Marijuana "Prohibition" on California's Ballot
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http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/091310a.html%20consortiumnews.com
Marijuana "Prohibition" on California's Ballot
Monday 13 September 2010
by: Kevin Zeese | Consortium News | Op-Ed
Marijuana "Prohibition" on California's Ballot
Monday 13 September 2010
by: Kevin Zeese | Consortium News | Op-Ed
Note: Families all across America have been touched in one way or another by
the 37-year-old drive to eradicate marijuana use. Beyond the prison
overcrowding that has resulted, many young people with promising futures
have had criminal convictions stuck on their permanent records.
And, while costing the taxpayers' billions of dollars, the prohibition
effort has also strengthened organized crime, much as Prohibition on alcohol
did nearly a century ago, factors that have led California to consider a
retreat in this "war," as "prohibition" opponent Kevin Zeese notes in this
guest essay:
Since the founding of the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973, 15
million Americans have been arrested for marijuana.
That is more people than live in California's 25 largest cities - millions
more than live in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Illinois.
The DEA has led an aggressive national law enforcement effort that results
in a marijuana arrest every 38 seconds, propelling the U.S. to become the
biggest incarcerator on the planet, housing one out of four of the world's
prisoners.
Despite mass arrests, incarceration and the tearing apart of millions of
families, the war rages on with no end in sight.