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 veggie
Registered: 07/26/04
Posts: 13,985
Loc: 
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 Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense 
#9366690 - 12/04/08 06:15 PM (4 years, 5 months ago) |
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Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense
December 4, 2008 - realclearpolitics.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- America ended Prohibition 75 years ago this week. The ban on the sale of alcohol unleashed a crime wave, as gangsters fought over the illicit booze trade. It sure didn't stop drinking. People turned to speakeasies and bathtub gin for their daily cocktail.
Prohibition -- and the violence, corruption and health hazards that followed -- lives on in its modern version, the so-called War on Drugs. Former law-enforcement officers gathered in Washington to draw the parallels. Their group, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), has called for nothing less than the legalization of drugs.
And before you say, "We can't do that," hear the officers out. They have an answer for every objection.
Doesn't the War on Drugs take narcotics off the street, raising their price beyond most Americans' means?
Obviously not. The retail price of cocaine is now about half what it was in 1990. When the value of something goes up, more people go into the business.
In some Dallas junior high schools, kids can buy two hits of "cheese" -- a mix of Tylenol PM and heroin -- for $5, Terry Nelson, a former U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer, told me. Lunch costs more.
Wouldn't legalizing drugs create new users? Not necessarily. LEAP wants drugs to be regulated like alcohol and cigarettes. Regulations are why it's harder to buy alcohol or cigarettes in many schoolyards than drugs. By regulating the purity and strength of drugs, they become less deadly.
Isn't drug addiction a scourge that tears families apart? Yes, it is, and so are arrests and incarceration and criminal records for kids caught smoking pot behind the bleachers. There are 2.1 million people in federal, state and local prisons, 1.7 million of them for non-violent drug offenses.
Removing the stigma of drug use lets addicts come out into the open for treatment. We have treatments for alcoholism, but we don't ban alcohol.
LEAP's members want to legalize drugs because they're tired of being shot at in a war they can't win. They're tired of making new business for dealers every time they arrest a competitor. They're are tired of busting people in the streets of America's cities over an ounce of cocaine, while the Andean region produces over 1,000 tons of it a year. They're tired of enriching terrorists.
"In 2009, the violence of al-Qaida will be financed by drug profits," said Eric Sterling, head of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, which joined the call for legalization. As counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in the 1980s, Sterling helped write the anti-drug laws he now opposes.
Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates that legalizing drugs would save federal, state and local governments $44 billion in enforcement costs. Governments could collect another $33 billion in revenues were they to tax drugs as heavily as alcohol and tobacco.
No one here likes drugs or advocates putting heroin on store shelves alongside ibuprofen and dental floss. Each state or county could set its own rules on who could buy which drugs and where and taxes levied -- as they now do with alcohol.
What about taking gradual steps -- say, starting with marijuana. And couldn't we first try decriminalization -- leaving users alone but still arresting dealers? Those were my questions.
The LEAP people want the laws gone, period. "We're whole hog on it," Nelson said. Keeping the sale of drugs illegal, he said, "doesn't take the cartels out of it."
Ending this "war" won't be easy. Too many police, drug agents, bureaucrats, lawyers, judges, prison guards and sprayers of poppy fields have a stake in it. But Prohibition was repealed once. Perhaps it can happen again.
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Same problem ... Same solution!
TAKE ACTION TO END TODAY'S FAILED PROHIBITION
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unknown1123
Experimental
Registered: 05/15/08
Posts: 4,455
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Re: Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense [Re: veggie]
#9367220 - 12/04/08 07:32 PM (4 years, 5 months ago) |
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so was this proposed or somthing or just an article
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veggie
Registered: 07/26/04
Posts: 13,985
Loc:
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Re: Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense [Re: unknown1123]
#9367420 - 12/04/08 08:04 PM (4 years, 5 months ago) |
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>so was this proposed or somthing or just an article<
I'm not quite sure what you mean. Yes, this is an article. I suppose what it is proposing is that if you are against drug prohibition and the damage to society that it causes, that it is very possible to end it just as we did alcohol prohibition.
Clicking on the link in my signature above is a way to start. Use that letter, modify to reflect your views. Contact your congressman, senators, Pres. Obama. Anyone. Everyone. Change is possible, it does take action and speaking out. We as a nation have changed many things by speaking out and letting our voices be heard, alcohol prohibition, civil rights, unpopular wars, etc. Ending drug prohibition is no different. It will happen.
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 bloodsheen
ChemChaplin
 
Registered: 09/24/08
Posts: 2,664
Last seen: 2 days, 17 hours
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Re: Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense [Re: veggie]
#9368045 - 12/04/08 09:34 PM (4 years, 5 months ago) |
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ok, im pretty sure its an exaggeration to say that over 70% of all people in jail are there for non-violent drug offenses. I dont have anything to prove that statement, but I'd also like to see them prove their statement.
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A cautious young fellow named Lodge / Had seat belts installed in his Dodge. / When his date was strapped in / He committed a sin / Without even leaving the garage. That's clever, isn't it?-A boy and his dog
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Green_T
Getting to the chopper
Registered: 10/02/08
Posts: 4,024
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Re: Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense [Re: bloodsheen]
#9368336 - 12/04/08 10:13 PM (4 years, 5 months ago) |
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"State prisons held a total of 1,274,600 inmates on all charges at yearend 2004. In absolute numbers an estimated 633,700 inmates in State prison at yearend 2004 (the latest year for which offense data is available) were held for violent offenses: 151,500 for murder, 178,900 for robbery, 129,400 for assault, and 153,800 for rape and other sexual assaults. In addition, 265,600 inmates were held for property offenses, 249,400 for drug offenses, and 88,900 for public-order offenses.
Source:
Sabol, William J., PhD, Couture, Heather, and Harrison, Paige M., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2006 (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, December 2007), NCJ219416, p. 24, Appendix Table 9."
http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/62
70% is an exaggeration.
however, look at this picture. Prison population went up dramatically during the 1980s.
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"I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" - Thomas Jefferson
Legalize Meth | Drug War Victims
Their vial of acid, which is on the table over there, tastes vile because they're incompetent chemists.
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MHbound
Ballin Out At All Cost
Registered: 09/24/07
Posts: 6,085
Loc: Under The Rainbow
Last seen: 45 minutes, 20 seconds
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Re: Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense [Re: Green_T]
#9368625 - 12/04/08 10:53 PM (4 years, 5 months ago) |
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I like to send that article...Or the one from the NORML site at least once a month, and try to send it more...Using different names of course.
That chart is insane. Looking at it my first impression was that you will naturally have more incarcerations due to population growth, but would it be that steep?? Not sure, but I doubt it. I gotta look that up.
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ragefanjr
Cookies4Rookies
Registered: 04/05/08
Posts: 95
Loc: Valparaiso, Ind.
Last seen: 6 months, 8 days
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Re: Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense [Re: MHbound]
#9368795 - 12/04/08 11:14 PM (4 years, 5 months ago) |
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"...Two hits of cheese for $5..." ??? What the F? "Cheese?" I thought "cheesing" was something fictional from South Park; when kids starting getting high off of cat piss? Am I the only one curious about that part? If not, could someone elaborate on that concoction? Tylenol PM & Heroin? What kind of combo is that? Do they mean "Tylenol 3 w/ codeine?" Someone explain this to me please? Thank you.
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Cooooooookies! Chomp Chomp Chewey Chomp!!!
This program has been brought to you by dirt. Dirt...it's been around so long it's considered to be older than...wait a minute...
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bloodsheen
ChemChaplin
Registered: 09/24/08
Posts: 2,664
Last seen: 2 days, 17 hours
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Re: Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense [Re: ragefanjr]
#9368861 - 12/04/08 11:24 PM (4 years, 5 months ago) |
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what was the tylenol PM supposed to be for anyway? if you just wanted some kind of extra depressant in there, why not use unisom or something and not bother with the extra liver-damaging acetaminophen? that just seems strange to me
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A cautious young fellow named Lodge / Had seat belts installed in his Dodge. / When his date was strapped in / He committed a sin / Without even leaving the garage. That's clever, isn't it?-A boy and his dog
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veggie
Registered: 07/26/04
Posts: 13,985
Loc:
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Re: Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense [Re: ragefanjr]
#9369193 - 12/05/08 12:27 AM (4 years, 5 months ago) |
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'Cheese' apparently got started in Texas a couple years back and is real, see here. 'Cheesing', on the other hand is probably not real, see here.
Yeah, that 70% figure sounds exaggerated. It depends how the figures were collected, local, state, fed, or a combination. Whether they are in jail waiting trial or have been convicted and sentenced. Number are numbers. It actually doesn't matter. Even if it's only 20%. We have all read the articles where violent offenders are being released early from overcrowded jails to make room for non-violent drug offenders. Even if it's 5% it's too much.
There are other figures from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program indicating marijuana arrests set another all-time record in 2007, totaling 872,720 (that’s a marijuana arrest every 36 seconds.) Arrests for marijuana possession totaled 775,138, greatly exceeding arrests for all violent crimes combined, which totaled 597,447.
Even if none of these people are sentenced to jail, think of how many violent crimes, by violent criminals who will never be arrested, are being committed while law enforcement goes after pot smokers.
Considering that it is the 75th anniversary of Repeal Day, the similarities are even more striking. Now as then, we are in deep financial trouble and getting worse, high unemployment, high crime.
Before the drug war, people used drugs. During the drug war they still do regardless of penalties. Even more people are exposed to drugs and at a younger age because they are readily available as they are not regulated. For that reason also drugs are of an unknown purity and strength leading to poisonings, overdose and deaths.
The drug war has made millionaires and murderers from common street punks. It has created gangs and cartels and incredible violence not only in our own country but across the world. The US spends billions on weapons, surveillance, prisons, supporting corrupt governments, etc. all the while drug prohibition provides trillions to the criminals, drug cartels, and terrorists. The biggest beneficiary of drug prohibition is the DEA, criminals, law enforcement, terrorists, corrupt politicians, the people that support them, and the business that sustain them. The biggest losers are everyone else, people caught in the crossfire.
Even now we are in an energy crisis. Industrial hemp could set us free from 'fossil' fuels and create untold jobs and wealth. Hemp is not even a drug. Everyone agrees with that. It is only because the DEA puts it in the same category because it looks like marijuana.
And decriminalization is not the answer. That would only continue the problem and make matters worse. The only answer is legalization. End prohibition and have all drugs legal and regulated.
To be continued ..
--------------------
Same problem ... Same solution!
TAKE ACTION TO END TODAY'S FAILED PROHIBITION
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Green_T
Getting to the chopper
Registered: 10/02/08
Posts: 4,024
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Re: Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense [Re: veggie]
#9369339 - 12/05/08 12:50 AM (4 years, 5 months ago) |
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QFT Veggie. Even that national geo documentary erroneously called marijuana "hemp".
The war on drugs will not be won on an economic standpoint, but rather on the idea that our bodies are sovereign. I also disagree with decriminalization and believe there can't be a middle ground, but that drugs should be legal.
That being said, I am also against the medicinal marijuana movement. You shouldn't have to have a medical reason to smoke weed: everyone should be allowed to smoke it, but if you have a medical reason your insurance should pay for it. Also, people defraud the system to take advantage of legal weed, which discredits the plight of the sick.
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"I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" - Thomas Jefferson
Legalize Meth | Drug War Victims
Their vial of acid, which is on the table over there, tastes vile because they're incompetent chemists.
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veggie
Registered: 07/26/04
Posts: 13,985
Loc:
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Re: Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense [Re: Green_T]
#9369775 - 12/05/08 01:57 AM (4 years, 5 months ago) |
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You and I are on the same side, no question about that. I do, however, disagree on the economic aspect, just for argument sake...
I believe the end of drug prohibition will come about primarily because of economics. The main reason it continues is because there is a ton of money in it. The Drug War is a major industry. A lot are making money from it. Plus it is ongoing. It can't be won, so it could go on indefinitely AS LONG AS the economy is good. Not too long ago the USA was on great financial footing. Business was good, manufacturing was great, people had jobs, were spending money, and the US coffers were overflowing. The Feds had money to burn.
I used to go around talking about the sovereignty of our bodies, that we have a right to do what we want as long as it is not hurting anyone else. Hell, I do stuff that others may not like. And people do things that I wouldn't do. But we should have a right to do those things. We cannot and should not legislate human behaviours. I still believe that. But, it is still all about the money. Times are tough now. People are scared. They are scared of the future, their kids futures, if they will be able to keep their homes, their jobs, eat. Many folks no longer care about infridgment on rights, fairness, morality, at least temporarily, and will put them on standby if told that will help their problems. The big push will come to end prohibition not from the social libertarians, constitutionalists, or the drug users. It will be from the majority, the non drug users whose pocketbooks are empty and realize the folly of spending money we don't have to 'fix' a problem that was self created by prohibition.
Also, many people think the subset war on marijuana will end just by explaining to non believers how safe it is compared to alcohol and tobacco. Showing study after study how beneficial it is to folks with various medical conditions, that it has been used for thousands of years, etc. The government, law enforcement, legislators, the medical profession are all aware of this. That's all true but it doesn't matter because it is all about the money.
Also I am for medical marijuana. There are plenty of safe, not so safe, useful, and questionable products available over the counter, or in our gardens, that people can take whenever they want for whatever reason. That is the way marijuana should be, freely available. For now if sick people need a prescription, so be it. Pot has been around for ages. But lets say we never heard of it, never knew it existed. But some explorer/scientist comes back from some far way exotic place with stories and several samples for research. It would be considered a wonder drug. The ultimate safe and healing herb and embraced by all.
So we are on the same page. We may have some subtle differences on going about ending prohibition. But it is a common goal. And I am confident it will end. It has to for the sake of our country and our future.
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