Marijuana Is Legal In The United States Now!

I'm assuming it is, anyway. If the government is shut down, then federal laws can't be enforced, right?

So smoke up! You can afford more weed, too, because I'm also assuming we don't have to pay taxes. This seems kind of cool.

Can we just leave the government shut down?

I won't lie. I kind of just used that title to draw you in here. It's somewhat related, though.

Since we're talking about legalization, though, let's talk about one sometimes overlooked aspect of it: by rolling out legalization so slowly, and with so many restrictions, are we just setting up an industry that will mostly be dominated by the same wealthy individuals and companies that dominate every other industry?

Here's the real title of this article, I suppose:

Is Legal Weed making the wrong people rich?

Studies have consistently shown that, while Americans in general use drugs at essentially the same rate regardless of race or ethnic background, blacks and Latinos are far more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for their "crimes" and have their lives ruined or at very least turned upside down.

Oakland California has attempted to steer justice in the right direction by putting regulations in place that at least half of the licenses given out for cultivators, processors, and dispensaries would be given to Latinos and blacks who have been arrested and convicted of cannabis-related crimes within the last 20 years. The City Council in Oakland is one of the only major municipalities with legal cannabis which has addressed the tragic reality that persons of color have been disappropriately affected by the failed war on drugs that has been waged in this country for far too long and ruined far too many lives.

Over $900 million dollars has been spent this year on the war on drugs. The US Government spends about $500 per second on the failed war on drugs.

The United States, which claims to be the Land of the Free, also has more of its citizens locked in cages than any other nation. The US represents roughly 5% of the world's population in general, but 25% of the world's prison population. Mass Incarceration also costs the government about $80 billion a year.

To pour gasoline on the fire, so to speak, this grave injustice against the citizens of the United States is far worse for people of color. Blacks are arrested and incarcerated at a rate 10 times that of whites, despite drug use in both communities being more or less equal, as I previously mentioned.

Wouldn't it be better if the government could just admit that the war on drugs is a failure, accept responsibility for the lives it has ruined, and did their best to reverse all of the damage?

We don't need regulations to tell us how much we can weed we can have on us. We don't need to waste the money paying someone to enforce rules like that, either. People were already operating grows and doing a good job getting their product out there well before this regulated "legalization" came about.

These days, cannabis stocks are all the rage and there are even articles on Forbes about them. People who already had money in the bank can use that money to invest in something that they never had to turn to in order to make a decent living under total prohibition.

If you had your life ruined by the drug war, then there's a good chance you don't really have the money to play in the legal weed game. Why? Because, with a felony on your record, it's a lot harder to land a good job. As we detailed earlier, simply being a person of color can significantly increase the likelihood that you will be convicted of a drug crime.

What's the best way to handle this injustice? Is the way Oakland is going about it? Should the push be towards true legalization? It's difficult to say. I'm still a firmer believer than any legalization is better than prohibition, but it seems as though perhaps legalization isn't going far enough to help the people who actually suffered the most from the Government's war on drugs.

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