Cannabis Legalization and How it Made Local Officials More Corrupt

local corruption and marijuana licensing

A recent Politico Article shed light on the fallacy of government; “People are not capable to rule themselves”. This is the assumption behind the existence of the government, that we need people to take care of our basic needs and rights because the human is fundamentally flawed in their ability to govern themselves.

This is an “assumption” because anarchy – or those who do not have rulers – have never been implemented as government system in the history of humankind. At least – not to our knowledge. Of course, anarchist communities have existed and continue to exist these days; but “Self-governance” has never been implemented as a “mass system of governance”. We have never tested the theory that “people can’t rule themselves”.

While the US attempted to be “ruled by the people” [democracy], what occurred over time was that a privileged political/economic class was forged where the majority would in-directly continue to serve this ruling minority.

The “government” suggests that “if people can’t rule themselves, then government needs to rule”. Except the fallacy lies in that government is separate from “people” and this is when we come full circle back to the Politico Article.

How Cannabis Exposed the Fallacy

For those who’s not interested in reading the Politico Article – I’ll try to bring you up to speed. Nonetheless, it’s a good read and highly recommended to fully understand the premise above.

The article begins to list several instances where local or state politicians lined their pockets with sham laws, extortion tactics, and a slew of bribery. The “holy government” failed at the most human level – those who hold power.

As is the case of Jasiel Correia – previous Fall River Mayor in the state of Massachusetts - who allegedly took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes which were dressed up in all sorts of “legal” activities such as “consulting” and “recommendation fees” and so forth.

The article continues to show that this “isolated instance” isn’t so isolated after all. In fact, there are plenty of evidence that this is a national issue within local communities where cannabis cultivation and dispensing is permitted.

This happens when states legalize cannabis and provide no oversight to local politicians. Big cannabis businesses with seed money from Wall Street will always try to bend the law to their favor. There are several instances mentioned in the aforementioned article.

While legalization may be moving the industry out of the black waters, it seems that the “promise of money” is more than enough of a motivation for local politicians to accept bribes from mega-cannabis chains who want to expand into virgin waters.

Don’t blame cannabis for corrupt people

I’m certain that some people will try to make the connection between cannabis and this spout of corruption but that would be false. The better connection is between the original premise of this article – “People can’t rule themselves” and it seems that post-cannabis legalization – the government can’t either.

This is because the government, no matter how much it wishes to separate itself from society is comprised of “people”. This means that government can’t rule itself either, since people can’t rule themselves.

Cannabis legalization simply shed light on the fact that corruption exists within the government and if you think it ends at a local level – the corruption at State and Federal level are simply too big to catch. Like how the Pentagon “misplaced a Trillion Dollars” type of big or how banks can launder money and no one goes to jail. You know, those “you can’t do anything about it” type of corruptions.

The point being – if you legalize cannabis or not – the same level of corruption remains. Perhaps, the promise of money simply coaxes the people out of their shadowy holes, but one has to be willfully ignorant to believe that “government is good” because it is not a “person”. Government is a collective of people and if the individual cannot rule over him or herself – why would a collective of individuals suddenly stop being individuals for simply being part of the collective? The answer is – they don’t.

How to solve this corruption issue?

For the time being, the best and fastest way to curb this local corruption trend is to legalize cannabis on a federal level or to simply completely decriminalize the plant entirely. This way you’ll be able to set a federal standard which could be respected across the board.

Perhaps establishing a “national fee” or some sort of national reference to be able to ensure that a local politician isn’t trying to swindle you.

Another way would be to simply replace a bunch of politicians with smart A.I systems that would be incorruptible since it wouldn’t be human. Of course – I don’t think we’re anywhere near where we could replace mayors with A.I – but theoretically one could write a set of “principles” that should be followed where an algorithm could execute basic functions to make it happen.

Sure – right now it’s a stoner’s idea…but when “Mayor Computon 3000” is your mayor, you’ll remember this article.