cannabisnews.com: Drug War a Failure: Time to Return to NORML










  Drug War a Failure: Time to Return to NORML

Posted by FoM on April 29, 2002 at 11:20:57 PT
By Shankar Gupta, Columnist  
Source: Washington Square News  

Last week, the WSN did a feature on one of NYU’s newest clubs: the NYU chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML. This organization represents political activism of the best kind. It is a campaign for more freedoms, less regulation and fewer government intrusions into our daily lives. The drug war is one of the most foolish legislative adventures in U.S. history. I don’t use illegal drugs; however, I do oppose the grossly unfair inquisition that our government is conducting. Without further ado, here are four good reasons why everyone should oppose the War on Drugs: 
 1. Alcohol and tobacco kill far more people than illegal drugs, yet we trust American adults to regulate their own use of those products. According to the Schaffer Library, tobacco kills about 390,000 people every year, and alcohol kills about 80,000. By comparison, heroin kills about 2,000 people a year, 195 times fewer than tobacco and 40 times fewer than alcohol. Aspirin kills the same number. Cocaine kills about 2,200 people a year. There has never been a recorded marijuana-related death in U.S. medical history. Why are alcohol and cigarettes allowed while these other drugs are prohibited? Alcohol and tobacco are the favored drugs of the powerful: Congressmen and lobbyists drink gin and tonics and smoke cigars, but they rarely drop acid or smoke a joint. Moreover, alcohol and tobacco have been socially accepted in our society since its founding (despite Prohibition, which did little to change social mores). It is the worst kind of hypocrisy that tobacco and alcohol are sold at every corner, but people who wish to smoke marijuana are treated like criminals. Some might argue that the reason tobacco and alcohol kill more people every year is because they are legal, and therefore more readily available. This claim is patently false. Fatalities through alcohol usage increased during the Prohibition years, due to the lack of quality control on alcoholic beverages; when going to a speakeasy, one could never be sure if the alcohol he or she was drinking was safe for consumption. Similarly, users of illegal drugs today can never be sure if the joints they’re about to light are laced with crack cocaine, or the heroin they’re about to use has been cut with rat poison to increase the profit margin. More than anything else, the illegality of drugs makes them dangerous to consume. 2. The drug war is unconstitutional. Not only unconstitutional, but spectacularly unconstitutional. When the U.S. Congress decided to enact Prohibition in 1919, they had to pass a constitutional amendment to do so. Why? Because Congress is not granted powers to regulate what people put into their bodies. The current anti-drug laws are based on the flimsy justification that any use of illegal substances comes about as a result of interstate commerce, which Congress is empowered to regulate in Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution. The U.S. government accomplished this outrageous manhandling of the law of our land by first legislating anti-drug laws as licensing and tax laws, which penalized sellers if they didn’t have the appropriate authorization. Then the federal bureaucracies that were empowered to issue such licenses simply never gave them out. Ending the drug war would restore the ideal of properly limited government, sorely lacking in today’s society. 3. The drug war disproportionately affects minorities. Although the modern drug war is probably not racist in intent, it affects minorities disproportionately. According to studies by the U.S. Department of Justice, one quarter of all the young black men in America are either in prison or on parole, most of them for non-violent drug offenses. According to a study by the Sentencing Project, black inmates make up 73.3 percent of drug offenders in some states, and these felony convictions on their records will follow them throughout their lives, making it difficult for them to find employment and interact with society. The high prices of controlled substances provide a quick, high-payoff, high-risk way to make a lot of money for themselves and their families, driving young black men in the inner cities to crime. It’s clear that the drug war is crushing these communities, adding one more barrier in the way of success for minorities in America. Ending the drug war would remove this burden, and then we could focus on repairing the damage it has done to these communities. 4. The drug war is costing us billions, and having no discernible positive effect. The former chief of the Planning Branch of the National Institutes of Mental Health, Theodore R. Vallance, spent his career researching the costs of various health programs. His study on the costs of the drug war, published in the National Review, estimated that legalization of currently illegal drugs would save the U.S. taxpayers $37 billion. $37 billion is a lot of money. It could pay for treatment programs for addicts, it could go to help the current victims of the war on drugs or it could just be returned to the taxpayers. Regardless, for that kind of money, we should be seeing some sort of positive return. Instead, all we see is the destruction of our minority communities, the incarceration of our nation’s youth and the criminalization of the more than 40 million Americans who have used illegal substances in the past year. Like Prohibition, the drug war is a huge financial and social burden to our nation, and all we get in return are such lovely institutions as gang warfare and police corruption. Our country’s experiment with the War on Drugs is a failure. Despite this, our government continues this foolish endeavor due to a mix of Puritanism, a nanny-state mentality and plain old legislative overkill. Back in the 1930s, when laws didn’t work we had the courage and common sense to repeal them. Now, we just throw more money and lives toward an ineffective solution. Shankar Gupta is a columnist at Washington Square News.Source: Washington Square News (NY Edu)Author: Shankar Gupta, Columnist Published: Monday, April 29, 2002 Copyright: 2002, Washington Square NewsContact: opinion nyunews.comWebsite: http://www.nyunews.com/Related Article & Web Sites:NORMLhttp://www.norml.org/NYU NORMLContact: Nathaniel McCuneE-mail: nyunorml cannabisaction.net Schaffer Library of Drug Policyhttp://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/NORML Students Fight for Unusual Causehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12638.shtml

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Comment #9 posted by el_toonces on April 30, 2002 at 05:19:37 PT:
GTA sounds fun....
...and real, Bounce. I was looking at some old financial information recently and was aghast at the return pharmaceutical stocks produced back in the 1990's. All that high return, delightful as it was, could not have come in an honest fashion. Pharm's interest in maintaining prohibition is -- as far as I can see - the greatest industrial obstacle we face right now, IMHO.I also wandered around some pharm websites only to see that most company's justifications for their high profits (and prices), i.e., the high cost of Research & Development, had much more to do with the "R&D" of marketing via detail men and direct to consumer adverts than actual drug research and development.What happens in the game (GTA) when one divests himself from the Pharma's stocks, if anyone knows?
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Comment #8 posted by Elfman_420 on April 30, 2002 at 02:52:30 PT
Obesity.
Speaking of obesity, I would like to say that cannabis has assisted me in losing 35 pounds in a year in a half since I began smoking. It helped me become more aware of what foods my body needed, and I changed my diet accordingly. I am now a vegetarian, for the most part, though will occasionally eat some types of meat. I also eat less food now than I used to. It also may have increased my metabolism.
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Comment #7 posted by Rambler on April 30, 2002 at 01:44:15 PT
Health Funding
""One of our nation's greatest public health threats today is 
obesity. Almost two-thirds of American adults are now seriously 
overweight or obese, putting them at increased risk for 
disabilities and life-threatening diseases,""APHA Calls for Adequate Funding for Programs to Battle Obesity; 
Executive Director to Testify on Behalf of NANA 
To: National Desk, Health Reporter 
Contact: Kate Fox of of the American Public Health Association, 
202-777-2435, e-mail: kate.fox apha.org WASHINGTON, April 29 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Dr. Mohammad N. Akhter, 
MD, MPH, executive director of the American Public Health 
Association (APHA), will testify tomorrow before the Appropriations 
Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. 
Representing the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity 
(NANA), his testimony will call for funding for the Youth Media 
Campaign and the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity at the 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to fund states to 
promote healthy eating and physical activity. "One of our nation's greatest public health threats today is 
obesity. Almost two-thirds of American adults are now seriously 
overweight or obese, putting them at increased risk for 
disabilities and life-threatening diseases," Akhter said. "To 
reduce disease, early death and soaring Medicare, Medicaid and 
other health care costs, we must address these key risk factors 
with comprehensive and effective policies, programs and 
environmental changes." Physical inactivity and poor nutrition contribute significantly 
to four of the six leading causes of death in the United States: 
heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes. They cause the deaths 
of between 310,000 and 580,000 Americans each year, according to 
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In 
addition, unhealthy eating habits and physical inactivity are major 
contributors to disabilities such as amputations and blindness 
resulting from diabetes, and loss of independence due to stroke or 
osteoporosis-related hip fractures. Although the nutrition and physical activity program has grown 
by $5 million to $10 million per year over the last three years, at 
the current rate of growth it would take seven to 10 years to fund 
all states. Over the last decade, obesity rates have increased by 
60 percent and diabetes rates by 50 percent. We cannot afford to 
wait 10 years to more fully address these pressing health problems. In addition to APHA, NANA is comprised of more than 200 members, 
including the Alliance for Retired Americans; Alliance for Aging 
Research; American Cancer Society; American Dietetic Association; 
American Heart Association; Center for Science in the Public 
Interest; National Association for Sport and Physical Education; 
National Association of County and City Health Officials; Society 
of State Directors of Health, Physical Education and Recreation; 
and the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Association. APHA is the oldest and largest organization of public health 
professionals and represents more than 50,000 members from over 50 
public health occupations. 
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Comment #6 posted by Bounce to the Ounce on April 30, 2002 at 00:04:50 PT
Don't forget Grand Theft Auto 3
for the PS2. In the game, the drug is called "SPANK" and all the mafias, from the Yakuza to the Columbians, in Liberty City deal it. There's also a mission around the beginning of the game where you take the daughter of the Italian mafia crime boss to a rave but make a getaway when the DEA agents raid the place (who are shooting off their machine guns in every direction, killing several people in the process). And another thing: The entire police force is corrupt.
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Comment #5 posted by The GCW on April 29, 2002 at 19:56:11 PT
The word is growing - 
More and more people are opposed to caging humans for using cannabis.Schools accross the country are being confronted, and it is putting a fowl taste in people's mouths. Here is another good one (an LTE) from another campus. US MA: Edu: PUB LTE: Arguments Against Decriminalization Fail
 http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n819/a06.html?397 Pubdate: Mon, 29 Apr 2002
Source: Harvard Crimson (MA Edu)
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Comment #4 posted by Elfman_420 on April 29, 2002 at 17:22:51 PT
New game shows what the drug war REALLY is...
There is a new popular video game called Max Payne. It is about an undercover police officer whose family is killed by a mafia drug gang who pushes a particular designer drug. Payne then joins the DEA to fight the mafia. The funniest part of the game is when Payne finds, what in most games is referred to as "health" which heals any incurred wounds, instead finds "pain killers". Sometimes when he picks up the painkillers he says "the pills will get me through the pain..."Then you also find hints that the pharmecutical company is in connection with the mafia, and actually manufactures the designer drug. So, in the end, it's these two gangs out killing each other over an illegal pill that makes pharmecutical companies richer, whilst the legal gang also takes pills that are making the pharmecutical companies richer and are also dangerous and extremely addictive. Anyways, I would recommend the game to any first-person shooter game fans as the effects are really amazing.. it has what is called "bullet time", so, like in the matrix, the whole world slows down, you dive and can shoot accurately several times in a matter of 4 seconds, when actually only 1 second is going by. Although you do play a DEA agent, it turns out that everybody who knows you are a DEA agent ultimately dies, so the gangsters and the state turn on you which makes for an interesting story line. 
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Comment #3 posted by Patrick on April 29, 2002 at 13:17:32 PT
4 good reasons for stopping WOSD.
Keyword: Reason
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on April 29, 2002 at 12:51:07 PT
NORMAL Versus NORML
I have seen NORML for so long then when I see NORMAL it looks odd. I catch myself not spelling normal the right way anymore. It is a good name.
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Comment #1 posted by E_Johnson on April 29, 2002 at 12:35:38 PT
NORML was a great choice of names
How did they know so long ago how far from NORMAL America would be taken in the War on Drugs?
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