Cannabis Prohibition
How long will cannabis prohibition last?
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Marijuana prohibition arose from abject racism and prejudice against the flowers of the cannabis plant, from its odor to the people that used it for recreation typically through smoking the dried flower buds in a cigarette called a joint. Prior to the banning of cannabis at the federal level in 1937, with the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act, Mexicans and African Americans enjoyed joints. Whites did not use the substance for recreation as much, but it was called cannabis when used in common medical products of the early 20th century. In fact, the change of the term from cannabis to marijuana is partially responsible for its prohibition. The American Medical Association argued against its prohibition in the 1930s, but not its regulation, and tried to explain that cannabis is a complex substance that is known to the medical community as cannabis, and not marijuana.
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Dick Nixon is the Father of Modern Cannabis Prohibition
On June 18, 1971, Richard Nixon declared drugs to be “public enemy number 1” and launched the modern war on drugs. He hated marijuana and fought hard to ban it with his Controlled Substances Act (CSA) that passed after the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1969. Marijuana required special study to be included in Schedule 1 of the CSA alongside heroin. We know Dick Nixon hated marijuana and was racist because he recorded himself when he was president. Here are the transcripts from his May 1971 talks with his staff.
"I mean one on marijuana that just tears the ass out of them.
You know it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews
"Now, this is one thing I want. I want a Goddamn strong statement on marijuana. Can I get that out of this sonofabitching, uh, Domestic Council?"
I am against legalizing marijuana. Now I'm against legalizing marijuana because, I know all the arguments about, well, marijuana is no worse than whiskey, or etc. etc. etc. But the point is, once you cross that line, from the straight society to the drug society -- marijuana, then speed, then it's LSD, then it's heroin, etc. then you're done.
"Drinking is a different thing in a sense. Uh, Linkletter's point I think is well taken, he says, 'A person may drink to have a good time' -"
By God we are going to hit the marijuana thing, and I want to hit it right square in the puss,
(what follows is the script about cannabis prohibition that our cannabis lawyer ranted about in the YouTube above and the Podcast)
Why are Republicans to blame for the ongoing cannabis prohibition? Well, you’ve come to the right place.
Welcome to Cannabis Legalization News that I decided to bring to you after I saw what the Republicans in the Senate did to the cannabis bills that were there. It wasn’t great. However, if you remember where this came from, well, it really isn’t all that much of a surprise. The Republicans, especially those in the Senate because they have the majority of control in that legislative body, are the ones that are really standing in the way of a cannabis prohibition. I’m sorry, they’re maintaining cannabis prohibition. They’re standing in the way of cannabis legalization and this goes all the way back to tricky Dick Nixon. Back in 1970, he started this crap with a slippery slope and racially charged argument and how do we know this? Well, because he liked to record himself.
So we have the tapes from May of 1971. How about I share those with my screen, blow it up a little bit and then you can see what Nixon said here on … then I’ve highlighted the marijuana words on there. Let me just … wrong zoom in on that. I have too many things open. There you go. And so you can see what he said. And Dick Nixon, just like Mike Crapo in the Senate, came out pretty hard and he said, “Now my position is that I’m flat out against legalizing marijuana.” Yeah, there it is. Flat out against legalizing marijuana. There it is. “Now my position is I’m flat out against that. I am against legalizing marijuana. Now I’m against legalizing marijuana because I know all the arguments about, well, marijuana is no worse than whiskey or etc.” So Nixon used to like to abbreviate himself. “But the point is, once you cross that line from the straight society into the drug society, marijuana, then speed, then it’s LSD, then it’s heroin, etc, then you’re done.”
Federal prohibition of cannabis
May 13th of 1971 and then if we fast forward to May 26th of 1971. He gets quite a bit more racist in the sense that it’s right here. Now he’s talking about something, and I’ve talked about this before and I’ll continue to talk about this until everybody really realizes how wrong these laws are. The thing is that the only way that they got the Controlled Substance Act through Congress, is that they attached Part F to it. And Part F created this domestic council that he’s going to rail on here in a bit. And that domestic counsel’s job was to study cannabis and find out which of the five controlled substance schedules it properly belonged in. The conclusion of that study, back in 1972, was that it should be decriminalized and taken out of the schedules entirely. Never has been done. We are now, as we go into 2020, entering the sixth decade of cannabis prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act.
So why don’t we then go back here and let me share my screen one more time and boom. So I’ll kind of appear on the side here and maybe a little bit, there we are. Here it is.
This is what Dick Nixon said at 10:03 AM, in the oval office. He’s meeting with Bob Haldeman and he’s talking about the domestic council what became the Schaefer or commission’s report regarding how come marijuana did not need to be a controlled one substance. But instead Nixon says, “I mean one on marijuana that just tears the ass out of them. I see another thing in the news summary this morning about it. You know, it’s a funny thing. Every one of them bastards out there for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is wrong or the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it’s because most of them are psychiatrists. You know, there’s so many. All the greatest psychiatrists are Jewish. By God, we are going to hit the marijuana thing. I want to hit it right square in the puss. I want to find a way of putting more on this more [inaudible 00:04:10] work with somebody else.”
And that was one of the things about Dick Nixon. Yes, he did record himself quite often, but sometimes he’d be drunk and he would be unintelligible. Now you can actually read this. We dropped that link in the description section so you can search for his BS positions on marijuana that he was just exposing in the spring and in May of 1971. And while you’re down there clicking to read all these terrible things that came out of Nixon’s mouth, don’t forget to give us thumbs up. And how about you give us a like and a subscribe because it can really help the channel. And then the channel of being helped will help bring about the end of marijuana prohibition.
Now, what happened, not in may of 1971, but in specifically on June 18th, 1971? Well, that is when President Richard Nixon, at the time, actually launched the war on drugs in which he declared drug abuse as public enemy number one. This of course sucks, June 18th is my birthday and it’s also Paul McCartney’s birthday and a little guy named Jack Herer’s birthday. So it’s not only cool people who like marijuana’s birthday, it’s also the day that the drug war was launched in Waterloo, I believe. But what has changed with Republicans in Washington D.C. in the five decades? Practically nothing.
Marijuana is still alongside heroin as a schedule one substance. And we’ve done episodes here about the Safe Banking Act, about the States Act, even The Moore Act and how they’re getting out of committee. And the Safe Banking Act even passed by a fairly healthy margin out of the democratically led House of Representatives.
Federal Cannabis Prohibition 2020
So what’s going to happen as we go into 2020? Mike Crapo and the Senate judiciary, well, I don’t think it was the Senate judiciary committee, the Senate banking committee gutted the Safe Banking Act to restrict marijuana to 2% THC or less. Come on, man. That is even weaker than the THC count of 3.5% that the federal government gives to its own medical cannabis patients. Like, this one, a Irvine Rosenfeld. I actually bought one of Irv Rosenfeld’s tins of 300 marijuana cigarettes. Granted, they’re now empty. He smoked his medicine before he raffled off that to raise money, of course, for legalization.
So good luck to all those legal cannabis companies and getting access to banks so they can make the industry safer. I guess Republicans in the Senate want all that cash floating around and they want all those marijuana companies to not be able to get banks to make the industry more dangerous and thereby create and further the narrative that they have about this slippery slope and how it’s stupidly dangerous this stuff is. Even though it’s not, you know?
And then what else? What else happened in the Republican led Senate? Did the state law protections get extended as it had in the democratic budget where they were going to try to expand the Robach or Blumenauer Amendment? Well, I believe that’s still what it’s called, but Robach, I don’t think is in the Congress anymore. It’s somebody else now, McClintock. That amendment goes, and it’s been there in the budget and it’s in there right now, it’s section 531. That has been in the budget for approximately the last six years. And that has defunded the war on medical marijuana. It’s one of the reasons why a lot of the bus stopped from the medical marijuana bus that used to be quite popular 10 years ago.
However, they tried to expand that to all state law cannabis and no, they had that walked back. It’s still only medical cannabis. Then Congress also got rid of provisions to protect veterans that were legally employed by the cannabis industry from being discriminated against by the VA when applying for home loans. So what did cannabis ever do to these Republicans that they hate it so much?
Senator Mike Crapo Loves Cannabis Prohibition
Seriously Senator Crapo, show me on the doll where cannabis touched you. It just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, but you remain as committed as Richard Nixon does to keeping marijuana illegal for no good reason whatsoever, except, you are going to give us like a slippery slope argument. Are you going to get as racist as Nixon did? I don’t know.
So you may be thinking, I’m a quite partisan right now and I’m just showing my card, my card carrying democratic traits. Now again, admittedly, yes, I am a Democrat. I have actually been a precinct committeeman before, but I’m going to call out the Democrats just as much as I would call out the Republicans for standing in the way of cannabis legalization. It’s just that the Republicans are the ones that are actually preventing it.
Now, Joe Biden’s sucks when it comes to marijuana. I’m hoping he comes around. He might not even be the candidate that faces off against Donald Trump in 2020, however that’s another thing. You might say like, “Hey, Trump will sign the cannabis bill if it gets to his desk,” but that’s not my point. My point is it will never get to his desk, so don’t vote for Donald Trump or any Republican in the Senate.
Next time the democratic budget, I’m sorry. Next time the democratic house tries to pass cannabis reform by using its budgetary powers like it did for the 2020 budget, do not let Republicans like Mike Crapo or Dick Nixon’s ghost stand in the way, but do stick around to this channel. I’m going to be actually getting some more of these Satan Smoke books back into print. Now this is my real art house version. It didn’t even have an ISBN number and it has a very arcane region of the fourth amendment, by arcane I mean, it’s been out of date by at least about a hundred years. However, it’s an interesting read about how come the cannabis laws were based entirely on racism and misconception and they still are. And not only that, let me share my screen a few more times because it wasn’t just me railing on them. It was a couple of publications. You know, it might be fake news.
Republicans Block Cannabis Legalization in the News
One of them is called Newsweek and you know how fake news Newsweek is. And ad, there we go. So according to Newsweek … and that way, all right. So they had, yeah, the significant spending riders that prevented … We already talked about that. What was the other one that they did? Oh, that’s it. And in addition, then let’s blow it up further. There you go. The Senate added an anti-cannabis rule that prevents Washington D.C., which relies on Congress for funding, from legalizing marijuana or even reducing penalties associated with possession use or discrimination and according to the congressional record.
So there you are. Again, why? And then we just had [inaudible 00:10:50] Jazz on the show. Don’t forget to tune in Wednesdays at two for Cannabis Legalization News. We had her on the show and she was talking about the strange loopholes that they have, but they still are not being allowed to be able to legalize the sale of cannabis.
And it’s not just Newsweek that was reporting on it, it’s also that a liberal rag, Forbes. And of course this is the Mike Adams post about why it’s not going anywhere. To cut to the quick of it, the reason why it’s not going anywhere is, again, it’s the Republicans in the Senate.
And any anybody out there that is going to vote for one of the Republicans in the Senate next year, please don’t. You know, it’s not that much of a switch that you need because I think they only have 52 senators. So if like four of them lose, and God hope that they will, there’s a real chance that these bills that have been making it out of the House will start making out of the Senate. And even then, if Trump still wins next time and he says that he’s going to sign these things if they hit his desk, they’ll actually hit his desk.
Why Cannabis Prohibition Is Still a Thing?
Why cannabis prohibition is still a thing? How we managed to make cannabis prohibition a more important matter than cannabis legalization?
Are those parties that speak about legalization truly involved in legalization, or they simply go with the political flow of correctness and social equality? How we’ve become a society where a question about cannabis legalization has more importance than consumption itself?
There are many questions that need to be answered. Here are some of the insights we’ve come to.
Is cannabis prohibition really necessary?
When Richard Nixon declared drug abuse as the “public enemy number one” for the American society, many things have changed in a matter of a few moments. Both Democrats and Republicans created their own opinion about the subject, and the endless political struggle continued to exist to the present date.
How this activism of both parties has affected an average American? Are we more aware of the fact that prohibition creates violence?
The incarceration rate for a drug offense has been historically high. According to the data from September 2016, approximately 47% of federal prisoners were convinced of a drug offense. In this light, we have drug offense cases that are related to all kinds of drugs. Marijuana is only one of them.
cannabis prohibition is a violation of human rights
However, too many people are incarcerated for marijuana possession. In 2017, only 92 people were sentenced for marijuana possession, according to the data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission. This is the total number of nearly 20,000 drug convictions.
Richard Nixon knew one thing. Drug prohibition would end one problem, but it would create another one. The prohibition of drugs had an impact on already addicted war veterans who could not survive without heroin, cocaine, and other substances that served as a stimulus for the war activities. These individuals were indulged in crimes related to drug possessions, but they still claim that drugs give them a necessary dose of substances that keep them mentally awake.
On the other hand, drug prohibition had a positive impact on keeping the young population away from drug abuse. Young activists still believe that the prohibition of all kinds of drugs is the only way to keep society mentally and physically healthy. This still has the potential to be the truth we want to believe in, but all kinds of societies will always have a tendency to misuse drugs in many different ways.
One thing is certain. The medical use of cannabis has proven to be the only way to ease certain medical conditions that affect many people today.
So, why cannabis prohibition is still a thing?
At the end of 2019, the Senate added an anti-cannabis rule that prevents the legalization and cultivation of marijuana in several states. The main concern is how so many cases on the court will end up if they release people who were imprisoned for marijuana possession.
At the same time, the financial situation for different companies is not the brightest one. The companies located in the states where marijuana is legalized will have more opportunities to grow and expand the business, especially with the noticeable increase in the popularity of cannabis products. This means the states where marijuana is still not legalized do not have an opportunity to support business operations in the cultivation, distribution, and sales of cannabis products.
Can these kinds of different rules in different states create social and economic differences that affect people on a more personal level? Why a person in Colorado can establish the business, promote the products and use the products personally while another person in Texas cannot even think about all of these things?
The prohibition creates inequality, financial and social differences, and overall anxiety about political rights. Moreover, prohibition creates violence. With the highest per-capita incarceration rate in the world, the USA has more than 2 million people behind the bars.
If we continue to prohibit drugs that are legally and medically proven to have a positive impact, we will create a society where people are constantly searching for ways to use drugs, which usually involves making major crimes.
Let it be legal and let’s see how people react to the new kind of freedom where they can decide whether to use drugs or not. This will create a society where personal choice is what matters the most. Of course, until the freedom and safety of another person are not affected.
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