Culture

While Republicans and Democrats argue over how much money is spent on things like education, there seems to be little mention of the incredible amount of money that is being spent on incarcerating illegal drug users, most of whom are marijuana users.

There is little mention of the private prison industry and how much money they make from locking people up. Twenty five percent of the world’s prisoners are in U.S. prisons even though we only have about 0.5% of the world’s population.

There will be no talk about this in the Presidential campaign unless it’s being done by Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson.

When you out a profit motive on taking away people’s freedom, you get people clamoring to do just that. Most industries perform better when in the private sector, but in the case of prisons, “performing better” means finding more ways to lock someone up.

Private prisons will always fight marijuana law reform because it means less money for them. Marijuana legalization will result in some prisons having to close, as would Gary Johnson getting elected; he has said he will pardon all non-violent marijuana offenders currently serving jail time.

Something has to change or someday there will be no more room to build prisons.