related: Attorney General Holder Aims to Ease Drug Sentencing Guidelines.
In the wake of Attorney General Eric Holder’s address to the American Bar Association in San Francisco, medical marijuana advocates were split in their reaction to the content of the speech. The speech addressed the failed policy of a five decades long “War on Drugs,” and called for a reduction of mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent drug offenders (many of whom picked up minor possession charges). Though this sounds like a step in the right direction, medical marijuana advocates are reluctant to start celebrating. The Obama Administration has made similar statements in the past with regard to states where marijuana has been legalized in some capacity, saying “we have bigger fish to fry.” Since the President made that statement, hundreds of marijuana related businesses and individuals who use or grow marijuana legally according to state law have been subject to federal raids, costing millions in tax payer dollars, as well as putting thousands of people off the job market and into the criminal justice system. What stung medical marijuana patients most about the speech, was the AG’s complete lack of any mention of medical marijuana. Not once did he address this unjustly persecuted community. This angered many medical marijuana patients whose businesses have been closed, medicine confiscated, licenses suspended and court costs thrust upon.
(Related: Top Economists Agree, “Legalizing Pot Could Save the Country Billions a Year”)
Members of the Medical Marijuana Community have seen the results assuring words from the President have gotten them, and it seems that this speech will do little to impact the reality of what medical marijuana users and advocates face each day. Until we view prison as an actual place to deter violent crime; a place to rehabilitate and reform individuals, and not as places of profit; we will continue to see an aggressive “arrest first” approach to the war on drugs.
(Related: Marijuana Prisoners Cost $1 Billion a Year)
Though it costs tax payers roughly $80 billion to house our nation’s 2.2 million inmates (more than anywhere else in the world), private investors and companies are jockeying to open up more prisons and are eager to fill them up with casual drug users and other non-violent criminals in order to buy that second home Up North. If we are to see real change in the U.S. drug policy, we will see a ban of for profit prisons, the legalization of cannabis, and an end to the bullying of other nations to push our misguided drug agenda. Until then the medical marijuana community would settle for AG Holder or President Obama specifically telling the 94 Attorney Generals in the U.S. to STOP ARRESTING PATIENTS.
