Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 26, 2022

Aren’t there other people you can bust? Jaywalkers? Litterers?

And profits for the prison industrial complex

I always found it easier to get alcohol. It was in everybody’s house. Some people kept refrigerators in their basements full of the stuff.

He has a point. If $Billions weren’t spent, all those jobs running the prison system (>1 million in US Prisons due to drug-related offences) would go.

Then there is the multiplier factor of the law enforcement that keeps such numbers high, and the parole system that deals with them once released.

The money could instead be spent on housing, social and medical care programs…but that would be ‘socialist’, obviously, so better to waste vast amounts of human and economic capital and ‘lock em up’ instead!

So, the War On Drugs is actually a jobs program?

Too bad nobody knows — they would claim we cannot afford it.

Since it was legalized here the state has not had a budget deficit. Just saying.

There are reruns of DRAGNET on MeTV where Sgt. Friday pontificates against marijuana use: that it causes a false high, leads to the use of harder drugs, etc.

Good show—good for laughs!!

It’s amazing how much is wasted trying to stop things just because some group of Fools think it’s bad for everyone based on simple opinions (or some warped perception of Morality) instead of real factual evidence of proof.

Then they claim to have proof just because some other idiot said so or they did their on research in the World Wide Web of Lies.

I have a friend who thinks exactly like BD..He even claims his not sorting out recyclables guarantees a job for someone at the landfill, who has to manually separate them.

When we ended prohibition, the bootleggers were put out of business. It left a bunch of law officers with better things to do, made sure that the liquor available wasn’t lethal, cut down on the number of people killing each other, and added the money that had been making bootleggers rich to the tax rolls. Isn’t there a lesson there somewhere?

It may have taken a while, but B.D. nailed it in the end. Although he could have added, “Opportunities for corruption.”

Straws in the third panel? heh.

His little pot plant is a cutie!

Jobs? They are cutting back on jobs in law enforcement.

Well, there you go. Employment for the law enforcement, juridical and correctional communities. I mean really, if there’s no crime where are these poor men and women going to get their benefits? Join the Army?? …pfffhhhttt

Look, you’re all missing the most important part: If we don’t keep a bunch of potheads in cages, then who do I get to feel smugly superior to?!

With that mentality we should also legalize heroin, since its also easier for kids to get than booze. Studies have shown

We do have a tendency for fads in massive unskilled employment, like searching people at airports, harassing rather than helping the homeless …

Repeal Prohibition. Again. For all the same reasons.

Unfortunately, the jobs B.D. is referring to are mostly law enforcement jobs. States have come to find that legalization brings revenue they didn’t know they needed, and it takes away the pretense cops need to search you and/or your vehicle for any potential infraction they may have invented just to pull you over.

Depended on how close you were to the boofing Rich kids

Way back in the 1930’s,after Elliott Ness was finished with Al Capone;the U.S.Government in their “wisdom” assigned him to flush out one man stills in Tennessee.

Ness said his life was in more danger there than in Chicago,because the populace was united in their hatred of “Outsiders”.

Jim Belushi is now a farmer in California, growing various strains of cannabis.

Because civil regulation doesn’t work when you can bypass the regulation with ease (grow your own for sale).And there are a lot of additional regulations around alcohol based on volume… following that logic, the sale of manufacturing for sale and the sale of pot should be well regulated like it is with alcohol.

When I was a PO a couple years ago it was not hard to score any thing you wanted. This includes guns. You got the cash, you got what you wanted!