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Why Pot Legalization Is the Most Important Issue Before Voters This Election Day

Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch
Huffington Post

Forget about what's happening in the partisan battle for control of Congress and statehouses across the country. The single-most important issue that will be decided on November 2 is California's Proposition 19, a ballot initiative that would legalize the cultivation, consumption, and sale of marijuana and allow municipalities to regulate and tax the stuff.

Though limited to voters in a single state, Prop. 19 is the only policy matter on the table with the potential to restructure the lives of virtually all Americans. If Prop. 19 passes, it will force, at long bloody last, an honest reconsideration of failed prohibitionist policies throughout the United States. In fact, given the drug war's influence on our foreign policy in Latin America and central Asia, Prop. 19's reverberations would even be felt far outside our borders.

Despite overt similarities to liquor prohibition in the 1920s, the drug war actually functions more like the Cold War used to. It's an almost-hidden, infrequently debated structuring device that affects every aspect of American politics, culture, and society. Just as Cold War anxieties transformed educational priorities and politicized everything from the Olympics to fluoridated drinking water, the drug war is everywhere with us. The same schools that plead poverty in teaching basic literature or math still all find time and money for D.A.R.E. and other drug-education classes, despite iffy results. Video games, public-service announcements, and even urinal-cake holders in men's rooms still implore us to just say no. Some 40 million workplace drug tests are administered each year, and even legal prescription drugs are getting some employees fired.

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Can Legalizing Marijuana Save California, Our Republic? 

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California Proposition 19: A Giant Leap Toward Ending the Fraudulent War on Drugs

Ethan Jacobs, J.D. -- Activist Post 

Contributing Writer

Introduction:

This November 2nd, Californian’s have an opportunity to vote yes on Proposition 19, which if passed, would set an important precedent for abolishing the fraudulent war on drugs. The war on drugs is a hypocritical fraud because hundreds of thousands of low level street marijuana dealers are arrested each year, while the global elite’s agents within the CIA and other government agencies continue to manage the international drug trade of narcotics. There are also many important social and economical reasons for supporting Proposition 19.

Proposition 19

If approved by voters, Proposition 19 will allow people 21 years old or older to possess, cultivate, or transport marijuana for personal use. Local governments will have the ability to regulate and tax commercial production and sale of marijuana. Proposition 19 prohibits people from possessing marijuana on school grounds, using it in public, smoking while minors are present, or providing it to anyone under 21 years old. Like with alcohol, driving while intoxicated is strictly prohibited.i

It is estimated that Proposition 19 will provide state and local governments with tens of millions of dollars of savings on the cost of incarcerating and supervising marijuana offenders. Additionally, state and local governments will are expected to gain millions of dollars in sales tax revenue.ii

The Global Elite & Government Drug Trafficking

The global elite and governments they control have been running the international drug trade for hundreds if not thousands of years.

The East India Company was an early English corporation that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China. The Company was granted an English Royal Charter, under the name Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, by Queen Elizabeth I on December 31, 1600. The East India Company traded mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye, saltpetre, tea, and opium:

In the eighteenth century, Britain had a huge trade deficit with Qing Dynasty China and so in 1773, the Company created a British monopoly on opium buying in Bengal. As the opium trade was illegal in China, Company ships could not carry opium to China. So the opium produced in Bengal was sold in Calcutta on condition that it be sent to China.…Despite the Chinese ban on opium imports, reaffirmed in 1799, it was smuggled into China from Bengal by traffickers and agency houses in amounts averaging 900 tons a year. The proceeds from drug-runners at Lintin Island were paid into the Company’s factory at Canton and by 1825, most of the money needed to buy tea in China was raised by the illegal opium trade. In 1838, with opium smuggling approaching 1,400 tons a year, the Chinese imposed a death penalty on opium smuggling and sent a new governor, Lin Zexu, to curb smuggling. This resulted in the First Opium War (1839–1842). The British seized Hong Kong and opened the Chinese market to British drug traffickers.iv

Nothing has changed in regard to the opium trade. US Marines currently guard the poppy seeds of Afghanistan, which are used to produce opium and sold on the world market. Fox News recently interviewed a commanding officer who openly admitted that the Marines provide the opium growers with “security and resources."

Black Ops & Black Market Profits

In an article titled Your Government Dealing Drugs, former Navy Seal and Governor of Minnesota, Jesse Venutra, shed light on the CIA’s involvement in the U.S. heroin epidemic of the 50s and 60s. “Almost from the moment of their founding in 1947, the CIA was giving covert support to organized drug trafficers in Europe and the Far East, and eventually the Middle East and Latin America.”vi Ventura’s article details how drugs funded Reagan’s war in Nicaragua, drug dealing in connection to the Iran Contra Affair, and the CIA’s involvement with Colonel Manuel Noriega of Panama. He continues, “It’s a proven fact that the CIA’s into drugs…It’s because they can get money to operate with and not have to account to Congress for what they’re doing… But doesn’t it really beg for a massive investigation and trials and a whole lot of people going to jail? This includes the big banks that allow the dirty money to be laundered through them.”

In his book, Called to Serve, Colonel James ‘Bo’ Gritz, a Green Beret and Vietnam veteran, also provides evidence of CIA drug dealing. “Manuel Noriega was paid $250,000 per-year as a CIA retainer…The CIA and Israeli Mossad were running cocaine from Columbia to Albert Air Force Base at Panama City.”

Robert “Tosh” Plumlee worked as an undercover CIA pilot and operative during the Ronald Reagan Administration’s “Drug War,” flying arms to Nicaragua, and the Contras and cocaineback to the United States.  Plumlee reported illegal shipments guns and drugs to Congress. He said that he flew into the former El Toro Marine Base, California, a number of times, inunmarked C-130s in the early morning hours.

In the event proposition 19 passes, the global elite and government drug dealers they sponsor will have to compete with marijuana, a plant that can grow practically anywhere inexpensively. This competition of recreational drugs could significantly reduce the drug trade income obtained by the global elite through the trafficking of narcotics.

Setting the Captives Free

The War on Drugs has been a necessary component of incrementally transforming the United States towards a police state. In 2007, the Department of Justice reported that there were 1,841,182 drug arrests in the United States, meaning that there were more drug abuse arrests than any other category of offenses.  Marijuana arrests accounted for 47.4% of the drug abuse arrests. Therefore, approximately 872,720 persons were arrested for marijuana offenses. Eighty-nine percent of these arrests were for possession.xii

Kevin Zees of Common Sense for Drug Policy writes:

…the United States with 5 percent of the world’s population has 25% of the world’s prisoners. One in 31 Americans is either behind bars, on probation or on parole…This mass “criminal” population in the land of the free: shows something is terribly wrong. What drives a system that results in 7 million Americans behind bars, on probation or parole? No doubt, the driving force is the war on drugs, and marijuana is the driving force of the drug war with a marijuana arrest every 38 seconds…xiii

Clearly the passage of Proposition 19 and legalization of marijuana would be a substantial victory for reducing the prison population and furthering inpidual freedom.

Will Law Enforcement Comply With the Passage of Proposition 19?

In the event that Proposition 19 passes, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., and Los Angels County Sheriff Lee Baca, announced that their agencies will act contrary to the will of California voters by continuing to enforce federal laws that prohibit marijuana activities.xiv Holder did not give specific reasons for his decision but alluded to the reluctance of the federal government to enforce drug laws differently in different states.xv

However, the police and the courts depend on the cooperation of communities to keep order. Law enforcement agents will lack legitimacy if they are enforcing a law the majority opposes. As with alcohol prohibition, marijuana laws will be repealed once large urban areas refuse to enforce them. xvi

Conclusion

Passage of California Proposition 19 and the legalization of marijuana would be a major victory for inpidual freedom and a blow to the police state. The war on drugs is a miserable failure; hundreds of thousands of low-level marijuana arrests are made each year while the global elite and their government puppets continue to traffic narcotics, making billions in off-the-books profits. Legalizing marijuana will reduce prison costs while increasing sales tax revenue for state and local government.

i Ballot Pedia. “California Proposition 19, the Marijuana Legalization Initiative (2010).”

ii Ibid.

iii Invisible Empire: A New World Order Defined. Dir. Jason Bermas. 2010. DVD.

online at

iv Wikipedia. “East India Company.” October 24, 2010

v Fox and Friends of Fox News Network. April 10, 2010. Posted on Youtube.com: Fox News – We Tolerate The Cultivation of Opium Poppies. 

vi TruTv. “Your Government Dealing Drugs.” By Jesse Ventura and Dick Russell.

Note: This article was condensed and excerpted from American Conspiracies by Jesse Ventura and Dick Russell with permission of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. New York, NY.

vii Ibid.

viii James Gritz. Called to Serve. Lazarus Pub Company. October 1991.

ix Bo Gritz. Behind the Looking Glass (The Bush Dynasty). < http://www.bogritz.com>

x Wikipedia. “William Robert Plumlee.” October 24, 2010

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Robert_Plumlee>

xi Salem-News. Former CIA Pilot Tells of Guns and Drugs Shipments.” March 8, 2010.

By Robert O’Dowd and Tim King. < http://www.salem-news.com/articles/march082010/plumlee-sabow-ro-tk.php?

xii The Social Medicine Portal. “Record Marijuana Arrests Feed The Prison Industrial Complex.”

xiii Global Research. “Enforcing the Marijuana Laws in America? When the Majority say marijuana should not be a crime, the law looses it legitimacy.” October 19, 2010. By Kevin Zeese, President of Common Sense for Drug Policy (www.csdp.org). < http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21511>

xiv U.S. Will Enforce Marijuana Laws, State Vote Aside. New York Times. By Adam Nagourney. October 15, 2010.

< http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/us/16pot.html>

xv Ibid.

xvi Global Research. Ibid.

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Hemp Is the Far Bigger Economic Issue Hiding Behind Legal Marijuana

Prop 19 will open up California to hemp, a multi-billion-dollar crop that has been a staple of human agriculture for thousands of years.

Harvey Wasserman
Alternet

Hemp is the far bigger economic issue hiding behind legal marijuana.

If the upcoming pot legalization ballot in California were decided by hemp farmers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, it would be no contest. For purely economic reasons, if you told the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that the nation they were founding would someday make hemp illegal, they would have laughed you out of the room.

If California legalizes pot, it will save the state millions in avoided legal and imprisonment costs, while raising it millions in taxes.

But with legal marijuana will come legal hemp. That will open up the Golden State to a multi-billion-dollar crop that has been a staple of human agriculture for thousands of years, and that could save the farms of thousands of American families.

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Legalize marijuana, says former US surgeon general

Jonathan Benson
Natural News

Next month, California voters will decide whether or not to legalize marijuana in the state for recreational use. And former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders recently made an announcement on CNN that she supports both the initiative and the decriminalization of marijuana.

“What I think is horrible about all of this, is that we criminalize young people,” she told reporters. “And we use so many of our excellent resources … for things that aren’t really causing any problems. It’s not a toxic substance.”

Proposition 19, the California bill that will legalize marijuana if passed, has come under fire from opponents that insist it will be the downfall of the state. But proponents of the bill say that removing marijuana from the controlled substance list will make it available to people that need it while decriminalizing thousands who have been jailed or fined, many while using it for legitimate treatments.

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Can Legalizing Marijuana Save California, Our Republic?

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