Thinking Clearly

Federal Laws Force People To Break Bad Habits by Throwing Them In Jail
by: Thinking Clearly

... "you know what, it’s entirely legitimate for folks to be concerned about getting mugged, and you can’t just talk about police abuse. How about folks not feeling safe outside their homes? It’s all fine and good for you to want to do something about poverty, but if the only mechanism you have is raising taxes on folks who are already feeling strapped, then maybe you need to widen your lens a little bit."  - Barack Obama

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  Prohibition is a tax on the poor and those of minority race: 

African-Americans are 62 percent of drug offenders sent to state prisons, yet they represent only 12 percent of the U. S. population.

• Black men are sent to state prisons on drug charges at 13 times the rate of White men.

• Drug transactions among Blacks are easier for police to target because they more often happen in public than do drug transactions between Whites.

• The disparities are particularly tragic in individual states where Black men are sent to federal prison on drug charges at a rate 57 times greater than White men, according to Human Rights Watch.

 The median net worth for black households is $4,955, or about 4.5 percent of whites’ median household wealth, which was $110,729 in 2010, according to Census data.

Explain to me how this (prohibition) does not equate to a tax on the poor and blacks and other minorities?

When one takes into account the amount of violence and corruption caused by forcing marijuana into an illegal market run by hoodlums and opportunistic entrepreneurs, a person begins slowly to get the picture.

... "I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life." - Barack Obama, (while being interviewed in a story) by David Remnick in The New Yorker. 

Why do we pad the pockets of our government with an unfair tax on the poor? 

Since when is throwing someone in jail the best way to break a bad habit?