Lessons learned from Al Capone

Lessons learned from Al Capone
SMDaily / David Alsaberry / 10,06,2010

If you support keeping marijuana illegal you are supporting terrorism. In 1919, the United States Constitution was amended to outlaw alcohol. The unintended consequence was the rise to power of organized crime. Today we face the same threat from Mexican narco-terrorists that control the trafficking of marijuana in the United States. According to a 2008 Justice Department threat assessment, "Mexican drug trafficking organizations represent the greatest organized crime threat to the United States." But a solution is at hand. The Tax Cannabis 2010 organization has put an initiative on the ballot for this November that will legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana in California.

Trying to charge Al Capone for alcohol production, drug smuggling and distribution proved impossible, and in the end they sent him to jail on tax evasion. Like the drug dealers of today, Al Capone bribed elected officials, colluded with bankers and everyone else in the food chain. No matter how much money we spent to fight organized crime, the dealers prevailed and grew stronger. Our local police do not have a chance when the full military power of the United States is in Afghanistan today, and they are not able to stop the heroin production from growing to 93 percent of the world's crops. Those drugs pay for the terrorists to attack us.

Finally Americans decided to pass the 21st Amendment to the Constitution that repealed the prohibition of alcohol. In one quick move the dealers were out of business. At the same time the federal, state and local governments all taxed the production, sales and distribution of alcohol.

We face the same challenge today. The people that profit from keeping marijuana illegal have worked hard to keep it illegal. The Mexican drug cartels do not want legal marijuana in the United States for obvious reasons. The Mexican narco-terrorists use that money to destroy the lives of the good people of Mexico and force them to flee to our country every day. What people don't realize is that the American Medical Association is on the side of the drug dealers, and fights hard to keep it illegal as well. The reason is simple, the AMA and the narco-terrorists together control the entire North American drug trade. If you don't believe the AMA is in it for the money, ask yourself why the Food and Drug Administration has done no study to date on the medical use of marijuana.

Without conducting a study of their own, the FDA's position contradicts the favorable 1999 study by the Institute of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, our nation's most prestigious scientific advisory agency. "Unfortunately, this is yet another example of the FDA making pronouncements that seem to be driven more by ideology than by science," said Dr. Jerry Avorn, a medical professor at Harvard Medical School.

A close friend had a fight with cancer and the doctors prescribed about $9,000 per month of highly addictive pills to manage the pain. That person tried marijuana and found it worked better and was far less expensive. Marijuana has many benefits that the AMA really does not want you to know since they can prescribe you a great number of expensive, highly addictive alternatives that make them a great deal of profit. If you think the AMA has your best interests in mind, ask yourself how many diseases have been cured in the last 20 years? How many addicts do they create by giving you the only legal way to "manage" your ailment with a lifetime of profitable drugs? Cures are not very profitable.

I hear many argue that marijuana is a gateway drug while alcohol is not. Alcohol can cause people to beat their spouse and drive their car into a bus full of children. In contrast, Marijuana causes people to stay home, eat food and sit on the couch. The only gateway to addictive drugs is created by forcing people to deal with drug dealers that also sell addictive drugs. The medical marijuana shops do not sell hard drugs and have proven to be easy to tax, regulate and control.

The proposed law is well written and to the point. The proposed law states: "Prohibits people from possessing marijuana on school grounds, using it in public, smoking it while minors are present, or providing it to anyone under 21 years old. Maintains current prohibitions against operating a vehicle while impaired." This leaves marijuana in the hands of the same people that can buy a bottle of scotch. In the Netherlands, which legalized marijuana, the number is half that of American users as a percentage of population.

Like any good Republican, I always look to raise revenue from fair sources and encourage more effective ways to fight crime. The people of Santa Monica and their neighbors on the Westside have led the charge to fight the evil narco-terrorists with the medical marijuana movement. The people of Santa Monica had the sense to pass a law that made personal marijuana use the police department's lowest priority. Since we did that, the police were able to focus on real crime and real criminals. The 21st Amendment method of legalizing a controlled substance has proven to work. Let's do the smart thing and stop the Mexican narco-terrorists once and for all by taking away their main source of revenue and have more money for the schools.