Why is american cannabis law so harsh?

Question

it seems like america is way over the top on weed punishments, when it is a relatively mild drug? i am in england so i dont know about this stuff.

and by mild i mean you don't get people stealing cars to pay for weed addictions in the way that you do for something like heroin, i know it is harmful.

Answer 1

Marijuana is over criminalized. The claim is that it is associated with and leads to hard drug use. That is BS. Remove it from the hard drugs by de-criminalizing it and make it a revenue stream with which to go after the hard drugs. The same way alcohol is used to control moonshiners.

Answer 2

Because billion dollar pharmaceutical companies and tobacco, and alcohol and other corporations can't patent natural herbs. They d**n well know cannabis can't harm a soul but since they can't patent it and make billions of dollars off of it, they lobby Congress and ensure it remains illegal.

They sell it to us gullible Americans with "it's bad for you and we want to protect you" but in all truth, if they really cared about our health we'd have single-payer health-care and tobacco and hard liquor would be banned from our store shelves.

Anything that is natural can't be patented, that's why ma huang better known as ephedra herb that's proven to be the most successful weight loss herb ever, is also banned in the United States. Fat people have many medical ailments and drug needs and they don't want no 3000 year old Chinese herb for weightloss to cut in their profits, do they?

Answer 3

watch "reefer madness"  its 1930's propoaganda film against weed but still a pretty good lampoon of current US drug laws on ganja.   Unlike UK were drugs are classified according to harm caused the US has just one black and white outlook on it all.  It really wastes a lot of time and money and resources on wacky tobaccy when it could be making real headway on meth, heroin and crack.

Canada was set to decriminalize weed completely and then US threatend to basically shut down the border searching every vehicle if that happened.  They even forced Canada to have arrested the guy known as "Prince of Pot" here in vancouver for selling seeds to the americans.  So here we can smoke it, buy it , theres even pot cafes and no one cares but in deference to the americans its still techncially illegal.

Answer 4

1. American culture is uptight and moralistic.

2. The "media" consensus is that people who smoke pot are losers, druggies, pot heads, slackers, morally bankrupt and sub-human.

3. Most Americans do not agree with this assessment, but they are generally too lazy or to distracted to speak up.

4. The "Drug Wars" are a big (and I mean really big) business. We're talking billions and billions of dollars here. This so called war employs thousands of people as DEA, law enforcement, prison guards, etc. These folks are not interested in losing their jobs or perks.

5. Law enforcement, through something called "forfeiture" can confiscate  and keep property (think houses, cars) and money with little or no oversight. This amounts to millions of dollars in the pockets of police, and they don't want to lose this funding.

6. Dear old paranoid President Nixon (of bygone years), ignored the findings of the very commission he set up to study "marijuana" when they "found" that "marijuana" ought to be legalized. He tore up the study (the Shafer Report), and launched a new volley in War on Drugs, aimed at the counter culture (hippies, et al), mostly because they were protesting the war in Viet Nam.

7. The mainstream media tends to play up skewed studies which show the "harm" cannabis causes, and ignores or downplay studies that show the benefits (medicinal and otherwise) of cannabis.

8. Legislators are beholding to corporate interests which are not served by making cannabis legal, in spite of the fact that most Americans think it should be legalized.

9. Most people who ingest cannabis have also been brainwashed and think they are doing something wrong, so they do not speak up. Also, it's dangerous to speak up because you can be harassed or arrested.

10. Cannabis is (unreasonably) classified as a Schedule 1 drug:

    Ã¢Â€Â¢ The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.

    Ã¢Â€Â¢ The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.

    Ã¢Â€Â¢ There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

    Ã¢Â€Â¢ Examples of Schedule I substances include heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana, and methaqualone.

11. The Federal Government is deathly afraid of the Medical Cannabis movement, because if it succeeds, they would have to reclassify cannabis, which would lead to more studies which would show how good cannabis really is for the body, and then they would have to admit they were wrong. Since they are, for the most part, pig headed, they are reluctant to do this.

12. The harsh laws of arrest and seizure makes it easy to oppress minorities. 830,000+ arrests each year 730,000 for simple cannabis possession. One out of every 100 Americans is in jail.

13. We are living in a proto-fascist state. And I can only pray to the Goddess that people will wake up soon before it's too late (if it isn't already).

14. Be happy you are in England. There are a lot of jerks there too, but not as many as here, apparently.

Answer 5

I agree with you completely. The cannabis laws in the US are way too harsh. And that's so it stays illegal, and the government can keep making money off the 'war' on drugs.

But to answer your "gateway drug" question. Pot is the gateway drug instead of alcohol because pot is illegal. If a person has good weed connections, they can most likely get connections to harder drugs easily. Most are first introduced into the drug culture through weed. And most are introduced into the crime world through the drug culture. The same can't be said about alcohol. You can't get coke connections from your bartender.

Answer 6

Many people in the United States believe that marijuana is a "gateway" drug. People who start taking marijuana often move on to take other drugs. It is believed that if we can stop people from taking marijuana, we can stop them from progressing to something worse.