This week the Republican National Convention in Cleveland had a choice to make and they decided against endorsing medical marijuana.
It wasn't a big surprise. However, what was surprising was a poll that came out at roughly the same time.

YouGov's latest research shows that most Americans still support legalization of marijuana, and that support for legalization has increased slightly, from 52% in December 2015 to 55% today. Most of this change is a result of changing attitudes among Republicans. In fact, for the first time, Republicans narrowly tend to support legalization, 45% to 42%.

Marijuana legalization is an idea that has finally arrived, and the election this November will likely reflect that.

nine states in the U.S. will vote on marijuana measures in the world’s most important general election Nov. 8, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center
Voters in California, Florida, Nevada, Massachusetts, Maine, Arizona, and Arkansas will definitely be casting a ballot to affect cannabis policy in their state. Voters in Missouri, Montana, and North Dakota have submitted signatures to place marijuana proposals on the ballot, while Oklahoma has cleared to circulate a last-minute measure.

Arkansas and Florida will be looking to become the first southern states with medical marijuana.
Missouri didn't make it this year.
Montana had already passed a medical marijuana bill, but the state legislature decided to overturn the will of their own voters. So we get to do it all over again.
Almost all the polls in every state show the measures leading, which would be enough to push the issue to acceptable mainstream politics.

The Ohio legislature didn't bother with the ballot and ok'd medical marijuana this year.

As you might imagine, legalizing and taxing pot is a minor windfall.
Washington state has pulled in $200 million in taxes on cannabis. The city of Denver alone pulled in $29 million in marijuana taxes.
Meanwhile, Colorado has seen no significant change in crime rates, while arrests for petty drug crimes are way down.

This long-overdue movement to legalize a largely harmless weed is being done entirely from the grassroots. Politicians are being forced, kicking and screaming, to accept it. Hillary's current position is incremental reform after previously opposing it.
Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz actively opposes legalization putting her at odds with 2/3rds of her voters.

So why aren't mainstream politicians getting onboard with a successful political movement?
Because there are monied interests with deep pockets fighting it.

Largely anonymous political action groups have sprung up to oppose legalization, and they all say the same thing -

Won't Someone Think of the Children!

One of the things that gets brought up again and again – despite the many studies saying otherwise – is that legalization will increase the rate at which our youth become users of marijuana. Whether it’s preschoolers accidentally eating a THC infused gummy or a teen getting bud with a fake I.D., it’s always one of the first “go-to” reasons in these situations.

Uh, yeah. The thing is, someone has already looked into this.

The study, which surveyed more than 216,000 adolescents from all 50 states, surprisingly found marijuana use by young people is dropping and marijuana-related problems among teens are dropping, even as availability and adult marijuana use goes up, according to a press release.
The researchers used data from people aged 12 to 17 collected over a 12-year span. In that time from 2002 to 2013, the number of teens who had problems related to marijuana, like drug dependency or trouble with school and relationships, declined by 24 percent.
At the same time as this drop in marijuana use, behavioral problems, like fighting and drug dealing, also dropped.

The Retailers Association of Massachusetts have also come out against marijuana legalization. It seems that legalizing pot will turn workers everywhere into stoners in the same way legalizing alcohol turned them all into drunks. [/s]

In Nevada there is casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

“Legalizing weed would jeopardize the health of countless Nevadans, expose more people to drug abuse and addiction, put excessive stress on the state’s health-care facilities and do little to relieve the state’s bloated prison population,” reads an editorial in Wednesday’s edition of the the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The paper was purchased last December by Sheldon Adelson, operator of Las Vegas’s Sands casino and one of the richest people in the world, according to Forbes. A staunch opponent of not just legalizing marijuana but also of allowing its medical use, he donated the lion’s share of funds in opposition to a medical cannabis initiative that was narrowly defeated by Florida voters in 2014.
The new editorial, a stark reversal of the Review-Journal’s previous strong support for ending cannabis prohibition, comes as Nevada voters prepare to decide on a legalization measure in November. When advocates were collecting signatures to qualify the initiative for the ballot, the editorial board called it “an important step forward in fixing a failed policy” and telling Nevadans, “If you are presented with the petition, and you’re a registered voter, sign it.”

In Arizona, the opposing to marijuana legalization is coming from the most hypocritical group of all.

According to the Phoenix New Times, a top Arizona anti-marijuana legalization group that champions public health has taken campaign contributions from an industry that some may see as deeply hypocritical: booze.
Earlier this week, the New Times reported that Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy (ARDP), a major player in the fight against legalization in the state, received a $10,000 donation from the Arizona Wine and Spirits Wholesale Association (AWSWA) last month, citing campaign-finance records.
...
"It really is exceptionally hypocritical for this group, which claims marijuana is too dangerous to regulate, is taking money from purveyors of a far more dangerous substance," Mason Tvert, spokesperson for the Marijuana Policy Project — the group behind a heavily supported legalization measure in Arizona — told ATTN: of ARDP's opposition.
"This campaign to maintain marijuana prohibition is being funded by alcohol money and it raises a lot fo questions about the actual intentions of this group, which says they are primarily interested in public health," Tvert said.

In California, the opposition is coming from nearly as cynical of group - prisons and prison guards.

“Roughly half of the money raised to oppose a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana in California is coming from police and prison guard groups, terrified that they might lose the revenue streams to which they have become so deeply addicted,” The Intercept’s Lee Fang reported on Wednesday.

Private prison companies are very active in fighting marijuana legalization.

Just behind prisons and police in fighting legalization are the pharmaceutical companies.

The second biggest opponent on Capitol Hill is big PhRMA because everyone knows God didn’t make no junk. Marijuana’s an excellent medicine for many things, taking the place of everything from Advil to Vicodin and other expensive pills

I know that sounds like conspiracy theory, but in this case it is conspiracy fact. For instance, it is openly acknowledged that the group Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America (CADCA), one of the largest such organizations in the country, and  Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) are funded by Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of Oxy-Contin.

 So it’s more than a little odd that CADCA and the other groups leading the fight against relaxing marijuana laws, including the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids (formerly the Partnership for a Drug-Free America), derive a significant portion of their budget from opioid manufacturers and other pharmaceutical companies.

This much is a fact. But why? It turns out, according to a new survey, that there are hard, bottom-line numbers that explain their position.

There's a body of research showing that painkiller abuse and overdose are lower in states with medical marijuana laws. These studies have generally assumed that when medical marijuana is available, pain patients are increasingly choosing pot over powerful and deadly prescription narcotics. But that's always been just an assumption.
Now a new study, released in the journal Health Affairs, validates these findings by providing clear evidence of a missing link in the causal chain running from medical marijuana to falling overdoses.

"This provides strong evidence that the observed shifts in prescribing patterns were in fact due to the passage of the medical marijuana laws," they write.
In a news release, lead author Ashley Bradford wrote, "The results suggest people are really using marijuana as medicine and not just using it for recreational purposes."

Drug companies are fighting legal marijuana for the same reason they got Congress to change the law against generic drugs.

Some of the fiercest opposition to legal marijuana comes from south of the border.

Legal marijuana may be doing at least one thing that a decades-long drug war couldn't: taking a bite out of Mexican drug cartels' profits.
The latest data from the U.S. Border Patrol shows that last year, marijuana seizures along the southwest border tumbled to their lowest level in at least a decade. Agents snagged roughly 1.5 million pounds of marijuana at the border, down from a peak of nearly 4 million pounds in 2009.
The data supports the many stories about the difficulties marijuana growers in Mexico face in light of increased competition from the north. As domestic marijuana production has ramped up in places such as California, Colorado and Washington, marijuana prices have fallen, especially at the bulk level.
"Two or three years ago, a kilogram [2.2 pounds] of marijuana was worth $60 to $90," a Mexican marijuana grower told NPR news in December 2014. "But now they're paying us $30 to $40 a kilo. It's a big difference. If the U.S. continues to legalize pot, they'll run us into the ground."

It's unlikely that Mexican drug cartels would lobby in any way to fight marijuana legalization. However, major banks like Wacovia and HSBC have made enormous profits laundering cartel money and can be considered proxies in a way for cartel interests.

To put it simply, the groups fighting marijuana legalization want to keep you, unhealthy, unsafe, poor, and in prison, so that they can have more of your money.
But they are running out of time. The legal U.S. marijuana market is expected to be a $7.1 Billion business this year, and a $44 Billion business in 2020.
At that point Big Marijuana will be too big to stop. It'll be able to match anti-pot lobbying dollar for dollar, and that terrifies some people who want you sick and in prison.

Fortunately for these merchants of sickness and incarceration, there is a Plan B.

In the U.S., the War in Afghanistan is among the major contributing factors to the country’s devastating heroin epidemic.....
The War in Afghanistan saw the country’s practically dead opium industry expanded dramatically. By 2014, Afghanistan was producing twice as much opium as it did in 2000. By 2015, Afghanistan was the source of 90 percent of the world’s opium poppy....
Heroin, one of the most addictive and deadly substances on Earth, can be found for as little a $4 a bag in some American cities.
Between 2002 and 2013, heroin-related overdose deaths quadrupled. In 2014, more than 10,000 people died of heroin overdoses in America.

Thank Gawd for the War on Terror, amirite?