America’s Bipolar Response To Marijuana And It’s Byproducts Hypocritical…

The Nixon drug wars have been fol­lowed up by every pres­i­dent, Republican, and Democrat, over­see­ing the impris­on­ment and depor­ta­tion of tens of thou­sands of peo­ple, main­ly of col­or, for the use and sale of weed.
Today, there is less vit­ri­ol direct­ed at the mar­i­jua­na plant. Despite the relax­ation of the penal­ties for small­er quan­ti­ties of weed, the American gov­ern­ment is still stead­fast­ly opposed to relax­ing the rules around the pos­ses­sion and sale of mar­i­jua­na at the fed­er­al lev­el. Mass depor­ta­tion con­tin­ues for non-American cit­i­zens caught sell­ing even a $5.00 cig­ar on the one hand. At the same time, white entre­pre­neurs brag about the mil­lions they make sell­ing the same weed.
And that does­n’t con­sid­er the thou­sands already deport­ed and the God knows how many still lan­guish in pris­ons across the coun­try for sell­ing from a cig­ar to pounds of weed.
And while we are on the injus­tice, let us not for­get the untold num­ber of lives racist crim­i­nal police destroy each year by plant­i­ng the weed on them or tes­ti­fy­ing false­ly to wit­ness­ing sales of the product.
Below is a break­down from Disa​.com of how states have respond­ed to mar­i­jua­na use. 

Even though many states across the union have relaxed their laws allow­ing for the pos­ses­sion of small­er quan­ti­ties, their police forces con­tin­ue to allow their cops to abuse the rights of black cit­i­zens with ille­gal search­es of their per­sons and pos­ses­sions under the guise that they smell mar­i­jua­na on them or see shakes in their automobiles.
Realistically, the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of mar­i­jua­na was nev­er about the harm it could poten­tial­ly do to one’s health, prompt­ing gov­ern­ment action. It was one more tool in fur­ther­ance of the larg­er mass incar­cer­a­tion of Blacks in the country.
My inten­tion is not to pro­duce data sup­port­ing the hypocrisy of the war on mar­i­jua­na; that infor­ma­tion is avail­able for objec­tive, curi­ous peo­ple to see using a sim­ple google search.
Frankly, I have nev­er smoked weed; when­ev­er I say that peo­ple always gasp,’ how can you not, and you are from Jamaica’?
I still haven’t quite fig­ured out whether or not to dig­ni­fy that ques­tion with a response.
My posi­tion is nei­ther pro nor con on mar­i­jua­na; it has to do with the hypocrisy and injus­tice in the way the laws are enforced.

The American Government went out of its way to secure the release of Britney Griner, and I com­mend the Biden Administration for try­ing to secure the ath­lete’s release from a Russian prison. For one, the sen­tence imposed on miss Griner was over­ly exces­sive. The sen­tence had the stench of a polit­i­cal one than one for the illic­it pos­ses­sion of a weed bi-product.
But we should nev­er lose sight of the fact that Brittney Griner did break Russian law.….….…
While the American State Department was active­ly try­ing to secure the release of Brittney Griner from a Russian prison for pos­sess­ing weed bi-prod­ucts, cops across the United States con­tin­ued their assault against Black peo­ple through ille­gal fourth amend­ment assaults on their per­sons and their prop­er­ty in search of small quan­ti­ties of the very same weed.
This is the bipo­lar and non­sen­si­cal pol­i­cy of the United States Government that goes out of its way to secure the release of one American for break­ing the same laws Americans at home are being per­se­cut­ed and worse for breaking.
But as I said ear­li­er, it is not about law and order but mass incar­cer­a­tion here. That is why cocaine mixed with oth­er prod­ucts, which is large­ly used by Blacks, attracts expo­nen­tial­ly more severe penal­ties than pure cocaine favored by whites.

.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.