POT PERSECUTIONS BELIE COMPASSIONATE TAG

Too many people seem to think that being "hard on drugs" is a good
thing. From a compassionate standpoint, it is reasonable to want to
protect people from themselves. It implies we care about them, even
if they are perfect strangers.

We care so much for them, that, in one of our more compassionate
moments, we decided that imprisoning drug users who have committed no
other crime is the best way to treat them compassionately.

Forgive me for sounding cynical, but when I did a mental tally of
"what is compassionate?" - grueling, dangerous prison was not on the
list. Furthermore, who asked you to be compassionate in the first place?

Who asked you to be hard-nosed about drugs?

With nearly 50 million marijuana smokers in this country, hey, not
all of them can be committing a "real" crime. (The prison-building
complex is salivating when they read this). There must be millions of
people, then, who consider themselves to be victims of the law, not
beneficiaries of it. They use their drug of choice without any
criminal or violent intent. But, you see, the corporate intent behind
a $40 billion a year drug-war is based on the certainty that an
ever-growing number of marijuana smokers, who have committed no other
crime, will slake their thirst for more steel bars and concrete.

Those other drug users are just small change. The real money is in
locking up marijuana people, not regulating and selling pot, at least, not yet.

The fact that the national legislature is complicit with the rise of
drug crimes, i.e., bootlegging to the present, suggests that they see
our natural inclination to use drugs as a way to make money.

They play into the hands of the criminals, almost as if one cannot do
without the other. Did it ever occur to anyone that the national
legislature is as much the problem as the black market they helped to create?

It is a terrible irony to grasp that the Congress gave us Al Capone
and the Colombian drug lords.

It's no wonder our nation readily locks up medical marijuana
patients. Everybody knows that when medical marijuana is legalized,
people will start asking, why are we putting the pot smokers in jail?
The heart of the fight is really over who controls a 50
million-person market, the Congress or the criminals?

Why, both of them do. Both of them also benefit enormously as long as
marijuana remains illegal.

The medical-marijuana issue is simply too narrow of a pocket for our
fat cats to grasp (sorry, not enough money in it).

Dave Crockett

Cumberland