On Monday Illinois’s financial health deteriorated a little more. The Fitch Ratings agency downgraded the state’s bond rating, noting the ongoing “mismatch between spending and revenues”—that is, the state’s inability to pay its bills. Moody’s Investor Service soon followed suit.
Coincidentally, the ACLU made headlines that same day with a report on the astounding volume of marijuana busts nationwide. In 2010 police across the country made more than 784,000 arrests for pot possession—one every 37 seconds.
On first glance the issues may appear unrelated. But you don’t have to be smoking anything to see that they’re actually intertwined, for the simple reason that the crackdown on small-time marijuana users has become staggeringly expensive.
Read the whole story at Chicago Reader
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