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Prohibition is as absurd and fruitless today as it was when Eliot Ness ran around shooting up Chicago trying to stamp out illegal beer. The world is laughing at us while real people are being robbed, jailed, assaulted and even killed. We have more people locked in prison than any country in the history of the world. But our drug use rate has barely dropped at all. The blood and violence from gangs and narco-traffickers that have left Colombia and Mexico on the verge of becoming failed states is spilling across our borders. This is no country for old men—or old laws.
Could we do worse than to at least try the Harm Reduction programs used most successfully in Holland and other parts of Europe? As unorthodox as this sounds, decriminalizing (not legalizing) even harder drugs, making them available on prescription from the government for free, along with a safe place to use them, has led to a much lower crime rate—and even addiction rate—than ours. Why? The free prescriptions mean the addict does not have to rob and kill people to pay the drug gangs' high prices, and the gangs are put out of business. Dealers are still treated harshly and rehab is strongly encouraged. This could also save up to $50 billion a year for rehab and education that is otherwise wasted by throwing people in prison.
This also frees up billions and billions of dollars to treat the addicts when they want to get off drugs—which will be sooner rather than later. Rehab costs 2/3 less than prison. Our mushrooming prison-industrial complex is draining our money so badly that state after state is slashing funds for education—education!—to pay for throwing more and more people in prison. In California, a prison guard now makes more money than a teacher. So much for family values.
What is wrong with this picture?!??? As president I suggest the commuting of federal prison sentences of all small-time non-violent drug offenders to time served and releasing them immediately. Then strongly urge governors to do the same at the state level. Again, think of all the wasted taxpayer dollars this will free up for more important things like education and rehabilitation. Estimates run as high as $50 billion nationwide.
This does not mean any of these drugs should be legalized, just decriminalized. That is, strictly regulated like alcohol and tobacco, with big-time dealers and gangs treated as harshly as ever. For another way to fight the drug lords, consider this. In 2005 the United States spent $780 million on drug eradication in Afghanistan. Where on earth did it all go? It worked so poorly that $600 million of poppies and heroin escaped into the market anyway.
Do the math: We could have saved a whopping $180 million if we had simply gone to the suppliers and bought the drugs, and then destroyed them so they won't keep making people sick and killing my friends. As sickening as it is to even think of doing business with drug cartels, can anyone think of a better way to cut off the supply? A counter-argument is that this will actually force the gangs to drive the street price way up. But with Harm Reduction programs already in place they will have nothing to sell, no place to sell it, and no suckers willing to buy.
And for crying out loud, isn't it time to finally get real and decriminalize marijuana? If current strains are more potent than the old days, so what? Study after study still proves that marijuana is less harmful—and less addictive—than alcohol or tobacco. Nowadays, going overboard against marijuana has not only flooded our prisons to the breaking point, it has driven the price of cannabis so high that young people are going straight into crack cocaine and methamphetamines. Is this wise?
On top of that, it is not just oil we are dangerously low on, we are running out of wood. If we ever hope to turn the tide on global warming and save what is left of our forests, we must remove all bans on the cultivation of cannabis for its many industrial uses—including the strain of hemp that has no THC in it to get anyone high but is still banned anyway. Recycling is not enough. Why chop down millions of trees to make paper when we can use hemp or kanaf and then grow another crop of paper a few months later? It does not get any greener than this. It will also help rescue a lot of family farms.
Finally, the Joe Biden-authored Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act (formerly known as the RAVE Act), passed as a rider to the Amber Alert Bill, is as big a disgrace as the PATRIOT Act. It has no place in a free society and should be repealed immediately. Long-term rescue of our social fabric and society, not to mention our southern neighbors, depends in major part on enacting humane drug laws.
I'm guilty of being a lazy fuck. If I was at work I'd probably read it. lol I will later anyway so thanks for sharing. Just not in a reading mood tonight. I need to fix up a laptop table for the toilet. That's where I do most of my serious reading these days.
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