The Top Five Special Interest Groups Lobbying To Keep Marijuana Illegal. Last year, over 850,000 people in America were arrested for marijuana-related crimes. Despite public opinion, the medical community, and human rights experts all moving in favor of relaxing marijuana prohibition laws, little has changed in terms of policy. There have been many great books and articles detailing the history of the drug war.
Part of America’s fixation with keeping the leafy green plant illegal is rooted in cultural and political clashes from the past. However, we at Republic Report think it’s worth showing that there are entrenched interest groups that are spending large sums of money to keep our broken drug laws on the books: 1.) RELATED: Why Can’t You Smoke Pot? To receive stories and investigations about political corruption, sign up for our daily digest here. Share and Enjoy Filed under: Lobbying. Private Contractors Making a Killing off the Drug War. The Pentagon’s addiction to failed wars.
Matt Stoller: Who Wants Keep the War on Drugs Going AND Put You in Debtor’s Prison? Matt Stoller is a current fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. His Twitter feed is @matthewstoller. More than a third of all states allow debtors “who can’t or won’t pay their debts” to be jailed. In 2010, according to the Wall Street Journal, judges have issued 5,000 such warrants. What is behind the increased pressure to incarcerate people with debts? Is it a desire to force debt payment? Or is it part of a new structure where incarceration is becoming increasingly the default tool to address any and all social problems?
Consider a different example that has nothing to do with debts. Welcome to the for-profit prison industry. Privatized prisons are marketed to international investors as “social infrastructure”, and they are part of a wave of privatization washing over the globe. Here’s the 2010 10k of the Corrections Corporation of America (PDF), the largest operator of private prisons in the country. But there are more risks.