If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
The vast majority of Americans do not even know that the U.S. is at war just south of our borders and do not understand why our Southern neighbors are crying out for a change in this senseless policy. The media's failure in this regard is inexcusable.
Author and legal scholar, Michelle Alexander, has written a powerful and highly acclaimed, well-researched book titled, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness."
As terrible as alcohol and other drugs are for some people, prohibition is not the answer. It didn't work in the United States in the 1920s and it is not working for the Sioux people today.
Daniel Chong, UC-San Diego student, said he was forced to drink his own urine after he was left in a Drug Enforcement Administration holding cell for nearly five days.
The continued decline in teen cigarette smoking is great news -- not just because it's the most deadly drug but also because it reveals that legal regulation and honest education are more effective than prohibition and criminalization.
While officials convened at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena earlier this month, the White House put the finishing touches on another free trade agreement. The deal has faced vocal resistance from labor and human rights groups in both countries.
At its core, the domestic cultivation of industrial hemp is a simple matter of agriculture and economics that has nothing to do with drug policy at all, and shouldn't even be tied to the otherwise raging debate about marijuana laws in America.
Last month Pat Robertson, televangelist and long-time icon of the religious right, announced that it's time to legalize marijuana. The firestorm of shock and indignation from all sides ... never materialized. Not a whimper.
To even suggest that Obama has to appear "tough on drugs" in order to deflect political attacks is preposterous. What political attacks? When have we ever heard him criticized for any such thing?
When the 2009 coup was allowed to conserve power and seal itself off from prosecution, it immediately undermined governance, rule of law, and the social compact. Honduras' constitutional crisis has now become a prolonged social and political crisis.
The world is fraught with too much violence, too much crime, too much addiction, too many overdose cases, too many prisons, too many bullet holes, too many AIDS cases, and too many bills related to prohibition. The war on drugs has proved to be public enemy number one.
Sir Richard Branson went to the White House this week to attend a state dinner. When he got a chance to speak to President Obama, he asked if he could have a spliff. He was only joking but it was a gentle way of reminding Obama that the issue of marijuana is an important one.
If there's contention in the medical community about the risk and effectiveness of painkillers, the debate gets more heated still when it comes to what sort of public policy should govern how the drugs are used.
For more than 40 years now, the war on drugs has failed in its mission. We are currently in the longest and most destructive war in American history, and yet no one seems to want to talk about it.
Vice President Biden landed in Mexico City Sunday for a two-day trip to that country and Honduras. He's left little doubt about his mission: to lock in the regional drug war. His visit comes amid mounting calls to end prohibitionist laws and move away from the military-based drug war.
Seducing 18-year-olds to fall in love or pretending to be friends and then tricking them into procuring small amounts of marijuana so they can charge them with felonies is beyond slimy and diametrically opposed to the officers' charge to "serve and protect."
