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.
“Personally, I’m not for telling anybody what to ingest.”
Well, I am.
I first of all support anti-drunkenness laws. One can drink without getting drunk. I don’t mind others drinking alcohol if they don’t get drunk. As for caffeine and tobacco, they do not promote anti-social behavior. Long human history has shown that.
But if you are drunk; or stoned on pot; or meth; or LSD; or cocaine; or whatever -
your inhibitions are lowered. you get psychotic. you get paranoid. you can’t properly make decisions. you tend to neglect vulnerable people in your care. you more often abuse vulnerable people in your care. you are more dangerous to people who have absolutely nothing to do with you. you can’t control your bodily functions as well. you can’t work to your best if at all. you can overdose. you can influence others to join you in your debauchery, particularly young people who may look up to you. you can’t help in an emergency. sometimes you are the emergency. you are more likely to commit every crime there is, from vandalism to murder. you are also a much easier mark for a criminal. most of the nutballs wandering our streets are there because either they abused drugs, or their caretakers did. They can’t string together a coherent sentence.
And none of this happens on your own private island. We live in a society, not separate cages.
What’s ironic is that I actually agree with ending the “War on” part of the “War on Drugs.” Not so much because I think we ought to legalise drugs or that anyone has an inherent right to put whatever they want in their bodies, regardless of the effect it will cause them to have on others (they don’t), but because I really don’t like the ideas of militarised police forces, warrantless no-knock entries, property forfeiture laws, and the rest that come with the “War on Drugs.”
It's unfortunate that it takes a depression and the government running out of money before politicians begin to realize they are losing a big source of tax revenue.
As you are probably aware, tax revenue--not the northeast liberal Catholics needing their afternoon shot of Cutty Sark--was the main reason Prohibition was repealed.
“Look man, if I wanna ingest PCP and put your head through your windscreen while screaming about zombies, that’s my ****ing right, man!!! “
Well, ingesting the PCP is ok with the Libertarians. Very “free” of you.
Putting the head through the windscreen, they’d punish you for that.
Better hope that’s all they do, and don’t decide you are one of the zombies. Because then they’ll kill you.
They’ll get punished for the murder in Libertarian land. Which could have been prevented if they weren’t allowed the PCP, but let’s not trouble the Libertarian waters.
Of course you are just as dead in that case.
Now, because I'm not a retard, I'm quite well able to understand that trans fats don't make anybody go nuts and throw other people through plate glass windows. Apparently libertarians are too flippin' stupid to figure out the finer gradations of the argument.
Public drunkeness is the crime, not the drink.
Personally, if a guy wants to get drunk/stoned/wasted in his own home, without externalizing the impacts to the rest of us, FINE.
As for “anti social behavior”, I haven’t known many violent weed users. Just the opposite.
The WO(S) is a complete failure. I used to support it, but I’ve grown up. Imprisonment is up, and drug use is unabated. Meanwhile, as with Prohibition, we’ve created the criminal element out of whole cloth.
Unless their brother-in-law is the judge on the private arbitration court they get to try the case.
The primary similarity being that neither drugs nor guns force themselves onto you.
Personal responsibility.
Just use like alcohol man. It’s like legal man. Like alright man?
Exactly. Unfortunately, many types of the harder drugs really cannot be used responsibly. The very act of using them is itself personal irresponsibility.
I don't, btw, apply that to marijuana, which I think ought to at least be decriminalised, and certainly ought to be open for medicinal use. What I have in mind are the hardcore hallucinogenics like angel dust, PCP, etc. as well as crack and the like. These very clearly do introduce "issues" for those around their users, even when relatively little amounts of the substance are used, which is much of the reason why trying to draw an argument between these drugs and, say, alcohol are illegitimate.
Not typically, and not usually. What do you think the rate of use for alcohol causing someone to do something like that would be versus, say, PCP causing the same? Trying to draw parallels between alcohol and hardcore hallucinogens is ridiculous.
Also note, we DO punish the use of alcohol pre-emptively in certain cases, such as drunk driving, even when the person using the alcohol has not or has not yet injured someone else. It's because the law (rightly) recognises that engaging in certain behaviours for which there is a high probability of harming someone else can be dealt with proactively, even when it hasn't actually happened yet. this is an entirely legitimate part of the arbitrative role of government.
Of course, I know of libertarians who think drunk driving laws are illegitimate, so go figure...
Furthermore, it required a Constitutional amendment for the fed to be able to outlaw it
Primarily because of the federalism issues involved, not because the prohibition was in and of itself inherently unconstitutional. (BTW, I don't disagree with you that prohibition of alcohol via amendment was a bad idea).
but that was repealed because it was shown to be an abject failure. But all that history and context means nothing to you, does it?
Actually, it was repealed because the FedGov (or ZOG, as it's known in some libertarian circles) needed the revenue.
Response: It seems to be true that the government falls short in dealing with drug abuse. However, that is no reason to stop trying. No legal or moral rule has ever procured perfect compliance and that is no reason not to have rules
And Prescription Pain Medication too, right?
After all, pain medication can be used in a recreational manner.
Drugs used to be legal. I do not remember reading about the 1890s drug problem in history books being as serious as we have now.
Drugs support an underworld of evil and hopelessness and ending the "drug war" will only allow more victims to be dragged into the pit.
Pretending drug-use is a matter of "personal responsibility" is the same as pretending abortion is "choice".
How positively benevolent of you n00b
“If the right to take drugs was mentioned in the Constitution”
Adn the right of the fed gvt to decide for me is mentioned where?
Hey, old-timer. Is it your position that any right we have must be listed in the constitution? Last time I looked, the constitution was intended to limit the power of government not to list all of our human rights.
Try it that way.
L
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