“It’s Where the Money Is”
Monday 5 July 2010 - Filed under Dumbassery + LE + War on Drugs
Justin Scheck via The Wall Street Journal:
Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, his budget under pressure in a weak economy, has laid off staff, reduced patrols and even released jail inmates. But there’s one mission on which he’s spending more than in recent years: pot busts.
The reason is simple: If he steps up his pursuit of marijuana growers, his department is eligible for roughly half a million dollars a year in federal anti-drug funding, helping save some jobs. The majority of the funding would have to be used to fight pot. Marijuana may not be the county’s most pressing crime problem, the sheriff says, but “it’s where the money is.”
More evidence underscoring the idea that drug prohibition isn’t about public health or safety or even the children, but about justifying large police forces which are diametrically against personal freedom, even at the cost of ignoring/shifting focus away from actual crime with actual victims.
2010-07-05 » madlibertarianguy
3 November 2010 @ 8:37 pm
[…] Hopefully pot smokers nationwide will stop believing that Democrats are at all interested in ending or even mitigating the war on drugs. Their only goal is to pander to entrenched law enforcement and corrections unions who are, go fucking figure, adamantly against any sort of drug liberalization. Not because it’s good policy, mind you, but because marijuana enforcement is “where the money is”. […]