Cannabis Freedom

I read this news story: Morocco destroyed a 2,736 hectare cannabis farm. That's an area almost 20 times the size of Overton Park*. That's an unreal bust, and yet supply for the United States in the coming year won't be diminished. We're the country with the greatest marijuana consumption in the world.

I saw this story later: Police make large marijuana bust, police in Louisville take in 5 suspects for possessing between 200 and 500 pounds of marijuana. Why does the news media not take note of the outrageous claims of law enforcement? Repeatedly we are told about large busts of multiple hundreds of pound of cannabis, but that's not even a comet in the universe of buds smoked in this country. According to the White House's Marijuana SourceBook [PDF] I've conservatively approximated that 60,000 Memphians use cannabis. That crowd would fill the Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium.

No one could fathom the acreage of bud you would have to produce to feed the demand of the residents of our city. We are constantly bombarded with claims that the drug warriors are winning, Blue Crush?, that they're "keeping drugs of the streets", when clearly they aren't. Instead we're crowding 201 Poplar full of the fathers of our dying babies. Watch the 20/20 preview if you haven't already. If marijuana were taxed and regulated, or simply free to grow and consume the money wouldn't be going to the thugs fueling the violence.

We're giving outrageous profits to the gangsters that rule our streets and cause one of the highest homicide rates in the country. Marijuana prohibition is causing and perpetuating our problems. You just can't keep drugs out the hands of a free people. Unless you want a totalitarian state, end the marijuana prohibition.

*2,736 hectares / 342 acres = 19.77