However, amazingly, and at terrific costs to the federal and state taxpayers, cannabis prohibition in America has frustratingly lasted over 70 years.
Tonight, if I were to enjoy some cannabis responsibly in the privacy of my home, I can be arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated.
Will Brown kowtow to this current (and really bizarre) epoch of British media Reefer Madness or respect the ACDM’s logical and pragmatic recommendation not to increase the penalties for cannabis?
Most everyone has read or seen government-funded propaganda or questionable science regarding the health effects of cannabis, so enjoy the humorous exploration therein found in Super High Me (check out a clip).
Seems unlikely to me that DEA will be as commercially successful and long-lived as the COPS franchise has been for a couple of reasons, including that the federal agency to be championed (and therein unduly glorified) is hardly a sympathetic character, the federal agents look and act like COPS-on-steroids and their Herculean (and largely thankless) task to make America drug-free is a sad and ugly reminder of the expensive failure cannabis prohibition has wrought over 70 years.
Shoot, if the cops ever caught everybody who was breaking marijuana laws in America at the same time, you’d have to fence off a couple of states to make us a jail big enough to hold ‘em all. And you know, letting all those marijuana prisoners go, I’ll also be freeing up 70,000 prison cells for real criminals…or we could use some of the freed-up billions of dollars we were spending to lock those people up and spend the money for college scholarships…or fixing roads.
Best selling author, TV travel guru and NORML Advisory Board member Rick Steves continues to advance in both mainstream print and radio the common sense notion that cannabis prohibition does not work at all well and that Europe is doing a better job with overall drug policy because most of their governments don’t harass and arrest cannabis consumers—and they incarcerate hardly any offenders
Historically, the federal government has been charged with patrolling and regulating travel across the international border with Mexico. However in a TSA, post-911 America, federal law enforcement under the guise of immigration control, are now regularly setting up automobile checkpoints hundreds of miles from their traditional jurisdiction
Fifteen years later, bittersweetly, let’s be thankful that the writers from The Wire are willing to speak out against the status quo of America’s drug policy both in supremely crafted storytelling and in the pages of Time Magazine.