Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
All governments rule by violence and coercion and they’re run by money, since the agents of violence and coercion need to be paid for their “service,” of extorting money from the peasantry so as to sustain the system that pays them. This explains why everything government does is self-sustaining and generally unhelpful to those outside of government or one of its crony corporations.
Of course, here in the USA, we never just have one layer of government ruining our lives as that would be too cost-effective and efficient. Instead, we have governing bodies with legal monopolies on violence at the municipal and/or township, county, state and federal levels. The higher up the chain you go, the more violence and money is needed to sustain that level of government with the most violence and money being dispensed and consumed respectively by the leviathan that is the federal government.
The only good thing, if one can even call it that, about this arrangement is that occasionally, these levels of government, being the creatures of violence they are, fight each other over money and power. It appears such a brawl is shaping up in the states that have legalized marijuana for medical and/or recreational use and the federal government which still bans marijuana to protect the oligarchs in big-booze and big-pharma.
“The governors of the first four states to legalize recreational marijuana have sent an open letter urging the Trump administration to work with them before making any changes to the enforcement of federal drug laws in their states.
The April 3 letter was addressed to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and signed by Alaska Gov. Bill Walker, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. Walker is a political independent; the other three are Democrats.
‘As governors of states that have legalized marijuana in some form, we ask the Trump administration to engage with us before embarking on any changes to regulatory and enforcement systems,’ the governors wrote. ‘We understand you and others in the administration have some concerns regarding marijuana. We sympathize, as many of us expressed apprehensions before our states adopted current laws,’” Yahoo News Senior Editor Dylan Stableford wrote for Yahoo on Tuesday.
The next two ‘graphs are particularly telling:
“Hickenlooper — who originally opposed Colorado’s 2014 referendum — said last month that he hasn’t seen the negative effects he feared and that he was ‘getting close’ to personally supporting it.
‘As governors, we have committed to implementing the will of our citizens and have worked cooperatively with our legislatures to establish robust regulatory structures that prioritize public health and public safety,’ the governors continued.”
Given that the state’s myriad taxes on marijuana brought in a whopping $87.28 million dollars in 2015 alone, I’ve a suspicion that Hickenlooper is more than “close” to supporting legalization. Total state taxes on marijuana come to about 25%, suggesting that the retail and medical marijuana is a $349 million per year industry in just Colorado alone. That’s a lot of money, more than enough to attract the oligarchs’ attention.
Trump’s Attorney General and former hard-charging drug warrior Jeff Sessions has recently signaled that the Obama-era policy of not cracking down with the federales on states that legalized marijuana was “under review,” prompting a group of senators to send Sessions a letter similar to that he just received from the governors.
“’I’m definitely not a fan of expanded use of marijuana,’ he said. ‘States, they can pass the laws they choose. I would just say it does remain a violation of federal law to distribute marijuana throughout any place in the United States, whether a state legalizes it or not,’” Yahoo quoted Sessions as saying.
Apparently the Trump regime has expressed at least some interest in cracking down on those states. The Denver Post reported last week that a Drug Enforcement Administration supervisor sent an email to a Colorado prosecutor, looking for information on marijuana “crimes” for the new regime.
The last ‘graph of the Yahoo piece is pure gold.
“’Any forced change in federal enforcement policy will interrupt the collaborative approach we have taken with local law enforcement and the federal government,’ Mark Bolton, Hickenlooper’s adviser on marijuana policy, said in a Monday statement. ‘Our hope is that we can continue working with the administration to build on a regulatory system that prioritizes protecting public safety and public health,’” Yahoo reported.
Given that there isn’t a single regulatory system at any level of government anywhere in the United States that prizes “protecting public safety and public health” over protecting government, its budgets and its cronies, it’s doubtful the federal government’s renewed vigor for enforcing its big-pharma and big-booze protections will be the first “regulatory system” to do so.
All this sets up what could be at least an interesting, if lop-sided fight between state governors who want to protect this awesome new revenue source they’ve just discovered and the federal government whose only purpose is to protect the interests of the oligarchs, big-pharma and big-booze among them.
Given that Insys Therapeutics, which donated $500,000 to fight legal medical marijuana in Arizona last year, just received preliminary approval from DEA for its synthesized THC pill, it’s a safe bet that the federal government will be the winner of this battle and it won’t even be close.
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