American Conspiracies - Jesse Ventura [77]
I mean, how stupid are we? Go back to Chicago and Prohibition, when Al Capone became more powerful than the government because we’d outlawed the selling of liquor. Legalize marijuana, and you put the cartels out of business! Instead, we’re going to further militarize our border and go shoot it out with them? And if a few thousand poor Mexicans get killed in the crossfire, too bad. I don’t get that mentality. I don’t understand how this is the proper way, the adult answer, when they could do it another way. Eventually, after thousands more people get killed, they’ll probably arrive at the same answer: legalization. Because there’s nothing else that will work.
And legalization would go a long way toward giving us a more legitimate government, too—a government that doesn’t have to shield drug dealers who happen to be doing its dirty work. There are clearly people in government making money off drugs. Far more people, statistically, die from prescription drugs than illegal drugs. But the powers that be don’t want you to be able to use a drug that you don’t have to pay for, such as marijuana. Thirteen states now have voted to allow use of medical marijuana. Thank goodness Barack Obama just came out with a new policy stating that the feds are not going to interfere as long as people are following state law. That’s a great step toward legalization.
You can’t legislate stupidity, is an old saying I used in governing. Just because you make something illegal doesn’t mean it’s going away, it just means it’ll now be run by criminals. But is using an illegal drug a criminal offense, or a medical one? I tend to believe medical, because that’s customarily how addictions are treated, we don’t throw you in jail for them. In a free society, that’s an oxymoron—going to jail for committing a crime against yourself.
The government is telling people what’s good for them and what’s not, but that should be a choice made by us, not those in power. Look at the consequences when it’s the other way around.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW?
The hypocrisy of our federal drug policy has to be seen for what it is. When millions of dollars from illegal drug sales are being used to fund government agencies like the CIA and being laundered through our leading banks, isn’t it time to rethink this situation? The fact is, the “war on drugs” is killing and imprisoning our citizens, way out of proportion to how it’s helping anyone. Revamping a criminal justice system that incarcerates thousands of people for using “illicit substances” is a necessity. Legalizing marijuana, and putting a tax on its purchase like we do with cigarettes and alcohol, would be a start toward truly dealing with our “drug problem.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE STOLEN ELECTIONS OF 2000, 2004 (AND ALMOST 2008)
THE INCIDENT: In 2000 and again in 2004, George W. Bush won closely contested presidential elections against Democratic contenders Al Gore and John Kerry.
THE OFFICIAL WORD: The Supreme Court stopped a recount in Florida in 2000, giving Bush an Electoral College victory on December 12. In 2004, Bush took the deciding state of Ohio by a 100,000-vote margin and gained a second term.
MY TAKE: Both elections were stolen by Republican operatives, above all through manipulation of the electronic voting machines in deciding states, where votes were shifted from one candidate to the other. A guy who might have blown the whistle was killed in a plane crash right after the 2008 election.
“If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of