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Posted by FoM on September 11, 2000 at 10:07:05 PT By Randy Alcorn Source: Santa Barbara News-Press 
Last week President Clinton delivered a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package to Colombia for the purpose of escalating the war on drugs. His quick denial that this aid wasn't comparable to the Vietnam fiasco nor was it "Yankee imperialism," was about as credible as his denial that he never inhaled marijuana smoke. The irony of a U.S. president who admits to being in possession of a banned drug, of actually sucking its smoke to the threshold of his lungs, now pontificating about the necessity of continuing the so-called war on drugs, even if it means supporting foreign governments that are in violation of our own human rights standards, is a perfect example of the hypocrisy of our policy on this issue of drugs. The war on drugs is so much more. It is a war on common sense, a war on individual rights, a war on justice, a war on third-world peasants, but as a war on drugs it is woefully unsuccessful. Typically we judge anyone who keeps repeating the same self-destructive behavior as either mentally disturbed or mentally deficient. As a political nation then, we must be either psychotics or morons. After our clearly decisive failure to outlaw alcohol in the early part of the 20th century, you would think we would have learned the profound folly of trying to eliminate something that so many of our citizens want so badly some will even kill for it. The gang wars and corruption resulting from banning booze pale in comparison to the death and corruption spawned by keeping some drugs illegal. In one respect Clinton may be right, the war on drugs isn't like the Vietnam fiasco. In that war, we came to grips with the error of our policy and the futility of pursuing it, and after 10 long years we withdrew. But the war on drugs, arguably even more futile and unjustified than the war in Vietnam, is relentlessly pursued by one U.S. administration after another, year after year, decade after decade. During the eight years of the Reagan presidency we spent about $22 billion on it. That amount escalated to $45 billion in the four Bush years. Currently, we spend over $18 billion per year just at the federal level to pursue the futile war on drugs. No matter who is in office, the stupidity continues. Certainly, there are better things to spend our money on. Our prisons are crowded with drug offenders. Drug offenders comprise nearly 60 percent of the federal prison population. Nearly three and a half million Americans have been arrested just on marijuana charges alone during the last seven years. Neighborhoods across our country are war zones in which competing drug dealers fight over the market. Desperate addicts, needing to find money to support their habit, steal and rob to pay the high street price of illegal drugs. The war on drugs has become a war on our constitutional rights. There have been many incidents reported over the years where innocent people have had their homes stormed, their property confiscated, even their lives lost. Police killed an old man in Ventura County some years ago when they stormed his farm after mistaking his corn crop for marijuana. A Texas man had all of his cash confiscated by drug agents at a Texas airport only because the amount of cash was large and, therefore, made him a suspected drug dealer. The man was never arrested or ever convicted of any drug-related crime. Our government has abrogated our most basic constitutional rights in its zealous pursuit of this insane war on drugs. If this is the cure, it is worse than the disease. It took a constitutional amendment to ban booze, but merely a stroke of the presidential pen to make criminals of millions of Americans who choose to use certain drugs. Illegal drugs won't go away until people stop wanting to use them -- and too many people choose to use them. Citizens rich and poor and of all races and walks of life have used and continue to use illegal drugs, which should be their right as free citizens. When drug use is harmful, it is typically harmful only to the person who chooses to engage in it. Most of the harm surrounding drugs in this country comes from the attendant violence, theft and corruption that keeping them illegal produces. Our tax money would be more wisely and effectively spent on educating our citizens about the health dangers of drugs, rather than funding this idiotic war on drugs. "Just say no" is more effective than another marijuana smoker serving five to 10 in prison. Besides, inmates can still get drugs in prison. If as a nation we were sincerely dedicated to eradicating all dangerous substances that a human might ever ingest, the list of banned substances would be long, indeed. Alcohol is legal and yet many would argue that it is more deleterious than marijuana. Cholesterol probably kills more people than cocaine. Should the police be rounding up all the addicts checking in to the Betty Ford Clinic and other addiction treatment centers across the country? Finally, there is a rogue nation that produces and exports a drug so addictive that people will continue to ingest it even after it has eaten away their bodies, and threatens them with imminent death. Unlike most other drugs, its use actually threatens the health of non-users. Up until recently this nation's government even subsidized its farmers who grow this drug. Huge, powerful organizations sanctioned by this government export this drug to the entire world with impunity. They insidiously entice children and teen-agers to use this drug. Yet, there are no armed helicopters invading the fields where this drug is grown. There are no aid packages from afflicted nations to further a war on this drug and stop its export. America, probably the greatest exporter of tobacco in the world, piously declares war on coca leaves, poppies and cannabis in Colombia and elsewhere; what shameful hypocrisy. The real reason that the war on drugs continues is that both sides want it to continue for the money it generates. Huge budgets -- your tax dollars at work -- and confiscated property for the government bureaucrats and police, and high prices and monopolies for the drug purveyors. It will never be won because neither side really wants it to end. While we still have some democracy left, we citizens must end it, just as we did the Vietnam war, just as we did with alcohol prohibition. The prohibition against drugs should be repealed. Stop the war! Randy Alcorn is controller for the News-Press. Readers may e-mail him at: ralcorn@newspress.com Published: September 10, 2000 CannabisNews Justice Archives: Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #2 posted by MikeEEEEE on September 11, 2000 at 16:22:25 PT |
| Comment #1 posted by observer on September 11, 2000 at 13:28:52 PT |
Be wary of drug warriors attempting to lie and deny this.
Here's what they do to "counter" that fact. They start paring down the categories. They say things like, "Only X (where X is some small number) percentage are in federal prison for marijuana possession. Why, hardly anyone, they assert. (But of course, it would be anathema to discuss repealing federal marijuana laws.)
Watch Barry McCaffrey try this on you:
.... the federal system is not locking up large numbers of drug addicts for simple possession. During fiscal year 1998, only 33 federal defendants were sentenced to jail for base offenses involving less than 5,000 grams of marijuana; 196 criminals were sentenced for crimes involving between 1 million and 2.99 million grams of marijuana. And only 55 federal defendants were sentenced for drug crimes involving 25 grams of powder cocaine or less. Meanwhile, 749 federal defendants were sentenced for crimes involving 5,000 grams or more of cocaine, with 249 of these cases involving more than 150,000 grams.At the state level, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that as of July 1997, 222,100 state inmates were incarcerated for drug offenses. Of these state drug offenders, more than 70 percent were incarcerated for trafficking, as opposed to possession. . .
Barry R. cCaffrey, Aug 19, 2000
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1190/a05.html
See how that they weasel their way through that? They break down the numbers (if they don't just make them us, as the ONDCP is want to do), narrowly defining a few of the categories. At all levels, state and federal, the "possesion" amounts are ridiculously low; the more presence of baggies, for example, is routinely used as excuse to press for "distribution" charges. That's why so few are put seemingly away for "possession": this is always upped to "distribution" whenever the prosecutor-judge thinks he can get away with it.
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