Scare a drug thug, make pot legal

Listen to Dave’s Commentary: Scare a drug thug, make pot legal

This is John McKay talking about the black market in marijuana:

“DEA’s own estimate, up to 60 percent of the income of international drug cartels is the American marijuana market. That means the people that are killing people, putting them in pits in Mexico and shooting them…”

John McKay was appointed by President Bush as US Attorney for Western Washington, but among those prosecutors fired for not aggressively recounting the votes in a close elections won by democrats.

That was like a gut punch and convinced him that political parties are incapable of radical reform. Which is why he renounced partisan politics to launch his crusade against the failed War on Drugs:

“People become addicted to marijuana, that’s true. But we’re looking at the criminal sanctions that we have directed toward marijuana. It’s been and is a failure.”

He does not smoke it, and agrees it can ruin lives as well as relieve pain. But the lumping it in with heroin and cocaine, which he feels should remain illegal, is dumb.

Will the bad guys just just go away? No, not immediately. But over time, absolutely. The legal competition will be too much.

And as for the moral issue, which motivates such a large portion of John McKay’s former party:

“Should young people have their lives ruined for possession of a marijuana cigarette and never be able to hold any job at all in some circumstances? Is that the price that should be paid? Should 14 million Americans who regularly smoke marijuana all be arrested and put into prison today? What’s the morality of that?”

Subscribe to Dave Ross Commentary podcasts