Posted on 02/29/2012 1:43:05 AM PST by Kaslin
Unlike Bill Clinton, President Obama admits he inhaled!. "Frequently," he said. "That was the point."
People laugh when politicians talk about their drug use. The audience laughed during a 2003 CNN Democratic presidential primary debate when John Kerry, John Edwards and Howard Dean admitted smoking weed.
Yet those same politicians oversee a cruel system that now stages SWAT raids on people's homes more than 100 times a day. People die in these raids -- some weren't even the intended targets of the police.
Neill Franklin once led such raids. The 33-year Maryland police veteran, now executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, locked up hundreds of people for drugs and felt good about it.
"We really thought that these drugs made people evil," he told me.
But 10 years ago Franklin decided that drugs -- even hard drugs -- do much less harm to Americans than does the drug war.
"Drugs can be -- and are in many cases -- problematic. But the policies that we have in place to prohibit their use are 10 times more problematic."
The raids helped change his mind. "We end up with kids being shot ... search warrants being served on the wrong home, innocent people on the other side of the door thinking that they are protecting their home."
And the level of drug use remains about the same.
Still, most Americans support the drug war. Paul Chabot, White House drug adviser to Presidents George W. Bush and Clinton, told me: "We should be kicking down more doors. ... They're kicking the door of somebody who's a violent person."
Violent? People who get high are rarely violent. The violence occurs because when something's illegal, it is sold only on the black market. And that causes crime. Drug dealers can't just call the cops if someone tries to steal their supply. So they form gangs and arm themselves to the teeth.
"We have the violence of these gangs competing for market share, and people get hurt," said Franklin.
Especially kids. Drug gangs constantly look for new recruits.
"Some of these gangs have better recruitment programs than Fortune 500 companies. They know what to say to kids."
People think that if drugs were legal, there would be more recruiting of kids. Franklin says the opposite is true.
"Prohibition causes that. We don't have kids on the corner (saying), 'Pssst, I got a fifth of Jack Daniel's.'"
Kids rarely peddle liquor, and there's little violence around liquor sales because alcohol is legal. There was lots of violence before 1933, but that was because Prohibition forbade liquor sales. Prohibition gave us Al Capone.
"Organized crime existed well before Prohibition," Chabot replied.
That's true. But much less of it. The murder rate rose when alcohol was banned. It dropped when Prohibition was repealed.
"If we were to do away with our drug laws ... we know drug usage numbers will skyrocket," Chabot said.
But we don't know that.
It's logical to assume that, were it not for drug prohibition, drug abuse would be rampant. But 10 years ago, Portugal decriminalized every drug -- crack, heroin, you name it. The number of abusers actually declined.
Joao Goulao, Portugal's top drug official, said that before decriminalization "we had a huge problem with drug use ... around 100,000 people hooked on heroin."
Then they started treating drug use more like a parking ticket. People caught with drugs get a slap on the wrist, sometimes a fine.
Independent studies have found the number of people in Portugal who say they regularly do drugs stayed about the same. And the best news, said Goulao: "Addiction itself decreased a lot."
At first, police were skeptical of the law, but Joao Figueira, chief inspector of Lisbon's drug unit, told me that decriminalization changed lots of minds.
"The level of conflicts on the street are reduced. Drug-related robberies are reduced. And now the police are not the enemies of the consumers!"
And teen drug use is down.
All good news. But in American and in most of the world, the drug war continues, thousands are murdered and in ghettos the police are enemies of the people.
Governments should wake up and learn something from the Portuguese.
Zactly.
He also smoked crack and gave a guy a blowjob in the back of a limo but no one cares about that.
Isn’t it odd that pre-employment drug testing excludes certain legally prescribed drugs or “medications” and that if for example marijuana was legal, a person who tests positive would probably either lose or never get that job?
I’m not talking about the kinds of jobs where operating heavy machinery, handling hazardous materials or driving company vehicles are primary requirements.
There are so many stoners out there who don’t use illegal drugs or have drinking problems and yet they have high paying jobs in so-called “drug-free” workplaces.
I’d rather share an office cubicle with someone who smokes a little weed now and then than somebody who’s on major anti-depressants and/or pain medication(s).
I am guessing that was probably Obama’s average weekend night.
Drugs will never be legal in this country. Cops love the power Prohibition gives them. Not to mention the private prisons making a killing incarcerating people and using them for nearly slave labor.
The Feds will never give up the power. It’s that simple.
You can argue until you are blue in the face. They don’t care about anything except for their own wallets. Doesn’t matter how many lives get ruined because of a plant.
Yup..... As with back in the 1920s, prohibition has become very profitable for certain folks, both inside and outside of government(at the expenses paid in lives/livelihoods of others). Sadly, it looks like things are going to have to get FAR worse before they get better. What never stops amazing me is how our country/society simply refuses to learn from historical mistakes of the past.
Not to metion how handy it is to have occupation armies in ghetto’s.
Amen a thousand times over. I’ve spoken out against the WOD and the unintended consequences for years, but the tide against doing something besides what we now do, seems overwhelmingly fixed.
Frankly, the years before the government placed itself on the pinnacle of the drug trade were no worse than what we have at present, IMHO. The WOD gives police forces ammo to increase their numbers beyond reasonable, and the same goes for the size of government.
If one of the principles of conservatism, is smaller government, then one needs to shrink the reach, and focus of government. I don’t see the role of government shrinking any time soon.
I suppose to close, I might mention how good the propaganda wing of government is when it has proven next to impossible even to have medical use of MJ approved. I would be the first to agree that is a thinly veiled attempt to legalize recreational use, however, put a sunset clause on the bill and call it a test, and it probably still would go down to defeat.
Look at the medical issues surrounding “spice”, and tell me the legal (so far) pot substitute is less harmful than the real thing? The real difference, one is legal and can cause highly dangerous and sometimes deadly reactions, and the other is illegal and doesn’t.
There is much misinformation on what would or would not happen if government got out of the drug business, much of it hearsay and based on nothing more than opinion. We all have one on the subject. I would like to see something besides a war and it’s consequences.
drugs were legal at the turn of the century... the country was not filled with zombie like creatures wandering aimlessly in the streets... here is my main beef.. I am allergic to aspirin and aspirin products. I have psoriatic arthritis.. the only relief I can get is through narcotics, which I refuse to take. But, If I am having a real bad day, do you think a doctor will prescribe them to me? And risk getting investigated by the feds?
The war on drugs is stupid. Period.
The drug war is necessary for the maintenance of the police state. It fulfils it’s purpose perfectly.
Then they started treating drug use more like a parking ticket. People caught with drugs get a slap on the wrist, sometimes a fine.
Independent studies have found the number of people in Portugal who say they regularly do drugs stayed about the same. And the best news, said Goulao: "Addiction itself decreased a lot."
Facts are stubborn things. I'll have to keep this in mind next time some Chicken Little proclaims that legalization would make drug use skyrocket.
Written by a scumbag who reports against the horrors of government waste, yet who took a couple hundred grand of taxpayer money when his vacation house at the shore got damaged in a storm.
Typical self-centered, liberaltarian hypocrite whose motto is, “What’s good for me is good for me even if it harms others. To hell with everyone else.”
And that makes what he reports about Portugal false?
Typical self-centered, liberaltarian hypocrite whose motto is, “What’s good for me is good for me even if it harms others. To hell with everyone else.”
Decriminalization in Portugal helped many and harmed none.
Again, you pick and choose what you look at to determine what “helps” and what “harms.”
Sad, really, you’re inability to see past your own flesh.
Again, you pick and choose what you look at to determine what “helps” and what “harms.”
Sad, really, your inability to see past your own flesh.
Again, you pick and choose what you look at to determine what “helps” and what “harms.”
Support your claim: state who was harmed by decriminalization in Portugal.
Sad, really, your inability to see past your own flesh.
Obviously false as my own flesh isn't in Portugal.
Support your own claim.
Open your eyes and stop lying to yourself and you’ll see the damage that drugs have done to America since they were popularized by your buddies the 1960’s radical leftists.
Drugs are ruining our young. Yet you pretend that it is the illegality of those drugs and not drug-usage itself that is the cause of the problem.
You are liar, and a liberal, and a troll and you belong at the DemocRAT Underground, not on a conservative forum.
Go away, liberal troll.
Again, you pick and choose what you look at to determine what “helps” and what “harms.”
Support your claim: state who was harmed by decriminalization in Portugal.
Support your own claim.
What claim do you imagine me to have made?
Open your eyes and stop lying to yourself and you’ll see the damage that drugs have done to America
I've never denied the damage done by drug use - nor by alcohol use. The point is that banning alcohol or other drugs has not been shown to decrease that damage, but clearly does damage of its own.
since they were popularized by your buddies the 1960’s radical leftists.
They're not my buddies and won't become so no matter how often you repeat it.
Drugs are ruining our young. Yet you pretend that it is the illegality of those drugs and not drug-usage itself that is the cause of the problem.
Wrong. Both are problems - but the problems of illegality are accompanied by no demonstrable reduction in the problems of use.
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