Cannabis legalization and freedom By Erik Hovden November 01, 2014
There have been a lot of letter on Sitnews that have been very anti freedom and posting typical scare tactics. If you look into who these people are it makes sense why they would vote to keep it illegal. Their jobs all depend on it staying illegal or they were an ex drug addict of very hard drugs most will never do. Renee Sohofield runs a place that tests for drugs, how much do they make by cannabis staying illegal by court mandated drug tests? Kalie Klaysmat is a Police chief and her budget gets a lot of help from the Feds. If cannabis were to be made legal that budget would shrink. Cannabis raid are very profitable for police agencies and are very low risk compared to busting hard drugs. Plus with asset forfeiture laws they reap millions more for their budget off seizing/stealing the property of cannabis users. Lucy Mahan is a drug recovery specialist. How much does she make off court mandated rehab off people who were caught in cannabis busts? Google who pays the most to lobby to keep cannabis illegal. The top five are: 1) Police Unions who get good jobs by the more laws that are on the books. Cannabis being illegal is money in their pocket. 2) Private prison corporations. America has less the 5% of the world jail population yet we have 25% of the world jail population (in a free country by the way) Almost 800,000 arrests each year in American for cannabis related crimes and 90% of those busts being low level possession charges. How many billions of your tax money has this cost? 3) Alcohol and beer companies. If cannabis were legalized they would lose billions of profit off the drunks of the world. 4)Pharmaceutical Corporations. They reap billions off illegal and even more off prescription dugs abuse. Cannabis is a great pain medicine and its legalization would take away from their vast profit. 5) Prison Guard unions. This is a simple correlation to make as are the other 4 examples. More people in jail equals more jobs for prison workers. The drug war is total failure. Unless your one of these groups. The cost born by the tax payer is about 40 billion dollars a year for the drug war and it has done nothing to stem the use of drugs. How many teachers could that money hire? Maybe some of that money could be spent on repaving Tongass Ave? There are lots of better uses for that money. In countries that have legalized drugs they have a lot less drug use then here in America. In America 41.5% of adults have tried cannabis where in the Netherlands its only 25.7%. Yearly use of cannabis is 11.3% vas 7%. Heroin use rates are 1.5% vrs .5% Portugal has legalized all drugs and has seen a drop in adult and teen drug use. They are using the savings from the cost of prohibition on rehab and education. They have a lower drug use rate then here in America. There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal, said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction. Its has been ten years and they have cut drug addiction in almost half. That is a great thing and great example of a better way then our way. Norway has parks where drugs are legal to do, where health care workers hand out clean needles and help get those who want help getting off drugs. They spend the saving on rehab and just like the other examples they have a lower drug use then we do and spend less money per capita doing it. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Albert Einstein Now ask yourself this. We spend billions of dollars of the failed drug war and there are clearly better options. So why do we continue to stay the course? The reason is effective lobbying and bought politicians and it is all costing you, nor has it worked. Another good thing that could come from the legalization of cannabis would be the legalization of growing hemp for industrial use. Hemp can be used to make a great many things that are currently made with more toxic things all due to prohibition. About 500 million dollars of hemp was imported into the use last year. This is money farmers in the Mat-Su valley could get instead of some farmer in China or Canada. The scare tactics used by those who profit off prohibition would be funny if not for the fact that some people believe it. No one is going to give your kids THC laced candy. Theses things are costly to make. If someone wanted to poison your kids there are plenty of cheaper store bought things they could use, but how often do you actual hear about anything like this? Cannabis deaths are rare. So rare that a death caused solely from cannabis has never happened in the history of man. It has been used by man for thousands of years for many thing from pain relief, to antidepressants. It is being used by parents to lessen there children's seizures. The gateway drug scare tactic is funny at best sad at least as we all know that tobacco and alcohol are the real gateway drugs. Who do you know that tried cannabis as their first intoxicant? What about you? What was the fist drug you did? LEAP Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is a great place to get facts on the real cost of the drug war and why many cops want to end it. I could go on but why. By this point you have made up your mind. Do you want America to be a free country that helps people? Or do you want American to continue to be a country that wastes billions on something that has been proven to be a failure, and only harms? Erik Hovden About: Former resident of Ketchikan and future resident of Sitka, sorry but Ketchikan is too harshly taxed for my taste. Received October November --, 2014 - Published November 01, 2014 Related Viewpoint: Viewpoints - Opinion Letters:
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