Who Benefits from Cannabis Prohibition?

The discussion of cannabis regulation is often approached from the viewpoint of public health protection and individual human rights to treatment. However, it’s not the full image of what happens at the state level with cannabis laws and regulations.

The strong, influential prohibition lobby explains why many unreasonably harsh bans persist in the USA. Who are they, and how do they manage to reap benefits from a marijuana ban? Let’s find this out.

Why Is There So Much Prejudice about Weed?

When you ask people why they are against marijuana legalization, the most frequent answer you will hear is a fear of lawlessness, disorder, and flourishing crime on the American streets. Mass media have done a great job hanging tons of negative, racially loaded labels on weed within the 20th-century war on drugs. So, many laypersons are 100% sure that a stoner is a criminal waiting for an opportunity to kill someone.

Weed legalization is often seen as the prime time for drug dealers who will come out of the darkness and start selling weed to kids around the corner. But luckily, the reality of marijuana legalization is pretty different from that. States where marijuana was legalized for medical and/or recreational purposes have witnessed:

• Reducing crime rates and arrests related to weed possession and distribution.
• Opening of licensed dispensaries where law-abiding citizens (eligible for getting some weed) buy their prescribed portions.
• Strict regulation of weed sizes in possession and places where weed can be consumed.

In other words, the weed smoking culture that has been present in the underground for many decades finally comes to the legal, official landscape where it can be controlled and regulated.

Who Opposes Legalization?

There are several long-standing, influential groups in the USA opposing marijuana legalization by all means:

• Republicans at all levels of governmental power
• The DEA, which still views weed as a Schedule I drug
• The CALM group (Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana)
• Police unions
• Private prisons corporations
• Alcohol and beer producers
• Pharmaceutical companies
• Prison guard unions

As you can see, the lobbyists for the marijuana ban are those who benefit from its illegal status and can monetize people’s broken lives. Prison owners are direct beneficiaries of weed possession or sale-related imprisonments, even in small portions. Beverage producers know that weed goes hand in hand with alcohol for many users. At the same time, pharma companies can feed their clients with pills unless there is a healthier, natural alternative to chemical painkillers.

All these influential players have strong political representation in the Republican party. Opinion polls also show that Americans opposed to legalization are older and more religious, while young, religiously unaffiliated Americans favor lifting all weed bans.

Beneficiaries of Prohibition

Now let’s take a sober look at what happens when weed is illegal. Thinking that weed is not circulating the streets and homes in the states where it’s illegal is nonsense; marijuana is present everywhere, regardless of its legal status. So, who benefits from the persistent prohibition in the American states?

Criminals

There’s no problem with getting weed, even in states where it’s completely banned and deemed illegal. Criminal gangs and drug dealers live in every city, small and large, eager to sell pot to interested clients. You can get some cannabis for recreational or therapeutic purposes; nobody will ask you a single question. However, the problem with this mode of acquiring and using weed is that you never know its origins, purity, and chemical compounds for sure. Criminals get marijuana via underground, illicit channels, so you have nobody to blame in case something goes wrong.

Terrorists

The marijuana trade has long been a lucrative business for terrorists. Terrorist groups move conspicuously across borders and are located in high-crime regions, as a rule. Thus, they have access to illegally grown and distributed cannabis, selling it to organized crime groups in developed states.

There is much information about ISIS’s collaboration with drug dealers and the sale of large batches of weed from Libya and the Mediterranean. Besides, terrorists often use weed as a means of exchange; given its high value in countries with a legal ban on weed, high-quality cannabis can be exchanged for weapons.

Arms Traders

The weapons trade is the other side of the terrorist and drug trade activities. To avoid leaving traces in the financial transactions or other exchanges, criminals can supply illegal weed in exchange for stolen, lost, or diverted weapons. This scheme is very common at the US-Mexico border, where drug cartels constantly need weaponry and can provide tons of top-quality pot in exchange for assault weapons.

Physicians

A large and not-so-evident group of prohibition beneficiaries is the physician community of the USA. GPs face unprecedented challenges when the legalization laws come into force. First, they need to consider the new substance from a therapeutic perspective and prescribe it in appropriate doses. Second, they must provide objective, unbiased advice and education to patients on cannabis use, which may contradict their lucrative contracts with pharma companies.

Beneficiaries of Legalization

As you can see, there are many beneficiaries of cannabis’s illegality, but the prohibition costs people freedom, money, and health. Thus, the legalization debate should highlight these structural paradoxes, bringing the lobbyists’ corrupt interests to the spotlight. This way, the legalization process might accelerate with civil rights and interests in mind.