kband: bluprnt 4 rvolution

the war on pot smokers

This is an amazing article, from Rolling Stone of all places, about the current DEA strategy for pot smokers: lock them away.

John Walters, Bush's drug czar, has redirected most of the effort of the DEA towards marijuana rather than dealing with pesky drugs like heroine and crack. Recently, the federal governement ruled that even states that legalize medical merijuana are not exempt from drug raids. So clinics in SF are being raided and people there charged with federal crimes, a far worse offence than state.

* All told, the government sinks an estimated $35 billion a year into the War on Drugs.

* The results? "Drug prices are at an all-time low, drug purity is at an all-time high, and polls show that drugs are more available than ever"

* Since 1992, according to a recent analysis of federal crime statistics by the Sentencing Project, arrests for marijuana have soared from 300,000 a year to 700,000.

* The government spends an estimated $4 billion a year arresting and prosecuting marijuana crimes -- more than it spends on treating addiction for all drugs -- and more and more of those busts are for possession rather than dealing.

* One in four people currently in state prisons for pot offenses are classified as "low-level offenders." In New York, arrests for possession -- which now account for nine of every ten busts -- are up twenty-five-fold during the past decade. [I can attest to this personally.]

* 9,000 tons of pot are still harvested each year in the United States

* Walters has launched a nationwide effort to persuade schools to conduct drug tests on student athletes -- and even entire student populations.

* The Supreme Court has upheld drug testing of students involved in sports and other extracurricular activities, [which can] include any student who parks on campus.

CANADIANS! I just want you to know that you dont need to boycott the US or anything. In fact, it's all fine. We are being taken down systematically by George W. Bush and it's SO fucking obvious it's amazing. Look at this:

* "While the feds target pot smokers, a burgeoning meth epidemic is swamping rural communities, especially in the West and the Great Plains. Nearly half of state and local law-enforcement agencies identify meth as their greatest drug threat -- compared with only one in eight for marijuana -- and more than 1 million Americans use the highly addictive drug, which is linked to violent crime, explosions and fires at meth labs, severe health problems, and child and family abuse. In 2003, drug agents busted a staggering 10,182 meth labs, and the fight against meth is straining the resources of local police and sheriffs in small towns. But the White House has proposed slashing federal aid for rural narcotics teams by half. "If those cuts go through, they're going to totally wipe us out," says Lt. Steve Dalton, leader of a drug task force in southwest Missouri."

CAN IT GET ANY MORE BLATENT????

Posted by bluprnt at August 10, 2005 01:49 PM