Why can’t you smoke pot? Because lobbyists are getting rich off of the war on drugs

Before he was the Governator, he was having a toke.

Even though the proven medical uses of marijuana have been well-known for decades, so much so that its use for medicinal purposes has been authorized in over a dozen states, it has curiously remained a Schedule I drug since 1970. It's not so curious, however, when you consider how many people are profiteering on the back of the never-ending War on Drugs.

Lee Fang reports:

John Lovell is a lobbyist who makes a lot of money from making sure you can’t smoke a joint. That’s his job. He’s a lobbyist for the police unions in Sacramento, and he is a driving force behind grabbing Federal dollars to shut down the California marijuana industry. I’ll get to the evidence on this important story in a bit, but first, some context.

At some point in the distant past, the war on drugs might have been popular. But not anymore — the polling is clear, but beyond that, the last three Presidents have used illegal drugs. So why do we still put hundreds of thousands of people in steel cages for pot-related offenses? Well, there are many reasons, but one of them is, of course, money in politics. Corruption. Whatever you want to call it, it’s why you can’t smoke a joint without committing a crime, though of course you can ingest any number of pills or drinks completely within the law.

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