It's all so simple to blame "the government" as if it's some kind of stand-alone entity without public support. The reason MJ and other drugs are illegal is because the people, the voters, don't want them to be legal.
"The people" have been misinformed and manipulated by the government many times. Need I remind you that the Backward Baby Bush actually convinced the American people that Saddam Hussein bore some responsibility for 9/11 while his oil-baron buddies, the Saudis, bore none? The problem with representative democracy, especially an ungainly huge one like ours, is that it's not too difficult for special-interest groups with a lot of money and organization to mount a successful propaganda campaign. In 2000 it was the petroleum industry who wanted to overthrow the government of Iraq rather than Saudi Arabia. In the early decades of the 20th century it was the Temperance movement, a well-organized religiously-motivated group who subscribed to the classic Protestant ethic that if someone, somewhere is having a good time, they must be stopped. First they used slick propaganda to convince people that booze was bad--something counterintuitive to a near-majority of the population. Then it was a piece of cake to convince them that other recreational drugs, which most people had no exprience with, were even worse.
Every single time it's come to a vote, almost anywhere, but in particularly in California, the druggie capital of the freakin' world . . . .
You haven't been to D.C.
. . . . it was still voted illegal.
Apparently you're about five years behind in reading the news. Under the wink-wink-nudge-nudge guise of "medical marijuana" (which is nonetheless a valid campaign in its own right because the shit really works) it has been decriminalized in something like eight states, the feds have agreed to not enforce federal law in those states, and it's even scheduled for the District of Columbia, the shit-for-brains government's own backyard.
The kids who spent their youth discovering that marijuana is less harmful than tobacco and alcohol are finally taking their turn as the elders. So much for Reefer Madness.
The people don't want drugs to be legalized. Why is that so hard to grasp for y'all? Right, wrong, harmless, harmful, or otherwise, ain't got nothin' to do with it. The people, the voters, don't want the drugs to be legal.
Right. These are the same people who want us to keep pushing the Islamic terrorists so far to the northeast that they're almost within marching distance of the capital of a country with nuclear weapons.
Apparently they can be convinced to do any damn fool thing if you lie to them earnestly enough.
I still think our system is the best, but only in the context, "It's the worst system there is, except for all the others."
Y'all can continue to blame "government', but understand that it's the people, the voters, .....and not just YOUR friends, but ALL of the voters.
Yes, I blame them for being so easily duped. Nonetheless, having wasted most of my career contracting for or working inside several layers of government, I'm convinced that the system is almost too badly broken to fix. Lobbyists have disproportionate power and there doesn't seem to be anything we can legally do about it. The citizens are so enamored of their entitlements that they're unwilling to make any substantive changes that might endanger them. Demagogues can sweet-talk the people into supporting their agenda, and corporations can control the demagogues.
The only hope I see is that the power of the corporation is waning in the Post-Industrial Era, as massive concentrations of capital are no longer necessary to fund big projects. Instead of being producers, corporations have turned into scavengers, buying up each other's carcasses and ripping the last few morsels of profit out of them before they topple over. Eventually they will run out of power by attrition.
But by then it may be too late, and besides, what clever new form of control will the government invent to take their place, once the "artificial persons" they created are obsolete?
