Steve DeAngelo: Marijuana is a Fundamental Human Right

Those bullshit quotes above are from Harry J. Anslinger the first Commissioner of the Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics back in the 30’s which ultimately morphed into the corrupt DEA of today. He was self-appointed, by the way. You see, marijuana was made illegal…just to give racists something tangible to use to DIRECTLY discriminate against African Americans! The ban on weed is rooted in those very same fears addressed by the civil rights movement. Reefer Madness continues to this day! Reefer Madness not only reinforces but illustrates that separate but not equal treatment bullshit that keeps us all separated. By fighting Reefer Madness we’re fighting RACISM ITSELF! And, by fighting for your right to medicate your fighting racism.

Since the 1930’s the United States has waged a war on drugs. Make no mistake…the war on drugs is a war on people! The unspeakable violence and suffering unleashed upon African Americans during their struggle for equal rights, the ongoing negative affects and the systematic, government-supported, sanctioned discrimination parallels the similar fate of those caught up in the 6 decades of mindless prohibition and draconian prison sentences for casual drug users in our country right now! Patients and aficionados of marijuana have all been fighting for their civil right to medicate and choose for themselves what they want to ingest…for decades now.

“Not only do I think it’s a civil right, but it’s beyond a civil right to a fundamental human right that something belongs to all of us simply because we were born human beings and our brains have receptors for canabinoids in them,” says Steve DeAngelo, star of Discovery’s WEED WARS and Executive Director of the Harboside Health Center in Oakland, California. “One of the very most basic of human rights is the right to be healthy and to take care of your health. Nature in all of her wisdom gave us  a cure for every ailment there is and every human being has a nature given, a god given, a goddess given right to use the plants that nature has given us.”

Perhaps it is more of a fight for human rights since America’s Weed Wars aren’t only affecting Americans. Marijuana prohibition fuels global drug cartels; 65% of all funding for Mexican drug cartels alone comes from the illegal sale of marijuana. The negative stereotyping of marijuana in our nation knows NO bounds. A quick Google search and you’ll see just recently in South Asia two young men were executed by their government just for possessing weed! There’s an Australian woman facing execution in Indonesia for possession right now! The day after Christmas two men we’re beheaded in Saudi Arabia for “smuggling”….we could go on and on and list the horrors of the persecution of herb-users in our nation (jailing, home-invasions, illegal search and seizures, beatings, witnessing family pets executed during raids, etc.) and externally then compare their suffering with that of African Americans, but why? You can clearly see that marijuana users are fighting for equality.

In the US, jailed drug offenders have increased 1,200% since 1980, yet the illegal flow of drugs hasn’t changed at all. Our country’s prison boom wasn’t a result of an increase in crime but an increase in jailing drug users! This boom is the result of renaming addicts as “criminals”. Currently nearly 60% of our prisons are filled with drug offenders and 80% of those “criminals” are in there for a weed offense of some kind. Some of those “criminals” are eventually stripped of their civil rights as a result of felony convictions…striped of the right to own a gun, or the right to vote (sound familiar) and then face an inability to find employment with a felony conviction marring their record for the rest of their lives. Possibly the biggest industry in our country is the prison industry. Do you realize how many PRIVATELY-OWNED prisons there are in this nation? Here’s a scary thought—a MAJORITY of our tax dollars are used to SEGREGATE marijuana supporters! Incarcerating pot-smokers is job security! Will legalizing weed change this? YES! Does the government realize this? YES! Now it’s a question of economics…which industry will be more lucrative…the prison or the pot industry?