by chycho

“In 1973 Oregon became the first state to modify its law and decriminalize marijuana use, which meant possession became a civil offense punishable by a fine. A key reason for this legislative change was pressure exerted by the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML), a private citizens group founded in 1971 that believed drug laws were unfair to recreational users. The American Medical Association (AMA) ad the American Bar Association (ABA) also supported marijuana law reform – the AMA came out in favor of dropping penalties for possession of insignificant amounts of marijuana in 1972, while the ABA recommended decriminalization in 1973.

“Ten other states followed Oregon in decriminalizing marijuana and it appeared the nation was well on its way toward a federal policy of less stringent marijuana regulation. This policy seemed all but guaranteed when Jimmy Carter, a liberal politician, was elected to the White House in 1976.”

“Carter chose Dr. Peter Bourne as his special assistant for health issues and instructed him to come up with a plan for reorganizing drug policy. Borne… argued in March 1977 in favor of decriminalizing marijuana. Five months later President Carter asked Congress for legislation to eliminate federal penalties for possession of up to one ounce of marijuana. Though a call for drastic legal change, this was not an extreme departure from everyday reality, as most local police departments were not arresting individuals for possessing small quantities of marijuana.”

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the elections, and the War on Drugs entered a new stage. “In his first year in office, Reagan called for total abstinence and substantially more funding for law enforcement – under the Reagan administration the enforcement part of the federal drug control budget shifted from one half to two thirds. The following year, Reagan launched a huge new campaign to combat drug trafficking and organized crime. It involved a variety of federal agencies and included the Defense Department, which was allowed for the first time to take an active part in the war on drugs. Vice President George Bush played a prominent part in the campaign by leading a task force to combat trafficking in Florida.”

“By 1984, thirteen antidrug task forces involving multiple federal agencies were operating nationwide and Nancy Reagan’s ‘Just Say No’ campaign, a program that promoted the value of a drug-free life style, was being inaugurated in the schools. A year later, 1985, a federal drive was begun to combat the growth of marijuana plants.”

Since the beginning of this new “crusade”, the United States “has experienced a surge in its prison population, quadrupling since 1980, partially as a result of mandated sentences that came about during the ‘war on drugs.’”

click to enlarge - source

In March 2009 it was revealed that “the U.S. correctional population -- those in jail, prison, on probation or on parole -- totaled 7.3 million, or 1 in every 31 adults.” Disproportionately, it has been minorities and the poor that have received the harshest sentences.

“African-Americans are arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned for drug offenses at far higher rates than whites. This racial disparity bears little relationship to racial differences in drug offending. For example, although the proportion of all drug users who are black is generally in the range of 13 to 15 percent, blacks constitute 36 percent of arrests for drug possession. Blacks constitute 63 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons. In at least fifteen states, black men were sent to prison on drug charges at rates ranging from twenty to fifty-seven times those of white men.”

click to enlarge - source

Cannabis arrests comprise nearly 47.5 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. “The total number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. for 2007 far exceeded the total number of arrests in the U.S. for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.” According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report, “police arrested a record 872,721 persons for marijuana violations in 2007.”

The monetary cost of this has been astronomical to the U.S. taxpayer. A staggering $41+ billion is spent annually on corrections alone, even though reports indicate that $37 billion would be saved annually with legalization.

This is the cost of the Prison-industrial complex in the United States and the difference between good infrastructure and bad infrastructure. Keep in mind that “the United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners”, with "1 in 100 U.S. adults behind bars.”

click to enlarge - source

One of the most astonishing aspects of the war on drugs, specifically in relation to cannabis, is that even though the federal government has classified it as a Schedule I substance, which means that according to the federal government the cannabis plant “has no currently accepted medical use”, in the United States there are at present 5 people who have a federal medical marijuana license.

But, “rather than respond to public and political demands for marijuana's medical availability, federal drug agencies are instead promoting bureaucratically sanctioned alternatives which are synthetic, expensive and often ineffective. It is ironic that after decades of pretending marijuana is medically useless, federal drug agencies are now aggressively pushing synthetic Marinol, the so-called ‘pot pill,’ by arguing it is as safe and effective as marijuana.”

So just to recap, in 2007, in the United States, 872,721 people were arrested for marijuana violations under the pretence that marijuana has no medical use, but at the same time the government allowed 5 people to carry a federal medical marijuana license. The US government has also authorized pharmaceutical companies to synthesize THC, the active ingredient of marijuana, and to market and sell it as medicine.

The hypocrisy is really mind-boggling.

We are now in 2009, we have a president that has stated publicly that he has smoked and inhaled marijuana. He has also stated that “we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws”, in essence agreeing with Jimmy Carter when he stated that:

“Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marihuana in private for personal use... Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marihuana.”

While we wait to obtain our freedom we should keep in mind that those who consume cannabis are not criminals. They are our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, and our children, and many have been sacrificed to further the agenda of certain individuals and organizations who feed off the profits from the criminalization of this simple plant that has the potential to save us and our environment.

Source: http://www.chycho.com/?q=node/2236

Related Information:

• Why the United States has a drug problem, and how to solve America’s drug problem: Four Must See Documentaries
• Coming out of the Dark Ages: Psychedelic Science, an introduction to LSD, DMT, Ibogaine, and Ayahuasca
• Marijuana, War on Drugs, the Prison Industrial Complex, and a couple of Documentaries
• Happy 420! Marijuana Appreciation Day (almost everything you wanted to know about Ganja)
• Remembering Albert Hoffman and LSD
• Salvia Divinorum and "Brett's Law": Part I