Why Is Cannabis Still Illegal?

“Why is Cannabis still illegal?"

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With the majority of the world in favor of full-scale legalization, we must ask ourselves “why isn’t it legal yet?” To answer this question, we must explore the top industries that stand to lose the most if marijuana and drugs in general were legalized.

So let’s find out who exactly stands in between legal marijuana and you.

Pharmaceutical Industry

One of the biggest opponents to legal marijuana is the pharmaceutical industry. Many people replace their pharmaceutical medication with cannabis. In States that have legalized marijuana, there has been a 25% drop in opiate overdoses. Translate this into money lost for Big Pharma, and it comes out to roughly $2.9 billion per year on painkillers alone. As cannabis can treat multiple conditions and illnesses, Pharma stands to lose a lot if it is ever legalized fully, not to mention the sales of medications for such things as autism, epilepsy, cancer tumors, and ADD would be reduced as well.

Prison Industrial Complex

The US has the largest prison population in the world. Since 1973 to 2009, the prison population grew from roughly 200,000 to 2.2 million all thanks to drug laws. Many prisons are privately owned and for them, having more prisoners means having more profits. The major source of prisoners for the prison industrial complex comes from the failed drug war. Remove prohibition from the equation, they stand to lose out on billions from loss of “cattle”…uuh, I mean prisoners.

Police Unions

Take away drugs and you take away a large portion of arrests each year. In fact, according to the FBI, the biggest category for arrests in the United States falls under drug law violations. Of these drug law violations, 83% of them are for possession alone. Cannabis takes up the largest portion of these arrests.

So if you were to legalize marijuana, you’d take away a large chunk of their achievements and since they are receiving benefits on drug arrests, this economic incentive makes you understand why they are so adamant to keep drugs illegal.

Rehabilitation Industry

Once you’re arrested, you either get to go to jail or to rehab. This means that the rehab industry is wholly against legalization. Many of their “addicts” are just pot smokers who were caught by the police and didn’t want to go to prison. Another aspect to look at is their “drug testing” section, which generates billions each year on having individuals piss into a cup. Take away the drug laws, and you take away their financial incentives and render them useless.

Banks

Finally, we look at big banks. Over the past few years we have discovered many different banks that have been laundering money for the big cartels. Between 2006 and 2009, according to DOJ, HSBC failed to monitor $670 billion in wire transfers and $9.4 billion in cash transactions from its Mexico bank operations. As a result, they were slapped with a mere $1.9 billion dollar settlement and no criminal charges were made.

As you can see, certain banks stand to lose a great sum of illegal money if we were to legalize drugs in general. They wouldn’t be able to launder for criminals and it’s no surprise that they are so adamant to keep drugs illegal.

And there you have it, the main reasons why cannabis is still illegal. Notice that it has nothing to do with your health and everything to do with money. Understanding the “why” can help is with the “how” in terms of legalization. Cannabis is the thread that will unravel an entire corrupt system, and thus the corrupt continue to fight to keep it illegal.

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Until next time…Happy Tokes!

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Why Is Cannabis Marijuana Illegal?