Editor’s Note: This column does not reflect the opinions of Corrections1.
Probation/parole officers, like most law enforcement types, will tell you that other people pass laws and the officers merely enforce them. It’s easy to understand the disgust that arises in the law enforcement community when enforcement of a law causes public outcry directed at the enforcer.
It becomes even harder to bear when the leaders of the enforcement community pass down orders not to enforce laws that the line officers have been sworn to enforce. The whole situation stinks. Such is the case with the marijuana laws.
The corruption that results as pot use becomes legal will increase the burden on all law enforcement, including probation and parole. A preemptive strike to prevent this corruption is called for. Give the law enforcement community a break; marijuana should be free.
Why would any law writing body, politician, or any other person want to mislead the voting public and consumers?
Money! Isn’t it always about money?
The money to be made in the distribution of marijuana has and will continue to lead to large scale corruption. The fact that there is money to be made is the prime mover of all the marijuana legislation. My state of New Hampshire now exhibits the symptoms of this illness.
The first line of the current New Hampshire medical marijuana bill is meant to impress and treats the general public like sheep. House Bill 0442 begins as follows:
“I. Modern medical research has discovered beneficial uses for marijuana in treating or alleviating the pain, nausea, and other symptoms associated with a variety of debilitating medical conditions, as found by the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine in March 1999.”
The truth that the sponsors of the bill did not reveal is:
“The most comprehensive, scientifically rigorous review of studies of smoked marijuana was conducted by the Institute of Medicine, an organization chartered by the National Academy of Sciences. In a report released in 1999, the Institute did not recommend the use of smoked marijuana, but did conclude that active ingredients in marijuana could be isolated and developed into a variety of pharmaceuticals, such as Marinol.”
If you search the internet and review the states that have some form of approval for the distribution of marijuana, you will find profit motive. Los Angeles has, by count of internet listings on one website, 139 marijuana dispensaries in the city. They are not there to help the terminally ill and hopelessly sick. They are there to make money!
Society can remove the money motive from the equation very simply. Pass a law that states simply and clearly that the manufacture, distribution and use of any part of the marijuana plant must not involve the exchange of money, goods or services for any part of the marijuana plant unless approved by the FDA.
In other words, the manufacture, transportation, distribution and possession of pot must be free! Marijuana is a weed growing freely on this planet and Mother Nature holds the patent. People who have a prescription for marijuana should be able to go to a state controlled distribution point and receive their marijuana for free.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
