As some of you may know, in America, not only is it illegal to smoke pot, but it's also illegal to sell bongs and pipes because they might be used to smoke pot by the purchaser. Anyway, Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong) just got sentenced to nine months in federal prison and a $20,000 fine because his name was on a bunch of bongs (more). Doesn't the US government have anything better to do than spend a fortune hassling old hippies? And it gets better. Ashcroft and Bush want these types of crimes to get the DEATH PENALTY through a combination of redefining of “drug dealing” as “domestic terrorism” and the assigning of new death penalties to “fight terror” (more).
PS. And yes, I know you can buy bongs everywhere. All of those people are at risk, and it doesn't matter if it says “tobacco bong” on the label. Also, even legitimate artists and glass blowers that rarely even make bongs are being raided and shut down. This isn't called a drug war for nothing you know. Oh, and yes, I also realize that this isn't a right-left thing; Clinton is the guy that told doctors they'd lose their license if they prescribed medical marijuana after all, and most of the impending Democrats are promising to continue the war… Hell, even everyone's favotire “lefty” candidate Dean has called for more funding for the war on drugs, and has also blocked medical marijuan laws. Oh, and I'll also note that if the US legalized pot, it would make at least $23 billion dollars a year in new tax money for the US to improve life for Americans (more), to say nothing of the $10 to $20 billion that could be cut from the drug war budget, to say nothing of how much safer it would make America, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of harmless people who'd no longer be in prison, and so on and so on. Of course, all that money eventually flows into the hands of the wealthy so maybe that's the whole point… It always comes back to class war, doesn't it?
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