Will We Really Allow Our Neighboring Government to Fail Just Because We Can't Deal With Our Drug Problem?
If there's ever been a riper time for abandoning the idiotic "drug war," we can't think of it, yet the mainstream press has nothing to say on the subject. The cons are overwhelming, and honestly too numerous to list. The most obvious is that the Mexican government may very well be overthrown by violent narcotic traffickers, leading to massive chaos. Another problem is that it's amazingly expensive and we are running a one and three quarter TRILLION dollar deficit (for comparison a trillion seconds is almost 32,000 years). It also promotes a disrespect for the law among the 60 million who occasionally use marijuana, a drug that is generally considered to be less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. This leads to the criminalization of average citizens who get thrown in jail for nonviolent drug use (the US has an incarceration rate more than five times that of "totalitarian" China). Finally, the war on drugs is also devastating the environment around the world. The same environment that is already pushed to the brink by global climate disruption, human population explosion, and lax environmental regulation.
How does the drug war devastate the environment?
Growing the drugs actually doesn't cause much of a problem. It's mostly the United States policy of supply eradication that causes the massive damage. Aerial spraying of Columbia's coca-growing region has been going on for over a decade, and the results have been catastrophic. As coca fields are destroyed by herbicides indiscriminately dropped from the air; food crops, livestock, people, and tropical jungle also take a hit. Once this land is made barren as a result of spraying, the only option available for the residents is to cut down more jungle to grow more crops.
Do they grow more coca? Of course they do! What did we think they would do? This isn't just happening in Columbia, it's happening all over the world. Sometimes not directly by the US, but since we strong arm many countries into keeping drugs illegal (especially Mexico, which has tried to decriminalize them several times), most have no choice but to perpetuate this idiocy. Here in the US, national forests are being chopped down and cut up by professional marijuana growers, leading to fragmented habitat that is pushing many indigenous species to the brink. Rather than being used as recreational wonderlands for humans to interact with nature, people are terrified of these places, because accidentally stumbling on a major pot crop can be a death sentence. The crops are often guarded and/or booby-trapped by the growers.
As the last three presidents have all pretty much admitted to doing drugs when they were young, the idea that taking one puff or one snort leads straight to a life in the gutter is preposterous. Nevertheless, we keep telling our children these lies decade after decade. Can drug use lead to major problems, including death? Of course! But we already know that from our legal drugs, tobacco and alcohol. Is there a way to regulate drug use that will actually solve all of the aforementioned problems, as well as help shepherd abusers into treatment centers? Yes. It is very simple. Here's a quick outline.
Adults over 21 who are interested in using drugs could apply for an ATM style card that would allow certain amounts of drugs to be purchased each month (e.g. a half ounce of pot, a gram of coke, etc.) from government regulated centers like the ABC stores we have here in the Southeast. People could actually use their card to buy more drugs than are specified by the preset limit, but if they did they would get a visit from a drug treatment counselor. The next time they went over they would get a mandatory week or two in a treatment center. A sure sign of a budding dependency on drugs is a devil-may-care attitude towards long term consequences, and this would easily bring anyone who was developing a problem to the attention of regulators. Funds raised from these stores (drugs are one of the most lucrative of all businesses) would be used to operate top-rate treatment facilities.
You get the idea. It's not a hard thing to figure out. Of course, since by reputable accounts drug money is propping up the financial system, maybe this isn't the time to solve this problem! Or maybe the Obama administration could prove these rumors to be scurrilous by acting decisively to end this human and ecological nightmare.
Stephen and Rebekah Hren are the authors of The Carbon-Free Home: 36 Remodeling Projects to Help Kick the Fossil-Fuel Habit from Chelsea Green. For more information about green living, the Hrens, or their book, visit chelseagreen.com.
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to Killthemessenger:
You have some big ole issues, knowing the following might help.
1. Everyone pitching the make drugs legal idea, institutes age limits, normally 21, just like alcohol.
2. there are places with legal drugs, these places have less drug use than we do, among teens and adults. legal does not mean encourage. encourage means encourage, legal means no law against.
3. Drug use should not be a crime, and the drug war needs to end. A war on ones own people, most of whom 95% only use, produce or sell marijuana, is a huge waste of time.
4. as for your what if this was your kids question. my answer is this, i would greatly prefer my children to use marijuana an intoxicant that has never once killed anyone, to alcohol which claimed 400,000 lives last year.
One question to all of you...
What if your son or daughter came home with drugs? Would you let them use it in the living room? Would you let them drink?
OK, so if you wouldn't let your own son or daughter do it, why would you let some other son or daughter go down that path? Where is the moral authority to say that watching someone throw their life away is morally justifiable?
The problem with the war on drugs is that we are targeting the wrong people. The only way to control this is to stop the majority of people from using THE NICE WAY. Going after the criminals any which way we can is hopeless. But then, it seems easier to lace some fields in a foreign country without air defense than it is to talk to your teenager.
See Rebekah and Stephen Hren's Profile
First of all, notice that we said adults 21 and over. We do think that psychoactive drugs such as marijuana and mushrooms offer powerful tools for comprehending our relationship with the natural world, a relationship, we probably don't need to point out, that has frayed to the point of ecological collapse. In Europe, the average drinking age is around 16 (in England it's 14), and dependency problems are no higher than they are here. If our children did use drugs, as many, many children do, than we would definitely want them to not only know more about what they were getting into, but also to have high quality treatment available if their drug use became a problem, rather than getting locked up with a bunch of murderers and rapists in the state pen.
dude, a half ounce of pot per month is nohting, I burn that in 2 days.
If it's legal, it's legal, no rationing.
See Rebekah and Stephen Hren's Profile
Dude, maybe you have a drug dependency.
He also has a 1200hp car. As far as I know he can also leap mountains. Of course, both might be hallucinations associated with his drug use.
Dystopic is, by the way, a good example that not everybody who smokes will become president. Some end up as trolls on HuffPo.
:-)
The ATM card idea is a decent compromise I suppose, but still a violation of citizen's rights to privacy. I could buy 10 handles of vodka every day without anyone stepping in (well, a coroner perhaps), so there is no reason to treat other drugs any differently.
Fantastic work! The idea that drugs are a real threat to society is laughable, the numbers simply do not add up. Tiny fractions of the population use hard drugs. 95% of all drug use is Marijuana use, meaning 95% of the War on Drugs is going towards busting pot heads. all those billions wasted on a plant that cant kill.
The arguments presented to continue this farce are criminal at best. Thank you Huff post and Rebekah and Stephen Hren for helping move the conversation forward.
in our current economic state can we continue to waste $60 billion dollars a year on pot smokers, dealers and growers.
well if we make it 1/2 an ounce in one month than I hope your currently training an army of drug therapists because there would be about 30 million people on that list. I'll accept those term if we put people in AA if they consume more than 24 beers in a month. Be prepared to put half of all college students into therapy then. Or we can stop trying to draw a concrete line on what amount of use becomes abuse. Because that can change for every person you look at. Put people in treatment when they become a threat to others. Untill that happens just stay out of the way and let the people who hit rock bottom come back up when they can handle themselves responsibly.
See Rebekah and Stephen Hren's Profile
People don't clearly become a threat to others until they harmed them. To say that there's no right to regulate private behavior before it actually does harm is not very effective. People don't bitch about having to get driver's licenses because it's obvious that driving a car can be a threat to others. The same holds true with drug use, including alcohol.
We're not saying this is a cure-all. We are merely saying it is much better than outright criminalization or unfettered decriminalization. It would almost certainly be wise to provide a similar system for alcohol (esp. liquor) use. 20,000 dead every year in car crashes, not counting the damage done in child and spouse abuse, fights, suicide, etc.
First off, why should you have the right to regulate my private behavior unless I actually cause harm to someone else? All prescription drugs carry warnings that they may interfere with the operation of motor vehicles and heavy equipment, but how many accidents a year do you think are caused by Paxil, Prozac or even Viagra? We should all be responsible for our actions, and isn't it already against the law to drive while impaired by any drug?
Also, if we are basing these consumption limits on scientific analysis of the corresponding health risks then I am all for it; but you cannot tell me that drinking a case of beer a week is better for me than smoking any amount of cannabis or eating an ounce of magic mushrooms. This is comparing apples to oranges because cannabis and psilocybin are recognized as medicine by a growing majority of the world--including Johns Hopkins, Harvard... Our drug education has almost everyone in the U.S. believing that all illegal drugs are detrimental to health. This is not the case. If Obama wants to overcome his addiction to nicotine (like countless others) then his best bet might be to try using ayahuasca tea--which contains DMT, and is traditionally known as a teacher to various tribes throughout the Amazon. Check out www.ayahuasca.com or read about Dr. Rick Strassman's latest book: "Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies."
While I can empathize with your frustrations over the lack of progress in the debate over the drug war, there is hope for change. And leading the charge in the debate is LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). Formed in 2002 by four cops fed up with the drug war, LEAP has grown into an international organization with over 11,000 members. LEAP can't be dismissed as a bunch of far left nuts since most of it's members were responsible for enforcing these stupid laws in the first place.
Go to their website at www.leap.cc and see what a difference they are making in ending the drug war. I like system the authors describe for regulating drugs. It was well thought-out and mirrored the philousiphy that illicit drugs should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal matter. Well done!
See Rebekah and Stephen Hren's Profile
Excellent point, Will, thanks for your comment!
The arms come from the US.
How about using serial numbers of guns to track down where they are being sold and close those stores completely?
We provide to both sides: the Mexican government with millions of dollars to stop it, and to the cartels through our demand, and our weapons.
Then we get mad when people come to America to get away from that horror of a Nation that we help build.
I have pretty much lost interest in even debating the Drug war for the same reason I no longer debate creationists or climate change denialists.
Nothing ever changes about the discussion. The 'other side' never abandons an argument no matter how many times it's been refuted.
The Drug war isn't about public health or safety , it's about America's religious kooks (we have more of them than any industrialised nations) getting revenge on the sixties.
There is no real chance of any rational discussion of this issue than there is ANY issue modulated through the hippies vs. straights battle of 40 years ago.
I have done my part over the years (and accomplished nothing) I leave it to others to carry on this one-sided "discussion "(do you really think those who still favor prohibition are actually listening to ANY rational arguments?). I for one have thrown up my hands on the matter.
I don't think those who favor prohibition and have been fighting since the '60s will change their minds, no. But I wasn't born yet in the '60s, and neither were a significant (and growing) number of other voters. The reason to keep arguing rationally is that it is possible to change the minds of people who are young enough not to have a vested interest in Prohibition but whose upbringing instilled in them an irrational fear of legalization. The number of Americans who oppose criminal penalties for marijuana has not been higher since it was outlawed. Our arguments are making a difference.
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