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For about a C , the United States has been contend a war on drugs that has all but consumed police force enforcement . Today , federal and state governments annually pass approximately$51 billionon interdicting , tracking , seek out , seizing , destruct , and prosecuting hoi polloi for possession of drugs .
For all that money and effort , however , therates of most drug ’ use among Americanshas remained generally high and stable for generation . Whatever hurt illegal drug do , it ’s clear that the lion ’s share of disbursal and destroy living is actually related to the million of people getting locked up and/or pour down over these controlled substances .
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It surprises most the great unwashed to pick up , for example , that marijuana is a Schedule I controlled substance and is therefore a drug that , in the DEA ’s “ Reefer Madness ” opinion , is too life-threatening even for Doctor to order to hospice patient in their last twenty-four hour period of life .
The obvious silliness of this feeling has lately moved29 statesto adopt measures legalizing marijuana for medical purposes , though dispensary that satiate prescription drug still lean a terrible peril of being raided , and many of them ca n’t get financial services out of bank ’ justified awe that the administration might assume their plus . In other Bible , the war on weed continue , and Washington remains confident that any fiddling moment of marijuana is too dangerous to keep in a locked drugstore .
The United States is a signatory to the U.N. ’s 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs treaty , which requires marijuana to be list as at least a Schedule II ( grievous , but with some medical uses ) controlled nub . adhesion to this treaty therefore require the same government that owns more than 4,000 nuclear weapons to deal marijuana like it ’s a live smallpox culture .
Meanwhile , many drugs that rational the great unwashed study to be way more dangerous than marijuana managed to mistake through the cracks and are now being freely prescribed by medical force with hardly a radar target on police enforcement ’s microwave radar . These drugs , which are absolutely legal to dictate in every state , include :
