"Striking Whilst The Iron Is Hot"

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Or the now pressing need to drastically ramp up anti-marijuana prohibition in the US. For months now, I have been immersed in all of the news and new legislation happening in our little republic and as a lifelong cannabis patient/BHO junkie/bootlegger-smuggler (lol) I find all of this incredibly exciting. Particularly so because all of this seems to be happening despite my extreme pessissm because for years it's been an uphill battle. Consider how quickly things have happened out of nowhere we got CO to fully legalize then it was CO and WA now it's CO, WA, AL and the District of Columbia.

We have now claimed 3 states fully, seized the Capitol and numerous other states which allow medicinal marijuana. This shift both on the state and federal level has emboldened myself and other activists and caused numerous state and commonwealth governors to go back and re-examine their own state or commonwealths prohibition policies. Not even mentioning this new "Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol" Act that's being proposed. Do others here agree we need a coordinated and vigorous upsurge of focus and activism to finalize the end of the drug war? How many other drug war veterans think it's time to storm Berlin? Whatcha guys think?

[John Nada]

I will continue to do my part via civil(usually) disobedience. This arduous work that's taken up all my teenage and adult life is finally paying off.;)

[Ele'ill]

why did they actually decide to legalize it or decriminalize it

[John Nada]

why did they actually decide to legalize it or decriminalize it

It sure as hell wasn't from the legislators. It came from via initiatives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiatives_and_referendums_in_the_United_States). One of the few things that is actually worth voting on in this(US) two-party dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In states that have it, the voters can bypass the legislators, though it's not always for the better(Prop. Hate, ect).

It was pushed for by groups like the Drug Policy Alliance, Marijuana Policy Project, MAPS, among others. I could be wrong, but I thing org like these overtook NORML, which were more cautious "evolutionists", to use a leftist term. Some infighting too. George Soros throws a lot of money behind drug legalization. At least he's doing something good, besides promoting imperialism'democracy".

[Stirnerian]

This is probably not going to be a hill the bourgeoisie are going to want to die on. There are the interest of the prison barons to consider, certainly, but they are ultimately small potatoes compared to the whole.

Probably they will cede on the issue of marijuana legalization - subject to stringent regulations - under a Paulite Republican Presidency. Thus the most barefacedly aggressive form of neoliberalism will be justified as somehow 'progressive', or at any rate surely an improvement.

[John Nada]

Probably they will cede on the issue of marijuana legalization - subject to stringent regulations - under a Paulite Republican Presidency. Thus the most barefacedly aggressive form of neoliberalism will be justified as somehow 'progressive', or at any rate surely an improvemenYeah. Only good thing is the Paulites will fuck up shit so much that capitalism's contradictions will be bare for all to see. They'd want to spark up a dobbie before the firing squad.:hammersickle::ninja: Or it'll be austerity on bath salts and just suck. Probably the later.

Once we get LSD legalized then things will really start heating up. You think a drunk crowd is out of control, that shit will make the pentagon levitate, and dialectics will make sense.:w00t:

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I know this may not be as exciting as talking about the factory rights of which none of you work OR a Rafiq novella but I was expecting more responses than this :(

[Stirnerian]

I know this may not be as exciting as talking about the factory rights of which none of you work OR a Rafiq novella but I was expecting more responses than this :(

You're not wrong, but I think this problem will 'fix itself'.

I know that vested capitalist interests have a stake in marijuana prohibition, from the Corrections Corporation of America to the Office of the Drug Czar. Massive profits are unquestionably reaped from mass misery because of this single issue.

But, also, I think capitalism is still fluid enough in its cleavages to legalize it. And again, I fully expect some free-market raider like Rand Paul to be in office overseeing it. For while the prison-industrial complex is powerful, it's ultimately small potatoes in comparison to the need for this system to bring the masses along with it. Legalize marijuana, and no matter how many restrictions you place on its use for the sake of your electoral base you'll still mollify lots of pretend radicals.

Suddenly it'll be the explicitly (as opposed to implicitly) pro-business guys who took government's heels off your head. And their libertarian rhetoric begins to sound plausible on other issues also.

This is how capitalism has always worked when it's been tethered to an electoral system. And this same process largely accounts for its - lamentably inefficient - 'progressiveness'.