On the day that U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner received her 9-year jail sentence from a Russian court for illegally possessing cannabis oil, President Biden issued the following statement:
American citizen Brittney Griner received a prison sentence that is one more reminder of what the world already knew: Russia is wrongfully detaining Brittney. It’s unacceptable, and I call on Russia to release her immediately so she can be with her wife, loved ones, friends, and teammates. My administration will continue to work tirelessly and pursue every possible avenue to bring Brittney and Paul Whelan home safely as soon as possible.
It would be interesting to know how Biden concluded that Griner was being wrongfully detained, especially given that she pled guilty to the offense. Was Biden suggesting that Griner was forced to plead guilty and, if so, why wouldn’t he just come out and say that and provide his evidence?
Meanwhile, on June 23, LA Weekly published an article whose title pretty much says it all: “Federal Cannibis Arrests Jump 25% under Biden.” The article stated:
After a dip during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, federal law enforcement agents and their partners arrested 25% more people for cannabis-related crimes in 2021, during the first year of the Biden Administration. But while a post-pandemic bump in arrests would have been fair to expect, the biggest jump in cannabis arrests in a decade was not. The nation’s oldest cannabis reform organization NORML noted the 6,606 marijuana-related arrests in 2021 represented the most since the 8,500 arrested in 2011.
It’s hard to get more hypocritical than that. It would be nice if Biden would explain why he feels that the Russian government is wrong to enforce its drug laws and why he feels that the U.S. government is right to enforce its drug laws.
Actually, neither regime has any moral authority to punish anyone for possessing, distributing, or ingesting any substance whatsoever. A genuinely free society is one in which people are free to possess, distribute, or ingest anything they want.
The fact that authoritarian, totalitarian, and communist regimes, such as Russia, China, North Korea, and Cuba, have drug laws should give every American pause. Drug laws enable tyrannical regimes to maintain more dictatorial control over their citizens. Thus, the question for Americans is: What business does the United States have in implementing and enforcing the same type of program that is used in authoritarian, totalitarian, and communist regimes as a way to control their citizenry? If the program is tyrannical over there, why wouldn’t it be equally tyrannical over here?
After all, consider:
- the thousands of people who have had their lives ruined by the U.S. drug war;
- how the drug war has empowered bigoted cops, DEA agents, prosecutors, and judges to harass, abuse, prosecute, and incarcerate blacks;
- how much cash that cops and DEA agents have stolen from innocent people as part of the drug war’s corrupt asset-forfeiture program;
- how many people have been incarcerated and fined for non-violent drug offenses;
- how many people have been killed in violent no-knock drug raids in the middle of the night;
- how many people have been denied the right to vote because of a felony drug-war conviction;
- how many people have received mandatory minimum jail sentences for non-violent drug offenses;
- all the law-enforcement personnel, prosecutors, and judges on the take;
- all the murders, robberies, and gang wars the drug war has spawned;
- the drug-war police state that has come into existence.
The fact is that there is nothing redeeming about the drug war, either in Russia or here at home. Unfortunately, while Biden and his minions are able to see the evil in Griner’s jail sentence, they still have a total blind spot that prevents them from seeing the drug-war evil in which they are engaged here at home.