Best Enjoyed with Headphones: If you think marijuana should be illegal then no
The reasons marijuana is illegal are rooted heavily in racist, ableist, and slut-shaming ways of thought, and it simply is impractical to be fighting marijuana in a war on drugs.
Let’s first consider racism: though whites are just as likely to use pot as blacks are, black people are 10x more likely to be arrested for possession. Because in order to arrest someone you have, in most cases, to either invade a space or search someone- and the spaces invaded in search of marijuana are almost always low-income, primarily black spaces. The bodies searched for marijuana are primarily black bodies. Because colored neighborhoods and bodies are the suspicious ones.
Then there is the slut-shaming element- marijuana was labeled even in the 1930s as a drug which caused women to be promiscuous, and the crackdown on pot which happened from the ’60s forward was largely due to a perceived tie between promiscuous people and the drug.
AND THEN there is the ableism that is clear in that disabled people have been recorded as using marijuana for purposes including the treatment of anxiety, depression, and chronic pain since as early as 2700 BC and it is still demonized to the extent that it is impossible for disabled people to have access to it in many parts of the country. Because who really cares if they say it works for them- clearly we non-disabled folks know better.
Add onto that the fact that other countries have legalized marijuana without seeing jumps in crime rates, and that 90% of marijuana cases don’t result in trials (wasting hours of police officers doing paperwork and taxpayers dollars that pay them) and we begin to see demonizing marijuana as not just culturally odd but economically unreasonable.
There is no valid reason I can be jailed for having pot on me but can go to the store and buy alcohol. None.
Always reblog.
(via gogogadgetphalluspalace)
