The House has introduced a bill to protect people who grow and use marijuana in states which have legalized it:
A group of US representatives plan to introduce legislation that will legalize marijuana and allow states to legislate its use, pro-marijuana groups said Wednesday.
The legislation would limit the federal government's role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or inter-state smuggling, and allow people to legally grow, use or sell marijuana in states where it is legal.
The bill, which is expected to be introduced on Thursday by Republican Representative Ron Paul and Democratic Representative Barney Frank, would be the first ever legislation designed to end the federal ban on marijuana.
A prominent group of former world leaders have stated that a move to decriminalize marijuana would reduce violence across the globe:
"Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President (Richard) Nixon launched the US government's war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed."...
The group of prominent statesmen, many from countries on the frontline of the seemingly never-ending war on drugs, said purely punitive measures had in fact led to a situation where "the global scale of illegal drug markets -- largely controlled by organized crime -- has grown dramatically."
"Encourage experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs (especially cannabis) to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens," the report urged.
"Decriminalization initiatives do not result in significant increases in drug use," the report said, citing policies in Australia, Holland and Portugal.
Resistance to legalization has come from a status quo of institutional support. Intelligence agencies have long supported drug cartels to finance their covert operations. Gangsters have been trained by the Army (School of the Americas) and are given arms through agencies which were created to stop them. U.S. banks have profited handsomely in the money laundering of their illicit funds (forming the basis of the shadow banking system, whose collapse caused the '08 recession).
Imprisonment of drug-using youth has become a growth industry for private corporations:
Our Attorney General once said that state-licensed medicinal marijuana shops would be protected, but is now conducting raids across the country. This is the same person who formerly defended right-wing narco-terrorists against murder charges in the banana republic of Colombia.
U.S. drug restrictions first pushed for by pharmaceutical companies are now being exploited as the industry scrambles to obtain patents for marijuana pills.
It's time to end prohibition, the lifeblood of the global mafia's lucrative drug monopoly.