Marijuana legality and special interests

The question of marijuana legality is sometimes a touchy one.  Even though the trend in the United States is slowly turning toward a policy of making it available to the general public, there are still plenty of people with lots of money battling against what the public seems to want.  Unfortunately, those battling against legality aren't necessarily people with an interest in public safety or those who disapprove of marijuana on a moral basis.  The true enemies of this plant happen to be those with a vested interest in keeping it illegal simply for the sake of their own profits.

Of the top enemies, proponents of marijuana legality seem to agree on a few that rank far above the others.  One of these happens to be the police force itself.  Why would police want to make more work for themselves by keeping marijuana illegal?  Well, it turns out that many departments get a substantial amount of federal funding based on the traditional “war on drugs.”  This money sometimes adds up to tens-of-millions of dollars - no small amount to departments that are often having their funding cut.  Coupled with the police is the prison system, a business that makes cash for each offender they keep locked up.  The more people get busted for smoking pot, the more the prison system profits.

Another major area of contention is that of rival drug producers.  Companies that manufacture and sell alcohol and prescription drugs would both like to see marijuana stay illegal so that they have less competition to worry about.  While it’s fairly obvious that a company selling beer might not want to share their profits, the story behind pharmaceutical companies is more insidious. 

These companies are reputedly devoted to helping people overcome illness of all sorts, but as it turns out, marijuana is often more effective in treating minor ailments.  Instead of buying their $100 drugs, people could simply smoke pot for a fraction of the price.  Prescription drugs are big business and the companies that produce them are anything but altruistic when it comes to maintaining their dominance.  The following article details how various companies pay doctors and other “authorities” to talk on behalf of their drugs.

The question of whether or not these represent conflicts of interest is an important one.  To think that people are being given potentially harmful drugs in place of marijuana to facilitate profit, or that people are being thrown in jail for the express purpose of filling out someone’s paycheck is, at least in my opinion, against what this country stands for. 

Marijuana plant photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services via Wikicommons