Jeff Sessions Regressionary Attack on Marijuana. Make America Great Again? Prison Industrial Complex.

I find Attorney General Jeff Sessions to be perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the Trump administration. He really doesn't seem to do much. Though he does seem fixated on his war against Marijuana.

I would like to state at the outset that my parents were hippies. I was raised around Marijuana whether it was legal or illegal. I am 47 years old and my brief experimentation with marijuana, alcohol, etc all occurred when I was 16. I am a control freak of my own mind and it really wasn't for me. I also found I could train myself to psych myself up the right way and get essentially the same effect without requiring a substance. This appealed more to me than artificial means of altering my brain or body chemistry. Since that time I have pretty much only used caffeine, and vitamins. Within the past few weeks I've been on a high blood pressure medication, but other than that I have been surprisingly drug free. I have not been a tobacco user either.

Yet I believe we should legalize ALL drugs. I don't believe making things illegal actually stops their usage. Studying history I cannot find a case where making these things illegal is effective in any way. In fact, in the long run it seems to make the problem far worse. Why? It creates a very lucrative black market. People hear of the wealth made selling illegal things and they often get into it for the "easy" but dangerous money. Yet, it isn't just the ordinary people.

Many of our most powerful political families made their wealth during alcohol prohibition by running alcohol. That's right they were bootleggers. So, once that was legalized (at least if you are 21 years old or older - another example of how it doesn't work) a lot of their lucrative black market cash cow dried up.

What can they do to restore this massively profitable income?

Perhaps they could make things illegal, and get in on the new black markets created by those laws.

Enter the "War on Drugs" which seems a complete failure IF the actual goal was to do what the public was told.

It is a complete success if the goal was to create a black market revenue stream.

It seems if you look close enough as though the black market revenue stream was the actual goal of the politicians. We've had a lot of leakers showing how the CIA, the DEA, and the ATF all have been involved in the illegal markets that they interact with.

This also produces a black budget. It produces a source of income that can be used "off the books", or "under the tables" by these agencies and their patrons without requiring any knowledge from congress, without any oversight, etc.

Here is a current example for you. We hear in the news these days a lot about the opiod crisis as we have more opiod problems around the nation than ever before. I find it interesting that this all occurred after we invaded Afghanistan. Why? It is the place where the bulk of the world's poppy fields are at. What are poppies? They happen to be the main component required to manufacture opiods. Heroine, Opium, Morphine, etc.

So if we had a TRUE war on drugs once we took over there we should have seen a dramatic reduction in opiods in the world. What we saw instead was record opiod production. We even had our troops defending those fields.

I believe the War on Drugs is highly successful from the politician point of view. That is because their goal does not appear to be to actually stop drugs. It is to create black markets for them. I would say the War on Terror hasn't been successful either with the rampant terrorism all over the world since that "War" began. Ron Paul accurately predicted that "Blowback".

Now let's circle back around to Jeff Sessions and his War on Marijuana. He recently reversed some Obama actions to keep the federal government from interfering with the Marijuana policies at the state level. This means the federal government could attempt to take action against Marijuana users in states that have legalized it. This is idiotic and stupid. This among several other reasons is one of the reasons I believe Sessions should be fired.

Marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug. That is the worst rating you can make for a drug. It indicates it has no medical uses, and it is highly addictive. Neither of these are true for Marijuana.

The government actually holds several patents on the medical properties of Marijuana products. So they know it has medicinal value.

Now consider that Meth is actually a Schedule 2 drug. That means they consider Meth to be safer than Marijuana according to their scheduling.

Consider that alcohol is legal. Both meth and alcohol are far worse and more dangerous than marijuana.

So why?

Three reasons that I am aware of.

1. The black market opportunities I already explained in some detail above.
2. Big Pharmaceutical Lobbyists and Kickbacks. Marijuana products are often better for some medical purposes than any current pharmaceutical product, and without the crazy side effects. This is a challenge to many billions of dollars in pharmaceuticals. They lobby the crony politicians to keep Marijuana where it is to insure and increase they profits.
3. Prison Industrial Complex. Prisons are increasing and have been dramatically been increasing in population. A lot of that is subsidized by the government, and an increasing number of products and services have been taken over by prisons. People may not realize how many products are increasingly being made by prisoners. They may not realize that a truck driver may be a prisoner. They may not realize the person calling them or answering a phone may be a prisoner. They may not realize a web page is made by prisoners. A large amount of this population comes from the avenue of busting people for Marijuana. If it is legalized then a lot less prison space would be needed. The Prison Industrial Complex much like big pharma will lobby the crony politicians for this.

I read an article yesterday by @johnvibes with the title. Inmates Charged for Jail Stay, Left Buried in Debt When they Get Out. I was aware of how corrupt and bad this had been since the 1994 time frame when I interacted with some of this business, but I didn't realize it could get even worse.

Today I read this article from The Washington Post (so likely an agenda) Legalized marijuana use threatened as Sessions rescinds Obama-era directive that eased federal enforcement.

I have also seen Jeff Sessions be very Pro-asset forfeiture type actions from law enforcement.

When there are so many productive things that people could be doing, this is NOT one of those.

If they truly wanted to win the War on Drugs they would look at success stories like Portugual. Portugal decriminalized ALL drugs more than a decade ago. All drug related problems including IV borne diseases have decreased and are very low. It also is not costing them huge amounts of money.

I have had one concern with the "Make America Great Again" and the "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" type of statements. I believe most of us are for both of those phrases.

Yet I don't believe we support the idea that those become more and more inmate/prisoner jobs. Yet those are still "jobs" within the United States.

They simply are behind intimidating looking structures that actually end up being a lot like a modern day plantation.

I hope this was food for thought for some of you.