Obama Continues Bush-Era "Drug War" Hypocrisy
Friday, February 26, 2010 at 02:53PM BY JESSE VENTURA
In my new book, American Conspiracies, I included a chapter called "Your Government Dealing Drugs." It traces the history of how the CIA has funded a lot of its operations over the years with drug money, and still looks the other way in places like Afghanistan -- where President Hamid Karzai's own brother is getting regular CIA payments while being simultaneously involved in the heroin trade. Meantime, according to reports by Congress and the Treasury Department, American banks are "collectively the world's largest financial beneficiary of the drug trade" -- with an estimated inflow of about $250 billion a year!
The hypocrisy is staggering when you consider that the Obama administration's "drug war" budget has about twice as much money going into the criminal justice system than to treatment and prevention. This is despite President Obama having said many times that drug use needs to be looked at as a health issue. In California, where you can get a prescription for medical marijuana, the L.A. County District Attorney claims that state law doesn't allow dispensaries to sell it - and they recently busted a popular distributor and charged him with 24 felonies!
In January, President Obama nominated a holdover from the Bush years, Michele Leonhart, to head up the Drug Enforcement Administration. She has a history of cracking down on medical marijuana dispensaries, and most recently denying the research application of a University of Massachusetts botanist. This is a ludicrous appointment, since Attorney General Eric Holder has already ordered federal agents not to go after medical marijuana outlets. So is the administration talking out of both sides of its mouth? What follows is an excerpt from American Conspiracies:
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