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Comment by rhizome | Hacker News Reader

Why is there still such resistance at the highest levels to legalization / decriminalization?

Government is filled with a bunch of squares. DOJ and DEA doubly or triply so.

Did you ever know anybody in school who not only never smoked pot or drank, but thought people who did were human failures? They went on to become professional squares, the US government employs thousands of them, and they've got the power of law enforcement and judicial precedent supporting the careers they've spent their lives building. They also populate the staffs, advisors, and campaign workers of Congresspeople who do smoke and drink.

As much as you think legal weed is a slam dunk derp, there are huge swaths of the country who through religion, politics, bad experiences and/or general upbringing who think it's just as simply a terrible idea.

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Dude what are you talking about? Honestly, are you trolling?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/in-major-shi...

Turns out that old white dudes - which I think would most clearly fit your label of "squares" (please) - are actually not the ones who strongly oppose legalization. True, this is just DC proper and not Virginia/Maryland, but given that Maryland has had votes to decriminalize it and such I don't think it's absurd to apply some general lessons from this to other parts of the area. Really, the only people who reliably oppose legalization seem to be older black women and republicans - which is kinda funny if you ask me.

No, not "old white dudes." The Wikipedia page is decent on the topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_%28slang%29

Also, when analyzing the forces resistant to legalization you should account for the allegiances and power dynamics, particularly as applies to the information channels that communicate crime and other social costs upward to the actual policymakers. You're painting a caricature of a flattened hierarchy of federal policy and politics that simply doesn't exist.

Obviously the DEA doesn't support legalization.

But I think that the DOJ has established that they're going to legitimately and honestly let the experiments in Colorado and Washington play out by themselves. Despite what they've done in the past and what they've done in other areas, I think they deserve credit for that at least.

At the end of the day, the people who work at these places are real human beings just like you and me. I think your caricature of these organizations is silly and slightly (and only slightly) offensive or off-putting.

What we're seeing now is that public opinion has changed and official policies are quickly changing to match - for as many problems as US democracy has faced lately, I think this is a pretty good example of it working. Simply put, I don't think it's fair to say that people in DC are trying to keep pot illegal or keep people down more than anyone else in this country.

There are a lot of people who will vote for some regulation, and in Retardistan, D.C. that turns into total regulation to maximize the number of votes.

You know, like "health care seems kind of screwed up" turned into "put an excise tax on doing nothing" and "hire a contractor already famous for spectacular failure".

Or like "establish safety standards for children's poducts" turned in to "you cannot resell a children's produce without burning it and blessing the ash".

The American people get the government they deserve, and they get it good and hard.

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