Prohibition should have taught us is regardless of the law you cannot stop a substance in a free society. We tried alcohol prohibition before and it created all the same problems that drug prohibition does, an expensive criminal black market, huge amounts of government corruption, etc, and it makes a joke of the government and laws because they don’t work. We learned to deal with alcohol better than prohibition why can’t we do the same for other drugs? Stopping drugs in a free society is impossible, if there's a demand there will be a supply and America has a huge demand that has created $400 billion a year industry. A job with that much profit to be made, where plants are worth as much as gold, how could the government ever stop you? Even the chief of the DEA admits we can never stop them even with all the billions in taxes spent. That’s not to even mention countries where their economy depends on drugs like Afghanistan and Columbia and they would literally collapse if drug use were stopped.
Original drug laws came from racism and they continue to be racist. In this ‘war on drugs’ 72% of users are white, 15% black, and 10% Hispanic; despite these numbers, African Americans consist of 40% of those arrested for drug violations, and over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 21%. Drug laws were created at the beginning of the century simply as another way to separate and discriminate against blacks, mexicans, and asians by criminalizing their drug of choice. Because of that cocaine, marijuana and opium became illegal at a time when immigrants were seen as doing nothing else than taking white jobs. Racism can still be seen in drug laws in the form of racial profiling, discretionary decisions of prosecutors and judges, harsh sentencing for small crack possession. In the ‘war on drugs’ African Americans and Latinos are treated more harshly than European-Americans.
Interesting fact about the war on drugs, it’s illegal! Federal government has only the powers granted to it in the Constitution; all other powers go to the states or the people. Congress had to amend the constitution, which is very difficult and requires a two-thirds majority, to give themselves the power to make a substance, alcohol, illegal. The problem is the constitution, the US has a tradition of individual liberty and limited government, it protects the right and freedom to use any substance and specifically gives the federal government only delegated power and the rest to the state and the people. There has been no constitutional amendment to gain the power to regulate drugs, instead the government used propaganda and a legal loophole to get around the constitution power. It taxed drugs requiring them to have a stamp, the trick is they only produced a small number of stamps and then stopped producing them. They also demonized the substances by spreading fear, lies and exaggerations and manipulating the public into fearing drugs would have your children having sex, going insane, killing others and it would be the death of a generation. This effectively kept drugs illegal for several decades until the Supreme Court ruled this was illegal. At this time society had changed, after striking at a parents worst fear for decades and falsely having drugs illegal for over a generation the people no longer knew it was their choice what when into their bodies this freedom was lost.
Many of the so called ‘drug problems’ are in reality drug law side effects or made worse by drug laws. The US has handed over control to the most powerful and profitable business to terrorist, criminal, gangsters, whoever wants to tap into easy billions and is violent enough to control this illegal world. Making drugs illegal does not make them go away, it just takes away government control, regulation, taxation. Another side effect is raised drug prices, now without thinking this would seem like a good idea except that means more money for drug dealers, it also lures people, especially inner city youth with a temptation stronger than any legal alternative could provide. It also makes it impossible for addicts to live normal lives with a habit normal salaries cant pay for, this of course forces them into theft and crime in order to support their habit. Forcing addicts into committing crimes and handing over the control of a market with inflated prices to fuel organized crime just doesn’t seem like crime reduction to me. Drugs also have to get made into a more potent form (like crack) because you try to fit as much drug as possible into the smallest space and to get the most high out of your drug you need to use more direct routes than eating, like snorting/injecting. This can be verified on the DEA web site but take my word for it since I was there to see it, its easier for kids to get drugs than alcohol or cigarettes. Our main goal is to keep drugs away from the kids but this isn’t working and it goes back to regulation. Alcohol and cigarettes have an age limit, you need ID, and you need a government license to sell them, drugs bypass all these problems. Its not a perfect system but it is more effective, with drugs some dealer really wants to sell to you, at a gas station they have plenty of reason to fear minors. Besides think about the psychology behind it whenever someone tells you not to do something you get more curious about it and want to do it more, the ‘don’t push the button’ effect. Tell kids they can’t do something they’ll want to that much more, this works for everyone but especially kids. Look at when something gets negative press in the media, the sales soar. Parental advisory stickers are a good example and have a similar mentality behind them.
The very idea of what drugs are have been twisted in our minds. We have this idea of evil ‘drugs’ but what are they? The line has become hard and hard to see because it does not exist. Nicotine is more addictive than any illegal drug, alcohol has cause more social problems than all the illegal drugs combined, caffeine is just another type of speed. We have a wide range of legal chemicals, prescriptions, and herbs that produce in many cases more powerful highs than illegal drugs. We have a society that thinks its normal to take anti-depressants, how is this happy pill different from the next? You can walk into GNC and ask for an herb to produce many stimulant, depressant, even psychedelic effects; you can ask your doctor for pills to relax you, put you to sleep, make you happy, reduce stress, give you energy, and the list goes on. We must realize that this drug distinction in an invisible line and that the only difference is how many years you get from the war on some drugs.
Drugs have something called the balloon effect, which is why they cannot be stopped. When you squeeze one end of the balloon the other gets bigger; when you get tough on drugs prices go up, criminals get more money, it becomes that much more of a good idea to sell drugs; when you get easy on them prices go down, there's more around and more people using them. It’s a lose lose situation which is why it can never be won, but now politicians have to keep getting tougher on drugs, anything else like decriminalization is seen as a weakness and has become an easy stab in the game of politics. Due to this game instead of helping society we are crushing drug users with laws more harmful than the drugs themselves. We have minimum sentencing where you will automatically be locked up several years regardless of the situation, offence number and judges opinion; you do not receive government aid for school if you have a non-violent drug charge; rave act, a very unconstitutional law slowly being torn apart by the courts. In this crazy obsession we have lost our logic, we are not helping society or addicts. We are taking away money for schooling, taking away ability to vote, greatly decreasing ability to get a job, and we take it away from the people who need it most, and we do this all while giving someone that supposedly needs help a criminal record and prison time. Drugs might be a health, social, maybe even family problem but they should not be a legal problem and any further increase in effort will result in a loss of civil rights, even more outrageous penalties, and unconstitutional laws; and it is up to us to decide weither we are willing to create a society with freedom in an attempt to win the war on drugs or weither we learn for our mistakes and realize there is a better, smarter way to deal with the problem.
I think drugs need to be legalized and destigmatized so that they can be dealt with properly, responsibly and logically. A system and laws must be made to regulate how drugs will work, will it be sold threw pharmacies, gas stations, special drug stores, age limits, etc must all be made by the government with the best way to benefit society in mind. Drugs will be FDA regulated so you know what you’re getting, how much, and that’s its pure, you will also have to real facts so you can make responsible, educated, mature decisions the way adults should be able to. The new focus should be how to spend our extra billions a year and how to reduce drug harm and keep the population well informed. Now those that really do have addiction problems will be able to get the help they need instead of getting locked up. Even addicts will have a better quality of life being able to live normally like tobacco addicts. New products and research can be made without zero-tolerance blindness being an obstacle. They have already created a cocaine-gum that works like nicotine-gum but it is currently considered a drug still. Research into the benefits and medical uses of drugs can be made. This is a world were we can let drugs help society instead of destroy it.
Edited by DailyPot (12/01/04 06:26 AM)
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