Posted on 06/16/2010 9:58:48 AM PDT by logician2u
I'm confused. When I walk around busy midtown Manhattan, I often smell marijuana. Despite the crowds, some people smoke weed in public. Usually the police leave them alone, and yet other times they act like a military force engaged in urban combat. This February, cops stormed a Columbia, Mo., home, killed the family dog and terrorized a 7-year-old boy -- for what? A tiny quantity of marijuana.
Two years ago, in Prince George's County, Md., cops raided Cheye Calvo's home -- all because a box of marijuana was randomly shipped to his wife as part of a smuggling operation. Only later did the police learn that Calvo was innocent -- and the mayor of that town.
"When this first happened, I assumed it was just a terrible, terrible mistake," Calvo said. "But the more I looked into it, the more I realized (it was) business as usual that brought the police through our front door. This is just what they do. We just don't hear about it. The only reason people heard about my story is that I happened to be a clean-cut white mayor."
Radley Balko of Reason magazine says more than a hundred police SWAT raids are conducted every day. Does the use of illicit drugs really justify the militarization of the police, the violent disregard for our civil liberties and the overpopulation of our prisons? It seems hard to believe.
I understand that people on drugs can do terrible harm -- wreck lives and hurt people. But that's true for alcohol, too. But alcohol prohibition didn't work. It created Al Capone and organized crime. Now drug prohibition funds nasty Mexican gangs and the Taliban. Is it worth it? I don't think so.
Everything can be abused, but that doesn't mean government can stop it, or should try to stop it. Government goes astray when it tries to protect us from ourselves.
Many people fear that if drugs were legal, there would be much more use and abuse. That's possible, but there is little evidence to support that assumption. In the Netherlands, marijuana has been legal for years. Yet the Dutch are actually less likely to smoke than Americans. Thirty-eight percent of American adolescents have smoked pot, while only 20 percent of Dutch teens have. One Dutch official told me that "we've succeeded in making pot boring."
By contrast, what good has the drug war done? It's been 40 years since Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. Since then, government has spent billions and officials keep announcing their "successes." They are always holding press conferences showing off big drug busts. So it's not like authorities aren't trying.
We've locked up 2.3 million people, a higher percentage than any other country. That allows China to criticize America's human-rights record because our prisons are "packed with inmates."
Yet drugs are still everywhere. The war on drugs wrecks far more lives than drugs do!
Need more proof? Fox News runs stories about Mexican cocaine cartels and marijuana gangs that smuggle drugs into Arizona. Few stop to think that legalization would end the violence. There are no Corona beer smugglers. Beer sellers don't smuggle. They simply ship their product. Drug laws cause drug crime.
The drug trade moved to Mexico partly because our government funded narcotics police in Colombia and sprayed the growing fields with herbicides. We announced it was a success! We cut way back on the Colombian drug trade.
But so what? All we did was squeeze the balloon. The drug trade moved across the border to Peru, and now it's moved to Mexico. So the new president of Mexico is squeezing the balloon. Now the trade and the violence are spilling over the border into the United States.
That's what I call progress. It the kind of progress we don't need.
Economist Ludwig von Mises wrote: "(O)nce the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness ... (w)hy not prevent him from reading bad books and bad plays ... ? The mischief done by bad ideologies is more pernicious ... than that done by narcotic drugs."
Right on, Ludwig!
John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of "Give Me a Break" and of "Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity." To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM moved to Mexico. So the new president of Mexico is squeezing the balloon. Now the trade and the violence are spilling over the border into the United States.
A very generous gesture.
I imagine that could throw a lot of government workers and contractors out of work, so both Republicans and Democrats will use that as an excuse to keep pot and like substances on the dangerous drugs list a while longer, or until this depression ends.
What was I thinking? All that additional tax revenue coming from the legal sale of a common weed that's now illegal would not even begin to pay for the unemployment benefits for the thousands of prison employees, parole officers, and drug counselors whose livelihood depends on continuing the WO(S)D. Not to mention the ones on the front lines, as it were: the SWAT teams, the trial lawyers, prosecutors, public defenders, bailiffs, jury commissioners . . am I leaving anyone out?
Oh, sure, the gang-bangers who deal in illicit drugs, whose entire income stream is tied to the perpetuation of the WO(S)D, would surely suffer the greatest as they'd have the most to lose if their product were legalized. They couldn't even draw unemployment benefits like everyone else.
And with this sick economy, where would they find a job? Nobody wants to hire someone with tattoos all over his face--that is, unless he can shoot 3-pointers from 40 feet out and get rebounds 7 times out of ten--and a rap sheet for a resume.
I guess it's pointless to even talk about ending a government program when it would put so many onto the welfare rolls.
I’m also afraid you can’t convince me that sending people to jail for growing plants has made the world a better place. All it’s done is give Mexican gangbangers an enormous financial advantage, almost to the point where the are more well armed than the government that is fighting them.
“I’m also afraid you can’t convince me that sending people to jail for growing plants”
It is not illegal to grow plants. That is a silly argument.
It isn’t? It’s a felony in many states.
He tells me their are a LOT more legally-drugged out soccer moms and higher income people than most folks realize.
What drugs do they use? Are they significantly different in pharmacological effect from illegal drugs?
I don’t advocate the outlawing of tobacco, caffeine, or moderate alcohol BECAUSE those three items have centuries of history proving they are not a source of anti-social behaviors.
I don't think we interpret the phenomena the same way.
I don't see drugs as a source of any behavior, other than at the most basic level.
People decide to behave or not, this way or that, to pretend they don't have a choice, or to pretend that "the drug made me do it".
Where you see illegal drugs enslaving individuals, I see individuals pretending, often to themselves, that they are enslaved.
Yes, and local authorities as well. It serves a lot purposes, does the drug war.
According to the Constitution, it is the jurisdiction of the local authorities, not the federal government. One of the purposes it serves is to make people forget there is a difference.
“I don’t see drugs as a source of any behavior, ‘
True, we have a different perspective.
First of all, I know that drugs lower inhibitions. While I don’t think they are an EXCUSE, since we do it to ourselves knowing the consequences, they change your perception of reality. They give you a high, “anything goes” attitude. And they make you irrational. This makes people around you very vulnerable, particularly dependents.
Secondly, they interfere with your basic motor skills. This makes people around you very vulnerable. Unless you are just sitting in your recliner.
Thirdly, they can make you unaware while awake or too deeply asleep when asleep. This makes those dependent upon you very vulnerable.
All of the above three points make you more dangerous to yourself, too, but of course that at least is just self-damage. While I don’t approve of it, it is sort of like suicide. You can’t really legislate against it. If someone wants to self-destruct badly enough, they will. I’d just make it illegal to help them along.
Fourthly, there is brain damage to varying degrees, depending on the drug, the intensity, the duration, etc. You may think, well, we get to damage our own brains if we want. However, brain damaged individuals need care. To suggest we leave them to rot in the compost of their own making is probably strictly libertarian, but not acceptable to me. I have a good friend who does genetic research on schizophrenia who has explained to me the nature of drug-induced psychosis. Most of the loonies who wander our big city streets were either drug abusers or were raised by drug abusers.
As to enslavement, I refer to addiction. Once you are physically or psychologically addicted to something, you are in slave status.
No, it’s not a crime to grow plants.
It’s a crime to grow a certain plant.
No one is concerned about your begonias.
Okay. At what level of government would you implement and enforce it? If you do it at the federal level, will you do it by amendment, or by claim of authority under an enumerated power? If you're doing it under an already existing enumerated power, which one?
“Okay. At what level of government would you implement and enforce it? If you do it at the federal level, will you do it by amendment, or by claim of authority under an enumerated power? If you’re doing it under an already existing enumerated power, which one? “
Ahem, ok, if I were King. . .
I would have each STATE legally define prescription drug abuse and recreational drug abuse.
I would go with the “class” system of drugs, classing them from OTC to the upper classes opiates and so forth.
I’d require doctor’s prescriptions for the higher class drugs.
I’d prosecute doctors for prescription fraud, drug dealers for selling higher class drugs illegally, drug abusers for possession of or intoxication by illegal drugs, and drug manufacturers for making drugs for illegal distribution.
I would go with the “class” system of drugs, classing them from OTC to the upper classes opiates and so forth.
I’d require doctor’s prescriptions for the higher class drugs.
I’d prosecute doctors for prescription fraud, drug dealers for selling higher class drugs illegally, drug abusers for possession of or intoxication by illegal drugs, and drug manufacturers for making drugs for illegal distribution.
Just to clarify, are you the one laying all this out, and telling the States "you will write and enforce these laws to these specifications", or are you leaving it up the the States to decide?
Well, we are talking speculatively, now. I said if I were “king.”
But I am not actually in favor of a monarchy. So, yes, if we are heading towards reality, I believe it is the business of duly elected and accountable law making bodies of the state to make these laws. And the state’s job to enforce them.
Constitutionally, perhaps the feds can assist in pragmatic ways such as communications or some such, inter-border stuff, I don’t know.
What you describe seems to be substantially different than the drug war.
“What you describe seems to be substantially different than the drug war.”
How so? Absence of federal intervention?
Absence of federal intervention, and recognition of the State's authority to make their own laws and manage enforcement within their own borders.
Painkillers and anti depressants, mostly.
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Are they significantly different in pharmacological effect from illegal drugs?
I've seen the results of both, and IMHO, not really.
People decide to give into their “lower inhibitions”, and some pretend that, once they get “high”, they can’t stop themselves from doing reprehensible actions like assault and robbery. I don’t want to give them that excuse.
Drugs can definitely interfere with motor skills, but morally responsible people, while under the influence of alcohol for example, still decide not to drive, since they would endanger others. I want to remove the dodge that “Once I got drunk, I couldn’t help myself”.
I want government to stop helping people hurt themselves and others by encouraging the myth that drugs have the power to enslave them.
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