Rightey wrote:Alvin Flummux wrote:KKLEIN wrote:Spicer announcing today that they'll be "taking action" against states that have legalised recreational marijuana. Quite a big thing in America, particularly in the black community (and are also far more likely to be arrested for it). I'm sure that's just coincidence though.
Considering that the entire rationale for the continued marijuana prohibition is based in racism, it's probably not.
I think it's more based on the fact that the US has for the last 50 years demonized marijuana and other drugs to such a massive extent older people honestly do believe that you might start killing everyone in sight or eating glass or who knows what else while high.
Even though it was proved in the 1940s that marijuana is safe... Do people really still believe it makes you crazy? Surely the younger generations of politicians (Paul Ryan etc) know better?
In 1973, a bipartisan commission actually went and recommended Nixon decriminalize marijuana, but he refused, instead launching the war on drugs.
"
We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." - John Ehrlichman, White House Domestic Affairs Adviser from 1969 to 1973.
The war on drugs was launched by Nixon to bully his political enemies and minorities. Not enough people know this.
