Posted on 12/04/2002 3:05:07 PM PST by MrLeRoy
MIDDLETOWN -- Peter Christ and Cliff Thornton are two men with very different backgrounds: Thornton was a substitute teacher in Hartford’s schools, and Christ is a former police officer in western New York state. But both men have reached the same conclusion -- that the ‘war on drugs’ is a massive failure that only deepens the national crisis of addiction and drug-related crime.
After 20 years on opposite sides of a war that has cost over $1 trillion in 30 years, with millions of casualties on both sides, the two men, and many more around the country, are pursuing campaigns to decriminalize illicit drugs.
"No matter how many (drug offenders) are locked up, the problem doesn’t go away ..it gets worse," said Thornton, an educator for a Hartford-based drug law reform group. "The drug war is a colossal waste of resources (and) we must dismantle this monster."
Speaking to a large group of students at Wesleyan University Tuesday, Thornton and Christ explained their shared perception of the so-called drug war as a policy that not only fails to keep drugs off the streets and out of schools, but leads to the incarceration of large sectors of the population -- mostly poor people and minorities.
"The average drug user in the United States has a 40-hour per week job and is white," said Thornton, who cited reports from Amnesty International condemning U.S. drug policy for its violations of human and civil rights. "But the faces of prisoners are overwhelmingly black and brown."
African-American men make up only 3 percent of Connecticut’s population, according to Thornton’s group, Efficacy, but constitute 47 percent of all inmates in the state’s prisons and halfway houses.
Prisons themselves are "largely violent, drug-ridden places," he said, where inmates are not likely to get the treatment they need."
Although Thornton likened the "war on drugs" to "class and race warfare," Christ said he views the prohibition of drugs as a matter of practicality -- prohibition simply doesn’t work.
Alcohol prohibition ended in the 1930s, "not because alcohol became benign ..but because we realized the policy (of prohibition) caused more problems than (alcohol did)," said Christ.
A founding member of the national group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Christ said he wants to see drugs legalized as a way to reduce drug-related crime and to regulate dangerous drugs.
Comparing drug prohibition to abortion and gambling laws, Christ said legalization will not cause an increase in the number of drug addicts.
"I want to regulate and control drugs in this country," said Christ. "You can’t regulate the black market."
The forum was sponsored by the Wesleyan group Students for Sensible Drug Policy.
1) Neither I nor anyone else that I know was ever polled by these people for either poll. So how can you say the poll participants were random, when we both know you don't know?
2) As we all know, Soros is a long time advocate for drug legalization. Since we can neither assert nor deny the presence of a bias in either of the latter polls due to that reason, they are in and of themselves absolutely and completely irrelevant.
And your implying both my opinion and that of those I know is worthless compared with a silly poll is just poppycock.
No. What I am saying is legalizing drugs will only get more people killed. You think it is bad dealing with drunk drivers? Try someone plowing into a school bus filled with kids because they could not miss their morning dose of LSD.
What I am saying is I have had it up to here with people that are of the opinion the "war on drugs" is not winnable, so we should just surrender and give up. That is just like saying instead of trying harder to protect our borders (like by placing a military presence there), we should just give in and let everybody come completely freely (never mind the higher crime rate and the people flying planes into heavily populated buildings). Or perhaps deciding at Normandy Beach we were not going to take the Nazis, so we should throw up the white flag (of course, none of us would have been born).
That is not merely completely f*cking crazy, that is unbelievably f*cking stupid.
The problem is not that it is not winnable (although it isn't... you can't legislate a preference, no matter how many liberals wish we could). The problem is the extra-Constitutional methods that are being created to fight it. These will almost certainly be expanded, and eventually used in other law enforcement efforts.
Deny it all you want. It does not alter the truth.
And, also, it's dcwusmc, not dswusmc. (get the point?) Courtesy dictates that you flag someone if you mention them, even if it is only an attempted mention. You are unable to do so, apparently, not knowing how to properly spell, or check the spelling of, his name.
I am going to say this very slowly just for you, and then I am not going to say it again:
If.
You.
Do.
Not.
Want.
To.
Go.
To.
Jail.
Do.
Not.
Have.
Drugs.
In.
Your.
Possession.
Now.
Stop.
Being.
Stupid.
And.
Shut.
Your.
F*cking.
Cakehole.
Random sampling is a standard part of polling; the burden of proof is on anyone who claims a pollster did not do a random sample. (And whether you or I know anyone who was polled is utterly irrelevant to that issue.)
2) As we all know, Soros is a long time advocate for drug legalization. Since we can neither assert nor deny the presence of a bias in either of the latter polls due to that reason,
The Pew poll had no connection to Soros. And since a pollster's business success depends on credibility, and thus pollsters have a clear incentive to poll objectively regardless of who commissions the poll, the burden of proff is on those who claim that sponsorship proves bias.
they are in and of themselves absolutely and completely irrelevant.
And your implying both my opinion and that of those I know is worthless compared with a silly poll is just poppycock.
Wrong, but your ignorance of basic statistics is hilarious.
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