The federally legal business of cannabis the US government
has been enjoying for nearly half a century is just a little bit closer to
bankruptcy after the 2016 elections. The agency running the federal
government’s cannabis business is the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The DEA’s federal
monopoly on the cannabis industry gets a little smaller after each election
cycle with the increasing passage of marijuana reform at the State level.
The DEA has cost the American tax payer over $1 trillion
since President Nixon created this agency and requested the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) to schedule cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug, alongside
heroin, LSD and ecstasy.
The DEA has also made the government a lot of money over the
past 40 plus years. And it’s not just the Federal government that enjoys the
fruits of the DEA labors. Every State and most local Town budgets also receive
“payments” for cooperation and equipment rental.
This is how it works on a small scale using my home town of
Natick as the example. The Natick Police voluntarily re-assign one of its
full-time police officers to the DEA’s Marijuana Eradication Task Force. This
officer’s salary is paid by the Town of Natick, but he does not work in the
town of Natick. The re-assigned officer
reports every day to the DEA Task Force in Boston. For “voluntarily” giving the DEA an armed
police officer to use in its task force the DEA gives the Town of Natick money
in the form of payments received from search and seizure operations. This money
goes into the town’s general fund to be used by the town however it wishes.
The amount of money given back to the town covers the cost
of the officer’s salary (approximately $62k) and adds additional money into a town’s
budget to spend as they wish. In 2016, as of November 3rd, the Town
of Natick received over $100k back from the Federal government in the form of equitable
sharing from drug forfeitures. Your elected Selectmen know about this, so too
does the Finance committee members in your town. So none of them have any incentive to stop
this. Why would they? It’s basically free money.
This arrangement and payment occurs at the State level as
well. For each Massachusetts State Police officer assigned to the DEA Task
Force there is a payment back to the State’s general fund. Therefore, no
elected official would dare attempt to put an end to this arrangement. It’s all
about the money.
Why would YOU want to put an end to this arrangement? Because this is the next step the voters in
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts need to take next in order to end the War on
Drugs. We must kick the DEA out of our state for good.
The DEA needs boots on the ground to conduct their search and
seizure of your grandmother’s glaucoma medicine growing in her garden. If you take away the men and women the DEA is
using as their “troops” on the ground you will effectively stop the DEA’s
ground war.
How can you accomplish this? Use your local town’s ballot
initiative and have your town pass new regulations that forbid the use of any
police officer being paid by your local town (and your taxes) to participate in
any Federal Task Force.
Is this legal? Yes.
You pay taxes. Your government only exists to provide you with a
service. That’s it. Our government exists only to provide us with services. If you
don’t want your local police to participate in a task force that you don’t
agree with, then by a majority vote in your town you can put a stop to this.
But it is up to you to take this action. Every official you have elected has no
incentive to stop this. They care too much about the money and not enough about
the people and communities they are supposed to be serving.
The national trend toward
legalizing cannabis state by state is an important first step toward ending a
failed government policy that has lasted over 40 years. Now it’s time to start putting the final nail
in this coffin. Bring your local police officers back to your home town and
keep them there.
With the election behind us it is time to pick up the
wrecked pieces of our political lives and focus on what to do next. With the passage of Ballot Question 4, the
legalization of cannabis for adult use, the really hard part begins now:
Watchdogging Our Legislature.
Create a list of every elected official that represents you and
stood in opposition to Question 4. Begin targeting them with phone calls,
emails and any other social media means of communication they open themselves
up to and bombard them with messages like, “Just do your job.”, “You had your
chance, now implement Q4 the way it was written.”, “Give it a chance before you
change it.”
Don’t let up. Send them messages every week. Make yourself a
calendar reminder to send one communication each week to at least one
politician that represents you.
Seriously I can’t believe all of the noise our government
officials have been making over deadlines, tax rates and home grow. They had
their chance 2 years ago to implement their own form of cannabis legalization but
they chose not do anything about it. So we the people took it upon ourselves to
tell them what we want. All they have to do is write the rules around it; don’t
change it.
We have 4 other States that can be used as the starting
point for our regulations.
If State Treasure Deb Goldberg
spent less time on press conferences and complaining, she would have enough
time to get this done within the given timeframe.
Just say “Trump You”.
From this point forward I am making a conscious decision to
always replace the word “fuck” with “trump”.
“That car just cut me off on Rt 9”… my thoughts and words
now are, “Trumping asshole!”
