Mises Daily: Mark Thornton- 'Nullify The War on Drugs'

Source:Mises Daily- with a piece about Uncle Sam's War On Drugs.

“Public opinion now favors the outright legalization of marijuana with nearly three-out-of-four adults in favor of legalizing medical marijuana. These numbers should continue to grow, because the polls exhibit a type of “generation effect,” in that people are not changing their minds as they grow older. Some prominent and diverse figures, such as Joycelyn Elders (Bill Clinton’s Surgeon General) and the Reverend Pat Robertson now openly support the legalization of marijuana.

Ideally, libertarians want to end the war on all drugs, fully and immediately, but in reality that will only happen after necessary initial steps are taken. Colorado and Washington have already taken some steps by legalizing marijuana. Other states will surely follow.

Marijuana, of course, is still illegal everywhere under Federal law. Will the Feds do something about Colorado and Washington? You bet they will. They have already announced their intentions to target large-scale growers and distributors. They claim they will not go after consumers, if only due to a lack of resources. As President Obama said, “We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

However, don’t be too sure that your president is telling you the truth. Candidate Obama said that medical marijuana was a state issue. However, under President Obama, raids committed on medical marijuana dispensaries have occurred at four times the rate as under President Bush. The government has also threatened landlords and banks that deal with medical marijuana dispensaries.”

From Mises Daily

Does marijuana come with real health risks? Well to answer that this way: playing with fire comes with real health risks and not just with your lungs. Anytime you are dealing with narcotics (legal or otherwise) and you are injecting them into your body, you are taking a risk with your health.

The fact that marijuana comes with real health risks is not why it’s illegal under United States law. If you want to know the real reasons why it’s illegal, just ask the alcohol and tobacco industries (speaking of legal narcotics) and expect a lot of non-answers, as well as bullshit (to be frank) in response. They don’t want the competition and now have more than enough members of Congress living in their back pockets to ever prevent that from happening.

If facts and evidence had anything to do with the illegal narcotics debate in America, the so-called War On Drugs would’ve ended a long time ago. 40 years later what have so-called taxpayers gotten for this bogus (to be kind) war? 2 millions Americans in prisons, two-trillion dollars in taxes to pay for that and now more Americans than ever (including per-capita) who are either addicted to illegal narcotics or are under some type of legal supervision by law enforcement.

So I guess we can thank Uncle Sam and his millions of nephews and nieces for that, as well as the tobacco and alcohol industries, as well as the Christian-Right and the nanny-statists on the Far-Left. Who I’m sure are all proud of their work at taxpayers expense. 

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