Sir Richard Branson, just over 2 minutes.
Quite interesting that The Global Commission on Drug Policy, according to Branson, includes 15 former Head of State crybabies: “I shoulda done something; this is awful; waaaa!”
WELL, YOU DIDN’T. YOU IMPRISONED PEOPLE INSTEAD. SO FUCK YOU.
Here’s the short article he published to LinkedIn. An excerpt.
Strangely, the trillion dollar war on drugs has persisted for 40 years even though it is the most dismal global policy failure of our time. Why do I care and why should you?
Millions of otherwise productive lives are wasted and lost in jail for marijuana possession and other nonviolent drug violations.
Too bad the War on Drugs People (and their lives) didn’t waste the life of that awful hypocrite in the White House…a life so evil and devoid of any character that he’s perfectly willing to see tens of thousands of lives ruined yearly for the same thing he used to do with impunity as a notorious pothead. He’s even joked about it from time to time on talk shows—to the lafs of the likes of Letterman and their audiences. Utterly despicable. Utterly evil.
…by 2011, federal agents were raiding cultivators in California — a clear departure from Obama’s initial rhetoric — and leaving in doubt the future of new state efforts to decriminalize. Just one day before Washington state‘s historic legislation took full effect, Holder’s office released a statement that read, in part, “The Department of Justice is reviewing the legalization initiatives recently passed in Colorado and Washington State. The Department’s responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged. Neither States nor the Executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress.
(Source)
Any man or woman of true character in this matter—particularly one with the kind of hypocritical blood Obama has on his hands—would send a personally signed message to every Representative and Senator: “Go Fuck Yourselves. Impeach me, but I’m doing what’s right.”
Immediately thereafter, he would sign an executive order to cease all Federal anti-drug activity, prosecutions, etc., he would lay off all federal employees involved in drug interdiction, and would pardon 100% of people in prison for non-violent drug offenses in federal and state prisons.
Any man or woman of character. Immediately. …Of course, no one of character ever gets elected to office at the federal level, anymore.
President Obama has more Character and Heart than any other President known to man!! It is easy for peons to criticize but if you ever tried to do something on a FEDERAL level you would see not even a God could just walk in and turn over the tables a smash everything that went down before. This is why it is a challenge far greater than minds like yours can deal with.
[Stupid bla bla bla]
The issue goes to hypocrisy and character. Everything I outlined is within his executive power.
He does not exercise it because he has such a profound lack of character that he will let over a million non-violent drug “offenders” languish in prison for the same thing he did openly and admits to doing in both his book and in interviews.
“President Obama has more Character and Heart than any other President ….”
I suppose you have a point. 0 + 0.00000000000000000001 is still a POSITIVE NUMBER!
Ron Paul would’ve done that. But you are wrong about one thing – the President can’t just fire people. Civil Service Reform etc. Its how the bureaucracy came to control power.
I didn’t say fire. Lay off is a bit of a misnomer. He can reposition them, however. He can even tell them to come to work everyday and play Words with Friends on the Internet.
It would be far less harmful to society than locking up people who are only hurting themselves (and most aren’t even doing that).
A friend of mine once represented a college student with a really bright future who got caught peeing in the bushes on the side of the road while possessing marijuana.
It got resolved but for a while the kid had to live in fear that his life was effectively over for taking a leak and possessing dried plant products.
But it’s okay because without a strong government you could get imprisoned by a petty tyrant for damned near anything, like peeing in the bushes.
/don’t pee in the bushes you could wind up having to register as a sex offender
//see
http://www.economist.com/node/14164614?story_id=14164614&source=hptextfeature
Yea, the number of kids both in prison and on sex offender registries is just another blot on America, driven by its puritan law & order mentality.
Like I always say: America is proof positive that you ought never let a bunch of Puritans get in a boat.
Strangely, the trillion dollar war on drugs has persisted for 40 years even though it is the most dismal global policy failure of our time.
That depends on your perspective.
If you’re the DuPont corporation, prohibition was the greatest boon ever to ensure their paper pulping process from trees they had just patented was not utterly beaten in the free market competing against the much cheaper, easier to grow, harvest and process hemp.
If you’re a Big Pharma corporation, it has been an unmitigated success in keeping people from self-medicating with plants that anyone can grow almost anywhere. Oh, and it also provides them with the only so-called “legal” access to the harder drug plants – coca and opium.
If you’re an employee of the prison system, or a shareholder in a private prison operation, the global war on drugs has been an extremely lucrative marketing expansion program.
If you’re a power broker amongst the elite bent on overturning the freedom and ignore the constitutional rights of the individual citizen in order to implement an authoritarian police state….the drug war has been and continues to be, a spectacular success.
Keoni, well said.
It’s a very profitable business for many (especially the private prison business, heck near me, in PA, they even bribe judges to send kids to juvie) and with the neat side-benefit (goes to your last point) of providing a great excuse for larger police forces – which should have been reduced in the last decade or so with the drop in violent crime rate, the same decade that incarcerations kept increasing.
But look Richard, how can you want to deprive the US of it’s #1 ranking for prison population in the world, (followed only by Rwanda and Russia)?
It’s got to be #1 in something, apparently not in reading, science and math, but in Something! Have a heart, man! (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading)
On the other hand, given that
“Prisons are universities of crime, maintained by the state” – Peter Kropotkin,
well then it seems we have the highest rate of higher-education!
.
No , you’re right Richard, this one isn’t a laughing matter either, it’s disgusting, systemic corruption that’s crippling large segments of the population and destroying individual lives.
Typifies to an extreme degree the idea you’ve touched on before : “The state calls it’s own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.” – Max Stirner.
I hear ya, Keoni!
Great points, and sadly all true, and the reason this “war on drugs” will persist.
What I want to see is WA state stand up for those of it’s citizens taken to Federal Court – call out the National Guard and arrest ATF&FBI agents and Federal Attorneys.
Then take all that to the Supremes – lovely stuff!!!!!!!
Yep. Right in their faces and down their throats, with malice.
I think that Romney would have been worse in the sense that Mormons seem very concerned with what you do with your penis, not to say they are not nice people but as far as “Where Do You Stick Your Penis,” they are quite limited.
So you had a choice between someone who pretends to believe in a 1900 year old religious cult, and someone who pretends to believe in 200 year old religious cult.
Imo there is more leeway in the older cult. Someone who pretends to believe in Christianity is quite a bit more normal than someone who pretends to believe in a cult that is largely restricted to the state of Utah.
ALL drugs should be legalized, regulated, rationed and taxed! End of the war on drugs with its wasteful expenditures.
Does anybody ever get held up to buy a bottle of Pinch? Do we have beer gangs? Wine cartels?
‘Do we have beer gangs? wine cartels?’ No, but we DID during Prohibition; lotsa violence too. That “Great Experiment” resulted in many new laws restricting freedoms as well.