Funneling 70+ Billion Per Year To An Unwinnable War

in #money4 years ago


The drug war has cost more than $1 trillion dollars in just a few decades alone.

This unwinnable war has helped to fuel mass incarceration around the United States, with some individuals seeing life sentences for a victimless crime. Imagine, spending a almost a decade or more behind bars for a couple of joints.

It's happened in the United states. A number of individuals are behind bars for also selling cannabis as well, another victimless crime that's gotten them locked up for decades. Meanwhile, perpetual offenders and violent offenders seem to at times be given much more leniency.

Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal enterprise today, but we don't see the same amount of attention and resources being spent to target this multi-billion industry.

Meanwhile, they're spending tens of thousands of dollars on helicopters to search for unlicensed cannabis farms that are helping to produce medicine for people who need it, in places like California. Making criminals out of patients and wasting taxpayer funds while doing it.

The customers who are buying the cannabis are those individuals who are wiling to trade for the product peacefully, without any harm coming to any others, that activity shouldn't land someone behind bars for the rest of their life. If they are engaging in peaceful exchanges in their community then they are no threat to the community and don't need to be caged like they are one.

Is this really where money should be prioritized today? There are greater needs, seeing as human trafficking is a much greater threat which involves real victims. Lets reserve space behind bars for predators rather than pot dealers.

If law enforcement focused the amount of attention toward human trafficking that they do toward the drug war, maybe then this wouldn't be the most booming criminal market in the world today.

This ignorant policy of trying to police the personal choices of others is not only an unwinnable war, that's been more than proven, but the battle also comes at a great cost for communities and families around the world.

Many innocent people have been caught in the middle and lost their lives because of this war. And though we might have filled the prisons up to the brim, blown over $1 trillion on trying to accomplish the goal, it hasn't dampened drug use or availability. It has however, contributed to significant growth for the state in a variety of ways. Namely, the resources that they've managed to acquire, the private property of people, over the years under the guise of battling the war on drugs.

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The government's wars, police, courts, and taxes should be perpetual reminders that we are not free.

Is there any sensible level headed politician asking the same questions and moving toward changing the laws. It is so awful to hear of injustices that keeps happening to some people. It is a crazy world.

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” - John Ehrlichman, former Nixon advisor.

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that is an interesting quote!

We have weed taxed for salemand still have humans in jail for possessing a flower...

Change is coming!!!

Hi @doitvoluntarily,
I have a friend, they were sent to prison for 5 years, they found one marijuana bush at home, the bush did not have THC.
Not a fair term. But the point is.
For careless killing give from 5 to 7 years.
This is a prison term, crime without victims.

It's still a too much profitable bizniz for some honchos in the United States of Amerrrrrica. They cannot allow even the slightest competition in their highly industrialized and profitable field of action just yet. };)

The government exists only to care for itself and it's crony supporters. Cannabis laws exist to allow pharma to control the medical tools we all should have and to punish those that dare resist.

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