In a 2011 interview, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that legalization is "not likely to work" because "there is just too much money in it." Clinton was talking about cartels, but the same holds true for the legal industries that owe their profit margins, market shares, and"”in some cases"”very existence to the war on drugs. Here are four industries you might not realize profit off the drug war.
4.) The Drug Testing Industry
One of the highlights of President Barack Obama's 2012 Drug Control Policy report is a section encouraging drug-free workplace programs, which the report touts as "beneficial for our labor force, employers, families, and communities in general." The report also alludes to the administration's commitment to funding research for an oral drug test that can be conducted alongside a urine analysis.
An entire testing industry helped make those policies a reality, and is pushing for their expansion. One industry group, the Drugs of Abuse Testing Coalition, has spent $90,000 already in 2011-2012 lobbying for "Medicare reimbursement codes and payment rates for qualitative drug screen testing." Another group, the Drug & Alcohol Testing Industry Association, has retained the lobbying shop Washington Policy Association since at least 1999, but according to its filings, has spent less than $10,000 per year on lobbying since then. Another drug testing company, Bensinger, DuPont & Associates, was started by former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and former White House drug chief Robert DuPont.
These groups have successfully pushed for the passage of drug testing laws and regulations across the country, and were behind the Drug Testing Integrity Act of 2008, which made it illegal to buy, sell, manufacture, or advertise "cleansing" products that promise to help consumers "defraud a drug test." A new federal law that allows states to drug test people seeking public assistance is proving to be another boon to such companies: Florida has already spent $118,140 testing welfare applicants; or, $45,780 more than it would have spent if it had just given welfare to the 108 applicants who tested positive for drugs.
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Prohibition has finally run its course; our prisons are full, our economy is in ruins, the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans have been destroyed or severely disrupted, and what was once a shining beacon of liberty and prosperity has become a toxic, repressive, smoldering heap of hypocrisy and a gross affront to fundamental human decency.
It is now the duty of every last one of us to insure that the people who are responsible for this shameful situation are not simply left in peace to enjoy the wealth and status that their despicable actions have, until now, afforded them. Former and present Prohibitionists must not be allowed to remain untainted and untouched from the unconscionable acts that they have viciously committed on their fellow citizens. - They have provided us with neither safe communities nor safe streets; we will provide them with neither a safe haven to enjoy their ill-gotten gains nor the liberty to repeat such a similar atrocity!
Prohibition has evolved local gangs into transnational enterprises with intricate power structures that reach into every corner of society, helping them control vast swaths of territory while gifting them with significant social and military resources.
Those responsible for the shameful policy of prohibition shall not go unpunished!
Prohibition has finally run its course
Really? On what planet do you live? Prohibition exists, guided in large part by the folly of believing the only other option is alcoholism. Booze is the only intoxicant that is legal and, in many states, the state itself runs the concession.
Even the team that talks the talk of individual responsibility wants to regulate whether you smoke a joint, all while defending practically to the death your right to get liquored up and smoke cigarettes till your lungs turn black.
Wareagle,
In the first place, I believe from context that poster Malcolm Kyle was referring to ALL kinds of Prohibition, rather than the fit of stupidity that lasted from 1920-1933.
In the second place, SOME of us who talk about individual responsibility ardently desire to let both potheads and cigarette fiends go to hell in their own way. Please do us the favor of recognizing that there is a difference between us and the political opportunists that plague our cause.
Addiction is a sin, not a disease.
It's neither but a "sin model" is much preferable view to a "disease model".
The "alcohol industry" really doesn't belong in this list. There lobbying contributions are more like paying for "protection" than an attempt to profit by taking out a competitor.Hell, some drugs actually encourage alcohol consumption.
That's pretty much what I've thought. Just because some people used freedom of information laws to find liquor industry donations doesn't mean they had to! That industry has usually been quite vocal about their support of anti-drug measures, both legal and hortatory. They're afraid they'll be seen as pro-drug just on gen'l principles unless they're identified as anti-drug.
All four of those a minuscule compared to the public sector police-prison complex.
I think Riggs is futilely trying to appeal to progressives who need a private sector boogeyman to blame for government tyranny. At least he didn't blame the petroleum and pulpwood industries like your average weed-addled, patchouli-stinkin' hippie.
Liberaltarianism just won't die as long as Reason is on the beat.
So pointing out regulatory capture is a socialist plot?
Just like to chime in and say that this is exactly it: I personally know a disturbing number of people who basically stopped giving a shit once The Right People (read: Obama and his merry men) were in charge, but, boy, howdy, if somebody mentions something about privately-run prisons they'll appropriately freak the fuck out.
Also whenever I think of this that silly Fortress movie with the Highlander and Clarence Boddicker comes to mind.
I was just talking to someone else about the for-profit prisons and how the CCPOA - one of the most influential unions in California - supports them. Corporations bad, unions good? They are both on the same side so many times.
Radley Balko had a piece pointing out that the UC, Davis cop who maced the Occupy folks still had his job thanks to the public employee union that the Occupy folks support so much.
Remeber when the private prison industry were the good guys in Reason?
I think private prison services pushing to increase political demand for their services is pretty disgusting.
[citation needed]
The US WoD spends $60B per year, which puts it around #125 on the Fortune Global 500 list. This makes it bigger than GlaxoSmithKline, Dow, Unilever, Goldman Sachs, or Rio Tinto. Such a huge enterprise is not going to go down without a major fight.
Thieving this (^). VERY good point, and I'd never considered the comparison. Next time some whacko goes off on 'big pharma', they're gonna get an ear-ful.
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