News & Analysis
Have Elites Decided to Legalize Some US Drugs?
The war on drugs has succeeded only in putting millions of Americans in jail ... Televangelist Pat Robertson recently made a gaffe. A gaffe, as journalist Michael Kinsley defined it, occurs when a political figure accidentally tells the truth. Robertson's truth is that America's drug war has failed and that the country should legalize marijuana. This view goes against the deepest political, moral and religious positions Robertson has held for decades, so imagine the blinding evidence that he has had to confront—and that has been mounting for years—on this topic. Robertson drew attention to one of the great scandals of American life. "Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today," writes the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik. "Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America—more than 6 million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height." – Fareed Zakaria /Time
Dominant Social Theme: We need to legalize it now because we made a mistake in not legalizing it before.
Free-Market Analysis: What's going on here? The US has jailed tens of millions in the past decade over drug infractions. But now we seem to be seeing some re-thinking.
We usually speculate such campaigns are part of larger elite dominant social themes intended to manipulate public opinion. We think we detect such a pattern here.
First Pat Robertson writes about legalizing marijuana and then CNN's Fareed Zakaria writes about it as well. And that's not all.
A random search of Google shows that a bill to legalize medical marijuana is moving forward in the Tennessee House and that the Rhode Island Senate is discussing legalization as well. In Yakima, Washington, a former Seattle police chief and a former state senator will hold a public forum on the legalization of marijuana. Here's some more from the article:
Is this hyperbole? Here are the facts. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. That's not just many more than in most other developed countries but seven to 10 times as many ... As Robertson pointed out on his TV show, The 700 Club, "We here in America make up 5% of the world's population but we make up 25% of the [world's] jailed prisoners."
There is a temptation to look at this staggering difference in numbers and chalk it up to one more aspect of American exceptionalism. America is different, so the view goes, and it has always had a Wild West culture and a tough legal system. But the facts don't support the conventional wisdom.
This wide gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world is relatively recent. In 1980 the U.S.'s prison population was about 150 per 100,000 adults. It has more than quadrupled since then. So something has happened in the past 30 years to push millions of Americans into prison.
That something, of course, is the war on drugs. Drug convictions went from 15 inmates per 100,000 adults in 1980 to 148 in 1996, an almost tenfold increase. More than half of America's federal inmates today are in prison on drug convictions.
In 2009 alone, 1.66 million Americans were arrested on drug charges, more than were arrested on assault or larceny charges. And 4 of 5 of those arrests were simply for possession. Over the past four decades, the U.S. has spent more than $1 trillion fighting the war on drugs.
Of course, at the Daily Bell we've written regularly about the US penitentiary-industrial complex. And we're not surprised that incarceration began to soar in the 1960s. This is part and parcel of what we consider to be directed history.
This is history that is organized and driven by a power elite that controls the world's central banks and is trying to create global government. This elite, especially what would seem to be its top dynastic families, apparently rule behind the scenes via what has been described as mercantilism.
These elites pass laws that benefit their interests at the expense of others. It benefits the elites in at least two ways to make drugs illegal. For one thing, the elites don't like to use their own money to pursue their goals. They use money generated via fiat central banking.
They also generate huge cash profits from the illegal smuggling that the West's top Intel agencies, including the CIA, are apparently involved in. This black cash funds black ops and increasingly private militias and policing.
It benefits the elites to have a large prison population in the US because doing so fractures families and creates societal dysfunction. The elites have seen the United States as a distinct threat to world government because of its republican culture and quasi-libertarian-mindset of millions of citizens.
The elites use dominant social themes to achieve their mercantilist aims. These memes are intended to scare Western middle classes into giving up power and wealth to internationalist facilities. One of these memes has been the "drug war" and the necessity to put drug addicts in jail to protect society. But now this meme seems to be coming under attack.
The people involved, like Robertson, may mean well but with addition of the CNN editorial (above) and various legislative moves, it would seem that something may be stirring. The mainstream media is controlled by the same elites that control central banking, in our view, and thus when something appears in aggregate on the mainstream media we tend to believe it is being presented for a purpose.
It is hard to say why the elites have decided to soften the rhetoric on the drug war at this time. One speculation would be that reducing drug usage penalties or eliminating them tends to blur the increasingly authoritarian line that Western governments are taking as regards "austerity" and other Draconian measures.
Or perhaps the inevitable sociopolitical debate over drugs will simply distract attention from other more important moves the elites are making to impose global government.
Conclusion: With many such themes, we are not entirely sure of their significance to begin with – or even if they constitute a real elite promotion. We are not sure what this seeming change in direction as regards the drug war means, either. Maybe viewers and feedbackers will have a better sense. As for us, we'll be watching.
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Posted by Bluebird on 03/28/12 08:43 AM
My thoughts were...
a. To take some of the heat off the "Fast and Furious" scandal. Of course the guns sales were to aid in the smuggling of drugs. If they can soothe some wounds...
b. Like the Daily Bell, I believe the elite choice for POTUS is Obama. But that nagging little birth scandal just won't go away. In fact, it is not so easy to ignore or laugh off now. So Romney is their next choice. But first they will pull out all the stops to salvage the Obama administration. He could use a little miracle right now. What better way than taking the credit for legalizing marijuana, which most young people use? Many of them might support Ron Paul?
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Posted by DwightMann on 03/28/12 08:37 AM
In the old days, natural drugs were, were common fare at the Pharmacy. It was not illegal, in fact hemp was a required crop in George Washingtons time. Coke was used to make Cola. The stupid chinese smoked opium for thousands of years. The war on drugs creates a gangland mindset that has infected our youth, and it makes robbery a staple of any addicts life.
Legalize it, you get rid of the crime problem, ala the prohibition period. The gangland style slayings in the big city would virtually cease.
Those that are truly addicted could get medical help. Money is the root of this evil, and the government is the only one that really makes any money at illegal drugs. There are numerous examples of this activity.
In the old days it was a social no no, to be addicted to drugs.
The bottom line is, smart people do not do drugs. If you are in the small percentage of people that need to use drugs for some sort of relief from lifes pain, it should be given to them, and if they kill themselves with it, so be it. . .
Why do I speak so forcefully on this subject?
The government has stolen 10 years of my life, because I could make more money than a judge with the so called illicit drugs.
RP in 2012
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Posted by rossbcan on 03/28/12 08:14 AM
Those who sell / supply drugs (CIA, et al) are also addicted and, they have competetion. Those whom seek planetary control are really after "eliminating competetion". Those whom attempt to "control" drugs are also addicted to control and kickbacks from their cronies in the prison industrial complex, managing an army of prisoner slaves.
The "addictions" of the various "belief constituencies" force them to compete in the free market, independent of commodity. The free market ALWAYS converges to maximal supply, minimal cost, assuming demand.
The sole "reason" that states find it incumbent to interfere in free markets is that they get a percentage, a cut. Falling prices are not in the interests of states, a reduction of "cut". The defationary nature (minimizing collective costs) of free markets is not in the interests of states. Thus, their very survival depends on "increasing costs" by controlling markets, a frictional cost which collapses markets, to the degree of "control".
If it is "not profitable, it will not be done", the corollory of "crime does not pay".
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Posted by mark on 03/28/12 07:53 AM
i meant restrict the supply
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Posted by mark on 03/28/12 07:52 AM
In the UK they have flip flopped re cannabis for a number of years. Likely they realise that you can only fool some of the people some of the time. Also the price of drugs has dropped and dropped. Cocaine in used by the many the length and breadth of the UK whereas once upon a time it would be the yuppies in the cities who would use it. So much of it must be produced that its hard to restrict the demand to inflate the price.
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Posted by rossbcan on 03/28/12 07:41 AM
DB: "What's going on here?"
The inevitable is not unexpected. For elites, control freaks and psychopaths, it is all about maintaining "consent of the governed" which resolves to collective tolerance of the "costs" of elite control / predations in the economic and social realms.
The methodology of "consent" has devolved from:
a) fully informed, voluntarily consenting, in control electorate, rapidly disposing of corrupt "leaders". People, by subverted media, education and history lost their vigelence and knowlege of what freedom really costs.
b) the doctrine of "state security" decrees "fully informed" populations a "threat", as it is when criminals seek control. The costs of this have integrated.
c) the gloves have long been off. Consent of the governed devolved to "terror of the governed". This is an emotional, environmental fact to which people have adapted and become immune or indifferent. Like any drug, it requires increasing "doses" to maintain the same "high". The required "doses" have exceeded tolerance of the intelligent and aware.
Hoss is correct. Elite choosers / pawns are jumping ship. They see that current allegiances / goals result in personal risk. They (as are all political hacks) are re-aligning with what they believe is the dominent social consensus, so they can pretend to be "of us".
The step back is a relaxing of control in the social realm. Even in ultra conservatve Toronto, Canada, an endeavor to legalize prostitution and common bawdy houses is nearly complete. Social control, given economic implosion, from the perspective of elites is a cost, with negative returns. The economic pie is only so big and, the costs of "social control" cut into "tolerance of the governed" and, therefore the "cut" for elites. Expect freedom to do anything except harm people in the social realm, while a futile attempt to maintain economic control will proceed apace.
Once social freedom is achieved, the freedom constitutency will no longer have to be de-focussed on two war fronts and can concentrate on economic freedom, which elite slavers must also lose.
The grim reaper of "Mathematics of Rule" (and all of physical reality) is on the side of freedom. Costs will continue to mount until we socially / economically "get it" (crime by anyone, independent of power. "does not pay"):
Click to view link
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Posted by Hoss on 03/28/12 06:45 AM
A step back, maybe? Perhaps the brainwashing of the meme that it is good policy to imprison people for an illegal state of mind is simply falling out of fashion. There is always the risk of blowback, so when the propaganda scheme appears to be failing, they can be expected to moderate a little.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Good point.
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