War on Marijuana! Whose Vested Interest?

Throughout human history, vested interest, self-interest, and malignant personality have remained keys to how things happen or don't happen, no matter the economic or political system or what nation is involved. The global assault on personal liberties, civil liberties, personal choice, by way of examples, is sustained by vested interests and self-interests of people for whom the "war on drugs" is a cash-cow, a career path, or both. Government offices have been set up, government departments have enormous budgets with equally enormous staff to support neoliberal agendas, most of which has turn out to be meaningless or dangerous, but a vested interest is created and it's difficult to end a program that has a press secretary. Consequently, that war will never end until human beings with more than an iota of intelligence stop financing it by purchasing recreational drugs and listening to political and religious people who are psychotic. I would recommend to users of marijuana to "grow your own."

So, it is not surprising that alcohol and cigarettes remain at the top of the scale of human degradation in the drug wars. Or, that hydrocarbons, which represent the greatest threat to planetary life, is bankrolled by predacious governments and parasitic business cartels. Or, that manufacturers of opioids and other toxic pharmaceuticals ARE NOT being jailed. One word: capitalism. These industries have created billions of addicts to sustain their hegemony with state-sponsored support. In ecological terms, they are resilient because their drugged investor enablers demand they be. Drug cartels are no different. They, too, are following the model established by the tobacco industry in the 17th century, including slave labor. They are the matrix. From the moral ethnological point of view, however, they are all criminals, but vested interests of the nation-state as chosen to finance one side of the war to maintain the equilibrium necessary to keep the careerists on track, while thieving from the other side who are disarmed in courts of law. That will change, too. The mafiosos of the world has written a playbook for that.

But, it still begs the question, why is marijuana being targeted today? Two answers: First, marijuana has not yet become a pet of capitalist ideology nor corporate boardrooms, cocaine/opioids are, but that will change in the next generation, which is why the harsh prison terms for minor quantities of a plant. And, it is a plant, it has curative properties, and that's the second reason. Users, as I have recommended here, can grow their own, they can live beyond the gates of capitalist paradise. More and more people are acknowledging that and moving to locations where that is an option. Marijuana is in harmony with nature, capitalism is not. Capitalism demands US vs. THEM. Capitalists despise harmony. Where 'them' do not exist, they are created. Harmony does not create the synergy for domination and exploitation that capitalism demands. Humans have been watching this plot mature since Colombus stepped onto the shores of the Americas and the Portuguese established a beach head in Goa, India where the islands of the Indian Ocean could compete with those of the Caribbean and Brazil.

A fascinating history of human self-destruction. Sadly, it cannot be fixed...if you are on one side of this capitalist crusade or "Hip, Hip, Hurrah" if on the other.