Government puts prohibition over protection

Must read of the day is this one I almost missed at Cannabis Culture, Protecting Children. Ray Boyd gives us an excellent overview of the skewed priorities of our government and points out many examples of misplaced funds used to promote the war on some drugs rather than the public safety. Read it all for yourself, but here's one key graf that kind of sums up the whole problem.

"I am hearing there's a terrible shortage of police, helicopters, medical supplies, trucks – that New Orleans is in utter chaos and needs help from everybody everywhere," he said. "But you know what the police were doing here where I live? Flying their helicopters looking for marijuana growing in people's backyards. They swooped on a guy who ran out in his backyard and tried to burn down his four pot plants when he heard their copters coming. They sent in a huge squad to bust him. I think that every one of those police and all their equipment should have been helping out in New Orleans. But no, it's business as usual. They don't care about kids drowning in New Orleans. They just like to have their wars."

Can't think of a better way to protect the illegal market than to bust people growing a few plants in order to supply themselves outside of it and how many lives were lost that could have saved in order to destroy four plants and an otherwise law-abiding tax-paying citizen's place in civil society?

[hat tip to Tim Meehan]