Why Do Prison and Alcohol Lobbies Oppose Drug Treatment?
I’ve been severely remiss in failing thus far to cover the very important Prop. 5 in California. The Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act (NORA) would save billions in incarceration costs by referring many drug offenders into treatment instead of prison. It’s a significant reform and the vested drug war interests are in full-blown panic mode trying to defeat it.
The drug czar is in California right now campaigning against it, and a who’s who of drug war profiteers have assembled a well-funded No on 5 campaign, branding Prop. 5 as "the drug dealer’s bill of rights." So who exactly is funding opposition to this commonsense drug treatment initiative?
DPA director Ethan Nadelmann explains via email:
Last week the powerful prison guards union contributed $1 million to the opposition campaign. That's on top of hundreds of thousands of dollars from Indian tribes/casinos with close links to law enforcement as well as $100,000 from the California Beer and Beverage Distributors.
Isn’t it obvious what’s going on here? The prison industry lobbies shamelessly to keep as many people in prison as possible. The alcohol industry defends the interests of the criminal justice infrastructure that protects their monopoly on legal intoxication. And yet the drug czar has the audacity to present George Soros’s support for reform as some kind of shady conspiracy. It’s just amazing, it really is.
It’s not even my style to go around accusing our opposition of unscrupulous drug war profiteering at every turn, but what else is there to say about this? It’s right in front of our face. It’s as transparent as it is hypocritical. And it can’t be allowed to succeed.
If you live in California, please vote YES on Prop. 5 and tell everyone you know to do the same.
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The Next Nail in the Drug War Coffin
Comment posted by Giordano on Fri, 10/24/2008 - 1:29amProp. 5 is made up of five parts. Part 4 caps fines for marijuana possession (less than one-ounce) and makes its possession, currently considered a misdemeanor, into an infraction.
That means that cannabis possession penalties for under one-ounce will change from a criminal fine to a civil fine—a revolutionary victory against the drug warriors equivalent, I think, to George Washington crossing the Delaware and waking up a bunch of hungover Hessians.
Prop. 5 takes money out of the drug warriors’ pockets. So it’s understandable that the judicial industrial complex senses the grim reaper advancing onto their hellish little fiefdom. Prison guards stand to lose their Bimmers and Hummers. Drug warriors will lose their drug conference trips to locations abroad. How sad for the drug warrior vultures that their little dinner party is running out of human flesh. But then extinction isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Drug warrior vultures are certainly a species civilization could do without.
Giordano