In the name of all the powers that be, let us reconsider our stance regarding the policy of drug prohibition. In this hundred year effort to prevent the use of certain flowers and plant extracts we have empowered criminal elements worldwide to the tune of $400 billion per year. The US has arrested 39 million non-violent drug users at a cost of more than one trillion dollars. Despite the horrors the US inflicts on its own people in the name of the war on drugs, it is the citizens of Mexico that bear the deadliest weight of this prohibition.
Thousands of Mexicans are butchered each year in the name of fighting this first of America's eternal wars. The drug war is the pipe dream of men who have long since died and whose followers continue their efforts to destroy the law of supply and demand, to stop 100's of millions of users, to prohibit the tens of millions of growers and millions of criminals from seeking their cut of black market profits. America is addicted to drug war.
Some say the fault lies with the American users. Logic dictates that if they were to quit using cocaine, heroin and marijuana then the cartels would wither away. Those who fault the users do not take into account that the US represents only 5% of the earths population. So even if every American quit using these drugs, the Mexican cartels would still have hundreds of millions of customers worldwide and the barbarism would continue to escalate.
Through a willing or silent embrace of prohibition those proponents of eternal drug war are ensuring more death, disease, crime and addiction. Born from racial screeds and amplified by hysteria and propaganda, this policy has no basis in science, no medical data to justify its existence and in fact has no relationship with empirical data whatsoever.
Generations of politicians and law enforcement have prospered from the policy of drug prohibition and dare not allow their stance to be examined in a new light. For the rest of us, ignorance and superstition may eventually be forgiven, but the horrors the United States has promulgated on this planet in the name of drug war, will never be forgotten.
Those who seek to forestall a reinvestigation of our drug war policy have aligned themselves so as to ensure eternal profits for evil ones who mean to destroy our way of life, our freedoms, our democracy.
Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman once said to drug czar William Bennett: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken? Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore."
Pray that we open our eyes, our hearts and our minds to the horrors we inflict on ourselves via our fear of flowers. How many Mexicans will have to die, before Americans realize they are ... mistaken?
On Sunday, Feb 14 we will interview El Paso City Coucilman Beto Orourke & Students for Sensible Drug Policy board member Michael Blunt on the Drug Truth Network radio programs. Listen live at 6:30 CENTRAL time at http://www.kpft.org or tune in to one of our 72 affiliate stations in the US and Canada or check it out on Monday morning on our website http://www.drugtruth.net
Biker Bil
Little Rock
I've known at least that many people who have been killed by the bottle.
And yet I have never known another human being who died from too much grass.
I am not even aware of it happening in all recorded human history.
Can someone please explain to me why we still having this stupid conversation in the year 2010? It's embarrassing.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Anybody out there affiliated with a college, independent or pirate radio station should contact me as well. There is no charge to become an affiliate of the Drug Truth Network.
I live just across the border from the most dangerous city in the world, Ciudad Juarez. Believe me, the cartels are not fighting for control of the smuggling routes and territory for our benefit. There is an old saying in law enforcement and politics "Follow the money." If drugs were not profitable they would not be killing themselves and innocent bystanders for the fun of it. And if we stopped the war on drugs, we could save the 70 billion dollars we spend on enforcement and get 40 billion dollars in revenue for 110 billion per year. There I have just paid for universal health care and at the end of a decade there would be 100 billion left over.
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And not all law enforcement professionals believe that the War on Drugs should continue. Check out Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) website.
The last time I heard the number argued in public was a few years ago and I think it was from the CDC... and that referred to US deaths by overdose only.... the actual number was around 3800 and was during the crack wars... Even if it was twice that number and I doubt it, the rationale for the current approach at managing it is lacking....
National Council on Alcoholism estimated that in 1985 all illegal drugs combined killed 3562 Americans
www.drugwarfacts.org states that illicit drug deaths in 2005 were around 17000 but that seems to include indirect deaths resulting from related diseases ? This is about half the number of those who die by suicide...and around the same number of those who die by homicide. Further, I suspect that those 17000 is an inaccurate number (overcount) to justify the drug wars, since the 1985 number is so low yet CIA sponsored crack and cocaine was common and the price of cocaine and heroin was at a low....
Cigarettes kill over 400,000 a year but there is no war on tobacco being waged with our tax dollars. Just a few programs and a some court fights with Big T.... certainly no DEA presence, no gang wars, no politically attractive declarations of "War"...
The only purpose of this criminalization is to increase law enforcement jobs and give them power over the rest of us. Drug laws are enforced whimsically and inequitably.
Legalize them all. Standardize all the drugs so dosage is known. Control them with the FDA so that there are no dangerous impurities.
Tax them, enough to pay for all the rehabilitation programs and the hospitals that will be necessary to treat the results - let the drug users pay for their treatment.
Last time I checked less than 4000 people a year die of drug overdoses and tens of thousands of people die from the criminal gang wars, law enforcement interdiction, etc.... It is wholly ineffective, drugs are as available now as they ever were. We have a lot better things to spend our money on right now than keeping the DEA in charge of American drug policy. The DEA have no respect for facts, science, data or the lives they destroy both here and abroad. They misrepresent so much, distort so much, lie so much that it puts them on par with their kidnapping, torturing, murdering, drug importing buddies in the CIA.
We need to stop this travesty and do something intelligent like treat drug addiction like a health issue, engage harm reduction type strategies, etc.... if necessary, legalize small amounts of all drugs, tax them and use the proceeds to offset treatment costs. We have had about 70years of drug prohibition and it is a dismal failure.