to trial. The thing
is, there never should have been a charge in the first place. And if it
actually went to trial, they generally drop the charges because they don't
want it to get out how these folks are honestly doing business. And these
are your tax dollars at work.
You don't get to be the number one
in anything without some effort. At least we have the number one prison population
in the world. The US has been locking people up using these illegal
investigations for a while. And that is just one more thing that is seriously
wrong with marijuana prohibition and the War on our People (commonly called the
War on Drugs).
The list goes on as to the wrongs.
Another thing that is seriously out
of control is that these investigators are going into our schools, as part of
what is known as the school-to-prison pipeline,
not honestly finding any drugs, or anybody in the wrong to arrest, so they are
targeting individual students, and pressuring them, special
needs students for example, making friends with students who may not have
another friend in the school, convincing them to commit whatever drug related
crime they can talk them into committing, and then arresting them for
committing those crimes. Used to, we locked people up who went into the schools
and preyed on, or otherwise did any kind of damage to our children, not us, we
spend our hard earned taxpayer dollars to write them a paycheck.
For all kinds of reasons, these
marijuana hearings Senator Leahy is leading are vitally important to many
people and many lives. But at the end of the day, they are merely a
conversation. It is however a conversation. The ball is in play. If you can't
do anything else, keep
the conversation going. It is way past time to end marijuana prohibition in
this country.
Copyright 2013 Regina Garson
