Guest speaker: John Gilmore
PROGRAM NOTES:
Date this lecture was recorded: September 1, 2017
[NOTE: All quotations are by John Gilmore]
“The U.S. still has the world’s largest prison population in absolute numbers and per capita. We imprison more people than the next ten countries put together. It’s insane. It’s a warped part of our culture.”
“[Some of the opposition to the Drug War] comes from people who are making money from the Drug War. I’m not talking about cartels and gangs. We haven’t seen any opposition from cartels, which is interesting. What we see is opposition from police officers, police unions, police chiefs’ associations, district attorneys, drug court judges, prison guards’ unions, probation officers. All of these people are putting their kids through college on the swelled prison population of the Drug War. And they’re afraid, if it goes away, we’re not going to need to pay them any more, or they might have to focus on some harder and more dangerous crimes and more dangerous criminals. Most of the people who are selling pot are not going to slit your throat. And so, 99% of the resistance to legalization comes from cops and prison guards, basically.”
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UN dictates the framework. One person did a lot of harm and now he’s dead. This site I’m providing is in Finnish but I just wanted to report this. God bless this mess
-Johan
http://www.tusky.fi/uutiset/771-kannabiksen-huumeluokituksen-heppoisuus
A great talk. I think that there are some really valuable lessons that have been learned from John’s experience in this area that can be directly applied to other countries seeking to throw off the prohibition yoke, such as (to paraphrase ever so slightly): “Frame initiatives in a form that the general public will vote for, rather than what the people who want it legalised will vote for”.
Here in New Zealand we will be having a public referendum on cannabis legalisation in teh next 3(?) years. You can bet that money will be pouring in from Big Pharma, Project SAM and all of the other parties who stand to lose a shitload of money from the ongoing global legalisation movement.