Co-written by Bob Fitrakis
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders now says he'd end it, and would vote for legalization. He joins Rand Paul. Hillary says she's thinking about it.
On Tuesday, Ohio will vote directly on whether to take pot off the state's Drug War agenda.
But the vote is not so simple. It's actually opposed by a substantial percentage of the hard core pro-pot community here. And since Ohio is a test market, this year's Proposition 3 seems a likely stalking horse for potential corporate-sponsored referenda to come.
The Constitutional Amendment would establish 10 monopolies to grow pot on 300,000 square-foot grow sites. Citizens could grow up to six flowering pots at home. But the corporate stuff will be implanted with genetic markers that would make it the only spliff legal to sell.
The amendment would establish more than 1,100 dispensaries in the state. But they'll all be licensed to sell only the officially sanctioned grow-site product.
For a full one-hour discussion of Prop 3, listen to us on the Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Hour here.
Prop 3 has deeply divided the cannabis community here. The $20 million campaign behind Prop 3 has been placing heavily produced TV ads on mainstream television, including some that ran during the second Republican Presidential debate.
It's unclear how the vote in Ohio might affect the future of the Drug War. But the War's impact on American politics has been catastrophic.
Since 1970, its perpetrators have used the Drug Enforcement Administration and other policing operations as a high-tech Ku Klux Klan, meant to gut America's communities of youth and color.
The Drug War has never been about suppressing drugs. Quite the opposite.
And now that it may be winding down, the focus on suppressing minority votes will shift even stronger to electronic election theft.
The Drug War was officially born June 17, 1971, when Richard Nixon pronounced drugs to be "Public Enemy Number One." In a nation wracked by poverty, racial tension, injustice, civil strife, ecological disaster, corporate domination, a hated Vietnam War and much more, drugs seemed an odd choice.
In fact, the Drug War's primary target was black and young voters.
It was the second, secret leg of Nixon's "Southern Strategy" meant to bring the former Confederacy into the Republican Party.
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