Forum Post: Time To End The War On Drugs
Posted 13 years ago on Dec. 20, 2011, 10:05 p.m. EST by thenewgreen
(170)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Let me preface this with the statement: I do not use drugs at all. I do not wish to legalize drugs so that I can use them but solely because its the right thing to do.
We have a privatized prison system that needs customers "inmates". We send drug users to prison when they should be sent to rehab etc. Non violent crimes of drug use should not be usurping our tax dollars and prison space. It's wrong.
This post says it better than I can: http://hubski.com/pub?id=11611
I second that. Do the research and it's the obvious choice. Other countries have already take the initiative on this, and have had positive results.
Let's focus those resources on quality of life, and happiness in society, then we won't have to worry about drugs. Most people who turn to drugs wouldn't have, if they had other positive options. And think of how many people are addicted to legal drugs.
America doesn't have a drug problem as much as it has a society problem.
In 2003 the head of DEA intelligence told the Congress that at least half of the terrorist group and armies that existed around the world were funded in whole or in part by the $321-billion annual black market economy created by the War on Drugs policy. this black market has, since the end of the Cold War, funded stateless terrorism since the Cold War no longer gives the U.S. and Russia cause to fund such groups and actions.
Simply put 50% of the terrorist groups and armies infesting planet earth, including the Taliban, alQaida, Hamas and others would no longer have access to most of their money for funding acts of terrorism.
Ending the War on Drugs is the best national security move that America and the modern world could adopt.
Great comment. Thank you.
Treating drug addiction as a mental problem rather than a criminal one has been shown to reduce both drug use and increase rehabilitation rates; you are absolutely right.
I think as a society, we place to great a value on "good guys" and "bad guys". It's easy to paint drug users as the "bad guys" when in reality, they often are our neighbors, friends and loved ones. It is a disease and we need to treat it as such, you are right. Thanks for the response.
I agree with the sentiment, but drug use isn't a disease. Its a lifestyle choice which (depending on the drug) can have benefits far outweighing the consequences.
Nobody thinks of moderate alcohol use as a disease, and despite the fact that it is one of the worst drugs out there. One of the major problems with drug policy is that it does not differentiate between drugs.
"Nobody thinks of moderate alcohol use as a disease" -I actually think many people think of alcohol use as a disease. I seriously think we need to legalize drugs and give amnesty to those currently in prison for non violent drug use crimes. They are more likely to become a danger to society BECAUSE they were imprisoned than if they weren't. Why? Because of the people they encounter in prison that can effect their choices once they are out of prison.
I agree with that for sure, prisons are like crime farms. I know a few people I grew up with who were sentenced for stupid juvenile things, then went to jail and came out deeply involved in the gang lifestyle. Was really sad to watch.
Maybe so for Alcohol, but I wish people would consider things like Ayahuasca (DMT) or other psychedelics. They are non-addictive, and can actually be used to treat addiction. Very positive, life changing, spiritual alternatives as opposed to something dangerous like crystal meth... especially when they are used in a proper context.
There's no doubt that there are a vast array of differences between what we call "drugs". That said, they should all be legalized. We don't need our government mothering it's citizenry. Violent or otherwise malicious crimes against OTHERS are a different story. Essentially, there is only one victim when someone uses drugs. (I realize there are tangential effects too)
And because pedophilia is a disease we should all get in a circle and sing together.
well thought out analogy. Drug use hurts the person using the drugs-no one else. Pedophilia is the raping or molesting of an innocent child.
P.S. -Shhhh... grown ups are talking.
Drug use can hurt more than just the user. Case and point is drinking a driving accidents. But yes expressed pedophilia will always hurt someone else
P.S. Either comment seriously on my post or be sarcastic. It makes it easier on my 17 year old mind to reply to your big grown up language.
Yes, punishing innocent people that need help should never be explained by a pseudo-moral obligation to label drug-users as 'bad guys', just as you said.
I absolutely agree. One feature of this position is that it is possible, indeed almost necessary, to be pro-legalization and anti-drug. The cartels are unambiguously the enemy; drug customers and anti-drug politicians are both their enablers. The police doggedly hunt down smugglers, but their efforts are futile - whichever cartel they pursue, they are doing cheap work for the other.
Note that when opium was first prohibited it was an obscure practice of Chinese immigrants, and when marijuana was prohibited the federal agents complained that none of them knew what it looked like. Prohibition does not decrease use - instead it establishes a profit motive for criminal elites to promote the drug, just like patents and copyrights, though criminalizing distribution of inventions and artistic works, are supposed to increase their production by rewarding authors.
There is absolutely no way meth and heroin should be legal.
I don't want to legalize them to increase their use, but to decrease it. One way or another, when the money is out of the equation, they will simply be unhealthy pastimes devoid of the cachet of rebellion that somehow snares people now. And if that fails, if usage doesn't decrease - well, at least they'll be cheaper and the addicts will be better able to live as normally as the drugs allow, without robbing people for the cash to buy them.
I should admit, methamphetamine is still an utter mystery to me. It's regarded as a splendid drug to feed children to make them sit down and shut up, the pastime of James Bond and soldiers and truckers and all who need to be vigilant ... and a monster drug that makes people turn crazy and lose their teeth. I don't have any idea how that could be. But it seems to me that the people using it legally are the ones suffering the least harmful effects, which makes me think legalizing it should reduce the harm it does.
I believe, but may be wrong, that there is a difference in amphetamine in pill form and methamphetamine. Meth, for one thing, is more toxic due to its manufacturing process. I think it's also more potent.
Well, according to the ever-handy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine , the drug Desoxyn given to kids for ADHD really is methamphetamine. The idea that some of the harmful effects could derive from some impurity is quite intriguing to me, because if it were so, then legalizing the drug would end them overnight throughout the entire population. But though I've seen such things said I'm not aware of any evidence.
(Looking up http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=methamphetamine%20impurities it looks like although there are 49 scientific papers indexed there about impurities in methamphetamine, none of them actually address their impact on human health)
Yeah, admittedly I don't know much about amphetamine. Not that I want or need to, thankfully. And Wikipedia is a great tool, I use it almost daily when I'm on the computer.
Meth and heroin can deliver an experience that in many people is absolutely wonderful. That is something that is very appealing to people because everyone has times in life where they need a pick me up. And one only has to use these drugs 1 or 2 times to become addicted. It is very, very easy to become addicted and it will quickly ruin your life.
I'm a dentist in New England. Meth is not that prevalent here thankfully but I have seen a few cases of meth mouth. You should google it to get an idea of what it looks like. It can set in after only a month or so of use and usually leads to all teeth being extracted and dentures made. And that will probably be the least of your problems.
I've seen those pictures... but why don't kids on Desoxyn get meth mouth? I suppose they receive a lower dose, but ... why don't they eventually yield to the temptation to take it all at once to get the high, then score more, become addicts, etc.?
Great point: "whichever cartel they pursue, they are doing cheap work for the other". -I've never thought of it in this context.
Agree!
What was the definition of insanity again?
Oh yeah, that was the War On Drugs!
This should be a focus of the occupation.
What will the CIA bargain with then?
There are two biological reasons why addiction should not be treated as a crime.
American Society of Addiction Medicine
Definition of Addiction Adopted: April 12, 2011
"When persons with addiction manifest problems in deferring gratification, there is a neurological locus of these problems in the frontal cortex. Frontal lobe morphology, connectivity and functioning are still in the process of maturation during adolescence and young adulthood, and early exposure to substance use is another significant factor in the development of addiction. "
"Genetic factors account for about half of the likelihood that an individual will develop addiction."
Fact is that children exposed to addictive substances, including second hand smoke or early childhood indulgence in sugar treats, warps the development of the brain in the area where we make decisions about whether or not it is responsible to indulge any more. Criminalization of an adult, for the rest of their life, for childhood decisions that damaged their brains is unjust and inhumane.
And when that early exposure triggers a genetic distinction that exist in some people making them more prone to addiction criminalizing that person becomes legal discrimination based on genetic distinction that a person did not choose.
These people do not deserve to be forced into a government imposed black market economy that requires them to resort to crime in order to get access to the medicines that may require for the rest of their lives.
It is the cartels not the drugs
Drug Busts=Jim Crow
by Ira Glasser, retired Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, President of the Board of the Drug Policy Alliance. From the July 10, 2006 issue of The Nation
This article is adapted from a speech Ira Glasser gave to the Correctional Association of New York.\
(Part two of two)
Similar statistics show that blacks and Latinos are also disproportionately stopped and frisked on the street and disproportionately singled out for body searches at customs points--two-thirds in both cases. The huge majority of these searches are fruitless. In New York City during the late 1990s, eight of nine recorded street frisks did not result in a conviction; in the customs searches, during the same period, 96 percent of the body searches turned up nothing.This shows two things: first, that there was no evidentiary basis for the stops and, second, that there is a comprehensive practice, if not policy, of selecting targets by skin color.
Despite these patterns of racial targeting, it has not been fashionable among liberals to see drug prohibition as a massive civil rights problem of racial discrimination. Perhaps it would be easier if we examined the way racially targeted drug-war incarceration has damaged the right to vote, a right quintessentially part of the rights we thought we had won in the 1960s with the demise of Jim Crow laws.
Until recently (there have been some changes in the past few years in some states), every state but two barred felons from voting--some permanently, some in a way that allowed, theoretically but often not as a practical matter, for the restoration of voting rights. Because of the explosion of incarceration driven by drug prohibition, more than 5 million people are now barred from voting. The United States is the only industrial democracy that does this. And the origin of most of these laws--no surprise--is the post-Reconstruction period after slavery was abolished. Felony disenfranchisement laws, like poll taxes and literacy tests, were historically part of the system that arose after slavery to bar blacks from exercising equal rights and, in particular, equal voting rights. Felony disenfranchisement laws were, to a large extent, part of a replacement system for subjugating blacks after slavery was abolished. If you want to contemplate what this means, consider the state of Florida in the 2000 presidential election, where 200,000 black Floridians were barred from voting because of prior felonies in an election in which the presidency was determined by 537 disputed votes. If even one-third of these people had actually voted--say, 70,000--and if they voted in the usual proportions that blacks vote for the Democratic candidate--say, 80 percent, probably a low estimate--those 70,000 voters would have produced a 42,000 net gain for Al Gore.
This is a dramatic example, but hardly unique. A 2002 study in the American Sociological Review concluded that John Tower would never have been elected to the US Senate from Texas in 1978 but for racially disproportionate felony disenfranchisement; that John Warner for the same reason wouldn't have been elected in 1978 from Virginia; and that despite the apparent rise in conservative Republican voting, the Senate would have remained under Democratic control every year between 1984 and 2003 if former felons had been allowed to vote. Indeed, if the same degree of racially disparate felony disenfranchisement that exists now had existed in 1960, Richard Nixon might well have defeated John F. Kennedy.
The kicker for all this is that all these black citizens who were disproportionately targeted for arrest and incarceration and then barred from voting are nonetheless counted as citizens for the purpose of determining how many Congressional seats and how many electoral votes states have. During slavery, three-fifths of the number of slaves were similarly counted by the slave states, even though slaves were not in any way members of the civil polity. This is worse. In the states of the Deep South, 30 percent of all black men are barred from voting because of felony convictions, but all of them are counted to determine Congressional representation and Electoral College votes. If one wants to wonder why the South is so solidly white, Republican and arch-conservative, one need look no further.
The fact is, just as Jim Crow laws were a successor system to slavery, so drug prohibition has been a successor to Jim Crow laws in targeting blacks, removing them from civil society and then denying them the right to vote while using their bodies to enhance white political power. Drug prohibition is now the last significant instance of legalized racial discrimination in America.
That many liberals have been at best timid in opposing the drug war and at worst accomplices to its continued escalation is, in light of the racial politics of drug prohibition, a special outrage. It is also politically self-destructive, serving to keep in power white conservatives opposed to everything liberals stand for. Liberals especially, therefore, need to consider attacking the premises upon which this edifice of racial subjugation is based. If they do not, who will.
Drug Busts=Jim Crow
by Ira Glasser, retired Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, President of the Board of the Drug Policy Alliance. From the July 10, 2006 issue of The Nation
This article is adapted from a speech Ira Glasser gave to the Correctional Association of New York.
I was born in 1938, grew up on the working-class, immigrant streets of East Flatbush in Brooklyn during World War II, and came to political consciousness during the postwar years. As children, we were told that World War II was a war fought against racism, against the idea that a whole class of people could be separated, subjugated and even murdered because of their race or religion. But back home in the United States, racial separation and subjugation remained entrenched by law in the Deep South and by custom nearly everywhere else.
This moral contradiction between what America said it stood for and the way it was actually organized was largely unrecognized by the American public as World War II drew to a close. The first major postwar event that challenged this contradiction and made it unavoidable was the coming of Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. It engaged people, including children, in a drama of racial integration, and it created what may have been the first racially integrated public accommodation--at Ebbets Field, where the Dodgers played. The following year President Harry Truman issued an executive order desegregating the armed forces. In 1950 Brown v. Board of Education was filed, signaling the start of the modern civil rights era. Four years later a surprisingly unanimous Supreme Court struck down legally enforced racial separation in public schools, and seventeen months after that, Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. Nine years later, after countless protests, marches, sit-ins and freedom rides, as well as murders and beatings of civil rights workers, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, outlawing racial discrimination in public accommodations, employment and education. A year later the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed racial discrimination in voting, and three years after that, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed racial discrimination in the purchase and rental of homes. By 1968 the legal infrastructure of Jim Crow subjugation had been destroyed and a new legal infrastructure of federal civil rights enforcement was erected in its place. America had, for the first time, abolished legalized racial discrimination and replaced it with a system of formal legal equality.
As it turned out, actual equality of opportunity did not follow automatically, easily or quickly from legal equality. But over the succeeding decades it has been assumed that at the very least, no legalized racial discrimination remains, and certainly no new forms of legalized skin-color subjugation have arisen. This is true, with one substantial exception: the system of drug prohibition and its enforcement, which is the major, and still insufficiently recognized, civil rights issue of our day.
In the late 1960s, at the peak of the civil rights movement, there were fewer than 200,000 people in state and federal prisons for all criminal offenses; by 2004 there were over 1.4 million. Another 700,000-plus in local jails brought the total to 2.2 million. This explosion of incarceration has been heavily due to nonviolent drug offenses--mostly possession and petty sales, not involving guns or violence--resulting from the exponential escalation of the "war on drugs," beginning in 1968 and accelerating again after 1980.
Since 1980 drug arrests have tripled, to 1.6 million annually--nearly half for marijuana, 88 percent of those for possession, not sale or manufacture. Since 1980 the proportion of all state prisoners who are in for drug offenses increased from 6 percent to 21 percent. Since 1980 the proportion of all federal prisoners who are in for drug offenses increased from 25 percent to 57 percent.
At the same time, the racial disparity of arrests, convictions and imprisonment for these offenses has become pronounced. According to federal statistics gathered by the Sentencing Project, only 13 percent of monthly drug users of all illegal drugs--defined as those who use a drug at least once a month on a regular basis--are black, about their proportion of the population. But 37 percent of drug-offense arrests are black; 53 percent of convictions are black; and 67 percent of all people imprisoned for drug offenses are black. Adding in Latinos, about 22 percent of all monthly drug users are black or Latino, but 80 percent of people in prison for drug offenses are black or Latino. Even in presumptively liberal New York State, 92 percent of all inmates who are there for drug offenses are black or Latino.
The fact that so many people arrested, convicted and imprisoned for drug offenses are black or Latino is not because they are mostly the ones doing the crime; it is because they are mostly the ones being targeted. This is not a phenomenon of the Deep South. It is nationwide. And it is not accidental. As the racial profiling scandals a few years ago showed, blacks are disproportionately targeted while driving cars on the highway; for example, in a lawsuit challenging this practice, it was revealed that although only 17 percent of drivers on a stretch of I-95 in Maryland were black, 73 percent of all the cars stopped and searched for drugs were driven by blacks. Nor was this an isolated example. In Florida blacks were seventy-five times more likely than whites to be stopped and searched for drugs while driving. And it turned out that these racially targeted stops were the explicit result of a Drug Enforcement Administration program begun in 1986, called Operation Pipeline, that "trained" 27,000 state troopers in forty-eight states to spot cars that might contain drugs. Most of the cars spotted were driven by blacks. And this happened even though three-quarters of monthly drug users are white!
Part one of two (part two of two will be in the thread.)
Thanks for this, I enjoyed reading it. When I was younger I used drugs in college. I was never arrested because I was likely not a "target". This is not hyperbole, this is happening and it's wrong. There are so many reasons drug use should be legalized and not many why it shouldn't. What keeps it illegal is the political machine. If a politician were to be pro legalization/amenesty, they would be painted as "soft on crime" by their opponent and would likely lose. Also, the privatized prison system has a strong foothold on policy makers. If prisons loose inmates, they close. If prisons close they can't supply jobs. Therefore, if you are pro legalization you are anti-job. It's ridiculous.
The War on Drugs will never end because the right-wingers that control the leadership of both the dominance parties depend on the Drug War to maintain their winning margin electorally. "Safe" legislative districts at both the state and federal level are kept same by the massive population shift of people from pluralistic urban home communities to rural right-wing white prison districts. They are counted for apportionment as being in the prison district but they have no vote. while their home districts are deprived of education, health and other block grant community funds due to these people not being counted where their families are. The money instead goes to the rural districts that actually do not have the disadvantaged population that justifies the larger block grants. But the congress person for the rural district is lauded for bringing in the bacon.
Countless millions of Americans have been criminally disenfranchised over the past four decades of the Drug War. Countless more of their friends and family members have been disaffected by the horrible ways their families and friends have been treated by the government in the name of the Drug War. This gives the right-wing in America a Jim Crow winning margin that has actually existed since the 1870's and was federalized by the War on Drugs.
So, when you send a person to "rehab" and they come out clean and in a few weeks start up again - will this solve the problem? No. The individual is the one who decides and until that happens they will not change their habits.
I agree, it is the decision of the individual. But if they decide to use drugs, I don't think that warrants imprisonment. Now, if they steal or attempt to operate a car etc while high, that is a crime. Sitting in your house and smoking pot while playing video games is not a crime (though it's also no way to live life). This system is incredibly broken.
But when to end the war of addiction on people? Women and men prostitute for crack. Those who have the drugs have too much power, the addicted have zero power.
I've been saying for years that we should either enforce the law, or we should change the law.
I don't do drugs either.
The fact is over 45,000 Mexican citizens have been slain in Mexico since Calderon took office in 2006.
"The fact is over 45,000 Mexican citizens have been slain in Mexico since Calderon took office in 2006. ALL IN THE NAME OF AMERICAN CONSUMER DEMAND"
And we Americans ought to be ashamed of ourselves for what Mexico is going through on our account. Yes. End the drug war now.
Agreed. If drugs are legalized, will you start to use them? Probably not.
It's very unlikely that it would increase usage amongst non-users. The cultural stigma would still exist. I'm not going to start smoking crack just because I can.
I tried to tell you this back in the 60s.
I even beat Mr. P to the it.
Where were you?
I would legalize drugs as long as you would agree to legalize God.
you should read the Constitution some time. It's a wonderful document
I have read it. Your point?
what do you think my point is you moron
god isn't illegal
we're just not gonna shove it down the kids throats in public school - that's what the Catholic system is for
ZenDog,,, YOU mentioned that I should read the Constitution,,, as if,,, you are making a POINT. I said I did read it. I especially like the parts ----secure the Blessings of Liberty. The "BLESSINGS" of libertry. And, The Declaration of Independence. My favorite parts are --endowed by their "Creator" -- ---Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them (notice "G" God not "g") which would indicate YOU have not read the Declaration of Independence,,, which is a shame,,, YOU should. You probably feel like the "M"oron. I would guess you never had the Constitution or Declaration of Independence in school shoved down your throat........ ("i"diot)
I actually have a copy of the federalist papers right on my desk. It contains the seven Articles, and the first 23 Amendments. Amendment XXIII was adopted in 1961.
The First Amendment states:
Laws of Nature is a reference to a philosophy - Natural Law - that was prevalent at the time. Wiki traces it's origins to Plato, and notes biblical references to natural law - I would point out that Christians often cannot incorporate that particular piece of scripture Wiki cites:
"For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things contained in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law unto themselves, their conscience also bearing witness."40
You just want your religious ideology reflected in every single public institution, and since this is a secular nation, and since the first Amendment prohibits the Congress from "law respecting an establishment of religion" that just isn't going to happen.
Man YOU are pissed that I called you out. You hate it that our Creator is mentioned. I thought you said I needed to read the Constitution. To cover your ass when you now bring in the Bill of Rights. You are really lost. OK,,, so,,,, I just read what you copied and paste. "Congress shall make no law,,,, religion,,," CONGRESS shall make no law. If the rules were to be extended it would have said, Congress, states, city councils, schools,,,, shall make no laws. It specifically said CONGRESS,,, with no restrictions on other forms of governments. The seperation clause was a judge ruling based on one case and has since been used by you weak liberals. A city council shall be able to make laws allowing God in the public square. So now you going to bring up something from the Girls Scouts handbook?
really? I hadn't noticed that.
your original statement:
You've demonstrated already, I think, that God is in fact legal, and done a fine job too, I might add. So why would I be pissed?
I'll be really impressed when all of the plants God created are as legal as God is - I mean, after all . . . . .
You are pretty quick at research, copy and paste. I know God, our Creator, etc is mentioned in our papers of country foundation,. One would assume there are many references to atheism in the Federalist Papers, DoI, Constitution, Bill of Rights. I bet you have tons of those at your fingertip. To save time,,, just post 3 or 4 references that our founding fathers thought were important to atheism.
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
How about Jefferson?
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.
Jefferson is no good for the OWS movement as he isn't anti muslim and a zionist...
I figure truth speaks for itself.
On July 4, 1776, in addition to approving the Declaration of Independence, Congress chose Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin to design a great seal for the new country. Franklin proposed the phrase "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God," a sentiment Jefferson heartily embraced and included in the design for the Virginia seal and sometimes stamped it on the wax seals of his own letters. Although Congress rejected the elaborate seal, it retained the words "E Pluribus Unum," which became the country's motto.
The Federalist Papers were just that, papers. No official binding laws. In none of the "official" papers, DoI, Constitution, BoR can I find reference to something other than a God. If atheism was important onw would have to assume it would be mentioned,,, strongly,,, and I cant find it.
Well then I've been obedient before God since . . . at least 1997 -
and there are n0 aliens . . .
it's just another lie
told by actors
on a stage
Now.
About those plants . . . .
Can you stop by our city hall and set up a manger out front and then give ACLU your cell number? I will water your plants.
why does it need to be at City Hall?
Why do we even have Christmas?
It sure as shit isn't a celebration of the birth of Jesus any more . . .
no mistletoe?
bah
humbug
Christmas is still for Jesus. And the presents and eggnog (I prefer mine spiked) are good too! : )
Happy Holidays Zen!
Jesus is legal.
In fact,
Jesus was a liberal
Jesus was a political dissident
That said, there is no reason to install a manger at city hall - that is simply a means of oppressing atheists, Muslims, Jews, et. al.
Legalize Jesus.
What on earth does that even mean?
its called sarcasm
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