Rubbish. It is the War on Drugs that causes violence and funds terrorism. Not the drugs themselves. Just like Prohibition funded the brutal gangsters of the Al Capone era.
I wrote the following in 2004:
I have long been opposed to the federal government’s so-called “War on Drugs,” which is second perhaps only to the income tax in terms of the burdensome tyranny that it imposes on the American people.
One would think that our nation would have learned the lessons of Prohibition — an arrogant and ultimately failed Progressive Era attempt to improve human beings by engineering their personal behavior. Of course, to their credit, the people who gave us Prohibition were at least sufficiently aware of the extent to which their agenda was inconsistent with the rights of American citizens that they did us the courtesy of seeking and securing a constitutional amendment.
Not so with the War on Drugs, which is far more damaging to our rights, and yet somehow was foisted on the American people without a similar bow to the necessity for submitting it to constitutional authority.
There are many good reasons to oppose the War on Drugs, but certainly at the top of the list is the fact that it has spawned the outrageous federal and state Drug Forfeiture Laws. These laws “enable” the government to confiscate private property without even a cursory nod to our 4th and 5th Amendment rights to due process and protection from unreasonable search and seizure. According to a recent article from Florida Today (1/11/2004):
Federal and state drug forfeiture laws allow authorities to take homes, cars, boats and other personal possessions of those caught with even the smallest amounts of illegal drugs. Often, such decisions are left to the discretion of individual police departments and municipalities.
“Even if you have a tiny pill in your pocket, they can confiscate your vehicle,” said Steve Casanova, a former prosecutor with the Brevard County State Attorney’s Office and now a Melbourne defense lawyer whose specialties include drug trafficking cases.
The law also allows cash and property of those not directly involved in drug arrests to be confiscated, Casanova said.
“If you loan your car to someone who’s pulled over by the police and arrested for having drugs, they can take your vehicle,” he said.
Sometimes, confiscated cash and property is held in limbo for one or two years before a judge decides whether such forfeitures should go to authorities, she said.
Anyone who thinks they are safe from such abuse because they don’t use drugs might find the following 1993 story from Newsweek a bit chilling:
“Gary and Kathy Bergman had their home seized after a houseguest was found with marijuana. After a three hour search of the house, federal agents found a trace of pot and a marijuana butt in a car outside belonging to the Bergmans’ daughter. Even though neither of the Bergmans was charged with a federal crime (Gary pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor state charge) the federal government seized the entire house as the presumed tainted property of a drug ring. The Bergmans have been allowed to stay there under an occupancy agreement. However, their front and back doors post signs stating, “No trespassing by order of U.S. Marshall.” – David Kaplan, Bob Cohn, and Karen Springen, Where the Innocent Lose, Newsweek, pg. 42, January 4, 1993.”
Most Americans are not aware of the extent to which government has usurped our supposed constitutional rights through drug war legislation. We have been sleeping for a long time. But my presidential candidacy will be the wake-up call that is long overdue, and I will use all of my powers as president to end this indecent assault on our most fundamental liberties.
Of course, the damage that the War on Drugs has done to our nation is not limited just to the abuses of the drug forfeiture laws. There is also the matter of financial cost. In 2002, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy FY 2003 Budget Summary, the federal government spent $18.8 billion fighting the drug war, and still has not made a dent in drug use in the United States.
But even apart from that, there is the fact that the drug war is simply bad public policy. Like Prohibition in its time, the primary social outcome of the War on Drugs is that it has financed the growth of organized crime. But today we are not just talking about good old fashioned Godfather-type organized crime that was mostly focused on high-jacking, prostitution, gambling and corrupting labor unions. We are talking about nationally organized street gangs recruiting aggressively, with millions of dollars in their treasuries, and nationwide networks of distributors and enforcers. We are talking about arsenals of high-powered weapons owned by criminals in gang controlled neighborhoods throughout America.
One could say, at least the Prohibition-era gangsters kept their own neighborhoods relatively safe. But what has the War on Drugs done to our inner-city neighborhoods, except turn them into war zones? What has it accomplished, except to enable vicious gang-bangers to expand their networks into the heartland of America, and recruit children into the drug business with a pay level that makes working at McDonald’s seem like something only chumps and suckers would do.
Space does not allow me to adequately chronicle the terrible toll that the Drug War has taken on our nation. But there is certainly a compelling case to be made that the supposed threat posed by individual drug addicts is far less damaging than the threat of the drug war itself.
When I was struggling to make a living during my music career in the mid-80s, I suffered the theft of an entire car-load of expensive instruments and band equipment. I later learned from others in my neighborhood that the likely suspects were several heroin users who shared an apartment up the street. I could never prove that, and I never did recover my equipment.
But let’s assume that the heroin addicts were, in fact the culprits. Had heroin been legal, they would have purchased it at some store for some nominal amount, gone home, shot up, nodded off, and left me alone. Possibly, they could even have managed their drug use to the point where they could hold jobs. Instead, in order to support drug habits made exorbitantly expensive by the artificially inflated prices of illegal drugs, they resorted to crime.
How is that a benefit to society? How do such outcomes justify the cost in lost rights, wasted dollars and the lost productivity of criminalized non-violent individual drug users, many of whom – but for the fact that their habit is illegal – would be in a position to function with relative normality and make at some sort contribution to their communities? Or at least not be driven by addiction to steal and burglarize.
Lastly, there is the pure issue of American liberty. I would agree that there might be a legitimate reason to outlaw certain individual drugs if it could be proven that their effect had a very high correlation to violent behavior. PCP comes to mind as an example as a substance that might merit such consideration. And I would certainly support laws relating to safety, such as prohibiting driving under the influence of certain substances – although such laws rightly belong at the state level.
But to threaten millions of non-violent drug users with prison and huge civil fines for engaging in behavior that is not generally harmful to others is a gross violation of their core liberties. It is not the federal government’s business to prohibit individuals from engaging in non-violent recreational behavior simply because it may not be good for them.
Ending the drug war raises some very complex issues about the practical realities, options and potential regulatory requirements relating drug legalization or decriminalization, but surely the War on Drugs as it stands now is the worst and most destructive approach.
P.S. I didn't get the gig.
To add to that, not only is the “war on drugs” an infringement on the rights and civil liberties of all Americans it is stupidly hypocritical as it does note include alcohol, which is the source of more damage, more murders, more mayhem, more wrecked lives than all the others combined.
Can’t touch it though — it’s the drug of choice of the people in power.
Another frightening side effect of the “war” has been the proliferation of anti-narcotics nomex-clad strumtruppen armed with advanced weaponry and no-knock warrants.
It used to be a rare thing, but it’s getting to where not a week or a month goes by when these thugs descend on the wrong address, burst through the door, totally terrorize the occupants at gunpoint and then, upon finding they are at the wrong place, simply leave — often with only the most insincere and useless of apologies.
Alas, there’s no way to get this genie back in the bottle. Too many petty bureaucratic empires and been founded, nurtured and expanded to take advantage of it. Too many coffee cups depend on it.
Sure. Then all the drug traffickers will move here, grow/manufacture their drugs legally, and make a tremendous profit exporting them to countries where use remains illegal. Buy American! will have a whole new meaning, thanks to you.
So will The Ugly American. This would really increase our popularity in the world -- especially among Muslims. "Houston Heroin", "Memphis Meth", and "Kansas Coke" addicting millions of children worldwide.
But wait, robertpaulsen, the rest of the world will follow our lead and legalize all drugs, thereby taking away the profit.
You are one funny dude. Hey, if you're going to dream your Libertarian dream, dream big.
Care to hear my nightmare? I am an end consumer of pot. I work 60 hours a week running a business and I have not missed a week of work in 4 years. I pay my taxes and bother no one.
A friend of mine introduced me to a woman who lived down the street from me. Her husband ran off and was living in Raleigh with a woman, left her and her son to fend for themselves. I was going over there to meet the woman a few nights a week. After the first week or so she says, “Kevin (the Wake County narcotics officer that lives across the street from me) is watching you.” As it turns out, he and her estranged husband are best friends and business partners. Over the next week or so, me and my friends all get pulled over and searched. I was pulled over by three cruisers and searched at * AM on the way to work because “We had an anonymous complaint you were drinking beer and blocking traffic across main street. This obviously required a search of my vehicle and person.
A week later on my day off, I get a battering ram through my front door and a dozen guys with HK’s and dogs tear my house up. I had set out my AK 47 to clean that day at the top of the stairs. Could have got a bullet in the brain for holding an AK as they came in. They stole every dollar I had in cash about $400. reported $16 dollars seized. Went through every file on my computer. Ripped up the front page of the Lawrence Mass. newspaper from the day FDR died. Took an antique Egyptian Hooka with Arabic writing on it. When I, handcuffed on the couch said it had never been used for pot I was told “we will test it at the lab, if it has no residue, You can have it back. “ I never smoked out of it. It is a tobacco hooka, not the same thing as a water pipe, and it reeked of tobacco. The hooka never appeared on any paperwork. Just dissapeared into a cops trunk.
So they must have found a load huh?
6 grams in one bag on the counter. I am apparently the first drug dealer in history who owns not a single plastic baggie and doesnt have a scale.
For evidence, they had an anonymous complaint and they pulled my trash. As soon as they found a seed, they had probable cause to believe there was a crime being committed in the house. So legally everything they did was hunky dory. $1,500 in bailbondsman fees, $1,500 for a lawyer, new door, cash gone, all my neighbors think I am a drug dealer, and after it all, I can’t be secure in my own home. Not being a drug dealer didn’t keep them from coming in before. Why should not being a dealer keep them away? The good news is 6 grams of marijuana was removed from the streets for only 5 digits or so in taxpayer money. My neighbor took care of the cat the weekend before. They hit her too. Try explaining to your 12 yr old daughter why she was in handcuffs with a submachine gun barell in her face and a cop screaming at her. Comicly, the only thing they found in that house was counterfeit cocaine in my friend’s 17 yr old son’s desk. A coincidence.
PLEASE FORGIVE ME IF I DONT GIVE A &&&& FOR THE WAR ON DRUGS AND TRADING MY RIGHTS AS A CITIZEN FOR A PUBLICLY FUNDED WAR ON A FRIGGIN PLANT
Want to hear karma? The Narc across the street, his partner ( who actually arrested me) and anouther narc (all white) were at an Applebee’s after a sting. An elderly black preacher took up 2 parking spaces when he parked with his granddaughter and wife (this is north carolina. The preacher always uses two spaces.) they pulled him out of the car, broke several ribs, maced him and gave him a concussion in front of his family as the wife was on 911 to get the police...The lawsuits have only just begun and I laugh a little on the inside every time it comes up! The first time i saw it in the paper I bust out laughing in a restaurant. For all I care, take your War on Drugs and stick it where the sun don’t shine.