[ty6853]

That's mainly because it cuts into the US government profit margins. They and their favored contractors have been selling arms for profit and love drug running when it suits their aims as they showed with eg support for the Contras.

It is important drugs stay illegal so powerful connected interests can maintain high profit and control. Without that, simple cocaine/meth/marijuana is just an agricultural or chemical commodity with essentially the margin of generic OTC drugs.

[jajko]

Yeah I meant more like some shady fentanyl that overdoses people en masse, not some rather harmless and sometimes even beneficial weed.

The worst part are weapons, there is no way to spin it as something benign. Victor Bout for example got 25 years and there was no drug smuggling nor contract murders.

[ty6853]

Victor Bout is free and selling weapons again with the blessing and release of the US government. Always was about profiting off of weapons. Don't believe what the US really got from it was one ditzy WNBA player.

[kortilla]

The US government does not have profit margins. It hasn’t run a balanced budget in decades. What are you even trying to say?

[rbanffy]

They might be alluding to regulatory capture by groups such as the NRA, big pharma, and the defense industry, which, for all purposes, are an unelected part of the government.

[15155]

I love how the NRA - which is almost entirely member-funded - gets lumped in with actual industries with eye watering margins.

[rbanffy]

They are a powerful lobby. Just mention "gun regulation" in DC to see how many of them there are.

[lupusreal]

In terms of money they really aren't that big, but they don't need much money to wield influence because their cause is very popular with a lot of voters and politicians know that.