It's not like the police would stop endorsing them if they decriminalized though. They have to support someone and it really can't go much further right than it

It's not like the police would stop endorsing them if they decriminalized though. They have to support someone and it really can't go much further right than it currently is. Well over 2m in federal funds are provided for counties in the appalachian high intensity drug trafficking area organized by a group called the appalachian regional commission and subgroup substance abuse advisory council. Those funds are then used to sponsor manufacturing industries moving to the area and keep up a substance abuse treatment grift that includes a lot of cannabis users. Often the punishment for minor drug crimes is supervised probation for a year, including the requirement of full time employment and inability to leave the area (which is known to be under performing economically as that is the criteria for ARC intervention) [0]. This creates the additional benefit of a cheap labor pool for the sponsored companies. The entire Appalachian region (which somehow includes Mississippi and Alabama) is given 235m to achieve the goal of retaining or creating 26k jobs (9k per job). So yea, I guess 2m state budget is nothing compared to propping up several industries in the poorest counties using some people who are essentially enslaved for cannabis use to prop up their success metrics. It is easier to extract productivity from people using a non-addictive substance than actual hard drug users or alcoholics. [0]https://www.arc.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/FY2022-Congressional-Budget-Justification.pdf https://www.arc.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/FY2022-Congre...