Strange But True: "The War on Drugs"
This is the second of my Strange But True posts. There is not much I can add here that the video doesn't say. Ending the "war on drugs" has long been something I have advocated from an economic, crime, and freedom position.
We can tax drugs, regulate their cultivation/manufacture/sale, educate against drug use, and provide free drug rehabilitation to help addicts and thus save taxpayers much money, take the profit out of crime, build fewer prisons, save more lives, and have less government control of our personal lives. We can do this on a gradual basis, if the federal government would stop fighting state laws that are moving in this direction. [Wikipedia]
Please watch the video and I invite your discussion.
Oh, how nice it would be to have a sane drug policy. And a sane policy on prostitution while we're at it, would be good, too.
ReplyDeleteLegalize prostitution...wouldn't that take the thrill out of doing something illegal? Gosh, it might even hurt the profession, and all this in a down economy. What are you thinking, Lisa? ;-)
ReplyDeleteFabulous video! I learned some very interesting historical facts while watching that. I have a feeling that we will see progress on this issue in the coming decade or so. At least I hope!
ReplyDeleteDebaters debate the two wars as if the civil war on drugs against Woodstock Nation did not yet run amok. It costs multi-billions of dollars; without accountability, oversight, or exit plan. Continuing the vendetta against all present at the peaceful public assembly of Woodstock Nation in August 1969, and their legions, cannot be good for the United States. Foreign enemies are at the gate. We lead the world in percentile behind bars. If we are all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? America needs peace on the home front.
ReplyDeleteThe negative numbers that will have to be used to bottom-line our legacy to the next generation can be less ginormous. The witch-hunt doctor’s Rx is for every bust to numerate a bigger tax-load over a smaller denominator of payers. Spend more on prisons than on schools. My second witch’s opinion is herbal remedy. More consumer discretionary funds will flow to the rest of the economy when they are no longer depleted by an unnatural seller’s market in psychoactive substances.
A clause about interstate commerce provides a pretext of constitutionality. Any excuse is better than none. So, how is that interstate commerce going? The mantra is eradicate, do not tax, the country’s number-one cash crop. Native flowers become wampum, good as gold. Gifted with margin to frustrate interdiction, peddlers’ bags do not carry coals to Newcastle. The founders’ purpose to authorize federal meddling in interstate commerce was not to divert tax revenue to outlaws.
In 1933, America decided against substance prohibition in the case of the substance alcohol. Drug prohibitionists knew not to try to prohibit drugs by amendment. They have run a super-bluff for 39 years. You don’t need any stinking amendment when you have a swat team on call.
Old England coerced conformity on the puritan nonconformists, so they came to New England, rather than submit. The coercion of the Quakers started in England in 1650 with the imprisonment of George Fox. Physical torture and forfeiture of land for absence in church continued for 39 years. The Toleration Act of 1689 granted freedom of worship to Quaker nonconformists. Now the war on drugs coerces conformity on a double-digit-demographic of defiant nonconformists.
The 1641 Massachusetts Liberties [item 94.2] echoes the Mosaic Law that witches having or consulting a familiar spirit shall be put to death. In 1692, teenage girls, claiming to channel invisible spirits and devils, sent 19 people who their parents disliked to the gallows. In 1693, the court stopped accepting spectral evidence. Gaols emptied. Fourteen years later, the leader of the accusers confided, “It was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time, where I justly fear I may have brought upon myself and this land the guilt of innocent blood.”
The scheduled substances have never had their day in court. Nixon promised to supply supporting evidence later. Later, the Commission evidence wasn’t supporting. No matter, civil war against Woodstock Nation had its charter. No amendments can assure due-process under an arbitrary law that never had any due-process itself. Marijuana has no medical use, period. Open and shut cases clog the kangaroo courts. Juries exclude peers. Lives are flushed down expensive tubes.
The Controlled Substances Act is anti-science. Redundantly, there is no accepted use, nor will there ever be, when all use is not accepted. LSD was hailed as a breakthrough drug until the CSA halted research. America’s drug policy should seek light from the Beckley Foundation.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act restores choice of sacrament for the Native American Church to eat peyote. All Americans, without distinction of church, should be extended the same freedom, to select scheduled sacraments to mediate communion in the rituals even of single-member sects.
To speak freely, one must first think freely. To create, one must be in a receptive mood. How could a bum such as I hope to achieve a great work such as ending a war? What was I smoking? The Constitution, as amended, does not enumerate any power to impede outside-the-box thinking or arbitrate states of consciousness. How and when did government acquire this power? Politicians who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction. Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, says the First Amendment. The CSA derails speech, such as these addled words of mine, onto mental roads not taken.
Common Law must hold that the people are the legal owners of their own bodies, to do with as they please, absent harm to others. That includes corporal components such as the various receptor sites. The people should have the same liberty to move about in their spiritual abodes as they have in their material apartments.
The people have a right to get drunk in their apartments, be it folly or otherwise. Some may self-medicate to comply with the dictum of Socrates to know thy self. Those who appreciate their own free choice of personal path in life should not deny the same to others. Live and let live. The Declaration of Independence gets right to the point. The pursuit of happiness is a self-evident, God-given, inalienable, right of man. The war on drugs is a war on the pursuit of happiness.
The books have ample law on them, sans CSA. The usual caveats, against injury to others, or their estates, remain in effect. Stronger medicines require a doctor’s prescription. Employees can be fired for poor job performance. People should be held responsible for damage caused by their screw-ups. No harm, no foul; and no excuse, either.
The annual dollar cost of the war on drugs at federal, state and local levels totals what, only 50 or 100B USD? If anybody is counting, please share. There is no lower-hanging, riper, or higher-yielding budgetary fruit than to kick the addiction to the third war, cold turkey. Repeal the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.
Jason, I think it unlikely that any significant progress will be made on drug prohibition during Obama's administration. I hope I am wrong. Democrats and Republicans alike support the current policy. Only a few brave ranking members of both parties question it.
ReplyDeleteHere's an idea to consider: Just imagine that in Afghanistan if we bought their opium crop instead of destroying it. We could sell some of it to Big Phrama, since opium derivatives are used in some Rx drugs. This income would help to offset the cost of buying the opium. We would improve our relationships with Afghan farmers who hate us for destroying their livelihood. We would undermine the terrorists who currently buy this opium to sell on the black market.
This would be a good place to start the change on drug policies. It seems practical to me. If you have evidence to the contrary, please share.
As as ex-cop, I fully support the decriminalization of all victimless vice crimes, such as prostitution and drugs.
ReplyDeleteThey've been illegal for years, yet drugs and prostitution continue to flourish. Keeping them illegal won't change a thing; it won't eradicate either.
There are simply some issues that cannot be effectively dealt with by throwing laws at them.
For drugs in particular, I think this issue would be better managed by approaching it as a medical issue, rather than a legal one.
I found these interesting facts over at http://drugwarfacts.org. It is about ten years old, but probably still is close to reality today. Most people imprisoned on drug offenses are for non-violent ones.
ReplyDelete"Department of corrections data show that about a fourth of those initially imprisoned for nonviolent crimes are sentenced for a second time for committing a violent offense. Whatever else it reflects, this pattern highlights the possibility that prison serves to transmit violent habits and values rather than to reduce them."
Source: Craig Haney, Ph.D., and Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., "The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy: Twenty-five Years After the Stanford Prison Experiment," American Psychologist, Vol. 53, No. 7 (July 1998), p. 721.
"The U.S. nonviolent prisoner population is larger than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska."
Source: John Irwin, Ph. D., Vincent Schiraldi, and Jason Ziedenberg, America's One Million Nonviolent Prisoners (Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute, 1999), pg. 4.