Possession is Never a Crime
The prohibition racket is very prominent in modern governments because there are many beneficiaries. In most places, alcohol is the dominant recreational drug and the industry behind it spends plenty of money keeping the competition away by paying off politicians who reinforce the false premises, faulty logic, immoral enforcement, and outright lies of prohibition. In the case of marijuana prohibition (as well as for numerous other natural drugs with healing properties), the pharmaceutical industry has an enormous incentive to keep cheaper (sometimes free) and more effective drugs illegal. Keeping drugs away from people who want them is an impossible and endless task that “requires” vast resources to be diverted to police and those who equip them. These groups all have an interest in supporting prohibition and many have no problem lying to the public or hiring politicians to do it for them.
Prohibition policies, once enacted, become entrenched very quickly, not just because of the financial incentives, but also because it is such an easy racket to maintain. People will always do drugs. Enforcement is a matter of what society will tolerate and the only real check is the conscience of the enforcers. Real crimes require victims, but prohibition is based on calling a victimless behavior a crime so that police have an excuse to sacrifice their morality. Once there is a critical mass of enforcers with socially-accepted enforcement policies, there is nothing to stop them from planting drugs on their victims, making it very easy to keep prohibition profitable.
One assumption of the drug war is that some drugs are illegal because they are dangerous or unhealthy. In other words, because doing drugs might ruin your life, if you’re caught with them, the government will ruin your life. In many places, most common drugs that aid productivity are allowed. If a drug is unpopular enough that it can be demonized, but widespread enough that banning it can be profitable, it will probably be made illegal.
To the extent that drug use is a legitimate problem, nothing makes it worse than charging in to point guns at everyone involved. This drives the market underground, creating new problems of violence and addiction. People who can’t control their use are less able to get help. It also drives up prices for the addict, encouraging financial destitution. Some will say prohibition is futile because it doesn’t achieve its stated objectives, and many governments can’t even keep drugs out of prisons. They are missing the point: prohibition works exactly as intended and is a very profitable racket.
Chapter 7 Section IV From FREEDOM! by Adam Kokesh
I am the author of FREEDOM!, a book endorsed (I mean banned) by the US Department of “Justice.” You can get a copy here. I’m running for Not-President in 2020 on the platform of the peaceful, orderly, and responsible dissolution of the United States federal government. You can find out more here. You can find an event near you here. Whoever has the top comment on this post after 24 hours can claim a free signed copy of FREEDOM! by sending me a message with their address.
Inside my skin is my kingdom, and nobody, but me, can trace rules.
Everithing else is written above.
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Yes!
Are you THE Adam Kokesh!?
This is my page, yes.
Jesus! This is so awesome! Mommy I'm chatting with a prospective Leader of the Free World!
Steemit need to get you verified.
Definitely him.
If they can convince us it's broken, they can give us the job of trying to fix it. Keeps us busy.
Yep! Exactly!
I support legalization of all drugs. If crack or heroin was made legal tomorrow I wouldn't do it. The reason I don't do them now is because I don't want to, they are available in minutes, quite easily. The war on drugs is a failure, kids smoke weed and its fun, take psychedelics and it's fun and then think society lied to them about all drugs so they try heroin. The war on some drugs has also targeted the poor and young people for enforcement while other groups have little to worry about. Everything about the drug war is bad, people dying in droves because black market opiates are contaminated by fentanyl. Way less people would be dying if it was opium or regulated quality opiods. I am sick of paying to lock people up for victimless crimes while the police never solve break ins or bike thefts because of lack of manpower. Every narc should be out fighting human trafficking instead, that is a crime with a victim. I really hate the war on drugs, prohibitionists are always either profiting from it or just really stupid.
Agreed!
I typed one big paragraph i was mad on the phone, the drug war makes me mad! So much money, we can't have free university but we can afford to spend the money locking up people for drugs. The whole war on drugs is just a big black hole for your tax dollars. It never ends, who wants to fight a war with no winner? Ever? It's just so insane that it is still going, getting worse even. I didn't even mention in my post how the drug war ending would pretty much end gang violence. Drug related shootings would literally end, or happen about as often as moonshine dealers shooting each other.
It is indeed how you say it.
Further, it appears that police love prohibition crimes.
Pot smokers are easy to bust. They rarely, if ever, put up a fight.
Look at the statistics of who is in prison.
Violent criminals - tiny percentage, only caught when they didn't leave the scene fast enough
Actual thieves - larger percentage, usually caught with possession, or ratted out by their friends
Drug offenders - largest percentage
The police almost never investigate a burglary. They show up to give you a report number. The police don't even investigate murders more than half the time.
Its a racket. And not what we (think we) pay police for.
You didn't even mention the sheer cost of keeping someone imprisoned. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever to me we tolerate having over 25% of the entire world's prison population when we have less than 5% of the total world population. The sentences are draconian, there is no other way to put it. Over half the prisoners are in for just drug charges. Being a minority especially, in America is tough enough and now you got a criminal record too. It is definitely more probable than not now that you will be back in the slave camps of the private prison system. The whole criminal justice industrial complex is dependent on people paying the fees, paying the lawyers, paying court costs, and they need fresh bodies for the slave camp that is a private prison. What do you think pays for the police departments, the courthouse, your public defender who isn't looking to get your charge lessened really, he's just there pretending to have your interests at heart? Eventually the proceeds confiscated by the police either ends up in the hands of dirty cops or they reinvest that money into better weaponry. This is the other half of the drug issue you didn't mention.
Nature is never a crime!
As long as we are not allowed to heal ourselves or take care of us, we will be taken care off. Just the same card that's always been played.
Yes, we need to heal ourselves, could not agree more!
Taxation if theft.
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