align="left">The war on drugs is a fucking disaster, except for the
law enforcement and prison industries, who make a pretty penny off its
wrongheaded persecution of small-timers when white-collar cocks grift
billions in wars we don't need using the bodies of those they would
save from the horrors of marijuana. Can't we all agree on that?
But seriously, the LA Times rag actually has something worth reading,
and it's all about the green. Both kinds:
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pot18dec18,0,5264617.story"
target="blank">Pot is called biggest cash crop
"For years, activists in the marijuana legalization movement have
claimed that cannabis is America's biggest cash crop. Now they're
citing government statistics to prove it. A report released today by a
marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot
produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion -- far more than the crop
value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are
the top three legal cash crops...." href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pot18dec18,0,5264617.story"
target="blank">READ MORE
The best part of the piece is listening to the ass-backwards White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy theorize why legalizing
such a cash cow would be bad:
"Tom Riley, a spokesman for the White House's Office of National Drug
Control Policy, cited examples of foreign countries that have
struggled with big crops used to produce cocaine and heroin. 'Coca is
Colombia's largest cash crop and that hasn't worked out for them, and
opium poppies are Afghanistan's largest crop, and that has worked out
disastrously for them,' Riley said. 'I don't know why we would venture
down that road.'"
Uh, first of all, we're talking about differentiating weed from heroin
and coke, so kudos to Riley for linking the two back together again in
attempt to keep the guilt-by-proximity criminalization streak alive.
Bonus points also for being disingenuous about those particular
markets, which are still going gangbusters, and refusing to explain
why they haven't "worked out." And you thought you paid government
officials to actually know and share specific information.
href="http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/23806 " target="blank">I've
interviewed the ONDCP retards before, and the best evidence
they had for why marijuana is dangerous is a story about three idiots
who tried to save a friend who was overdosing on ecstasy by stuffing
her mouth full of pot. Brilliance. That piece is infinitely more
interesting -- and exhaustive, I might add -- than the LA Times mea
culpa, if only because it lays bare the ONDCP's pathetic efforts to
fight common sense.
But using the same tired cliche the LA Times uses, the genie is out of
the bottle. Might as well legalize it, like style="font-weight:bold;">href=" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Tosh" target="blank">Peter
Tosh sang, so we can monetize it. Our economy sucks balls
as it is anyway.
