marijuana industry sex scandals

Here’s another reason why Prohibition is a joke – Sex Scandals!

The foundational premise used to justify organized government is that human corruption and selfish tendencies must be restrained through elaborate checks, balances, and rule of law. The core claim is that average citizens are fundamentally unable to govern themselves in a just manner due to innate human flaws and moral weaknesses. Thus, we require "noble" institutions and elites to rule over us for the greater good.

This, of course, is an extraordinarily convenient narrative for those already in positions of power and privilege. But scandals and hypocrisy revealed on a near daily basis shed sobering light on the fallacy of this assumption. The inescapable truth is that the state apparatus and governing class are equally susceptible to the same graft, vice, and lechery that they condescendingly accuse average people of being unable to overcome.

In other words, corruption and depravity infect the halls of governance just as much as they do Main Street. Money, sex, and abuses of power compromise officials constantly while they pontificate piously about morality.

So a glaring question arises: who will guard the supposed guardians? If rulers can't govern their own impulses, how can they claim legitimacy and authority in governing citizens who never consented to be ruled?

Here’s a real world example!

A case in point is the recent sordid cannabis corruption and bribery scheme engulfing Michigan's political establishment. Politicians like former Republican House Speaker Rick Johnson were entrusted by the people and empowered by the state to ethically regulate marijuana in the public interest.

Yet instead, Johnson and his cohorts abused this authority by exchanging lucrative cannabis business licenses for large cash bribes and access to sexual favors from sex workers. This crass quid pro quo scheme exposes the rottenness right at the core of cannabis prohibition.

Outlawing and criminalizing the cannabis plant only serves to empower and amplify the very same crooked human tendencies of greed and vice that such laws and governance supposedly aim to restrain. Societal harms like graft, bribery, lechery and hypocrisy don't simply disappear under democracy - if anything, they proliferate and intensely concentrate among the privileged governing class operating behind the curtain with impunity.

While average citizens continue facing rigid prohibition enforcement, seizure of property, loss of rights and years in prison for even minor cannabis offenses, lawmakers like Johnson walk freely with a slap on the wrist despite brazen criminality at the highest levels. The pious political rhetoric about morality, ethics and public health rings hollow alongside revelations of backroom deals, delivering suitcases of cash in exchange for influence and access to black market sex workers.

Laws and regulations supposedly meant to benefit the public at large are contorted and bent to serve the selfish private ends of the elite. At its heart, prohibition is ultimately about control and power over the masses, not ethics or justice. The powerful want to dictate and micromanage what ordinary citizens choose to buy, sell and consume, while hypocritically exempting themselves from adherence. It is a tragic case of ‘rules for thee but not for me’ as everyday people suffer under cannabis criminalization, while corrupt officials collect under-the-table kickbacks.

Of course, this Michigan example is just a relatively small glimpse into the much larger endemic culture of sleaze, financial conflicts of interest, and ethical shortcuts that has thoroughly infected the higher echelons of the political system. From congressmen cheating on their wives with staffers, to presidents with sprawling global business empires rife with emoluments violations, the so-called governing “elite” break norms, ignore guidelines, and act without integrity freely behind a thin hollow veneer of sanctimony.

A deeper look at the “Ruling Class”

This systemic hypocrisy and double-dealing reveals the political and corporate “ruling class” for what it really is - an opportunistic cabal solely concerned with maintaining and expanding its power, prestige and wealth above all else. If citizens must submit to draconian laws and arbitrary prohibitions on even benign plants, those restrictions should apply twice as harshly to lawmakers, regulators and policy-makers themselves.

True moral authority can only stem from living completely upstanding lives beyond any reproach or misconduct. Anything less on the part of our leaders is base hypocrisy and a total breach of public trust. According to their own logic, it is a privilege to govern others that must be rightfully earned through virtue, sobriety and self-discipline.

Yet the cynical reality is that meaningful change arises not primarily from periodically replacing one group of suit-wearing, Ivy League educated snakes with another set cut from the same cloth. Rather, true reform comes through dismantling and decentralizing the entire elite power structure enabling this corruption in the first place.

If concentrated power, influence and lack of accountability inevitably corrupts all who possess it, then the solution begins with ceasing to empower anyone as an unaccountable overlord ruling over the lives of others without their consent. Prohibition and coercive policy-making only poisons everything it touches, breeding disrespect for governance at all levels.

The Sticky Bottom Line

The bottom line is that we as both citizens and human beings do not require nor benefit from some contrived class of “noble” overlords regulating our lifestyles, behaviors, choices and relationships through coercive policy and unjust prohibition. Even laws conceived with the best of intentions inevitably breed greed, hypocrisy, division and oppression - as power concentrated in the hands of the few will corrupt the morality of most.

The innate human desire to dominate and control others through fear and punishment inherently poisons souls and casts darkness over society. The road to hell was paved with ”good intentions” going back to the first empires and monarchies. Today is no different.

Prohibition and the authoritarian impulse behind it only serves to corrupt and bring out the worst in all it touches, destroying far more lives than it purportedly saves. We cannot continue repeating the same self-destructive mistakes over and over. The wise change course not by fruitlessly replacing one generation of lying, cheating, fallible politicians with another chosen from the same elite circles. But rather by eliminating and decentralizing positions of unrestrained coercive power and monopoly privilege within society wherever possible.

As the spirit of cognitive liberty and the freedom to live according to one's conscience inevitably expands in the coming age, we must hold all officials and public representatives to the very highest moral and ethical standards without exception. Any corruption, abuse of power or ethical transgression must carry swift and severe social consequences.

Those who wish to take it upon themselves to legislate how others live cannot remain insulated within a system of self-policing ruled by insiders. Lead by example through impeccable integrity or voluntarily step aside. The era of preaching temperance, austerity and sexual morality from the shadows while indulging in decadence behind closed doors must come to an end now. The truth can no longer be concealed in the darkness.

Ultimately, building truly just communities happens not at the ballot box, but within our own collective consciousnesses. It starts with choosing love over fear. With seeing the inherent fallibility in all, yet refusing to judge lest we be judged ourselves. In lifting up those who have strayed rather than condemning them.

The greater path is found in empowering the divine light within all life through compassion - not controlling others through fear and force. Our shared future will be bright when each of us takes responsibility for reflecting this light back out into the world. Though the road is long, together we shall get there. The old world dies, and the new era awaits - we need only open our eyes to see it.