The Long Road to Dismantling Prohibition

Marijuana decriminalization and legalization may
start to be feeling like a fait accompli, a matter of
when not if (you can check out the status of
legalization efforts in all 50 states
here).

Yet the “business” (mostly government) built around the war on
drugs involves a lot of people (again, mostly government employees
or those involved with government in some way) profiting from the
status quo. Even as public opinion continues to move rapidly toward
the mainstreaming of marijuana use, desperate drug warriors try to
claim their often all-too-real war on drugs is actually a “public
health” issue. Drug
courts have popped up around the country to permit an end run
around decriminalization. When the human cost of the drug war
finally starts to make prohibition unpalatable, drug courts and the
treatment of the consensual activity of drug use as a “public
health” issue sanitizes it while keeping those who use drugs and
get caught in the net of the drug warriors as
profit centers.

Fearmongering about drugs helps fuel this kind of set-up. Even
in Colorado, where voters approved marijuana legalization in 2012,
the governor, Democrat John Hickenlooper, continues to insist it
may not have been a good idea. He still wouldn’t have supported it,

he says, even as tax revenue exceeds projections. Counties,
meanwhile, are
fighting over the tax revenue even when they prohibit marijuana
within their own jurisdictions. Agents with the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) insist “every
parent” opposes marijuana legalization and get choked up
telling the Senate thaat legalization “scares”
them.

And anti-drug propaganda is peddled nationwide on a daily basis,
especially under the guise of protecting children. Here are a
couple of items just from today. In Washington,
New Jersey:

Former Mount Olive Police Officer Joseph Abrusci is not
good at being “retired.”

As a certified expert in the area of drug impairment, Abrusci
continues to offer his knowledge to parents and organizations that
combat substance abuse with education and experience.

“I’m still having fun and enjoying it to help my community and its
kids to stay on the right track, or get back on it,” Abrusci said,
“and I love every minute of it.”

Abrusci offers eight hour classes under a program called “Drug
Identification Training for Education Professionals.” Dollars to
donuts that’s a paid gig.

Meanwhile in
Montana:

Alliance for Youth is looking for students and parents
to join separate advisory boards to help promote and sustain an
anti-drug media campaign targeting teens.

The Above the Influence campaign will look at how parents and
teenagers can reach out to students and encourage positive behavior
and change attitudes about drugs and alcohol use and abuse.

For more than 20 years, Alliance for Youth has provided resources
to families, children and teens to advance healthy youth
development. They champion prevention and reduction of underage
drinking and illegal drug use and dependency, which often leads to
other problems including crime, violence, early sexual activity and
dropping out of school.

The Alliance for Youth also adminsters the local court’s

drug court program. The drug war is a jobs program all the way
down. Those can be the hardest to dismantle, tied to the power of
government and to political pressure as they are.