Prohibition kills a massive number of people in the United States every year. It does help make a few people extremely wealthy, but at the same time, it impoverishes the rest of us. This dire situation is mostly unknown, but it is not due to a simple misunderstanding or lack of knowledge about prohibition. It is because prohibition is nothing but a scam.

Steve Kubby's forward to the book demonstrates that the state has no moral purpose for enforcing marijuana prohibition. Rather, the state is actively covering up the fact that marijuana is not highly dangerous and marijuana has well-established benefits.

Readers will be amazed at how callously law enforcement and the justice system treated Kubby and his wife. However, do not forget that the state's enforcement of drug prohibition laws give them the opportunity to brandish their weapons in an attempt to scare us. Such laws have also been enacted and enforced to suppress minority groups.

Jesse Ventura's Marijuana Manifesto is a practical call to our attention that marijuana, i.e., cannabis and hemp, is not only far less harmful than the state declares, but it is also one of the most beneficial and versatile resources on the planet. As the author searches earnestly for an explanation for this irrational policy, he finds that large corporations that sell substitute products are primary culprits.

In other words, if you sell alcohol, tobacco, or pharmaceutical products, it is likely that you contribute money to groups named "Save the Children" or "Protect American Values" who ultimately spend some of that money to defeat legalization ballot measures.

I have been studying, researching and writing about alcohol and drug prohibition for over 30 years now. I realize that private prison corporations have also been donating money to these anti-marijuana political campaigns as a way to increase the flow of inmates into their prisons. Ventura takes the analysis one step further. He shows that federal prisons are renting out their prison populations to large American corporations for pennies on the dollar as cheap labor pools.

This diabolical practice not only spreads the benefits of continuing marijuana prohibition to large American corporations, but it also handicaps smaller businesses that are trying to compete. Ventura names Whole Foods, Walmart, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, BP, Starbucks, Eddie Bauer, Wendy's, McDonald's, and Victoria's Secret as all being implicated in this scheme. The inmates are paid 0 to $1 per hour, they are required by law to work, and the corporations that hire them receive their slave labor and a $2,400 tax credit per inmate.

I am not against criminals being forced to do hard labor for their crimes. However, all that money should end up in the hands of victims as restitution or compensation for their crimes or be used to offset taxpayer money used for incarceration. It clearly should not end up as a competitive wedge for large corporations against small business. Also, clearly, the production, sale, and possession of marijuana should not be a crime because there is no victim to compensate!