Tennessee Politicians: Selling Cancer, Buying Prisons, and Jailing Weed

Big Alcohol Cancer Causing Killer - But Legal

The State’s Sacred Cow: Alcohol 🥃

Alcohol is a proven killer. It’s linked to 7 types of cancer and shortens lives by 15 years on average. (source)
Tennessee knows this but shields the alcohol industry because it brings in $546 million a year in alcohol tax revenue (2023). (tn.gov)
Politicians throw whiskey festivals, cut ribbons at breweries, and smile for bourbon photo ops—while quietly ignoring alcohol’s role in DUIs, liver disease, and violent crime.

The State’s Scapegoat: Cannabis 🌿

Tennessee is 2nd in the nation for marijuana arrests. In 2023 alone:
- 12,234 arrested for possession (41% of all drug possession cases).
- Almost every one of these was nonviolent.
  (tennesseecannabis.org)
Lawmakers are doubling down by banning THCA, a form of cannabis that isn’t even intoxicating until heated. That’s like outlawing grapes because they might become wine.

The Prison Profiteers 💰

Tennessee spends $907M annually on state prisons and $554M more on county jails—over $1.4 billion a year to keep mostly nonviolent offenders locked away. (sycamoretn.org)
Who benefits? CoreCivic, a private prison giant headquartered in Nashville, which rakes in taxpayer dollars every time someone is arrested for weed.
Meanwhile, the state average cost to jail someone is $81/day per inmate. Locking up 12,000 people for simple cannabis possession costs taxpayers nearly $1 million every single day.

Alcohol vs. Weed: The Bloody Scoreboard ⚖️

Alcohol kills ~95,000 Americans a year.
Cannabis? Zero overdose deaths.
Tennessee still treats cannabis as the villain, while alcohol is handed the keys to the economy.

Bottom Line

Tennessee’s politicians aren’t “protecting families” or “keeping communities safe.” They’re protecting:

Alcohol lobby money 💵
Private prison contracts 🔒
Law enforcement revenue 🚓

And they’re doing it by branding cannabis users as criminals—even when the science, the economics, and basic morality scream otherwise.

This isn’t lawmaking. This is racketeering dressed in red, white, and blue.

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