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| War on Drugs: Your Tax Dollars at Waste |
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Posted by FoM on April 08, 2002 at 15:39:21 PT By Bruce Mirken, Special To The Examiner Source: San Francisco Examiner 
No one looks forward to April 15, but most of us pay our taxes willingly. After all, our dollars buy important things, from highways to missiles. But what if for decades we spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a program without bothering to find out if it actually worked?Or worse, what if we kept pouring money into a proven failure? We are doing precisely that with the War on Drugs. That is the inevitable conclusion of a devastating National Research Council report commissioned by the White House drug czar's office and released one year ago -- and ignored by the press and policymakers. Titled "Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us" Aavailable online at: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10021.html -- the NRC's analysis concludes that we are not even collecting the data that would tell us whether present anti-drug strategies are working. More startling, the data we do have doesn't support the central pillar of U.S. drug policy: Arresting and jailing drug users. "Existing research," the NRC writes, "seems to indicate that there is little apparent relationship between severity of sanctions prescribed for drug use and prevalence or frequency of use." The researchers particularly noted that the 11 states that have greatly reduced penalties for marijuana possession have not seen increased use. Bush administration budget chief Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., explained to the Washington Post in January that the administration would rate federal programs as "effective, ineffective and in-between," steering more money to programs that work and less to those that don't. Logically, this should lead to a major rethinking of anti-drug efforts. It hasn't. Bush's budget tinkers a bit, but still allocates two-thirds of anti-drug funds to the same old failed law-enforcement efforts. MARIJUANA -- legal under federal law until 1937 -- provides a telling example: According to government figures, only about 2 percent of Americans born before the ban took effect had used marijuana by the time they turned 21. But of those born 20 years later, from 1956 to 1960, more than 50 percent tried marijuana by age 21. Since then, the percentage has consistently remained at least 2000 percent above pre-ban levels. Federal anti-drug expenditures rose from $11.5 billion in 1992 to nearly $19 billion in 2002. The result? According to government surveys, in 1992, 33.3 percent of Americans had used at least one illicit drug. By 2000 that figure had risen to 38.9 percent. That year, the United States arrested 646,000 people for simple possession of marijuana, an all-time record. But is marijuana really so dangerous that this draconian approach is needed? In March 1972, a national commission appointed by President Nixon declared, "The Commission is of the unanimous opinion that marijuana use is not such a grave problem that individuals who smoke marijuana, and possess it for that purpose, should be subject to criminal procedures." This conservative group found that criminal prohibition actually undercuts efforts to discourage use and to curb misuse of marijuana. In 1995, The Lancet, one of the world's most prestigious medical journals, stated flatly, "The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health," and called for decriminalization. This March, the Canadian Medical Association did the same. Almost simultaneously, the British government's scientific advisory panel on illegal drugs reported, "The high use of cannabis is not associated with major health problems for the individual or society" and recommended ending arrests for marijuana possession. The experts have spoken, but the waste of our tax dollars continues. Bruce Mirken, a longtime health journalist who has written for Men's Health, AIDS Treatment News and the San Francisco Chronicle, is director of communications at the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. -- http://www.mpp.org Source: San Francisco Examiner (CA) Related Articles: Marijuana Reconsidered Secret Nixon Tapes Show Why US Outlawed Pot Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #4 posted by Lehder on April 08, 2002 at 18:22:19 PT |
| Despite all this established fact about the safety of marijuana and the urgings of multiple Congressional and Presidential commissions, another 800,000 people will be arrested this year. These arrests will probably affect three or four million people in very adverse ways. These arrests are crimes. They must not only be stopped, they must be punished. Our form of government and our economic structure must be thorougly revised so that they cannot be hijacked by criminals. --------- Read this Counter Punch article about how evidence is mounting that the anthrax attacks - already known to have originated in the US - were the work not of a single madman, but the official organized program from offices in George Bush's government. (link will change to archives tomorrow, author Wayne Madsen.) As far as 9/11, I still say that Osama bin Laden is living in the Lincoln Bedroom. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #3 posted by qqqq on April 08, 2002 at 17:36:00 PT |
| ..let's say you read this article,,and you're not that pissed off by it,because you have developed this big ol' leathery calous in your mind from getting really pissed about other things,,like the amount that is budgeted for "defense" this year!..(does anyone know?..Does anyone want to guess??,,??or perhaps you DO know,and your mind wanted to freak,,but luckily it went into shock.....you know,,"shock",,it's the same as physical shock,,but it's mental..It's your bodys' way of blocking severe pain.,,like if you got run over by a train,and you were still alive,,your body would automaticly block out the pain!..{{I'm not sure whether it's because your body wont allow you to feel that level of pain,,or if the pain sensing nerves max out ,??)..well it's the same type thing with "mental shock",,,....there are things that every human must face,,that make them way too mad,and their minds have numerous 'shock protection' mechanisms that allow them to deal with brutal train wrecks of reality .. ...] ..well I found something that made me really upset.I read it just before I read the article above....If you need to get a bit more upset,,check out this example of government priorities!... http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/first/0408-126.html now I dont know about you,or the people you know,,but I'm really glad that they are finally taking action so I can get some fuckin' Terrorism Insurance....!..I finally got earthquake and flood insurance,,but like all sheeple,I've been waiting for them to take action on affordable terror insurance... [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #2 posted by goneposthole on April 08, 2002 at 17:02:22 PT |
| I suppose every American citizen could go to the atms, max out their credit cards, and send the cash to the DEA. It would help some. Let's see, 125,000,000 credit card holders at an average of 20,000 USD limit on each card would be 2,500,000,000,000 USD. That's 2.5 trillion dollars. Maybe the drug war could be won with that much money. It might be worth a try. Everybody could declare bankruptcy and leave the banks holding the bag. The government could bail them out. And then, tax everybody to recuperate the bank losses. Hire Ken Lay to broker the transactions. Happiness would abound. A trip to the Big Rock Candy Mountains for all. [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #1 posted by Steve in PR on April 08, 2002 at 16:26:49 PT:
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| It is time! "Goverment for the people, By the people" should begin to get more than just lip service. The truth is out there...It is time to act upon it. Wasted lives, wasted time and money is all that the D.E.A/US goverment has to show for 30+ yrs of (wrongful) prohabition.
PEACE!
Steve In PR. [ Post Comment ] |
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